Chapter V: Part II: VI (1)

In due time we found our way, through deafening clatter, to Miss Post's door, a little below the Astor House, and in the midst of all that female feet the soonest seek. In Maiden Lane and on Broadway it was easy to find all that a Weston fancy painted in the shape of dry goods; and I did my errands up with conscientious speed before indulging in a fashionable lounge on the Battery.

The first twenty-four hours were full of successive surprises, which ought to have been chronicled on the spot and at the time. They affected me like electric shocks; but in a day or two I forgot to be surprised at the queer Dutch signs over the shops and the swine in the streets. Now I only remember the oddity of Miss Post's poverty in the water-line; and that she had to buy fresh water by the gallon and rain-water by the barrel. Also, the faithlessness of the two brilliant black boys who waited on table and at the door, and who couldn't be depended on to take up a bundle or carry a message to your room, so unmitigatedly wicked were they.

"If I owned 'em," said Miss Post to me, confidentially, "I would have 'em whipped every day of their lives. It's what they need, and can't do without. They're just like bad children!"

That was true enough. However, she didn't own them, and got very little out of them but show; and they looked like princes, with their white aprons and jackets, and their glittering, haughty eyes. They played with their duties, and disdained all directions. I used to follow them with my eyes at the table with amused astonishment. It was very grand, and, as the Marchioness says, "If you made believe a good deal," reminded one of barbaric splendor, and Tippoo Saib. But poor Miss Post couldn't order an elephant to tread their heads off, or she would have extinguished her household twice a day. I looked back with a feeling of relief to Weston, and my good Polly, who would scorn to be an eye-servant or men-pleaser.

At the long table, where sat Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, Babbit, and so on, I looked sharply for Mr. and Mrs. Lewis. But neither was there the first day. All the people were childless and desolate-looking, though much bedecked with braids and curls, which ladies wore at that time without stint. Nobody looked as if she could be Mr. Lewis's wife. However, the ladies all treated me with so much cordiality and politeness that I set New York down at once as a delightful spot.

Happening to speak of Mrs. Lewis, I saw that the corners of Mrs. Jones's mouth went immediately down, and Mrs. Smith's eyebrows immediately up. Of course, no woman is going to stand that; and I inquired minutely enough to satisfy myself either that Mrs. Lewis was very peculiar, or that a boarding-house was not a favorable atmosphere for character. My husband, to whom I told all they said, considered "the abundant leisure from family-cares which these ladies enjoyed as giving them opportunities for investigation which they carried to excess."

"But think of Gus not being Mr. Lewis's child!" said I, after faithfully relating all I had heard.

"He looks like an Italian. I always thought so. But Lewis seems very fond of him."

"Yes, they said so. But that the mother cared nothing for him, nor for her other children, who are off in Genesee County somewhere."

"For health, doubtless," said my "he," dryly.

"And the way they talked of Mr. Remington! calling him George, and more than insinuating that she likes too well to be at the Oaks,--that is his place. They say she has been there all the time Mr. Lewis has been gone!"

"Mr. Remington has been gone too, as you and I can testify," more dryly.

"So he has. I wish I had thought to tell them so."

I hadn't been in a boarding-house for nothing.

"It was like Lewis to take her as he did. Very noble and generous, too, even supposing he loved her. I dare say he does. Is Montalli dead?"

"I don't know. I think so. At all events, they were divorced, and for his cruelty. Only think of a lady, a young lady, not sixteen, and the darling and idol at home, being beaten and pounded! Ugh! what horrid creatures Italians are!"

"And you say Lewis happened to be in Mobile at the time?"

"Yes, and fell in love with her,--she, scarcely eighteen, and to have had this shocking experience! I don't like to tell you how much these ladies have hinted about her, but enough to make me feel as if I were reading the "Mysteries of Udolpho," instead of hearing of a live woman, out of a book, and belonging to our own time."

"Very likely she may have amused herself at the expense of their credulity. I have seen women do that, just for sport, and to see how much people would believe. It is a dangerous game to play."

Mr. Lewis came to dinner, and brought me a little three-cornered note from his wife, written with much grace and elegance, so far as the composition was concerned. It was sealed with a dove flying, and expressed her thanks for my bringing the "sweet remembranser" from her beloved child, and so on, expecting to see me the next day at the Oaks.

The surprising part of the note was, that the writing was scrawled, and the words misspelt in a manner that would have disgraced the youngest member of a town-school in Weston. She had "grate" pleasure, and spoke of my "truble" in a way that made me feel as if I should see a child.

The next day brought Mr. Remington himself, fresh and handsome as ever, saying that a carriage was waiting, and his tulips were at their best, and the ladies expecting to see us,--adding, with an informality which I had not associated with New York, that the day was all planned out for us,--tulips and lunch at the Oaks, Hoboken in the afternoon.

