Chapter I: Part 1

[Transcriber's Note: Bold text is surrounded by =equal signs= and italic text is surrounded by _underscores_.]

THE CHAUTAUQUAN.

_A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE._

VOL. III. APRIL, 1883. NO. 7.

Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

_President_, Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio.

_Superintendent of Instruction_, J. H. Vincent, D. D.,
Plainfield, N. J.

_General Secretary_, Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.

_Office Secretary_, Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield,
N. J.

_Counselors_, Lyman Abbott, D. D.; J. M. Gibson, D. D.;
Bishop H. W. Warren, D. D.; W. C. Wilkinson, D. D.

[Transcriber's Note: This table of contents of this periodical was created for the HTML version to aid the reader.]

CONTENTS

REQUIRED READING
History of Russia
Chapter IX.—The Tatar Invasions—1224-1264 365
A Glance at the History and Literature of Scandinavia
VI.—The Romance of Axel 368
Pictures from English History
VII.—The John Brown of the English Slaves 371
PHYSIOLOGY 374

SUNDAY READINGS
[April 1.]
The Law of the Household 377
[April 8.]
The Law of the Household 378
[April 15.]
Finding and Bringing 379
[April 22.]
Finding and Bringing 380
[April 29.]
Faith the Soul Saving Act 380

They Grow to Flowers, Or to Weeds 383
Habit of Taking Pains 384
A Chaplet of Pearls 385
The Worth of Fresh Air 386
The Mammalia 389
Washington Irving 390
Hours of Rest 392
The Resources of the United States 393
Montana 394
Tales from Shakspere
Much Ado About Nothing 395
The Head and the Heart 398
Defects in Our American Homes 399

C. L. S. C. Work 401
C. L. S. C. Testimony 402
C. L. S. C. Song 402
Local Circles 403
Robin and I 407
Questions and Answers
Fifty Questions and Answers on Hampton Tracts, No. 5,
“A Haunted House,” and No. 9. “Cleanliness and
Disinfection.” 407
Outline of C. L. S. C. Studies 408
Thomas Hood 409
An Unnoted Evidence 412
Loss and Gain 413
Chautauqua Emerging from Winter 413
Chautauqua School of Languages 414
Editor’s Outlook 415
Editor’s Note-book 417
Editor’s Table 419

REQUIRED READING FOR APRIL
English Literature
The Poet Described 423
On Giving Advice 424
Education Compared to Sculpture 425
New Books 426

REQUIRED READING[A]

FOR THE

_Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for 1882-83_.

APRIL.

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

By MRS. MARY S. ROBINSON.

_CHAPTER IX._

THE TATAR INVASIONS—1224-1264.

The Russian principalities, weakened by civil wars, had no time for federation or concentration against the race that, moving with the swiftness of wild horses, darkened the horizon of the realm with their coming in 1224. Their aspect was rude, gross, and frightful: collectively, they were like an army of goblins. An English writer, who had perhaps witnessed one of their attacks, describes them: “They have broad and flat visages of a tanned color, yellow and black; thin hayre upon the upper lip, and a pit upon the chin. Their speeche is sudden and loud, speaking as if out of a deep hollow throat. When they sing, you would think a cow lowed, or a great Ban dog howled. They suffer not their children to eat till they have shot near the Marke, within a certain scantling.” The bellowing of their cattle, the neighing of their wild horses, the grinding of the wooden wheels of their wagons, heightened the din and terror of their approach. In appearance and in warfare they were, in effect, half a million maniacs, mounted on horses as frenzied as themselves. Such conception of government as they had, took form in companies or hordes, who lived together in consenting communities, guarded by hosts of mounted archers. The poet, Matthew Arnold, in “Sohrab and Rustum,” gives a vivid enumeration of a Tatar host, as it mustered “by the broad-flowing Oxus,” many centuries prior to the period whereof we write:

“Kalmucks and Kuzzaks, tribes who stray
Nearest the pole; and wandering Kirghizes,
Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere:[B]

* * * * *

The Tatars of the Oxus, the king’s guard,
First, with black sheepskin caps, and with long spears;
Large men, large steeds, who from Bokhara come,
And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares.
Next, the more temperate Toorkums of the south,
The Tukas, and the lances of Salore,
And those from Attruck, and the Caspian sands—
Light men, and on light steeds, who only drink
The acrid milk of camels, and their wells.
And then a swarm of wandering horse, who come
From far, and a more doubtful service owned—
The Tatars of Ferghana, from the banks
Of the Jaxartes—men with scanty beards,
And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder hordes
Who roam o’er Kipschak and the northern waste.”

