Chapter V: The Romance of Axel 305 (1)

Pictures from English History
VI.—A Picturesque Half-Century 309

SUNDAY READINGS
[March 4.]
The False Balance Detected by the True 311
[March 11.]
Three Dispensations in History and in the Soul 313
[March 18.]
Three Dispensations 314
[March 25.]
Three Dispensations 316

Practice and Habit 317
Thoughts and Aphorisms 318
The Comet That Came But Once 319
My Winter Garden 320
Science and Common Sense 321
The Sorrow of the Sea 322
Anecdotes of Fashion 323
Language in Animals 323
The Electric Light 325
Among the Mountains 326
New Mexico 327
Speculation in Theology 329
Advantage of Warm Clothing 332
In Him Confiding 335
The History of Education
V.—Egypt, Phœnicia, Judea 336
Song 338
Tales from Shakspere—Macbeth 338
Before Daybreak, With the Great Comet of 1882 341
Social Duties in the Family 342
C. L. S. C. Work 345
C. L. S. C. Songs 346
A Sweet Surprise 346
Local Circles 347
Questions and Answers
One Hundred Questions and Answers on “Recreations
in Astronomy” 353
Answers to Questions For Further Study in the January Number 355
Outline of C. L. S. C. Studies 356
C. L. S. C. Round-Table—How to Read Together Profitably 356
The Study of French 358
Editor’s Outlook 359
Editor’s Note-Book 361
Editor’s Table 363
Our Daily Bread 363
New Books 364

REQUIRED READING

FOR THE

_Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle for 1882-83_.

MARCH.

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

By MRS. MARY S. ROBINSON.

_CHAPTER VIII._

THE LITHUANIAN AND LIVONIAN ORDERS.

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, three new races entered Slavonia whose character essentially modified its subsequent history. From the northwest came the Germans, from the east the Tartar Mongols, from the west the Lithuanians. The modern Russian divisions of Livonia and Esthonia, with the outlying regions, were peopled in the ninth century with the Tchud or Lett tribes, of the Finnish race,—the most ancient, it is believed, of living European peoples. The Russian Finns of the present time number one and a half million souls; but though they long retained their distinctive nationality, they have yielded to the process of “Russification,” and to-day, among the majority of them, their ancient character is noticeable merely by certain peculiarities of physiognomy and dialect. They are short and thick of stature, tough as oak, and of a hickory hue. The countenance is blurred and unfinished, so to speak. The face is broad and flat, the cheek bones high, the nose depressed and bridgeless. Their dialects are primitive and meager. Their manners and superstitions are traceable to the earliest of known races; their religious observances antedate those of any known form of paganism. They remain, in fact, pagan at heart, loyal to their ancient gods, though with these they are willing to give Saint Nicholas some qualified homage. They recognize a good and an evil principle, both to be equally revered. An offspring and mingling of the two is Keremet, who, with his progeny of Keremets, is more mischievous than malevolent, and to whom, far in the depths of the forests, offerings and sacrifices are made. The evil principle is Shaïtan, philologically allied with the Arabic Shatana, and the still older Hebrew Sâtân. The Finn buys his bride, by paying to her father a _kalm_ or fee. With his fellows he practices an agricultural communism. Through a thousand years he has remained without education, incapable, apparently, of progress, unchangeable. At present, however, the Russian Finn, along with the other races of the country, is being merged into the ubiquitous, self-asserting Russian.

The Baltic Letts, occupying Esthonia, had been subjugated by the Dane, Knut the Great, the conqueror of England. But Livonia had submitted to the arms of Iaroslaf the Great, who founded there Iurief, later called Dorpat; and Mstislaf, son of Vladimir Monomakh, had taken one of the chief cities of the Tchudi. The princes of Polotsk and the republic of Novgorod claimed the country and virtually bore rule over it. To Livonia early in the twelfth century came the German merchant in search of trade, and the Latin priest, seeking souls for his hire and subjects for his Pope. The monk Meinhard, commissioned by the Archbishop of Bremen, compulsorily brought the Livonians under his sway, and was constituted bishop of their country. But this invasion of a stranger race bearing the wares of commerce, and the authority of Rome behind the symbol of the cross, implied the overthrow of the untutored but brave descendants of the Tchud hero Kalevy, the extinction of their liberties and their independence. In 1187 Meinhard completed a church at Uexhüll, and surrounded it with a fortification. Eleven years later the tribes revolted against their episcopal master, and killed him in open warfare. They then plunged into the Dwina to wash off and send back to Germany their baptism, and restored to their shrines their ancient gods. Innocent III preached a crusade against them, and another bishop, commander of a large fleet, built for his capital the town of Riga (1200). In the following year was established the Order of the Brothers of the Army of Christ, or the Sword Bearers, later known as the Livonian Knights, “men of iron,” who broke the strength of the tribes, and against whom the Russian princes, occupied with their own dissensions, made no united resistance. The knights intrenched themselves firmly in the regions whither they hewed with the sword a pathway for the cross, and built fortifications of cemented stone, that were a wonder and a terror to the simple natives, who were driven in herds to the waters of baptism, or massacred if they offered resistance. A song of the Tchudi of Pskof, entitled “The Days of Slavery,” commemorates this period of misery: “Destroying fiends were unchained against us. The priests strangled us with their rosaries, the greedy knights plundered us, murderers with their weapons cut us in pieces. The father of the cross stole our wealth; he stole the treasure from the hiding place. He hewed down the sacred tree, he polluted the fountain, the waters of salvation. The axe smote the oak of Tara, the cruel hatchet the tree of Kero.”

