Chapter I (8)

A cry of rage and terror burst from the crew, and they sprang impulsively toward the boats, but the captain’s authoritative voice at once arrested their steps. “Hear me out, will you? Hurry and confusion will destroy us all, but with courage and steadiness every soul on board may be saved before the flames can reach the powder. And remember,” he added, as he took his pistols from Hawkins and cocked one of them, “that I will send a bullet after any man who disobeys me, and I seldom miss my aim. Now, then, to your work—steadily, and with a will!”

It was marvelous to observe the influence his bold, confident, and commanding bearing and words had upon the men. The panic-terror that had seized them gave place to energetic resolution, and in an incredibly short space of time the boats were in the water. “Well done, my fine fellows! There is plenty of time, I again repeat. Four of you”—and he named them—“remain with me. Three others jump into each of the large boats, two into the small one, and bring them round to the landward side of the ship. A rush would swamp the boats, and we shall be able to keep only one gangway clear.”

The passengers were by this time rushing upon deck half-clad, and in a state of the wildest terror, for they all knew there was a large quantity of gunpowder on board. The instant the boats touched the starboard side of the bark, the men, white as well as colored, forced their way with frenzied eagerness before the women and children—careless, apparently, whom they sacrificed so that they might themselves leap to the shelter of the boats from the fiery volcano raging beneath their feet. Captain Starkey, aided by the four athletic seamen he had selected for the duty, hurled them fiercely back. “Back, back!” he shouted. “We must have funeral order here—first the women and children, next the old men. Hand Señora Arguellas along; next the young lady her daughter: quick!”

As Donna Antonia, more dead than alive, was about to be lifted into the boat, a gush of flame burst up through the main hatchway with the roar of an explosion; a tumultuous cry burst from the frenzied passengers, and they jostled each other with frightful violence in their efforts to reach the gangway. Dupont forced his way through the lane of seamen with the energy of a madman, and pressed so suddenly upon Antonia that, but for the utmost exertion of the captain’s Herculean strength, she must have been precipitated into the water.

“Back, unmanly dastard! back, dog!” roared Captain Starkey, terribly excited by the lady’s danger; and a moment after, seizing Dupont fiercely by the collar, he added: “or if you will, look there but for a moment,” and he pointed with his pistol-hand to the fins of several sharks plainly visible in the glaring light at but a few yards’ distance from the ship. “Men,” he added, “let whoever presses forward out of his turn fall into the water.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” was the prompt mechanical response.

This terrible menace instantly restored order; the colored women and children were next embarked, and the boat appeared full.

“Pull off,” was the order: “you are deep enough for safety.”

A cry, faint as the wail of a child, arose in the boat. It was heard and understood.

“Stay one moment; pass along Señor Arguellas. Now, then, off with you, and be smart!”

The next boat was quickly loaded; the colored lads and men, all but one, and the three Americans, went in her.

“You are a noble fellow,” said Mr. Desmond, pausing an instant, and catching at the captain’s hand; “and I was but a fool to—”

“Pass on,” was the reply: “there is no time to bandy compliments.”

The order to shove off had passed the captain’s lips when his glance chanced to light upon me, as I leaned, dumb with terror, just behind him against the vessel’s bulwarks.

“Hold on a moment!” he cried. “Here is a youngster whose weight will not hurt you;” and he fairly lifted me over, and dropped me gently into the boat, whispering as he did so: “Remember me, Ned, to thy father and mother should I not see them again.”

There was now only the small boat, capable of safely containing but eight persons, and how, it was whispered among us—how, in addition to the two seamen already in her, can she take off Lieutenant Arguellas, M. Dupont, the remaining colored man, the four seamen, and Captain Starkey? They were, however, all speedily embarked except the captain.

“Can she bear another?” he asked, and although his voice was firm as ever, his countenance, I noticed, was ashy pale, yet full as ever of unswerving resolution.

“We must, and will, sir, since it’s you; but we are dangerously overcrowded now, especially with yon ugly customers swimming round us.”

“Stay one moment; I can not quit the ship while there’s a living soul on board.” He stepped hastily forward, and presently reappeared at the gangway with the still senseless body of the lieutenant’s servant in his arms, and dropped it over the side into the boat. There was a cry of indignation, but it was of no avail. The boat’s rope the next instant was cast into the water. “Now pull for your lives!” The oars, from the instinct of self-preservation, instantly fell into the water, and the boat sprang off. Captain Starkey, now that all except himself were clear of the burning ship, gazed eagerly with eyes shaded with his hand in the direction of the shore. Presently he hailed the headmost boat. “We must have been seen from the shore long ago, and pilot-boats ought to be coming out, though I don’t see any. If you meet one, bid him be smart: there may be a chance yet.” All this scene, this long agony, which has taken me so many words to depict very imperfectly from my own recollection, and those of others, only lasted, I was afterward assured by Mr. Desmond, eight minutes from the embarkation of Señora Arguellas till the last boat left the ill-fated _Neptune_.