The lieutenants of Genghis, Tchep and Subudaï-bagadur, leaders of the invasion, fell upon the princes successively, cut down their small armies, struck terror into the remoter regions of the realm by the renown of the Asiatic conquests, and by the well-nigh incredible devastations made on Russian soil. The report was bruited that the Tatars had closed with the Polovtsui in southeastern Russia. These sent messengers imploring help from the descendants of Vladimir, saying: “The Tatars have taken our country; to-morrow they will take yours.” Scarcely had Mstislaf the Bold, in Galitsch, son of Mstislaf the Brave,[C] summoned Daniel of Volhynia, Mstislaf Romanovitch of Kief, and the other leading princes of the south to arm for the common cause, when the Tatar scouts had wet their horses’ hoofs in the Lower Dnieper. By the Kalka, a small stream coursing to the Sea of Azof, the brave, incautious Russian chivalry came within view of the innumerable mounted barbarians, moving with the speed and the obedience of one man. Mstislaf the Bold, Daniel of Volhynia, and Oleg of Kursk, precipitously urged by their angry contempt of the wild pagans, and by their eagerness to seize the honors of victory, closed with the dark swarms. In the height of battle, the Polovtsui, seized with affright, fell back disorderly upon the Russian ranks, causing disturbance and discomfiture throughout the army. The strange, wild sounds of the foe, the dust and clouds of arrows, added to the confusion, and soon the rout became general. The soldiers fled in terror from horsemen, the like of whom they had never seen, not even among the Petchenegs or the Drevliané; and for the princes nothing remained but instantaneous death, or flight to the Dnieper. Six of them already lay stiff and stark upon the field, amid seventy of their chief boyars, and nine-tenths of the fighting force; for of the one hundred thousand Russians, barely ten thousand escaped alive from the banks of the Kalka. Mstislaf Romanovitch of Kief had not been apprised of the rash advance of the three Princes, and consequently had remained within his earth-works on the bank of the Kalka. Abandoned by the fleeing remnant of the Russian host, he maintained a show of self-defense, until the Tatars made proposals permitting him to retire without molestation, on condition that ransom were paid for himself and his drujina; a condition violated as soon as it was accepted. The drujina were cut down by the sword; the prince with his two sons-in-law was stifled between planks. This day of national ruin closed with a festival held by the invaders over their slain victims.

The realm was silent with terror. Mourning for the fallen brave, burial of the dead, universal dismay followed this onslaught, that had been so sudden, so overwhelming, as to overpower any resolution for further defense. All at once, without notification, the multitudes of the Tatars vanished as swiftly and as mysteriously as they had appeared. One would have said their horses had invisible wings. They had crossed the Ural River, and were reported as beyond the Caspian Sea. They had returned to their late conquered lands of the East, where they remained during thirteen years, strengthening their hold, increasing in boldness, and ever and anon invading China with their cloud-like hordes. The Princes reverted to their usual discords, the Mongols gradually ceased to be talked of, save as a frightful apparition that had disappeared as unaccountably as it had advanced. Yet the sagacious and the learned among the Russians were not without forebodings. A comet had traversed the heavens in 1224, prior to the devouring invasion. Its re-appearance was regarded as a warning, an _avant-courier_ of the Tatars. The chroniclers record with alarm the seasons of scarcity and of pestilence, the conflagrations of towns, and especially the earthquake and sun eclipse of 1230, as portentous omens for the imperiled realm.

In 1237 the nomads who traversed the lands long before occupied by the Bulgarians of the Volga,[D] gave notice of a second irruption of the Mongol hosts, in a line of approach toward Suzdalian Russia. Forthwith followed tidings of the destruction of the “Great City,” capital of the half-civilized Bulgarui, and the massacre of all, or nearly all, of the people of that region. The invaders, led by Batui, nephew of Genghis, plunged into the forests of the Volga, and sent forward to Riazan two envoys with a sorcerer or Shaman. “If you want peace give us a tribute of the tenth of your goods,” ran their message. The ancient Slav courage and quickness that had spurred the Princes by the Kalka, was still regnant; and Riazan, with the neighboring States, represented in all by seven Princes, made answer: “When we are dead you may have the whole, if you can get them.” But, as before, the rude, wild race laid low the bravery of the nobler one. The Russian soldiers were cut down, till scarce any were left to tell the story of the day of ruin. Feodor, one of the fair youth of the Russian chivalry, as he lay bleeding on the field, exclaimed: “I thank thee, Great God, that thou takest me now to thyself. Mine eyes shall not behold Euphrasia the spoil of Batui.” Euphrasia, his beautiful wife, learning his fate, and forecasting her own, leaped from her castle window, her infant boy in her arms, crying: “Receive me, Christ and Feodor! Me, the hunted prey of the savage!” Oleg the Handsome, found bleeding from many wounds, among his dead drujina, repelled the offers, the caresses of the Khan, and was hewn into fragments. The ancient capital, the whole principality of Riazan was laid waste with sword and fire.

The stronger powers of Tchernigof and Suzdal had stood aloof in this unequal conflict, but were speedily punished for their supineness. Iuri (George) the Second, Grand Prince of Suzdal, and nephew of Andrei Bogoliubski, was driven from the field of battle by his mounted foemen, who also burned the young growing city of Moscow, and laid siege to the ancient capital, Vladimir-on-the-Kliasma, left to the guard of Iuri’s sons, while he went northward in search of help. The citizens prepared for their fate. Their bishop, Metrophanes, invested the princes and the boyars with the tonsure and the monastic garb: for the ancient custom of Russian royalty and nobility is to go down to death thus habited, symbolizing a formal renunciation of and separation from the world. When the Mongols, breaking in at all the gates simultaneously, swarmed into the revered capital, their first act was to burn the cathedral, whither had taken refuge the family of Iuri, with all the wealthy and powerful of the principality. Amid the crackling of the conflagration, the falling of timbers and roofs, the fierce war-cries of the barbarians, the souls in the sanctuary passed to their eternal destiny. The cities of Suzdal, Rostof, Iaroslavl, fourteen other large towns, and nearly all the villages of the principality were destroyed to the last house, and the last man, in this all-devouring campaign. The Mongols went in search of Iuri, who was in the realm of Novgorod raising recruits for his army. When he learned the fate of his capital, he cried: “Alas, that I have lived to see this day! Why am I left of all my people?” His headless body received burial at the hands of the Bishop of Rostof. Vasilko, Iuri’s son, was of comely mien and gracious manners. The Tatars, notwithstanding their ferocity and brutishness, were susceptible to the charm of beauty, and certain among them spoke gently to him: “Stay with us. You shall bear the banner of Batui. He is worthy.” “Never will I put my hand to the banner of the foemen of my country, and of the Lord Christ,” replied Vasilko. “Great as is my woe, ye shall never force me to lift my hand against a Christian. Thy destruction will also come, O heavy and cursed power! There _is_ a God, and you are doomed to perdition. Thither will you be hurled, when your cup is full, ye human tigers!” At these bold words, wrung from an agonized, but noble Slavic heart, the barbarians “gnashed upon him with their teeth,” thrust at him with their sabers, and flung his body into the forest of Scherensk, whither it was rescued, in time, and laid beside the remains of his father.