About 1225, a second military order established itself in Livonia, and built four considerable towns, among them Thorn and Koenigsberg, in the depopulated country. Their black cross was borne, along with the red cross of the sword-bearers, and in course of time the two orders became associated, and together imposed a crushing servitude upon the remnants of the Tchudi, who were reduced to a form of serfdom; and though in later times their liberty has been yielded them again, the German nobility retained their lands. The aboriginal Livonian remained ever separate from his conqueror, the Papal German. The Kalevy-Poeg, the epic of the Tchud Esthonians, recites the career of the son of Kalev, the personification of the race, the hero of Titanic force. He swam the Gulf of Finland. His club was the trunk of an oak; with his horse and his immense harrow he plowed all Esthonia; he exterminated the beasts of prey, conquered the magicians of Finland, and the genii of the caves. He descended into hell and had single combat with Sarvig, the horned. He sailed to the ends of the earth, and when the fiery breath of the northern spirits burned his vessel, he built another of silver. When the heavens were lurid with the flames of these spirits, he laughed and said to his pilot: “With their darts of fire they light us on our way, since the sun has gone to rest, and we are passed beyond the daylight.” No fury of the elements could destroy him. He went to the isle of flame, of smoke, and of boiling water, where the mountains throw forth fire (Iceland). There he encountered a giant woman, who, plucking grass for her kine, crushed with it several of his sailors, as if they had been insects. He fought with men whose bodies were those of dogs, possibly the Greenland Esquimaux; and pauses in his onward strides only when told by a magician that the wall of the world’s end is still far away. When he is told of the landing of the sword-bearers, the men whose armor can neither be pierced with the spear nor cleft with the axe, his unconquerable heart is troubled. He seeks the tomb of his father for counsel, but the place is silent; the leaves murmur plaintively, the winds sigh, the dew itself is moved, the eye of the clouds is wet, all Esthonian nature shares in the forebodings of the national hero. He gathers his warriors by the Embach, and raises the battle cry. Bloody is the field, mournful the victory! All the brave are slain, the brothers of Kalevy-Poeg among them. His charger is cut down by the hand of the stranger. He who had overcome the demon Sarvig, who had laughed at the spirits of the north, could not subdue the men of iron, whose strength surpassed that of the gods. Captive to Mana, god of death, his wrist held fast in a cleft of the rock hard by the gate of hell, he comes no more to vindicate the liberties of his sons, his people. Long looked they for his return; but like his kinsman, perhaps his sire, Kolyvan, who lies under the rock whereon is built the city of Revel, he is holden captive of Mana. Thus sorrowfully closes the career of the Arthur of this primitive people.

The German planted region was destined to be a thorn in the side of Russia. Protracted wars were maintained between the foreigners of the west and the Slavs of the realm. Four hundred years passed ere an appearance of tranquillity and of union was attained; and even now the governments of Esthonia and Livonia are not among the more trusted provinces of the empire. The people of that region, restive under absolutism, dimly conscious of rights withheld, and of oppressive restrictions, encourage the spirit of revolution, and invite to their sea-bordered home many of the malcontents of the empire.

Up to the opening of the thirteenth century, Russian civilization had kept a relative pace with that of the east. Receiving industries, arts and religion from Byzantium, and civic form from Scandinavia, it had been united under Iaroslaf the Great, and had maintained with some degree of order feudal divisions corresponding to those of the other European nations in the same centuries. This relative development the empire bade fair to maintain without serious lapses, when a calamity utterly without precedent, immeasurably disastrous, suddenly fell upon the realm, and shattered her incipient civilization beyond the power of repairing. Nature has been a step-mother to Russia, says one of her native historians. Fate was a second, a harsher step-mother.

“In those times, (1224) there came upon us, on account of our sins, unknown nations,” write the chroniclers. No one could tell their origin, whence they came, what religion they professed. “God alone knew who they were: God, and perhaps a few wise men learned in books.” All Europe was affrighted at the apparition of these Asiatic hordes. The Pope and the sovereigns prepared to meet them with combined forces. But upon Russia alone fell the shock, the subjugation, the humiliating servitude, imposed by these numberless and mysterious armies, whom it was whispered among the people were Gog and Magog, prophesied to come at the end of the world, when all things would be destroyed by anti-Christ.

The Ta-ta, Das, or Tatars were Mongol, pastoral tribes, settled at the base of the Altai Mountains. Occupied exclusively with their flocks, they wandered from pasture to pasture, from river to river. The Land of Grass is the name given to-day, by the inhabitants, to modern Tartary. They built no walls nor towns, knew nothing of writing or of arts beyond the simplest. Their treaties were made orally. They were equally destitute of laws and of religion, save perhaps a vague adoration of the sun. They respected nothing but strength and bravery: age and weakness they despised, and like other barbarians, they left the pining, the feeble and the aged among them to perish. Their food was milk and the flesh of their herds: their clothing was made of the skins of their animals. They practiced polygamy, and had a community of wives; when the father died the son married his younger wives. Trained to ride from their infancy, they were taught also to let fly their arrows at birds and other small creatures, and thus acquired the courage and skill essential to their predatory existence. They had no infantry, and laid no sieges. When they would capture a town, they fell upon the suburban villages. Each leader seized ten men and compelled them to carry wood, stones, and whatever material was accessible for the filling up of fosses. The prisoners were also forced to dig trenches. But save for purposes of utility, they took no prisoners, choosing rather the extermination of the entire population.

This barbarous and appalling people, in their earlier advances, invaded China, whither they passed with incomprehensible suddenness: nor of the direction of their movements, nor of their departure could aught be presaged. The present dynasty of that country is of the Mantchoo Tatars, who, in respect of political influence, are dominant in the empire.

As they increased and formed a rude nationality, a mighty chief arose among them, Temutchin, or Genghis Khan. In a general congress of their princes, assembled early in the thirteenth century, he proclaimed himself emperor, averring that as but one sun shone in the heavens, in like manner the whole earth should be subject to one sole sovereign. Placing himself at the head of this nation, composed of half a million armed cavalry, he initiated a widely devastating conquest, by destroying the teeming populations of Mantchuria, Tangut, Northern China, Turkestan, Great Bokhara, and the remainder of Western Asia to the plains of the Crimea.