That was a white day, and one long to be remembered. First of all, for Hoboken, which, whatever it may be now, was then a spot full of picturesque beauty and sweet retirement, relieving and contrasting the roar and tumult of the city; second, for the tulips, which were the most glorious things I ever saw, and still remain the pattern of exceeding beauty, though I have since seen wealth of floral splendor, but none that came up to the Royal Adelaide,--nothing so queenly and so noble as the large white cup, fit for Hebe to bear and the gods to drink out of, and holding at least a pint within the snowy radiance of its ample brim. I did not wonder Mr. Remington had a passion for tulips. He flitted about among his brilliant brigade like a happy butterfly, rejoicing in our delight and exulting in our surprise like a pleased child.

"And is each of these different?"

"Not a duplicate among them. Fifteen hundred varieties."

If he had said fifteen thousand, it would not have added to my astonishment. To be sure, no king was ever arrayed like one of these. And fifteen hundred! each gorgeous enough for a king's ransom! It took my breath away to look at the far-reaching parterre of nodding glories, moved by the breath of the south-wind.

"I am satisfied. I see you are sufficiently impressed with my tulips, Mrs. Prince," said Mr. Remington, gleefully, "and I shall send you no end of bulbs for your Weston garden."

Mr. Remington had taken us directly to the garden on our arrival, and now led the way, through large evergreens, and by a winding path, to the house. The land was not half an acre in size, yet I was sure that I had been over a large estate. The same delusion clung to the house, which was in looks like one of Gainsborough's cottages, and ought to have been at least two hundred years old, instead of two. But Downing's advent had already wrought miracles here and there in our land; and a little while before Mr. Remington had been bitten with an architectural mania. So under the transplanted trees, and beneath trailing vines of Virginia creeper and Boursault roses, there peeped the brown gables of a cottage, which arose and stood there as reposeful and weather-stained as if it had been built before the Revolution. Mr. Remington showed us twenty unexpected doors, and juttings-out here and there, to catch a view, or to let in the sun, and rejoiced in our pleasure, as he had in the garden, like a child. In the library, Mrs. Remington received us, looking pale, and being very silent.

I sat down by her without being attracted at all--rather repelled by the faint sickliness of everything connected with her appearance. But neither her pale blue eyes, nor her yellow hair, nor her straw-colored gown and blue ribbons would have repelled me; I could not make her talk at all. I never saw such reticence before or since. As if she were determined "to die and make no sign," she sat, bowing and smiling, and amounting to nothing, one way or another,--giving no opinion, if asked, and asking no question. She was passively polite, but so very near nothing that I was rejoiced when Mr. Remington entered with my husband, and proposed that we should go into the dining-room. He carelessly introduced Mrs. Remington, but further than that seemed not to know she was in existence; and I must confess, I did not wonder. While my husband made, or tried to make, some conversation with her, Mr. Remington showed me an exquisite Clytie in marble, and a landscape by Cole, which hung in a good light, and showed its wonderful wild beauty. And now for the third reason that this was a white day.

VII.

In a little room connected with the refreshment-room there stood before a large mirror somebody winding a red scarf about her head. I had only time to see that the head was small and shapely, and the figure full of flexible grace, when it turned and nodded to the party. Of course, it could only be Mrs. Lewis, as she at once said, in a honey-sweet voice, and with what seemed to me a foreign accent; but then I had never heard the Southern accent, which is full of music, and seems somehow to avoid the sibilant tone as well as the nasal drawl characteristic of Northern tongues.

I was attracted to her, not by her beauty, though that was marked, but by her cordial, unaffected manner of placing her two hands in ours, and by her infantine sweetness of expression. Whatever she might have gone through, I saw she had not suffered. There was no line or track of experience, on her broad, tranquil brow, nor was there the hushed, restrained expression left in all eyes that have deeply mourned and bitterly wept. The look was serene and youthful, with such happiness as might come from health and elemental life,--such as a Dryad might have in her songful bowers, or a Naiad plunging in the surf. But it was a shallow face, and pleased only as the sunshine does. For my part, I would rather listen to the sorrowful song of the pine-tree: that is the tune of life.

So, after the first five minutes, the face of Mrs. Lewis ceased to attract me, and I only wondered how she came to attract her husband.

At Miss Post's, our rooms were quite near each other; and I frequently passed an hour in the morning with Mrs. Lewis, chatting with her, and looking about her fanciful apartment. She had dozens of birds of all gay colors,--paroquets from Brazil, cockatoos, ring-doves, and canaries; fresh flowers, in vases on the mantel-pieces, and a blue-ribboned guitar in the corner. No books, no pictures. A great many scarfs, bonnets, and drapery generally, fell about on the chairs and tables.

She never asked about Auguste, nor talked of her children. Once she said they were at Madam somebody's, she couldn't think of the name, but a very nice school, she believed. Everything was "very nice" or "very horrid." Much of the time she passed in draping herself in various finery before the mirror, and trying the effects of color on her complexion. I could think of nothing but field-lilies, that toil not, and yet exceed Solomon in glory; sometimes it seemed gaudiness rather than glory, only that her brilliant complexion carried off the brightest hues, and made them only add to the native splendor of lip and eye. Then she had a transparent complexion, where the blood rippled vividly and roseately at the least excitement. This expressed a vivacity of temperament and a sensitiveness which yet she had not, so that I was constantly looking for more than there was in her, and as constantly disappointed. The face suggested, and so did the conversation, far more both of native sensibility and of culture than she had of either. This was apparent during the first twenty-four hours.

