Chapter XXI: Introduction (19)

The New England Colonies abounded in high examples of public and private virtue, though not always under prepossessing forms. There were few New Englanders, however personally modest, who could divest themselves of the notion that they belonged to a people in an especial manner the object of divine approval; and thus self-righteousness――along with certain other traits――failed to commend the Puritan colonies to the favor of their fellows. Then, as now, New England was best known to her neighbors by her worst side.

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THE HEIGHTS OF ABRAHAM.¹

(FROM MONTCALM AND WOLFE, 1884.)

¹ By Permission of Little, Brown & Co.

FOR full two hours the procession of boats, borne on the current, steered silently down the St. Lawrence. The stars were visible, but the night was moonless and sufficiently dark. The General was in one of the foremost boats, and near him was a young midshipman, John Robinson, afterwards professor of natural philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. He used to tell in his later life how Wolfe, with a low voice, repeated Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Church-yard” to the officers about him. Probably it was to relieve the intense strain of his thoughts. Among the rest was the verse which his own fate was soon to illustrate.――“The paths of glory lead but to the grave.”

“Gentlemen,” he said, as his recital ended, “I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec.” None were there to tell him that the hero is greater than the poet.

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Montcalm had passed a troubled night. Through all the evening the cannon bellowed from the ships of Saunders, and the boats of the fleet hovered in the dusk off Beauport shore, threatening every moment to land. Troops lined the entrenchments till day, while the general walked the field that adjoined his headquarters till one in the morning, accompanied by the Chevalier Johnstone and Colonel Poulariez. Johnstone says that he was in great agitation, and took no rest all night. At daybreak he heard the sound of cannon above the town. It was the battery at Samos firing on the English ships. He had sent an officer to the headquarters of Vaudreuil, which was much nearer Quebec, with orders to bring him word at once should anything unusual happen. But no word came, and about six o’clock he mounted and rode thither with Johnstone. As they advanced, the country behind the town opened more and more upon their sight; till at length, when opposite Vaudreuil’s house, they saw across the St. Charles, some two miles away, the red ranks of British soldiers on the heights beyond.

“This is a serious business,” Montcalm said, and sent off Johnstone at full gallop to bring up the troops from the centre and left of the camp. Those on the right were in motion already, and doubtless by the Governor’s order. Vaudreuil came out of the house. Montcalm stopped for a few words with him; then set spurs to his horse, and rode over the bridge of the St. Charles to the scene of danger. He rode with a fixed look, uttering not a word.

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Montcalm was amazed at what he saw. He had expected to see a detachment, and he found an army. Full in sight before him stretched the lines of Wolfe; the close ranks of English infantry, stretched a silent wall of red, and the wild array of Highlanders, with their waving tartans, and bagpipes screaming defiance. Vaudreuil had not come; but not the less was felt the evil of divided authority and the jealousy of the rival chiefs. Montcalm waited long for the forces he had ordered to join him from the left wing of the army. He waited in vain. It is said the Governor had detained them lest the English should attack the Beauport shore. Even if they did so, and succeeded, the French might defy them, could they but put Wolfe to route on the Plains of Abraham. Neither did the garrison of Quebec come to the aid of Montcalm. He sent to Ramesay, its commander, for twenty-five field-pieces which were on the palace battery. Ramesay would give him only three, saying that he wanted them for his own defence. There were orders and counter-orders; misunderstandings, haste, delay, perplexity.

Montcalm and his chief officers held a council of war. It is said that he and they alike were for immediate attack. His enemies declared that he was afraid lest Vaudreuil should arrive and take command; but the Governor was not the man to assume responsibility at such a crisis. Others say his impetuosity overcame his better judgment; and of this charge it is hard to acquit him. Bougainville was but a few miles distant and some of his troops were much nearer; a messenger sent by way of Old Lorette could have reached him in an hour and a-half at most, and a combined attack in front and rear might have been concerted with him. If, moreover, Montcalm could have come to an understanding with Vaudreuil, his own forces might have been strengthened by two or three thousand additional men from the town and the camp of Beauport; but he felt that there was no time to lose, for he imagined that Wolfe would soon be reinforced, which was no less an error. He has been blamed not only for fighting too soon, but for fighting at all. In this he could not choose. Fight he must, for Wolfe was now in a position to cut off all his supplies. His men were full of ardor, and he resolved to attack before their ardor cooled. He spoke a few words to them in his keen, vehement way. “I remember very well how he looked,” one of the Canadians, then a boy of eighteen, used to say in his old age. “He rode a black or dark bay horse along the front of our lines, brandishing his sword, as if to excite us to do our duty. He wore a coat with wide sleeves, which fell back as he raised his arm, and showed the white linen of the wristband.”

The English waited the result with a composure which, if not quite real, was well feigned. The three field-pieces sent by Ramesay plied them with canister-shot, and fifteen hundred Canadians and Indians fusilladed them in front and flank.

