Chapter X: Introduction (1)

Rome is the cradle of art,--which accounts for its sleeping there.

Nature, however, is nowhere more wide awake than it is in and around this city: therefore, Mr. James Caper, animal painter, determined to repose there for several months.

The following sketches correctly describe his Roman life.

ARRIVAL IN ROME.

It was on an Autumn night that the traveling carriage in which sat James Caper arrived in Rome; and as he drove through that fine street, the Corso, he saw coming towards him a two-horse open carriage, filled with Roman girls of the working class (_minenti_). Dressed in their picturesque costumes, bonnetless, their black hair tressed with flowers, they stood up, waving torches, and singing in full voice one of those songs in which you can go but few feet, metrically speaking, without meeting _amore_. And then another and another carriage, with flashing torches and sparkling-eyed girls. It was one of the turnouts of the _minenti_; they had been to Monte Testaccio, had drank all the wine they could pay for; and, with a prudence our friend Caper could not sufficiently admire, he noticed that the women were in separate carriages from the men. It was the Feast Day of Saint Crispin, and all the cobblers, or artists in leather, as they call themselves, were keeping it up bravely.

'Eight days to make a pair of shoes?' he once asked a shoemaker. 'Si, Signore, there are three holidays in that time.' Argument unanswerable.

As the carriages rolled by, Caper determined to observe the festivals.

The next day our artist entered his name in his banker's register, and had the horror of seeing it mangled to 'Jams Scraper' in the list of arrivals published in the _Giornale di Roma_. For some time after his arrival in Rome, he was pained to receive cards, circulars, notices, letters, advertisements, etc., from divers tradesmen, all directed to the above name. In revenge, he here gives them a public airing. One firm announces,--

'Manafactury of Remain Seltings, Mosaïques, Cameas, Medalls, Erasofines, &c.' (Erasofines is the Roman-English for crucifixes.) And on a slip of paper, handsomely printed, is an announcement that they make 'Romain Perles of all Couloueurs'--there's color for you!

A tailor, under the head of '_Ici un parle Français_,' prints, 'Merchant _and_ tailor. Cloths (clothes?) Reddy maid, Mercery Roman; Scarfs, etc.'

Another, 'Roman Artickles Manofactorer'--hopes to be 'honnoured with our Custom, (American?), and flaters himsself we will find things to our likings.' Everything but the English, you know--that is not exactly to our liking. Another, from a lady, reads,--

_A VENTRE!_

_une Galérie decomposée de 300 d'Anciens Maitres, et de l'école romaine peintres sur bois, sur cuivre et sur toit, &c._

_Ventre_ for _Vendre_ is bad enough, but a 'gallery of decomposed old masters and of Roman school painters on wood and on the roof,' when it was intended to say 'A gallery composed of 300 of the old masters--' But let us leave it untranslated; it is already _decomposée_.

A SHORT WALK.

Mr. Caper having indignantly rejected the services of all professors of the guiding art or 'commissionaires,' slowly sauntered out of his hotel the morning after his arrival, and, map in hand, made his way to the tower on the Capitoline Hill. Threading several narrow, dirty streets, he at last went through one where in one spot there was such a heap of garbage and broccoli stumps that he raised his eyes to see how high up it reached against the walls of a palace; and there read, in black letters,

_Immondezzaio_;

literally translated, A Place for Dirt. On the opposite wall, which was the side of a church, he saw a number of black placards on which were large white skulls and crossbones, and while examining these, a bare-headed, brown-bearded, stout Franciscan monk passed him. From a passing glance, Caper saw he looked good-natured, and so, hailing him, asked why the skulls and bones were pasted there.

'Who knows?' answered the monk. 'I came this morning from the Campagna; this is the first time in all my life I have been in this magnificent city.'

'Can you tell me what that word means up there?' said Caper, pointing to _immondezzaio_.

'Signore, I can not read.'

'Perhaps it is the name of the street, maybe of the city?'

'It must be so,' answered the priest, 'unless it's a sign of a lottery office, or a caution against blasphemy up and down the pavement. Those are the only signs we have in the country, except the government salt and cigar shops.' ... He took a snuff-box from a pocket in his sleeve, and with a bow offered a pinch to Mr. Caper. This accepted, they bid each other profoundly farewell.

'There goes a brick!' remarked the traveler.

Arrived at the entrance-door to the tower of the Capitoline Hill, James Caper first felt in one pocket for a silver piece and in the other for a match-box, and finding them both there, rang the bell, and then mounted to the top of the tower. Lighting a _zigarro scelto_ or papal cigar, he leaned on both elbows on the parapet, and gazed long and fixedly over the seven-hilled city.

'And this,' soliloquized he, _is_ Rome. Many a day have I been kept in school without my dinner because I was not able to parse thee idly by, _Roma_--Rome--noun of the first declension, feminine gender, that a quarter of a century ago caused me punishment, I have thee now literally under foot, and (knocking his cigar) throw ashes on thy head.

'My mission in this great city is not that of a picture-peddler or art student. I come to investigate the eating, drinking, sleeping arrangements of the Eternal City--its wine more than its vinegar, its pretty girls more than its galleries, its _cafés_ more than its churches. I see from here that I have a fine field to work in. Down there, clambering over the fallen ruins of the Palace of the Cæsars, is a donkey. Could one have a finer opportunity to see in this a moral and twist a tail? From those fallen stones, Memory-glorious old architect--rears a fabric wondrously beautiful; peoples it with eidolons white and purple-robed, and gleaming jewel-gemmed; or, iron armed, glistening with flashing light from polished steel--heroes and slaves, conquerors and conquered; my blood no longer flows to the slow, jerking measure of a nineteenth-century piece of mechanism, but freely, fully, and completely. Hurrah, my blood is up! dark, liquid eyes; black, flowing locks; strange, pleasing perfumes are around me. There is a rush as of a strong south wind through a myriad of floating banners, and I am borne onward through triumphal arches, past pillared temples, under the walls of shining palaces, into the Coliseum....

