Chapter XXI (3)

Our relations with France were then (1811) in a very critical state, owing to the latter's repeated attacks on American commerce, and it was of vital moment to the government that a man so universally respected by the French people, and so familiar with the French court and its circle of wily diplomats, as was Barlow, should have charge of American interests in that quarter. A man less unselfish, less patriotic, would have refused the burden of such a position, especially one so foreign to his tastes and desires; but the poet in this case, as in 1795, seems not to have hesitated an instant at the call of his country. Kalorama was closed--not sold, for its owner hoped that his absence would not be of long duration--preparations for the journey were speedily made, and early in August, 1811, Barlow, accompanied by his faithful wife, was set down at the port of Annapolis, where the famous frigate Constitution, Captain Hull, had been lying for some time in readiness to receive him. In Annapolis the poet was received with distinguished honor: at his embarkation crowds thronged the quay, and a number of distinguished citizens were gathered at the gang-plank to bid him God-speed on his journey. Captain Hull received his guest with the honor due his station: then the Constitution spread her sails, and, gay with bunting and responding heartily to the salutes from the forts on shore, swept gallantly down the bay and out to sea. The beautiful city, gleaming amid the foliage of its stately forest trees, and the low level shores, green with orchards and growing corn, were the last objects that the poet beheld ere the outlines of his native land sank beneath the waters. Happily, he could not foresee the untimely death in waiting for him not eighteen months distant, nor the lonely sepulchre in the Polish waste, nor the still more bitter fact that ere two generations should pass an ungrateful country would entirely forget his services and martyrdom.

Barlow's correspondence with Mr. Monroe and the duke de Bassano while abroad on this mission forms an interesting and hitherto unpublished chapter in our history. It has rested undisturbed in the pigeonholes of the State Department for nearly a century, and if published in connection with a brief memoir of the poet would prove a valuable addition to our annals. The first of the series is Mr. Monroe's letter of instruction to the newly-appointed minister, defining the objects of his mission, which were, in brief, indemnity for past spoliations and security from further depredations. The second paper is Mr. Barlow's first letter from Paris, under date of September 29, 1811, and is as follows:

"I seize the first occasion to announce to you my arrival, though I have little else to announce. I landed at Cherbourg the 8th of this month, and arrived at Paris the 19th. The emperor has been residing for some time at Compiegne, and it unluckily happened that he set out thence for the coast and for Holland the day of my arrival here. The duke de Bassano, Minister of Foreign Relations, came the next day to Paris for two days only, when he was to follow the emperor to join him in Holland. General Turreau and others, who called on me the morning after I reached Paris, assured me that the duke was desirous of seeing me as soon as possible and with as little ceremony.

"On the 21st I made my first visit to him, which of course had no other object than that of delivering my credentials. I expressed my regret at the emperor's absence, and the consequent delay of such business as was rendered particularly urgent by the necessity of sending home the frigate and by the approaching session of Congress, as well as by the distressed situation of those American citizens who were awaiting the result of decisions which might be hastened by the expositions I was charged to make on the part of the President of the United States. He said the emperor had foreseen the urgency of the case, and had charged him to remedy the evil, as far as could be done, by dispensing with my presentation to His Majesty till his return, and that I might immediately proceed to business as if I had been presented. He said the most flattering things from the emperor relative to my appointment. He observed that His Majesty had expected my arrival with some solicitude, and was disposed to do everything that I could reasonably ask to maintain a good intelligence between the two countries.... I explained to him with as much precision as possible the sentiments of the President on the most pressing objects of my mission, and threw in such observations as seemed to arise out of what I conceived to be the true interests of France. He heard me with patience and apparent solicitude, endeavored to explain away some of the evils of which we complain, and expressed a strong desire to explain away the rest. He said that many of the ideas I suggested were new to him, and were very important--that he should lay them before the emperor with fidelity and in a manner calculated to produce the most favorable impression; desired me to reduce them to writing, to be presented in a more solemn form; and endeavored to convince me that he doubted not our being able on the return of the emperor to remove all obstacles to a most perfect harmony between the two countries."

In a letter dated December 19, 1811, he writes:

"Since the date of my last I have had many interviews with the Minister of Foreign Relations. I have explained several points, and urged every argument for as speedy an answer to my note of the 10th as its very serious importance would allow. He always treats the subject with apparent candor and solicitude, seems anxious to gain information, and declares that neither he nor the emperor had before understood American affairs, and always assures me that he is nearly ready with his answer. But he says the emperor's taking so long a time to consider it and make up his decision is not without reason, for it opens a wide field for meditation on very interesting matters. He says the emperor has read the note repeatedly and with great attention--that he told him the reasoning in it was everywhere just and the conclusions undeniable, but to reconcile its principles with his continental system presented difficulties not easy to remove. From what the emperor told me himself at the last diplomatic audience, and from a variety of hints and other circumstances remarked among the people about his person, I have been made to believe that he is really changing his system relative to our trade, and that the answer to my note will be more satisfactory than I had at first expected."

