Chapter IX: Part 9

Old Mr. Stoughton, the Spanish consul, used to occupy the first house in Franklin Street above the alley, behind which his garden ran back for some distance. How little that worthy gentleman thought that his tulip beds and rose bushes would one day give place to a dry goods shop! Senor Stoughton was one of the urbanest men that ever touched a hat. If he met you in the morning, the memory of his bland and gracious salutation never departed from you during the day, and seemed to render your sleep sweeter at night. He always treated you as if you were a prince in disguise, and he were the only person in the secret of your incognito. He enjoyed the intimate friendship of that great and good man, Dr. Cheverus, the first Bishop of Boston, who was afterwards transferred to the archiepiscopal see of Bordeaux, and decorated with the dignity of a Prince of the Church. He, too, often walked through the old alley. The children always welcomed his approach. They respected Don Stoughton; Bishop Cheverus they loved. His very look was a benediction, and the mere glance of his eye was a _Sursum corda_. That calm, wise, benignant face always had a smile for the little ones who loved the neighbourhood of that humble Cathedral, and the pockets of that benevolent prelate never knew a dearth of sugar plums. Years after that happy time, a worthy Protestant minister of this vicinity--who was blessed with few or none of those prejudices against "Romanism" which are nowadays considered a necessary part of a minister's education--visited Cardinal Cheverus in his palace at Bordeaux, and found him keenly alive to every thing that concerned his old associations and friends in Boston. He declared, with tears in his eyes, and with that air of sincerity that marked every word he spoke, that he would gladly lay down the burden of the honour and power that then weighed upon him, to return to the care of his little New England flock. Now, Cardinal Cheverus was a man of taste and of kind feelings, and I will warrant you that when he thought of Boston, Theatre Alley was included among his associations, and enjoyed a share in his affectionate regrets.

Mrs. Grace Dunlap's little shop was an institution which many considered to be coexistent with the alley itself. It was just one of those places that seem in perfect harmony with Theatre Alley as it was twenty-five years ago. It was one of those shops that always seem to shun the madding crowd's ignoble strife, and seek a refuge in some cool sequestered way. The snuff and tobacco which Mrs. Dunlap used to dispense were of the best quality, and she numbered many distinguished persons among her customers. The author of the History of Ferdinand and Isabella was often seen there replenishing his box, and exchanging kind courtesies with the fair-spoken dealer in that fragrant article which is productive of so many bad voices and so much real politeness in European society. Mrs. Dunlap herself was a study for an artist. Her pleasant face, her fair complexion, her quiet manner, her white cap, with its gay ribbons, rivalling her eyes in brightness, were all in perfect keeping with the scrupulous neatness and air of repose that always reigned in her shop. Her parlour was as comfortable a place as you would wish to see on a summer or a winter day. It had a cheerful English look that I always loved. The plants in the windows, the bird cage, the white curtains, the plain furniture, that looked as if you might use it without spoiling it, the shining andirons, and the blazing wood fire, are all treasured in my memory of Theatre Alley as it used to be. Mrs. Dunlap's customers and friends (and who could help being her friend?) were always welcome in her parlour, and there were few who did not enjoy her simple hospitality more than that pretentious kind which sought to lure them with the pomp and vanity of mirrors and gilding. Her punch was a work of art. But I will refrain from pursuing this subject further. It is no pleasure to me to harrow up the feelings of my readers by dwelling upon the joys of their _praeteritos annos_.

When Mrs. Dunlap moved out of the alley, its glory began to decline. From that day its _prestige_ seemed to have gone. Even before that time an attempt had been made to rob it of its honoured name. Signs were put up at each end of it bearing the inscription, "Odeon Avenue"; but the attempt was vain, whether it proceeded from motives of godliness or of respectability; nobody ever called it any thing but Theatre Alley. At about that time nearly all the buildings left in it were devoted to the philanthropic object of the quenching of human thirst. We read that St. Paul took courage when he saw _three_ taverns. Who can estimate the height of daring to which the Apostle of the Gentiles might have risen had it been vouchsafed to him to walk through Theatre Alley. One of the most frequented resorts there rejoiced in the name of "The Rainbow"--an auspicious title, certainly, and one which would attract those who were averse to the cold water principle. Some of the places were below the level of the alley, and verified, in a striking manner, the truth of Virgil's words, _Facilis descensus taverni_. Among certain low persons, not appreciative of its poetic associations, the alley at that time was nicknamed "Rum Row"; and he was considered a hero who could make all the ports in the passage through, and carry his topsails when he reached Franklin Street. Various efforts were made at that period to bring the alley into disrepute. Among others, a sign was put up announcing that it was _dangerous passing_ through there; I fear that Father Mathew would have thought a declaration that it was dangerous _stopping_, to have been nearer the truth. But the daily deputations from the Old Colony and Worcester Railways could not be kept back by any signs, and the alley echoed to their multitudinous tramp every morning. Mr. Choate, too, was faithful to the alley through good and evil report, and while there was a plank left, it was daily pressed by his India rubbers. To such a lover of nature as he, what shall take the place of a morning walk through Theatre Alley!

