Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

'You have the rheumatism, madam, because your house is so open; a draught of air is always unhealthy.'

'I allers reckoned 'twar _healthy_,' she replied. 'Ye Yankee folks have quar notions.'

I looked at my watch, and found it was nearly ten o'clock, and, feeling very tired, said to the hostess,--

'Where do you mean we shall sleep?'

'Ye can take that ar bed,' pointing to the one nearest the wall, 'the darky can sleep har;' motioning to the settle on which she was seated.

'But where will you and your daughters sleep? I don't wish to turn you out of your beds.'

'Oh! don't ye keer for us; we kin all bunk together; dun it afore. Like to turn in now?'

'Yes, thank you, I would;' and without more ceremony I adjourned to the further part of the room, and commenced disrobing. Doffing my boots, waistcoat, and cravat, and placing my watch and purse under the pillow, I gave a moment's thought to what a certain not very old lady, whom I had left at home, might say when she heard of my lodging with a grass-widow and three young girls, and sprung into bed. There I removed my undermentionables, which were still too damp to sleep in, and in about two minutes and thirty seconds sunk into oblivion.

A few streaks of grayish light were beginning to creep through the crevices in the logs, when a movement at the foot of the bed awakened me, and glancing downward I beheld the youngest girl emerging from under the clothes at my feet. She had slept there, 'cross-wise,' all night. A stir in the adjoining bed soon warned me that the other feminines were preparing to follow her example; so, turning my face to the wall, I feigned to be asleep. Their toilet was soon made, and they then quietly left Scip and myself in full possession of the premises.

The darky rose as soon as they were gone, and, coming to me, said,--

'Massa, we'd better be gwine. I'se got your cloes all dry, and you can rig up and breakfust at de Cunnel's.'

The storm had cleared away, and the sun was struggling to get through the distant pines, when Scipio brought the horse to the door, and we prepared to start. Turning to the old woman, I said,

'I feel greatly obliged to you, madam, for the shelter you have given us, and would like to make you some recompense for your trouble. Please to tell me what I shall pay you.'

'Wal, stranger, we don't gin'rally take in lodgers, but seein' as how as thar ar tu on ye, and ye've had a good night on it, I don't keer if ye pay me tu dollars.'

That struck me as 'rather steep' for 'common doin's,' particularly as we had furnished the food and 'the drinks;' yet, saying nothing, I handed her a two-dollar bank note. She took it, and held it up curiously to the sun, then in a moment handed it back, saying, 'I don't know nothin' 'bout that ar sort of money; hain't you got no silver?'

I fumbled in my pocket a moment, and found a quarter-eagle, which I gave her.

'I hain't got nary a fip o' change,' she said, as she took it.

'Oh! never mind the change, madam; I shall want to stop and _look_ at you when I return,' I replied, good-humoredly.

'Ha! ha! yer a chicken,' said the woman, at the same time giving me a gentle poke in the ribs. Fearing she might, in the exuberance of her joy at the sight of the money, proceed to some more decided demonstration of affection, I hastily stepped into the wagon, bade her good-by, and was off.

We were still among the pines, which towered gigantically all around us, but were no longer alone. Every tree was scarified for turpentine, and the forest was alive with negro men and women gathering the 'last dipping,' or clearing away the stumps and underbrush preparatory to the spring work. It was Christmas week; but, as I afterwards learned, the Colonel's negroes were accustomed to doing 'half tasks' at that season, being paid for their labor as if they were free. They stopped their work as we rode by, and stared at us with a sort of stupid, half-frightened curiosity, very much like the look of a cow when a railway train is passing. It needed but little observation to conclude that their _status_ was but one step above the level of the brutes.

As we rode along I said to the driver, 'Scipio, what did you think of our lodgings?'

'Mighty pore, massa. Niggas lib better'n dat.'

'Yes,' I replied, 'but these folks despise you blacks; they seem to be both poor and proud.'

'Yas, massa, dey'm pore 'cause dey won't work, and dey'm proud 'cause dey'r white. Dey won't work 'cause dey see de darky slaves doin' it, and tink it am beneaf white folks to do as de darkies do. Dis habin' slaves keeps dis hull country pore.'

'Who told you that?' I asked, astonished at hearing a remark showing so much reflection from a negro.

'Nobody, massa, I see it myseff.'

'Are there many of these poor whites around Georgetown?'

'Not many 'round Georgetown, sar, but great many in de up-country har, and dey'm all 'like--pore and no account; none ob 'em kin read, and dey all eat clay.'

'Eat clay!' I said; 'what do you mean by that?'

'Didn't you see, massa, how yaller all dem wimmin war? Dat's 'cause dey eat clay. De little children begin 'fore dey can walk, and dey eat it till dey die; dey chaw it like 'backer. It makes all dar stumacs big, like as you seed 'em, and spiles dar 'gestion. It am mighty onhealfy.'

'Can it be possible that human beings do such things! The brutes wouldn't do that.'

'No, massa, but _dey_ do it; dey'm pore trash. Dat's what de big folks call 'em, and it am true; dey'm long way lower down dan de darkies.'

By this time we had arrived at the run. We found the bridge carried away, as the woman had told us; but its abutments were still standing, and over these planks had been laid, which afforded a safe crossing for foot-passengers. To reach these planks, however, it was necessary to wade into the stream for full fifty yards, the 'run' having overflowed its banks for that distance on either side of the bridge. The water was evidently receding, but, as we could not well wait, like the man in the fable, for it all to run by, we alighted, and counseled as to the best mode of making the passage.