Several other letters from the poet to Monroe follow, all of the same general tenor--complaining of delay, yet hopeful that the treaty would shortly be secured. February 8, 1812, he writes to the Secretary of State that the duke is "at work upon the treaty, and probably in good earnest, but the discussions with Russia and the other affairs of this Continent give him and the emperor so much occupation that I cannot count upon their getting on very fast with ours."

Amid these delays the summer passed away, and the emperor, intent on mapping out his great campaign against Russia, still neglected to sign the important instrument. Early in the summer Napoleon left Paris for Wilna to take command of the vast armies that had been collected for the invasion, and from that place, on the 11th of October, the duke de Bassano addressed the following note to Mr. Barlow in Paris:

"SIR: I have had the honor to make known to you how much I regretted, in the negotiation commenced between the United States and France, the delays which inevitably attended a correspondence carried on at so great a distance. Your government has desired to see the epoch of this arrangement draw near: His Majesty is animated by the same dispositions, and, willing to assure to the negotiation a result the most prompt, he has thought that it would be expedient to suppress the intermediaries and to transfer the conference to Wilna. His Majesty has in consequence authorized me, sir, to treat directly with you; and if you will come to this town I dare hope that, with the desire which animates us both to conciliate such important interests, we shall immediately be enabled to remove all the difficulties which until now have appeared to impede the progress of the negotiation. I have apprised the duke of Dalberg that his mission was thus terminated, and I have laid before His Majesty the actual state of the negotiation, to the end that when you arrive at Wilna, the different questions being already illustrated either by your judicious observation or by the instructions I shall have received, we may, sir, conclude an arrangement so desirable and so conformable to the mutually amicable views of our two governments."

Barlow could do no less than comply with this invitation, since, as he remarked in a letter to Monroe under date of October 25, "it was impossible to refuse it without giving offence." His letter accepting the duke's invitation was probably the last ever written by him, and is dated Paris, October 25, 1812:

"SIR: In consequence of the letter you did me the honor to write me on the 11th of this month, I accept your invitation, and leave Paris to-morrow for Wilna, where I hope to arrive in fifteen or eighteen days from this date. The negotiation on which you have done me the honor to invite me at Wilna is so completely prepared in all its parts between the duke of Dalberg and myself, and, as I understand, sent on to you for your approbation about the 18th of the present month, that I am persuaded that if it could have arrived before the date of your letter the necessity of this meeting would not have existed, as I am confident His Majesty would have found the project reasonable and acceptable in all its parts, and would have ordered that minister to conclude and sign both the treaty of commerce and the convention of indemnities."

Barlow left Paris for Wilna on the 26th of October in his private carriage, yet travelling night and day and with relays of horses at the post-towns to expedite his progress. His sole companion was his nephew and secretary of legation, Thomas Barlow, who had been educated and given an honorable position in life through the poet's munificence. Their route, the same as that pursued by Napoleon a few weeks before, led across the Belgian frontiers and through the forests and defiles of the German principalities. Once across the Niemen, they met with rumors of the emperor's disaster at Moscow, and that portions of his army were then in full retreat, but, discrediting them, pushed on to Wilna, which they reached about the 1st of December. Wilna is the only considerable village in Russia between the Niemen and Moscow: it is a quaint and venerable town, capital of the ancient province of Lithuania, and played an important part in Napoleon's Russian campaign, being the rendezvous of his legions after crossing the Niemen and the site of his army-hospitals. When our travellers entered it, it was filled with a horde of panic-stricken fugitives, who made the town a temporary resting-place before continuing their flight to the frontiers; nor were they long in learning the, to them, distressing news that the French army was in swift retreat, and that the duke de Bassano, so far from being at leisure to attend a diplomatic conference at Wilna, was then on the frontiers hurrying forward reinforcements to cover the retreat of his emperor across the Beresina.

The perilous journey had been made in vain, and the treaty was doomed to still further delay. It now only remained for Barlow to extricate himself from his dangerous position and to reach the frontiers before the fleeing army and the pursuing Cossacks should close every avenue of escape.

Thomas Barlow on his return to America sometimes favored his friends with vivid pictures of the sufferings and privations endured by the travellers in their flight from Wilna. The passage of so many men had rendered the roads well-nigh impassable; food, even of the meanest kind, could only be procured with the greatest difficulty; and often the travellers were mixed up with the flying masses, as it seemed inextricably. Ruined habitations, wagons and provision-vans overturned and pillaged, men dying by scores from hunger and starvation, and frozen corpses of men and horses, were objects that constantly presented themselves. At length they crossed the Niemen and pursued their journey through Poland, still suffering terribly from the cold and from the insufficient nature of the food obtainable; but on reaching Zarrow,[C] an obscure village near Cracow, the poet was seized with a sudden and fatal attack of pneumonia, the result, no doubt, of privation and exposure. He was borne to a little Jewish cottage, the only inn that the village afforded, and there died December 26, 1812. His remains were interred in the little churchyard of the village where he died. It is rarely that an American visits his grave, and the government has never taken interest enough in its minister to erect a memorial slab above his dust; but wifely devotion has supplied the omission, and a plain monument of marble, on which are inscribed his name, age and station and the circumstances of his death, marks the poet's place of sepulture.