Wolfe was everywhere. How cool he was, and why his followers loved him is shown by the following incident that happened in the course of the morning. One of his captains was shot through the lungs; and on recovering consciousness he saw the general standing by his side. Wolfe pressed his hand, told him not to despair, praised his services, promised him early promotion, and sent an aide-de-camp to Monckton to beg that officer to keep the promise if he himself should fall.

It was toward ten o’clock when, from the high ground on the right of the line, Wolfe saw that the crisis was near. The French on the ridge had formed themselves into three bodies, regulars in the centre, regulars and Canadians on right and left. Two field-pieces, which had been dragged up the heights at Anse du Foulon, fired on them with grapeshot, and the troops, rising from the ground, prepared to receive them. In a few moments more they were in motion. They came on rapidly, uttering loud shouts, and firing as soon as they were within range. Their ranks, ill-ordered at best, were further confused by a number of Canadians who had been mixed among the regulars, and who, after hastily firing, threw themselves on the ground to reload. The British advanced a few rods; then halted and stood still. When the French were within forty paces the word of command rang out, and a crash of musketry answered all along the line. The volley was delivered with remarkable precision. In the battalions of the centre, which had suffered least from the enemy’s bullets, the simultaneous explosion was afterwards said by French officers to have sounded like a cannon-shot.

Another volley followed, and then a furious clattering fire that lasted but a minute or two. When the smoke rose, a miserable sight was revealed: the ground cumbered with dead and wounded; the advancing masses stopped short and turned into a frantic mob, shouting, cursing, gesticulating. The order was given to charge. Then over the field rose the British cheer, mixed with the fierce yell of the Highland slogan. Some of the corps pushed forward with the bayonet; some advanced firing. The clansmen drew their broadswords and dashed on, keen and swift as blood-hounds. At the English right, though the attacking column was broken to pieces, a fire was still kept up, chiefly, it seems, by sharpshooters from the bushes and cornfields, where they had lain for an hour or more. Here Wolfe himself led the charge at the head of the Louisbourg Grenadiers. A shot shattered his wrist. He wrapped his handkerchief about it and kept on. Another shot struck him and he still advanced, when a third lodged in his breast. He staggered, and sat on the ground. Lieutenant Brown, of the Grenadiers, one Henderson, a volunteer in the same company, and a private soldier, aided by an officer of artillery who ran to join them, carried him in their arms to the rear. He begged them to lay him down. They did so, and asked if he would have a surgeon. “There’s no need,” he answered; “it’s all over with me.” A moment after, one of them cried out: “They run, see how they run!” “Who run?” Wolfe demanded, like a man roused from sleep. “The enemy, sir. Egad, they give way everywhere!”

“Go, one of you, to Colonel Burton,” returned the dying man, “tell him to march Webb’s Regiment down to Charles River to cut off their retreat from the bridge.” Then, turning on his side, he murmured: “Now, God be praised, I will die in peace!” and in a few moments his gallant soul had fled.

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WILLIAM HICKLING PRESCOTT.

HISTORIAN OF THE CONQUEST OF MEXICO AND PERU.

IT MAY well be doubted whether any other historian was ever so loved both by those who knew him personally and by those who counted themselves fortunate in knowing him through his books as was William H. Prescott. Indeed that love promises to be perennial, for “The Conquest of Mexico” and “The Conquest of Peru” continue to be the delight of the intelligent schoolboy and bid fair to maintain their hold upon public interest in succeeding generations.

Prescott was a native of Salem, Massachusetts, having been born in that city on the 4th of May, 1796. His father was a lawyer, and he inherited from him literary tastes, love of learning and great mental vigor. He was accidentally struck, while a Junior at Harvard, by a piece of hard bread, thrown by a fellow student, and the blow deprived him forever of the use of his left eye, gave him many months of tedious suffering in darkened rooms, and resulted in such serious damage to the other eye as to make it of little and constantly decreasing use to him. He had intended to be a lawyer, but this accident made another choice necessary. He deliberately resolved upon a literary career and prepared himself for it in the most thorough and painstaking way imaginable. A memorandum dated October, 1821, lays out a course of study which one might think unnecessary for a graduate of Harvard College, but which he undertook for the purpose of perfecting his style, and with what degree of success the universal admiration of his works well testifies. It was as follows:

“1. Principles of Grammar, correct writing, etc.

2. Compendious history of North America.

3. Fine prose-writers of English.

4. Latin classics one hour a day.”

This course, omitting the American history, he faithfully pursued for about a year, when he took up the study of French and, later, of German. His study of Spanish and consequently his choice of the topics of his great works came about almost accidentally. He had found the study of German very difficult, so much so that he was in despair. His friend George Ticknor had delivered to the Senior Class at Harvard a series of lectures on Spanish literature, and, to divert and entertain him during a period of discouragement and of suffering from his eyes, proposed to read the lectures to him. He was so delighted with the subject that he immediately began the study of the language with the result that the remainder of his life was devoted to Spanish subjects. Prescott had married, in 1820, to Miss Susan Amory, the daughter of a cultivated and successful Boston merchant, and of the marriage he said, near the close of his life, “contrary to the assertion of a French philosopher who says that the most fortunate husband finds reason to regret his condition at least once in twenty-four hours,――I may truly say that I have found no such day in the quarter of a century that Providence has spared us to each other.” Mrs. Prescott was devoted to her husband, and until his death in 1859, was his continual support, adviser and assistant.