Never shall I forget the frightful sublimity of the spectacle presented by that flaming ship, the sole object, save ourselves, discernible amidst the vast and heaving darkness, if I may use the term, of the night and ocean, coupled as it was with the dreadful thought that the heroic man to whose firmness and presence of mind we all owed our safety was inevitably doomed to perish. We had not rowed more than a couple of hundred yards when the flames, leaping up every where through the deck, reached the rigging and the few sails set, presenting a complete outline of the bark and her tracery of masts and yards drawn in lines of fire! Captain Starkey, not to throw away the chance he spoke of, had gone out to the end of the bowsprit, having first let the jib and foresail go by the run, and was for a brief space safe from the flames; but what was this but a prolongation of the bitterness of death?

The boats continued to increase the distance between them and the blazing ship, amidst a dead silence broken only by the measured dip of the oars; and many an eye was turned with intense anxiety shoreward with the hope of descrying the expected pilot. At length a distinct hail—and I felt my heart stop heating at the sound—was heard ahead, lustily responded to by the seamen’s throats, and presently afterward a swiftly-propelled pilot-boat shot out of the thick darkness ahead, almost immediately followed by another.

“What ship is that?” cried a man standing in the bows of the first boat.

“The _Neptune_, and that is Captain Starkey on the bowsprit!”

I sprang eagerly to my feet, and with all the force I could exert, shouted: “A hundred pounds for the first boat that reaches the ship!”

“That’s young Mr. Mainwaring’s face and voice!” exclaimed the foremost pilot. “Hurra, then, for the prize!” and away both sped with eager vigor, but unaware certainly of the peril of the task. In a minute or so another shore-boat came up, but after asking a few questions, and seeing how matters stood, remained, and lightened us of a portion of our living cargoes. We were all three too deep in the water, the small boat perilously so.

Great God! the terrible suspense we all felt while this was going forward. I can scarcely bear, even now, to think about it. I shut my eyes, and listened with breathless, palpitating excitement for the explosion that should end all. It came!—at least I thought it did, and I sprang convulsively to my feet. So sensitive was my brain, partly no doubt from recent sickness as well as fright, that I had mistaken the sudden shout of the boats’ crews, for the dreaded catastrophe. The bowsprit, from the end of which a rope was dangling, was empty! and both pilots, made aware doubtless of the danger, were pulling with the eagerness of fear from the ship. The cheering among us was renewed again and again, during which I continued to gaze with arrested breath and fascinated stare at the flaming vessel and fleeing pilot-boats. Suddenly a pyramid of flame shot up from the hold of the ship, followed by a deafening roar. I fell, or was knocked down, I know not which; the boat rocked as if caught in a fierce eddy; next came the hiss and splash of numerous heavy bodies falling from a great height into the water; and then the blinding glare and stunning uproar were succeeded by a soundless silence and a thick darkness, in which no man could discern his neighbor. The stillness was broken by a loud, cheerful hail from one of the pilot-boats: we recognized the voice, and the simultaneous and ringing shout which burst from us assured the gallant seaman of our own safety, and how exultingly we all rejoiced in his. Half an hour afterward we were safely landed; and as the ship and cargo had been specially insured, the only ultimate evil result of this fearful passage in the lives of the passengers and crew of the _Neptune_ was a heavy loss to the underwriters.

A piece of plate, at the suggestion of Mr. Desmond and his friends, was subscribed for and presented to Captain Starkey at a public dinner given at Kingston in his honor—a circumstance that many there will remember. In his speech on returning thanks for the compliment paid him, he explained his motive for resolutely declining to fight a duel with M. Dupont, half-a-dozen versions of which had got into the newspapers. “I was very early left an orphan,” he said, “and was very tenderly reared by a maternal aunt, Mrs. ——.” (He mentioned a name with which hundreds of newspaper readers in England must be still familiar). “Her husband—as many here may be aware—fell in a duel in the second month of wedlock. My aunt continued to live dejectedly on till I had passed my nineteenth year; and so vivid an impression did the patient sorrow of her life make on me—so thoroughly did I learn to loathe and detest the barbarous practice that consigned her to a premature grave, that it scarcely required the solemn promise she obtained from me, as the last sigh trembled on her lips, to make me resolve never, under any circumstances, to fight a duel. As to my behavior during the unfortunate conflagration of the _Neptune,_ which my friend Mr. Desmond has spoken of so flatteringly, I can only say that I did no more than my simple duty in the matter. Both he and I belong to a maritime race, one of whose most peremptory maxims it is that the captain must be the last man to quit or give up his ship. Besides, I must have been the veriest dastard alive to have quailed in the presence of—of—that is, in the presence of—circumstances which—in point of fact—that is—” Here Captain Starkey blushed and boggled sadly: he was evidently no orator; but whether it was the sly significance of Señor Arguellas’ countenance, which just then happened to be turned toward him, or the glance he threw at the gallery where Señora Arguellas’ grave placidity and Donna Antonia’s bright eyes and blushing cheeks encountered him, that so completely put him out, I can not say; but he continued to stammer painfully, although the company cheered and laughed with great vehemence and uncommon good-humor, in order to give him time. He could not recover himself; and after floundering about through a few more unintelligible sentences sat down, evidently very hot and uncomfortable, though amidst a little hurricane of hearty cheers and hilarious laughter.