The news of his death seems not to have reached the United States until the succeeding March. The Federal journals merely announced the fact without comment: the Republican papers published formal eulogiums on the dead statesman. President Madison, in his inaugural of 1813, thus referred to the event: "The sudden death of the distinguished citizen who represented the United States in France, without any special arrangement by him for such a conclusion, has kept us without the expected sequel to his last communications; nor has the French government taken any measures for bringing the depending negotiations to a conclusion through its representative in the United States."

In France the poet's demise excited a more general feeling of regret, perhaps, than in his own country. A formal eulogy on his life and character was pronounced by Dupont de Nemours before the Society for the Encouragement of National Industry, and the year succeeding his death an account of his life and writings was published at Paris in quarto form, accompanied by one canto of _The Columbiad_, translated into French heroic verse. The American residents of Paris also addressed a letter of condolence to Mrs. Barlow, in which is apparent the general sentiment of respect and affection entertained for the poet in the French capital.

"In private life," says one of his eulogists, "Mr. Barlow was highly esteemed for his amiable temperament and many social excellences. His manners were generally grave and dignified, and he possessed but little facility of general conversation, but with his intimate friends he was easy and familiar, and upon topics which deeply interested him he conversed with much animation."

Another thus refers to his domestic relations: "The affection of Mr. Barlow for his lovely wife was unusually strong, and on her part it was fully reciprocated. She cheerfully in early life cast in her lot with his 'for better or for worse'--and sometimes the worst, so far as their pecuniary prospects were concerned. In their darkest days Barlow ever found light and encouragement at home in the smiles, sympathy and counsel of his prudent, faithful wife. No matter how dark and portentous the cloud that brooded over them might be, she always contrived to give it a silver lining, and his subsequent success in life he always attributed more to her influence over him than to anything else."

Barlow lived a dual life--the life of a poet as well as of a diplomatist--and this paper can scarcely be considered complete unless it touches somewhat on his literary productions. It will be the verdict of all who study his life carefully that he was a better statesman than poet, and a better philanthropist than either; yet as a poet he surpassed his contemporaries, producing works that fairly entitle him to the distinction of being the father of American letters. His _Hasty Pudding_ would be a valuable addition to any literature, and in his _Advice to the Privileged Orders_ and his _Conspiracy of Kings_ much poetic power and insight is apparent. It was on his epic of _The Columbiad_ that he no doubt founded his hopes of fame, but, though the book was extensively read in its day and passed through several editions on both continents, no reprint has been demanded in modern times, and it long since dropped out of the category of books that are read.

Barlow's private letters from abroad would have possessed undoubted interest to the present generation, but, so far as is known, none of them have been preserved--with one exception, however. There is in existence a long letter of his, written to his wife while he was in Algiers in imminent danger from the plague, and which was to be forwarded to her only in case of his death. It was found among his papers after his death nearly sixteen years later. This letter has already appeared in print, but it will be new to most of our readers, and it is so remarkable in itself, and throws such light on the character of the writer, that, in spite of its length, no apology is required for inserting it here:

"_To Mrs. Barlow in Paris_:

"ALGIERS, 8th July, 1796.

"MY DEAREST LIFE AND ONLY LOVE: I run no risk of alarming
your extreme sensibility by writing this letter, since it is
not my intention that it shall come into your hands unless
and until, through some other channel, you shall be informed
of the event which it anticipates as possible. For our happy
union to be dissolved by death is indeed at every moment
possible; but at this time there is an uncommon degree of
danger that you may lose a life which I know you value more
than you do your own. I say I _know_ this, because I have
long been taught, from our perfect sympathy of affection, to
judge your heart by mine; and I can say solemnly and truly,
as far as I know myself, that I have no other value for my
own life than as a means of continuing a conjugal union with
the best of women--the wife of my soul, my first, my last,
my only love. I have told you in my current letters that the
plague is raging with considerable violence in this place. I
must tell you in this, if it should be your fortune to see
it, that a pressing duty of humanity requires me to expose
myself more than other considerations would justify in
endeavoring to save as many of our unhappy citizens as
possible from falling a sacrifice, and to embark them at
this cruel moment for their country. Though they are dying
very fast, it is possible that my exertions may be the means
of saving a number who otherwise would perish. If this
should be the case, and _I_ should fall instead of _them_,
my tender, generous friend must not upbraid my memory by
ever thinking I did too much. But she cannot help it: I know
she cannot. Yet, my dearest love, give me leave, since I
must anticipate your affliction, to lay before you some
reflections which would recur to you at _last_, but which
ought to strike your mind at _first_, to mingle with and
assuage your first emotions of grief. You cannot judge at
your distance of the risk I am taking, nor of the necessity
of taking it; and I am convinced that were you in my place
you would do more than I shall do, for your kind, intrepid
spirit has more courage than mine, and always had.