Illustration: MR. PRESCOTT’S HOUSE AT PEPPERETT, MASS.

The account of his method of composition is told in one of his letters: “In the Christmas of 1837 my first work, ‘The History of Ferdinand and Isabella,’ was given to the world. I obtained the services of a reader who knew no language but his own, (English). I taught him to pronounce Castilian in a manner suited, I suspect, more to _my_ ear than to that of a Spaniard, and we began our wearisome journey through Mariana’s noble (Spanish) history. I cannot even now call to mind without a smile the tedious hours in which, seated under some old trees in my country residence, we pursued our slow and melancholy way over pages which afforded no glimmering of light to him, and from which the light came dimly struggling to me through a half intelligible vocabulary. But in a few weeks the light became stronger, and I was cheered by the consciousness of my own improvement, and when we had toiled our way through seven quartos, I found I could understand the book when read about two-thirds as fast as ordinary English. My reader’s office required the more patience; he had not even this result to cheer him in his labor. I now felt that the great difficulty could be overcome, and I obtained the services of a reader whose acquaintance with modern and ancient tongues supplied, as far as it could be supplied, the deficiency of eyesight on my part. But though in this way I could examine various authorities, it was not easy to arrange in my mind the results of my reading drawn from different and often contradictory accounts. To do this I dictated copious notes as I went along, and when I had read enough for a chapter (from thirty to forty, and sometimes fifty pages in length), I had a mass of memoranda in my own language, which would easily bring before me in one view, the fruit of my researches. These notes were carefully read to me, and while my recent studies were fresh in my recollection, I ran over the whole of any intended chapter in my mind. This process I repeated at least half a dozen times, so that when I finally put my pen to paper it ran off pretty glibly for it was an effort of memory rather than composition.

Writing presented me a difficulty even greater than reading. Thierry, the famous blind historian of the Norman conquest, advised me to cultivate dictation; but I usually preferred a substitute that I found in a writing-case made for the blind which I procured in London, forty years since. It consists of a frame of the size of a sheet of paper, traversed by brass wires, as many as lines are wanted on the page, and with a sheet of carbonated paper, such as is used for getting duplicates, pasted on the reverse side. With an ivory or agate stylus the writer traces his characters between the wires on the carbonated sheet, making indelible marks, which he cannot see, on the white page below. This treadmill operation has its defects; and I have repeatedly supposed I had accomplished a good page, and was proceeding in all the glow of composition to go ahead, when I found I had forgotten to insert a sheet of writing-paper below, that my labor had all been thrown away, and that the leaf looked as blank as myself. Notwithstanding these and other whimsical distresses of the kind, I have found my writing-case my best friend in my lonely hours, and with it have written nearly all that I have sent into the world the last forty years.”

Prescott’s writings were successful from the first. Translations of the “History of Ferdinand and Isabella” appeared within a few years in French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian, and it is surely no wonder that the author took up with a good heart the preparation of a “History of the Conquest of Mexico,” and then a “History of the Conquest of Peru,” both of which were received with the same appreciation that had rewarded his first published work.

He had spent some time abroad before his marriage, partly in the hope of benefitting his eyesight. In 1850 he again visited England and spent some time on the continent. He wrote a number of miscellaneous articles for magazines and reviews, and published in 1855, two, and in 1858 the third volume of his uncompleted “History of the Reign of Philip II., King of Spain.” This, had he lived to complete it, would doubtless have been his greatest work. It was received with such favor that six months after the publication of the first two volumes, eight thousand copies had been sold and the sales of his other works had been so stimulated as to bring the total up to thirty thousand volumes during that time, which yielded the author the substantial royalty of seventeen thousand dollars.

A slight stroke of paralysis had already enfeebled him, and a second terminated his life on the 28th of January, 1859. His wife, one daughter, and two sons survived him.

Few men have combined so many engaging qualities. His blindness had made no change in his appearance, and he was thought to be one of the handsomest men of his time. His cheerfulness of disposition was so great that at the time of his most intense suffering he addressed those who cared for him with such brightness and consideration that one might have thought their positions reversed. The personal friends who were won by his grace of manner and by the sterling worth of his character have nearly all passed away, but the hope that he early expressed, “to produce something which posterity would not willingly let die,” was most abundantly realized.

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THE GOLDEN AGE OF TEZCUCO.

(FROM HISTORY OF CONQUEST OF MEXICO, 1843.)

THE first measure of Nezahualcoyotl, on returning to his dominions, was a general amnesty. It was his maxim “that a monarch might punish, but revenge was unworthy of him.” In the present instance he was averse even to punish, and not only freely pardoned his rebel nobles, but conferred on some, who had most deeply offended, posts of honor and confidence. Such conduct was doubtless politic, especially as their alienation was owing probably, much more to fear of the usurper than to any disaffection towards himself. But there are some acts of policy which a magnanimous spirit only can execute.

