Chapter VII: Part 7

"This love of country," said he, emphatically, "was the great, I should say the only, passion of my life." It was this love which was his best inspiration as poet,--love of country, and with it of equality. Out of devotion to these great objects of his worship, he will even consent that the statue of Liberty be sometimes veiled, when there is a necessity for it. That France should be great and glorious, that she should not cease to be democratic, and to advance toward a democracy more and more equitable and favorable to all,--such were the aspirations and the programme of Béranger. He goes so far as to say that in his childhood he had an aversion, almost a hatred, for Voltaire, on account of the insult to patriotism in his famous poem of _La Pucelle_; and that afterwards, even while acknowledging all his admirable qualities and the services he rendered to the cause of humanity, he could acquire only a very faint taste for his writing. This is a striking singularity, if Béranger does not exaggerate it a little; it is almost an ingratitude,--for Voltaire is one of his nearest and most direct masters.

There is, indeed, a third passion which disputes with those for country and equality the heart of Béranger, and which he shares fully with Voltaire,--the hatred, namely, we will not say of Christianity, but of religious hypocrisy, of Jesuitic Tartufery. What Voltaire did in innumerable pamphlets, _facetioe_, and philosophic diatribes, Béranger did in songs. He gave a refrain, and with it popular currency to the anti-clerical attacks and mockeries of Voltaire; he set them to his violin and made them sing with the horsehair of his bow. Béranger was in this respect only the minstrel of Voltaire.

Bold songs against hypocrites, the Reverend Fathers and the Tartufes, so much in favor under the Restoration, and some which carry the attack yet higher, and which sparkle with the very spirit of buffoonery, like _Le Bâtard du Pape_; beautiful patriotic songs, like _Le vieux Drapeau_; and beautiful songs of humanity and equality, like _Le vieux Vagabond_;--these are the three chief branches which unite and intertwine to make the poetic crown of Béranger in his best days, and they had their root in passions which with him were profound and living,--hatred of superstition, love of country, love of humanity and equality.

His aunt at Péronne was superstitious, and during thunder-storms had recourse to all kinds of expedients, such as signs of the cross, holy-water, and the like. One day the lightning struck near the house and knocked down young Béranger, who was standing on the door-step. He was insensible for some time, and they thought him killed. His first words, on recovering consciousness, were, "Well, what good did your holy-water do?"

At Péronne he finished his very irregular course of study at a kind of primary school founded by a philanthropic citizen. During the Directory, attempts were made all over France to get up free institutions for the young, on plans more or less reasonable or absurd, by men who had fed upon Rousseau's _Émile_ and invented variations upon his system. On leaving school, Béranger was placed with a printer in the city, where he became a journeyman printer and compositor, which has occasioned his being often compared to Franklin,--a comparison of which he is not unworthy, in his love for the progress of the human race, and the piquant and ingenious turn he knew how to give to good sense. From this first employment as printer Béranger acquired and retained great nicety in language and grammar. He insisted on it, in his counsels to the young, more than seems natural in a poet of the people. He even exaggerated its importance somewhat, and might seem a purist.

Béranger's father reappeared suddenly during the Directory and reclaimed his son, whom he carried to Paris. The father had formed connections in Brittany with the royalists. He had become steward of the household of the Countess of Bourmont, mother of the famous Bourmont who was afterwards Marshal of France and Minister of War. Bourmont himself, then young, was living in Paris, in order the better to conspire for the restoration of the Bourbons. The elder Béranger was neck-deep in these intrigues, and was even prosecuted after the discovery of one of the numerous conspiracies of the day, but acquitted for want of proof. He was the banker and money-broker of the party,--a wretched banker enough! The narrative of the son enables us to see what a miserable business the father was engaged in. This near view of political intriguers, of royalists driven to all manner of expedients and standing at bay, of adventurers who did not shrink from the use of any means, not even the infernal-machine, did not dispose the young man already imbued with republican sentiments to change them, and this initiation into the secrets of the party was not likely to inspire him with much respect for the future Restoration. He had too early seen men and things behind the scenes. His father, in consequence of his swindling transactions, made a bankruptcy, which reduced the son to poverty and filled him with grief and shame.

He was now twenty years old; he had courage and hope, and he already wrote verses on all sorts of subjects,--serious, religious, epic, and tragic. One day, when he was in especial distress, he made up a little packet of his best verses and sent them to Lucien Bonaparte, with a letter, in which he set forth his unhappy situation. Lucien loved literature, and piqued himself on being author and poet. He was pleased with the attempts of the young man, and made him a present of the salary of a thousand or twelve hundred francs to which he was entitled as member of the Institute. It was Béranger's first step out of the poverty in which he had been plunged for several years, and he was indebted for the benefit to a Bonaparte, and to the most republican Bonaparte of the family. He was always especially grateful for it to Lucien, and somewhat to the Bonapartes in general.

Receiving a small appointment in the bureau of the University through the intervention of the Academician Arnault, a friend of Lucien Bonaparte, Béranger lived gayly during the last six years of the Empire. He managed to escape the conscription, and never shouldered a musket. He reserved himself to sing of military glory at a later day, but had no desire to share in it as soldier. He was elected into a singing club called _The Cellar_, all of whose members were songwriters and good fellows, presided over by Désaugiers, the lord of misrule and of jolly minstrels. Béranger, after his admission to the _Caveau_, at first contended with Désaugiers in his own style, but already a ground of seriousness and thought showed through his gayety. He wrote at this time his celebrated song of the _Roi d'Yvetot_, in which, while he caricatured the little play-king, the king in the cotton nightcap, he seemed to be slyly satirizing the great conquering Emperor himself.

