Chapter VI: Life on Board (1)

I have recounted above the manner in which the good divinity spoiled the Labrador triumph of the malign god. To that veracious history belongs the following _addendum_. The evil power was deeply chagrined to be so robbed of his victory. Rubbing his brow with vexation, he chanced to break the skin with his nails. The venom of the viper is poisonous to its own blood; and in like manner, the malignity of the demon afflicted his own flesh with a festering pain. The slight anguish gave him a thought. "Ha! now I have it!" he cried; "now I will be quits with him!" He caused, accordingly, a boggy moss to grow in the hollows of this dreary land, and made this to generate in countless multitudes a small, winged, venomous fiend, named _mosquito_. "Ahriman is victor, after all!" he shouted, as the humming imps trooped forth upon the air.

I think he was!

Delighted with this success, the demon tried to repeat it in other lands; but it fared with him as with every genius, good or bad, who begins to repeat himself: the imitation was but a feeble copy of the original. The mosquito of Labrador would spoil Eden itself. The imitated fiend I am indifferent to, but from the original spare me!

We were spared in a degree. Ormuzd turned the weapons of his enemy against himself: rain, hail, and snow fought for us against the mosquito; but when fair weather came, this pest came with it. It is clear that Dante was not a man of genius! Otherwise he would have put the mosquito (the original, of course) in his "Inferno."

_Ennui_ is always to be suffered on a long voyage. We had it, enough of it, and to spare, yet always broken by days of high delight.

During the early part of the voyage, while we were still sailing, or even during considerable detentions in harbor, there was, novelty and incident enough to give the mind employment. The weather was fine; the sun shone; we lived on deck, in company with sun, sea, sky, horizon; and the mere relief from the narrowness of in-door life, the wide fellowship with the elements in which we were established, sufficed of themselves to invest our days with an unfailing charm. I was peculiarly happy, for I love the sea. All its ordinary aspects delight me in a very deep and heartfelt way. These were varied in the present instance with much that to me was far from being ordinary. Ever there was some ascending shore, some towering island or prodigious cliff, some enticing bird, some magnificence of morning or evening; and besides all these and a hundred attractions more, there were the beauty and terror of berg and floe-field, the marvel of the ice. For a time, therefore, all was enchantment. If we made a harbor, if we left one, expectation sailed with us; we fancied new scenes, new adventures,--the delight of exploration yet fierce in our souls.

But now comes a change. The novelty wears away; we get in some degree the gauge of the scenery and the variety of circumstance; the dawdling, snail-foot, insufferable creep of the ship from one fisherman's dog's-hole to another becomes inexcusable; the weather conspires against us; the sportsman wonders why he had brought gun and fishing-rod; even Science grows weary at times in its limited and hampered inspection. For more than five weeks our average progress along the coast was eight miles a day! The ice and the weather were partly responsible for this lagging; but there were other causes, at which I forbear to hint more definitely. Suffice it to say that they were of a kind that one finds it hard to be charmed with; and the Elder will here confide to the reader that he was in the end a much vexed individual.

_Ennui_ overtook us first in Square Island Harbor. During our long duress there, outward objects of interest began to fail, and each man was thrown back in some degree upon his own resources.

Now follows a special development of idiosyncrasy, and with it of friction. Kept below much of the time by inclement weather, we are crowded and jumbled incessantly together; you jostle against the shoulders of one, you rub elbows with another, you clamber over the knees of a third; the members of the company are thrust together more closely than husband and wife in the narrowest household, and there is no exhaustless spousal love, no nameless mutual charm of man and woman, to relieve the sharpness of contact. Every man's peculiarities come out; and as there is no space between one and another, every man's peculiarities jar upon those of his neighbor. One is rampant just when another is moodily silent; one wishes to sleep when another must shout or split.

For a while, however, these idiosyncrasies amuse. We are rather pleased with them as a resource than vexed by them as an annoyance. We are as yet full of the sense of power; we are equal to occasion, and like to feel our independence of outward support. So our young people run out into all sorts of riotous fun, and, sooth to say, the older do not always refuse a helping hand. The "Nightingale Club" becomes a "Night-Owl Club"; there are whistling choruses, laughing choruses, weeping, howling, stamping choruses, choruses of huzzas, of mock-complaint; there are burglaries, spectres, lampoons, and what not? At last these follies became tiresome, and every man was brought to the marrow-bones of his endurance.

Now, then, impatience, impatience! The abominable cooking, the dawdling progress,--how was one to endure them? Especially when we had turned homeward, and were sluggishly repeating the ground already traversed, did the delay become almost insupportable. At length, on the 24th of August, we fairly said good-bye to Labrador, and came sweeping southward with the matchless speed of which our schooner was capable when she got a chance. It wellnigh tore Bradford's heart-strings to leave his icebergs once and for all behind; for a more fascinated human being I believe there never was than this true enthusiast while on that coast. He _must_ paint the bergs with rare power, must get the very spirit and suggestion of them on canvas, or his soul will quit him, and make off north!