But _venit summa dies et ineluctabile tempus_, and the old alley has been swept away. During the past century how many thousands have passed through it! how many anxious minds, engrossed with schemes of commercial enterprises, how many hearts weary with defeat, how many kind, and generous, and great, and good men, who have passed away from earthly existence, like the alley through which they walked! But while I mourn over the loss, I would not restore it if I could. When so many of its old associations had been blotted out; when low dram-drinking dens had taken the place of the ancient, quiet dispensatories of good cheer; when grim and gloomy warehouses, with their unsocial, distrustful iron shutters, had made the warm sunlight a stranger to it,--it was time for it to go. It was better that it should cease to exist, than continue in its humiliation, a reproach to the neighbourhood, and a libel upon its ancient and honourable fame.

THE OLD CATHEDRAL

In many people who have been abroad, the mere mention of the old city of Rouen is enough to kindle an enthusiasm. If you would know why this is,--why those who are familiar with the cathedrals of Cologne, Milan, Florence, and the basilicas of Rome, have yet so deep a feeling about the old capital of Normandy,--the true answer is, that Rouen, with its Gothic glories and the thrilling history of the middle ages written on its every stone, was the first ancient city that they saw, and made the deepest impression on their minds. They had left the stiff and unsympathetic respectability of Boston, the tiresome cleanliness of Philadelphia, or the ineffable filth of New York behind them; or perchance they had been emancipated from some dreary western town, whose wide, straight, unpaved streets seemed to have no beginning and to end nowhere; whose atmosphere was pervaded with an odour of fresh paint and new shingles, and whose inhabitants would regard fifty years as a highly respectable antiquity,--and had come steaming across the unquiet Atlantic to Havre, eager to see an old city. A short railway ride carried them to one in which they could not turn a corner without seeing something to remind them of what they had seen in pictures or read in books about the middle ages. The richly-carved window frames, the grotesque faces, the fanciful devices, the profusion of ornament, the shrines and statues of the saints at the corners of the streets, and all the other picturesque peculiarities of that queer old city, filled them with wonder and delight. Those fantastic gables that seemed to be leaning over to look at them, inspired them with a respect which all the architectural wonders and artistic trophies of the continent are powerless to disturb.

It was not my fortune thus to make acquaintance with Rouen. I had several times tasted the pleasure of a continental sojourn. The streets of several of the great European capitals were as familiar to me as those of my native city. Yet Rouen captivated me with a charm peculiarly its own. I shall not easily forget the delicious summer day in which I left Paris for a short visit to Rouen. That four hours' ride over the Western Railway of France was full of solid enjoyment for every sense. The high cultivation of that fertile and unfenced country--the farmers at work in the sunny broad-stretched fields--the hay-makers piling up their fragrant loads--the chateau-like farm houses, looking as stately as if they had strayed out of the city, and, getting lost, had thought it beneath their dignity to inquire the way back--and those old compactly built towns, in each of which the houses seem to have nestled together around a moss-grown church tower, like children at the knees of a fond mother,--made up a scene which harmonized admirably with my feelings and with the day, "so calm, so cool, so bright, the bridal of the earth and sky." My fellow-passengers shared in the general joy which the blithesomeness of nature inspired. We all chatted merrily together, and a German, who looked about as lively as Scott's Commentaries bound in dark sheep-skin, tried to make a joke. So irresistible was the contagion of cheerfulness, that an Englishman, who sat opposite me, so far forgot his native dignity, as to volunteer the remark that it was a "nice day."

At last we began to consult our watches and time tables, and, after a shrill whistle and a ride through a long tunnel, I found myself, with a punctuality by which you might set your Frodsham, in the station at Rouen. I obeyed the instructions of the conductor to _Messieurs les voyageurs pour Rouen_ to _descendez_, and was, in a very few minutes, walking leisurely through narrow and winding streets, which I used to think existed only in the imaginations of novelists and scene-painters. I say walking, but the fact is, I did not know what means of locomotion I employed in my progress through the town. My eyes and mind were too busy to take cognizance of any inferior matters. My astonishment and delight at all that met my sight was not so great as my astonishment and delight to find myself astonished and delighted. I had seen so many old cities that I had no thought of getting enthusiastic about Rouen, until I found myself suddenly in a state of mental exaltation. I had visited Rouen as many people visit churches and galleries of art in Italy--because I had an opportunity, and feared that in after years I might be asked if I had ever been there. But, if a dislike to acknowledge my ignorance led me to Rouen, it was a very different sentiment that took possession of me as soon as I caught the spirit of the place. The genius of the past seemed to inhabit every street and alley of that strange city. I half expected, whenever I heard the hoofs of horses, to find myself encompassed by mailed knights; and if Joan of Arc, with her sweet maidenly face beaming with the inspiration of religious patriotism, had galloped by, it would not have surprised me so much as it did to realize that I--a Yankee, clad in a gray travelling suit, with an umbrella in my hand, and drafts to a limited amount on Baring Brothers in my pocket--was moving about in the midst of such scenes, and was not arrested and hustled out of the way as a profane intruder.