It may seem strange that I should cultivate such a disappointing acquaintance as Mrs. Lewis. But, first, I liked Mr. Lewis, and he was much of the time in their parlor; and, secondly, Mrs. Lewis took a decided fancy to me, and that had its effect. I could not deem her insensible to excellence of some sort; besides, she was a curious study to me, and besides, I had occasion, as the time wore on, to think more of her. Our lives are threaded with black and gold, not of our own selecting, and we feel that we are guided by an Unseen Hand in many of our associations.

There was a want of arrangement of material in her mind, which prevented her from using what she knew, to any advantage; and what she knew, though it had the originality of first observation, and a grace of expression so great that more met the ear than was meant, was still so wanting, either in insight or reflection, as to be poor and vapid as small-beer after the first sparkle is gone. The manner was all in Mrs. Lewis, but that was ever varying and charming.

One day she had been wrapping some green and gold gauzes about her, and draping herself so that you could think of nothing but sunsets and tulip-beds, when, in pulling over her finery, she came across a miniature of herself. She handed it to me.

"This was what made William dead in love with me, before he saw me. I used to wear my hair so for years after I married him; he liked me to."

It was a very delicately painted miniature, by Staigg, I think. Still a very good likeness, and with the perpetual childhood of the large brown eyes, and the clusters of chestnut curls over brow and neck, that gave an added expression of extreme youth to the face.

"Will she never mature?" I thought.

But always there was the same promise, the same expectation, and the same disappointment. I used to think I would as soon marry Hoffman's machine, who looked so beautiful, and said, "Ah! ah!" and the husband thought her very sensible. But Hoffman's husband thought he had an admiring wife, and her "ah! ah-s!" were appreciative, whereas Mr. Lewis could be under no such delusion. Once I heard him say, "he cared only for love in a wife: intellect he could find in books, but the heart only in woman." "Eyes that look kindly on me are full of good sense,--lips that part over pearls are better than wisdom,--and the heart-beat is the measure of true life."

He liked to talk in this proverb-fashion, and would often turn towards his wife, giving his remarks point and affectionate direction by smoothing her curls or gently touching her shoulder. He was very happy in her beauty.

Notwithstanding this, he often brought in books of an evening, to read to us, leaving Lulu to get her entertainment as she could, and would sometimes sit a whole hour, discussing literary points with me, and metaphysical ones with the Dominie, who was only too happy to pull the Scotch professors over the coals, and lead to condign execution Brown, Reid, and Stewart, in their turn. Sometimes Lulu would come in, with a bird on each hand, and sit at our feet. She then never mingled in the conversation, but just smoothed the birds' plumage, or fed them with crumbs from her own lips, like a child, or a princess trifling in the harem.

Once we were at Hoboken, where we had passed most of the warm day, and, being weary with strolling among the trees, had seated ourselves on a bank, whence we had a good view of the water and the vessels in the hazy distance. Mr. Lewis took Wordsworth from his pocket, and read aloud the "Ode to Immortality." It was so beautiful, and the images of "the calm sea that brought us hither" so suggestive, that we listened with rapture. Lulu twined oak-leaves into wreaths, sitting at her husband's feet. I don't know whether she heard or not, but, as we discussed afterwards the various beauties of the expression, and the exquisite thoughts, Mr. Lewis leaned over and laid his hand lightly on his wife's hair. He had done it a hundred times before. But to-day she shook her head away from him, blushed angrily, and said, "Don't, William! I am not a baby!"

VIII.

We stayed in New York over ten days. In that time we seemed to have known the Lewises ten years. In the last three days I had some new views, however, and puzzled myself over manners which were apparently contradictory.

Lulu had told me in the morning that her husband was going to Philadelphia, and wouldn't be back for two days. I asked her if she were not going with him. She said, no,--that she wouldn't encounter the dust of those Jersey wagons again; and then described, with much vivacity, the method of transportation which was soon after succeeded by the present railroad.

"There were a hundred horses, at least," said she, "to drag us. Magnificent creatures, too. But nothing pays for having one's mouth and eyes full of grit."

As she spoke, Mr. Lewis passed by the door, and looked at her. She went to him at once, put up her lips to be kissed, and I heard his loving good-bye, as they went along the entry to the top of the stairway.

When she came back to my room, which was half an hour after, she was dressed to go out, in a new hat and pelisse of green silk, with a plume of the same. With her bright color, it was very becoming to her.

"I have just got these home. William just hates me in green, but I would have them. They make one think of fern-leaves and the deep woods, don't they?" said she, standing before the mirror with childish admiration of her own dress.

She turned slowly round, and faced me.

"Now I suppose you would dress up in a blue bag, if your husband liked to see you in it?"

I said I supposed so, too.

"That's because you love him, and know that he loves you!"

"I am sure, you may say one is true of yourself," said I, surprised at her knitted brow and flushed cheek.

"What was that you were reading last night in Plato's Dialogues? What does he say is real love? for the body or the soul?"