"Another consideration: Many of these persons have wives at
home as well as I, from whom they have been much longer
separated, under more affecting circumstances, having been
held in a merciless and desponding slavery: if their wives
love them as mine does me (a thing I cannot believe, but
have no right to deny), ask these lately disconsolate and
now joyous families whether I have done too much.

"Since I write this as if it were my last poor demonstration
of affection to my lovely friend, I have much to say; and it
is with difficulty that I can steal an hour from the fatigue
of business to devote to the grateful, painful task. But
tell me (you cannot tell me) where shall I begin? where
shall I end? how shall I put an eternal period to a
correspondence which has given me so much comfort? With what
expression of regret shall I take leave of my happiness?
with what words of tenderness, of gratitude, of counsel, of
consolation, shall I pay you for what I am robbing you
of--the husband whom you cherish, the friend who is all your
own?

"But I am giving vent to more weakness than I intended:
this, my dear, is a letter of _business_, not of love, and I
wonder I cannot enter upon it and keep to my subject.
Enclosed is my last will, made in conformity to the one I
left in the hands of Doctor Hopkins of Hartford, as you may
remember. The greater part of our property now lying in
Paris, I thought proper to renew this instrument, that you
might enter immediately upon the settlement of your affairs,
without waiting to send to America for the other paper.

"You will likewise find enclosed a schedule of our property
debts and demands, with explanations, as nearly just as I
can make it from memory in the absence of my papers. If the
French Republic is consolidated, and her funds rise to par,
or near it, as I believe they will do soon after the war,
the effects noted in this schedule may amount to a capital
of about one hundred and twenty thousand dollars, besides
paying my debts; which sum, vested in the American funds or
mortgages equally solid, would produce something more than
seven thousand dollars a year perpetual income.

"If the French should fund their debt anew at one-half its
nominal value (which is possible), so that the part of your
property now vested in those funds should diminish in
proportion, still, taking the whole together, it will not
make a difference of more than one-third, and the annual
income may still be near five thousand dollars. Events
unforeseen by me may, however, reduce it considerably lower.
But, whatever may be the value of what I leave, it is left
simply and wholly to you.

"Perhaps some of my relations may think it strange that I
have not mentioned them in this final disposition of my
effects, especially if they should prove to be as
considerable as I hope they may. But, my dearest love, I
will tell you my reasons, and I hope you will approve them;
for if I can excuse myself to _you_ in a point in which your
generous delicacy would be more likely to question the
propriety of my conduct than in most others, I am sure my
arguments will be convincing to those whose objections may
arise from their interest.

"_First._ In a view of justice and equity, whatever we
possess at this moment is a joint property between
ourselves, and ought to remain to the survivor. When you
gave me your blessed self you know I was destitute of every
other possession, as of every other enjoyment: I was rich
only in the fund of your affectionate economy and the sweet
consolation of your society. In our various struggles and
disappointments while trying to obtain a moderate competency
for the quiet enjoyment of what we used to call the
remainder of our lives, I have been rendered happy by
misfortunes, for the heaviest we have met with were turned
into blessings by the opportunities they gave me to discover
new virtues in you, who taught me how to bear them.

"I have often told you since the year 1791, the period of
our deepest difficulties (and even during that period), that
I had never been so easy and contented before; and I have
certainly been happier in you during the latter years of our
union than I was in former years; not that I have loved you
more ardently or more exclusively, for that was impossible,
but I have loved you _better_: my heart has been more full
of your excellence and less agitated with objects of
ambition, which used to devour me too much.

"I recall these things to your mind to convince you of my
full belief that the acquisition of the competency which we
seem at last to have secured is owing more to your energy
than my own: I mean the energy of your virtues, which gave
me consolation, and even happiness, under circumstances
wherein, if I had been alone or with a partner no better
than myself, I should have sunk.

"These fruits of our joint exertions you expected to enjoy
_with me_, else I know you would not have wished for them.
But if by my death you are to be deprived of the greater
part of the comfort you expected, it would surely be unjust
and cruel to deprive you of the remainder, or any portion of
it, by giving any part of this property to others. It is
yours in the truest sense in which property can be
considered; and I should have no right, if I were disposed,
to take it from you.