Scipio proposed that he should wade in to the first abutment, ascertain the depth of the stream, and then, if it was not found too deep for the horse to ford to that point, we would drive that far, get out, and walk to the end of the planking, leading the horse, and then again mount the wagon at the further end of the bridge. We were sure the horse would have to swim in the middle of the current, and perhaps for a considerable distance beyond; but, having witnessed his proficiency in aquatic performances, we had no doubt of his getting safely across.

The darky's plan was decided on, and divesting himself of his trowsers, he waded into the 'run' to take the soundings.

While he was in the water my attention was attracted to a printed paper, posted on one of the pines near the roadside. Going up to it, I read as follows:--

$250 REWARD.

Ran Away from the subscriber, on Monday, November 12th, his mulatto
man, SAM. Said boy is stout-built, five feet nine inches
high, 31 years old, weighs 170 lbs., and walks very erect, and with
a quick, rapid gait. The American flag is tattooed on his right arm
above the elbow. There is a knife-cut over the bridge of his nose,
a fresh bullet-wound in his left thigh, and his back bears marks of
a recent whipping. He is supposed to have made his way back to
Dinwiddie County, Va., where he was raised, or to be lurking in the
swamps in this vicinity.

The above reward will be paid for his confinement in any jail in
North or South Carolina, or Virginia, or for his delivery to the
subscriber on his plantation at ----. D. W. J----. ----, December
2, 1860.

The name signed to this hand-bill was that of the planter I was about to visit.

Scipio having returned, reporting the stream fordable to the bridge, I said to him, pointing to the 'notice,'--

'Read that, Scip.'

He read it, but made no remark.

'What does it mean--that fresh bullet wound, and the marks of a recent whipping?' I asked.

'It mean, massa, dat de darky hab run away, and ben took; and dat when dey took him dey shot him, and flogged him arter dat. Now, he hab run away agin. De Cunnel's mighty hard on his niggas!'

'Is he! I can scarcely believe that.'

'He am, massa; but he ain't so much to blame, nuther; dey'm awful bad set, most ob 'em,--so dey say.'

Our conversation was here interrupted by our reaching the bridge. After, safely 'walking the plank,' and making our way to the opposite bank, I resumed it by asking,--

'Why are the Colonel's negroes so particularly bad?'

'Cause, you see, massa, de turpentime business hab made great profits for sum yars now, and de Cunnel hab been gettin' rich bery fass. He hab put all his money, jes so fass as he made it, into darkies, so as to make more; for he's got berry big plantation, and need nuffin' but darkies to work it to make money jess like a gold mine. He goes up to Virginny to buy niggas; and up dar _now_ dey don't sell none less dey'm bad uns, 'cep when sum massa die or git pore. Virginny darkies dat cum down har ain't gin'rally of much account. Dey'm either kinder good-for-nuffin, or dey'm ugly; and de Cunnel d'rather hab de ugly dan de no-account niggas.'

'How many negroes has he?'

''Bout two hundred, men and wimmin, I b'lieve, massa.'

'It can't be very pleasant for his family to remain in such an out-of-the-way place, with such a gang of negroes about them, and no white people near.'

'No, massa, not in dese times; but de missus and de young lady ain't dar now.'

'Not there now? The Colonel said nothing to me about that. Are you sure?'

'Oh yas, massa; I seed 'em go off on de boat to Charles'n most two weeks ago. Dey don't mean to cum back till tings am more settled; dey'm 'fraid to stay dar.'

'I should think it wouldn't be safe for even the Colonel there, if a disturbance broke out among the slaves.'

''Twouldn't be safe den anywhar, sar; but de Cunnel am berry brave man. He'm better dan twenty of _his_ niggas.'

'Why better than twenty of _his_ niggers?'

''Cause dem ugly niggas am gin'rally cowards. De darky dat is quiet, 'spectful, and does his duty, am de brave sort; _dey'll_ fight, massa, till dey'm cut down.'

We had here reached a turn in the road, and passing it, came suddenly upon a coach, attached to which were a pair of magnificent grays, driven by a darky in livery.

'Hallo dar!' said Scipio to the driver, as we came nearly abreast of the carriage. 'Am you Cunnel J----'s man?'

'Yas, I is dat,' replied the darky.

At this moment a woolley head, which I recognized at once as that of the Colonel's man 'Jim,' was thrust out of the window of the vehicle.

'Hallo, Jim,' I said. 'How do you do? I'm glad to see you.'

'Lor bress me, massa K----, am dat you?' exclaimed the astonished negro, hastily opening the door, and coming to me. 'Whar _did_ you cum from? I'se mighty glad to see you;' at the same time giving my hand a hearty shaking. I must here say, in justice to the reputation of South Carolina, that no respectable Carolinian refuses to shake hands with a black man, unless--the black happens to be free.

'I thought I wouldn't wait for you,' I replied. 'But how did you expect to get on? the "runs" have swollen into rivers.'

'We got a "flat" made for dis one,--it's down dar by dis time,--de oders we tought we'd get ober sumhow.'

BLACK FREEMASONRY.

'Jim, this is Scip,' I said, seeing that the darkies had taken no notice of each other.

'How d'ye do, Scipio?' said Jim, extending his hand to him. A look of singular intelligence passed over the faces of the two negroes as their hands met; it vanished in an instant, and was so slight that none but a close observer would have detected it, but some words that Scip had previously let drop put me on the alert, and I felt sure it had a hidden significance.

'Won't you get into de carriage, massa?' inquired Jim.

'No, thank you, Jim. I'll ride on with Scip. Our horse is jaded, and you had better go ahead.'

Jim mounted the driver's seat, turned the carriage, and drove off at a brisk pace to announce our coming at the plantation, while Scip and I rode on at a slower gait.

'Scip, did you know Jim before?' I asked.

'Neber seed him afore, massa, but hab heern ob him.'