I have but a few more words to say. Captain Starkey has been long settled at the Havanna; and Donna Antonia has been just as long Mrs. Starkey. Three little Starkeys have to my knowledge already come to town, and the captain is altogether a rich and prosperous man; but though apparently permanently domiciled in a foreign country, he is, I am quite satisfied, as true an Englishman, and as loyal a subject of Queen Victoria, as when he threw the glass of wine in the Cuban Creole’s face. I don’t know what has become of Dupont; and, to tell the truth, I don’t much care. Lieutenant Arguellas has attained the rank of major: at least I suppose he must be the Major Arguellas officially reported to be slightly wounded in the late Lopez buccaneering affair. And I also am pretty well now, thank you!

CHRISTMAS IN GERMANY.

Christmas-day came—presents were to be exchanged. My friend Albert B—— and I were deputed to go to Bremen to make purchases, the choice thereof being left to our discretion. This, be it understood, was for the behoof of some of our gentlemen friends; the ladies had long been prepared with their offerings, which almost, in every case, were the work of their own hands.

We started on foot; it was genial frosty weather. At Oslebshausen, which is half-way, we rested, and took a glass of wine. Then we continued our march, and at last caught sight of the windmill, which marks the entrance to the town. Breakfast was the first thing to be thought of, so we went and breakfasted in a house situated in a street called the “Bishop’s Needle.” Then we hunted about in various shops, and finally arrived, not a little laden, at the office of the Lesmona omnibus. Here we deposited our goods, and secured our places; after which, as we had a couple of hours before us, we repaired to Stehely and Jansen’s, the chief café of Bremen, to pass the time and read the papers.

Toward dusk we reached Lesmona, and our constituents immediately selected, each according to his taste, the articles we had brought them. For my part, as I was that evening a guest at the house of my friend the pastor, I betook myself thither with the trifling gifts I had bought for his children. I was destined to receive in return presents from them and other members of his family. How they were exchanged, I shall presently relate. I begin at the beginning of the ceremony; for the celebration of Christmas-day is, indeed, a ceremony in most parts of Germany.

The pastor’s house is, when you look at it in front, a long, low building, with a prodigiously high thatched roof. If you go to the gable, however, you will find that there are actually three stories in it, two being in the said roof. The middle of the ground floor is occupied by a large hall, which gives access to all the chambers, and has a branch leading to one end of the edifice. At this end there is a door, on passing by which, you find yourself in the place where the cows, pigs, and other animals are kept. When I speak of the other animals, I should except the storks, who, on their arrival in spring, from Egypt or elsewhere, find their usual basket-work habitations about the chimneys all ready to receive them. One would imagine, by the way, that they brought from their winter quarters something like the superstition of the old inhabitants of the Nile valley, so great is the worship of the Germans for these birds, and so enthusiastically is their arrival hailed. No one would ever dare to murder a stork. A similar protection is extended to nightingales. The consequense is, that, being unmolested, the “solemn bird of night” becomes very tame. In the suburbs of Hamburg are numerous villas, and there, in a friend’s garden, I have passed and repassed under the bough where, within the reach of my arm, a nightingale was singing. He not only showed no fear, but, being of a vain character, as nightingales naturally are, he strained his little throat the more that he saw I listened to him.

But to return to the pastor’s house. In the corner of the hall of which I have spoken, was the “Christmas Tree.” Some of those who read these sketches may have seen an engraving of Luther on a Christmas evening, his wife and children beside him. The tree represented in that engraving was the exact prototype of the one I now saw. It was of a species of fir, and on all its branches were fixed small wax-tapers. These, at the given hour, were lighted. Immediately, a procession of the village-school children entered, and placed themselves in order. Then the pastor appeared, and after a short prayer gave out a psalm. He conducted the music himself, and, as he had for some time been teaching the young people a little singing, it was much better than usual, more especially as there were no braying men to spoil it. The air was that brave old composition of the great reformer, _Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott_ (“A strong tower is our God”). Nothing nobler in psalmody exists.

After another short prayer, and a few words by way of speech, sundry rewards and prizes were distributed. The greater part of these were the handiwork of the pastor’s family. I refer, of course, to the useful articles of dress and other things, which domestic female hands know how to sew, and knit, and embroider. Many tracts were distributed. A blessing was pronounced, and the children withdrew.