Wandering through the mouldy streets without any definite idea whither they led, and so charmed by all I saw, that I did not care, I suddenly turned a corner and suddenly found myself in a market-place well filled with figures, which would have graced a similar scene in any opera-house, and facing that stupendous cathedral which is one of the glories of France. I do not know how to talk learnedly about architecture; so I can spare you, dear reader, any criticism on the details of that great church. I have no doubt that it is full of faults, but my unskilful eyes rested only on its beauties. I would not have had it one stroke of the chisel less ornate, nor one shade less dingy. I could not, indeed, help thinking what it must have been centuries ago, when it was in all the glory of its fresh beauty; but still I rejoiced that it was reserved for me to behold it in the perfected loveliness and richer glory of its decay. Never until then did I fully appreciate the truth of Mr. Ruskin's declaration, that the greatest glory of a building is not in its sculptures or in its gold, but in its age,--nor did I ever before perfectly comprehend his eloquent words touching that mysterious sympathy which we feel in "walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity."

After lingering for a while before the sacred edifice, I entered, and stood within its northern aisle. Arches above arches, supported by a forest of massive columns, seemed to be climbing up as if they aspired to reach the throne of Him whose worship was daily celebrated there. The sun was obscured by a passing cloud as I entered, and that made the ancient arches seem doubly solemn. The stillness that reigned there was rendered more profound by the occasional twitter of a swallow from some "jutty frieze," or "coigne of vantage," high up above my head. I walked half way up the aisle, and stopped on hearing voices at a distance. As I stood listening, the sun uncovered his radiant face, and poured his golden glory through the great western windows of the church, bathing the whole interior with a prismatic brilliancy which made me wonder at my presumption in being there. At the same moment a clear tenor voice rang out from the choir as if the sunbeams had called it into being, giving a wonderful expression to the words of the Psalmist, _Dominus illuminatio mea et salus mea; quem timebo_. Then came a full burst of music as the choir took up the old Gregorian Chant--the universal language of prayer and praise. As the mute groves of the Academy reecho still the wisdom of the sages, so did that ancient church people my mind with forms and scenes of an age long passed away. "I was all ear," and those solemn strains seemed to be endowed with the accumulated melody of the _Misereres_ and _Glorias_ of a thousand years.

I have an especial affection for an old church, and I pity with all my heart the man whom the silent eloquence of that vast cathedral does not move. The very birds that build their nests in its mouldering towers have more soul than he. Its every stone is a sermon on the transitoriness of human enterprise and the vanity of worldly hopes. Beneath its pavement lie buried hopes and ambitions which have left no memorial but in the unread pages of forgotten historians. Richard, the lion-hearted, who made two continents ring with the fame of his valour, and yearned for new conquests, was obliged at last to content himself with the dusty dignity and obscurity of a vault beneath those lofty arches which stand unmoved amid the contentions of rival dynasties and the insane violence of republican anarchy.

But it was not merely to write of the glories of Rouen and its churches, that I took up my neglected pen. The old cathedral of which I have now a few kind words to say, does not, like that of Rouen, date back sixteen centuries to its foundation; neither is it one of those marvels of architecture in which the conscious stone seems to have grown naturally into forms of enduring beauty. No great synods or councils have been held within its walls; nor have its humble aisles resounded daily with the divine office chanted by a chapter of learned and pious canons. Indeed it bears little in its external appearance that would raise a suspicion of its being a cathedral at all. Yet its plain interior, its simple altars, and its unpretentious episcopal throne, bear witness to the abiding-place of that power which is radiated from the shrine of the Prince of the Apostles--as unmistakably as if it were encrusted with mosaics, and the genius of generations of great masters had been taxed in its adornment.

The Cathedral of Boston is the last relic of Franklin Street as I delight to remember it. One by one, the theatre, the residence of the Catholic bishops, and the old mansions that bore such a Berkeley Square-y look of respectability have passed away; and the old church alone remains. Tall warehouses look down upon it, as if it were an intruder there, and the triumphal car of traffic makes its old walls tremble and disturbs the devotion of its worshippers. An irreverent punster ventured a few months since to suggest that, out of regard to its new associations, it ought to be rededicated under the invocation of St. Casimir, and to be enlarged by the addition of a chapel built in honor of St. Pantaleone.

Quid non mortalia pectora cogis,
Joci sacra fames!

But it is well that it should follow the buildings with which it held companionship through so many quiet years. The charm of the old street has been destroyed, and the sooner the last monument of its former state is removed the better it will be. The land on which it stands formerly belonged to the Boston Theatre corporation. It was transferred to its present proprietorship in the last week of the last century, and the first Catholic church in New England was erected upon it. That church (enlarged considerably by the late Bishop Fenwick) is the one which still stands, and towards which I feel a veneration similar in kind to that inspired by the cathedrals of the old world. Even now I remember with pleasure how I used to enjoy an occasional visit to that strange place in my boyhood. "Logic made easy" and "Geometry for Infant Schools" were things unknown in my young days. I was weaned from the Primer and Spelling-book with the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and the works of Defoe, Goldsmith, Addison, and Shakespeare. Therefore the romantic instinct was not entirely crushed out of my youthful heart, and it would be difficult, dear reader, for you to conceive how much I found to feed it on, within those plain brick walls.