'How is it that you have lived in Georgetown for five years, and he only seventy miles off, and you never have seen him?'

'I cud hab seed him, massa, good many time, ef I'd liked, but darkies hab to be careful.'

'Careful of what?'

'Careful ob who dey knows; good many bad niggas 'bout.'

'Pshaw, Scip, you're "coming de possum;" that game won't work with me. There isn't a better nigger than Jim in all South Carolina. I know him well.'

'P'raps he am; reckon he _am_ a good enuff nigga.'

'Good enough nigga, Scip! Why, I tell you he's a splendid fellow; just as true as steel. He's been North with the Colonel, often, and the Abolitionists have tried to get him away; he knew he could go, but wouldn't budge an inch.'

'I knew he wouldn't,' said the darky, a pleasurable gleam passing through his eyes; 'dat sort don't run; dey face de music!'

'Why don't they run? What do you mean?'

'Nuffin', massa,--only dey'd ruther stay har.'

'Come, Scip, you've played this game long enough. Tell me, now, what that look you gave each other when you shook hands meant.'

'What look, massa? Oh! I s'pose 'twar 'cause we'd both _heerd_ ob each oder afore.'

''Twas more than that, Scip. Be frank; you know you can trust me.'

'Wal, den, massa,' he replied, adding, after a short pause, 'de ole woman called you a Yankee,--you can guess.'

'If I should guess,'twould be that it meant _mischief_.'

'It don't mean mischief, sar,' said the darky, with a tone and air that would not have disgraced a Cabinet officer; 'it mean only RIGHT and JUSTICE.'

'It means that there is some secret understanding between you.'

'I tole you, massa,' he replied, relapsing into his usual manner, 'dat de blacks am all Freemasons. I gabe Jim de grip, and he know'd me. He'd ha known my name ef you hadn't tole him.'

'Why would he have known your name?'

''Cause I gabe de grip, dat tole him.'

'Why did he call you Scip_io_? I called you _Scip_.'

'Oh! de darkies all do dat. Nobody but de white folks call me _Scip_. I can't say no more, massa; I SHUD BREAK DE OATH EF I DID!'

'You have said enough, Scipio, to satisfy me that there is a secret league among the blacks, and that you are a leader in it. Now, I tell you, you'll get yourself into a scrape. I've taken a liking to you, Scip, and I should be _very sorry_ to see you run yourself into danger.'

'I tank you, massa, from de bottom ob my soul I tank you,' he said, as the tears moistened his eyes. 'You bery kind, massa; it do me good to talk wid you. But what am my life wuth? What am any _slave's_ life wuth? Ef you war me you'd do like me!'

I could not deny it, and made no reply.

The writer of this article is aware that he is here making an important statement, and one that may be called in question by those persons who are accustomed to regard the Southern blacks as only reasoning brutes. The great mass of them are but a little above the brutes in their habits and instincts, but a large body are fully on a par, except in mere book-education, with their white masters.

The conversation above recorded is, _verbatim et literatim_, TRUE. It took place at the time indicated, and was taken down, as were other conversations recorded in these papers, within twenty-four hours after its occurrence. The name and the locality, only, I have, for very evident reasons, disguised.

From this conversation, together with previous ones, held with the same negro, and from after developments made to me at various places, and at different times, extending over a period of six weeks, I became acquainted with the fact--and I _know_ it to be a _fact_--that there exists among the blacks a secret and wide-spread organization of a Masonic character, having its grip, pass-word, and oath. It has various grades of leaders, who are competent and _earnest_ men, and its ultimate object is FREEDOM. It is quite as wide-spread, and much more secret, than the order of the 'Knights of the Golden Circle,' the kindred league among the whites.

This latter organization, which was instituted by John C. Calhoun, William L. Porcher, and others, as far back as 1835, has for its sole object the dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of a Southern Empire;--Empire is the word, not Confederacy, or Republic;--and it was solely by means of its secret but powerful machinery that the Southern States were plunged into revolution, in defiance of the will of a majority of their voting population.

Nearly every man of influence at the South (and many a pretended Union man at the North) is a member of this organization, and sworn, under the penalty of assassination, to labor, 'in season and out of season, by fair means and by foul, at all times, and on all occasions,' for the accomplishment of its object. The blacks are bound together by a similar oath, and only _bide their time_.

The knowledge of the real state of political affairs, which the negroes have acquired through this organization, is astonishingly accurate; their leaders possess every essential of leadership,--except, it may be, military skill,--and they are fully able to cope with the whites.

The negro whom I call Scipio, on the day when Major Anderson evacuated Fort Moultrie, and before he or I knew of that event, which set all South Carolina in a blaze, foretold to me the breaking out of this war in Charleston harbor, and as confidently predicted that it would result in the freedom of the slaves!

The knowledge of this organization I acquired by gaining the confidence of some of the blacks, who knew me to be a Northern man, and supposed I sympathized with them. Having acquired it in that manner, I could not communicate it; but now, when our troops have landed in South Carolina, and its existence is sure to be speedily developed, no harm can result from this announcement.

The fact of its existing is not positively known (for the black is more subtle and crafty than anything human), but is suspected, by many of the whites; the more moderate of whom are disposed to ward off the impending blow by some system of gradual emancipation,--declaring all black children born after a certain date free,--or by some other action that will pacify and keep down the slaves. These persons, however, are but a small minority, and possess no political power, and the South is rushing blindly on to a catastrophe, which, if not averted by the action of our government, will make the horrors of San Domingo and the French Revolution grow pale in history.