'Pray, and can you tell me--if that pile of d----d old rubbish--down there, you know--is the Forum--for I do not--see it in Murray--though I'm sure--I have looked very clearly--and Murray you know--has everything down in him--that a traveler....

'A commercial traveler?' ... interrupted Mr. Caper, speaking slowly, and looking coolly into the eyes of the blackguard Bagman.... 'The ruins you see there are those of the Forum. Good morning.'

MODERN ART.

'Lucrezia Borgia at the Tomb of Don Giovanni! You see,' said the artist, 'I have chosen a good name for my painting, ... and it's a great point gained. Forty or fifty years ago, some of those fluffy old painters would have had Venus worshiping at the shrine of Bacchus.'

'Whereas, you think it would be more appropriate for her to worship Giove?' ... asked Capar.

'No _sir_!... I run dead against classic art: it's a drug. I tried my hand at it when I first came to Rome. Will you believe me, I never sold a picture. Why that very painting'--pointing to the Borgia--'is on a canvas on which I commenced The Subjugation of Adonis.'

'H'm! You find the class of Middle Age subjects most salable then?'

'I should think I did. Something with brilliant colors, stained glass windows, armor, and all that, sells well. The only trouble is, ultramarine costs dear, although Dovizzelli's is good and goes a great ways. I sold a picture to an Ohio man last week for two hundred dollars, and it is a positive fact there was twenty _scudi_ (dollars) worth of blue in it. But the infernal Italians spoil trade here. Why, that fellow who paints Guide's Speranzas up there at San Pietro in Vineulo is as smart as a Yankee. He has found out that Americans from Rhode Island take to the Speranza, because Hope is the motto of their State, and he turns out copies hand over fist. He has a stencil plate of the face, and three or four fellows to paint for him; one does the features of the face, another the hand, and another rushes in the background. Why, sir, those paintings can be sold for five _scudi_, and money made on them at that. But then what are they? Wretched daubs not worth house-room. Have you any thoughts of purchasing paintings?'

Caper smiled gently.... 'I had not when I first came to Rome, but how long I may continue to think so is doubtful. The temptations' (glancing at the Borgia) 'are very great.' ...

'Rome,' ... interrupted the artist, ... 'is the cradle of art.'

A ROOM HUNT.

Caper, on his first arrival in Home, went to the Hotel Europe, in the Piazza di Spagna. There for two weeks he lived like a _milordo_. He formed many acquaintances among the resident colony of American artists, and was received by them with much kindness. Some of the mercenary ones of their number, having formed the opinion that he came there to buy paintings, ignorant of his profession, were excessively polite;--but their offers of services were declined. When Caper finally moved to private lodgings in Babuino Street and opened a studio, hope for a season bade these salesmen all farewell; they groaned, and owned that they had tried but could not sell.

Among the acquaintances formed by Caper, was a French artist named Rocjean. Born in France, he had passed eight or ten years in the United States, learned to speak English very well, and was residing in Rome 'to perfect himself as an artist.' He had, when Caper first met him, been there two years. In all this time he had never entered the Vatican, and having been told that Michael Angelo's Last Judgment was found to have a flaw in it, he had been waiting for repairs before passing his opinion thereon. On the other hand, he had studied the Roman _plebe_, the people, with all his might. He knew how they slept, eat, drank, loved, made their little economies, clothed themselves, and, above all, how they blackguarded each other. When Caper mentioned to him that he wished to leave his hotel, take a studio and private lodgings, then Rocjean expanded from an old owl into a spread eagle. Hurriedly taking Caper by the arm, he rushed him from one end of Rome to the other, up one staircase and down another; until, at last, finding out that Rocjean invariably presented him to fat, fair, jolly-looking landladies (_padrone_), with the remark, 'Signora, the Signor is an Englishman and very wealthy,' he began to believe that something was wrong. But Rocjean assured him that it was not--that, as in Paris, it was Madame who attended to renting rooms, so it was the _padrona_ in Rome, and that the remark, 'he is an Englishman, and very wealthy,' were synonymous, and always went together. 'If I were to tell them you were an American it would do just as well--in fact, better, but for one thing, and that is, you would be swindled twice as much. The expression "and very wealthy," attached to the name of an Englishman, is only a delicate piece of flattery, for the majority of the present race of traveling English are by no means lavish in their expenditures or very wealthy. In taking you to see all these pretty women, I have undoubtedly given you pleasure, at the same time I have gratified a little innocent curiosity of mine:--but then the chance is such a good one! We will now visit the Countess ----, for she has a very desirable apartment to let; after which we will proceed seriously to take rooms with a home-ly view.'

The Countess ---- was a very lovely woman, consequently Caper was fascinated with the apartment, and told her he would reflect over it.

'Right,' said Rocjean, after they had left; 'better reflect over it than in it--as the enormous draught up chimney would in a short time compel you to.'

'How so?'

'I have a German friend who has rooms there. He tells me that a cord of firewood lasts about long enough to warm one side of him; when he turns to warm the other it is gone. He has lived there three years reflecting over this; the Countess occasionally condoles with him over the draught of that chimney.'

'H'm! Let us go to the homely: better a drawn sword than a draught.'