The lamp which used to burn constantly before the altar, until an anxiety for "improvement" removed it out of sight behind the pulpit, filled me with an indescribable awe. I was ignorant of its meaning, and for years was unaware that my childish reverence for its mild flicker was a blind homage to one of the profoundest mysteries of the Catholic faith. I remember to this day the satisfaction I took in the lighting of those tall candles, and what a halo of mysterious dignity surrounded even the surpliced boys grouped around that altar. That strange ceremonial surpassed my comprehension. The Latin, as I heard it sung there, was pronounced so differently from what I had been taught at school, that it was all Greek to me. Yet, when I saw the devotion of that congregation, and the pious zeal of the devoted clergymen who built that church, I could not call their worship "mummery," nor join in the irreverent laughter of my comrades at those ancient rites. There was something about them that seemed to fill up my ideal of worship--a soothing and consoling influence which I found nowhere else.

I never entertained the vulgar notion of a Catholic priest. Of course my education led me to regard the dogmas of the Roman Church with any thing but a friendly eye; but my ideas of the clergy of that Church were not influenced by popular prejudice. I was always willing to believe that Vincent de Paul, and Charles Borromeo, and Fenelon were what they were, _in consequence_ of their religion, rather than _in spite_ of it, as some people, who make pretensions to liberality, would fain persuade us. When I recall the self-denying lives of the two founders of the Catholic Church in Boston,--Matignon and Cheverus,--I wonder that the influence of their virtues has not extended even to the present day, to soften prejudice and do away with _irreligious_ animosity. They were regarded with distrust, if not with hatred, when they first came among us to take charge of that humble flock; but their devotedness, joined with great acquirements and rare personal worth, overcame even the force of the great Protestant tradition of enmity towards their office. Protestant admiration kept pace with Catholic love and veneration in their regard, and when they built the church which is now so near the term of its existence, there were few wealthy Protestants in Boston who did not esteem it a privilege to aid them with liberal contributions. The first subscription paper for its erection was headed by the illustrious and venerable name of John Adams, the successor of Washington in the presidency of the United States.

The memory of the first Bishop of Boston, Dr. Cheverus, is (for most Bostonians of my age) the most precious association connected with the Cathedral. He was endeared to the people of this city by ten years of unselfish exertion in the duties of a missionary priest, before he was elevated to the dignity of the episcopate. His unwillingness to receive the proffered mitre was as characteristic of his modest and humble spirit, as the meekness with which he bore his faculties when the burden of that responsibility was forced upon him. His "episcopal palace," as he used facetiously to term his small and scantily-furnished dwelling, which was contiguous to the rear of the church, was the resort of all classes of the community. His simplicity of manner and ingenuous affability won all hearts. The needy and opulent, the learned and illiterate, the prosperous merchant and the Indians in the unknown wilds of Maine, found in him a father and a friend. Children used to run after him as he walked down Franklin Place, delighted to receive a smile and a kind word from one whose personal presence was like a benediction.

His face was the index of a pure heart and a great mind. It was impossible to look at him without recalling that fine stanza of the old poet.--

"A sweete attractive kind of grace,
A full assurance given by lookes,
Continuall comfort in a face,
The lineaments of Gospel bookes;--
I trow that countenance cannot lie
Whose thoughts are legible in the eye."

One of the ancient Hebrew prophets, in describing the glories of the millennial period, tells us that upon the bells of the horses shall be the words, _Holiness unto the Lord_--a prophecy which always reminded me of Cheverus; for that divine inscription seemed to have been written all over his benign countenance as with the luminous pen of the rapt evangelist in Patmos.

But Bishop Cheverus was not merely a good man--he was a great man. He did not court the society of the learned, for his line of duty lay among the poor; but, even in that humble sphere, his talents shone out brightly, and won the respect even of those who had the least sympathy with the Church to which his every energy was devoted. Boston valued him highly; but few of her citizens thought, as they saw him bound on some errand of mercy through her streets, that France envied them the possession of such a prelate, that the peerage of the old monarchy was thought to need his virtuous presence, and that the scarlet dignity of a Prince of the Church was in reserve for that meek and self-sacrificing servant of the poor. Had he been gifted with prophetic vision, his humility would have had much to suffer, and his life would have been made unhappy, by the thought of coming power and honour. He had given the best part of his life to Boston, and here he wished to die. He had buried his friend and fellow-labourer, Dr. Matignon, in the Church of St. Augustine at South Boston, and when he placed the mural tablet over the tomb of that venerable priest, he left a space for his own name, and expressed the hope that, as they had lived together harmoniously for so many years, they might not in death be separated. It was a strange sight to see more than two hundred Protestants remonstrating against the translation of a Catholic bishop from their city, and speaking of him in such terms as these: "We hold him to be a blessing and a treasure in our social community, which we cannot part with, and which, without injustice to any man, we may affirm, if withdrawn from us, can never be replaced." And when he distributed all that he possessed among his clergy, his personal friends and the poor, and left Boston as poor as he had entered it, with the single trunk that contained his clothes when he arrived, twenty-seven years before,--public admiration outran the power of language. Doctrinal differences were forgotten. Three hundred carriages and other vehicles escorted him several miles on the road to New York, where he was to embark.