The ruin inflicted by these wild hordes has never been repaired. During the captainship of Genghis Khan, an approximately correct estimate shows that eighteen million five hundred thousand human beings were slaughtered by his horsemen in China and Tangut alone. Turkestan, once called the Garden of the East, and Great Bokhara, after the lapse of six centuries, bear the evidences of the Tatar invasion on their many depopulated wastes. Upon the occupation of Nessa, a town in Kiva, the people were bound together in couples, and above seventy thousand were despatched thus by the Tatar arrows. At Merv, seven hundred thousand, or, according to another authority, one million three hundred thousand corpses were left to corrupt the atmosphere once teeming with life, and rich in its bountiful fruitfulness. At Nishapoor, in Persia, seven hundred and forty-seven thousand lives were extinguished. To prevent the living from hiding under the piles of the dead, the bodies were decapitated. At Herat, in Afghanistan, one million six hundred thousand were mowed down by the Tatar cimetars. After the enemy had vanished, forty persons, the mournful remnant from the massacre, came together in the principal mosque of the ruined city. These regions have never recovered a tithe of their former prosperity.

[To be continued.]

PRONOUNCING LIST OF RUSSIAN PROPER NAMES.

_Explanation of signs used_: _a_, _e_, _i_, _o_, _u_, long, as in _fate_, _mete_, _mite_, _mote_, _mute_.

_a_, _e_, _i_, _o_, short, as in _add_, _met_, _if_, _off_.

_ö_ like the prolonged sound of _e_ in _her_.

_ä_, the Italian _a_, as in _arm_.

_ï_, the Italian _i_, like _e_.

_o_, in the syllables of most Russian words, has a sound between _o_ and _o_. For typographical reasons, however, we give simply the _o_, advising that the vowel sound be not made too long.

_u_, in most Russian syllables, has a liquid sound like _yu_.

Consonants, when succeeding one another, unite their sounds rapidly. Thus, in _Svi-at´o-slaf_, the sounds of _s_ and _v_ follow one another much as _s_ and _t_ unite in the English word _step_.

Altai´; altäï.
Apemas; ä´pe-mas.
Askold; as´kold.
Baikal; ba´kal.
Blachernae; blä-cher´nae.
Buslaivitch; bus-la-é-vitch.
Dir; dïr.
Dnieper; dnee´per.
Dniester; dnee´ster.
Dwina; dwi´na, or dwï´na.
Esthonia; es-tho´nia.
Ezeroum; ez-er-oom´.
Finningia; fin-ning´ia.
Galitsch; gäl´-itsch.
Gallicia; gallic´ia.
Iaroslaf; yar´o-slaf.
Iaropolk; yar´o-polk.
Idano; ï-dä´-no.
Ienikale; yen-i-kä´le.
Igor; i´gor.
Ilmen; il´men.
Izborsk; iz´borsk.
Kalmuck; käl´mook.
Kama; kä´ma.
Karaites; kar-a´tes.
Karamsin; kar-äm-sin´.
Kazan; kä-zän´.
Kazarui; kä-zar-uï´.
Kherson; ker´son.
Kiakta; kï-a´kta.
Kief; keef.
Kirghiz; keer´jeez.
Kliasma; klï-as´ma.
Koenigsberg; kö´-nigs-berg.
Kroats; kro´äts.
Kroatia; kro-a´tia.
Kuria; qu´ria.
Kyrie Eleison; ky´rie el-ei´-son. (Lord, have mercy upon us.
Opening of the Greek Liturgy.)
Lithuania; lith-u-a´nia.
Livonia; liv-o´nia.
Meria; me´ria.
Mikula Selianinovitch; mik´-u-la
sel-ian-in´ovitch.
Mir; mïr.
Morea; mo-re´a.
Moscow; mos´ko.
Moskova; mos-ko´va.
Mstislaf; ms-ti´slaf.
Murom; mu´rom.
Muromians; mu-ro´mians.
Mursk; mursk.
Neva; ne´va.
Niemen; nee´men.
Nijni-Novgorod (Lower Novgorod); nijnï-novgorod.
Novgorod-severski; nov´gorod-sever´ski.
Novgorod (Veliki, or the Great); nov´gorod.
Oka; o´ka.
Okof; o´kof.
Oleg; o´leg.
Olga; ol´ga.
Olgovitchi; ol-go-vitch´ï.
Osmomuisl; os-mom´u-isl.
Peïpus; pay´ee-pus.
Perum; pa´rum.
Periaslaf; pe-ri´a-slaf.
Petchenegs; petch´en-egs.
Polotsk; pol´otsk.
Polovtsui; pol-ov-tsuï´.
Poliane; po-li-ä-né´.
Pskof; pskof.
Riazan; rï-a-zan´.
Rogneda; rog-ne´-da.
Rurik; ru´rik.
Russkia pravda; russ-ki´ya präv´da.
Rostof; rost´of.
Samoyedes; sam´oi-ëdes.
Scythia; cith´ia.
Sineus; sin´-e-us.
Slav; släv.
Slavic; släv´ic.
Slavonic; släv-on´ic.
Slavonia; släv-on´ia.
Staraïa Rusa; star-a´-ya ru´-sa.
Stanovoi; stän-o-voï´.
Sud; sood.
Suzdal; suz´däl.
Sviatoslaf; svï-ä-´to-slaf.
Tatar; tä´tar.
Taurid; tau´rid.
Tcheki; tchek´ï.
Tcherkess; cher´kess.
Tchernigof; cher´ni-gof.
Tcheremisa; tcher-e-mïs´a.
Tchudi; tchu´di.
Tchud; tchud.
Tobolsk; to´bolsk.
Toropets; to´ro-pets.
Truvor; tru´vor.
Tsargrad; tsar´grad.
Ukase; yu-kase.
Valdai; väl-däï´.
Varangian: vä-räng´ian.
Variag; vä´ri-ag.
Variag-Slav; vid. Variag and Slav.
Vasili; vas´-i-li.
Veliki; vel-ï´-ki.
Ves; ves.
Vetché; vetch´é.
Vladimir; vläd´i-mïr.
Voivodui; voï-vo-dui´.
Volhynia; vol-hyn´ia.
Volkhof; volk´hof.
Volos; vo´los.
Zagorodni; zä-go-rod´-ni.
Zimisces; zim-is´ces.