I say the action of our government, for with it rests the responsibility. What the black wants is freedom. Give him that, and he will have no incentive to insurrection. If emancipation is proclaimed at the head of our armies,--emancipation for _all_--confiscation for the slaves of rebels, compensation for the slaves of loyal citizens,--the blacks will rush to the aid of our troops, the avenging angel will pass over the homes of the many true and loyal men who are still left at the South, and the thunderbolts of this war will fall only--where they should fall--on the heads of its blood-stained authors. If this is not done, after we have put down the whites we shall have to meet the blacks, and after we have waded knee-deep in the blood of both, we shall end the war where it began, but with the South desolated by fire and sword, the North impoverished and loaded down with an everlasting debt, and our once proud, happy and glorious country the by-word and scorn of the whole civilized world.

I have all my life long been a true friend to the South. My connections, my interests, and my sympathies are all there, and there are those now in the ranks of this rebellion who are of my own blood; but I say, and I would to God that every lover of his country would say it with me, 'Make no peace with it until slavery is exterminated.' Slavery is its very bones, marrow, and life-blood, and you can not put it down till you have destroyed that accursed institution. If a miserable peace is patched up before a death-stroke is given to slavery, it will gather new strength, and drive freedom from this country forever. In the nature of things it can not exist in the same hemisphere with liberty. Then let every man who loves his country determine that if this war must needs last for twenty years, it shall not end until this root of all our political evils is weeded out forever.

A short half-hour took us to the plantation, where I found the Colonel on the piazza awaiting me. After our greeting was over, noticing my soiled and rather dilapidated condition, he inquired where I had passed the night. I told him, when he burst into a hearty fit of laughter, and for several days good-naturedly bantered me about 'putting up' at the most aristocratic hotel in South Carolina,--the 'Mills House.'

We soon entered the mansion, and the reader will, I trust, excuse me, if I leave him standing in its door-way till another month.

THE LESSON OF WAR.

Lex est, non poena, perire.--_Martial._

Ye warriors of the past, whose flashing swords
Light up with fitful gleams the misty night
Of half-forgotten eld, in fiery words
Ye teach a truth 'twere well we read aright.

God sends the gentle breeze to woo the flower,
And stir the pulses of the ripening corn;
He, too, lets loose the whirlwind's vengeful power
To quench the plagues of foul stagnation born.

And thus in love, sometimes disguised as wrath,
He sends his hidden blessings in the storm,
Which dashes down in its resistless path
The hoar abuses that defied reform.

When Cyrus ravaged fair Chaldea's plain,
And mocked the strength of Babylon's haughty wall,
The proud Assyrian's guilt had earned the chain,
And man rejoiced to mark the oppressor's fall.

And when, made drunk with power, the Persian lost
The stern and simple virtues of his sires,
His empire's ruin and his slaughtered host
Kindled in Greece her world-illuming fires.

Then Greece, her swift career of glory stayed,
Exhausted by her madman's triumphs lay,
Till Rome's protecting arm the loss repaid
Of Corinth's sack and Pydua's fatal day.

Imperial Rome! though crime succeeded crime
As earth fell prostrate 'neath her giant tread,
Still shall her subjects reap to endless time
The priceless harvests by her wisdom spread.

What though the stern proconsul's grinding rule
Close followed on the legion's merciless sword?
Laws, arts, and culture, in that rigid school,
Evoked a nation from each savage horde.

And when at last her crimes, reacting, wrought
Their curse upon herself, to her, supine
And helpless, the barbarian spoiler brought,
With fire and sword, new life to her decline.

Theodoric, Clovis, Charles, your endless strife,
From Weser's marsh to Naples' laughing bay,
Was but the throe that marked the nascent life
Emerging from the worn-out world's decay.

Ye were, amid that elemental war,
But straws to show its course. Ye toiled, and won,
Or lost; your people bled--yet slow and far
The mighty cause of man pressed ever on.

Long has that travail been. Kings, Kaisers, Popes,
The stern Crusader and the pirate Dane,
Each, centered in his own ambitious hopes,
But helped the cause he labored to restrain.

Hildebrand's voice sets Christendom on fire;
'Neath Frederic's plow sinks Milan's lofty wall;
Unnumbered victims glut De Montfort's ire;
From Ecclin's dungeon shrieks the night appall.

If the tide ebbs, 'tis but to flow again.
Each fierce convulsion gains some vantage ground.
Man's fettered limbs grow stronger, and the chain
Falls link by link at each tumultuous bound.

The timid burgher dons the helm and shield,
The wretched hind reluctant grasps the bow,
To fight their master's quarrels. Courtrai's field
And Sempach's hill that lesson's worth may show.

The restless soul still yearns for things unknown;
It chafes against its bondage, points the way
That leads to freedom, but the sword alone
Makes good the dreams that else would but betray.

See, Luther speaks, and Europe flies to arms:
Her stubborn fight outlasts a hundred years;
A thousand fields her richest life-blood warms,
Yet gain the vanquished more than pays their tears.

If Orange and Gustavus conquering died,
Not Coligny nor Hampden fell in vain,
For one domain escaped the furious tide,
And peace made that one desolate--chivalrous Spain!

So, when the traitorous truth was whispered round,--
Equality for man on earth as heaven,--
It was but speculation's idlest sound,
Till by the sword the time-worn bonds were riven.

Though Moscow, Leipzig, Waterloo, might seem
To roll the tide back, they but marked its flood;
Nor could the Holy Allies' darkest scheme
Restore the wrongs so well effaced in blood.

The end is not yet. God's mysterious way
Evolves its purpose in its destined time.
Vainly we seek its fated march to stay:
All things subserve it--wisdom, folly, crime.

We are his instruments. The past has fled
For us. We suffer for the future dim.
Then sternly face the darkness round us spread,
Do each his duty--leave the rest to Him!