Of his life as Bishop of Montauban, Archbishop of Bordeaux, a Peer of France, and a Cardinal, there is not space for me to speak. Suffice it to say, that amid all the dignities to which he was successively promoted, he lived as simply and unostentatiously as when he dwelt in Franklin Street; and that in time of pestilence and public distress he showed the same unbounded charity which caused his departure from Boston to be considered a public calamity. To the last day of his life he maintained his interest in his American home, and would gladly have relinquished all his dignities to return and minister at the altar of the church he here erected. Throughout France he was honoured and beloved, even as he had been in the metropolis of New England, and a nation sorrowed at his death. Full as his life was of good works, it was not in his eloquence, nor his learning, nor in the pious and charitable enterprises which he originated, that the glory of Cardinal Cheverus consisted; it was in the simplicity of his character and the daily beauty of his life:--

"His thoughts were as a pyramid up-piled,
On whose far top an angel stood and smiled,
Yet in his heart he was a little child."

The gentle and benevolent spirit of that illustrious prelate has never departed from the church he built. When Channing died, and was buried from the church which his eloquence had made famous, the successor of Cheverus caused the bell of the neighbouring Cathedral to be tolled, that it might not seem as if the Catholics had forgotten the friendly relations which had existed between the great Unitarian preacher and their first bishop. And when the good Bishop Fenwick was borne from the old Cathedral, with all the pomp of pontifical obsequies, his courtesy and regard for Dr. Channing's memory was not forgotten, and the bell which was so lately removed from the tower, where it had swung for half a century, joined with that of the Cathedral in giving expression to the general sorrow, and proved that no dogmatic differences had disturbed the kindly spirit which Channing inculcated and had exemplified in his blameless life.

Of the later history of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross I may not speak. My youthful respect for it has in no degree diminished, and I shall always consider it a substantial refutation of the old apothegm, "Familiarity breeds contempt." There are, I doubt not, those who regard that old edifice with deeper feelings than mine. Who can estimate the affection and veneration in which it is held by those who may there have found an asylum from harassing doubts, who have received from that font the joy of a renovated heart, and from that altar the divine gift which is at the same time a consolation for past sorrows and a renewal of strength to tread the rough path of life!

I am told that it will not probably be long before the glittering cross which the pure-hearted Cheverus placed upon the old church will be removed, and the demolition of his only monument in Boston will be effected. Permit me to conclude these reminiscences with the expression of the hope that the new Cathedral of Boston will be an edifice worthy of this wealthy city, and that it may contain some fitting memorial of the remarkable man who exercised his beneficent apostolate among us during more than a quarter of a century. The virtues which merited the gratitude of the poor and the highest honours which pontiffs and kings can bestow, ought not to go uncommemorated in the city which witnessed their development, and never hesitated to give expression to its love and veneration for their possessor. But whatever the new Cathedral may be,--however glorious the skill of the architect, the sculptor, and the painter may render it,--there are those in whose affections it will never be able to replace the little unpretending church which Cheverus built, and which the remembrance of his saintly life has embalmed in all their hearts.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUFFERING

I am old,
And my infirmities have chained me here
To suffer and to vex my weary soul
With the vain hope of cure. * * *
Yet my captivity is not so joyless
As you would think, my masters. Here I sit
And look upon this eager, anxious world,--
Not with the eyes of sour misanthropy,
Nor envious of its pleasures,--but content,--
Yea, blessedly content, 'mid all my pains,
That I no more may mingle with its brawlings.