On their return route, the Tatars razed “Tver, the ancient and the rich,” and Torjok, where “the Russian heads fell beneath the Tatar swords as falls the grass before the scythe.” All traces of human habitation and human life disappeared in the track of their wanderings; for their cloud-like advances could not be called a march. The Great Republic began to tremble, for they had passed within her frontier. But swollen rivers, and forests till then untrodden by human feet, delayed the host, who sought, moreover, a softer clime and booty more easily obtained. It surged up to the Cross of Ignatius, within fifty miles of Novgorod Veliki, and there turned to the southeast. The village of Kozelsk (in the modern government of Kalouga), resisted to the death, and caused severe loss to the attacking squadrons. They named it the Wicked Town, and left not one of its people alive. Its young prince, Vasili, was drowned in a pool of blood.

Pereiaslaf and Tchernigof, though defended with similar desperation, suffered the same destruction (1238). All Russia, save the principality of Kief, was red with the blood of her children, or marred by the conflagrations kindled by the Asiatics. Mangu, grandson of Genghis, coveted the city whose praises had been uttered ofttimes by travelers and merchants in the Orient. From the left bank of the Dnieper he gazed upon its walls of hewn stone, its springing towers, its many-domed churches, roofed with silver and gold. Such a city in such a sunlight, not even a Tatar could despise. Could it but be preserved intact, a trophy of the conquest, it might well serve as a capital, a center for the incoming conquering race. Messengers were sent across the river, offering what the chief considered doubtless as fair conditions of surrender. But though Riazan, Vladimir, Tchernigof, Tver, venerable capitals of powerful states, had been burned to ashes, the indomitable Slavic heart would

] not endure the thought of servitude. The Kievans trampled the envoys under foot, and awaited their own fate. Mikhail the Prince, with Daniel of Galitsch, and the Prince of Volhynia took refuge in Poland and Hungary. Dmitri, deputy of Daniel, led the citizens in defending the Polish Gate, the attacking point of the enemy. Batui brought up its main body with an uproar that seemed to cause the earth to quake; the grinding of the wooden chariots, the cries of the camels, the neighing of wild horses, the war shrieks of the Tatars, the plying of their rude rams, united in such a confused turmoil as drowned the voices of those within the walls. Scarcely could the commands of Dmitri be understood. He with his Kievans, however, stood in the breach till sundown. The next day they retreated to the enclosure palisaded around the Church of the Tithe, defending their shrine as men defend their altars when their last hour has come. The greater part of them perished, write the chroniclers, around the tomb of their great Iaroslaf; the khan, however, commanded that Dmitri’s life should be spared; he would not see so noble a foeman ignominiously cut down. The city was then given over to the fury of the Asiatics. The venerable Church of the Tithe was so far destroyed that nothing remains of it, at present, save a few fragments of mosaic, preserved in the museum of the modern town. The Monastery of the Catacombs, founded by Saint Antony from Mt. Athos, where the saints lived and died in tombs of their own construction, was violated; no spot more redolent of sanctity, more revered than this, exists in the vast Russian Empire.[E] The splendor of the ancient Slav capital, fatally obscured by this second and most ruinous violation, has never been recovered. Kief has never thoroughly shaken from her garments the ashes of the Tatar brands.

The great states of Volhynia and Gallicia, abandoned by their princes, were in no condition for a resolute resistance, after the ruin of the rest of the realm. They bent themselves to the Mongol yoke, which had now been imposed upon all Russia outside the Great Republic. Those of the people who had escaped the Tatar arrows, were made slaves. The wives of boyars who had been surrounded with luxury, clothed in costly stuffs from the Orient, adorned with jewels and with golden collars, became the menials of the rude and filthy Tatars, were forced to cook their mutton and grain, and to grind their mills.

When the Princes of Galitsch, Volhynia, and Kief reached Western Europe, the nations were greatly moved. Louis IX. prepared for a crusade. Friedrich Second, Emperor of Germany, wrote to the other sovereigns: “This is a moment to open the eyes of all men, now that the gallant princes on whom we counted are enslaved or slaughtered.” Meanwhile the Mongols, ever wandering, impelled by the assertion of the great Genghis, that all the earth should become subject to one emperor, passed westward to the hills of Hungary, and were met by a Polish host at Liegnitz in Silesia. Their advance was strongly contested at Olmütz, in Moravia, where the Tchek voïvode, Iaroslaf, conducted a stubborn defense; nor did they pass eastward of this strongly fortified place: for learning there from the west that the King of Bohemia, allied with the Dukes of Austria and Karinthia, was coming with a mighty host to confront them: learning too, from the east, of the death of Oktai, successor of Genghis, Batui turned his horses’ heads, and made his way back to the Caspian, his force greatly diminished by the dense and hostile population of the hill region of Silesia, and by the continual molestation of a well-trained Polish cavalry, alert and well-prepared. It was the Slavic peoples,—the Russians, Poles, Silesians, and Moravians,—who bore the shock, and suffered the terrors of this last of the great Asiatic incursions. A few heroic Europeans on the outskirts of European civilization, sent backward the last tidal wave of barbaric invasion.