They found a homely landlady with neat rooms in the via Babuino, and having bargained for them for twelve _scudi_ a month, their labors were over.

MACCARONICAL.

There was, when Caper first came to Rome, an eating-house, nearly opposite the fountain Trevi, called the Gabioni. It was underground,--in fact, a series of cellars, popularly conjectured to have been part of the catacombs. In one of these cellars, resembling with its arched roof a tunnel, the ceiling so low that you could touch the apex of the round arch with your hand, every afternoon in autumn and winter, between the hours of five and six, there assembled, by mutual consent, eight or ten artists. The table at which they sat would hold no more, and they did not want it to. Two waiters attended them, Giovanni for food, Santi for wine and cigars. The long-stemmed Roman lamps of burnished brass, the bowl that held the oil and wicks resembling the united prows of four vessels, shedding their light on the white cloth and white walls, made the old place cheerful. The white and red wine in the thin glass flasks gleamed brightly, and the food was well cooked and wholesome. Here in early winter came the sellers of 'sweet olives,' as they called them, and for two or three cents (_baiocchi_) you could buy a plateful. These olives were green, and, having been soaked in lime-water, the bitter taste was taken from them, and they had the flavor of almonds.

But the maccaroni was the great dish in the Gabioni; a four-cent plate of it would take the sharp edge from a fierce appetite, assisted as it was by a large one-cent roll of bread. There was the white pipe-stem and the dark ribbon (_fettucia_) species; and it was cooked with sauce (_al sugo_), with cheese, Neapolitan, Roman and Milan fashion, and--otherways. Wild boar steaks came in winter, and were cheap. Veal never being sold in Rome until the calf is a two-year-old heifer, was no longer veal, but tender beef, and was eatable. Sardines fried in oil and batter were good. Game was plenty, and very reasonable in price, except venison, which was scarce. The average cost of a substantial dinner was from thirty to forty baiocchi, and said Rocjean, 'I can live like a prince--like the Prince B----, who dines here occasionally--for half that sum.'

The first day Caper dined in the Gabioni, what with a dog-fight under the table, cats jumping upon the table, a distressed marchioness (fact) begging him for a small sum, a beautiful girl from the Trastevere, shining like a patent-leather boot, with gold ear-rings, and brooch, and necklace, and coral beads, who sat at another table with a French soldier--these and those other little _piquante_ things, that the traveler learns to smile at and endure, worried him. But the dinner was good, his companions at table were companionable, and as he finished an extra _foglietta_ (pint) of wine, price eight cents, with Rocjean, he concluded to give it another trial. He kept at giving it trials until the old Gabioni was closed, and from it arose the Four Nations or Quattre Nazione in Turkey Cock Alley (_viccolo Gallmaccio_), which, as any one knows, is near Two Murderers' Street. (_Via Due Macelli_)

'Now that we have finished dinner,' spoke Rocjean, 'we will smoke: then to the Caffe or Café Greco and have our cup of black coffee.'

AMERICA IN ROME.

It may be a good thing to have the conceit taken out of us--but not by the corkscrew of ignorance; the operation is too painful. Caper, proud of his country, and believing her in the front rank of nations, was destined to learn, while in Rome and the Papal States, that America was geographically unknown.

He consoled himself for this with the fact that geography is not taught in the 'Elementary Schools' there;--and for the people there are no others.

The following translation of a notice advertising for a schoolmaster, copied from the walls of a palace where it was posted, shows the sum total taught in the common schools:--

The duties of the Master are to teach Reading, Writing, the First
Four Rules of Arithmetic; to observe the duties prescribed in the
law '_Quod divina sapientia_;' and to be subject to the biennial
committee like other salaried officers of the department; as an
equivalent for which he shall enjoy (_godrá_) an annual salary of
$60, payable in monthly shares.

(Signed)

IL GONFALONIERE ---- ----.

But what can you expect when one of the rulers of the land asserted to Caper that he knew that 'pop-corn grew in America on the banks of the Nile, after the water went down,--for it never rains in America'?

It was a handsome man, an advocate for Prince Doria, who, once traveling in a _vetturo_ with Caper, asked him why he did not go to America by land, since he knew that it was in the south of England; and gently corrected a companion of his, who told Caper he had read and thought it strange that all Americans lived in holes in the ground, by saying to him that if such houses were agreeable to the _Signori Americani_ they had every right to inhabit them.

The landlord of a hotel in a town about thirty miles from Rome asked Caper if, when he returned to New York, he would not some morning call and see his cousin--in Peru!

This same landlord once drew his knife on a man, when, accompanied by Caper, he went to observe a saint's day in a neighboring town. The cause of the quarrel was this--the landlord, having been asked by a man who Caper was, told him he was an American. The man asserted that Americans always wore long feathers in their hair, and that he did not see any on Caper's head. The landlord, determined to stand by Caper, swore by all the saints that they were under his hat. The man disbelieved it. Out came the 'hardware' with that jarring cr-r-r-rick the blade makes when the notched knife-back catches in the spring, but Caper jumped between them, and they put off stabbing one another--until the next saint's day.

It was with pleasure that Caper, passing down the Corso one morning, saw there was an Universal Panorama, including views of America, advertised to be exhibited in the Piazza Colonna. 'Here is an opportunity,' thought he, 'for the Romans to acquire some knowledge of a land touching which they are very much at sea. The views undoubtedly will do for them what the tabooed geographies are not allowed to do--give them a little education to slow music.'

Accompanied by Rocjean, he went one evening to see it, and found it on wheels in a traveling van, drawn up at one side of the Colonna Square.