The Empire fell, and Béranger hesitated for some time to take part against the Bourbons. It was not till after the battle of Waterloo and the return of Louis XVIII. under convoy of the allied armies, that he began to feel the passion of patriotism blaze up anew within him and dictate stinging songs which soon became darts of steel. Meanwhile he wrote pretty songs, in which a slight sentiment of melancholy mingled with and heightened the intoxication of wine and pleasure. _La bonne Vieille_ is his _chef-d'oeuvre_ in this style. He arranged the design of these little pieces carefully, sketching his subjects beforehand, and herein belongs to the French school, that old classic school which left nothing to chance. He composed his couplets slowly, even those which seem the most easy. Commonly the song came to him through the refrain;--he caught the butterfly by the wings;--when he had seized the refrain, he finished at intervals, and put in the nicer shadings at leisure. He wrote hardly ten songs a year at the time of his greatest fecundity. It has since been remarked that they smell of the lamp here and there; but at first no one had eyes except for the rose, the vine, and the laurel.

The Bourbons, brought back for the second time in 1815, committed all manner of blunders: they insulted the remains of the old _grande armée_; they shot Marshal Ney and many others; a horrible royalist reaction ensanguined the South of France. The Jesuit party insinuated itself at Court, and assumed to govern as in the high times of the confessors of Louis XIV. It was hoped to conquer the spirit of the Revolution, and to drive modern France back to the days before 1789; hence thousands of hateful things impossible to be realized, and thousands of ridiculous ones. Towards 1820 the liberal opposition organized itself in the Chambers and in the press. The Muse of Béranger came to its assistance under the mask of gay raillery. He was the angry bee that stung flying, and whose stings are not harmless; nay, he would fain have made them mortal to the enemy. He hated even Louis XVIII., a king who was esteemed tolerably wise, and more intelligent than his party. "I stick my pins," said Béranger, "into the calves of Louis XVIII." One must have seen the fat king in small-clothes, his legs as big as posts and round as pin-cushions, to appreciate all the point of the epigram.

Béranger had been very intimate since 1815 with the Deputy Manuel, a man of sense and courage, but very hostile to the Bourbons, and who, for words spoken from the Tribune, was expelled from the Chamber of Deputies and declared incapable of reëlection. Though intimate with many influential members of the opposition, such as Laffitte the banker, and General Sebastiani, it was only with Manuel that Béranger perfectly agreed. It is by his side, in the same tomb, that he now reposes in Père la Chaise, and after the death of Manuel he always slept on the mattress upon which his friend had breathed his last. Manuel and Béranger were ultra-inimical to the Restoration. They believed that it was irreconcilable with the modern spirit of France, with the common sense of the new form of society, and they accordingly did their best to goad and irritate it, never giving it any quarter. At certain times, other opposition deputies, such as General Foy, would have advised a more prudent course, which would not have rendered the Bourbons impossible by attacking them so fiercely as to push them to extremes. However this might have been, poetry is always more at home in excess than in moderation. Béranger was all the more a poet at this period, that he was more impassioned. The Bourbons and the Jesuits, his two most violent antipathies, served him well, and made him write his best and most spirited songs. Hence his great success. The people, who never perceive nice shades of opinion, but love and hate absolutely, at once adopted Béranger as the singer of its loves and hatreds, the avenger of the old army, of national glory and freedom, and the inaugurator or prophet of the future. The spirit prisoned in these little couplets, these tiny bodies, is of amazing force, and has, one might almost say, a devilish audacity. In larger compositions, breath would doubtless have failed the poet,--the greater space would have been an injury to him. Even in songs he has a constrained air sometimes, but this constraint gave him more force. He produces the impression of superiority to his class.

Béranger had given up his little post at the University before declaring open war against the government. He was before long indicted, and in 1822 condemned to several months' imprisonment, for having scandalized the throne and the altar. His popularity became at once boundless; he was sensible of it, and enjoyed it. "They are going to indict your songs," said some one to him. "So much the better!" he replied,--"that will gilt-edge them." He thought so well of this _gilding_, that in 1828, during the ministry of M. Martignac, a very moderate man and of a conciliatory semi-liberalism, he found means to get indicted again and to undergo a new condemnation, by attacks which some even of his friends then thought untimely. Once again Béranger was impassioned; he declared his enemies incurable and incorrigible; and soon came the ordinances of July, 1830, and the Revolution in their train, to prove him right.

In 1830, at the moment when the Revolution took place, the popularity of Béranger was at its height. His opinion was much deferred to in the course taken during and after "the three great days." The intimate friend of most of the chiefs of the opposition who were now in power, of great influence with the young, and trusted by the people, it was essential that he should not oppose the plan of making the Duke of Orleans King. Béranger, in his Biography, speaks modestly of his part in these movements. In his conversations he attributed a great deal to himself. He loved to describe himself in the midst of the people who surrounded the Hôtel of M. Laffitte, going and coming, listening to each, consulted by all, and continually sent for by Laffitte, who was confined to his armchair by a swollen foot. Seeing the hesitation prolonged, he whispered in Laffitte's ear that it was time to decide, for, if they did not take the Duke of Orleans for King pretty soon, the Revolution was in danger of turning out an _émeute_. He gave this advice simply as a patriot, for he was not of the Orleans party. When he came out, his younger friends, the republicans, reproached him; but he replied, "It is not a king I want, but only a plank to get over the stream." He set the first example of disrespect for the plank he thought so useful; indeed, the comparison itself is rather a contemptuous one.