It was now our turn. The family assembled in the saloon—a fine apartment, about thirty feet in length. A long table, covered with a white cloth, extended down the centre. At this every one had his place—I among the rest. But it was not for a repast. Each had previously entered and deposited his or her Christmas boxes at the part of the table assigned to those to whom they were offered. We all had thus a little heap. As the greatest secresy is preserved up to the moment of the general entry, we had all the pleasure of a surprise. The curiosity of the children, and also of those who were not children, as they examined their gifts was most amusing. I, for my part, received among other things the following:—Sundry articles got up by the family fingers; a little box, covered with beads, for holding lucifer-matches; a German toy, meant to be instructive; a long chain in beads, intended for the decoration of a pipe. This pipe was in sugar, and was accompanied by a note in verse. The note I still have, but the pipe melted away in the damp of winter. I never could ascertain to whom I was indebted for this gift.

A little later, evening worship was celebrated, and then we supped. Long that night, after I had laid my head on my pillow, was I kept awake by the thoughts raised by the kind, hearty, and genial character of those with whom I had passed the evening, and of the good, old-fashioned, hearty ceremony in which I had participated.

Many a merry Christmas to these my friends!

THE MIRACLE OF LIFE.

Of all Miracles, the most wonderful is that of Life—the common, daily life which we carry about with us, and which every where surrounds us. The sun and stars, the blue firmament, day and night, the tides and seasons, are as nothing compared with it. Life—the soul of the world, but for which creation were not!

It is our daily familiarity with Life, which obscures its wonders from us. We live, yet remember it not. Other wonders attract our attention, and excite our surprise; but this, the great wonder of the world, which includes all others, is little regarded. We have grown up alongside of Life, with Life within us and about us; and there is never any point in our existence, at which its phenomena arrest our curiosity and attention. The miracle is hid from us by familiarity, and we see it not.

Fancy the earth without Life!—its skeleton ribs of rock and mountain unclothed by verdure, without soil, without flesh! What a naked, desolate spectacle,—and how unlike the beautiful aspect of external nature in all lands! Nature, ever-varied and ever-changing—coming with the spring, and going to sleep with the winter—in constant rotation. The flower springs up, blooms, withers, and falls, returning to the earth from whence it sprung, leaving behind it the germs of future being; for nothing dies; not even Life, which only gives up one form to assume another. Organization is traveling in an unending circle.

The trees in summer put on their verdure; they blossom; their fruit ripens—falls; what the roots gathered up out of the earth returns to earth again; the leaves drop one by one, and decay, resolving themselves into new forms, to enter into other organizations; the sap flows back to the trunk; and the forest, wood, field, and brake compose themselves to their annual winter’s sleep. In spring and summer the birds sang in the boughs, and tended their young brood; the whole animal kingdom rejoiced in their full bounding life; the sun shone warm, and nature rejoiced in greenness. Winter lays its cold chill upon this scene; but the same scene comes round again, and another spring recommences the same “never-ending, still beginning” succession of vital changes. We learn to expect all this, and become so familiar with it, that it seldom occurs to us to reflect how much harmony and adaptation there is in the arrangement—how much of beauty and glory there is every where, above, around, and beneath us.

But were it possible to conceive an intelligent being, abstracted from our humanity, endowed with the full possession of mind and reason, all at once set down on the earth’s surface—how many objects of surpassing interest and wonder would at once force themselves on his attention. The verdant earth, covered with its endless profusion of forms of vegetable life, from the delicate moss to the oak which survives the revolutions of centuries; the insect and animal kingdom, from the gnat which dances in the summer’s sunbeams, up to the higher forms of sentient being; birds, beasts of endless diversity of form, instinct, and color; and, above all, Man—“Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye;”—these would, to such an intelligence, be a source of almost endless interest.

It is life which is the grand glory of the world it was the consummation of creative power, at which the morning stars sang together for joy. Is not the sun glorious because there are living eyes to be gladdened by his beams? is not the fresh air delicious because there are living creatures to inhale and enjoy it? are not odors fragrant, and sounds sweet, and colors gorgeous, because there is the living sensation to appreciate them? Without Life, what were they all? What were a Creator himself, without life, intelligence, understanding, to know and adore Him, and to trace His finger in the works that He hath made?

Boundless variety and perpetual change are exhibited in the living beings around us. Take the class of insects alone: of these, not fewer than 100,000 distinct species are already known and described; and every day is adding to the catalogue. Wherever you penetrate, that life can be sustained, you find living beings to exist; in the depths of ocean, in the arid desert, or at the icy polar regions. The air teems with life. The soil which clothes the earth all round, is swarming with life, vegetable and animal. Take a drop of water, and examine it with a microscope: lo! it is swarming with living creatures. Within Life, exists other life, until it recedes before the powers of human vision. The parasitic animalcule, which preys upon or within the body of a larger animal, is itself preyed upon by parasites peculiar to itself. So minute are living animalcules, that Ehrenberg has computed that not fewer than five hundred millions can subsist in a single drop of water, and each of these monads is endowed with its appropriate organs, possesses spontaneous power of motion, and enjoys an independent vitality.