Upon the European steppes, apparently extensions of the Asiatic plains, beside a branch of the Lower Volga, Batui paused to build a “castle,” or city, Saraï, that became in time the capital of the Russian Tatar empire, the Golden Horde—so called from its sending a tent made of cloth of gold to the Grand Khan in Asia, as a part of its annual tribute; or perhaps from the chief tent of Batui, which was made of this precious stuff. This empire, called also Kipschak, extended from the Ural River and the Caspian Sea, westward to the mouth of the Danube, seventeen hundred miles; and from north to south, above a thousand miles, covering an area of one million seven hundred thousand square miles, or about half the area of our republic. Here gathered the Tatar Mongols, or modern Nogais, the remnants of the Petchenegs and the Polovtsui (Kumans), the Bashkirs, and later the Kalmucks, with various Turkish nomad tribes, such as the Tatars of Astrakan, and the aboriginal Finnish populations,—all save the last named invaders of the Russian realm from the ninth to the eighteenth centuries. The Golden Horde remained tributary to the first three successors of Genghis, but revolted from the fourth, Khubulaï, conqueror of the Chinese, and announced itself an independent empire in 1260. United and strong under the firm reign of Batui, it fell into dismemberment under his successors, till Khan Uzbek, in the fourteenth century, restored its unity and its primal prosperity. Gradually the nomads who settled upon its vast plains accepted the faith of Islam, and enrolled themselves among its fiercest propagandists. Gradually, too, they adopted partially the civilization of the people they had enslaved. The modern Russian Tatar is mild, peaceable, industrious, has a keen eye to trade, and unless in military ranks, cares nothing for warfare. But the advent of his race ushered a night of gloom over the young empire. All its arts and industries were annihilated for a century or more; its people were massacred or enslaved, its governments shattered, its national growth hopelessly obstructed. Its original Orientalism was intensified and used as the groundwork for the uprearing of an Oriental barbarism. The fine sensibilities, the poetry and grace, the generous spirit and gentle, hospitable manners of the Slav, were inoculated and depraved by the cruelty, the contempt of life, the falsehood, treachery, perfidy, and filthiness of the Mongol barbarians. One of the laws of Genghis was that clothes must never be washed, but worn without washing till they decayed. A like prohibition extended to the cooking utensils. The virtues and vices of his race have been enumerated as those of the animals of their zodiac:

Thievish as mice,
Strong as oxen,
Ferocious as panthers,
Cautious as hares,
Subtle as serpents,
Horrible as dragons,
Mettlesome as horses,
Obedient (to their rulers) as sheep,
Child-loving (of their offspring) as apes,
Faithful (to their over-lord) as dogs,
Unclean as swine.

Their ferocity led to the report in Greece and Western Europe that they had dog’s heads, and lived on human flesh. The degeneracy of the ancient Slav began with the entrance of the horsemen of Tchep and Subudaï-bagadur into the Russian realm. In the modern Russian, compounded of Finn, Turk, Tatar, and German, scarcely a trace of the nobler Slav lineaments is evident; and from the fourteenth century the current maxim gains continually in veracity: “Scratch a Russian and you find a Tatar.”

[To be continued.]

A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SCANDINAVIA.

VI.—THE ROMANCE OF AXEL:

[Concluded.]

Translated by L. A. SHERMAN, PH.D.

* * * * *

From their celestial flight restored
Spake Axel first: “Now by my sword,
By Northland’s honor, by each star,
Which like a bride-maid standing far
Looks down on us with beams benign,—
By earth and heaven, thou art mine!
Oh! it were blessed, far from strife
In some sweet vale where peace has made
Her home beneath the mountain’s shade,
To live with thee in blended life.
Alas! my oath, my oath prevents.
With hateful look, as here we stand,
It speechless thrusts its icy hand
Between our hearts, and bids me hence.
But fear not; I shall be released
With honor from my stringent oath,
And when next May shall bid us both
To her luxuriant, floral feast,
Then shall I surely come again,
And claim thee as my bride, my wife.
Farewell, thou jewel of my life,
Farewell, a long farewell till then!”

And with the word he turned away.
He took his sword, and king’s commands,
And through Czar Peter’s hundred lands
Resumed his swift and dangerous way,
Oft hid in woods the whole day through,
And guided in his paths by night
From heaven’s peerless signal light,—
The star of Northland, steadfast, true,
Or by those stars in heaven’s crown,
Which know no hour of going down,
The Wain of Charles, with argent beam,
And wheel-spikes forged of brightest gold.
And thus he rode through risks extreme,
And hordes of foemen manifold,
To Mälars palace, where amid
The council’s wonderment he told
How had escaped their sovereign bold,
And gave the letter as he bid.

But meanwhile in her vacant halls
Maria murmured Axel’s name,
In woods her sighs repeat the same,
And vales and hills send back her calls.
“What oath, pray, was it so austere?
Some maid in that bleak land so dear,
An older flame? or is there more
Than one? My heart spurns three or four!
Thou Northern maid in snow attire,
One of us twain must to the grave!
Thou knowest naught of Southern fire.
Beyond thy farthest frozen wave,
Beyond thy snow-peaks burdened high,
I’ll search thee out, for thou must die!
Yet—went not Axel when a boy
From home? Nor has he since that day
Returned, and far from all annoy
Of camps and strife love flees away.
Yes, only truth and honor dwell
On such a brow, and arched so well.
His steadfast gaze have I looked through,
Down to the bottom of his heart,
As deep the searching sunbeams dart
Through spring-depths, clear and silver-blue.
Why fleest thou then? What craved the test
Of oaths? Was it to crush this breast?
What—but in space my protest dies,—
A widow faint with bitter sighs,
A dove which roams with weary cry
Through earth and heaven without reply.
Yes, forests sigh and torrents fall
Between us, he hears not my call.
What! if I followed him?—But no!
It were not meet for woman so.
A _woman_,—who will know? If I
But wear a sword, the man is made.
With danger I have often played,
And staked life when I threw the die.
From horseback I was never thrown,
Nor ever carbine failed me aught.
Yes, God inspired in me the thought.
Now Axel thou art all my own!
I seek thee in thy land of birth,
I search for thee throughout the earth,
From dale to dale, from strand to strand,
And all oaths from thy lips I wring.
Now take me, War, upon thy wing,
And set me down in Axel’s land!”