I was confounded. For I had never supposed she listened to a word that was read.

"If any one has been in love with the body of Alcibiades, that person has not been in love with Alcibiades," said she, reciting from memory.

"Yes, I remember."

"But one that loves your soul does not leave you, but continues constant after the flower of your beauty has faded, and all your admirers have retired."

I nodded, as much nonplussed as if she had been Socrates.

"That is a love worth having, is it not, which will continue, though the cheek be white and furrowed, and the eye dim?"

I nodded again, staring at her.

"And what is that worth," said she, stamping her foot, "which does not recognize a soul at all? If he ever encouraged me to improve,--if he ever read to me, or talked to me as he does to you, I might make something of myself! I am in earnest. I do want to be something,--to think, to learn, if I only knew how!"

Childish tears ran down her face as she spoke. Presently she went into her room and brought me a set of malachite, in exquisite cameo-cuttings. I took up a microscope, and began admiring and examining them, recognizing the subjects, which were taken from Raphael's History of Psyche.

"Beautiful! where did they come from?"

"William bought them of Lloyd, who had them long ago of the Emperor's jeweller. They had been ordered for Marie Louise."

"And why didn't she have them, pray?"

"Just the question I asked. He said, 'Oh, because the Emperor was down and the Allies in Paris, and the Emperor's jeweller nobody, and glad to sell the cameos for one-third their cost, when they were finished.'"

"Oh, yes! I see,--at the time of Waterloo."

Mrs. Lewis looked at me again with the same knitted brow and flushed cheek as before.

"All you say is Greek to me. I don't know what malachite is, nor who Raphael is, nor who Psyche is, nor who Marie Louise is, scarcely who Napoleon, and nothing about Waterloo. A pretty present to make to me, is it not? I could make nothing of it. To you it is a whole volume."

I said, with some embarrassment, that it was easy to learn, and that if she--that is, that women should endeavor to improve themselves, and so on. She heard me through, and then said, dryly,--

"How old were you when you were married?"

"I was nearly twenty."

"Were you well-informed? had you read a great deal?"

"What one gets in a country-school,--and being fond of reading;--but then I had always been in an atmosphere of books; and one takes in, one knows not how, a thousand facts"--

I stopped; for I saw by her impatient nodding that she understood me.

"Yes, yes. I knew it must be so. Now, if William would ever bring me books, instead of jewels, or talk to me and with me, I might have been a rational being too, instead of being absolutely ashamed to open my mouth!"

She clasped the jewel-case and went out; and I heard her chatting a minute after with some gentlemen in the house, as if she were perfectly and childishly happy.

IX.

How I wished I could give Mr. Lewis some hint of what had passed between his wife and myself! But that I could not do. Besides that it was always best to let matrimonial improvements originate with the parties themselves, I had an inability to interfere usefully. I could talk to her a little,--not at all to him. He seemed fond and proud of her as she was, and her dissatisfaction with herself was a good sign. It was strange to me, accustomed to intellectual sympathy, that he could do without that of his wife. But I suppose he had come to feel that she would not understand him, and so did not try to hit her apprehension, much less to raise or cultivate her intellect. He had lived too long at the South.

Her moral nature was very oddly developed, showing how starved and stunted some of the faculties, naturally good, become without their proper nourishment. As, intellectually, she seemed not to comprehend herself, except that she had a vague sense of want and waste, so, from the habit of occupying herself with the external, she had not only a keen sense of the beautiful in outward form, but as ready a perception of character as could consist with a want of tact. Adaptation she certainly had. Tact she could not have, since her sympathies were so limited and her habit so much of external perception and appreciation. All this desolate tract in her nature might yet possibly be cultivated. But thus far it had never been. Beyond a small circle of thoughts and feelings, she was incapable of being interested. She didn't say, "Anan!" but she looked it.

There was the same want of comprehension, I may call it, in reference to propriety of conduct. A certain nobleness, and freedom from all that was petty and cold, kept her from coquetry. At the same time she had a womanish vanity about her admirers, and entire freedom in speaking of them. In vain I endeavored to insinuate the unpleasant truth, that the fervency of her adorers was no compliment to her. She could not understand that she ought to shrink from the implied imputation of such manifestations.

Somewhat out of patience, one day, at her pleasure in receiving a bouquet of rare flowers from one of these adorers, I said,--

"Isn't this the person who you said professed an attachment to you, or rather sent heliotrope to you and told you it meant _je vous aime?_"

"The very man!" said she, smiling.

"Then I am sure you are, as I should be, sadly mortified at his continuing these attentions."

"I don't see why I should be mortified," said she, "He may be, if he likes."

"You know what the poet says, Lulu, and it is excellent sense,--

'In part she is to blame that has been tried,
He comes too near that comes to be denied.'"

The crimson tide rippled over her forehead at this, but it was only a passing disturbance, and she answered sweetly,--

"I don't think you are quite fair," as if she had been playing at some game with me.

Apparently, too, she had as little religious as moral sense, though she called herself a member of the Church, and said she was confirmed at twelve years old.