"_Secondly._ Of _my_ relations, I have some thirty or forty,
nephews and nieces and their children, the greater part of
whom I have never seen, and from whom I have had no news for
seven or eight years. Among them there may be some
necessitous ones who would be proper objects of particular
legacies, yet it would be impossible for me at this moment
to know which they are. It was my intention, and still is if
I live, to go to America, to make discrimination among them
according to their wants, and to give them such relief as
might be in my power, without waiting to do it by legacy.
Now, my lovely wife, if this task and the means of
performing it should devolve upon you, I need not recommend
it: our _joint_ liberality would have been less extensive
and less grateful to the receivers than _yours_ will be
alone.

"_Your own_ relations in the same degree of affinity are few
in number. I hope I need not tell you that in my affections
I know no difference between yours and mine. I include them
all in the same recommendation, without any other
distinction than what may arise from their wants and your
ability to do them good.

"If Colonel B---- or his wife (either of them being left by
the other) should be in a situation otherwise than
comfortable, I wish my generous friend to render it so as
far as may be in her power. We may have had more powerful
friends than they, but never any more sincere. _He_ has the
most frank and loyal spirit in the world, and she is
possessed of many amiable and almost heroic virtues.

"Mary----, poor girl!--you know her worth, her virtues, and
her talents, and I am sure you will not fail to keep
yourself informed of her circumstances. She has friends, or
at least _had_ them, more able than you will be to yield her
assistance in case of need. But they may forsake her for
reasons which to your enlightened and benevolent mind would
rather be an additional inducement to contribute to her
happiness. Excuse me, my dearest life, for my being so
particular on a subject which, considering to whom it is
addressed, may appear superfluous; but I do it rather to
show that I agree with you in these sentiments than to
pretend that they originate on my part. With this view I
must pursue them a little further. One of the principal
gratifications in which I intended, and still intend to
indulge myself if I should live to enjoy with you the means
of doing it, is to succor the unfortunate of every
description as far as possible--to encourage merit where I
find it, and try to create it where it does not exist. This
has long been a favorite project with me; but, having always
been destitute of the means of carrying it into effect to
any considerable degree, I have not conversed with you upon
it as much as I wish I had. Though I can say nothing that
will be new to you on the pleasure of employing one's
attention and resources in this way, yet some useful hints
might be given on the means of multiplying good actions from
small resources; for I would not confine my pleasure to the
simple duties of _charity_ in the beggar's sense of the
word.

"_First._ Much may be done by advising with poor persons,
contriving for them, and pointing out the objects on which
they can employ their own industry.

"_Secondly._ Many persons and families in a crisis of
difficulty might be extricated and set up in the world by
little loans of money, for which they might give good
security and refund within a year; and the same fund might
then go to relieve a second and a third; and thus a dozen
families might be set on the independent footing of their
own industry in the course of a dozen years by the help of
fifty dollars, and the owner lose nothing but the interest.
Some judgment would be necessary in these operations, as
well as care and attention in finding out the proper
objects. How many of these are to be found in prisons,
thrown in and confined for years, for small debts which
their industry and their liberty would enable them to
discharge in a short time! Imprisonment for debt still
exists as a stain upon our country, as most others. France,
indeed, has set us the example of abolishing it, but I am
apprehensive she will relapse from this, as I see she is
inclined to do from many other good things which she began
in her magnanimous struggle for the renovation of society.

"_Thirdly._ With your benevolence, your character and
connections, you may put in motion a much greater fund of
charity than you will yourself possess. It is by searching
out the objects of distress or misfortune, and recommending
them to their wealthy neighbors in such a manner as to
excite their attention. I have often remarked to you (I
forget whether you agree with me in it or not) that there is
more goodness at the bottom of the human heart than the
world will generally allow. Men are as often hindered from
doing a generous thing by an _indolence_ either of thought
or action as by a selfish principle. If they knew what the
action was, when and where it was to be done and how to do
it, their obstacles would be overcome. In this manner one
may bring the resources of others into contribution, and
with such a grace as to obtain the thanks both of the givers
and receivers.

"_Fourthly._ The _example_ of one beneficent person, like
yourself, in a neighborhood or a town would go a great way.
It would doubtless be imitated by others, extend far, and
benefit thousands whom you might never hear of.

"I certainly hope to escape from this place and return to
your beloved arms. No man has stronger inducements to wish
to live than I have. I have no quarrel with the world: it
has used me as well as could be expected. I have valuable
friends in every country where I have put my foot, not
excepting this abominable sink of wickedness, pestilence and
folly--the city of Algiers. I have a pretty extensive and
dear-bought knowledge of mankind; a most valuable collection
of books; a pure and undivided taste for domestic
tranquillity, the social intercourse of friends, study, and
the exercise of charity. I have a moderate but sufficient
income, perfect health, an unimpaired constitution, and, to
give the relish to all enjoyments and smooth away the
asperities that might arise from unforeseen calamities, I
have the wife that my youth chose and my advancing age has
cherished--the pattern of excellence, the example of every
virtue--from whom all my joys have risen, in whom all my
hopes are centred.