A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SCANDINAVIA.

V.—THE ROMANCE OF AXEL.

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

We promised ourselves at the beginning of these papers a little entertainment betweenwhiles, and we have had rather dry reading lately. The political history of Scandinavia is not very fascinating, except here and there a period or a reign. Let us then declare a breathing space, and spend half an hour with Tegnér [Teng-nar´], the most brilliant and popular poet of the Swedes; besides, it will not be out of order, for it is of the glorious _Carolinska Tid_, or age of Charles XII., that we shall hear. Of Tegnér we shall learn hereafter, and I hope when we have read his poem we shall want to know a great deal about him. The story is called “Axel” [Ahk-sel], from the name of the hero, and explains itself. We make no pretentions to reproducing the poetry, but only something of the directness and force, of the original.

The ancient days are dear to me,
The days of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden,
For they were blithe as peace of Eden,
And they were bold as victory.
Nor yet their after-glow hath faded
From northern skies which time hath shaded,
But tall and stalwart forms we view,
With belts of gold and coats of blue,
Move up and down when evening blushes.
With reverence my spirit hushes
To see you, men of nobler day,
With jerkins buff and steel array.

I knew in childhood’s days long flown
One whom King Charles had held of worth.
He still remained upon the earth
A trophy, ruinous and lone.
From locks a century old there shone
The only silver he possessed,
And scars told on his brow and breast
What runes tell on a bauta-stone.[A]
Though he was poor, he understood
Want was no foe, but friend concealed;
He lived as if still in the field,
His home a hut within the wood.
Yet had he treasures twain in hoard,
And deemed them of all wealth the best,—
His Bible and his ancient sword,
Which bore Carl Twelfth’s name deep impressed.
The mighty king’s illustrious deeds,
Which now no farthest zone but reads
(For wide that eagle flew around),
All lay within the old man’s mind
As urns of warriors lie enshrined
Within the green-clad burial mound.
Oh! when he told of risks gone through
For Charles, and for his lads in blue,
How swelled his frame, how proud and high,
How brightly gleamed his kindled eye!
And mighty as a sabre stroke
Rang every word the old man spoke.
Thus oft till late at night he sat,
And told again the tales we claimed,
And every time King Charles was named
Failed not to lift his tattered hat.
I stood in wonder at his knee
(No higher reached my wistful face),
And pictures of his hero-race
Hath memory kept till now for me;
And many a saga then enshrined
Hath since remained within my mind,
As iris-germs beneath the snow
In slumber wait their time to grow.

The old man sleeps in death forgot:
Peace to his dust! A tale which stirred
My youth receive. When thou hast heard,
Weep, North, with me for Axel’s lot.
Beside the old man’s words sublime
My song is weak, in humble rhyme.

* * * * *

In Bender Sweden’s sovereign lay.
His foes had torn his lands away,
His glory sinking out of sight.
His people, like a wounded knight,
Who even feels death’s creeping chill,
Rose on its knees, resisting still,
And hope of rescue there was none,
Except in Charles, the absent one.
Although the leaves in Fate’s dark book
Turned in the storm, though nature shook,
He stood calm like the bomb-proof wall,
When sacked and burning cities fall,
Like rocks lashed wildly by the wave,
Like Resignation on a grave.

The king had called, one afternoon,
Young Axel in, the brave dragoon.
“Here, take this letter, and—away!
Ride for your life both night and day,
And straightway when you reach our land,
Deliver to the council’s hand.
Go with God’s help, set forth to-night,
And greet our hills and northern light!”

Young Axel dearly loved to ride,
And glad he sewed the letter in
His hollow belt. At Holofzin
His father fell the king beside,
And orphaned thus this son of arms
Grew up amid the camp’s alarms.
His frame was strong, such as of old,
Whose like have not yet vanished all,
Fresh as a rose, but slight and tall,
Like pines upon the Swedish mould.

* * * * *

The keen-eyed king had placed him in
His body-guard, souls near of kin.
They numbered seven, a slender troop
As are the stars of Charles’s Wain,
At most nine, like the muses’ group,
And hard the honor was to gain.
By sword and fire their claims were tried,
They were a Christian viking-stock,
Not unlike that which once defied
All dangers of the wave and rock.
They never slept upon a bed,
But on their cloaks spread on the ground,
In storms and northwest snows as sound
As if on daisied meads instead.
A horse-shoe they could press together,
And never in the wildest weather
Approached the hearthstone’s crackling light,
But warmed themselves with shot,[B] each one,
As red as when the rayless sun
Goes down in blood some winter’s night.
The rule was when in strife exposed
That one might yield if seven opposed,
His breast still turned to their attack,
For none must ever see his back.
And last there was this law beside,
The most austere, perhaps, of all,
To let no maid bring them in thrall,
Till Charles himself should take a bride.
However blue two eyes might smile,
However red two lips beguile,—
They all must shut their eyes—or flee:
Their swords were pledged, they must be free.

Young Axel saddled glad his steed,
And rode both night and day with speed.
When Ukrane’s boundaries drew near
The sudden gleam of lance and spear
Flashed round him, spurring through a wood.
At once the ambush rose and stood:
“Thou art the bearer of commands;
Give up the letter to our hands,
Dismount and give it up, or die.”
Then rang his sword its swift reply,
And he who spoke, grown wondrous meek,
Bowed to the earth with piercing shriek.
His back now screened against an oak
Now Axel meets each stroke with stroke.
Wherever fell that ponderous sword,
There knees were bent and blood was poured;
And thus he gave his oath support.
Not one to seven, that were but sport,
But one to twenty rang his blade:
Resistance such as Krakë made.
To life by hope no longer bound,
He sought but fellowship in death.
The purple mouth of many a wound,
Now whispers with enfeebled breath
That strength and life are taking flight.
His hand no longer knows the steel,
And swooning darkness sets its seal
Upon his eyes, he sinks in night.