So said so done. Resolve and deed
Are one with woman, and with speed
She is disguised. A casque compressed
And hid her dark abundant hair,
A doublet stayed her swelling breast,
Her powder-sack she filled with care,
And from her fair white shoulder slung
Death’s telescope, her carabine.
Down from a belt of Greek design
A crooked sabre gleaming hung,
And either lip and cheek she smeared
With black,—the hint of future beard.

* * * * *

She seemed, thus girt with belt and sword
Like Love in hero’s garb concealed,
Or Klinias’ son’s fair form restored,
Once painted on the gleaming shield.

“Farewell, my father’s home, farewell!
I shall return with love and dwell
Again within thy walls some day.
I can not wait, I must away.
Hide me beneath thy veil, O Night,
And give my Axel to my sight.”
Already lay upon the strands
Of slumbering Sweden’s vanquished lands
Czar Peter’s city, which has since
Held crowns in pledge from many a prince.
Then was it paltry. On its bay
It like a new-born dragon lay.
Yet nature is betrayed in young
That coils itself on heated sands,
Already venom in its glands,
And hisses on its cloven tongue.
A fleet to ravage Svea’s[F] shores
Was lading there with murderous stores,
And thitherward Maria pressed,
And where the ships received their hoard
Traced out her way, and made request
That she might have a place on board.
An officer who walked the quay,
And saw, surprised, addressed her then:
“You seem more dangerous, Sir youth,
To Northern maids than Northern men.
However it shall go with thee,
They can not tweak thy beard, forsooth!
Yet thou canst learn of them the whole
Of war: it is for death or life;
But either issue of the strife
God and Saint Nicholas control.”

The sails are set, the keel cuts through
The foam, and hastens toward the west,
And Svea’s cliffs soon rise to view
In sunset flames: they stand at rest
Amid the swirl of tide and wave,
The giant landmarks nature gave
Of old to warn of dangerous strands.
They landed on the famous sands
Which skirt the base of Sota’s reef,
Where parted Hjalmar[G] from the side
Of Ingeborg,[G] his faithful bride,
Where afterward she died of grief,
When Odin called the youth above
To Valhall’s courts, to do his will;
And there her ghost sits lingering still
Upon the cliff and mourns her love.

* * * * *

But towns are blazing one by one,
And children shriek and women fly;
Too well they know the war begun,
And bells are ringing far and nigh
Both night and day the call to arms.
Alas! the dead hear no alarms.
Woe! wretched land! what arm can save?
Thy valiant men are in their grave.
But still the peril of the land
Joins boys and old men in a band
With swords which smote on German mail,
And saw Gustavus’s hosts prevail,
And halberds wielded with despatch
In Denmark, worn with victory,
And curious shapes of musketry
With rusted locks, and kindled match.
Such was the kingdom’s sole defence,
A paltry troop, and weaponed ill;
Without surprise or doubt it still
Went forth to drive the foemen thence.
These did not battle hand to hand,
But spread their cloud across the land,
And lightened from the mountain’s crown
Where boldest hearts could not aspire,
And unrevenged death thundered down
On scanty ranks with ceaseless fire.

But then, as cometh angry Thor
With hammer, girt with manhood’s belt,
So Axel came and joined the war,
Where flight prevailed and horror dwelt,—
An angel sent in time of need.
His arm is death, his glance a frown;
He posts his men, spurs up and down
The lines upon his foam-white steed.
“Stand, Swedes, close up the ranks again!
I have been sent by Carl to bring
His greeting home to all his men.
Our watchword, God, and Carl our king!”
God and King Charles sound through the field.
They follow where he leads the way,
And heights from which the death-shots play
Are stormed, and in a moment yield.
And so was stopped the throat of hell,
And fields were sown with weapons well,
And blindly raged the sword throughout
The terrible and bloody rout,
Till awe-struck swept the robber-band,
With quick-snatched cables from the strand.

Now like a sated beast of prey
Lay Slaughter sleeping on the field.
From heaven’s tent the moon revealed
The awful scene with pitying ray.
Along the shore, with sighs, alone,
Went Axel where the dead were strewn.
They lay by twos, men face to face:
How fierce the grasp of their embrace!
A faithful clasp wouldst thou behold?
Think not of lovers who enfold
Each other, smiling tenderly;
Go to the battlefield and see
How hate, inflamed by death’s fierce smart,
Can press its foeman to its heart!
Ah! charms of love and happiness
Are fleeting as the zephyr’s breath,
But hate, and sorrow, and distress
Are faithful even unto death.
Thus musing, in the darkness nigh
He heard the words of weak complaint:
“O Axel, water! I am faint,—
A last farewell before I die!”
He started at the well known sounds,
And looking on the rocks espied
A youth unknown who leaned beside
The sharp cliff, pale and weak with wounds.
The moon broke through the cloud and shone
Upon the face, and with a groan
Of trembling horror bitterly
He shrieked, “O Jesus, it is she!”