He afterwards behaved, however, with great sense and wisdom. He declined all offices and honors, considering his part as political songster at an end. In 1833 he published a collection in which were remarked some songs of a higher order, less partisan, and in which he foreshadowed a broader and more peaceful democracy. After this he was silent, and as he was continually visited and consulted, he resolved upon leaving Paris for some years, in order to escape this annoyance. He went first to the neighborhood of Tours, and then to Fontainebleau; but the free, conversational life of Paris was too dear to him, and he returned to live in seclusion, though always much visited by his troops of friends, and much sought after. In leaving Paris during the first years of Louis Philippe's reign, and _closing_, as he called it, _his consulting office_, his chief aim was to escape the questions, solicitations, and confidences of opposite parties, in all of which he continued to have many friends who would gladly have brought him over to their way of thinking. He did not wish to be any longer what he had been so much,--a consulting politician; but he did not cease to be a practical philosopher with a crowd of disciples, and a consulting democrat. Chateaubriand, Lamennais, Lamartine,--the chiefs of parties at first totally opposed to his own,--came to seek his friendship, and loved to repose and refresh themselves in his conversation. He enjoyed, a little mischievously, seeing one of them (Chateaubriand) lay aside his royalism, another (Lamennais) abjure his Catholicism, and the third (Lamartine) forget his former aristocracy, in visiting him. He looked upon this, and justly, as a homage paid to the manners and spirit of the age, of which he was the humble but inflexible representative.

When the Revolution of 1848 burst unexpectedly, he was not charmed with it,--nay, it made him even a little sad. Less a republican than a patriot, he saw immense danger for France, as he knew her, in the establishment of the pure republican form. He was of opinion that it was necessary to wear out the monarchy little by little,--that with time and patience it would fall of itself; but he had to do with an impatient people, and he lamented it. "We had a ladder to go down by," said he, "and here we are jumping out of the window!" It was the same sentiment of patriotism, mingled with a certain almost mystical enthusiasm for the great personality of Napoleon, nourished and augmented with growing years, which made him accept the events of 1851-2 and the new Empire.

The religion of Béranger, which was so anti-Catholic, and which seems even to have dispensed with Christianity, reduced itself to a vague Deism, which in principle had too much the air of a pleasantry. His _Dieu des bonnes gens_, which he opposed to the God of the congregation and the preachers, could not be taken seriously by any one. Nevertheless, the poet, as he grew older, grew more and more attached to this symbol of a Deity, indulgent before all else, but very real and living, and in whom the poor and the suffering could put their trust. What passed in the days preceding his death has been much discussed, and many stories are told about it. He received, in fact, some visits from the curate of the parish of Saint Elizabeth, in which he lived. This curate had formerly officiated at Passy,--a little village near Paris, where Béranger had resided,--and was already acquainted with the poet. The conversations at these visits, according to the testimony of those best informed, amounted to very little; and the last time the curate came, just as he was going out, Béranger, already dying, said to him, "Your profession gives you the right to bless me; I also bless you;--pray for me, and for all the unfortunate!" The priest and the old man exchanged blessings,--the benedictions of two honest men, and nothing more.

Béranger had one rare quality, and it was fundamental with him,--obligingness, readiness to perform kind offices, humanity carried to the extent of Charity. He loved to busy himself for others. To some one who said that time lay heavy on his hands, he answered, "Then you have never occupied yourself about other people?" "Take more thought of others than of yourself" was his maxim. And he did so occupy himself,--not out of curiosity, but to aid, to succor with advice and with deeds. His time belonged to everybody,--to the humblest, the poorest, the first stranger who addressed him and told him his sorrows. Out of a very small income (at most, four or five thousand francs a year) he found means to give much. He loved, above all, to assist poor artisans, men of the people, who appealed to him; and he did it always without wounding the fibre of manhood in them. He loved everything that wore a blouse. He had, even stronger than the love of liberty, the love of equality, the great passion of the French.

He spent the last years of his life with an old friend of his youth by the name of Madame Judith. This worthy person died a few months before him, and he accompanied her remains to the church. He was seventy-seven years old when he died.

Estimating and comparing chiefly literary and poetic merits, some persons in France have been astonished that the obsequies of Béranger should have been so magnificently celebrated, while, but a few months before, the coffin of another poet, M. Alfred de Musset, had been followed by a mere handful of mourners; yet M. de Musset was capable of tones and flights which in inspiration and ardor surpassed the habitual range of Béranger. Without attempting here to institute a comparison, there is one thing essential to be remarked: in Béranger there was not only a poet, but a man, and the man in him was more considerable than the poet,--the reverse of what is the case with so many others. People went to see him, after having heard his songs sung, to tell him how much they had been applauded and enjoyed,--and, after the first compliments, found that the poet was a man of sense, a good talker on all subjects, interested in politics, a wonderful reasoner, with great knowledge of men, and characterizing them delicately with a few fine and happy touches. They became sincerely attached to him; they came again, and delighted to draw out in talk that wisdom armed with epigram, that experience full of agreeable counsels. His passions had been the talent of the poet; his good sense gave authority to the man. Even by those least willing to accept popular idols, Béranger will always be ranked as one of the subtilest wits of the French school, and as something more than this,--as one of the acutest servants of free human thought.

A TIFFIN OF PARAGRAPHS.