“Halloo!” With shouts the wood resounds,
And falcons bold and faithful hounds
Press hard upon their frightened prey,
And now the hunters dash this way.
And first upon a roan-flecked steed,
And vying with the wind for speed,
An Amazon rides like a queen,
With cheek of rose and robe of green.
The robber gang affrighted fled,
But she whose steed chafed at the dead
Dismounted with a single bound
Where lay he, as within some dale
An oak thrown prostrate by the gale
Lies on the copse which clothes the ground.
How fair he lay, though bathed in gore!
And over him Maria[C] bent,
As fair Diana long before
On Latmos, also well content
That dogs and din of chase were gone,
Bent over her Endymion.
The slumberer who caused her bliss
Was surely not more fair than this.
A spark of life had still endured
Within his breast, and, soon procured,
They raise the fallen to a bier
Of interwoven twigs, and bear
It slowly forth with reverent care,
And seek her dwelling, which was near.

She sat beside his couch, oppressed
With anxious cares that leave their trace,
And fastened on his pallid face
A look well worth a realm’s acquest.
She sat as in the groves of Greece
(That land of beauty overthrown),
The wild rose blooms in noiseless peace
By prostrate Hercules in stone.
At last he wakes to consciousness,
And looks around him in distress.
Alas! his eye before so mild
Now glares deliriously wild.
“Where am I? Girl, why art thou here?
To King Carl’s service I am bound,
And must not look on thee; thy tear
I will not have within my wound.—
My sire beyond the milky way
Is wroth: he heard the oath I took.
How fair, though, is the tempter’s look!
How winning! Satan, hence, away!—
Where is my belt and my commands?
I took them from my king’s own hands.
My father’s sword is good, it smites
With special hate on Muscovites.—
Oh! what delight it was to slay!
I would the king had seen the fray:
Like prostrate harvests lay the dead.
It almost seemed I also bled.—
I bore dispatches from the war,
My honor stands in pledge therefor.
Waste not a moment more,—away!”
She heard his ravings with dismay,
While swooning sank her hero then
Exhausted on his couch again.

Thus grappled life with death anew
Till life had won the youth at last,
And slowly was the danger passed,
When Axel now could calmly view
With glance restored, though weak and dim,
The angel bending over him.
She was not like the idyl’s queen,
Who roves and sighs in groves of green,
The counterfeit of languishing,
With locks bright gold like suns of spring,
And cheeks deep-dyed as Julian flowers,
And eyes like blue-bells after showers.
She was an Oriental maid.
Her dark, rich locks which fell unstayed,
Seemed midnight round a bed of roses;
And on her brow was throned the grace
Of cheerfulness, as in the face
An Amazonian shield exposes,—
The face and mien of victory.
Its hue was like Aurora’s haze,
Which artists paint with clouds of rays.
Of form so shapely, gait so free,
She seemed a Dryad from the grove;
And high and deep her bosom’s sea
Of youth and health swelled ceaselessly.
A body all divinely wove
Of roses red and lilies white,
A soul of only fire and light,—
A summer and a southern sky
With fragrance filled and golden beams.
She cast on all a glance as proud
As looks Jove’s eagle from the cloud,
Yet mild as are the doves that bear
The car of Venus through the air.

O Axel! Wounds soon lose their smart,
And nothing but the scars remain.
Thy breast is healed, thy thoughts are sane,
But ah! how is it with thy heart?
Look not so fondly at the hand
Which bound thy wounds with gentle band;
That hand as white as sculptor’s stone,—
It must not linger in thine own.
It is more dangerous by far
Than angry Turkish hands last year,
In Bender, callous with the spear
And cimeter, and many a scar.
Those lips so fresh in changeless red,
Which only whisper when they ope
In spirit-lays of trust and hope,—
Far better didst thou hear instead
Czar Peter’s hundred cannon roar
In line at Pultava once more.
When pale thou walkest in the heat,
With drooping limbs and stumbling feet,
Lean, Axel, on thy sword alone,
Not on that arm beside thine own,
Which Love hath formed so round and fair
That he might make his pillow there.

O Love! all miracles in one!
Thou breath of universal bliss!
Thou breeze of heaven which comes to kiss
Life’s groves beneath their sweltering sun!
Thou open heart in Nature’s breast,
The solace both of gods and men!
Each ocean-drop clings to the rest,
And all the stars that smile above
Wind on from pole to pole again
Their bride-dance round the suns they love.
Yet love is in the human mind
But twilight of remembered rays
From fairer and from better days,[D]
When once a little maid she twined
The dance in heaven’s azure hall
With silver crowns on arch and wall,
And when in weariness would rest,
Slept nestled on her father’s breast.
Then was she rich as reason’s powers
Of growth, her speech was only prayer,
And each her brother of the fair
And winged sons in heaven’s bowers.
But ah! she fell; and here her love
Is no more pure like that above.
Yet in the lover oft she traces
Lines from her heavenly kindred’s faces,
And hears their voice in notes of spring,
And in the songs the poets sing.
How glad, how sweet that moment is!
As when upon some desert track
The Swiss hears sounds which straight bring back
His Alpine childhood’s memories.