"I will use every precaution for my safety, as well for your
sake as mine. But if you should see me no more, my dearest
friend, you will not forget I loved you. As you have valued
my love, and as you believe this letter is written with an
intention to promote your happiness at a time when it will
be for ever out of my power to contribute to it in any other
way, I beg you will kindly receive the last advice I can
give you, with which I am going to close our endearing
intercourse.... Submitting with patience to a destiny that
is unavoidable, let your tenderness for me soon cease to
agitate that lovely bosom: banish it to the house of
darkness and dust, with the object that can no longer be
benefited by it, and transfer your affections to some worthy
person who shall supply my place in the relation I have
borne to you. It is for the living, not the dead, to be
rendered happy by the sweetness of your temper, the purity
of your heart, your exalted sentiments, your cultivated
spirit, your undivided love. Happy man of your choice should
he know and prize the treasure of such a wife! Oh, treat her
tenderly, my dear sir: she is used to nothing but kindness,
unbounded love and confidence. She is all that any
reasonable man can desire. She is more than I have merited,
or perhaps than you can merit. My resigning her to your
charge, though but the result of uncontrollable necessity,
is done with a degree of cheerfulness--a cheerfulness
inspired by the hope that her happiness will be the object
of your care and the long-continued fruit of your affection.

"Farewell, my wife; and though I am not used to subscribe my
letters addressed to you, your familiarity with my writing
having always rendered it unnecessary, yet it seems proper
that the last characters which this hand shall trace for
your perusal should compose the name of your most faithful,
most affectionate and most grateful husband,

"JOEL BARLOW."

After her husband's decease Mrs. Barlow returned to America, and continued to reside at Kalorama until her death in 1818.

CHARLES BURR TODD.

FOOTNOTES:

[C] The name is variously written Zarrow, Zarniwica and Zarrowitch.

TERESA DI FAENZA.

I.

If he should wed a woman like a flower,
Fresh as the dew and royal as a rose,
Veined with spring-fire, mesmeric in repose,
His world-vext brain to lull with mystic power,
Great-souled to track his flight through heavens starred,
Upborne by wings of trust and love, yet meek
As one who has no self-set goal to seek,
His inspiration and his best reward,
At once his Art's deep secret and clear crown,
His every-day made dream, his dream fulfilled,--
If such a wife he wooed to be his own,
God knows 'twere well. Even I no less had willed.
Yet, O my heart! wouldst thou for his dear sake
Frankly rejoice, or with self-pity break?

II.

What could I bring in dower? A restless heart,
As eager, ardent, hungry, as his own,
Face burned pale olive by our Southern sun,
A mind long used to musings grave apart.
Gold, noble name or fame I ne'er regret,
Albeit all are lacking; but the glow
Of spring-like beauty, but the overflow
Of simple, youthful joy. And yet--and yet--
A proud voice whispers: Vain may be his quest,
What fruit soe'er he pluck, what laurels green,
Through all the world, for just this prize unseen
I in my deep heart harbor quite unguessed:
I alone know what full hands I should bring
Were I to lay my wealth before my king.

EMMA LAZARUS.

PIPISTRELLO.

I am only Pipistrello. Nothing but that--nothing more than any one of the round brown pebbles that the wind sets rolling down the dry bed of the Tiber in summer.

I am Pipistrello, the mime, the fool, the posturer, the juggler, the spangled saltinbanco, the people's plaything, that runs and leaps and turns and twists, and laughs at himself and is laughed at by all, and lives by his limbs like his brother the dancing bear and his cousin the monkey in a red coat and a feathered cap.

I am Pipistrello, five-and-twenty years old, and strong as you see, and good to look at, the women have said. I can leap and run against any man, and I can break a bar of iron against my knee, and I can keep up with the fastest horse that flies, and I can root up a young oak without too much effort. I am strong enough, and my life is at the full, and a day's sickness I never have known, and my mother is living. Yet I lie under sentence of death, and to-morrow I die on the scaffold: if nothing come between this and the break of dawn, I am a dead man with to-morrow's sun.

And nothing will come: why should it?

I am only Pipistrello. The people have loved me, indeed, but that is no reason why the law should spare me. Nor would I wish that it should--not I. They come and stand and stare at me through the grating, men and women and maidens and babies. A few of them cry a little, and one little mite of a child thrusts at me with a little brown hand the half of a red pomegranate. But for the most part they laugh. Why, of course they do. The street-children always laugh to see a big black steer with his bold horned head go down under the mace of the butcher: the street always finds that droll. The strength of the bull could scatter the crowd as the north wind scatters the dust, if he were free; but he is not, and his strength serves him nothing: the hammer fells him and the crowd laughs.

The people of this old Orte know me so well. Right and left, up and down, through the country I have gone all the years of my life. Wherever there was fair or festa, there was I, Pipistrello, in the midst. It is not a bad life, believe me. No life is bad that has the sun and the rain upon it, and the free will of the feet and the feel of the wind, and nothing between it and heaven.