P----, the indefatigable, would also have gladly stayed longer, I believe. Our voyage had not extended so far as he desired to go, but had been fruitful of results, nevertheless. Besides making important observations upon the action of glacial and coast ice, counting upwards of seventy-five raised beaches, obtaining convincing indications of a great central table-land, and establishing by abundant detail a resemblance amounting almost to identity between the insect Fauna of Labrador and that of the summit of Mount Washington, he had been able to collect indubitable evidence that there exists a sub-Arctic group of marine animals inhabiting the shores of Labrador and Newfoundland. This last is a result of especial importance, as this group, owing to the want of material, had been overlooked by preceding naturalists. This gentleman, whose industry and zeal in scientific research are literally boundless, and are matched with much penetration, designs visiting the North of Europe to make comparisons between the land of the Lapps and Finns and the sub-Arctic regions of America; and I make no doubt that American science will obtain honor in his person.

The rest of us, however, breathed freer now that we were

HOMEWARD BOUND.

Wide swells aloft the snowy sail,
New life comes flowing on the gale.
Joy! joy! our exile all is past!
We're homeward bound, homeward at last!
Ill fates are strong, but God is stronger;
The loved that wait shall wait no longer;
Our wake is white with happy foam,
And blithe the skies to fan us home.

O bliss of friendship, bliss of heaven!
O heart of love, earth's angel leaven!
The speed of winds is in your feet,
Soon hands will join and lips will meet.

Now through our land roll far and wide
War's lurid flame and crimson tide;
But glory blushes through her woe,
And both to share with joy we go.

Farewell, grim North! Possess thy throne,
And reign amid thy bergs alone;
Now turn our hearts to truer poles,
To native shores and kindred souls.
Ill fates are strong, but God is stronger;
The loved that wait shall wait no longer;
Our wake is white with happy foam,
And blithe the skies to fan us home.

_September 1._--The Gulf had waylaid us, with a fierce storm in readiness. Our reckoning was wrong; we just escaped going ashore in the pitchy darkness; and, to mend all, the ship took fire! The flames were soon quenched, but St. Lawrence Neptune kept trying to put them out for twelve hours afterward; and such a drenching! But here we are between the shores of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton Isle. Fort Mulgrave, two miles away over the calm water and beneath the floods of sunshine, looks like a little paradise, (painted white,) after all my reviling it. And fields, too!--green fields and forests! Could one ever again wish more pleasure than to look on swarded fields and wooded hills? Yes,--besides this, the pleasure of _remembering_ Labrador!

FOOTNOTES:

[C] Possibly sienite. I omitted to make a note, and speak from recollection. If sienite, very hard, the quartz element predominating, as the feldspar does farther north.

NOTES OF A PIANIST.

III.

New York, _February, 1862._--One thing surprises me. It is to find New York, to say the least of it, as brilliant as when I took my departure for the Antilles in 1857. In general, the press abroad relates the events of our war with such a predetermined pessimist spirit, that at a distance it is impossible to form a correct estimate of the state of the country. For the last year I have read in the papers statements to this effect:--"The theatres are closed; the terrorism of Robespierre sinks into insignificance, compared to the excesses of the Americans; the streets of New York are deluged with blood" (I very nearly had a duel in Puerto Rico for venturing to question the authenticity of this last assertion, propounded by a Spanish officer); "in short, the North is in a starving condition."

"How can you think of giving concerts to people who are in want of bread?" was the remark of my friends, on being apprised of my resolution to return to the United States; and, in all humility, I must acknowledge that the same question suggested itself not unfrequently to my mind, when I discussed within me the expediency of my voyage. I have still in my possession a newspaper in which a correspondent states the depreciation of our currency to be such that he actually saw a baker refuse to take a dollar from a famished laborer in exchange for a loaf of bread.

The number of these trustworhy correspondents has increased in the direct ratio of our prosperity, the development of our resources, and the umbrage these blessings give to the enemies of democratic principles. There are very few governments that would not deem it a matter of duty to exult over the ruin of our republican edifice. Fear actuates the less enlightened; jealousy is the motive of the more liberal. A celebrated statesman once said to me, "A republic is theoretically a very fine thing, but it is a Utopia." Like the man in antiquity, who, on hearing motion denied, refuted the assertion simply by rising and walking, we had hitherto put the "Utopia" into practice; and the _thing did_ march on, and proved a reality. The argument was peremptory. A principle can be discussed; a fact is undeniable. Although refracted by the organs of the foreign press, the light of truth still flashed at times upon the people in Europe, and taught it to reflect. When our troubles broke out, I was in Martinique. In all the Antilles,--Spanish, French, Danish, English, Swedish, Dutch,--it was but one unanimous cry, "Did not we say so?" and the truthful and independent correspondents immediately embraced this opportunity to redouble their zeal, and forthwith began to multiply like mosquitoes in a tropical swamp after a summer shower.

But it is not my province to pronounce upon lofty political and moral questions. I would merely say that New York, for a deserted city, is singularly animated; that Broadway yesterday was thronged with pretty women, who, famished as they are, present, nevertheless, the delusive appearance of health, and brave with heroic indifference the bloody tumults of which our streets are daily the theatre; that Art is not so utterly dead among us but that Maretzek gives "Un Ballo in Maschera" to crowded houses, and Church sees his studio filled with amateurs desirous of admiring his magnificent and strange "Icebergs," which he has just finished.