'Hawks inspected it the other evening,' said Rocjean; 'and he describes it as well worth seeing. The explainer of the Universal Panorama resembles the wandering Jew, exactly, with perhaps a difference about the change in his pockets; and the paintings, comical enough in themselves, considering that they are supposed to be serious likenesses of the places represented, are made still funnier by the explanations of the manager.'

Securing tickets from a stout, showy ticket-seller, adorned with a stunning silk dress, crushing bracelets, and an overpowering bonnet, they subduedly entered a room twenty feet long by six or eight wide, illuminated with the mellow glow of what appeared to be about thirty moons. The first things that caught their eye were several French soldiers who were acting as inspection guard over several rooms, having stacked their muskets in one corner. Their exclamations of delight or sorrow, their criticisms of the art panoramic, in short, were full of humor and trenchant fun. But 'the explanator' was before them; where he came from they could not see, for his footsteps were light as velvet, evidently having 'gums' on his feet; his milk-white hair, parted in the middle of his forehead, hung down his back for a couple of feet, while his milk-white beard, hanging equally low in front, gave him the appearance of a venerable billy goat. He was an Albino, and his eyes kept blinking like a white owl's at mid-day. He had a voice slightly tremulous, and mild as a cat's in a dairy.

'Gen-till-men, do me the playshure to gaze within this first hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool land of Sweet-sir-land. Vi-yew from the some-mut of the Riggy Cool'm. Day break-in' in the dis-tant yeast. He has a blan-kit round him, sir; for it is cold upon the moun-tin tops at break of day. [Madame, the stupen-doss irrup-tion of Ve-soov-yus is two holes from the corner.]

'Gen-till-men, do me the play-zure to gaze upon the second hole. 'Tis Flor-renz the be-yu-ti-fool, be the bangs off the flowin' Arno. 'Twas here that--'

'No matter about all that,' said Caper; 'show off America to us.' He slipped a couple of _pauls_ into his hand, and instantly the Venerable skipped four moons.

'Gen-till-men, do me the play-zure to gaze upon this hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool city of Nuova Jorck in Ay-mer-i-kay, with the flour-ish-ing cities of Brook-lyn, Nuova Jer-sais, and Long Is-lad. The impo-sing struc-ture of rotund form is the Gr-rand Coun-cill Hall con-tain-ing the coun-cill chamber of the Amer-i-can nations.... [You say it is the Bat-tai-ree? It may be the Bat-tai-ree.] _What is that road in Broo-klin_? that is the ra'l-road to Nuova Or-lins di-rect. _What is that wash-tub_? "Tis not a wash-tub--'tis a stim-boat. They make the stim out of coal, which is found on the ground. _Is that the Ay-mer-i-cain eagill_? 'Tis not; 'tis a hoarse-fly which has in-tro-doo-ced hisself behind the glass. _Are those savages in Nuova Jer-sais_? (New Jersey.) Those are trees.'

'Pass on, illustrious gen-till-men, to the next hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool city of Filadelfia. The houses here are all built of woo-ood. The two rivaires that cir-cum-vent the city are the Lavar (Delaware?) and the Hud-soon. I do not know what is "a pum-king cart," but the car-riage which you see before you is a fi-ah engine, be-cause the city is all built of woo-ood. The tall stee-ple belongs to the kay-ker (Quaker) temple of San Cristo.'

Rocjean now gave the Venerable a _paul_, requesting him to dwell at length upon these scenes, as he was a Frenchman in search of a little of geography.

'Excellencies, I will do my en-dea-vors. The gran-diose ship as lies in the Lavar (Delaware) riv-aire is fool of em-i-gr-rants. The signora de-scen-din' the side of the ship is in a dreadful sit-u-a-tion tru-ly. [Per-haps the artist was in a boat and de-scri-bed the scene as he saw it.] The elephant you see de-scen-din' the street is a nay-tive of this tropi-cal re-gion, and the cock-a-toos infest the sur-round-in' air. The Moors you see along the wharves are the spon-ta-ne-ous born of the soil. Those are kay-kers (Quakers?) on mules with broad-brimmed hats onto their heads; the sticks in their hands are to beat the Moors who live on their su-gar plan-tay-tions.... Music? did you ask, Madame? We have none in this establish-ment. Kone.

'Excellencies, the next hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool city of Bal-ti-mory. You behold in the be-fore ground a gr-rand feast day of Amer-i-cain peas-ants; they are be-hold-ing their noble Count re-pair-ring to the chase with a serf on a white hoarse-bag (horse-back?). The little joke of the cattle is a play-fool fan-cy of the jocose artiste as did the panorama. I am un-ac-count-able for veg-garies such as them. The riv-aire in the bag-ground is the Signora-pippi'....

'The what?' asked Caper, shaking with laughter.

'A gen-till-man the other day told me that only the peasants in Americay say Missus or Mis-triss, and that the riv-aire con-se-kwen-tilly was not Missus-pippi, but, as I have had the honor of saying, the Signora-pippi rivaire. The next hole, Excel-len-cies!--'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool city of Vaskmenton (Washington), also on the Signora-pippi riv-aire. The white balls on the trees is cot-ton. Those are not white balls on the ground, those are ship;--ships as have woolen growin' onto their sides (sheep?). 'Tis not a white bar-racks: 'tis the Palazzo di Vaskmenton, a nobil gen-e-ral woo lives there, and was for-mer-ly king of the A-mer-i-cain nations. What does that Moor, with the white lady in his arms? it is a negro peas-sant taking his mis-triss out to air,--'tis the customs in those land.... That negress or fe-mail Moor with some childs is also airring, and, the white 'ooman tyin' up her stockings is a sportive of the artiste. He is much for the hum-or-ous.