My father had led the same kind of life before me: he died at Genoa, his spine broken in two, like a snapped bough, by a fall from the trapeze before the eyes of all the citizens. I was a big baby in that time, thrown from hand to hand by the men in their spectacles as they would have thrown a ball or an orange.

My mother was a young and gentle creature, full of tenderness for her own people, with strangers shy and afraid. She was the daughter of a poor weaver. My father had found and wooed her in Etruria, and although he had never taken the trouble to espouse her before the mayor, yet he had loved her and had always treated her with great respect. She was a woman very pure and very honest. Alas, the poor soul! To-day her hair is white as the snow, and they tell me she is mad. So much the better for her if she know nothing; but I fear the mad and the imbecile know all and see all, crouching in their hapless gloom.

When my father died thus at Genoa my mother took a hatred for that manner of living, and she broke off all ties with the athletes who had been his comrades, and, taking the little money that was hers in a little leather bag, she fled away with me to the old town of Orte, where my grandmother still lived, the widow of the weaver. The troop wished to keep me with them, for, although I was but five years old, I was supple and light and very fearless, and never afraid of being thrown up in the air, a living ball, in their games and sports.

Orte was just the same then as it is now. These very aged towns I think never change: if you try to alter them you must break them up and destroy them utterly. Orte has known the Etruscans: she can very well do without modern folk. At Orte my mother and grandmother dwelt together in one room that looked over the river--a large vaulted chamber with grated casements, with thick stone walls--a chamber in what had once been a palace. My mother was then still very young and beautiful--of a pale, serious beauty, full of sadness. She smiled on me sometimes, but never once did I hear her laugh. She had never laughed since that awful day when, in the full sunlight, in the midst of the people, in the sight of the sea, in Genoa, a man had dropped from air to earth like an eagle fallen stone dead from the skies, struck by lightning.

My mother had many suitors. She was beautiful of face, as I say, like one of the Madonnas of our old painters: she was industrious, and all her little world knew very well that she would one day inherit the strip of field and the red cow that my grandmother owned outside the gates of Orte. All these pretty suitors of course made a great fuss with me, caressed me often, and brought me tomatoes, green figs, crickets in wire cages, fried fish and playthings. But my mother looked at none of them. When a woman's eyes are always looking downward on a grave, how should their tear-laden lids be lifted to see a fresh lover? She repulsed them all, always. She lived, lonely and sad, as well as she could in our great garret: we ate little, our bed was hard, and she and my grandam labored hard to get a pittance. But when a rich bailiff sought her in honest marriage, she kissed me and wept over me, and said again and again, "No, no! To your father I will be faithful, let what will chance to us."

The bailiff soon consoled himself: he married a big country wench who had a fine rope of pearls and gold bracelets, and I continued to grow up by my mother's side where the Tiber is gilded with the gold of the dawns and rolls its heavy waves under the weeping boughs of its willows. My boyish strength increased in the heat of the summers, and I grew like a young brown stalk of the tall maize. I herded the cow, cut the rushes and hewed wood, and I was always happy, even when my mother would send me to the old priest to learn things out of books. She wished to make a monk of me, but the mere idea made me shudder with fear. I loved to climb the oaks, to swing in the maples, to scale the roofs and the towers and the masts of the vessels. What had I to do with a monkish frock and a whitewashed cell? _Ouf!_ I put my fingers in my ears and ran away whenever my poor mother talked of the cloister.

My limbs were always dancing, and my blood was always leaping, laughing, boiling merrily in my veins. A priest? What an idea! I had never wholly forgotten the glad, bright days of childhood when my father had thrown me about in the air like a ball: I had never wholly forgotten the shouts of the people, the sight of the human sea of faces, the loud, frank laugh of the populace, the sparkle of the spangled habit, the intoxication of the applause of a crowd. I had only been five years old then, yet I remembered, and sometimes in the night I cried bitterly for those dead days. I had only been a little brown thing, with curls as black as the raven's wing, and they had thrown me from one to the other lightly, laughingly, like a ripe apple, like a smooth peach. But I had known what it was to get drunk on the "hurrahs" of the multitude, and I did not forget them as I grew up here a youth in old Orte.

The son of an athlete can never rest quiet at home and at school like the children of cobblers and coppersmiths and vine-dressers. All my life was beating in me, tumbling, palpitating, bubbling, panting in me--moving incessantly, like the wings of a swallow when the hour draws near for its flight and the thirst for the south rises in it. With all my force I adored my pale, lovely, Madonna-like mother, but all the same, as I trotted toward the priest with a satchel on my back, I used to think, Would it be very wicked to throw the books into the river and run away to the fields? And, in truth, I used to run away very often, scampering over the country around Orte like a mountain-hare, climbing the belfries of the churches, pulling off their weathercocks or setting their bells a-ringing--doing a thousand and one mischievous antics; but I always returned at nightfall to my mother's side. It seemed to me it would be cruel and cowardly to leave her, for she had but me in the world.