Human suffering is an old and favourite theme. From the time when the woes of Job assumed an epic grandeur of form, and the adventures and pains of Philoctetes inspired the tragic muse of Sophocles, down to the publication of the last number of the _London Lancet_, there would seem to have been no subject so attractive as the sufferings of poor humanity. Literature is filled with their recital, and, if books were gifted with a vocal power, every library would resound with wailings. Ask your neighbour Jenkins, who overtakes you on your way to your office, how he is, and it is ten chances to one that he will entertain you with an account of his influenza or his rheumatism. It is a subject, too, which age cannot wither nor custom stale. It knows none of the changes which will at times dwarf or keep out of sight all other themes. The weather, which forms the raw material of so much conversation, is nothing compared to it. There is nothing which men find so much pleasure in talking about as their own ailments. The late Mr. Webster, of Marshfield, was once stopping for a single day in a western city, where he had never been before, and where there was a natural curiosity among many of the inhabitants to see the Defender of the Constitution. He therefore set apart two hours before the time of his departure for the reception of such persons as might seek the honour of a shake of his hand. The reception took place in one of the parlours of a hotel, the crowd filing in at one door, being introduced by the mayor, and making their exit by another. In the course of the proceedings, a little man, with a lustrous beaver in one hand and a gold-headed cane in the other, and whose personal apparel appeared to have been got up (as old Pelby would have said) without the slightest regard to expense, and on a scale of unparalleled splendour, walked forward, and was presented by the mayor as "Mr. Smith, one of our most eminent steamboat builders and leading citizens." Mr. Webster's large, thoughtful, serene eyes seemed to be completely filled by the result of the combined efforts of the linen-draper, the tailor, and the jeweller, that confronted him, and his deep voice made answer--"Mr. Smith, I am happy to see you. I hope you are well, sir." "Thank you, thir," said the leading citizen, "I am not very well. I wath tho unfortunate ath to take cold yethterday by thitting in a draught. Very unpleathant, Mr. Webthter, to have a cold! But Mrs. Smith thays that the thinks that if I put my feet in thome warm water to-night, and take thome-thing warm to drink on going to bed, that I may get over it. I thertainly hope tho, for it really givth me the headache, and I can't thmell at all." Mr. Webster expressed a warm interest in Mr. Smith's case, and a hope that Mrs. Smith's simple medical treatment would result beneficially, and then turned with undisturbed gravity to the next citizen, who, with some six hundred others, was anxiously waiting his turn. We are all like Mr. Smith. We laugh, it is true, at his affectations, but we are as likely to force our petty ailments upon a mind burdened with the welfare of a nation; and we never tire of hearing ourselves talk about our varying symptoms. Politeness may hold us back from importuning our friends with the diagnosis of our case, but our self-centred hearts are all alike, and a cold in the head will awaken more feelings in its victim than the recital of all the horrors of the hospital of Scutari. Nothing can equal the heroic fortitude with which we bear the sufferings of our fellows, or the saintliness of our pious resignation and acquiescence in the wisdom of the divine decrees when our friends are bending under their afflictive stroke.

I wish to say a few words about suffering. Do not be afraid, beloved reader, that I am going to carry you into rooms from which the light is excluded, and which are strangers to any sound above a whisper, or the casual movement of some of the phials on the mantel-piece. I am going to speak of suffering in its strict sense of pain,--bodily pain,--and sickness is not necessarily accompanied with pain. I cannot regard your sick man as a real sufferer. His fever rages, and he tosses from side to side as if he were suffering punishment with Dives; but from the incoherent phrases which escape from his parched lips, you learn that his other self is rapt in the blissfulness that enfolds Lazarus. He prattles childishly of other lands and scenes--he thinks himself surrounded by friends whose faces once were grateful to his sight, but who long since fell before the power with which he is struggling--or he fancies himself metamorphosed into a favourite character in some pleasant book which he has lately read. After a time he wakes forth from his delirium, but he cannot even then be called a sufferer. On the contrary, his situation, even while he is so entirely dependent upon those around him, is really the most independent one in the world. His lightest wish is cared for as if his life were the price of its non-accomplishment. All his friends and kinsmen, and neighbours whom he hardly knows by sight, vie with each other in trying to keep pace with his returning appetite. He is the absolute monarch of all he surveys. There is no one to dispute his reign. The crown of convalescence is the only one which does not make the head that wears it uneasy. He has nothing to do but to satisfy his longings for niceties, to listen to kind words from dear friends, to sleep when he feels like it, and to get better. I am afraid that we are all so selfish and so enslaved by our appetites, that the period of convalescence is the pleasantest part of life to most of us.

Therefore I shut out common sickness, fevers, and the like, from any share in my observations on suffering. If you ask me what I should be willing to consider real bodily pain,--since I am unwilling to allow that ordinary sick men participate in it,--I should say that you can find it in a good, old-fashioned attack of rheumatism or gout. I think it was Horace Walpole who said that these two complaints were very much alike, the difference between them being this: that rheumatism was like putting your hand or foot into a vice, and screwing it up as tight as you possibly can, and gout was the same thing, only you give the screw one more turn. It is no flattery to speak of the victim to either of these disorders as a sufferer. The rheumatic gout is a complaint which possesses all the advantages and peculiarities which its compound title denotes. It unites in itself all the potentiality of gout and all the ubiquity of rheumatism. Its characteristics have been impressed upon me in a manner that sets at defiance that weakness of memory which generally accompanies old age. Sharp experience, increasing in sharpness as my years pile up, makes that complaint a specialty among my acquirements. These stinging, burning, cutting pains deserve the superlative case, if any thing does. Language (that habitual bankrupt) is reduced to a most abject state when called upon to describe rheumatic gout. The disease does not seem to feel satisfied with poisoning your blood by its aciduousness, it makes your flesh tingle and burn, and, like the late Duke of Wellington, does not rest until it has conquered the bony part. The very bone seems to be crumbling wherever the demon of gout pinches. There are moments in the life of every gouty man when it seems as if nothing would be so refreshing as to indulge for a while in the use of that energetic diction, savouring more of strength than of righteousness, which is common among cavalry troops and gentlemen of the seafaring profession, but which, in society, is considered to be a little in advance of the prejudices of the age. No higher encomium could be passed upon a gouty man than to say that, with all his torments, he never swore, and was seldom petulant. But there are very few whose merits deserve this canonization.