'Excellencies, the last hole A-mer-i-cain. 'Tis the stoo-pen-doss Signora-pippi rivaire in all its mag-gnif-fi-cent booty. What is that cockatoo doing there? He is taking a fly. _You do not see the fly_? I mean a flight. _What is that bust to flin-ders_? That is a stim-boat was carryin' on too much stim, and the stim, which is made of coal, goes, off like gun-pow-dair if you put lights onto it. This is a fir-ful and awe-fool sight. The other stim-boat is not bustin', it is sailin'. What is that man behind the whil-house with the cards while another signer kicks into him on his coat-tails, I do not know. It is steel the sportifs of the artiste.'

'Excel-len-cies, the last hole. 'Tis the be-yu-ti-fool bustin'--no, not bustin', but ex-plo-sion of Vee-soov-yus. You can see the sublime sight, un-terrupt-ted be me ex-play-nations. I thank you for your attentions auri-cu-lar and pe-coo-niar-ry. _Adio_, until I have the play-shure of seein' you oncet more.'

'I tell you what, Rocjean,' said Caper, as he came out from the panorama, 'America has but a POOR SHOW in the Papal dominions.'

* * * * *

JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

Grand with all that the young earth had of vigorous and queenly to adorn her, rich with the spoils of victories not all bought with battle-axe and sword, stately with a pride that had won its just and inalienable majesty from elastic centuries of progress and culture, History, the muse to whom fewest songs were sung, yet whose march was music's sublimest voice, trembled upon the brink of the Dark Ages, and leaped, in her armor, into the abyss of ignorance before her. A poetry the purest, an art the noblest, a religion deeply symbolical, a freedom bold and magnificent, had given to the world-histories of those early days a melody varied and faultless, a form flowing yet well-defined, an earnestness that was sacred, a truth that was divine. A philosophy rich and largely suggestive had made the great men of Greece and Rome alert, vigilant, penetrating, before luxury and oppression had dragged them down to ruin and ignorance; and at last Ambition, splendid but destructive, becoming the world's artist, blended the midnight tints of decline and suffering with the carnation of triumph and liberty, and cast over the pictures of History the Rembrandt-like shadows, heavy and wavering, that add a fearful intensity to their charms.

To these eras, once splendid and promising, succeeded a night, long, hopeless, disastrous. Its hours were counted by contentions, its darkness was deepened by crime. The sun had set upon a mighty empire, regnant upon her seven hills, glorious with conquest, drunken with power: when the day dawned upon the thousandth year of the Christian era, its crumbled arches and moss-grown walls alone testified to the truth of History that had survived the universal destruction.

And now came the age of knight and paladin, of crusades and talismans. The rough, vigorous life that had been developing at the North, exuberant with a strength not yet so mature that it could be employed in the wise and practical pursuits of civilized life, burst forth into an enthusiasm half military, half religious, that pervaded all ranks, but was 'mightiest in the mighty.' The Saxons, fair-haired, with wild blue eyes, whence looked an inflexible perseverance, the dark-browed Normans, and the men of fair Bretagne, swooped down falcon-like from their nests among the rocks and by the seas of Northern Europe upon the impetuous Saracens, and fought brave poems that were written on sacred soil with their blood. From the strife of years the heroes returned, their flowing locks whitened by years and suffering, the fair Saxon faces browned by the fervent suns of the distant East. From hardship and imprisonment they marched with gay songs amid acclamations and welcome to their homes upon the Northern shores. Their once shining armor was dimmed and rusted with their own blood; but they bore upon their 'spears the light' of a culture more refined, a knowledge more subtle, than those high latitudes had ever before known.

From this marriage of the barbaric vigor of the North with the delicate and infinitely pliable sensuousness of the South, the classic union of Strength and Desire, Chivalry was born. Leaping forth to light and power, a majestic creation, glittering in the knightly panoply, noble by its knightly vows, it stood resplendent against the dark background of the past ages, the inevitable and legitimate offspring of the times and circumstances that gave it birth. The courtly baptism was eagerly sought, its requirements rigidly obeyed. The lands bristled with the lances of their valiant sons, and Quixotic expeditions were the order of the age. But not alone with sword and spear were gallant contests decided; the gauntlet thrown at the feet of a proud foe was not always of iron. _El gai saber_, the _gaye science_, held its august courts, where princesses entered the lists and vanquished gallant troubadours with the concord of their sweet measures. Slowly, yet with resistless strength, a new social world was rising upon the splendid ruins of the old. Its principles were just, if their garb was fantastical. It began with that almost superstitious reverence for woman, which had borrowed its religion from the Teuton, its romance from the Minnesinger and the Trouveur: it will end in the honesty and freedom of a world mature for its enjoyment.