RALPH WALDO EMERSON.

The Nineteenth Century dawned upon a nation already glorious with the sublime promise of a prophetic infancy. The strong serpents of Tyranny and Superstition had been crushed in its powerful grasp. The songs of two oceans--the lullaby of its earlier days--had cheered it on to a youth whose dignity and beauty were bought with sword and rifle, with blood and death. Wrapped at last in the _toga_ of an undisputed manhood, it took its place among the empires of the earth, the son of a king, mightier than all; free to enact new laws, to promulgate new systems of economy, social and political, free to worship and to think. With what success a government grounded on a principle so faultless has been administered, may not now be written, but is not more doubtful than it was when the drum beat its _reveillé_ only on our distant frontiers, and the booming of guns from ship or shore was but the nation's welcome to days made memorable by its great men. But before the new republic stretched a vast field for thought, and within its almost boundless limits, hidden beneath the husks of old theories, lay the seed ready for the ripening. Far back toward the east rolled, like a mighty desert, the history of the Progress of Mind. Here and there, on its arid surface, rose, stately and awe-inspiring, great pyramids which marked those eras of agitation when Humanity, awaking suddenly to her power, grappled with giant strength the mighty enigmas of Being, and endeavored to wrench from their mute souls the great secrets that Faith alone has expounded to the satisfaction of her devotees. It availed little that one by one, in the vaults of these temples, the axioms and deductions of their founders were laid away lifeless and powerless. Another generation, vigorous and persevering, laid stone after stone the foundations of another edifice that strove to reach, with its yearning apex of desire, the very heavens. Still high and unmoved curved the blue infinitude above, while below its mirror in the soul of man surged wildly against shores stern, rock-bound, immutable, unanswering.

The 'limits of the forefathers' (_fines quos posuerunt patres nostri_) had been first transgressed by Abelard, and the speculating spirit of Scholasticism disseminated by him overwhelmed Europe with that rage for investigations, so futile yet so laborious, that terrified the theologians of the mediæval church, and marked the first modern epoch in Philosophy--the beginning of the revolt of Reason against Authority. Next, colossal against the still unrelenting skies, towered what may be called the _Natur-Philosophie_, 'Nature Philosophy' of Giordano Bruno. The echoes of Luther's bugle still pierced the mountain-fastnesses of Northern Italy and the gorges of Spain. In the church, Bruno found only skepticism and licentiousness, ignorance and tyranny. Before him four centuries had been swallowed up in debate on the fruitless question of Nominalism, and others equally insignificant, but were visible to him by the light of a logic so shallow, futile, and despotic, that it was known only to be scorned. With an energy that astonished the feeble and degraded clergy of his time, a fearlessness that exacted the admiration while it aroused the indignation of his contemporaries, and a genius that compelled the attention of those who were most zealous to combat its evidences, Bruno, casting off the shackles of the cloister, that '_prigione angusta e nera_,' boldly advanced a system of Philosophy, startling, in those Inquisitorial times, from its independence, and horrible from its antagonism to Aristotle, the Atlas of the church. This was no less than pure Pantheism,--God in and through all, the infinite Intelligence. _Deus est monadum monas--nempe entium entitas_. This creed, by an incomprehensible metamorphosis, was styled, in the language of the day, Atheism; its promulgation, even its conception, was pronounced a crime whose penalty was death. And Bruno, who, from the depths of infamous superstition, had risen into the pure light of heaven, to a theory whose principles, though they might not satisfy, could not fail to refine, elevate, and encourage the soul long groveling in the mire of ignorance, or languishing in the dark dungeons of Scholasticism,--Bruno died for the truth. More foolish than the savages of whom Montesquieu speaks, who cut down trees to reach their fruit, these judges of Bruno destroyed the tree whose seeds were already strewn broadcast over the world. They hushed forever the voice whose echoes are not yet stilled,--echoes that resound in the cautious _Meditations_ of Descartes, that rise from peak to peak of the majestic method of the great Spinoza, who was no less a martyr because reputation and not life was the forfeit of his earnestness; and that vibrate with thrilling sweetness in the Idealism of Schelling. 'The perfect theory of Nature,' says Schelling, 'is that by virtue of which all Nature is resolved into the intellectual element,' which 'intellectual element' is at once composed of intuitions and is the source of intuitions,--the _Deus in nobis_ of Giordano Bruno. 'It is evident,' he continues, 'that Nature is originally identical with that which in us is recognized as the subject and the object.'

Thus the empirical school, in its representative, Aristotle, met in the martyr of Nola an opponent vigilant, earnest, powerful. And while the legitimate prosecution of the former mode of philosophizing has led to deism, skepticism, atheism, and materialism, it is to those who have retained in methods, more mathematically clear and more perfectly developed than that which Bruno disseminated, but still bearing, as their key-note, the one great idea of his bold crusade,--to those we must look for all that is most pure, most noble, in Philosophy: a system or succession of systems whose primitive idea--substance and essence--is the very God for a supposed denial of whom Bruno died. '_Cosi vince Goffredo!_'

Thus rolled on the centuries. Germany, France, England, and Scotland had each contributed her knights to the great tournament of Mind. And now the first symptoms of agitation appeared on the hitherto unruffled surface of Thought in the New World. Still panting after her victories, scarcely used to her new freedom, at first the presence of a power antagonistic to the orthodox faith was unsuspected even by those who first entertained it. But the stone had been dashed into the tranquil ocean when the May-flower was moored on the New England coast, and its circling eddies drew curve after curve among the descendants, brave, conscientious, energetic, of the old Puritans. The stern Calvinism, by which their fathers had lived and died, was, by these early recreants, first mistrusted, then questioned, and finally abjured. The murmurs of dissent that had long agitated the sturdy upholders of the accepted faith, broke out in a demand for a system whose claims should be less absolute, and whose nature should satisfy those fugitive appeals to Reason and the Understanding, that, weak indeed, and faint, were yet distinctly audible to the thinkers of the day. From the cloud of accusation and denial, of suspicion and trial, the new Perseus, Unitarianism,--whilom a nursling of Milton, Locke, and Hartley,--was born, and took its place among the sects, sustained by the few, dreaded and condemned by the many.