But once, in speaking of Mr. Lewis's going to church, she told me, "William has no religion at all." Much in the same way she would have said he had not had luncheon. A strange responsibility, if he felt it, had this William, a man nearly forty years old, for this young creature not yet twenty-three, and with powers so undeveloped and a character so unbalanced!

In the ten days we passed together I often wished I could have known her early, or that I now had a right to say to her what I would. However, perhaps I overestimated the influence of outward circumstances.

We parted rather suddenly, and in the next three years they were mostly in Cuba, while my husband was called to leave Weston for a larger field of usefulness.

We had lived more than a year in Boston, and it was in the autumn of 1833 that I sat alone by a sea-coal fire, thinking, and making out faces in the coal. I was too absorbed to hear the bell ring, or the door open, till I felt a little rustle, and a soft, sudden kiss on my lips. I was no way surprised, for Lulu's was the foremost face in the coals. Mr. Lewis was close behind her, with my husband. As soon as the astral was lighted, we gazed wistfully for a few moments at each other. Each looked for possible alteration.

"You have been ill!"

"And you have had something besides Time."

We had had grief and bereavement. Mr. Lewis had been very ill, and very near death, with the fever of the country. It had left traces on his worn face, and thinned his already thin enough figure.

But a greater change had come over Mrs. Lewis. Personally, she was fuller and handsomer than ever. She had the same grace in every motion, the same lulling music in her sweet voice. But a soul seemed to be born into that fine body. The brown eyes were deeper, and the voice had thrills of feeling and sentiment. For all that, she had the same incompleteness that she had when I last saw her, and an inharmoniousness that was felt by the hearer whenever she spoke. It was very odd, this impression I constantly had of her; but they were to remain in Boston through the winter, and I supposed time would develop the mystery to me.

X.

One evening, soon after Lulu's return, for she soon took up her old habits of intimacy, she sat listlessly by the fire, holding her two hands in her lap, as usual, and not even dawdling at netting. Perhaps the still evening and the quiet room induced confidence, or she may have felt the effect of my "receptivity," as she called it. (She always insisted that she could not help telling me everything.) She turned away abruptly from the fire, saying,--

"Do you know I don't love William a particle,--not the smallest atom?"

"I hope you are only talking nonsense," said I, rising, and ringing for lights; "but it is painful for me to hear you. Don't! I beg!"

"No, it isn't nonsense. It is the simple truth. And it is best you should know it. Because,--you don't want me to be a living lie, do you? To the world I can keep up the old seeming. But it is better you should know the truth."

"There I differ from you entirely, Lulu. If you are so sadly unfortunate, so wretched, as not to love your husband, it is too painful and serious a matter lightly to be talked of. It is a matter for grievous lamentation,--a matter between your conscience and your God. I don't think any friend can help you; and if not, of course you can have no motive in confiding it."

She had the same old look, as if she would say, "Anan!" but presently added,--

"He cares only for himself,--not at all for me. Don't I see that every day? Am I but the plume in his cap? but the lace on his sleeve? but the jewel in his linen? Whatever I might have felt for him, I am sure I have no need to feel now; and I repeat to you, I should not care at all if I were never again to lay my eyes on him!"

I shuddered to hear this talk. It was said, however, without anger, and with the air rather of a simple child who thought it right not to have false pretences. Her frankness, if it had been united with deep feeling, would have touched me exceedingly. As it was, I was bewildered, yet only anxious to avoid explanations, which it seemed to me would only increase the evil.

Thoughts of the ill-training that had made such a poor piece of life-work out of the rich materials before me made my heart ache. She sat still, looking in the fire, like a child, rebuked and chidden for some unconscious fault. So many fine traits of character, yet such a hopeless want of balance, such an utter wrongheadedness! I turned, and did what I very seldom do, yielded to my impulses of compassionate tenderness and kissed her. To my surprise, she burst into a hearty fit of crying.

"If I had known you early! or if my mother had lived!" she sobbed; "but now I am good for nothing! I don't know what is right nor what is wrong!"

"Don't say so,--we can always try."

"Not this. I could at first. But to be always treated like a baby,--and if I express any contrary opinion, or show that I've a mind of my own,--a sick baby! I can tell you this comes pretty hard three hundred and sixty-five days in a year! Oh, I wish I were a free woman! There! I am going to stop now. But you know."

I was only too glad to be interrupted by our two husbands. Lulu ran up-stairs,--I supposed, to bathe her eyes and compose herself. She, however, was down again in a minute, with some drapery which she wound about her after the fashion Lady Hamilton was said to do, and represented, like her, the Muses, and various statues. With the curtain and one light she managed to give a very statuesque effect. Mr. Lewis was evidently very proud of her grace and talent, and she had a pretty, wilful, bird-like way with him, that was fascinating, and did not seem, as I thought it must really be, mechanical. I felt, more than ever, how idle it must be to talk with her. The affectionate respect, the joyful uplooking of wifehood, was not to be taught by words, nor to be taught, in fact, any way. Mr. Lewis's manner to his wife, which I criticized carefully, was always tender and dignified. And, from my knowledge of him, I felt sure that his expression was that of genuine feeling. Evidently he did not understand her feelings at all. She longed for encouragement and improvement. He looked at her as a lovely child only.