The sun was sinking. Evening lay
Still couched and dreaming in the west,
And mute as priests of Egypt pressed
The stars along their opening way:
And earth stood in the evening’s hush
As blessed as a bride stands fair
With diamonds in her raven hair,
And veil which hides not smile or blush.
From all day sports now seeking rest
The Naiad smiled in glad repose,
While twilight’s blush with hue of rose
Glowed tremblingly upon her breast.
The Cupids, bound while day-beams crown
The gazing sky, are loosed and rove
With bow and arrows up and down
Upon the moon-beams in the grove,—
The darksome green triumphal gate
Which spring had entered through of late.
From dripping oaks the nightingale
Struck notes which echoed through the dale
As tender, innocent and chaste
As lays which Franzen’s[E] muse has graced.
It was as if, her cares dismissed,
Now nature kept her hour of tryst,
All stir, and yet such hush complete
Thou might’st have heard her bosom beat.
Then did the twain in winsome bliss
Together rove the hours away.
As groom and bride change rings, so they
Exchanged their childhood’s memories.
He told her of the days he spent
Still in his mother’s house content,
Which, built of fir and painted red,
Stood lone, with pines on every hand,
And of his cherished fatherland,
And of dear sisters, all now dead.
Then told he how his soul was stirred
By all the battle-songs he heard,
And sagas which, whoever reads,
Will wake desire for valiant deeds,
And how he dreamed full many a night
He sat in armor burnished white
Upon the giant charger Grane,
And rode like Sigurd Fafnisbane
Through Vafur’s flames, to where the maid
Of memory dwells in castle walls
Which gleam afar when evening falls
Throughout the mountain laurel glade.
Thick grew his breath, close grew his room,
He rushed out in the forest’s gloom,
Climbed up and joined with boyish glee
The eagle on the highest tree,
And rocked before the northern blast.
It cooled his cheek, it cooled his heart.
How happy could he but depart
Upon the cloud-wain hurrying past,
And wend him yonder through the air
To that far world, so bright and fair,
Where victory beckons, and renown
Stands holding out her laurel crown,
And where King Charles (though he has known
But seven more years of youth than thou),
Is plucking crowns from Europe’s brow,
And keeping none except his own.
“At length I won at fifteen years
My mother’s blessing, and with tears
Embraced her, and to camp I went;
And there my life has since been spent,
And has shone true as beacon rays
Amid the rage and rush of men.
Yet saw I birds come back again,
And feed their young on summer days,
Or saw I boys who lay and played
Beside some brook in flowers and shade;
Then did the roar of guns grow faint,
For peaceful visions rose between
Of golden harvests, groves of green,
And children glad in unrestraint;
And by a quiet cottage door
A maiden stood, and evening’s flame
Lit up her face, which was the same
I oft in dreams had seen before.
And now these pictures seek me here,
And in my mind throng ceaselessly;
I shut my eyes, and yet I see
Them not less animate and clear,—
And find the maid of my idea
An image of thyself, Maria!”

Embarrassed then replied Marie:
“How blest of fortune is your sex!
No chains of destiny can vex
Your strength, born only to be free;
And danger’s spell, and honor’s throne,—
Yea, earth and heaven, are yours alone.
But woman’s destiny is sealed
As man’s appendage to his life,
A bandage on his wounds in strife,
Forgotten when they once are healed.
She is the sacrifice, but he
The flame that soars, and shines afar.—
My sire fell battling for the Czar;
My mother’s face can memory
But dimly trace, and here her child
In solitude grew strong and wild
Within these halls, without caress,
Where worship serfs, if in each whim
Their master find they humor him,
The idol of their wretchedness.
The noble soul must grow ashamed
Of life so willing to be tamed.
Hast thou seen roam the steppe’s vast space
Our beautiful, wild charger race?
Bold as the chief, fleet like the doe,
It serves and knows no master’s will,
But pricks its ear, and, standing still,
Scents danger in the winds that blow,
Then sudden in a cloud of dust
It darts away from its mistrust,—
Fights all the foes it ever had
With hoof unshod, chafes, or is glad.
‘How blest ye children of the plains,
How sweet and free your green domains?’
So have I cried and bid them stay,
Whenever on my Tartar steed
I have approached with careful speed
Their throng, and myriad-answering neigh.
Obeying not with scornful eye
They looked at us, and passed us by.
Intolerable then became
These halls, so endlessly the same.
Then zealously I won the skill
To brave the wolves upon the hill,
The vultures in their native air,
And rescued often from the bear
A life before of little worth.
Alas! although we strive from birth,
We can not, Nature, thwart thy will.
Be it a throne she sits upon,
As peasant maid or Amazon,
Thy woman is a woman still,
A withering vine if not upheld,
A being with its half withheld:
No unshared joy can she possess,
For twin-born is her happiness.
Within my heart there ever beats
A pain, yet sweeter borne than not,
A yearning for I know not what,
So grievous, yet so full of sweets.
It has no limits, has no aim:
It is as if with wings it came
And bore me upward from the base
And groveling earth to yonder space,
Where stars and suns with gathering light
Surround God’s throne in farthest night;
Again as if, I fell apace,
Down from the dizzy heights above,
Ye dear existences, to you,
Ye trees with which through life I grew,
Thou brook, with all thy songs of love,
Thou cliff with flowers upon thy brow!
A thousand times have I seen you,
But as a statue’s face might view,—
I love you now—first love you now!
I do not love myself so much,—
A sentiment of nobler touch
I find within, since I....” Then sped
Across her cheek the deepest red,
And what her words left unexpressed
Was in a half-sigh uttered best.

And all was hushed except the lone
Far nightingale renewed its song,
And in a kiss that lingered long,
Their souls communing blissfully
Dissolved in perfect harmony.
They kissed as kiss in sacrifice
Two altar-flames, which thus unite,
And shine with an intenser light
As nearer heaven’s door they rise.
To them the world had fled from sight,
And time desisted from its flight.
Each hour of time’s mortality
Is measured by the strictest line,
But death’s cold kiss, and love’s divine
Are children of eternity.

[To be continued.]

FOOTNOTES:

[A] A monument with runic inscription, raised over a fallen warrior.

[B] That is by a red-hot cannon ball, placed at the middle of the tent.

[C] Pronounced as in Swedish, Marea. Marie, which occurs below, is pronounced Mare´.

[D] The author does not here personify love, but reversing the process, considers it once a person and inhabitant of heaven, now degraded to be a mere quality on earth.

[E] A poet-bishop of Sweden, much admired by Tegnér.

* * * * *

“There is in human nature a general inclination to make
people stare; and every wise man has himself to cure of
it, and does cure himself. If you wish to make people
stare by doing better than others, why make them stare
till they stare their eyes out! But consider how easy it
is to make people stare by being absurd. I may do it by
going into a drawing-room without my shoes. You remember
the gentleman in ‘The Spectator,’ who had a commission of
lunacy taken out against him for his extreme singularity,
such as never wearing a wig, but a night-cap. Now, sir,
abstractedly, the night-cap was best: but, relatively, the
advantage was overbalanced by his making the boys run after
him.”—_Boswell, reporting Samuel Johnson._

PICTURES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.