But gout, with all its pains, has yet its redeeming characteristics. That great law of compensation which reduces the inequalities of our lot, and makes Brown, Jones, and Robinson come out about even in the long run, is not inoperative here. The gout is painful, but its respectability is unquestionable. It is the disease of a gentleman. It is a certificate of good birth more satisfactory than any which the Heralds' College or the Genealogical Association can furnish. It is but right, too, that the man who can date back his family history to Plymouth or Jamestown in this country, and to Runnymede on the other side of the Atlantic, should pay something for such a privilege. A man may never have indulged in "the sweet poison of the Tuscan grape" himself, but can he reasonably complain of an incontrovertible testimony to the fact that his ancestors lived well! _Chacun a son gout_: for myself, I should much prefer my honoured family name, with all its associations with the brave knight who made it famous, accompanied by the only possession which I have received by hereditary right, to the most unequivocal state of health burdened with such a name as Jinkins.

Mentally and spiritually, the gout is far from being a useless institution. It ripens a man's judgment, and prunes away the radical tendencies of his nature. It will convert the wildest of revolutionists into the stiffest of conservatives. It teaches a man to look at things as they really are, and not as enthusiasm would have them represented. No gouty man would ever look to the New York Tribune as the exponent of his religious or political creed. His complaint has a positive character, and it makes him earnest to find something positive in religion and politics. The negativeness of radicalism tires him. He deprecates every thing like change. He thinks that religion, and society, and government were established for some better end than to afford a perpetual employment to the destructive powers of visionary reformers and professional philanthropists. He longs to find constancy and stability in something besides his inexorable disorder.

There is another disorder which people generally seem to consider a very trifling affair, but which any one who knows it will allow to be productive of the most unmistakable pain. I refer to neuralgia. Who pities a neuralgic person? Any healthy man, when asked about it, will answer in his ignorance that it is "only a headache." But ask the school teacher, whose throbbing head seems to be beating time to the ceaseless muttering and whispering of her scholars as they bend over their tasks--ask the student, whose thoughts, like undisciplined soldiers, will not fall into the ranks, and whose head seems to be occupied by a steam engine of enormous power, running at the highest rate of pressure, with the driver sitting on the safety-valve--ask them whether neuralgia is "only a headache"! Who can tell the cause of the prevalence of this scourge? whether it proceeds from our houses overheated with intolerable furnaces and anthracite coal, or from our treacherous and unconstant climate so forcibly described by Choate: "Cold to-day; hot to-morrow; mercury at eighty degrees in the morning, with wind at south-west; and in three hours more a sea turn, with wind at east, a thick fog from the very bottom of the ocean, and a fall of forty degrees of Fahrenheit." The uncertainty which seems to attend all human science, and the science of medicine in particular, envelops this mysterious disease, and thousands of us are left to suffer and wonder what the matter is.

But all of these pains, gouty, neuralgic, and otherwise, have yet their sweet uses, and like the vile reptile Shakespeare tells us of, are adorned with a precious jewel. The old Roman emperors in the hour of triumph used to have a slave stand behind them to whisper in their ear, from time to time, the unwelcome but salutary truth that they were but mortal men. Even now, on the occasion of the enthronement of a Pope, a lighted candle is applied to a bunch of flax fixed upon a staff, and as the smoke dissipates itself into thin air before the newly-crowned Pontiff, surrounded as he is by all the emblems of religion and all the insignia and pomp of worldly power, the same great truth of the perishableness of all mortal things is impressed upon his mind by the chanting of the simple but eloquent phrase, _Sic transit gloria mundi_. But we neuralgic and gouty wretches need no whispering slave nor smoking flax to remind us of our frailty and the transientness of our happiness and glory. We carry with us a monitor who checks our swelling pride, and teaches us effectually the brevity of human joys. We are very apt, in our impatience and short-sightedness, to think that if we had the management of the world and the dispensation of pleasure and suffering, every thing could be conducted in a much more satisfactory manner. If it were so, we should undoubtedly carry things on in the style of a French restaurant, so that we could have _pain a discretion_. But on the whole, I am inclined to think that we had better leave these matters to the management of that infinite Power which gives us day by day our daily pain, and from which we receive in the long run about what is meet for us. I hope that I shall not be thought ill-bred or profane in using such expressions as these. At my time of life it is too late to begin to murmur. A few twinges more or less are nothing when the hair grows gray and the eye is dimmed with the mists of age. The man who knows nothing of the novitiate of patience--who has passed through life without the chastening discipline of bodily pain--has missed one of the best parts of existence. To suffer is one of the noblest prerogatives of human nature. Without suffering, life would be robbed of half its zest, and the thought of death would drive us to despair.