It is difficult to account for the extreme ignorance of many foreigners with regard to the political and intellectual standing of the United States, when one considers the extent of our commerce, which covers the entire world like a vast net, or when one views the incessant tide of immigration which thins the population of Europe to our profit. A French admiral, Viscount Duquesne, inquired of me at Havana, in 1853, if it were possible to venture in the vicinity of St. Louis without apprehending being massacred by the Indians. The father of a talented French pianist who resides in this country wrote a few years since to his son to know if the furrier business in the city of New York was exclusively carried on by Indians. Her Imperial Highness the Grand-Duchess of Russia, on seeing Barnum's name in an American paper, requested me to tell her if he were not one of our prominent statesmen. For very many individuals in Europe, the United States have remained just what they were when Chateaubriand wrote "Les Natchez," and saw parrots(?) on the boughs of the trees which the majestic "_Mechasebe_" rolled down the current of its mighty waters. All this may seem improbable, but I advance nothing that I am not fully prepared to prove. There is, assuredly, an intelligent class of people who read and know the truth; but, unfortunately, it is not the most numerous, nor the most inclined to render us justice. Proudhon himself--that bold, vast mind, ever struggling for the triumph of light and progress--regards the pioneer of the West merely as an heroic outlaw, and the Americans in general as half-civilized savages. From Talleyrand, who said, "_L'Amerique est un pays de cochons sales et de sales cochons,_" down to Zimmermann, the director of the piano-classes at the Conservatory of Paris, who, without hearing me, gave as a reason for refusing to receive me in 1841, that "America was a country that could produce nothing but steam-engines," there is scarcely an eminent man abroad who has not made a thrust at the Americans.--It may not be irrelevant to say here that the little Louisianian who was refused as a pupil in 1841 was called upon in 1851 to sit as a judge on the same bench with Zimmermann, at the "_Concours_" of the Conservatory.

Unquestionably there are many blanks in certain branches of our civilization. Our appreciation of the fine arts is not always as enlightened, as discriminating, as elevated, as it might be. We look upon them somewhat as interlopers, parasites, occupying a place to which they have no legitimate right. Our manners, like the machinery of our government, are too new to be smooth and polished; they occasionally grate. We are more prone to worship the golden calf, in bowing down before the favorites of Fortune, than disposed to kill the fatted calf in honor of the elect of thought and mind. Each and every one of us thinks himself as good and better than any other man: an invaluable creed, when it engenders self-respect; but, alas! when we put it in practice, it is generally with a view of pulling down to our level those whose level we could never hope to reach. Fortunately, these little weaknesses are not national traits. They are inherent in all new societies, and will completely disappear when we shall attain the full development of our civilization with the maturity of age.

* * * * *

My _impresarios_, Strakosch and Gran, have made the important discovery, that my first concert in New York, on my return from Europe in 1853, took place the 11th of February, and consequently have decided to defer my reappearance for a few days in order that it may fall upon the 11th of February, 1862. The public (which takes not the remotest interest in the thing) has been duly informed of this memorable coincidence by all the papers.

Query by some of my friends: "Why do you say such and such things in the advertisements? Why do you not eliminate such and such epithets from the bills?"

Answer: Alas! are you ignorant of the fact that the artist is a piece of merchandise, which the _impresario_ has purchased, and which he sets off to the best advantage according to his own taste and views? You might as well upbraid certain pseudo-gold-mines for declaring dividends which they will never pay, as to render the artist responsible for the puffs of his managers. A poor old negress becomes, in the hands of the Jupiter of the Museum, the nurse of Washington; after that, can you marvel at the magniloquent titles coupled with my name?

The artist is like the stock which is to be quoted at the board and thrown upon the market. The _impresario_ and his agents, the broker and his clique, cry out that it is "excellent, superb, unparalleled,--the shares are being carried off as by magic,--there remain but very few reserved seats." (The house will perhaps be full of dead-heads, and the broker may be meditating a timely failure.) Nevertheless, the public rushes in, and the money follows a similar course. If the stock be really good, the founders of the enterprise become millionnaires. If the artist has talent, the _impresario_ occasionally makes his (the _impresario's_) fortune. In case both stock and artist prove bad, they fall below par and vanish after having made (quite innocently) a certain number of victims. Now, in all sincerity, of the two humbugs, do you not prefer that of the _impresario_? At all events, it is less expensive.

* * * * *

I heard Brignoli yesterday evening in "Martha." The favorite tenor has still his charming voice, and has retained, despite the progress of an _embonpoint_ that gives him some uneasiness, the aristocratic elegance which, added to his fine hair and "beautiful throat," has made him so successful with the fair sex. Brignoli, notwithstanding the defects his detractors love to heap upon him, is an artist I sincerely admire. The reverse of vocalists, who, I am sorry to say, are for the most part vulgar ignoramuses, he is a thorough musician, and perfectly qualified to judge a musical work. His enemies would be surprised to learn that he knows by heart Hummel's Concerto in A minor. He learned it as a child when he contemplated becoming a pianist, and still plays it charmingly. Brignoli knows how to sing, and, were it not for the excessive fear that paralyzes all his faculties before an audience, he would rank among the best singers of the day.