By C. E. BISHOP.

VI.—A PICTURESQUE HALF-CENTURY.

A picture of the times of Edward III should be one of strong lights and shades. His fifty years were crowded with events remarkable in their nature and of powerful influence on England, then and thereafter. His wars by land and sea revolutionized the military ideas of Europe; the invincible English infantry rose, and the thunder of the first cannon proclaimed the end of chivalry; the organization of the House of Commons and the enlistment of soldiers for stipend introduced in its full effect the safe policy of “control of the sovereign by the control of his purse.” The foundation of Flemish manufactures in England, and the opening of the New Castle coal trade on the one hand, with the labors of Wickliffe and Chaucer on the other, were alone sufficient to make any reign memorable.

It is a matter of wonder that “philosophers of history” have not made more study of the pregnant events of this reign. It is a matter of greater wonder that writers of romance and the drama have not more utilized its highly-colored scenes; the reigns of John and Richard II, which Shakspere seized as food for his pen, seem tame in the comparison—the more so because Froissart’s minute and picturesque “Chronicles” have preserved a wealth of material of these events ready to the modern adapter’s hand. This variety of strong situations should have half a dozen “pictures” instead of one. Perhaps we can “photograph them down” into a group of seven vignettes for our one “Picture.”

First shows us Edward, the boy of ten years, taken by his mother to her brother’s court at Paris and there made the unwitting tool to work the dethronement and death of his father (Edward II). His mother has sold his hand in marriage to the Count of Hainault’s infant daughter for troops to invade England withal. He becomes nominal king at the age of fifteen, but his mother and her brilliantly bad paramour, Mortimer, are the real rulers of England. His luckless Scotch campaign should be seen, in which his army was wasted and used up without a blow being struck, because the Scotch on their Highland ponies, with a bag of oatmeal dough and a pan-cake griddle at their saddles, needed no base of supplies, and just starved out and tired out the richly equipped English army—Isabella and Mortimer plotting the whole thing to ruin the young king’s popularity and avert the catastrophe which their black prophetic souls but too surely anticipated. For there is Nottingham Castle, the home of the two conspirators. The guards are changed every night and the keys kept under the queen’s pillow; and no nobleman is allowed to bring his retinue nearer than five miles from the walls. Good reason have they to be thus careful and suspicious after their five years of riot and usurpation; but their care avails not. The king is twenty years old and the only man in England capable of delivering her. We can see to this day the underground passage beneath the castle walls, where Edward and his few trusted knights went in and burst open Mortimer’s bed-room, where he was himself plotting the death of Edward. Comes the queen rushing in, _en déshabillé_, screaming, “Do not hurt my darling Mortimer!” Mortimer goes to the block, nevertheless; and the scene closes with the guilty queen’s agony for the loss of the only love of her unhappy life, her succeeding years of alternate brooding and raving, while all Europe is ringing with the feats of her son and grandson, (the Black Prince), not one ray of which glory penetrated the gloom of her solitary mourning over a lost and guilty passion. Is not this opening picture of the reign sufficiently tragic?

Next we should have the first exhibitions of the equally unholy passion of Edward for foreign conquest. His intrigues in the Netherlands for the invasion of France are a study in early diplomacy. A foremost figure in the scene is the remarkable “Brewer of Ghent,” de Artevelde, whose romantic career and tragic death at the hands of the people he most loved and benefited, because they resented his devotion to Edward, “read like a novel.” Here appear, too, the sturdy burghers of the Netherlands, painted by Motley’s matchless pen:

“Commerce plucks up half drowned Holland by the locks and
pours gold into her lap. Fishermen and river raftsmen
become ocean adventurers and merchant princes. Flemish
weavers become mighty manufacturers. Armies of workmen,
fifty thousand strong, tramp through the swarming streets.
Silk-makers, clothiers, brewers, become the gossips of
kings, lend their royal gossips vast sums and burn the royal
notes of hand in fires of cinnamon wood. Wealth brings
strength, strength confidence. Learning to handle cross-bow
and dagger, the burghers fear less the baronial sword,
finding that their own will cut as well, seeing that great
armies—flowers of chivalry—can ride away before them fast
enough at battles of spears and other encounters.... And so,
struggling along their appointed path, making cloth, making
money, making treaties with great kingdoms, making war by
land and sea, ringing great bells, waving great banners,
these insolent, boisterous burghers accomplish their work.”

These burghers took all Edward’s money for fighting and did not fight. From three invasions of France their armies came back with whole skins and full pockets, until Edward was beggared, his crown jewels pawned, his estates mortgaged, and he at last obliged to give hostages to the thrifty Dutchmen for payment of their claims.

But, three things resulted: (1) “The Brewer of Ghent” advising it, Edward laid claim to the throne of France as next in succession by his mother’s prior right, and thus began the Hundred Years’ War, of great portent to both countries. (2) Edward and his queen, Phillippa of Hainault, transplanted colonies of Flemish manufacturers to England, and laid the foundation of her wealth and independence. (3) Edward’s necessity proved England’s opportunity, and every appropriation for his wars was the occasion of new demands for parliamentary privilege and popular rights.

This vignette closes with the great naval battle off Sluys (June 24, 1340), so quaintly described by Froissart; in which we have the strange spectacle of iron-clad French knights fighting on shipboard, sturdy English sailors boarding and incontinently pitching them into the sea, where, like Falstaff, they “have a kind of alacrity in sinking,”—the result being a victory so striking that it “made the Channel an English lake for two hundred years,” and a calamity so complete that no one dared to break the news to the French king, and so they set the court fools to berating in his presence “the cowardly English who dared not jump into the sea as your majesty’s soldiers did.” This victory redeemed Edward’s military renown, and began to stir the slow blood of England at last. The idea of annexing France, which had so long regarded England as only a Norman-French colony, began to take a hold on all classes.