"You promise to be sensible and quiet, Pippo?" the poor soul always murmured. And I used to say "Yes," and mean it. But can a bird promise not to fly when it feels in its instincts the coming of spring? Can a young colt promise not to fling out his limbs when he feels the yielding turf beneath his hoofs?

I never wished to be disobedient, but, somehow, ten minutes after I was out of her sight I was high above on some tower or belfry, with the martens and the pigeons circling about my curly head. I was so happy on high there, looking down on all the old town misty with dust, the men and women like ants on an antheap, the historic river like a mere ribbon, yellow and twisted, the palaces and the tombs all hidden under the same gray veil of summer dust! I was so happy there!--and they spoke of making me into a monk, or, if I would not hear of that, of turning me into a clerk in a notary's office!

A monk? a clerk? when all the trees cried out to me to climb and all the birds called to me to fly! I used to cry about it with hot tears that stung my face like lashes, lying with my head hidden on my arms in the grass by the old Tiber water. For I was not twelve years old, and to be shut up in Orte always, growing gray and wrinkled as the notary had done over the wicked, crabbed, evil-looking skins that set the neighbors at war! The thought broke my heart. Nevertheless, I loved my mother, and I mended my quills, and tried to write my best, and said to the boys of the town, "I cannot bend iron or leap or race any more. I am going to write for my bread in the notary's office a year hence, for my mother wishes it, and so it must be."

And I did my best not to look up to the jackdaws circling round the towers or the old river running away to Rome. For all the waters cried to me to leap, and all the birds to fly. And you cannot tell, unless you have been born to do it as I was, how good it is to climb and climb and climb, and see the green earth grow pale beneath you, and the people dwindle till they are small as dust, and the houses fade till they seem like heaps of sand. The air gets so clear around you, and the great black wings flap close against your face; and you sit astride where the bells are, with some quaint stone face beside you that was carved on the pinnacle here a thousand years and more ago, and has hardly been seen of man ever since; and the white clouds are so near you that you seem to bathe in them; and the winds toss the trees far below, and sweep by you as they go down to torment the trees and the sea, the men that work, and the roofs that cover them, and the sails of their ships in the ocean. Men are so far from you, and heaven seems so near! The fields and the plains are lost in the vapors that divide you from them, and all their noise of living multitudes comes very faintly to your ear, and sweetly like the low murmuring of bees in the white blossoms of an acacia in the month of May.

But you do not understand, you poor toilers in cities who pace the street and watch the faces of the rich.

I was to be a notary's clerk--I, called Pipistrello (the bat) because I was always whirling and wheeling in air. I was to be a clerk, so my mother and grandmother decided for me, with the old notary himself who lived at the corner, and made his daily bread by carrying fire and sword where he could through the affairs of his neighbors. He was an old rascal, but my mother did not know that: he promised to be a safe and trustworthy guardian of my youth, and she believed he had power to keep me safe from all dangers of destiny. She wanted to be sure that I should never run the risks of my father's career: she wanted to see me always before the plate of herb soup on her table. Poor mother!

One day in Orte chance gave me another fate than this of her desires.

One fine sunrise on the morning of Palm Sunday I heard the sharp sound of a screeching fife, the metallic clash of cymbals, the shouts of boys, the rattle of a little drum. It was the rataplan beating before a troop of wrestlers and jugglers who were traversing the Marche and Reggio Emilia. The troop stationed themselves in a little square burnt by the sun and surrounded by old crumbling houses: I ran with the rest of the lads of Orte to see them. Orte was in holiday guise: aged, wrinkled, deserted, forgotten by the world as she is, she made herself gay that day with palms and lilies and lilac and the branches of willow; and her people, honest, joyous, clad in their best, who filled the streets and the churches and wine-houses, after mass flocked with one accord and pressure around the play-place of the strollers.

It was in the month of April: outside the walls and on the banks of Tiber, still swollen by the floods of winter, one could see the gold of millions of daffodils and the bright crimson and yellow of tulips in the green corn. The scent of flowers and herbs came into the town and filled its dusky and narrow ways; the boatmen had green branches fastened to their masts; in the stillness of evening one heard the song of crickets, and even a mosquito would come and blow his shrill little trumpet, and one was willing to say to him "Welcome!" because on his little horn he blew the good news, "Summer is here!" Ah, those bright summers of my youth! I am old now--ay, old, though I have lived through only twenty-five years.

This afternoon, on Palm Sunday, I ran to see the athletes as a moth flies to the candle: in Italy all the world loves the saltinbanco, be he dumb or speaking, in wood or in flesh, and all Orte hastened, as I hastened, under the sunny skies of Easter. I saw, I trembled, I laughed: I sobbed with ecstasy. It was so many years that I had not seen my brothers! Were they not my brothers all?