Thus, while the kingdoms of Europe were rising to a height where to oppress, to torture, to fight, were to seem their sole aim and purpose, in a hitherto obscure corner of the great theatre of modern life an unknown element was developing itself, which was in time to shake the greatest nations with its power, to inflame all Europe with jealousy and cupidity, and to dictate to empires the very terms of their existence. And this element was LABOR. The rich lowlands of the 'double-armed' Rhine teemed with a busy life, that, king-like, demanded a tribute of the sea, and wrenched from the greedy waves a treasure that its industry made priceless. Each man became a prince in his own divine right, and every occupation had its lords and its lore, its 'mysteries,' and its social rights. The seamen, merchants, and artisans of the Netherlands had made their country the richest in Europe. They ranged the seas and learned the value of the land; and while they fed the great despot of the Middle Ages, the light of intelligence, born of energy and nurtured by activity, cast its benignant gleams from the central island of the Rhine, and drove from their mountain nooks the owls and bats of tyranny and superstition. They fought first, these lords of the soil, among themselves, for local privileges, advancing in their continuous struggles upon the very threshold of the church. By strong alliances they kept at bay their feudal lords, and fettered the ecclesiastical power with the yoke of a justice, meagre, indeed, and sadly unfruitful, but still ominous of a better day. Within the alabaster vase of despotism, frail, yet old as ambition, the lamp of freedom had long burned dimly: now its flames were licking, with serpent-like tongues, the enclosure so long deemed sacred, and threatened, as they dyed the air with their amber flood of light, to shiver their temple to fragments. The theory of the divine right of kings was but another 'Luck of Edenhall.' Its slender stem trembled now within the rough grasp of the sacrilegious and burly Netherlanders, who hesitated not long ere they dashed it with the old superstition to the ground, shaking the civilized world to its centre by the shock. But out of the ruins a statelier edifice was to rise, whose windows, like those of the old legend, were stained by the lifeblood of its architect.

The historian who would worthily depict such an age, such a people, such principles, must be an artist, but one in whom the creative faculty does not blind the moral obligations. He must bring to the work a republican sympathy, must be governed by a republican justice, and wear a character as noble as the struggle that he paints. And such an artist, such a historian, such a man, we have in JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY.

The honors of Harvard, early and nobly earned, had given to the boy at seventeen the privileges and dignity of manhood. He was destined to become a scholar, eminent, even among the rarely and richly cultured minds of his own New England, for his universal knowledge, clearness of intellect, prompt energy, and indomitable perseverance. Inspired by these gifts and attainments, it was only natural, almost inevitable, that his first appearance upon the literary stage should have been in the _rôle_ of a novelist. The active young intellect was pliant and strong, but had not yet learned its power. Before him lay the broad fields of romance, fascinating with their royal _fleurs de lis_, rich with the contributions of every age, some quaint and laughter-moving, some pompous and exaggerated, some soul-stirring and grand. Impelled, perhaps, less by a thirst for fame than a desire to satisfy the resistless impulses of an energetic nature, and lay those fair ghosts of enterprises dimly recognized that beckoned him onward, he followed the first path that lay before him, and became a romance writer. His first work, _Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial_, was published in 1839, and subsequently appeared _Merry Mount, a Romance of Massachusetts_. It is curious to trace in these first flights of a genius that has since learned its legitimate field, a tendency to the breadth of Motley's later efforts, an instinctive and evidently unconscious passion for the descriptive, an admirably curbed yet still powerful impatience of the light fetters, the toy regulations of the realm of Fiction, and an earnestness that has since bloomed in the world of Fact and History. The very imperfections of the novelist have become the charms of the historian. His student-life in Germany, his after-plot in the stirring Revolutionary times, strongly as they are drawn, animated as they are with dashes of that vivid power that stamps every page of the histories of their author, yet lack the proof of that unquestioned yet unobtrusive consciousness of genius that harden the telling sentences of the _Rise of the Dutch Republic_ and the _United Netherlands_ into blocks of adamant, polished by friction with each other to a diamond brightness, and reflecting only the noblest sentiments, the most profound principles. The dice had been thrown a second time, and Motley had not won a victory. The applause of the press was insufficient to the man, who felt that he had not yet struck the key-note of his destiny. To be counted the follower of Cooper was not the meet guerdon of an intellect to which the shapely monuments of ancient literature yielded the clue to their hieroglyphic labyrinths of knowledge, and that pierced with lightning swiftness the shell of events, and possessed the latent principles of life in their warm hearts. He returned, therefore, to Europe, leaving behind him a reputation which at no distant day was destined to spring from a new and more noble foundation into a lasting and more stately pile.

To a mind like Motley's, the department of history presented the most attractive features. There could honestly be no dabbling with the specious and seductive alchemy of Fiction. Truth had molded every period of the world's life. Truth defied had tripped up nations in their headlong race after dominion and unrighteous power. Truth victorious had smiled upon their steady growth to greatness and honor. To write history was to write poetry, art, philosophy, religion, life. The pen that sketched the rise, the progress, and the fate of nations, was in fact the chisel of a sculptor, whose theme was humanity.

And what work so fitting for the American author as the record of a nation struggling away from the oppression of feudal institutions, which stifled all growth either towards knowledge or civil greatness, throwing off the trammels of religious intolerance, defying the most powerful nation of Christendom, which had breathed an air of bigotry in its long contest with the Moors, and waging an exhaustive war of nearly a century's duration against fearful odds, only to win an independent existence? We had treasured as rare heirlooms the Mechlin laces of our grandmothers, had our favorite sets of Tournay porcelain, awaited with curious and enthusiastic patience our shares in the floral exportations of Harlem, trodden daily the carpetings of Brussels, and esteemed ourselves rich with a fragment of its tapestry, or a rifle of Namur; we had honored the vast manufacturing interest of the Netherlands, their commercial prosperity and noble enterprise; but here all thought of them had ended. Schiller had not taught us that the ancestors of the miners of Mons, the artisans of Brussels, the seamen of Antwerp, the professors of Leyden, were heroes, worthy to stand beside Leonidas and Bozzaris; Strâda had failed to rouse us to enthusiasm at the thought of their long, noble battle for life. Grotius had indeed painted for us with a very Flemish nicety of detail their manners and customs, but had forgotten to round his skeleton of a nation with the passions that animated every stage of its development. It remained for Motley, with all the quick sympathies of an American heart, to rouse our affections and to command our reverence for a people so unfortunate and so brave. It was reserved for him to teach us that William of Orange was not less a martyr to the truth than Huss or Latimer.