How runs the Hindoo saw? "Are we not to milk when there is a cow?" When India is giving down generous streams of paragraphy to all the greedy buckets of the press, shall we not hold our pretty pail under? As our genial young friend, Ensign Isnob, of the "Sappies and Minors," would say,--"I believe you, me boy!"

Then come with us to Cossitollah, and we'll have a tiffin of talk; some cloves of adventure, with a capsicum or two of tragic story, shall stand for the curry; the customs of the country may represent the familiar rice; a whiff of freshness and fragrance from the Mofussil will be as the mangoes and the dorians; in the piquancy and grotesqueness of the first pure Orientalism that may come to hand we shall recognize the curious chow-chow of the chutney; and as for the beer,--why, we will be the beer ourselves.

"Kitmudgar, remove that scorpion from the punka, before it drops into the Sahib's plate.--Hold, miscreant! who told you to kill it?

"'Take it up tenderly,
Lift it with care,--
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!'

"For know, O Kitmudgar, that there is one beauty of women, and another beauty of scorpions; and if the beauty of scorpions be to thee as the ugliness of women, the fault is in thy godless eye.

"'Only a crawling kafir,' sayest thou, O heathen! and straightway goest about to stick a fork into a political symbol? Verily, the hapless wretch shall be sacrificed unto Agnee, god of Fire, that a timely warning may enter into thy purblind soul!

"Here, take this bottle of brandy,--'_Sahib_ brandy,' you perceive,--genuine old 'London Dock,'--and pour a cordon of ardent spirits on the table, to 'weave a circle round him thrice.' So! that's for British Ascendency!

"Now drop your subjugated brother into the midst thereof. See how, in his senseless, drunken rage, he wriggles and squirms,--then desperately dashes, and venomously snaps! That's Indian Revolt!

"Quickly, now! light the train; so!--What think you of Anglo-Saxon power and hereditary pride?

"Oho, my Kitmudgar! you begin to understand!--the living fable is not lost on you!

"But watch your Great Mogul! Barrackpore, Meerut, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Delhi,--five imposing plunges, but impotent; for at every point the Sahib's fatal fire, fire, fire, fire, fire!--insurmountable, all-subduing 'destiny'!

"Maimed, discomfited, dismayed, shivering, at wits' end, a crippled wriggler, in the midst of the exulting flames,--there lies your Great Mogul!

"But see!--the scorpion, brave wretch! with a gladiator's fortitude, loosens the shameful coil in which its last agonies have twisted it, fiercely erects its head once more, lashes defiantly with its tail, and then--_click! click! click!--_stings itself to death.

"And with that ends our figure of speech; for only the pitifulness of the defeat is the Great Mogul's; the sublimity of suicide is proper to the scorpion alone.

"Take away the fable, Kitmudgar!"

I lay in bed this morning half an hour after the sun had risen, watching my Parsee neighbor on his house-top, and thereby lost my drive on the Esplanade. But I console myself with imagining that the pretty Chee-chee spinster who comes every morning from Raneemoody Gully in a green tonjon, and makes romantic eyes at me through the silk curtains, missed the Boston gentleman with the gray moustache, and was lonesome.

My Parsee neighbor is quite as fat, but by no means as saucy, as ever. Last week his youngest boy died,--little Kirsajee Samsajee Bonnarjee, a contemplative young fire-worshipper, with eyes as profound as the philosophy of Zoroaster. I saw the dismal procession depart from the house, and my heart ached for the little Gheber.

Four awful creatures, that were like ghosts, clad all in white, solemnly dumb and veiled, bore him away on an iron bier. When they arrived at the drawbridge, great sheets of copper were spread before them, and they crossed upon those; for wood is sacred to their adored Element, and the touch of "them on whose shoulders the dead doth ride" would pollute it.

So they carried little Kirsajee to Golgotha, their Place of Skulls, which is a dreary, treeless field, encompassed round about with a blank wall; and they laid him naked in a stone trough on the edge of a great pit, and left him there, betaking them, still solemnly veiled and mute, to their homes again.

All but my Parsee neighbor; he went and sat him down, like Hagar in the wilderness, over against the dead Kirsajee, "a good way off, as it were a bowshot"; and he lifted up his voice, and wept for the lad that was dead. But still he waited there, till the crows and the Brahminee kites should come to perform the last horrid rites; for to Parsee custom the sepulture most becoming to men and most acceptable to God is in the stomachs of the fowls of the air, in the craws of ghoulish vultures and sacrilegious crows.

And presently there came a great Pondicherry eagle, sniffing the feast from afar; and he came alone. Swiftly sailing, poised on silent wings, he circled over Golgotha, circle within circle, circle below circle, over the child sleeping naked, over the father watching veiled.

One moment he flutters, as for a foothold on the pinnacle of his purpose; then

"Like a thunderbolt he falls."

Sitting solemnly on the breast of the dead boy, the "grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird" peers with sidelong glance into his face, gloating; and then--

Immediately my Parsee neighbor uprises in his place, throws aside his veil, and, shouting, runs forward. The Pondicherry eagle soars screaming to the clouds, and the sorrow-stricken Gheber bends over the dear corpse. Is it Heaven or Hell? _the right eye or the left?_ Alas, the left!

He beats his breast, he falls upon his knees, and cries with frantic gestures to the setting Sun; but the sullen god only draws a cloud before his face, and leaves his poor worshipper to despair. Then my Parsee neighbor arises and girds up his loins, muffles his haggard face more closely than before, and with dishevelled beard, and chin sadly sunk upon his breast, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, and meeting no man's gaze, wends silently homeward.