The restored monarch next set about repairing the damages sustained under the late misrule, and reviving, or rather remodelling, the various departments of government. He framed a concise, but comprehensive, code of laws, so well suited, it was thought, to the exigencies of the times, that it was adopted as their own by the two other members of the triple alliance. It was written in blood, and entitled the author to be called the Draco rather than “the Solon of Anahuac,” as he is fondly styled by his admirers. Humanity is one of the best fruits of refinement. It is only with increasing civilization that the legislator studies to economize human suffering, even for the guilty; to devise penalties not so much by way of punishment for the past as of reformation for the future.

He divided the burden of the government among a number of departments, as the council of war, the council of finance, the council of justice. This last was a court of supreme authority, both in civil and criminal matters, receiving appeals from the lower tribunals of the provinces, which were obliged to make a full report, every four months, or eighty days, of their own proceedings to this higher judicature. In all these bodies, a certain number of citizens were allowed to have seats with the nobles and professional dignitaries. There was, however, another body, a council of state, for aiding the king in the dispatch of business, and advising him in matters of importance, which was drawn altogether from the highest order of chiefs. It consisted of fourteen members; and they had seats provided for them at the royal table. Lastly, there was an extraordinary tribunal, called the council of music, but which differing from the import of its name, was devoted to the encouragement of science and art. Works on astronomy, chronology, history or any other science, were required to be submitted to its judgment, before they could be made public. This censorial power was of some moment, at least with regard to the historical department, where the wilful perversion of truth was made a capital offence by the bloody code of Nezahualcoyotl. Yet a Tezcucan author must have been a bungler, who could not elude a conviction under the cloudy veil of hieroglyphics. This body, which was drawn from the best instructed persons in the kingdom, with little regard to rank, had supervision of all the productions of art, and the nicer fabrics. It decided on the qualifications of the professors in the various branches of science, on the fidelity of their instructions to their pupils, the deficiency of which was severely punished, and it instituted examinations of these latter. In short, it was a general board of education for the country. On stated days, historical compositions, and poems treating of moral or traditional topics, were recited before it by their authors. Seats were provided for the three crowned heads of the empire, who deliberated with the other members on the respective merits of the pieces, and distributed prizes of value to the successful competitors.

The influence of this academy must have been most propitious to the capital, which became the nursery not only of such sciences as could be compassed by the scholarship of the period, but of various useful and ornamental arts. Its historians, orators, and poets were celebrated throughout the country. Its archives, for which accommodations were provided in the royal palaces, were stored with the records of primitive ages. Its idiom, more polished than the Mexican, was, indeed, the purest of all the Nahuatlac dialects, and continued, long after the Conquest, to be that in which the best productions of the native races were composed. Tezcuco claimed the glory of being the Athens of the Western world.

Among the most illustrious of her bards was the emperor himself,――for the Tezcucan writers claim this title for their chief, as head of the imperial alliance. He doubtless appeared as a competitor before that very academy where he so often sat as a critic. Many of his odes descended to a late generation, and are still preserved, perhaps, in some of the dusty repositories of Mexico or Spain. The historian Ixtlilxochitl has left a translation, in Castilian, of one of the poems of his royal ancestor. It is not easy to render his version into corresponding English rhyme, without the perfume of the original escaping in this double filtration. They remind one of the rich breathings of Spanish-Arab poetry, in which an ardent imagination is tempered by a not unpleasing and moral melancholy. But, though sufficiently florid in diction, they are generally free from the meretricious ornaments and hyperbole with which the minstrelsy of the East is usually tainted. They turn on the vanities and mutability of human life,――a topic very natural for a monarch who had himself experienced the strangest mutations of fortune. There is mingled in the lament of the Tezcucan bard, however, an Epicurean philosophy, which seeks relief from the fears of the future in the joys of the present. “Banish care,” he says: “if there are bounds to pleasure, the saddest of life must also have an end. Then weave the chaplet of flowers, and sing thy songs in praise of the all-powerful God; for the glory of this world soon fadeth away. Rejoice in the green freshness of thy spring; for the day will come when thou shalt sigh for these joys in vain; when the sceptre shall pass from thy hands, thy servants shall wander desolate in thy courts, thy sons, and the sons of thy nobles, shall drink the dregs of distress, and all the pomp of thy victories and triumphs shall live only in their recollection. Yet the remembrance of the just shall not pass away from the nations, and the good thou hast done shall ever be held in honor. The goods of this life, its glories and its riches, are but lent to us, its substance is but an illusory shadow, and the things of to-day shall change on the coming of the morrow. Then gather the fairest flowers from thy gardens, to bind round thy brow, and seize the joys of the present ere they perish.”

But the hours of the Tezcucan monarch were not all passed in idle dalliance with the Muse, nor in the sober contemplations of philosophy, as at a later period. In the freshness of youth and early manhood he led the allied armies in their annual expeditions, which were certain to result in a wider extent of territory to the empire. In the intervals of peace he fostered those productive arts which are the surest sources of public prosperity. He encouraged agriculture above all; and there was scarcely a spot so rude, or a steep so inaccessible, as not to confess the power of cultivation. The land was covered with a busy population, and towns and cities sprang up in places since deserted or dwindled into miserable villages.