To brand this new theory, no terms were found too strong even by the religious periodicals of the day. Unwilling to bide their time, to test its soundness by its strength and duration, its opponents rested not. It was confidently predicted that the movement would influence its followers to skepticism and atheism. The accusation of the sixteenth century was revived, and St. Bernards cried from pulpit and press, 'The limits of the forefathers have been transgressed!' To the great mass of the opposition, the horror was not that Trinitarianism had been assailed, but that men had been found so bold as to question it. The crime with the unlearned and the majority of the professors was not heresy, but daring. But Christians, fervent and earnest, were not wanting who denounced the movement in its anticipated consequences. The young and adventurous, the men of impulse and daring, would drift, it was feared, to the very borders of open infidelity. But the contrary was the result. A pietism the very reverse was developed, which, aided by the beloved Channing, was disseminated through New England. Justice Story even asserted that in Unitarianism he found refuge from the skepticism to which in youth he had tended.

Permitted, by the liberal character of the welcome substitute for a theology that had become too stringent for the age, to prosecute their researches into fields hitherto forbidden to the orthodox, thinkers, economists, statesmen and theologians gathered round the standard, and a new impulse was given to the intellectual character of the times. A revolution in Thought was impending.

In Literature we dared challenge the nations. The popularity of Cooper was at its high noon. Irving, with the graphic and delicate strokes of his sympathetic pencil, had written himself the Claude Lorraine among _litterateurs_; and Prescott, with his sentences of granite, was building himself an immortal name. Still, we were behind Germany, and even France, in that wide comprehension and universal criticism that determines more accurately than its politics the real _status_ of a nation. These elements were now to be supplied. Carlyle had played in England the _rôle_ so humorously yet thoroughly enacted in Germany by Heine, and so gracefully and airily performed in France by Cousin. He had _popularized_ the philosophers. Without the acute, electric perceptions of the great German or the industry and amiable vanities of that De Sevigné among philosophers, Cousin, he presented, by fierce dashes of his crayon, black, blunt, and bluff, to the hitherto ignorant British public, some phases of the great metaphysical bearings of the age upon Literature and Art, as developed in Teutonic poetry and prose. In a word, he familiarized his readers with the _Æsthetik_ of Germany. He published in 1830 his _Sartor Resartus_, which, clothing the man in '_der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid_,' usurped for him at once an office not inferior to that of the _Erd-geist_ in _Faust_. The shrill notes of the bagpipe of the critic of Craigenputtock blew across the mountains and valleys of his island home, rousing the judge on the bench, and, penetrating the long halls of Cambridge and Oxford, streamed yet distinct and powerful to our shores. Astonished by the richness and fullness of a literature so comprehensive, which seemed to inclose in its brilliant mazes all that their meagre and unfruitful dogmas denied of comfort to the heart and systematic development to the mind, the men who, with girded loins and scrips in their hands, had long wandered disconsolately on the shores of a seething ocean, now saw its waters parted, and crossed upon dry ground. Before them stretched the vast wilderness of German Philosophy. To their bewildered gaze, each system was an Arabia Felix, and every axiom a graceful palm.

Meanwhile, a second influence was at work among the orthodox, an influence that tended to the same great result, no longer an accident, but a necessity of the age. The _Biographia Literaria_ and _The Friend_ of Coleridge, embodying a dwarfed but not distorted version of the metaphysical system of Kant, which had created a profound sensation in England, met with an even more enthusiastic reception in this country. The Christian character of their author was beyond reproach, his genius undisputed; as a poet he ranked among those to whom Great Britain owed the laurel; and as an essayist, even the bitterest critics yielded him the palm. When, therefore, this man, one of the most evangelical of his time in the Established Church, brought to the aid of a time-honored and beloved theology the principles of that very philosophy which was deemed by others its fiercest antagonist, not a few who had been hitherto deterred from its investigation by a dread of the accusation of heresy, eagerly availed themselves of his labors. His _Aids to Reflection_ was presented to the American public under the patronage of Dr. Marsh, late president of Burlington College, Vt. An elaborate preliminary essay by this eminently pious clergyman established the claims of the work to favor, and it was even taken up as a text-book in Amherst and one or two liberal Congregational universities in New England.

The effort of Coleridge, rendered obscure by his turgid and florid style, was to explain the religious doctrines of Archbishop Leighton and the early Puritans, which he held as orthodox, by means of the momentous distinction between Reason and the Understanding, which he borrowed from the _Critik der Reinen Vernunft_ of Kant. However plausible, when disencumbered of its poetical drapery, the theory of Coleridge may be, and however convincing, _so far as it goes_, of the truth of his principles, we can not forget that the final tendency of the critical philosophy of Kant is, if not a positive approach to skepticism, at least to afford a scientific basis for it. But the formula of the author of Christabel was the pure exponent of his creed. The terror of metaphysics vanished as the oft-repeated words met the eye of the wary and suspicious investigator. 'World--God = 0: God--world = Reality Absolute. The world without God is nothing: God without the world is already, in and of himself, absolute perfection, absolute authority.'