To-morrow he will take his wife and go to Bombay, to feed with consecrated sandal-wood and oil the Sacred Flame the Magi brought from Persia, when they were driven thence with all their people to Ormuz. But the name of little Kirsajee will cross their lips no more; his memory is a forbidden thing in the household; he is as if he never had been.

When Brahminee kite, and adjutant, and white-breasted crow have done their ghoulish office on little Kirsajee, his bones shall lie bleaching under the pitiless eye of his people's blazing god, till the rains come, and fill the pit, and carry the waste of Gheber skeletons by subterraneous sewers down to the sea. But the Pondicherry eagle took the _left eye_ first; wherefore the most pious deeds of merit, to be performed by my Parsee neighbor,--even a hospital for maimed dogs, or feeding the Sacred Flame with great store of sandal-wood and precious gums, or tilling the earth with a diligence equivalent to the efficacy of ten thousand prayers,--can hardly suffice to save the soul of little Kirsajee, the Forbidden!

* * * * *

There is a blood-feud of three months' standing between two members of our household.

One day, Lootee, the chuprassey's cat, took Tchoop, the khansamah's monkey, unawares, as he was sunning himself on the house-top, and with scratching and spitting, sudden and furious, so startled him, that he threw himself over the parapet into the crowded Cossitollah, and would have been killed by the fall, had he not chanced to alight on the voluminous turban of a dandy hurkaru from the Mint. As it was, one of his arms sustained a compound fracture, and his nerves suffered so frightful a shock, that it was only by a miracle of surgery, and the most patient nursing, that he was ever restored to his wonted agility and sagacity.

But the day of retribution has arrived; Lootee has had kittens. There were five of them in the original litter; but only one remains. Tchoop tossed two of them from the house-top when no dandy hurkaru from the Mint was below to soften the fall; the old adjutant-bird, that for three years has stood on one leg on the Parsee's godown, gobbled up another as it lay choked in the south veranda; while the dismayed sirdar found the head of a fourth jammed inextricably in the neck of his sacred lotah, wherewith he performs his pious ablutions every morning at the ghaut.

On the other hand, Lootee has made prize of about three inches of Tehoop's tail, and displays it all over the house for a trophy.--It is a blood-feud, fierce and implacable as any between Afghans, and there's no knowing where it will all end.

In Europe the monkey is a cynic, in South America an overworked slave, in Africa a citizen, but in India an imp,--I mean to the eye of the Western stranger, for in the estimation of the native he is mythologically a demigod, and socially a guest. At Ahmedabad, the capital of Guzerat, there are certainly two--Mr. De Ward says three--hospitals for sick and lame monkeys, who are therein provided with salaried physicians, apothecaries, and nurses.

In the famous Hindoo epic, the "Ramayana" of Valmiki,--"by singing and hearing which continually a man may attain to the highest state of enjoyment, and be shortly admitted to fraternity with the gods,"--the exploits of Hoonamunta, the Divine Monkey, are gravely related, with a dramatic force and figurativeness that hold a street audience spell-bound; but to the European imagination the childish drollery of the plot is irrestistible.

Boodhir, the Earth, was beset by giants, demons, and chimeras dire; so she besought Vishnu, with many tears, and vows of peculiar adoration, to put forth his strength of arms and arts against her abominable tormentors, and rout them utterly. The god was gracious; whence his nine avatars, or incarnations,--as fish, as tortoise, as boar, as man-lion, as dwarf Brahmin, as Pursuram,--the Brahmin-warrior who overthrew the Kshatriya, or soldier-caste; the eighth avatar appeared in the person of Krishna, and the ninth in that of Boodh.

But the seventh incarnation was the avatar of Rama, and it is this that the "Ramayana" celebrates.

Vishnu proceeds to be born unto Doosurath, King of Ayodhya, (Oude,) as the Prince Rama, or Ramchundra. Nothing remarkable occurs thereupon until Rama has attained the marriageable age, when he espouses Seeta, daughter of the King of Mithili.

Immediately old Mrs. Mithili, our hero's mother-in-law, being of an intriguing turn of mind, applies herself to the amiable task of worrying the poor old King of Ayodhya out of his crown or his life; and so well does she succeed, that Doosurath, for the sake of peace and quietness, would fain abdicate in favor of his son.

But Rama will have none of his royalty. Was it for bored kings and mischief-making mothers-in-law, he asks, speaking with the ante-natal memories of Vishnu, that he came among the sons of men? Not at all! he has a mission, and he bides his time. For the present he will take his wife Seeta, whose will is his, and go out into the wilderness, there to build him a hut of bamboos and banian-boughs and palmyra-leaves, and be--Seeta and he--two jolly yogees, that is, religious gypsies,--living on grass-roots, wild rice, and white ants, and being dirty and devout to their heart's content.

So they went; and for a little while they enjoyed, undisturbed, their yogeeish ideas of a good time. But by-and-by tidings came to Rawunna--the giant with ten heads and twice ten arms, that was King of Lunka (Ceylon)--of the plots of Mrs. Mithili, the disgust of old Doosurath, the distraction of the kingdom of Ayodhya, and the whimsical adventure of Rama and Seeta.