Yes, it _was_ she. Despite constraint
Of pain she spoke in accents faint:
“Adieu, O Axel; we must part,
For death stands knocking at my heart.
Ask not why we meet here to-day.
Naught but my love brings me away.
Oh! when the endless shadows close
And man stands by death’s open door,
How changed from what it was before
Seems life with all its paltry woes;
And nothing but a love like ours
Shall rise with him to heaven’s powers.
I craved to know thy oath austere,
And that it was which brought me here.
Now I shall search it out on high
Among the stars of purest ray
Where it is writ, and shall espy
Thine innocence as bright as they.
I know I acted foolishly,
I know thou sorely mournest me.
Forgive me, for my love and trust,
Each tear let fall upon my dust!
I had not brother, sire or mother;
_Thou_ wast my mother, father, brother,—
Thou wast my all! O Axel, swear
In death that I am dear to thee!
Thou sayst it,—thou contentest me.
The sweetest of its sagas rare
Hath life told me. Shall we not part,
Thy maiden folded to thy heart?
And shall not here her dust be blended
With this dear soil thou hast defended?
See, Axel, yonder cloud shut in
The moon. When it shines out again,
I shall be dead. My spirit then
Shall on far-distant shores begin
To pray all good, and with all eyes
Of heaven, watch thee from the skies.
Set on my grave a Southern rose,
And when in snows its bloom shall fade,
Child of the sun, think of thy maid
Who slumbers under Northern snows.
Her morning years were quickly passed,—
See, Axel, now the cloud moves fast—
Farewell,—farewell!”—She sank, and sighed
And pressed her lover’s hand, and died.

Then forth from realms of nether air
Not death, but death’s young brother rose,—
Pale, fierce insanity, which goes
With poppy wreaths in streaming hair,
And glares up sometimes at the sky,
And sometimes downward at the earth,
Distorts its ashen lips in mirth,
And weeps from its low-burning eye.
It comes and touches Axel’s brain,
And ever afterwards his feet
Pace round the grave with restless beat,
As once in saga-days the slain
Were wont to flit, and linger nigh
Where some deep-buried treasure lay,
And all the shore heard night and day
His pitiful, dejected cry:—
“Be still, ye billows, cease your roar;
Ye must not smite so on the shore.
What do ye but disturb my dreams?
I can not love your foamy streams
That dance blood-mixed along the sands,
For ye bring death to these my strands.
Here lately lay a youth and bled,
And roses on his grave I spread,
For he was like—I know well whom;—
I bear _her_ home in spring’s first bloom.
They tell me that earth lulls my love
To slumber, that grass grows above
Her faithful breast: they are deceived—
She sat upon the rock and grieved,
Pale was she as one painteth death,—
But that came of the moon’s faint light;
And cold her lips and cheek that night—
That came but of the north wind’s breath.
I bade my own beloved stay,
Her fingers stroked my locks away:
My brain was dark and heavy then,
But soon methought it light again.
Far off in yonder east there shine
The vanished days, alas! how few,
Those days as fair as heaven’s blue
When Axel lived the life divine.
A castle stood in groves of green,
And in that castle dwelt a queen.
I lay in forests murdered there;
She brought my life back in a kiss,
And from her heart she gave me bliss,—
Her heart of love, so warm and rare.
Now lies it frozen in her breast,
Her withering breast, and all is past!—
Ye stars of yonder spaces vast,
Take off from me your burning eyes!
A morning star as bright as ye,
I saw sink in a bloody sea.
It smells of blood yet by the strand
And blood there is upon my hand.”

Such was his plaint on Sota’s shore,
Where yet he stands at break of day,
At night-fall will not go away,
But lingers weeping as before.
One morning saw him lifeless there,
His hands clasped upward as in prayer,
While on his cheeks the last tears lie,
Half stiffened in the morning’s chill;
But on the grave is fastened still
The viewless luster of his eye.

* * * * *

Such was the saga that I heard;
How deep my tender heart was stirred.
Full thirty years have passed away,
Yet lives it in my soul to-day.
For with lines definite and sharp
Stand childhood’s fancies graven well
In hearts of skalds, where small they dwell,
As Aslög[H] in King Heimer’s harp,

Till summoned they come forth as she,
Betraying god-like pedigree
In dazzling raiment, gestures high,
And golden hair, and kingly eye.
Ah! full with golden lyres is hung
The heaven of our childhood’s hours,
And all that skalds may since have sung,
As great as heroes, small as flowers,
Already in a fairer guise
Has passed before our youthful eyes.
Yet when melodiously ring
The far-piped notes of quails in spring,
When leaves the moon its eastern wave,
A ghost uprising from the grave,
And paints so mournfully and still
The hue of death on dale and hill,
Then sounds of sighs invade mine ear,
Then seems as if I still could hear
The ancient tale, and told so wide,
Of Axel and his Russian bride.

[To be continued.]

PICTURES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.

By C. E. BISHOP.

VII.—THE JOHN BROWN OF THE ENGLISH SLAVES.

Macaulay has remarked as singular the fact that two great relics of barbarism in England were never abolished by law: disappeared, melted away before the advance of civilization. These were feudalism and human slavery.

It is also a remarkable fact that there never was in England an insurrection of the laboring classes, save one, that in the reign of Richard II., of sad fortune. The same can not be said of any other nation. This favorable contrast for England is due to several causes which we need not recount. But England’s one servile rising came very near putting an abrupt end to serfdom by violence; emancipation was sanctioned and pardoned by royal writs, and would have been confirmed by act of Parliament had that body contained fewer slaveholders at the time; _i. e._, had it been more truly a representative body of the English people.