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THE BANQUET OF THE DEAD.

(FROM “HISTORY OF THE CONQUEST OF PERU,” 1847.)

THE wealth displayed by the Peruvian princes was only that which each had amassed individually for himself. He owed nothing to inheritance from his predecessors. On the decease of an Inca, his palaces were abandoned; all his treasures, except what were employed in his obsequies, his furniture and apparel, were suffered to remain as he had left them, and his mansions, save one, were closed up forever. The new sovereign was to provide himself with everything new for his royal state. The reason of this was the popular belief that the soul of the departed monarch would return after a time to reanimate his body on earth; and they wished that he should find everything to which he had been used in life prepared for his reception.

When an Inca died, or, to use his own language, “was called home to the mansions of his father, the Sun,” his obsequies were celebrated with great pomp and solemnity. The bowels were taken from the body and deposited in the temple of Tampu, about five leagues from the capital. A quantity of his plate and jewels was buried with them, and a number of his attendants and favorite concubines, amounting sometimes, it is said, to a thousand, were immolated on his tomb. Some of them showed the natural repugnance to the sacrifice occasionally manifested by the victims of a similar superstition in India. But these were probably the menials and more humble attendants; since the women have been known, in more than one instance, to lay violent hands on themselves, when restrained from testifying their fidelity by this act of conjugal martyrdom. This melancholy ceremony was followed by a general mourning throughout the empire. At stated intervals, for a year, the people assembled to renew the expressions of their sorrow; processions were made, displaying the banner of the departed monarch; bards and minstrels were appointed to chronicle his achievements, and their songs continued to be rehearsed at high festivals in the presence of the reigning monarch, thus stimulating the living by the glorious example of the dead.

The body of the deceased Inca was skilfully embalmed, and removed to the great temple of the Sun at Cuzco. There the Peruvian sovereign, on entering the awful sanctuary, might behold the effigies of his royal ancestors, ranged in opposite files, the men on the right, and their queens on the left of the great luminary which blazed in refulgent gold on the walls of the temple. The bodies, clothed in the princely attire which they had been accustomed to wear, were placed on chairs of gold, and sat with their heads inclined downward, their hands placidly crossed over their bosoms, their countenances exhibiting their natural dusky hue――less liable to change than the fresher coloring of an European complexion――and their hair of raven black, or silvered over with age, according to the period at which they died! It seemed like a company of solemn worshippers fixed in devotion, so true were the forms and lineaments to life. The Peruvians were as successful as the Egyptians in the miserable attempt to perpetuate the existence of the body beyond the limits assigned by nature.

They cherished a still stranger illusion in the attentions which they continued to pay to those insensible remains, as if they were instinct with life. One of the houses belonging to the deceased Inca was kept open and occupied by his guard and attendants with all the state appropriate to royalty. On certain festivals the revered bodies of the sovereigns were brought out with great ceremony into the public square of the capital. Invitations were sent by the captains of the guard of the respective Incas to the different nobles and officers of the court; and entertainments were provided in the names of their masters, which displayed all the profuse magnificence of their treasures, and “such a display,” says an ancient chronicler, “was there in the great square of Cuzco, on this occasion, of gold and silverplate and jewels, as no other city in the world ever witnessed.” The banquet was served by the menials of the respective households, and the guests partook of the melancholy cheer in the presence of the royal phantom with the same attention to the forms of courtly etiquette as if the living monarch had presided!

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JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

HISTORIAN AND DIPLOMATIST.

MOTLEY’S history of the “Rise of the Dutch Republic” is, in some important respects, America’s greatest contribution to historical literature. Its author was the son of a New England merchant of literary tastes, and inherited through both parents some of the best blood of New England. He was born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, now a part of Boston, April 15, 1814. He was a delicate boy, but vigorous, vivacious, fond of outdoor sports and intellectual contests. He was a boyish friend of Wendell Phillips, and was early associated with many of that group of New England scholars who have done so much for American literature during the past half-century. Motley was educated at good schools near Boston, and entered Harvard at what would now seem the ridiculously early age of thirteen. He cared too much for general and voluminous reading to do thorough work in the prescribed college course, but his wit, his brilliant mind and his impulsive generosity made him a general favorite. After graduating from Harvard he studied in Germany, becoming acquainted at Göttingen with Bismarck, between whom and himself there sprang up an intimate friendship which was renewed at every opportunity throughout his life. Bismarck said of him that “The most striking feature of his handsome and delicate appearance was uncommonly large and beautiful eyes. He never entered a drawing-room without exciting the curiosity and sympathy of the ladies.” He was married in 1837 to Mary, sister of Park Benjamin, a most attractive and beautiful woman, and two years later he published an historical novel called “Morton’s Hope.” Neither this book nor another called “Merry Mount” proved a success, and both Motley and his friends were convinced that his real field of work was that of the historian. His first attempt in this direction was an essay published in the “North American Review” on the “Polity of the Puritans,” which not only demonstrated his skill and ability but gave expression to his intense love of liberty and to his lofty patriotism.