In the very ocean deeps, insects, by the labor of ages, are enabled to construct islands, and lay the foundations of future continents. The coral insect is the great architect of the southern ocean. First a reef is formed; seeds are wafted to it, vegetation springs up, a verdant island exists; then man takes possession, and a colony is formed.

Dig down into the earth, and from a hundred yards deep, throw up a portion of soil—cover it so that no communication can take place between that earth and the surrounding air. Soon you will observe vegetation springing up—perhaps new plants, altogether unlike any thing heretofore grown in that neighborhood. During how many thousands of years has the vitality of these seeds been preserved deep in the earth’s bosom! Not less wonderful is the fact stated by Lord Lindsay, who took from the hand of an Egyptian mummy a tuber, which must have been wrapped up there more than 2000 years before. It was planted, was rained and dewed upon, the sun shone on it again, and the root grew, bursting forth and blooming into a beauteous Dahlia!

At the North Pole, where you would expect life to become extinct, the snow is sometimes found of a bright red color. Examine it by the microscope, and, lo! it is covered with mushrooms, growing on the surface of the snow as their natural abode.

A philosopher distills a portion of pure water, secludes it from the air, and then places it under the influence of a powerful electric current. Living beings are stimulated into existence, the _acari Crossii_ appear in numbers! Here we touch on the borders of a great mystery; but it is not at all more mysterious than the fact of Life itself. Philosophers know nothing about it, further than it _is_. The attempt to discover its cause, inevitably throws them back upon the Great First Cause. Philosophy takes refuge in religion.

Yet man is never at rest in his speculations as to causes; and he contrives all manner of theories to satisfy his demands for them. A favorite theory nowadays is what is called the Development theory, which proceeds on the assumption, that one germ of being was originally planted on the earth, and that from this germ, by the wondrous power of Life, all forms of vegetable and animal life have progressively been developed. Unquestionably, all living beings are organized on one grand plan, and the higher forms of living beings, in the process of their growth, successively pass through the lower organized forms. Thus, the human being is successively a monad, an a-vertebrated animal, an osseous fish, a turtle, a bird, a ruminant, a mammal, and lastly an infant Man. Through all these types of organization, Tiedemann has shown that the brain of man passes.

This theory, however, does nothing to explain the causes of life, or the strikingly diversified, and yet determinate characters of living beings; why some so far transcend others in the stages of development to which they ascend, and how it is that they stop there—how it is that animals succeed each other in right lines, the offspring inheriting the physical structure and the moral disposition of their parents, and never, by any chance, stopping short at any other stage of being—man, for instance, never issuing in a lion, a fish, or a polypus. We can scarcely conceive it possible that, had merely the Germ of Being been planted on the earth, and “set a-going,” any thing like the beautiful harmony and extra ordinary adaptation which is every where observable throughout the animated kingdoms of Nature, would have been secured. That there has been a grand plan of organization, on which all living beings have been formed, seems obvious enough; but to account for the diversity of being, by the theory that plants and animals have gradually advanced from lower to higher stages of being by an inherent power of self-development, is at variance with known facts, and is only an attempt to get rid of one difficulty by creating another far greater.

Chemists are equally at fault, in endeavoring to unvail the mysterious processes of Life. Before its power they stand abashed. For Life controls matter, and to a great extent overrules its combinations. An organized being is not held together by ordinary chemical affinity; nor can chemistry do any thing toward compounding organized tissues. The principles which enter into the composition of the organized being are few, the chief being charcoal and water, but into what wondrous forms does Life mould these common elements! The chemist can tell you what these elements are, and how they are combined, when dead; but when living, they resist all his power of analysis. Rudolphi confesses that chemistry is able to investigate only the lifeless remains of organized beings.

There are some remarkable facts connected with Animal Chemistry—if we may employ the term—which show how superior is the principle of Life to all known methods of synthesis and analysis. For example, much more carbon or charcoal is regularly voided from the respiratory organs alone, of all living beings—not to speak of its ejection in many other ways—than can be accounted for, as having in any way entered the system. They also produce and eject much more nitrogen than they inhale. The mushroom and mustard plant, though nourished by pure water containing no nitrogen, give it off abundantly; the same is the case with zoophytes attached to rocks at the bottom of the sea; and reptiles and fishes contain it in abundance, though living and growing in pure water only. Again, plants which grow on sand containing not a particle of lime, are found to contain as much of this mineral as those which grow in a calcareous soil; and the bones of animals in New South Wales, and other districts where not an atom of lime is to be found in the soil, or in the plants from which they gather their food, contain the usual proportion of lime, though it remains an entire mystery to the chemist where they can have obtained it. The same fact is observable in the egg-shells of hens, where lime is produced in quantities for which the kind of food taken is altogether inadequate to account: as well as in the enormous deposits of coral-rock, consisting of almost pure lime, without any manifest supply of that ingredient. Chemistry fails to unravel these mysterious facts; nor can it account for the abundant production of soda, by plants growing on a soil containing not an atom of soda in any form: nor of gold in bezoards; nor of copper in some descriptions of shell-fish. These extraordinary facts seem to point to this—that many, if not most, of the elements which chemists have set down as simple, because they have failed to reduce them further, are in reality compound; and that what we regard as Elements, do not signify matters that are undecompoundable, but which are merely undecompounded by chemical processes. Life, however, which is superior to human powers of analysis, resolves and composes the ultimate atoms of things after methods of its own, but which to chemists will probably ever remain involved in mystery.