It was no common scholar who so worthily finished this task. It was not enough that the intellectual integrity of oar historian was unquestioned, his judgment mature, his knowledge vast and comprehensive. During the years of preparation he had become thoroughly cosmopolite; all the _petty_ prejudices of country and blood had been swept away before the advancing dignity of a reason that became daily more truly and completely the master of itself. All the thousand minute refinements of an extensive and intimate association with the commanding and courtly minds of the age fitted him to cope more successfully with the spirit of subtle intrigue, the fox-like sagacity, the wolfish rapacity, the cruel lack of diplomatic honor, and the illimitable and terrible intolerance that distinguished in so wonderful a degree the historical era of Motley's choice. He came with all the zeal of a true lover of liberty, himself republican, as earth's most cultured sons have been in every age, in thought, habit, and sentiment, to trace for the future and for us the records of a people who were willing to suffer a master, but who revolted from a tyrant; who, with a rare but unappreciated and too nice honor, strove to keep to the yoke that their forefathers had worn, only asking from their ruler the respect and consideration due the faithful servants of his crown, who were no longer the abject slaves of a monarchy, and yet, through an inveterate habit of servitude, were scarcely prepared for the independence of a republic. How nobly he has fulfilled his mission, the hearty applause of two nations sufficiently testifies.

To the wide, comprehensive vision of Motley, history appears in its true light as a science, demanding the assistance of other sciences to the due and harmonious development of all its parts. It relies not more upon the correctness of the recorder's authorities and the profoundness of his researches in the mere region of the events and mutual relation of nations, than upon his universal acquaintance with general literature and the sister arts of politics and philosophy. It was for the treacherous and elegant Bolingbroke to reduce the noble art of Thucydides from the height of sublimity and grandeur to the parlor level of the conversations of the Hotel de Rambouillet, to introduce into the most serious political disquisitions, concerning perhaps the welfare of society, an imperceptible yet carefully elaborated and most effective tone of levity that speedily proved disastrous to their object. It was be who forced the vapid but imposing ceremonial of the _bon ton_ into the records of church and state; who clothed his empty but pompous periods with the ermine of royalty, to ensure them the reverence of a deluded multitude; who stripped Virtue of her ancient prerogatives, and fed her with the crumbs from his table. His polished diction, undeniable talent and fine acquisitions served most unhappily to disguise his real poverty of sentiment, and for a time, at least, diverted the current of popular feeling from the true, beautiful, and reliable in early literature and art, no less than in history. With what success his faulty and imperfect theories were engrafted upon the literature of his nation, the learned and sagacious Schlosser conclusively proves in his _History of the Eighteenth Century_. Says this ripe scholar and deep thinker, 'All that Bolingbroke ridicules as tedious and without talent, all that he laughs at as useless and without taste, all that which, urged by his labors and those of his like-minded associates, had for eighty years disappeared from ancient history, is again brought back in our day. So short is the triumph of falsehood.' Well may we pervert the verses of Horace,--

'Nullæ placere diu, nec vivere _historiæ_ possunt
Quæ scribuntur aquæ potoribus.'

That was an ungenerous fountain whence Bolingbroke drank even his chilling draughts of inspiration. Splendid, in sooth, as the great _Brunnen_ of the luckless Abderites of Wieland, with its sea-god of marble surrounded by a stately train of nymphs, tritons, and dolphins, from whose jets the water only dripped like tears, because, says the writer, with grave naïveté, 'there was scarcely enough to moisten the lips of a single nymph.' Truly the purple wine of inspiration is as necessary to the historian as to the poet; and if the laughing Bacchus that holds the beaker to the student's eager lips be not clothed in the classic robes of the senate-chamber or the flowing garments of the professor, he wears at least the fawn's dappled hide, and in his hand

'His thyrsus holds--an ivy-crowned spear.'

Does not the gentle Euripides show us the god, 'his horned head with dragon wreath entwined?' And those two sacred horns point back to the dread mysteries of the Ogdoad sublime,

'The great Cabiri of earth's dawning prime.'

They trace with lines that never swerve from truth the history of the primeval world, the early days of Noah and his ark. They recall to us the old story of life and suffering, of deluge and salvation; on their crescent points hangs the eternal principle of the efficacy of sacrifice. They float with the moon-ark of Astarté Mylitta on hyacinthine seas of night-clouds, and their high import, dimmed and lost in the great stream of Time, rises again in the ages, uncrowned with the early luxuriance of symbol and mystery. The mystic horns appear over the brow of the queenly Sappho of Grillparzer, upon whose hair

'Rested the diadem, _like the pale moon_
Upon the brow of night, a silver crest;'

and the white-robed Madonna, with child-like face upraised, and deep, tender eyes uplifted, yet rests her slender, sandaled foot upon the horned moon, floating below her in misty clouds.

A hiatus for which we crave indulgence; a dream, and yet not all a dream, for each of these old types encloses a living truth, and unfolds into a history, tangled, perhaps, and imperfect, but suggestive and reliable, of races and religions that had else passed away into oblivion. And the earnest student of the present, or the historian of the past, can never disregard these dim old treasures, but must draw from them a fresher faith in his own humanity and in the eternal laws of God, that are unchangeable as he is immortal.