An interesting episode in Motley’s life was his election in 1849 to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. He does not seem to have been well adapted for a legislator and never sought a re-election. The incident which he most vividly remembered in this connection was his careful preparation of a report from the Committee on Education, of which he was chairman, proposing measures which he had convinced himself were for the best, and the apparent ease with which a country member, Geo. S. Boutwell, who afterwards distinguished himself in the field of national politics, demolished his arguments, and convinced everybody, including the author of the report of the opposite view.

Mr. Motley began the collection of materials for his “History of Holland” about 1846. He devoted ten years to its preparation, making careful researches at Berlin, Dresden, the Hague and Brussels. When finally he had brought it to a conclusion he did not find it easy to make satisfactory arrangements for its publication. The leading house in London declined it, and it was finally published at the expense of the author. It was another and most marked example of the occasional lack of insight on the part of the wisest and best trained publishers, for the book which had gone begging to be printed was received everywhere with acclamations. Guizot, perhaps the foremost historian of modern times, personally supervised the translation into French, and wrote the introduction. The book had a large sale on both sides of the Atlantic, and Mr. Motley was at once recognized as a great historian. Mr. Froude has very justly said that this history is as “complete as industry and genius can make it,” and “one which will take its place among the finest stories in this or any other language.” Motley lived for the next two years in Boston, taking much interest in the “Atlantic Monthly,” though he was too much engaged with historical study to contribute very frequently to its columns. In 1858 he returned to England, where he lived for most of his remaining life, visiting America only three times, and making on each occasion a comparatively short stay. He found residence abroad more convenient for historical research. His position in English society was an enviable one, and his daughters were all married to Englishmen, one of them to Sir William Vernon Harcourt. This residence in England, however, did not wean his heart from America or its institutions or make him any less an ardent patriot, and perhaps he never rendered his country a more signal service than when, on finding that the higher classes in England sympathized with the South, he addressed two letters to the London “Times,” which did much to bring about a change of sentiment, and which remained as monuments to his loyalty and to his ability as an advocate.

Mr. Motley had been appointed Secretary of the American Legation at St. Petersburg in 1841, but had found the climate too rigorous and had continued at his post only a few months before tendering his resignation. He was now to undertake a more serious task in diplomacy. President Lincoln appointed him, in 1861, Minister to Austria. He was so absorbed in the great struggle going on in his own country that he gave up for the time the historical studies which made so large a part of his ordinary life, and “lived only in the varying fortunes of the day, his profound faith and enthusiasm sustaining him and lifting him above the natural influence of a by no means sanguine temperament.” He continued Minister to Austria, performing the difficult service of that office with discretion and with credit until 1867, when, in consequence of a letter received by President Johnson from some obscure source, inquiries were made which Mr. Motley considered insulting, and he at once tendered his resignation.

He had published in 1860 two volumes of his “History of the United Netherlands,” and they had been received with all the favor that had greeted his former great work. The American war had delayed the completion of the book, but in 1868 he published the other two volumes. An article from the “Edinburgh Review” discussing the first two volumes says: “Mr. Motley combines as an historian two qualifications seldom found united――to a great capacity for historical research he adds much power of pictorial representation.”

This is the secret of his great success. Men who excel in the use of language are too often unwilling to undertake the drudgery which research entails, while those who are able and willing to read voluminous correspondence and con over numberless dispatches in order to establish some historical fact, are frequently unable to clothe the fact in words which will so illumine and illustrate the truth as to make it really live in the mind of the reader. That Motley possessed both of these abilities along with those others which made him to a very wide circle in both Europe and America a much loved man, is sufficient reason for the place that has been given him in the history of men of letters.

Probably, at the request of Senator Sumner, Mr. Motley was in 1869 appointed Minister to England. The position was in many respects most agreeable to him. It gave him a post of great influence in a society in which he was known and admired, and opened possibilities of high service to the country which he loved with an ardor that amounted to enthusiasm. The Alabama claims were being urged upon the British Government, and the difficulties and responsibilities were very great. He was suddenly recalled in 1870 under circumstances that wounded him so deeply that it may be said he never recovered from the cruel surprise. The most probable explanation of President Grant’s course seems to be that it was the outcome of his difficulty with Mr. Sumner over his San Domingo policy, and that Mr. Motley’s tastes and the pursuits to which he had devoted his life made him a man with whom the President could not in any large measure sympathize. When, therefore, the President found his favorite measure defeated largely by the influence of Mr. Sumner, he ceased to have cause to retain Mr. Sumner’s friend in so responsible a post. The whole matter looks, at this distance, discreditable, but it was probably the system of political favoritism then in vogue rather than either the President or his Secretary of State that was to blame.