When I was a young man, and gave little thought to the gout and the other ills that vex me at present, I saw a wonderful exhibition of patience, which I now daily recall to mind, and wish I could imitate. I was sojourning in Florence, that lovely city, whose every association is one of calm and satisfactory pleasure undisturbed by any thing like bodily suffering. I enjoyed the friendship of a young American amateur artist of unquestioned talent, but whose artistic efforts were interfered with by the frequent attacks of a serious and excruciating disorder. It was considerable time after I made his acquaintance before I knew that he was an invalid. I noticed his lameness, but whenever we met he wore a smiling face, and had a cheerful word for every body. One evening I called in at his quiet lodgings near the Lung' Arno, and found a party of some six or eight Americans talking over their recollections of home. He was entertaining them with the explanation of an imaginary panorama of New England, and a musical friend threw in illustrative passages from the piano in the intervals. The parlour resounded with our laughter at his irresistible fun; but in the midst of it all, he asked us to excuse him for a moment, and went into his bedroom. After a little while, another engagement calling me away, I went into his chamber to speak with him before leaving. I found him lying upon his bed, writhing like Laocooen, while great drops stood upon his brow and agony was depicted on his patient face. He resisted all my attempts to do any thing for him; the attack had lasted all day, but was at some times severer than at others; he should feel better soon, and would go back to his friends; I had better not stop with him, as it might attract their attention in the parlour, &c. So I took my leave. The next morning I met one of his friends, who told me that he returned to his company a few minutes after my departure, and entertained them for an hour or more with an exhibition of his powers of wit and humour, which eclipsed all his previous efforts. Poor S. C.! His weary but uncomplaining spirit laid down that crippled body, which never gave aught but pain to its possessor, three or four years ago, and passed, let us hope, into a happier state of existence, which flesh and blood, with their countless maladies and dolours, may not inherit.

The traveller in the south of Europe frequently encounters, in his perambulations through the streets and squares of cities, a group of people gathered around a monk, who is discoursing to them of those sublime truths which men are prone to lose sight of in their walks abroad. The style of the sermon is not, it is true, what we should look for from Newman, or Ravignan, or Ventura, but it has in it those fundamental principles of true eloquence, simplicity and earnestness; and the coarse brown habit, the knotted cord, and the pale, serene, devout face of the preacher, harmonize wondrously with the self-denying doctrine he teaches, and give a double force to all his words. His instructions frequently concern the simple moral duties of life and the exercise of the cardinal virtues, which he enforces by illustrations drawn from the lives of canonized saints, who won their heavenly crown and their earthly fame of blessedness by the practice of those virtues. Allow me to close my sermon on suffering in the manner of the preaching friars, though I may not draw my illustrations from the ancient martyrologies; for I apprehend that it will be more in keeping with the serious character of this essay to take them from another source. We have all laughed at Dickens's characters of Mark Tapley and Mr. Toots. The former was celebrated for "keeping jolly under disadvantageous circumstances," and seemed to mourn over those dispensations of good fortune which detracted from his credit in being jolly. The latter was never known to indulge in any complaint, but met every mishap and disappointment with a manly resignation and the simple remark, "It's of no consequence." Even when he was completely ingulfed in misfortunes, when Pelion seemed to have been heaped upon Ossa, and both upon him, he did not give way to despair. He only gave utterance more fervently to his favourite maxim, "It's of no consequence. Nothing is of any consequence whatever!" Now, laugh at it as we may, this is a great truth. It is the foundation of all true philosophy--of all practical religion. A few years more, and what will it avail us to have bargained successfully, to have lived in splendour, to have left in history a name that shall be the synonyme of power! A few years, and what shall we care for all our present sufferings and the light afflictions which are but for a moment! May we not say with Solomon, that "All is vanity," and with poor Toots, that "Nothing is of any consequence whatever"? Now, if there are any people who are likely to arrive at this satisfactory conclusion, and who need the consolation imparted by the reception and full appreciation of the deep truth it contains, it is the gouty, and rheumatic, and neuralgic wretches whom I have had in mind while writing this paper. Let me, in conclusion, as one who has had some experience, and is not merely theorizing, exhort all such persons to meditate upon the lives of the two great patterns of patience whom I have brought forward as examples; and to bear in mind that it is only through the resignation of Toots, that they can attain to the jollity of Tapley. Likewise let me counsel those who may be passing through life unharmed by serious misfortune and untrammelled by bodily pain, never to lose sight of that striking admonition of old Sir Thomas Browne's, "Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy grave; and reckon thyself above the earth, by the line thou must be contented with under it."

BOYHOOD AND BOYS

Human nature is a very telescopic "institution." It delights to dwell on whatever is most distant. Lord Rosse's famous instrument dwindles down to a mere opera glass if you compare it with the mental vision of a restless boy, looking forward to the time when he shall don a tail-coat and a beaver hat. How his young heart swells with pride as he anticipates the day when he shall be his own master, as the phrase is--when he shall be able to stay out after nine o'clock in the evening, and to go home without being subjected to the ignominy of being escorted by a chambermaid! If he be of a particularly sanguine temperament, his wild imagination is rapt in the contemplation of the possibility of one day having his name in the newspapers as secretary of some public meeting, or as having made a vigorous speech at a political caucus where liberty of speech runs out into slander, and sedition is mistaken for patriotism,--or perhaps even of being one day a Common Councilman, or a member of the Great and General Court. A popular poet of the present day has expressed the same idea in a less prosaic manner:--

"Not rainbow pinions coloured like yon cloud,
The sun's broad banner o'er his western tent,
Can match the bright imaginings of a child
Upon the glories of his coming years:"--