I met Brignoli for the first time at Paris in 1849. He was then very young, and had just made his _debut_ at the Theatre Italien, in "L' Elisire d' Amore," under the sentimental patronage of Mme. R., wife of the celebrated barytone. In those days Brignoli was very thin, very awkward, and his timidity was rendered more apparent by the proximity of his protectress. Mme. R. was an Italian of commanding stature, impassioned and jealous. She sang badly, although possessed of a fine voice, which she was less skilful in showing to advantage than in displaying the luxuriant splendor of her raven hair. The public, initiated into the secret of the green-room, used to be intensely amused at the piteous attitudes of Nemorino Brignoli, contrasting, as they did, with the ardent pantomime of Adina R., who looked by his side like a wounded lioness. Poor woman! What has been your fate? The glossy tresses of which you were so proud in your scenes of insanity, those tresses that brought down the house when your talent might have failed to do so, are now frosted with the snow of years. Your husband has forsaken you. After a long career of success, he has buried his fame under the orange-groves of the Alhambra. There he directs, according to his own statement, (but I can scarce credit it,) the phantom of a Conservatory for singing. I am convinced he has too much taste to break in upon the poetical silence of the old Moorish palace with _portamenti_, trills, and scales, and I flatter myself that the plaintive song of the nightingales of the Generalife and the soft murmur of the Fountain of the Lions are the only concerts that echo gives to the breeze that gently sighs at night from the mountains of the Sierra Nevada. Alas! poor woman, your locks are silvered, and Brignoli--has grown fat! "_Sic transit gloria mundi!_"

DIPLOMACY OF THE REVOLUTION.

When a European speaks about the American Revolution, he speaks of it as the work of Washington and Franklin. These two names embody for his mind all the phases of the contest, and explain its result. The military genius of Washington, going hand in hand with the civil genius of Franklin, fills the foreground of his picture. He has heard of other names, and may remember some of them; but these are the only ones which have taken their place in his memory at the side of the great names of European history.

In part this is owing to the importance which all Europeans attach to the French alliance as one of the chief causes of our success. For then, as now, France held a place among the great powers of the world which gave importance to all her movements. With direct access to two of the principal theatres of European strife and easy access to the third, she never raised her arm without drawing immediate attention. If less powerful than England on the ocean, she was more powerful there than any other nation; and even England's superiority was often, and sometimes successfully, contested. The adoption by such a power of the cause of a people so obscure as the people of the "Thirteen Colonies" then were was, in the opinion of European statesmen, decisive of its success. The fact of our actual poverty was known to all; few, if any, knew that we possessed exhaustless sources of wealth. Our weakness was on the surface, palpable, manifest, forcing itself upon attention; our strength lay out of sight, in rich veins which none but eyes familiar with their secret windings could trace. Thus the French alliance, as the European interpreted it, was the alliance of wealth with poverty, of strength with weakness,--a magnanimous recognition of efforts which without that recognition would have been vain. What, then, must have been the persuasive powers, the commanding genius, of the man who procured that recognition!

Partly, also, this opinion is owing to the personal character and personal position of Franklin. Franklin was preeminently a wise man, wise in the speculative science and wise in the practical art of life. Something of the maturity of age seems to have tempered the liveliest sallies of his youth, and much of the vivacity of youth mingles with the sober wisdom of his age. Thoughtful and self-controlling at twenty, at seventy his ripe experience was warmed by a genial glow. He entered upon life with the feeling that he had a part to perform, and the conviction that his happiness would depend upon his performing it well. What that part was to be was his earliest study; and a social temperament, combining with a sound judgment, quickly taught him that the happiness of the individual is inseparably connected with the happiness of the species. Thus life became his study as a condition of happiness; man and Nature, as the means of obtaining it. He sought to control his passions as he sought to control the lightning, that he might strip them of their power to harm. Sagacious in the study of causes, he was still more sagacious in tracing their connection with effects; and his speculations often lose somewhat of their grandeur by the simple and unpretending directness with which he adapts them to the common understanding and makes them minister to the common wants of life. The ambition which quickened his early exertions met an early reward. He was ambitious to write well, and he became one of the best writers in our language. He was ambitious of knowledge, and he laid it up in such stores that men sought his conversation in order to learn from him. He was ambitious of pecuniary independence, and he accumulated a fortune that made him master of his time and actions. He was ambitious of influence, and he obtained a rare control over the thoughts and the passions of men. He was ambitious of fame, and he connected his name with the boldest and grandest discovery of his age.