Mr. Motley had intended to devote his last years to a “History of the Thirty Years’ War,” but before undertaking it he wrote “The Life and Death of John of Barneveld, Advocate of Holland, with a View of the Primary Causes and Movements of the Thirty Years’ War,” which has been recognized as the most classical of his productions. It was his last work. Even before the death of Mrs. Motley in 1874, he was in somewhat feeble health, and while he did not abandon literary labor, he gave up at this time any hope of being able to engage in protracted effort. He spent a part of the year 1875 in Boston, returning to his daughter’s residence in Devonshire, where he died in 1877. Dean Stanley spoke of him as “one of the brightest lights of the Western Hemisphere, the high-spirited patriot, the faithful friend of England’s best and purest spirits; the brilliant, the indefatigable historian.” A distinguished countryman of his own had once introduced him to an audience as one “whose name belongs to no single country and to no single age: as a statesman and diplomatist and patriot, ♦he belongs to America; as a scholar, to the world of letters; as a historian, all ages will claim him in the future.”

♦ ‘be’ replaced with ‘he’

* * * * *

BISMARCK.¹

GLIMPSES OF NOTED PEOPLE FROM THE CORRESPONDENCE OF
JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L. EDITED BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS, 1889.

¹ Copyright, Harper & Bros.

WHEN I called, Bismarck was at dinner, so I left my card and said I would come back in half an hour. As soon as my card had been carried to him (as I learned afterwards) he sent a servant after me to the hotel, but I had gone another way. When I came back I was received with open arms. I can’t express to you how cordially he received me. If I had been his brother, instead of an old friend, he could not have shown more warmth and affectionate delight in seeing me. I find I like him even better than I thought I did, and you know how high an opinion I always expressed of his talents and disposition. He is a man of very noble character and of very powerful mind. The prominent place which he now occupies as a statesman sought _him_. He did not seek it, or any other office. The stand which he took in the Assembly from conviction, on the occasion of the outbreak of 1848, marked him at once to all parties as one of the leading characters of Prussia. Of course, I don’t now go into the rights and wrongs of the matter, but I listened with great interest, as you may suppose, to his detailed history of the revolutionary events of that year, and his share in them, which he narrated to me in a long conversation which we had last night. He wanted me to stay entirely in his house, but as he has his wife’s father and mother with him, and as I saw that it was necessary to put up a bed in a room where there was none, I decidedly begged off. I breakfasted there this morning, and am to dine there, with a party, to-day. To-morrow, I suppose, I shall dine there _en famille_. I am only afraid that the landlord here will turn me into the streets for being such a poor _consommateur_ for him, and all I can do is to order vast quantities of seltzer water.

The principal change in Bismarck is that he has grown stouter, but, being over six feet, this is an improvement. His voice and manner are singularly unchanged. His wife I like very much indeed; very friendly, intelligent and perfectly unaffected, and treats me like an old friend. In short, I can’t better describe the couple than by saying that they are as unlike M. and Mme. de ―――― as it is possible to be.

In the summer of 1851 he told me that the Minister, Manteuffel, asked him one day abruptly if he would accept the post of Ambassador at Frankfort, to which (although the proposition was as unexpected a one to him as if I should hear by the next mail that I had been chosen Governor of Massachusetts) he answered, after a moment’s deliberation, yes, without another word. The King, the same day, sent for him, and asked him if he would accept the place, to which he made the same brief answer, “Ja.” His Majesty expressed a little surprise that he made no queries or conditions, when Bismarck replied that anything the King felt strong enough to propose to him he felt strong enough to accept. I only write these details that you may have an idea of the man. Strict integrity and courage of character, a high sense of honor, a firm religious belief, united with remarkable talents, make up necessarily a combination which cannot be found any day in any court, and I have no doubt that he is destined to be Prime Minister, unless his obstinate truthfulness, which is apt to be a stumbling-block for politicians, stands in his way....

Well, he accepted the post, and wrote to his wife next day, who was preparing for a summer’s residence in a small house on the sea-coast, that he could not come because he was already Minister in Frankfort. The result, as he said, was three days of tears on her part. He had previously been leading the life of a plain country ’squire, with a moderate income, had never held any position in the government or in diplomacy, and had hardly ever been to court. He went into the office with a holy horror of the mysterious nothings of diplomacy, but soon found how little there was in the whole “galimatias.” Of course, my politics are very different from his, although not so antipodal as you might suppose, but I can talk with him as frankly as I could with you, and I am glad of an opportunity of hearing the other side put by a man whose talents and character I esteem, and who so well knows _le dessous des cartes_.

* * * * *

THE SIEGE OF LEYDEN.¹

¹ Copyright, J. Lewis Stackpole.