And immediately Rawunna, the giant, is seized in all his heads and arms with a great longing to know what manner of man this Rama may be, that he should prefer the yogee's breech-cloth to the royal purple, a hut of leaves, with only his Seeta, to a harem of a hundred wives, white ants and paddy to the white camel's flesh and golden partridges of Ayodhya's imperial repasts. Especially is he curious as to the charms of Seeta, as to the mighty magic wherewithal she renders monogamy acceptable to an Ayodhyan prince.

By Indra! he will see for himself! So, pleading exhaustion from the cares of state, and ten headaches of trouble and dyspepsia, he announces his intention to make an excursion a few hundred coss into the country for the benefit of his health; and taking twenty carpet-bags in his hands, he sets out, in his monstrous way, for Ayodhya, leaving his kingdom in the care of a blue dwarf with an eye in the back of his neck.

With seven-coss strides he comes to Ayodhya, and straightway finds the banian hut in the forest, where Rama dwells with Seeta in the devout dirtiness of their jolly yogeery.

The god has gone abroad in search of a dinner, and is over the hills to the sandy nullahs, where the white ants are fattest; while that greasy Joan, Seeta, "doth keel the pot" at home.

Then Rawunna, the giant, assuming the shape of a pilgrim yogee rolling to the Caves of Ellora,--with Gayntree, the mystical text, on his lips, and the shadow of Siva's beard in his soul,--rolls to Rama's door, and cries, "Alms, alms, in the name of the Destroyer!"

And Seeta comes forth, with water in a palm-leaf and grass-roots in the fold of her saree; and when she beholds the false yogee her heart blooms with pity, so that her smile is as the alighting of butterflies, and her voice as the rustling of roses.

But, behold you, as she bends over the prostrate yogee, and, saying, "Drink from the cup of Vishnu!" offers the crisp leaf to his dusty lips, a great spasm of desire impels the impostor; and, flinging off the yogee, he leaps erect, Rawunna, the Abhorred!

With ten mouths he kisses her; with twenty arms he clasps her; and away, away to Lunka! while yet poor Seeta gasps with fear.

When Rama returned and found no Seeta, his soul was seized with a mighty horror; and a blankness, like unto the mystery of Brahm, fell upon his heart. He shed not a tear, but the sky wept floods; he uttered not a groan, but Earth shook from her centre, and the mountains fell on their faces. But Rama, stupefied, stood stock still where he was stricken, and stared, till his eyelids stiffened, at the desolate hut, at the desolate hearth.

Then all the angels in heaven, who had witnessed the crime of Rawunna, and his flight, passed into the forms of monkeys; and a million of them made a monkey chain, that the rest of the celestial host might descend into the banian-groves of Ayodhya. The tails glide swiftly through each glowing hand, and quick as lightning on the trees they stand.

And Hoonamunta, their chief, prostrated himself before Rama, and said, "Behold, my Lord, we are here! I and all my host are yours,--command us!"

But Rama spoke not; he only stood where he was stricken, and stared at his desolation.

Then Hoonamunta turned him to his host, and said, "Bide here till I come, and be silent; break not the quiet of divine sorrow." And he went forth with mighty bounds.

That night he came to Lunka. But the city slept; if Seeta yet lived, she, too, was silent; no cry of sorrow rose on the night; no stir, as of an unusual event, disturbed the stillness and the gloom.

So Hoonamunta took upon himself the form of a rat, and sped nimbly through the huts of dwarfs and the towers of giants, through the hiding-places of misery and the high seats of power, through the places of trouble and the places of ease; till at last he came to an ivory dome, hard by the silver palace of Rawanna, the Monstrous; and there lay Seeta, buried in a profound trance of despair.

Hoonamunta bit, very tenderly, her slender white finger; but she stirred not, she made no sign.

Then he whispered softly in her ear, "Rama comes!" and Seeta started from her death-sleep, and sat erect; her eyes were open, and she cried, "My Lord, I am here!"

So Hoonamunta spake to her, bidding her be of good cheer, for Brahm was with her, and the Omnipotent Three,--bade her be of good heart and wait. And Seeta's smile was as the alighting of many butterflies, and her voice of murmured joy was as the rustling of all the roses of Ayodhya.

Then Hoonamunta took counsel with his cunning; and he said unto himself, "I will arouse the sleepers; I will take the strength of the city; I will count the heads of Rawunna, and the arms of him."

So straightway he resumed his monkey shape, and went forth into the streets, by the tanks and through the bazaars, among the places of the oppressed and the places of the powerful.

And he bit the ears of the Pariah dogs, so that they howled; he twisted the tails of the Brahmin bulls, so that they rushed, bellowing, down to the ghauts; he plucked the beards of gorged adjutants, till they snapped their great beaks with a terrible clatter.

He made a great splashing in the tanks; he ran through the bazaars, banging the gongs of the bell-makers, and smashing the brittle wares of the potters; he tore holes in the roofs of houses, and threw down tiles upon them that were buried in slumber; he cried with a loud voice, "Siva, Siva, the Destroyer, cometh!"

So that the city awoke with a great outcry and a din, with all its torches and all its dogs. And the multitude filled the streets, and the compounds, and the open places round about the tanks; and all cried, "Siva, Siva!"

But when they beheld Hoonamunta, how he tore off roofs, and pelted them with tiles,--how he climbed to the tops of pagodas, and jangled the sacred bells,--how he laid his shoulder to the city walls and overthrew them, so that the noise of their fall was as the roar of the breakers on the far-off coast of Lunka when the Typhoon blows,--then they cried, "A demon! a fiend from the halls of Yama!" and they gave chase with a mighty uproar,--the gooroos, and the yogees, and the jugglers going first.