Living thus in harmony with himself, he enjoyed the rare privilege of living in equal harmony with the common mind and the advanced mind of his contemporaries. He entered into every-day wants and feelings as if he had never looked beyond them, and thus made himself the counsellor of the people. He appreciated the higher wants and nobler aspirations of our nature, and thus became the companion and friend of the philosopher. His interest in the present--and it was a deep and active interest--did not prevent him from looking forward with kindling sympathies to the future. Like the diligent husbandman of whom Cicero tells us, he could plant trees without expecting to see their fruit. If he detected folly with a keen eye, he did not revile it with a bitter heart. Human weakness, in his estimate of life, formed an inseparable part of human nature, the extremes of virtue often becoming the starting-points of vice,--better treated, all of them, by playful ridicule than by stern reproof. He might never have gone with Howard in search of abuses, but he would have drawn such pictures of those near home as would have made some laugh and some blush and all unite heartily in doing away with them. With nothing of the ascetic, he could impose self-denial and bear it. Like Erasmus, he may not have aspired to become a martyr,--but in those long voyages and journeys, which, in his infirm old age, he undertook in his country's service, there was much of the sublimest spirit of martyrdom. His philosophy, a philosophy of observation and induction, had taught him caution in the formation of opinions, and candor in his judgments. With distinct ideas upon most subjects, he was never so wedded to his own views as to think that all who did not see things as he did must be wilfully blind. His justly tempered faculties lost none of their serene activity or gentle philanthropy by age. Hamilton himself, at thirty, did not labor with more earnestness in the formation of the Constitution than Franklin at eighty-one; and as if in solemn record of his own interpretation of it, his last public act, with eternity full in view, was to head a memorial to Congress for the abolition of the slave-trade.

That such a man should produce a strong impression upon the excitable mind of France must be evident to every one who knows how excitable that mind is. But to understand his public as well as his personal position, not so much at the French Court as at the court of French opinion, we must go back a dozen years and see what that opinion had been since the Peace of 1763.

The Treaty of Paris, like all treaties between equals founded upon the temporary superiority of one over the other, had deeply wounded, not the vanity only, but the pride of France. Humbled in the eyes of her rival, humbled in the eyes of Europe, she was still more profoundly humbled in her own eyes. It was a barbed and venomous arrow, haughtily left to rankle in the wound. For highminded Frenchmen, it was henceforth the wisdom as well as the duty of France to prepare the means and hasten the hour of revenge. It was then that the eyes of French statesmen were first opened to the true position of the American Colonies. It was then that they first saw how much the prosperity of the parent state depended upon the sure and constant flow of wealth and strength from this exhaustless source. Then, too, they first, saw, these Colonies, in due time, must grow into independence; and in this, independence, in this severing of ties which they foresaw English pride would cling to long after English avidity had stripped them of their natural strength, there was the prospect of full and sweet revenge.

Scarce a twelvemonth had passed from the signing of the Treaty of Paris, when the first French emissary, an officer of the French navy, was already at his work in the Colonies. Passing to and fro, travelling here and there, moving from place to place as any common traveller might have done, his eyes and his ears were ever open, his note-book was ever in his hand, and, without awakening the suspicions of England, the first steps in a work to which the Duke of Choiseul looked forward as the crowning glory of his administration were wisely and surely taken. They were promptly followed up. The French Ambassador in England established relations with Colonial agents in London which enabled him to follow the progress of the growing discontent and anticipate the questions which must soon be brought forward for decision. Franklin's examination before the House of Commons became the text of an elaborate despatch, harmonizing with the report of his secret agent, and opening a prospect which even the weary eyes of Louis XV. could not look upon without some return of the spirit that had won for his youth the long forfeited title of the Well-Beloved. It was not the first time that the name of the great philosopher had been heard in the council-chamber of Versailles. But among the secret agents of France we now meet for the first time the name of De Kalb, a name consecrated in American history by the life that he laid down for us on the fatal field of Camden. Scarce a step was taken by the English Ministry that was not instantly communicated by the Ambassador in London to the French Minister at Versailles, with speculations, always ingenious, often profound, upon its probable results. Scarce a step was taken in the Colonies without attracting the instant attention of the French agent. Never were events more closely studied or their character better understood. When troops were sent to Boston, the English Ministry was not without serious apprehensions of resistance. But when the tidings of their peaceful landing came, while the English were exulting in their success, the French Ambassador rejoiced that the wisdom of the Colonial leaders had withheld them from a form of opposition for which they were not yet ready. The English Ministry was preparing to enter upon a system of coercion at the point of the bayonet. "If the Colonists submit under the pressure," said Choiseul, "it will only be in appearance and for a short time."

Meanwhile his active brain was teeming with projects; the letters of his agents were teeming with suggestions. Frances counsels caution, dreads the effects of hasty measures; for the Colonists have not yet learned to look upon France as a friend, and premature action might serve only to bind them more firmly to England. Du Chatelet proposes that France and Spain, sacrificing their old colonial system, should open their colonial ports to the products of the English Colonies,--thus inflicting a fatal blow upon England's commerce, while they supplant her in the affections of the Colonists. A clerk in the Department of Commerce goes still farther, advocating a full emancipation of the French Colonies, both to throw off a useless burden and to increase the irritation of the English Colonies by the spectacle of an independence which they were not permitted to share.