The art of history advances with the art of poetry; both, and indeed all literature, correspond aesthetically with the manners, customs, theology, and politics of the nation of their birth. The severe grandeur of Thucydides, the invariable sweetness of Xenophon, and the cheerful elegance of Herodotus, recall, with their just conceptions of harmony, their noble and sustained flow of thought, and their freedom from the adventitious ornaments of an exaggerated rhetoric or a sentimental morality, the golden age of Greece. We seem to stand within the Parthenon, to gaze upon the Venus of Cnidus, to be jostled by the gay crowd at the Olympic games. It was indeed a golden age, when all that was beautiful in nature was reverently and assiduously nurtured, and all that was noble and natural in art was magnificently encouraged; an age in which refinement and nobility were not accidents, but necessities; when politics had reached the high grade of an art, and oratory attained a beauty and power beyond which no Pitt, Canning, or Brougham has ever yet aspired; an age when the gifted Aspasia held her splendid court, and Alcibiades and Socrates were proud to sit at the Milesian's feet; when Pericles, who 'well deserved the lofty title of Olympian,' lived and ruled: the golden age when Socrates thought and taught, bearing in its bosom the guilty day when Socrates died.

Not less faithful portraitures of the influences that formed them are the histories of Livy, of Sallust, and of Tacitus. They wrote in a language that had been sublimated into electric clouds by the warm and splendid diffuseness of Cicero, and reduced to a granite-like strength by the cold and exquisite simplicity of Terence. The amiable fustian, the Falstaffian bombast of Lucan and Ovid's brilliant imagination, all stamp their indelible seal upon the vivid coloring of Livy, the somewhat affected severity of Sallust, and the elegant morality of Tacitus. The banner of the monarchy flaunts across every page of these writers. They even bear the impress of an architecture whose splendor and strength did not atone for its disregard of the old Hellenic lines and rules. They bear the same relation to Thucydides and Herodotus that a pillar of the Roman Ionic order, with its angularly turned volutes and arbitrary perpendicularity of outline, does to its graceful Greek mother, with her primitive and expressive scrolls, and the slightly convex profile of her shaft. In more modern times, a black-letter, quaint sentence of Froissart or Monstrelet is like a knight in full armor, bristling with quaint, beautiful devices, golden dragons inlaid on Milan cuirasses, golden vines on broad Venetian blades, apes on the hilts of grooved-bladed, firm stilettoes, or the illuminated margins of old metrical romances. The pages of Strada are darkened by the stormy passions of a battling age, crossed with the lurid light of Moorish tragedies; an _ay de mi Alhama_ moans under his pride and bigotry. Torquemadas grind each sentence into dullness and inquisitorial harmlessness, yet now and then sweeps by a trace of Lope de Vega, a word that reminds us of Calderon, while still oftener the euphuism of Gongora pervades the writer's mind and flows in platitudes from his guarded pen.

As we near our own day, history is invested with new dignities; its arms float, sea-weed like, on the raging waves of political life, as if to grasp from some fragment of shipwrecked treaties or some passing argosy of government a precious jewel to light its deep researches. It takes in with nervous grasp the tendencies of literature; its keen gaze drinks in the features of popular belief and searches out the fountains of popular error. Fully equal to the requirements of the exacting age, Motley has produced a work whose lightest merit is its equal conformity to the new rules of his art. He possesses in an eminent degree the first qualification which the old Abbé de Mably, in his _Manière d'ecrire l'histoire_, insists upon for the historian. He recognizes the natural rights of man, those rights which are the same in every age, and as powerful in their demands in the sixteenth century as in the nineteenth. His well-balanced mind acknowledges and respects the duties of man as citizen and magistrate, and the mutual rights of nations. No splendor, no power, no prejudice, has been able to seduce him from his high principles, neither does a warm and manifest sympathy with his subject delude him even into the passing extravagance of an undue praise. If he comprehends the greatness of the national character he almost flings upon the canvas before us, he appreciates as profoundly its weaknesses too. Strada's history is a poison, which strikes at the very roots of society, and would wither all the fresh young leaves of its vigorous spring. Motley's is its powerful antidote, which restores the juices of life to the brittle fibres, smooths out the shriveled leaves, and clothes them again with the fresh green of hope and promise. Strada is the slave of the victor; Motley is the champion of the vanquished. Strada bends the dignity of Justice before the painted sceptre of Despotism; Motley exalts the honest title of the man above the will of the perjured monarch. Strada gilds with the false gold of sophistry the very chains that gall his soul; Motley sharpens on the clear crystal of his unobtrusive logic, the two-handed sword of power, and cuts his way through an army of protocols and pacts to the fortress of Liberty.

It is, we believe, an exploded theory that the characters of modern times are inferior to those of antiquity. 'Under the toga as under the modern dress,' says Guizot, 'in the senate as in our councils, men were what they still are;' and the old Jesuit takes a narrow view of the progress of mankind, who asserts that the masculine and vigorous treatment that was necessary to Thucydides and Livy is not required by the historians of our puny and degenerate day. Even the Count Gobineau, who so ably and, to his followers, conclusively proves the fallacy of the dearest hope of every learned philanthropist and patriot, does not, in his most earnest antagonism to the doctrine of human progress, insinuate the existence of a principle urging the systematic and inevitable decline of individual power from age to age. So far from exacting less of the historian, the present age demands even a firmer handling. Our era has its Alexanders and Cæsars; its Hannibals and Hectors; and if these men of antiquity rise before us with an unapproachable air of grandeur, it is because the light shining from our distant stand-point surrounds them with deeper shadows, and throws them in bolder relief against the background of their vanished ages. It is a simple triumph of _chiaro-scuro_, and by no means the proof of the truth of an absurd theory.

It is mournful enough to see the dead nations that were once young and glorious pacing onward through an inferno like so many headless Bertrand de Borns, bearing by the hair

'The severed member, lantern-wise
Pendent in hand.'