The last mystery of Life is Death. Such is the economy of living beings, that the very actions which are subservient to their preservation, tend to exhaust and destroy them. Each being has its definite term of life, and on attaining its acme of perfection, it begins to decay, and at length ceases to exist. This is alike true of the insect which perishes within the hour, and of the octogenarian who falls in a ripe old age. Love provides for the perpetuation of the species. “We love,” says Virey, “because we do not live forever: we purchase love at the expense of our life.” To die, is as characteristic of organized beings as to live. The one condition is necessary to the other. Death is the last of life’s functions. And no sooner has the mysterious principle of vitality departed, than the laws of matter assert their power over the organized frame.

“Universal experience teaches us,” says Liebig, “that all organized beings, after death, suffer a change, in consequence of which their bodies gradually vanish from the surface of the earth. The mightiest tree, after it is cut down, disappears, with the exception, perhaps of the bark, when exposed to the action of the air for thirty or forty years. Leaves, young twigs, the straw which is added to the soil as manure, juicy fruits, &c., disappear much more quickly. In a still shorter time, animal matters lose their cohesion; they are dissipated into the air, leaving only the mineral elements which they had derived from the soil.

“This grand natural process of the dissolution of all compounds formed in living organizations, begins immediately after death, when the manifold causes no longer act under the influence of which they were produced. The compounds formed in the bodies of animals and of plants, undergo, in the air, and with the aid of moisture, a series of changes, the last of which are, the conversion of their carbon into carbonic acid, of their hydrogen into water, of their nitrogen into ammonia, of their sulphur into sulphuric acid. Thus their elements resume the forms in which they can again serve as food to a new generation of plants and animals. Those elements which had been derived from the atmosphere take the gaseous form and return to the air; those which the earth had yielded, return to the soil. Death, followed by the dissolution of the dead generation, is the source of life for a new one. The same atom of carbon which, as a constituent of a muscular fibre in the heart of a man, assists to propel the blood through his frame, was perhaps a constituent of the heart of one of his ancestors; and any atom of nitrogen in our brain has perhaps been a part of the brain of an Egyptian or of a negro. As the intellect of the men of this generation draws the food required for its development and cultivation from the products of the intellectual activity of former times, so may the constituents or elements of the bodies of a former generation pass into, and become parts of our own frames.”

The greatest mystery of all remains. What of the Spirit—the Soul? The vital principle which bound the frame together has been dissolved; what of the Man, the being of high aspirations, “looking before and after,” and whose “thoughts wandered through eternity?” The material elements have not died, but merely assumed new forms. Does not the spirit of man, which is ever at enmity with nothingness and dissolution, live too? Religion in all ages has dealt with this great mystery, and here we leave it with confidence in the solution which it offers.

PERSONAL SKETCHES AND REMINISCENCES. BY MARY RUSSELL MITFORD.(2)

Recollections Of Childhood.

Most undoubtedly I was a spoilt child. When I recollect certain passages of my thrice happy early life, I can not have the slightest doubt about the matter, although it contradicts all foregone conclusions, all nursery and school-room morality, to say so. But facts are stubborn things. Spoilt I was. Every body spoilt me, most of all the person whose power in that way was greatest, the dear papa himself. Not content with spoiling me in-doors, he spoilt me out. How well I remember his carrying me round the orchard on his shoulder, holding fast my little three-year-old feet, while the little hands hung on to his pig-tail, which I called my bridle (those were days of pig-tails), hung so fast, and tugged so heartily, that sometimes the ribbon would come off between my fingers, and send his hair floating, and the powder flying down his back. That climax of mischief was the crowning joy of all. I can hear our shouts of laughter now.

Nor were these my only rides. This dear papa of mine, whose gay and careless temper all the professional _etiquette_ of the world could never tame into the staid gravity proper to a doctor of medicine, happened to be a capital horseman; and abandoning the close carriage, which, at that time, was the regulation conveyance of a physician, almost wholly to my mother, used to pay his country visits on a favorite blood-mare, whose extreme docility and gentleness tempted him, after certain short trials round our old course, the orchard, into having a pad constructed, perched upon which I might occasionally accompany him, when the weather was favorable, and the distance not too great. A groom, who had been bred up in my grandfather’s family, always attended us; and I do think that both Brown Bess and George liked to have me with them almost as well as my father did. The old servant proud, as grooms always are, of a fleet and beautiful horse, was almost as proud of my horsemanship; for I, cowardly enough, Heaven knows, in after-years, was then too young and too ignorant for fear—if it could have been possible to have had any sense of danger when strapped so tightly to my father’s saddle, and inclosed so fondly by his strong and loving arm. Very delightful were those rides across the breezy Hampshire downs on a sunny summer morning; and grieved was I when a change of residence from a small town to a large one, and going among strange people who did not know our ways, put an end to this perfectly harmless, if somewhat unusual pleasure.