Being a minister's wife, I felt called on to labor in my vocation, and from time to time watch the pliant moment, and endeavor to lead Lulu's mind to the foundation of all truth. But, surely, never fell seed on such stony ground. To be sure, the flowers sprang up. Dewy, rich, and running, they climbed over the rocks beneath; but they shed their perfume, and shrank dead in a day, leaving the stones bare. I was discouraged about sowing seed.

The Lewises had been but a few weeks in Boston, when Lulu brought Mr. Remington in one morning to make a call. He was dressed in black, and told me he had been a widower six months. His bright, genial face and healthful nature seemed not to have sustained any severe shock, however, and he spoke with great composure of his loss.

He was at Mr. Lewis's a great deal. It seemed as a matter of course. As an accomplished man, with great powers of entertaining, he must naturally be acceptable there; but we were too much occupied with family and parish matters to see much of him, and about that time went on a journey of some weeks.

* * * * *

THE CONQUEST OF CUBA.

One hundred years ago the people of America were as much moved by martial ardor as are the American people of to-day. The year 1762 was, indeed, a far more warlike time than was 1862. "Great war" is now confined to the territory of the United States, and exists neither in Asia, Africa, nor Europe. Garibaldi's laudable attempt to get it up in Italy failed dismally. There was a flash of spirit, and there were a few flashes of gunpowder, and all was over. "The rest is silence." There are numerous questions unsettled in the Old World, but the disputants are inclined to wait for settlement, it would seem, until our affairs shall have been brought into a healthful state. Europeans complain that our quarrel has wrought them injury, and very great injury, too. They are right as to the fact. England has suffered more from the consequences of the Southern Rebellion than have the Free States of the Union, and France quite as much, and Spain as severely as any one of our States. In Germany, in Switzerland, and in Belgium, thousands of families have had bitter reasons for joining in the cry that Americans do not know how to manage their politics. We have heard of riots in Moravia, not far from the scene of Lafayette's imprisonment and that of Napoleon's greatest victory, caused by the scarcity of cotton. Yankee cloths that used to go into remote and barbarous regions, through the medium of the caravan-commerce, will be known no more there for some time. Perhaps those African chiefs who had condescended to shirt themselves, thus taking a step toward civilization, will have to fall back upon their skins, because Mr. Jefferson Davis and some others of the Southern Americans chose to make war on their country, and so stop the supply of cotton. The "too-many-shirts" cry, which so revolted the benevolent heart of Mr. Carlyle twenty years since, has ceased to be heard. The supply is getting exhausted. The old shirts are vanishing, and the new ones, instead of being of good stout cloth, are of such stuff as dreams are made of. There might be a new version of "The Song of the Shirt" published, specially adapted to the state of the times, and which would come home to the bosoms and backs of many men. Mr. Davis's war may be considered as a personal one against all civilized men, for it affects every one's person. The great civil war between Charles I. and the English Parliament was in part caused by soap, which the monopolists made of so bad a quality that it destroyed the clothes which it should have cleaned. Of "the monopolers and polers of the people," as he called them, Sir John Culpeper said, "We find them in the dye-fat, the wash-bowl, and the powdering-tub." As a monarchy was made to fall through the monopoly of soap and other ordinary articles, so was it purposed that a republic should be crushed through the monopoly of the material from which the sheets and shirts of laborers are manufactured. There was not much chivalry in the basis of Southern power, but most grand revolutions are brought about by acting on the lives of the masses, who are more easily moved by appeals to their sense of immediate interest than by reference to the probable consequences of a certain kind of political action. Our party-men know this, and hence it is, that, while they have not much to say about the excellence of slavery, they ask the Irish to oppose the overthrow of that institution, on the ground, that, if it were to cease to exist, all the negroes of the South would come to the North, and work for a dime a day,--which nonsense there are some persons so ignorant as to believe.

To return to 1762: the people of the Colonies were as martially disposed as are the people of the States in these days. "In the heat of the Old French War," says Mr. Hawthorne, speaking of the inhabitants of New England, "they might be termed a martial people. Every man was a soldier, or the father or brother of a soldier; and the whole land literally echoed with the roll of the drum, either beating up for recruits among the towns and villages, or striking the march toward the frontier. Besides the provincial troops, there were twenty-three British regiments in the northern colonies. The country has never known a period of such excitement and warlike life, except during the Revolution,--perhaps scarcely then; for that was a lingering war, and this a stirring and eventful one." There has not been so much movement in the Secession War as characterized that in which our ancestors were engaged a century ago, and which was fought in America and in India, in Germany and in Portugal, in Italy and in Africa, in France and in Bohemia. As the great Lisbon earthquake had been felt on the shores of Ontario, so had the war which began the year of that earthquake's occurrence shaken the world that lay on the American lakes. Forty years ago, old men talked as much of the Old French War--the Seven Years' War of European historians--as of the War of the Revolution. It was a contest but for the happening of which there could have been no American Revolution, at least none of the character that now occupies so high a place in history. Or, had it happened, and had the event been different, our annals would have been made to read differently, and the Fourth of July could never have become an institution. It opened well for the French, and, had not fortune changed, the colonists, instead of looking to Paris for aid, only a dozen years after its conclusion, might have been ruled by proconsuls sent from that "centre of civilization," as it delights to call itself. And even if the terms of the treaty which put an end to that war had been a little differently arranged, England might have triumphed in the war that she carried on against our ancestors. Both the war itself, and the manner of concluding it, were necessary to the creation of that American empire which, according to Earl Russell, we are fighting to maintain,--as unquestionably we are, though not in the ignoble sense in which the noble Earl meant that his words should be taken and understood.