Thus, while Carlyle, bold, versatile, shrewd, untrammeled, worked upon the Unitarian element in America, Coleridge, evangelical, polished, yet adventurous, leavened the Congregationalists and other shades of orthodox Christians with the same result. But the first literary outgrowth and original product of the Transcendental movement in America was Emerson's Essay on Nature, which appeared in 1838, forming a nucleus for the writings of the Dial-ists, and proving a sort of _prolegomena_ to the new edition of Hermetic Philosophy. '_Non est philosophus nisi fingit et pinxit_,' said the great pioneer. Here Emerson does both, proving, by inversion, his claim to the title. Whatever may be the negative virtues of this preliminary essay, it undoubtedly possesses the positive one of having given a strong impulse to the study and love of Nature. True, the man who is to grasp its details, sympathies, significations, to hear, in all their grand harmony, its various discordant symphonies and fugues, to see its marvelous associations, needs to be Briarean-armed, Israfel-hearted and Argus-eyed, as perhaps none in our imperfect day and generation can claim to be. But at least this 'Nature' of Emerson's insinuated, dimly and dreamily, in spite of its positive air, an occult relation between man and Nature. It invested rock and sky and air with new and startling attributes. The deep thinker might even draw upon its pages some _pays-de-Cocagne_ landscape, flowing indeed with milk and honey, but in Tantalian distance. Nature's true heart is invested with a pericardium so thick that it resists the scalpel of the skillful critics, to whom the stethoscope alone betrays the healthful throb of vitality beneath. With portly arguments, Emerson bars the door to the simple but earnest-hearted. That Nature, whose prophet he is, gleams, bright and unloving, down from a cold, unsympathizing heaven.

'Not every one doth it beseem to question
The far-off, high Arcturus.'

And we, the lazzaroni on the piazza, can not even see the sky for the mist of 'mottoes Italianate and Spanish terms' of an effete logic that has risen before it.

Nevertheless, here are the first gleams of a genial appreciation of the _Æsthetik_ of Germany, that large-hearted discernment that grasps similitudes from the antipodes of Thought, and writes them upon its sunny equator. And there are appeals to those finer impulses and experiences of every feeling soul that manifest a sense, imperfect yet animated, of that marvelous sympathy that exists between all phases of life, whether in humanity or in external nature. His natural outbursts of feeling are rare, but delicious as _caviare_, with a certain quaver of piquancy. 'Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous. The dawn is my Assyria; the sun-set and moon-rise my Paphos and unimaginable realms of faërie; broad noon shall be my England of the senses and the understanding, and night shall be my Germany of mystic philosophy and dreams.' Only a fantasy, and yet how he bends Nature to suit the curve of his own temperament. And who has not felt the involuntary exhilaration, appalling from its very depth, that possessed him, crossing a bare common, on a bleak October afternoon, sunless and chill, with gray winds sweeping by--'I was glad to the brink of fear.' An intense emotion is imprisoned in these words,--the irresistible intoxication of deep delight, the consciousness of an unbounded faculty for enjoyment, and a lurking but delicious dread of the lavish power of sensation cooped within the senses. Heine, in his 'Lutetia,' speaks of the 'secret raptures attendant upon the tremors of fear.' Still, Emerson's Nature is rather a Nature à la Pompadour, in powdered hair and jeweled stomacher and high-heeled slippers; not the dear green mother of our dreams, who was wooed by the bending heavens, and

'Myriad myriads of lives teemed forth from the mighty embracement;
Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impelled by thousand-fold instincts,
Filled, as a dream, the wide waters; the rivers sang on in their
channels;
Laughed on their shores the hoarse seas; the yearning ocean swelled
upward;
Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods, and the echoing
mountains,
Wandered bleating in valleys, and warbled in blossoming branches.'

But Nature had been broached and Society was scandalized. Like the Chancellor in Faust, it mounted its tripod and solemnly proclaimed its verdict upon the inadmissible theory, so inadequately proved of the identity of Nature and Spirit. But '_was sagt_ mein Thales?'

'Natur und Geist! so spricht man nicht zu Christen:
Desshalb verbrennt man Atheisten,
Weil solche Reden höchst gefährlich sind.
Natur ist Sünde, Geist ist Teufel;
Sie hegen zwischen sich den Zweifel,
Ihr miss-gestaltet Zwitterkind.'

The Transcendental movement did not fail to attract severe opposition, not only to its agitators, but toward the whole body of Unitarians, from a portion of which it in a great measure sprang. If indeed, as Ellis, its champion, asserts, Transcendentalism was not a native emanation from New England, _i.e._, Unitarianism, yet it obviously paved the way for its entrance, and even erected triumphal arches at intervals over its projected route. The consequence of the renewed attack upon this already sorely aggrieved sect was its virtual separation into moderates and extremists: the one holding to its primitive theories, the other inclining graciously to the more comprehensive and fascinating, because more liberal and mystical, tenets of the new faith. The Rev. Andrew Norton, an eminent Unitarian divine of the old school, in a discourse before the Alumni of the Cambridge Theological School, took occasion to attack with great vigor what he termed the 'new form of infidelity.' This and his subsequent replies were most ably answered by George Ripley, a zealous and genial scholar, eminent in belles-lettres and philosophy, in his 'Letters on the latest form of Infidelity, including the Opinions of Spinoza, Schleiermacher, and De Wette. Boston, James Munroe & Co., 1840.'