Then Hoonamunta took counsel with his cunning; and he came down and stood in the midst of the angry people, and asked, "What would you with me? and where is this demon you pursue?"

But they cried, "Hear him, how he mocks us! Hear him, how he flouts us!" and they dragged him into the presence of Rawunna, the king.

And when the giant would have questioned him, who he was, and whence he came, and what his mission, he only mocked, and mimicked the fee-faw-fumness of Rawunna's tones, and said, "Lo! This beggar goes a-foot, but his words ride in a palanquin!"

And the king said, "I have been foolish, I have been weak, to waste words on this kafir. Am not I a mighty monarch? Am not I a terrible giant? Let him be cast out!"

And again Hoonamunta mocked him, saying, "His insanity is past! fetch him the rice-pounder that he may gird himself! fetch him the gong that he may cover his feet!"

And Hoonamunta would have sat on the throne, on Rawunna's right hand; but Rawunna thrust him off, and cursed him.

So Hoonamunta took his tail in his hand, and pulled and pulled; and the tail grew, and grew,--a fathom, a furlong, a whole coss.

And Hoonamunta coiled it on the floor, a lofty coil, on the right hand of the throne, higher and higher, till it overlooked the golden cushion of the king; and Hoonamunta laughed.

Then Rawunna turned him to his counsellors, and said, "What shall we do with this audacious fellow?"

And with one voice all the counsellors cried, "Burn his tremendous tail!"

And the king commanded:--

"Let all the dwarfs of Lunka
Bring rags from near and far;
Call all the dwarfs of Lunka
To soak them all in tar!"

So they went, and brought as many rags as ten strong giants could lift, and a thousand maunds of tar.

And they soaked the rags in the tar, even as Kawunna had commanded, and bound them all at once on the tremendous tail of Hoonamunta.

And when they had done this, the king said, "Lead him forth, and light him!"

And they led him forth into the great Midaun, hard by the triple pagoda; and they lighted his tail with a torch. And immediately the flames leaped to the skies, and the smoke filled all the city.

Then Hoonamunta broke away from his captors, and with a loud laugh started on his fiery race,--over house-tops and hay-ricks, through close bazaars and dry rice-fields, through the porticoes of palaces and the porches of pagodas,--kindling a roaring conflagration as he went.

And all the people pursued him, screaming with fear, imploring mercy, imploring pardon, crying, "Spare us, and we will make you our high-priest! Spare us, and you shall be our king!"

But Hoonamunta staid not, till, having laid half the city in flames, he ascended to the top of a lofty tower to survey his work with satisfaction.

Thither the great men of Lunka followed him,--the princes, and the Brahmins, and the victorious chieftains, the strong giants, and the cunning dwarfs.

And when they were all gathered underneath the tower, and in the porch of it, he shook it, till it fell and crushed a thousand of the first citizens.

Then Hoonamunta sped away northward to Ayodhya, extinguishing his tail in the sea as he went.

And when he came to where his army lay, he found them all waiting in silence. When he entered the hut of Rama, the bereaved one still lay on his face. But Hoonamunta spake softly in his ear: "My Lord, arise! for Seeta calls you, and her heart sickens within her that you come not!"

Immediately Rama uprose, and stood erect, and all the god blazed in his eyes; and he grew in the sight of Hoonamunta until his stature was as the stature of Rawunna, the giant, and his countenance was as the countenance of Indra, King of Heaven.

And he went forth, and stood at the head of Hoonamunta's monkey host, and called for a sword; and when they gave him one, it became alive in his hand, and was a sword of flame; and when they gave him a spear, lo! it became his slave, flying whithersoever he bade it, and striking where he listed.

So Rama and Hoonamunta, with all their monkey host, took up their march for Lunka.

When they came to the sea (which is the Gulf of Manaar) there was no bridge; but Rama mounted the back of Hoonamunta, and called to the host to follow him; and all the monkeys leaped across.

Then immediately they fell upon Lunka; and Rama slew Rawunna, the Monster, and rescued the delighted Seeta.

And now those three sit together on a throne in heaven,--Seeta, the faithful wife, on the left hand of Rama,--and Hoonamunta on his right hand, the shrewd and courageous friend.

Who would not be a monkey in Hindostan?

* * * * *

THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW.

Oh, that last day in Lucknow fort!
We knew that it was the last,
That the enemy's lines crept surely on,
And the end was coming fast.

To yield to that foe was worse than death,
And the men and we all worked on;
It was one day more of smoke and roar,
And then it would all be done.

There was one of us, a corporal's wife,
A fair, young, gentle thing,
Wasted with fever in the siege,
And her mind was wandering.

She lay on the ground, in her Scottish plaid,
And I took her head on my knee:
"When my father comes hame frae the pleugh," she said,
"Oh! then please wauken me."

She slept like a child on her father's floor
In the flecking of woodbine-shade,
When the house-dog sprawls by the open door,
And the mother's wheel is staid.

It was smoke and roar and powder-stench,
And hopeless waiting for death;
And the soldier's wife, like a full-tired child,
Seemed scarce to draw her breath.

I sank to sleep; and I had my dream
Of an English village-lane,
And wall and garden;--but one wild scream
Brought me back to the roar again.

There Jessie Brown stood listening
Till a sudden gladness broke
All over her face, and she caught my hand
And drew me near, as she spoke:--

"The Hielanders! Oh! dinna ye hear
The slogan far awa?
The McGregor's? Oh! I ken it weel;
It's the grandest o' them a'!