Of the many conquests which were made by the English in the Seven Years' War, no one was more remarkable than that which placed the Havana and its neighborhood in their hands, virtually giving them possession of the island of Cuba; and the manner in which they disposed of their magnificent prize, when George III. forced peace upon his unwilling subjects, was among the causes of their failure to conquer the Thirteen States in the War for Independence.

That England should have been favored with the opportunity to seize Cuba was not the least singular of the incidents of a contest that was waged wherever Christians could meet for the pious purpose of cutting one another's throats. The English owed it to the hatred for them that was felt by one man, who assailed them in their hour of triumph, in the hope of gratifying his love of revenge, but who reaped only new humiliations from his crusade. He had better luck in after days; but in 1762 he must have entertained some pretty strong doubts as to the wisdom of hating his neighbors, and of allowing that sentiment to get the better of his judgment. Charles III., King of the Spains, the best of all the Spanish Bourbons, had, when he was King of Naples, been most grossly insulted by a British naval commander, and he had had to swallow the affront. "Being a good Christian, and vindictive," though he swallowed the affront, he could not digest it. He cherished the hope of being able to repay the English with that usurious interest with which men of all grades love to discharge their debts of the kind. He little thought that he was to wait near forty years for the settlement of his account, and that a generation was to pass away before he should be able to feel as Loredano felt when he heard of the death of Francesco Foscari.

The fortunes of France have seldom been lower than they were in 1759, when the energy of William Pitt had imparted itself to the whole of the alliance which was acting against Louis XV. That year, Charles III. ascended the Spanish throne. For some time he was apparently disposed to continue the judicious system of neutrality which had been adopted and pursued by his predecessor; but in 1760, partly from his fear of British power, and partly because of the insulting conduct, of England, which revived his recollection of her officer's action at Naples in 1742, he was induced to enter into that arrangement which is known as the Family Compact, (_Pacte de Famille_,) which was destined to have the most memorable consequences,--consequences that are far from being now exhausted. By the terms of this treaty, the sovereign princes of the House of Bourbon agreed to support each other against all enemies. The wisdom of this compact, on the part of France, cannot be doubted, for her condition was so bad that it could not be made much worse, happen what would, and it might be changed for the better through the assistance of Spain; but it is not so clear that they were as wise at Madrid as were the statesmen at Paris. Mr. Pitt obtained intelligence of this treaty's existence, though it was "a profound secret," of course; but then Mr. Pitt always had good intelligence, because he was ready to pay roundly for it, knowing that it was the best article for which a war-minister could lay out his money. The object of keeping secret an arrangement that depended for its usefulness upon open action was, that time might be gained for the arrival of the Spanish treasure-ships from America. Mr. Pitt, who was as wise as he was arrogant, was for taking immediate measures against Spain. He would have declared war at once, and have seized the plate fleet. Had George II. still lived, this judicious course--all boldness is judicious in war, in which there is nothing so imprudent as prudence--would have been adopted. But that monarch died on the 25th of October, 1760, and his grandson and successor, George III., had domestic objects to accomplish with which the continuance of the war was incompatible. His intention was to make peace with France, and he must have deemed it the height of folly to make war on Spain. Pitt, finding his advice disregarded, resigned his office, much to the joy of most of his colleagues, whom he had treated as if they had been the lackeys of his lackeys. How they ever got along with him through one month is among the mysteries of statesmanship. President Jackson was not the mildest of men, but he was meekness itself in comparison with the first William Pitt.

But if Pitt was offensive to his colleagues, he was even more offensive to the enemies of his country. In a few weeks after he left the Ministry, the justice of his views became clear even to the young King and to Lord Bute, the latter personage having virtually made himself Premier. The Spanish Government, in compliance with the terms of the Family Compact, made war on England, and that country lost most of the advantages which would have been hers, if the King had been governed by Pitt's advice. The treasure-ships reached Spain in safety, and their cargoes furnished the new belligerent with the sinews of war. So far as they could, the English Ministers resolved to carry on the war with Spain in conformity with the plan which Pitt had formed. One of his projects was to send a force to seize the Havana, which, though not the important place that it now is, in itself, was nevertheless one of the most valuable of the commmanding points of the Spanish Indies. At that time the colonial dominion of Spain embraced the greater part of America, and the Havana was regarded as the key to the Occidental possessions of Charles III.[5] This key Secretary Pitt had meant to seize; and his successors, forced to act, availed themselves of the preparations which he had made. An expedition sailed from Spithead on the 5th of March, 1762, which was joined by other forces, the whole number of vessels being almost two hundred, of which about a fifth were ships of war. The total of the land-forces, including those sent from North America, was 14,041. The fleet was commanded by Admiral Sir George Pocock, and the army by General the Earl of Albemarle. Lord Albemarle was descended from that Arnold van Keppel who came into England, not with William the Conqueror, but with William of Orange, and who, through the favor of the Dutch King of England, founded one of the most respectable of British patrician houses. He was a good soldier, and in Cuba he showed considerable energy; but his name is not high in the list of commanders.