This contest constituted the central polemic of the strife. Chilled by the cold breath of popular intolerance, these persecuted advocates of a metaphysical faith, which even themselves comprehended but dimly, might have warmed their trembling hands by the fire of that _auto da fé_ whose flames three centuries have not extinguished. Even those most opposed by culture and habit to the innovators, could not but acknowledge that the _Bestia Triofante_, that Giordano Bruno undertook to expel, was still rampant and powerful in the midst of a civilized and intelligent community. The fact was that the Transcendentalists were as much astonished at this accusation of infidelity as even Fénélon himself could have been. They were men of irreproachable character, the majority religious by nature and scholarly by disposition, and they found in their new field scope for an increased piety and a more enlarged benevolence. Their infinitely pliable philosophy expanded amiably to suit the requirements of any and every sect. The Rev. W. H. Furness, of Philadelphia, though not thoroughly identified with the movement, yet, in several volumes published at that time, manifested the influence of Rationalism upon his own studies. But the machinery of his mind, though exquisite in its details, was too delicate to work up successfully the heavy material of the German importations. In a review of his 'Life of Jesus,' by A. P. Peabody, in the _N. A. Review_, after a merited tribute of praise and respect to the talented author, occurs the following: 'Æsthetic considerations weigh more with him than historical proofs, and vividness of conception than demonstration. So far is he from needing facts to verify his theories, that he is ready to reject the best authenticated facts, if they would not flow necessarily from his _à priori_ reasoning.' This was severe, too severe in the instance cited; but the remark is worth preserving, as strikingly characteristic of much of the _belles-lettres_ writings of the New School of thinkers, as they were once, and indeed might yet be termed. But impiety was never the result of Transcendentalism. Its advocates endeavored rather to prove the adaptability of a generous and catholic spirit of Philosophy to religion than to subvert it. They never advanced to a love of Strauss and Feuerbach, and men of the second generation, of whom G.H. Lewes may be taken as a type, have generally been regarded by them as the Girondists regarded the Jacobins. Both urge reform, the Vergniaud and the Robespierre, but the one respects the old landmarks, while the other, with an unequaled nonchalance, sweeps by, unconscious of them all, and plants his standard on a foundation as yet unshaken by foot of man.

The consequences of the Transcendental movement were truly remarkable. Those latitudes to which habit had accustomed us to look for our _literati_ became one immense hot-house, in which exotics of the most powerful fragrance bloomed luxuriantly.[4] As if by miracle, they assumed hues and adopted habits to which, in their native soil, they had been strangers. Every small _litterateur_ wore conspicuously his cunningly entwined wreath. Ladies appeared at 'æsthetic tea-parties,' crowned with the most delicate of the new importations. Young clergymen were not complete without a flower in their button-holes, and the tables of staid old professors groaned beneath the weight of huge pyramidal bouquets. The cursory examination of foreign literature had given rise to an eclecticism which reflected the distinguishing features of that of Cousin, yet went a step further in daring. Yet this was not an eclecticism that, gifted with the power of a king, the dignity of a priest, and the discernment of a prophet, drew from the treasure-troves of European libraries only their choicest gems. Diamonds, it is true, flashed among the spoils; sapphires and emeralds gleamed; but beside them lay bits of sandstone and scraps of anthracite, rainbow-tinted, perhaps, but of an unconquerable opaqueness. And the alchemy that should have transmuted these to gold, and educed from the one light and from the other majesty, was wanting. A trace of Behmen here, a reading of Cousin's lectures there, some Schiller and more Goethe, some pietism encouraged by a love of Channing, the American Fénélon, some German ballads and a flavor of Plato,--all these helped the initiated to a curious dialect and a curious _mélange_. And this was Transcendentalism. The great revelation that the grand Moonsee of the new movement had declared necessary in 1838 had been made; the ninth _avatar_ had descended, and men looked about them for the representative of Krishna, and reverenced him in RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Under his auspices, the _Dial_, the organ of the new sect, was published, and the next year, 1841, the first collection of his writings appeared under the simple caption _Essays_, followed by a second series in 1847.

Spite of the fragmentary Germano-pantheism of the new Philosophy, as set forth in these volumes, that a grand advance had been made upon the old modes of thought was proved by the dismay in the opposing ranks. The outcry against Unitarianism was faint compared with the howls of horror and defiance that greeted Transcendentalism. The very name was a synonym for arrogance. The pride of its opponents was touched. Alarming indeed, and transcendental beyond conception, were the outpourings of thought that anointed the _Dial_ and these _Essays_. The very chrism of mysticism trickled along their running-titles, and dripped fragrantly from their pages. Not only new opinions, but new words and phrases, puzzled the uninitiated. Among these were _subjective_ and _objective_, and the concise, comprehensive Germanisms were assailed as sure evidence of treason or insanity. He who used them was a marked man, and liable to find on the first oyster-shell his sentence of exile from the assemblage of the faithful. The name of Goethe was as terrible as the sacred 'Om' of the Brahmins; it was whispered with 'bated breath, and was generally believed to be diabolical _per se_. In short, everything bearing the stamp of Germany was a bit of sweet, forbidden lore. Travels in that fog-land by dull old fogies, and simple outlines of its Philosophy by divines high in rank, were obtained by stealth, and read in secret by college-boys, with as much zeal as the 'Kisses' of Johannes Secundus or the Epigrams of Martial. Even Klopstock's 'Messiah' became gilded with a sort of delightful impropriety.

Disapprobation and distrust had merged into abuse and persecution. Orestes A. Brownson, then drifting with the strong tide of the liberals, published in 1840 a sort of pantheistically ending novel, entitled _Charles Elwood, or the Infidel Converted_. The Rev. Dr. Bright, at present editor of the Baptist _Examiner_, was at that tune a bookseller of the firm of Bennett & Bright, and publisher of the _Baptist Register_. When _Charles Elwood_ appeared, he ordered the usual number of copies; but, discovering the nature of the book, made a Servetus of the 'lot' by burning them up in the back-yard of his store. A funeral pyre worthy the admiration and awe it must have excited.