Wat Tyler was the John Brown of that movement, and Richard of Bordeaux came near being its Abraham Lincoln. Death in the guise of the Black Plague had struck a fierce blow at English slavery about the middle of the fourteenth century. [See last CHAUTAUQUAN.] It made labor so scarce that the old laws binding the laborer to the soil and compelling him to work without hire, proved abortive; insomuch that we find Parliament soon at work passing the new “Statute of Laborers.” It was made to reach as well freedmen as serfs, for it said any man who was out of work “must serve the first employer who shall require him to do so,” and must not accept higher wages than obtained before the plague; and it forbade him going beyond his parish to hire out, under pain of arrest as a vagabond, branding on the forehead with a hot iron being one of the penalties. But this statute did not work, either; for succeeding Parliaments adopted it over and over again. That was the way they made laws more binding. King Edward I. reaffirmed to respect the Great Charter some thirty times. And yet, farmers and lords whose lands were lying waste, or whose herds were running wild for want of help, would offer large pay to get it and men were reckless enough to hire out to those who would pay the most, the much-enacted Statute of Laborers to the contrary, notwithstanding.

Then a crazy step was taken. An effort was made to supply landlords with unrequited help by remanding freed serfs to slavery on frivolous pretexts and legal technicalities, the ex-master usually controlling the decision of the manorial court before which these questions were tried. Of course the accused freedman had there little chance for right. The consequence was that the woods and wastes Boon became filled with bands of men who had been slaves, had tasted the sweets of freedom, and had turned outlaws and chronic vagabonds sooner than come within the reach of such “justice.”

While this was going on, during twenty years, other things helped to create the spirit of insubordination. John Wickliffe had begun to thunder against the tyranny of Rome and the corruptions of the clergy, and to preach individual liberty of conscience. The sect of Lollards, of which he was the head, had offshoots of ruder tenets and practices. A preacher named John Ball had for many years itinerated, with all England for his circuit and the fields, market-places and church-yards for his chapels. He “preached politics” with an unction and genuine eloquence, as this condensed report of one of his sermons will show:

“Good people, things will never go well in England so
long as there be villeins and gentlemen. By what right
are they whom we call lords greater than we? Why do
they hold us in serfage? If we all came of the same
father and mother, of Adam and Eve, [see the danger of
putting the Bible into common people’s hands!] how can
they say or prove that they are better than we, if it
be not that they make us gain for them by our toil what
they spend in their pride? They are clothed in velvet
and warm in their furs and their ermine, while we are
covered with rags. They have wine and spices and fair
bread, we oat-cake and straw and water to drink. They
have leisure and fine houses; we have pain and labor,
the rain and wind in the fields. And yet it is of us
and of our toil that these men hold their state.”

And John Ball, like all men who move the masses, boiled his whole political and religious platform down into a motto with a rhyme to it, so that the most stolid ignorance could learn and remember it—for, mark you, poetry is the aspiration of the ignorant as well as the inspiration of the gifted:

When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?

Immortal old epigrammatist and poet of democracy! His lines are heard to-day wherever manhood rebels against the pride and tyranny of property. It was in every poor man’s mouth in England for a quarter of a century, and it did a wonderful work, that little couplet. Such is the power of a thought!

There were other street orators and other poets. An Oxford student wrote “The Plaints of Piers, the Ploughman,” the saddest, fiercest protest against caste that England ever heard.

While all this work was going on in the huts and fields of England, her proud nobles were squabbling over the dotage and around the dying bed of Edward III., and for the control of his grandson, Richard II.; and while they were thus dissipating government, her enemies were assailing her on all sides. Armies and fleets were raised, and campaigns and expeditions fooled away, while the treasure was squandered in both military failures and court prodigality and corruption. Taxes were laid, on the heels of defeats which made the old archers of Cressy, Nevill’s Cross, and Poictiers mad with shame and rage.

The crowning act of folly and injustice came when Parliament laid a poll-tax on every person in the kingdom over fifteen years of age. This made the poor man pay as much as the rich; and more, if the poorer the man the larger his family, which was probably the case then as now. There were no census statistics, and the tax-gatherers had to make a domiciliary visit in every case, an inquisition Englishmen especially resent; for the feeling that every man’s house is his castle dates back to the life of family segregation for which they were remarked in old Roman times. The tax, payable in money, came hard on poor people, who generally worked for their food and clothing, paid in kind. With an exaggerated idea of the population of England, Parliament had not levied a large enough unit per head. The rich, instead of helping the poor heads of families to pay the tax, as directed in the writs, shirked their own share. Thus the returns were insufficient to meet government needs, and the tax-gatherers were sent out again, with sheriffs’ posses, to glean more thoroughly.

With all these exactions when the times were ripe for an outbreak, you may be sure England was soon in a fever of excitement. Collectors’ processes began to be resisted, and they and their posses driven away by force. One day a rough collector went into the house of a man in Dartford, Kent, named Walter, a tyler by trade. Demanding his tax the collector insisted, in spite of the mother’s denial, that the eldest daughter was over fifteen years of age, and at last, to settle the dispute, he made an insulting proposition and laid hands on the girl. The screams of the mother and children brought the father running from his shop, hammer in hand, and seeing his daughter struggling in the arms of the man, he smashed his brains out with the hammer, regardless of the royal coat-of-arms. Walter himself had worn that uniform, for he had been a brave campaigner in France. The deed was done, and his life was forfeit. Instead of shrinking from the consequences, he placed himself at the head of his neighbors, who now gathered around him. His hammer had struck the percussion cap to the mine long prepared.

In another part of Kent there was another outbreak. A noble claimed a runaway bondsman and shut him up in Rochester Castle. The people stormed the castle and delivered the prisoner-slave to a double freedom. Couriers now went through all England bearing calls to rise, couched in rude rhymes which tell at once of the lowly state of the masses and of the art of those who called to arms. One ran thus:

“John Ball greeteth you all,
And doth for to understand he hath rung your bell,
Now, right and might, will and skill,
God speede every dele.”