"God bless thae bonny Hielanders!
We're saved! we're saved!" she cried;
And fell on her knees; and thanks to God
Flowed forth like a full flood-tide.

Along the battery-line her cry
Had fallen among the men,
And they started back;--they were there to die;
But was life so near them, then?

They listened for life; the rattling fire
Far off, and the far-off roar,
Were all; and the colonel shook his head,
And they turned to their guns once more.

But Jessie said, "The slogan's done;
But winna ye hear it noo,
_The Campbells are comin'_? It's no a dream;
Our succors hae broken through!"

We heard the roar and the rattle afar,
But the pipes we could not hear;
So the men plied their work of hopeless war,
And knew that the end was near.

It was not long ere it made its way,--
A shrilling, ceaseless sound:
It was no noise from the strife afar,
Or the sappers under ground.

It _was_ the pipes of the Highlanders!
And now they played _Auld Lang Syne_;
It came to our men like the voice of God,
And they shouted along the line.

And they wept and shook one another's hands,
And the women sobbed in a crowd;
And every one knelt down where he stood,
And we all thanked God aloud.

That happy time, when we welcomed them,
Our men put Jessie first;
And the general gave her his hand, and cheers
Like a storm from the soldiers burst.

And the pipers' ribbons and tartans streamed,
Marching round and round our line;
And our joyful cheers were broken with tears
As the pipes played _Auld Lang Syne_.

NEW ENGLAND MINISTERS.

Dr. Sprague, of Albany, has added to the literature of our country two large octavo volumes, containing biographical accounts of the Congregational clergy of New England, from its earliest settlement until the year 1841. The book has been for the most part compiled from letters furnished by different individuals, who, either through personal knowledge or through tradition, had the most intimate acquaintance with the subjects of which they wrote.

The characters here sketched, though perfectly individual, are in so great a degree the result of peculiar political influences, that it would be difficult to suppose their existence elsewhere than in New England. We have therefore chosen this book as a kind of standpoint from which to take a glance at the New England clergy and pulpit.

The earliest constitution of government in New England was a theocracy; it was the realization of Arnold's idea of the identity of Church and State. Under it the clergy had peculiar powers and privileges, which, it is but fair to say, they turned to the advantage of the Commonwealth more than has generally been the case with any privileged order.

A time, however, came when the democratic element, which these men themselves had fostered, worked out its logical results, by depriving them of all special immunities, and leaving them, like any other citizens, to make their way by pure force of character, and to be rated, like other men, simply for what they were and what they could do.

It is creditable to the intelligence and shrewdness of this body of men that the more far-sighted among them received this change with satisfaction; that they were such uncommonly fair logicians as to be willing to accept the direct inference from principles which they had been foremost to inculcate, and, like men of strong mind and clear conscience, were not afraid to rest their claim to influence and deference on the manfulness with which they should strive to deserve them.

Dr. Sprague's book contains pictures of life under both the old _régime_ and the new. The following extract from the venerable Josiah Quincy's recollections of the Rev. Mr. French, of Andover, is interesting, as an illustration of the olden times.

"Mrs. Dowse, my maternal aunt, has often related to me her pride and delight at visiting at the Rev. Mr. Phillips', her paternal grandfather's house, when a child; which was interesting as a statement of the manners of those early times in Massachusetts, before the sceptre of worldly power, which the first settlers of the Colony had placed in the hands of the clergy, had been broken. The period was about between 1760 and the Revolution. The parsonage at Andover was situated about two or three hundred rods from the meeting-house, which was three stories high, of immense dimensions, far greater, I should think, than those of any meeting-houses in these anti-church-going, degenerate times. It was on a hill, slightly elevated above the parsonage, so that all the flock could see the pastor as he issued from it.

"Before the time of service, the congregation gradually assembled in early season, coming on foot or on horseback, the ladies behind their lords or brothers or one another, on pillions, so that before the time of service the whole space before the meeting-house was filled with a waiting, respectful, and expecting multitude. At the moment of service the pastor issued from his mansion with Bible and manuscript sermon under his arm, with his wife leaning on one arm, flanked by his negro man on his side, as his wife was by her negro woman, the little negroes being distributed according to their sex by the side of their respective parents. Then followed every other member of the family according to age and rank, making often, with family visitants, somewhat of a formidable procession. As soon as it appeared, the congregation, as if moved by one spirit, began to move towards the door of the church; and before the procession reached it, all were in their places.

"As soon as the pastor entered the church, the whole congregation rose and stood until the pastor was in the pulpit and his family seated,--until which was done the whole assembly continued standing. At the close of the service the congregation stood until he and his family had left the church, before any one moved towards the door.

"Forenoon and afternoon the same course of proceeding was had, expressive of the reverential relation in which the people acknowledged that they stood towards their clergyman.

"Such was the account given me by Mrs. Dowse in relation to times previous to my birth, and which I relate as her narrative, and not as part of my recollections. The procession from the parsonage, the disappearance of the people on the appearance of the procession, and that their pastor was received with every mark of decorum and respect, I well remember, but of their rising at his entrance and standing after the service until he had departed, I have no recollection; my time was almost twenty years after that narrated by Mrs. Dowse. During that period the Revolution had commenced."

Some might think it an advantage, if more of the decorum and reverence of such a state of society had been preserved to our day; for this respect paid to the minister was but part of a general and all-pervading system. Children were more reverential to their parents, scholars to their teachers, the people to their magistrates. A want of reverence threatens now to become the besetting sin of America, whether young or old.