The third scene should open with the little wars in Little Britain, the “wars of the two Janes,” wives of the dead dukes of Brittany, England and France aiding respective sides. Jane de Montfort’s heroic defense of Hennebon; her promise to her despairing garrison to surrender within three days should not the English succor arrive; her discovery of the English fleet in the offing at day-break of the third day; and how she came down from the walls after her allies had beaten and driven off the French and “kissed Sir Walter Manny and all his knights like a noble and valiant dame;” and then her subsequent naval victory in the channel, when she stood on the deck of her flag-ship, in complete armor, and vanquished her assailants—all this was just the thing to “fire the hearts” of English chivalry. It only needed in addition the promise of unlimited booty to raise an army of English yeomen—not of Dutch burghers—for the invasion of France (1346). The Norman spoliation is requited with interest after two hundred and eighty years; booty and prisoners are sent home by the ship load; the very hostlers of Edward’s army wear velvets and fine furs every day. Now we come to the wonderful battle of Cressy—more full of romantic incident than any other of modern times, save possibly that of Poictiers, its companion-piece, in the same reign. On the English side 7,000 jaded, retreating men—on the French, 60,000 of the best and freshest recruits. But this handful of men, untitled and unarmored, shall overthrow that host of steel-clad warriors, with genealogies as long as their lances, and an ancient culture of arms as useless as their metal overcoats before the English yeomen, in their buff and green jerkins. Here the peal of the new bombards—“the thunder of God,” the French called it—also told of a new order of war. The world had moved and the French had not discovered it; while the English had, for they moved it! The picture is full of incident. There stands Edward, on the hill by the windmill, refusing to send reinforcements to the beset Black Prince. “Let the boy win his spurs. This shall be his victory.” Over here is the brave, blind, old king of Bohemia, who has heard the battle is going badly, and he insists on being led into the fray where he may strike one blow for France and honor, and is struck down. _Ich dien_[F] is blazoned on his crest—a motto which an admiring and commiserating foe is to take up and fulfill in proud humility, a young warrior of sixteen years—

Edward, the Black Prince,
Who on the French ground played a tragedy,
Making defeat on the full power of France,
Whiles his most mighty father on a hill
Stood smiling to behold his lion’s whelp
Forage in blood of French nobility.

The slaughter of thirty thousand French—Edward had them carefully counted—by this handful of English made French prowess forever after despised in the homes and market-places of England.

The next condensed picture is of the siege of Calais. An English city springs up around the doomed fortress, and for a year the English trade, feast, game and tourney before the starving garrison. Scotland thinks this a good time to strike England. Queen Phillippa is anon in the field with an English army, and at Nevill’s Cross (October, 1346) there is another exhibition of Amazonian chivalry. King David of Scotland is taken prisoner and by a common soldier, plain John Copeland, as if everything must be extraordinary and strange. John hurries his royal prize away to the castle of Ogle, and sturdily refuses to give him up to the queen or to any man but King Edward himself. Just the same John was knighted and rewarded; he would have lost his head in any other country. Phillippa goes happy enough over to Calais to spend Christmas and receive the plaudits of Europe and of her lord, which she thought more of. We must take in Froissart’s fancy sketch of the surrender of Calais. The six wealthy burghers voluntarily march out, barefooted, in their shirts, halters about their necks, to die vicariously for the rest of the Calaisians; at the pitiful sight all the English generals intercede with Edward for mercy, but he will not; the queen goes on her knees and pleads so eloquently that the stoutest warriors drop surreptitious tears; the king, with recollections of Nevill’s Cross and the anticipation of another royal child soon to come, can not withstand this, and he says, rather ungraciously, he wishes the queen had been farther away that day, but he supposes she will have it so; and she gives the six citizens each his life, his liberty, a good suit of clothes and a banquet—the last being esteemed not the least of the gifts after their long diet on dogs and horses. All this dear old Froissart tells, and it does not impair its acceptation in history that he evolved the whole incident from his inner consciousness—any more than does the fact that good parson Weems invented the incident of George Washington and the cherry tree injure that story’s currency. In fact, sober history of those times is more marvelous than anything that even the imaginative Froissart could invent. Calais remained an English stronghold and base of English operations in France for two hundred years.

It is now 1347, and all England gives itself up to months of festivity, and patting its own back for its French feats. There are brilliant tournaments and balls, in which the captive king of Scotland and captive French nobles take part as heartily as if they were victors. The Noble Order of the Garter is established with imposing ritual and brilliant festivities, and St. George becomes England’s titular saint. Now occurs Edward’s attempted intrigue with the Countess of Salisbury, who is as wise, brave and pure as she is beautiful. The noble part she played makes her, in our eyes, a greater heroine than Phillippa and “the two Janes.” She taught Edward such a lesson of propriety that he was able to turn her own confusion at a court ball into a lesson in modesty to the tittering lords and ladies, as he clasped the lost garter on his own knee and said, “_Evil be to him who evil thinks_.” And so it comes that the highest order of English nobility and the noble motto on her coat of arms commemorates a pure woman’s holding fast to her integrity. Is not this the best of all the vignettes?

But there is an awfully dark background to it. A rude stop was put to all these rejoicings by the Black Death (1348-50). This Chinese epidemic swept desolation over all Europe. One-third of the population of England was carried off; half the people of London died, and it was difficult to find places of burial. The king’s daughter was one of its victims, and her death took place while she was _en route_ to Spain to be married; she was buried in the church she was to have been married in. The loss of laborers and beasts was so great that famine was added to pestilence. But these dreadful dispensations contributed to the overthrow of slavery and hastened the downfall of the Plantagenets. To counteract the effects of the scarcity of help the Statute of Laborers was passed, a law which attempted to fix the price of labor and to prevent villeins leaving their masters. This act was at the bottom of Wat Tyler’s rebellion in the next reign, and that was the beginning of the end of slavery. The revolt of the laboring classes proved a powerful aid to the spread of Lollardism, and that was the beginning of the Reformation. Thus do remote blessings flow from dark and inscrutable causes.