There were several other leaders, and some of the proclamations were issued anonymously. They ran thus:

“Help truth and truth shall help you. Now reigneth
pride in place and covetise [covetousness] is counted
wise, and lechery withouten shame, and gluttony
withouten blame. Envy reigneth with treason, and sloth
is taken in great season. God do bote! for now is time.”

“Jack Carter prays you all that ye may make a good end
of that ye have begun, and do well and aye better and
better. For at the even men heareth the day.”

“Truth hath been set under a lock, and falseness and
guile reigneth in every stock. True love is away that
was so good and clerks [priests] for wealth work us
woe. God do bote for now is tyme.

[signed] “JACK TREWMAN.”

These unmistakable references to preparations already made, help us to understand how it was that almost in a day Wat Tyler found himself at the head of a hundred thousand men marching on London. One force under a leader named Jack Straw, came by Canterbury, which threw open its gates, as “the whole town was of their sort,” and they gutted the palace of the archbishop, who had ground the face of the poor by assuming a monopoly of all the grinding of grain in his district, on which he had placed excessive toll.

There is something very pathetic in this movement on London. They would appeal to the young king himself, and not to the selfish dukes, his uncles, who guarded him and misgoverned the realm. The son of the Black Prince, the defender of England, and, so long as he lived, the protector of the people against the cruelty of the nobles, should hear their appeal and do them right. It was said the boy king was no better than a prisoner in his uncles’ hands; peradventure they might deliver him and themselves by the same blow. All the way to London they made everybody they took swear allegiance to Richard. But all the lawyers they captured they hung, as the instruments of oppression, the contrivers of technicalities by which freedmen had been re-enslaved.

And thus they settled down on Blackheath, before London, June 12, 1381. Panic had gone before them. John, the Duke of Lancaster, fled to Scotland, deserting the young king he had overruled with no gentle hand. All the knights and nobles about the king threw themselves into the tower. The king’s mother, the widow of the Black Prince, hearing of the disturbance in her country home, made brave by a mother’s fear, hastened to London, passing through the camp of the insurgents unhurt and with honor; she kissed Walter Tyler and Jack Straw and took their devotion to her son.

In the general panic Richard was the only man in England equal to the emergency. Man! He was only sixteen, but at about that age his father had won his spurs at Cressy. He took boat on the Thames and rowed down to the insurgents’ camp. The Archbishop of Canterbury and some ministers were with him, and when Tyler asked the king to land and talk with them, promising respect and loyalty, this prelate prevented him, thus confirming the stories of the king’s duress. The rescue of their sovereign became their first object. They marched on the city, and the sympathizing citizens threw open the gates.

Lancaster’s stately Savoy Palace was soon in flames; also the Marshalsea and the King’s Bench Temple, the dwellings and offices of the hated lawyers. But one of their number who undertook to carry off a silver tankard from the destruction was immediately drowned in the Thames. “We are no thieves and robbers; we are not nobles and bishops; we are honest workingmen, come to deliver the king and ourselves,” said Tyler. The next day they captured the tower, took the archbishop, the royal treasurer, and the commissioner of the poll-tax, and cut off their heads as traitors on Tower Hill.

The king, now delivered from his court, sent word to Tyler that he would meet them at Mile-End, just out of London, to hear their grievances. The knights of the Tower and the guards wanted to gather a force and attack the mob, but the king rode out unarmed, with a few companions, to this historic appointment.

It was a memorable scene, and a poetic coincidence. The day was the anniversary of that other demand for rights from King John. Just one hundred and sixty-six years before Magna Charta has been wrung from a king at Runnymede. Now the boy king and the peasant leader meet to treat on equal terms. Justice levels all distinctions. The graceful, delicate and beautiful descendant of the Plantagenets and the rough, unkempt, Celto-Saxon artisan—the personification of the two armies at Hastings—the types of the extremes of English civilization; extremes destined to draw nearer together through centuries of civil war, of martyrdoms for free thought and speech, of sufferings and defeats, ever bravely and persistently renewed by generation after generation of laborers on the one side: through discrownings, beheadings and gradual curtailment of royal power on the other. Two chief agencies were to draw these extremes together—gunpowder and printer’s ink. The one to blow feudalism off the earth and put an end to baronial domination—the other to unlock the storehouses of thought and introduce the rule of mind, to the permanent limitation of those other two classes of tyrants: priests and kings. The despised class, represented by the ruder of these two “high contracting parties,” is to rise by slow and stormful evolution: the slave to become freeman—the freeman, yeoman—the yeoman, citizen—the citizen, an elector of rulers; out of all to be evolved that splendid, conservative, expansive power of England, the Middle Class. Happy England! that the two extremes stood that day and thereafter not as antagonists but as treaty-makers.

Richard found the Toussaint l’Overteur of that day prepared with very distinct and well-grounded grievances, though not numerous or unreasonable. He asked—

First—The abolition of slavery.

Second—Limitation of rent of land to fourpence an acre.

Third—Liberty to buy and sell in all markets and fairs, without favoritism or toll.

Fourth—Pardon for what they had done in order to obtain this interview.

The young king, more just than well-informed, more generous than politic, promised it all, and said he would immediately cause franchises and letters of pardon and emancipation to be drawn up under the royal seal. Great shouts of joy went up—premature shouts indeed!

During all that day and succeeding night thirty clerks were busy drawing up the charter of freedom and amnesty for every parish and township; and the next day the great body of the insurgents marched home, the king’s proclamation in their hands, the king’s banners over their heads, and in their hearts such joy as the children of Israel felt when Miriam’s timbrel rang out its triumph over the Red Sea.