But the dear papa was not my only spoiler. His example was followed, as bad examples are pretty sure to be, by the rest of the household. My maid Nancy, for instance, before we left Hampshire, married a young farmer; and nothing would serve her but I must be bridesmaid. And so it was settled.

She was married from her own home, about four miles from our house, and was to go to her husband’s after the ceremony. I remember the whole scene as if it were yesterday! How my father took me himself to the church-yard gate, where the procession was formed, and how I walked next to the young couple hand-in-hand with the bridegroom’s man, no other than the village blacksmith, a giant of six-feet-three, who might have served as a model for Hercules. Much trouble had he to stoop low enough to reach down to my hand; and many were the rustic jokes passed upon the disproportioned pair, who might fitly have represented Brobdignag and Liliput. My tall colleague proved, however, as well-natured as giants commonly are every where but in fairy tales, and took as good care of his little partner as if she had been a proper match for him in age and size.

In this order, followed by the parents on both sides, and a due number of uncles, aunts, and cousins, we entered the church, where I held the glove with all the gravity and importance proper to my office; and so contagious is emotion, and so accustomed was I to sympathize with Nancy, that when the bride cried, I could not help crying for company. But it was a love-match, and between smiles and blushes Nancy’s tears soon disappeared, and so by the same contagion did mine. The happy husband helped his pretty wife into her own chaise-cart, my friend the blacksmith lifted me in after her, and we drove gayly to the large, comfortable farm-house where her future life was to be spent.

It was a bright morning in May, and I still remember when we drove up to the low wall which parted the front garden from the winding village road, the mixture of affection and honest pride which lighted up the face of the owner. The square, substantial brick house, covered with a vine, the brick porch garlanded with honey-suckles and sweet-brier, the espalier apple-trees on either side the path in full flower, the double row of thrift with its dull pink bloom, the stocks and wall-flowers under the window, the huge barns full of corn, the stacks of all shapes and sizes in the rick-yard, cows and sheep and pigs and poultry told a pleasant tale of rural comfort and rural affluence.

The bride was taken to survey her new dominions by her proud bridegroom, and the blacksmith finding me, I suppose, easier to carry than lead, followed close upon their steps with me in his arms.

Nothing could exceed the good-nature of my country beau; he pointed out bantams and peafowls, and took me to see a tame lamb, and a tall, staggering calf, born that morning; but for all that, I do not think I should have submitted so quietly to the indignity of being carried, I, who had ridden thither on Brown Bess, and was at that instant filling the ostensible place of bridesmaid, if it had not been for the chastening influence of a little touch of fear. Entering the poultry-yard I had caught sight of a certain turkey-cock, who erected that circular tail of his, and swelled out his deep-red comb and gills after a fashion familiar to that truculent bird, but which up to the present hour I am far from admiring. A turkey at Christmas well roasted with bread sauce, may have his merits; but if I meet him alive in his feathers, especially when he swells them out and sticks up his tail, I commonly get out of his way even now, much more sixty years ago. So I let the blacksmith carry me.

Then we went to the dairy, so fresh and cool and clean—glittering with cleanliness! overflowing with creamy riches! and there I had the greatest enjoyment of my whole day, the printing with my own hands a pat of butter, and putting it up in a little basket covered with a vine leaf, to take home for the dear mamma’s tea. Then we should have gone to the kitchen, the back kitchen, the brew-house, the wash-house, and the rest of the bride’s new territories, but this part of the domicil was literally too hot to hold us; the cooking of the great wedding dinner was in full activity, and the bridegroom himself was forced to retreat before his notable mother, who had come to superintend all things for the day.

So back we drew to the hall, a large square brick apartment, with a beam across the ceiling, a wide yawning chimney, and wooden settles with backs to them; where many young people being assembled, and one of them producing a fiddle, it was agreed to have a country dance until dinner should be ready, the bride and bridegroom leading off, and I following with the bridegroom’s man.

Oh, the blunders, the confusion, the merriment of that country dance! No two people attempted the same figure; few aimed at any figure at all; each went his own way; many stumbled; some fell, and every body capered, laughed, and shouted at once. My partner prudently caught me up in his arms again, for fear of my being knocked down and danced over, which, considering some of the exploits of some of the performers, seemed by no means impossible, and would have been a worse catastrophe than an onslaught of the turkey-cock.

A summons to dinner put an end to the glee. Such a dinner! The plenty of Camacho’s wedding was but a type of my Nancy’s. Fish from the great pond, roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, boiled fowls and a gammon of bacon, a green goose and a sucking pig, plum puddings, apple pies, cheese-cakes and custards, formed a part of the bill of fare, followed by home-brewed beer and home-made wine, by syllabub, and by wedding cake. Every body ate enough for four, and there was four times more than could by any possibility be eaten. I have always thought it one of the strongest proofs of sense and kindness in my pretty maid, that she rescued me from the terrible hospitality of her mother-in-law, and gave me back unscathed into my father’s hands, when, about three o’clock, he arrived to reclaim me.