It is uncertain whether the Spaniards had knowledge of the intentions of the English, who, in those days, did not announce their points of attack to the enemy; but the Captain-General, Don Juan de Prado Porto Carrero, found it so very difficult to believe that the English would attack his Government, that even so late as the 6th of June, when the invaders were within a few hours of landing, he insisted that their fleet was a homeward-bound convoy from Jamaica; and he found fault with one of his officers who had taken some precautionary measures. The next day he was compelled to admit that he was mistaken, for then the British troops had landed. He could not have been more blind to the coming storm, had he lived in 1861, and held a high post in the Government of the United States. Once convinced of his error, he went vigorously to work, and prepared for defence. He had 27,610 men, including soldiers, seamen, marines, militia, and negroes,--for, in those days, it was not thought wise to refuse the services of black men, and even slaves were allowed the honor of being slain in the service of their masters. There were, however, but few regular troops at the command of the Captain-General,--only 4,610; but the seamen and marines, who numbered 9,000, helped to make the deficiency good. The Spaniards were situated somewhat as were the Russians, the other day, at Sebastopol. Their naval force was too small to have any chance whatever against that of the English, and the men who belonged to it were employed on land, where they behaved bravely. The best officers among the defenders were from the fleet. The Morro was put under the charge of Don Luis de Velasco, captain of a line-of-battle ship, who maintained the credit of his ancient name; and he was well supported by the Marques de Gonzales, another naval officer. Don Manuel Brizeñio, also from the fleet, with a brother-officer for his lieutenant, had charge of the Punta castle. The army-officers did not like these arrangements, but it was argued that seamen were better qualified than either cavalry or infantry to defend fortified places; and of regular artillerists there were but three hundred in the whole Spanish force. These considerations had their weight with the soldiers, and the conduct of the seamen fully justified the conduct of the Captain-General.

The English troops were landed on the 7th of June, and Colonel Carleton--the Sir Guy Carleton of our Revolutionary history--repulsed a cavalry attack that was made upon a detachment under his command. This so disheartened the Spaniards, that they abandoned the position which they had taken up at Guanabacoa for the purpose of impeding the advance of the invaders, and fell back on the Havana. The women and children, with the monks and nuns, were all sent out of the town, and the suburbs destroyed. On the 11th, the Cabaña fortress, which commands the Morro, was taken by Colonel Carleton. The Spaniards also abandoned the Chorrera fort, on the other side. Operations against the Morro were then begun. The English suffered much from the heat, and a little from the assaults of the defenders; and, though greatly aided by the fleet, it was not until the 1st of July that they were able to open fire on the Morro. Among their laborers were five hundred black slaves, purchased at Antigua and Martinique. Fatigue and sickness had reduced the army's strength more than one-third, without counting the soldiers who had died, or been slain by the Spanish fire; and three thousand seamen also were unfit for duty. Water was procured with difficulty, and fresh provisions were almost unknown.

The land-batteries opened on the Morro July 1st, and were supported by a fire from several ships. The latter were roughly received by the Spaniards, and lost one hundred and eighty-two men, besides being greatly damaged in hull, masts, and rigging, so that they were forced to abandon the conflict, without having made any impression on the fortress, though they had effected an important diversion in favor of the land-batteries, the fire from which had proved most injurious. On the 2d there were but two guns in condition to bear upon the besiegers. The latter, however, had a worse enemy than the Spaniards to contend against, the heat causing fires in their works that neither earth nor water could extinguish; and they had to remove their mortars from the left parallel, and substitute cannon. This was the crisis of the siege; and had a hurricane occurred, as was expected, the fleet would have been driven off, and the army probably captured. But no storm came, and the English, with characteristic stubbornness, repaired their damaged works, and erected others. On the 9th they renewed their fire, having twelve guns, and the Spaniards but nine. The English increased the strength of their batteries, while the Spanish guns were reduced to two by the 16th; and on the 17th the castle made no reply to the fire of the Valiant, a line-of-battle ship. Sapping-operations began that evening, and on the 18th a small lodgment was effected. The Spanish commander made a morning sally against the besiegers in three columns, which, if successful, would have necessitated the abandonment of the siege; but the first and second columns were driven back with heavy loss, and the third retreated without firing a shot. In this action a battalion of North Americans bore a prominent part, aiding to drive the first Spanish column to the water, where one hundred and fifty men were drowned. The total loss of the assailants was four hundred, besides those wounded who returned into the town.