There is nothing in history more humiliating than to see on what small hinges great events sometimes turn. Of all the disgraceful intrigues of a palace filled with intrigues from the day of its foundation, there is none half so disgraceful as the overthrow of the Duke of Choiseul in 1770. And yet, vile as it was both by its motive and by its agents, it marks an important point in the progress of American independence. A bow more, a sarcasm less, might have confirmed the power of a man whose deep-rooted hatred of England was fast hastening to its natural termination, an open rupture; and a premature rupture would have brought the Colonists into the field, either as the subjects of England or as the allies of France. To secure the dependence of the Colonies, England would have been compelled to make large concessions; and timely concessions might have put off the day of separation for another century. To secure the alliance of the Colonies, France would have been compelled to take upon herself the burden of the war; a French general might have led our armies; French gold might have paid our troops; we might have been spared the sufferings of Valley Forge, the humiliation of bankruptcy; but where would have been the wise discipline of adversity? and if great examples be as essential to the formation of national as of individual character, what would the name of independence have been to us, without the example of our Washington?

French diplomacy had little to do with the American events of the next five years. England, unconscious how near she had been to a new war with her old enemy, held blindly on in her course of irritation and oppression; the Colonies continued to advance by sure steps from resistance by votes and resolves to resistance by the sword. When Louis XVI. ascended the throne in 1774, and Vergennes received the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, domestic interests pressed too hard upon them to allow of their resuming at once the vast plans of the fallen minister. Unlike that Minister, Vergennes, a diplomatist by profession, preferred watching and waiting events to hastening or anticipating hem. But to watch and wait events like those which were then passing in the Colonies without being drawn into the vortex was beyond the power of even his well-trained and sagacious mind. In 1775, a French emissary was again taking the measure of American perseverance, French ambassadors were again bringing forward American questions as the most important questions of their correspondence. That expression which has been put into so many mouths as a summing up of the value of a victory was applied in substance by Vergennes to the Battle of Bunker Hill,--"Two more victories of this kind, and the English will have no army left in America."

And while thus tempted by this proof of American strength, his wavering mind was irritated by the apprehension of some sudden outbreak of English arrogance; for the Ambassador wrote that Whigs and Tories might yet unite in a war against France in order to put an end to the troubles in the Colonies,--and no Frenchman had forgotten that England began the War of 1755 by an open violation of international law, by seizing three hundred French merchant ships and casting into prison ten thousand French sailors before the declaration of hostilities. Thus events prepared the way for American diplomacy, and, more powerful than the prudence of Vergennes or the pacific longings of Louis XVI., compelled them to decide and act, when they would still gladly have discussed and waited.

And, moreover, a new element had been introduced into the councils of statesmen,--or rather, an element hitherto circumscribed and resisted had begun to act with irresistible force. Public opinion, speaking through the press by eloquent pens, through coffee-houses and saloons by eloquent voices, called loudly for action in the name of humanity and in the still more exciting name of French honor. Little as most Frenchmen knew about America, they knew enough about England to believe that in her disputes with other nations she was apt to be in the wrong,--and if with other nations, why not with her own colonies? The longing for revenge, which ever since the Treaty of Paris filled some corner of every French heart, grew stronger at the near approach of so abundant a harvest; nor did it lose any of its sweetness from the reflection that their enemy himself was doing what they never could have done alone to prepare it for them.

But humanity, too, was a powerful word. Men could not read Rousseau without being led to think more earnestly, if not always more profoundly, upon the laws of social organization. They could not read Voltaire without a clearer perception of abuses and a more vigorous contempt for the systems which had put the many into the hands of the few to be butchered or butchers at their will. They could not read Montesquieu without feeling that there was a future in store for them for which the long past had been patiently laboring, and longing, as they read, to hasten its coming. In that future, mankind were to rise higher than they had ever risen before; rulers and ruled were to act in fruitful harmony for their common good; the brightest virtues of Greece, the purest virtues of Rome, were to revive in some new form of society, not very definitely conceived by the understanding, but which floated in magnificent visions before the glowing imagination.

I hasten reluctantly over this part of my subject; for the formation of public opinion in France and its action upon Government, even while all the forms of an almost absolute monarchy were preserved, is an important chapter in the history of European civilization. But hasten I must, merely calling attention to the existence of this element, and reminding my reader, that, chronologically, of the two parts which composed this opinion, hatred for England had been at work ever since 1763, while sympathy with the Colonists was rather an individual than a public feeling till late in 1776.

It was at Versailles, and not at Paris, that action began. Vergennes's first step was to send another agent, no longer merely to observe and report, but to ascertain, though without compromising the French Government, how far the Americans were prepared for French intervention. English suspicions were already awakened. Already the English Minister had informed the French Ambassador, upon the authority of a private letter of General Lee to General Burgoyne, that the Americans were sure of French aid. It was not without great difficulty that the new agent, De Bonvouloir, could find a safe conveyance. But by December he was already in Philadelphia, and, though still pretending to be a mere traveller, soon in full communication with the Committee of Secret Correspondence.