MEANTIME, the besieged city was at its last gasp. The burghers had been in a state of uncertainty for many days; being aware that the fleet had set forth for their relief, but knowing full well the thousand obstacles which it had to surmount. They had guessed its progress by the illumination from the blazing villages; they had heard its salvos of artillery on its arrival at North Aa; but since then all had been dark and mournful again, hope and fear, in sickening alternation, distracting every breast. They knew that the wind was unfavorable, and at the dawn of each day every eye was turned wistfully to the vanes of the steeples. So long as the easterly breeze prevailed, they felt, as they anxiously stood on towers and housetops, that they must look in vain for the welcome ocean. Yet, while thus patiently waiting, they were literally starving; for even the misery endured at Harlem had not reached that depth and intensity of agony to which Leyden was now reduced. Bread, malt-cake, horseflesh, had entirely disappeared; dogs, cats, rats and other vermin were esteemed luxuries. A small number of cows, kept as long as possible for their milk, still remained; but a few were killed from day to day, and distributed in minute proportions, hardly sufficient to support life among the famishing population. Starving wretches swarmed daily around the shambles where these cattle were slaughtered, contending for any morsel which might fall, and lapping eagerly the blood as it ran along the pavement; while the hides, chopped and boiled, were greedily devoured. Women and children, all day long, were seen searching gutters and dunghills for morsels of food, which they disputed fiercely with the famishing dogs. The green leaves were stripped from the trees, every living herb was converted into human food; but these expedients could not avert starvation. The daily mortality was frightful; infants starved to death on the maternal breasts which famine had parched and withered; mothers dropped dead in the streets, with their dead children in their arms. In many a house the watchmen, in their rounds, found a whole family of corpses――father, mother, children, side by side; for a disorder called the plague, naturally engendered of hardship and famine, now came, as if in kindness, to abridge the agony of the people. The pestilence stalked at noonday through the city, and the doomed inhabitants, fell like grass beneath its scythe. From six thousand to eight thousand human beings sank before this scourge alone; yet the people resolutely held out,――women and men mutually encouraging each other to resist the entrance of their foreign foe,――an evil more horrible than pest or famine.

Leyden was sublime in its despair. A few murmurs were, however, occasionally heard at the steadfastness of the magistrates, and a dead body was placed at the door of the burgomaster, as a silent witness against his inflexibility. A party of the more faint-hearted even assailed the heroic Adrian Van der Werf with threats and reproaches as he passed through the streets. A crowd had gathered around him as he reached a triangular place in the centre of the town, into which many of the principal streets emptied themselves, and upon one side of which stood the church of Saint Pancras. There stood the burgomaster, a tall, haggard, imposing figure, with dark visage and a tranquil but commanding eye. He waved his broad-leaved felt hat for silence, and then exclaimed, in language which has been almost literally preserved, “What would ye, my friends? Why do ye murmur that we do not break our vows and surrender the city to the Spaniards?――a fate more horrible than the agony which she now endures. I tell you I have made an oath to hold the city; and may God give me strength to keep my oath! I can die but once, whether by your hands, the enemy’s, or by the hand of God. My own fate is indifferent to me; not so that of the city intrusted to my care. I know that we shall starve if not soon relieved; but starvation is preferable to the dishonored death which is the only alternative. Your menaces move me not; my life is at your disposal; here is my sword, plunge it into my breast, and divide my flesh among you. Take my body to appease your hunger, but expect no surrender so long as I remain alive.”...

On the 28th of September a dove flew into the city, bringing a letter from Admiral Boisot. In this dispatch the position of the fleet at North Aa was described in encouraging terms, and the inhabitants were assured that, in a very few days at furthest, the long-expected relief would enter their gates. The tempest came to their relief. A violent equinoctial gale on the night of the 1st and 2d of October came storming from the northwest, shifting after a few hours full eight points, and then blowing still more violently from the southwest. The waters of the North Sea were piled in vast masses upon the southern coast of Holland, and then dashed furiously landward, the ocean rising over the earth and sweeping with unrestrained power across the ruined dykes. In the course of twenty-four hours the fleet at North Aa, instead of nine inches, had more than two feet of water.... On it went, sweeping over the broad waters which lay between Zoeterwoude and Zwieten; as they approached some shallows which led into the great mere, the Zealanders dashed into the sea, and with sheer strength shouldered every vessel through.... On again the fleet of Boisot still went, and, overcoming every obstacle entered the city on the morning of the 3d of October. Leyden was relieved.

* * * * *

ASSASSINATION OF WILLIAM OF ORANGE.

(FROM “RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.”)

ON Tuesday, the 10th of July, 1584, at about half-past twelve, the Prince, with his wife on his arm, and followed by the ladies and gentlemen of his family, was going to the dining-room. William the Silent was dressed upon that day, according to his usual custom, in a very plain fashion. He wore a wide-leaved hat of dark felt, with a silken cord round the crown, such as had been worn by the “Beggars” in the early days of the revolt. A high ruff encircled his neck from which also depended one of the Beggars’ medals with the motto, “_Fidèle jusqu’ à la besace_;” while a loose surcoat of gray frieze cloth, over a tawny leather doublet, with wide-slashed underclothes, completed his costume. Gérard presented himself at the doorway, and demanded a passport, which the Prince directed his secretary to make out for him....

At two o’clock the company rose from the table. The Prince led the way, intending to pass to his private apartments above. The dining-room, which was on the ground floor, opened into a little, square vestibule, which communicated through an arched passage-way with the main entrance into the courtyard. The vestibule was also directly at the foot of the wooden staircase leading to the next floor, and was scarcely six feet in width. Upon its left side, as one approached the stairway, was an obscure arch sunk deep in the wall, and completely in shadow of the door. Behind this arch a portal opened to the narrow lane at the side of the house. The stairs themselves were completely lighted by a large window half-way up the flight.