The affluence and abundance of that gala day—the great gala of a life-time—in that Hampshire farm-house, I have never seen surpassed.

This was my first appearance as a bridesmaid. My next, which took place about a twelvemonth after, was of a very different description.

A first cousin of my father, the daughter of his uncle and guardian, had, by the death of her mother’s brother, become a wealthy heiress; and leaving her picturesque old mansion in Northumberland, Little Harle Tower, a true border keep overhanging the Warsbeck, for a journey to what the Northumbrians of that day emphatically call “the South,” came after a season in London to pass some months with us. At our house she became acquainted with the brother of a Scotch duke, an Oxford student, who, passing the long vacation with his mother, had nothing better to do than to fall in love. Each had what the other wanted—the lady money, the gentleman rank; and as his family were charmed with the match, and hers had neither the power nor the wish to oppose it, every thing was arranged with as little delay as lawyers, jewelers, coach-makers, and mantua-makers would permit.

How the first step in the business, the inevitable and awful ceremonial of a declaration of love and a proposal of marriage, was ever brought about, has always been to me one of the most unsolvable of mysteries—an enigma without the word.

Lord Charles, as fine a young man as one should see in a summer’s day, tall, well-made, with handsome features, fair capacity, excellent education, and charming temper, had an infirmity which went nigh to render all these good gifts of no avail: a shyness, a bashfulness, a timidity most painful to himself, and distressing to all about him. It is not uncommon to hear a quiet, silent man of rank unjustly suspected of pride and haughtiness; but there could be no such mistake here—his shamefacedness was patent to all men. I myself, a child not five years old, one day threw him into an agony of blushing, by running up to his chair in mistake for my papa. Now I was a shy child, a very shy child, and as soon as I arrived in front of his lordship, and found that I had been misled by a resemblance of dress, by the blue coat and buff waistcoat, I first of all crept under the table, and then flew to hide my face in my mother’s lap; my poor fellow-sufferer, too big for one place of refuge, too old for the other, had nothing for it but to run away, which, the door being luckily open, he happily accomplished.

That a man with such a temperament, who could hardly summon courage enough to say, “How d’ye do?” should ever have wrought himself up to the point of putting the great question, was wonderful enough; that he should have submitted himself to undergo the ordeal of what was called in those days a public wedding, was more wonderful still.

Perhaps the very different temper of the lady may offer some solution to the last of these riddles; perhaps (I say it in all honor, for there is no shame in offering some encouragement to a bashful suitor) it may assist us in expounding them both.

Of a certainty, my fair cousin was pre-eminently gifted with those very qualities in which her lover was deficient. Every thing about her was prompt and bright, cheerful and self-possessed. Nearly as tall as himself, and quite as handsome, it was of the beauty that is called showy—a showy face, a showy figure, a showy complexion. We felt at a glance that those radiant, well-opened, hazel eyes, had never quailed before mortal glance, and that that clear, round cheek, red and white like a daisy, had never been guilty of a blush in its whole life. Handsome as she was, it was a figure that looked best in a riding-habit, and a face that of all head-dresses, best became a beaver hat; just a face and figure for a procession; she would not have minded a coronation: on the contrary, she would have been enchanted to have been a queen-regent; but, as a coronation was out of the question, she had no objection, taking the publicity as a part of the happiness, to a wedding as grand as the resources of a country town could make it.

So a wedding procession was organized, after the fashion of Sir Charles Grandison, comprising the chief members of each family, especially of the ducal one; an infinite number of brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, cousins and clansfolk, friends and acquaintances, all arranged in different carriages, according to their rank; ladies, gentlemen, servants, and horses, decorated with white and silver favors, in so long a line, that it extended from Coley Avenue to St. Mary’s Church. The first carriage, a low phaeton, drawn by ponies led by grooms, containing three children, two of five and six years old, niece and nephew of the bridegroom, who, with myself (already a lady of experience in that line), were to officiate as bride-maidens and bridegroom’s man; the last, also an open carriage, with only the bride and my dear papa, who gave her away.

How well I recollect the crowd of the street, the crowd of the church-yard, the crowd of the church! There was no crying at this wedding though; no crying, and far fewer smiles.

The young couple proceeded to Bath and Clifton from the church door; and the rest of the procession returned to our house to eat bridecake, drink to the health of the new-married pair, and be merry at their leisure; after which many dispersed, but the members of the two families and the more intimate friends remained to dinner; and in the confusion of preparing to entertain so large a party, the servants, even those belonging to the nursery, were engaged in different ways, and we children, left to our own devices, and finding nearly the whole house free to our incursions, betook ourselves to a game at hide-and-seek.