The appointment of this committee, on the 29th of November, 1775, is the beginning of the history of our foreign relations. Then began our attempts to gain admission into the great family of nations as an independent power,--attempts not always judiciously directed, attended in some instances with disappointment and mortification, but crowned at last with as full a measure of success as those who understood monarchy and Europe could have anticipated. Two of its members, Franklin and Dickinson, were already known abroad, where, at a later day, Jay also was to make himself an enduring name. The other two, Johnson and Harrison, enjoyed and merited a high Colonial reputation.

There can be but little doubt that Franklin's keen eye quickly penetrated the veil under which De Bonvouloir attempted to conceal his real character. It was not the first time that he had been brought into contact with French diplomacy, nor the first proof he had seen that France was watching the contest in the hope of abasing the power of her rival. While agent in London for four Colonies,--a true ambassador, if to watch events, study character, give timely warning and wise counsel be the office of an ambassador,--he had lived on a friendly footing with the French legation, and profited by it to give them correct views of the character and feelings of the Colonies. And now, reducing the question to these simple heads, he asked,--

"How is France disposed towards us? If favorably, what assurance will she give us of it?

"Can we have from France two good engineers, and how shall we apply for them?

"Can we have, by direct communication, arms and munitions of war, and free entrance and exit for our vessels in French ports?"

But whatever reliance they may have placed on the French emissary, the Committee were unwilling to confine themselves to this as the only means of opening communication with European powers. During a visit to Holland, Franklin had formed the acquaintance of a Swiss gentleman of the name of Dumas,--a man of great learning and liberal sentiments, and whose social position gave him access to sure sources of information. To him he now addressed himself with the great question of the moment:--"If we throw off our dependence upon Great Britain, will any court enter into alliance with us and aid us for the sake of our commerce?"

Such, then, was the starting-point of our diplomatic history, the end and aim of all our negotiations: alliance and aid for the sake of our commerce.

But we should greatly mistake the character of the times, if we supposed that this point was reached without many and warm debates. When the question was first started in Congress, that body was found to be as much divided upon this as upon any of the other subjects which it was called upon to discuss. With Franklin, one party held, that, instead of asking for treaties with European powers, we should first conquer our independence, when those powers, allured by our commerce, would come and ask us; the other, with John Adams, that, as our true policy and a mark of respect from a new nation to old ones, we ought to send ministers to all the great courts of Europe, in order to obtain the recognition of our independence and form treaties of amity and commerce. Franklin, who had already outlived six treaties of "firm and lasting peace," and now saw the seventh swiftly approaching its end, might well doubt the efficacy of those acts to which his young and impetuous colleague attached so much importance. But in Congress the majority was with Adams, and for a while there was what Gouverneur Morris called a rage for treaties.

The Committee of Secret Correspondence, as I have already said, was formed in November, 1775. One of its first measures was to appoint agents,--Arthur Lee for London, Dumas for the Hague, and, early in the following year, Silas Deane for France. Lee immediately opened relations with the French Court by means of the French Ambassador in London; and Deane, on his arrival in France in June, followed them up with great intelligence and zeal. A million of livres was placed by Vergennes in the hands of Beaumarchais, who assumed the name of Hortalez & Co., and arranged with Deane the measures for transmitting the amount to America in the shape of arms and supplies.

And now the Declaration of Independence came to add the question of recognition to the question of aid. But recognition was a declaration of war, and to bring the French Government to this decisive pass required the highest diplomatic skill supported by dignity and weight of character. The Colonies had but one man possessed of these qualifications, and that man was Franklin.

The history of diplomacy, with its long record of solemn entrances and brilliant processions, its dazzling pictures of thrones and courts, which make the head dizzy and the heart sick, has no scene half so grand as the entrance of this unattended, unushered old man into France, in December, 1776. No one knew of his coming until he stood among them; and then, as they looked upon his serene, yet grave and thoughtful face,--upon his gray hairs, which carried memory back to the fatal year of Ramillies and the waning glories of the great Louis,--on the right hand which had written words of persuasive wisdom for prince and peasant, which had drawn the lightning from its home in the heavens, and was now stretched forth with such an imperial grasp to strip a sceptre they all hated of its richest jewel,--a feeling of reverential awe came over them, and they bowed themselves before him as in the secret depths of their hearts they had never bowed to emperor or king. "He is at Nantes, he is on the road," was whispered from mouth to mouth in the saloons of the capital, as his landing became known. Some asserted confidently that he had already reached Paris, others that he might be hourly expected. Then came the certainty: he had slept at Versailles the night of the 21st, had come to Paris at two the next afternoon, and now was at his lodgings in the Rue de l'Universite.

No one, perhaps, was more surprised than Franklin to find himself the object of such universal attention. But no one knew better than he how to turn it to account for the accomplishment of his purpose. In a few days he withdrew to the quiet little village of Passy, at easy distance both from the city and the court,--and, without endeavoring to increase the public curiosity by an air of mystery or seclusion, kept himself sufficiently in the background to prevent that curiosity from losing its stimulant by too great a familiarity with its object. Where men of science met for the discussion of a new theory or the trial of a new experiment, he was to be seen amongst them with an unpretending air of intelligent interest, and wise suggestions, never indiscreetly proffered, never indiscreetly withheld. Where humane men met to discuss some question of practical benevolence, or philosophers to debate some principle of social organization, he was always prepared to take his part with apt and far-reaching illustrations from the stores of his meditation and experience. Sometimes he was to be seen in places of amusement, and always with a genial smile, as if in his sympathy with the enjoyment of others he had forgotten his own perplexities and cares. In a short time he had drawn around him the best minds of the capital, and laid his skilful hand on the public pulse with an unerring accuracy of touch, which told him when to speak and when to be silent, when to urge and when to leave events to their natural progress. Ever active, ever vigilant, no opportunity was suffered to escape him, and yet no one whose good-will it was desirable to propitiate was disgusted by injudicious importunity. Even Vergennes, who knew that his coming was the signal of a new favor to be asked, found in his way of asking it such a cheerful recognition of its true character, so considerate an exposition of the necessities which made it urgent, that he never saw him come without pleasure. If he had been a vain man, he would have enjoyed his position too much to make good use of it for the cause he came to serve. If he had been a weak man, he would have fallen under the control of the opinion which it was his office to guide. If he had not possessed a pure and genuine sympathy with human nature, he would not have been able, at the age of seventy, to enter into the feelings of a people so different from those among whom he had always lived. And if he had not been stimulated by earnest convictions, and governed by high principles, he would not have been able to withstand the frequent and insidious attempts that were made to shake his fortitude and undermine his fidelity. But in him, as in Washington, there was a rare predominance of that sound common-sense which is man's surest guide in his relations with events, and that firm belief in the progress of humanity which is his best reliance in his relations with men.

Congress had given him two associates in his commission to France,--Silas Deane of Connecticut, and Arthur Lee of Virginia. Deane had been a member of Congress, was active, enterprising, and industrious; but his judgment was not sound, his knowledge of men not extensive, his acquaintance with great interests and his experience of great affairs insufficient for the important position in which he was placed. Lee had lived long in England, was an accomplished scholar, a good writer, familiar with the character of European statesmen and the politics of European courts,--but vain, jealous, irritable, suspicious, ambitious of the first honors, and disposed to look upon every one who attracted more attention than himself as his natural enemy. Deane, deeply impressed with the importance of Franklin's social position for the fulfilment of their common duties, although energetic and active, cheerfully yielded the precedence to his more experienced colleague. Lee, conscious of his own accomplishments, regarded the deference paid to Franklin as an insult to himself, and promptly resumed in Paris the war of petty intrigue and secret accusation which a few years before he had waged against him in England. In this vile course Congress soon unwittingly gave him a worthy coadjutor, by appointing, as Commissioner to Tuscany, Ralph Izard of South Carolina, who, without rendering a single service, without even going near the court to which he was accredited, continued for two years to draw his salary and abuse Dr. Franklin.

When Franklin reached Paris, he found that Deane had already made himself a respectable position, and that, through Caron de Beaumarchais, the brilliant author of "Figaro," the French Government had begun that system of pecuniary aid which it continued to render through the whole course of the war. Vergennes granted the Commissioners an early interview, listened respectfully to their statements, asked them for a memorial to lay before the King, assured them of the personal protection of the French Court, promised them every commercial facility not incompatible with treaty obligations with Great Britain, and advised them to seek an interview with the Spanish Ambassador. The memorial was promptly drawn up and presented. A copy of it was given to the Spanish Ambassador to lay before the Court of Madrid. Negotiations were fairly opened.

But Franklin soon became convinced that the French Government had marked out for itself a line of policy, from which, as it was founded upon a just appreciation of its own interests, it would not swerve,--that it wished the Americans success, was prepared to give them secret aid in arms and money and by a partial opening of its ports,--but that it was compelled by the obligations of the Family Compact to time its own movements in a certain measure by those of Spain, and was not prepared to involve itself in a war with England by an open acknowledgment of the independence of the Colonies, until they had given fuller proof of the earnestness of their intentions and of their ability to bear their part in the contest. Nor was he long in perceiving that the French Government was giving the Colonies money which it sorely needed for paying its own debts and defraying its own expenses,--and thus, that, however well-disposed it might be, there were certain limits beyond which it was not in its power to go. It was evident, therefore, to his just and sagacious mind, that to accept the actual policy of France as the gauge of a more open avowal under more favorable circumstances, and to recognize the limits which her financial embarrassments set to her pecuniary grants, was the only course that he could pursue without incurring the danger of defeating his own negotiations by excess of zeal. Meanwhile there was enough to do in strengthening the ground already gained, in counteracting the insidious efforts of English emissaries, in correcting erroneous impressions, in awakening just expectations, in keeping up that public interest which had so large a part in the formation of public opinion, and in so regulating the action of that opinion as to make it bear with a firm and consistent and not unwelcome pressure upon the action of Government. And in doing this he had to contend not only with the local difficulties of his position, but with the difficulty of uncertain communications: months often intervening between the sending of a despatch and the receiving of an answer, and affording newsmongers abundant opportunities for idle reports and unfounded conjectures, and enemies ample scope for malicious falsehoods.