Chapter II: The Chinese Discoverers of Mexico in the Fifth Century (2)

He first appears in the history of the country in the Mexican war, is present at the bombardment of Vera Cruz, dashes after the enemy at Cerro Gordo, capturing on the crest of the hill a battery which he turns upon the discomfited foe. At Contreras his command proves as impenetrable as a phalanx of Alexander; and when at last the victorious Americans fight their way into Mexico, the city of fabulous treasures and associations well-nigh classical, for the first time he receives a wound. He was breveted captain for his gallantry at Cherubusco, and at the end of the war received the rank of full captain, and was ordered with his regiment to California. No appointment could have been more felicitous. In the guerilla mode of warfare demanded by the peculiar nature of the country and its inhabitants, his habits of quick decision, and the experience of a war with an enemy equally unscrupulous though less undisciplined, were absolutely invaluable. Here was no scope for the conception and excitation of deep-laid schemes; the movements of the enemy were too rapid. Plans that would elsewhere have been matured only in the process of a long campaign, were here often originated and completed in a single night. Simple strategy was of more avail than the most intricate display of military science, and the impulse of a moment more to be relied upon than the prudent forethought of a month. He had to combat, in the newly-acquired territory, the cunning of tribes whose natural ferocity was sharpened into vindictiveness by the encroachments upon their soil of a new and strange people; and every association with the intruders, who were for the most part men of little reputation and less principle, had developed in the Indians only the fiercest and most decided animosity. To encounter their vigilance with watchfulness as alert, to confound their swift counsels with sudden alarm, to penetrate their ambuscades and anticipate their cunning with incessant activity, to be, in short, ubiquitous, was the duty of Captain Lyon.

After years spent in the uncertain tactics of this half barbaric warfare, he was removed, in the height of political strife in Kansas, to its very centre. Here, while comparatively free from the wearisome requirements of active service such as had been demanded in California, and at a time when events the most portentous proved clearly to the great minds of the country the advance of a political crisis whose consequences must be most important, involving--should deep-laid conspiracy be successful--the bankruptcy of principle and that high-handed outrage, the triumph, of a minority,--Captain Lyon had full liberty and abundant opportunity to settle for himself the great questions mooted in the Missouri Compromises, the Lecompton Constitutions and the Dred Scott decisions of the day. To a mind unprejudiced, except as the honest impulses of every honest man's heart are always prejudiced in favor of the right, there was but a single decision. Disgusted with the heartless policy which democracy had for so many years pursued, and which now threatened to culminate either in its utter degradation at the North, or in the establishment in the South of an oligarchy which would annihilate all free action and suppress all free opinion, he severed his connection with that party,--a step to which he was also impelled by the injustice that was then seeking to force upon the people of Kansas an institution which they condemned as unproductive and expensive, to say nothing of their moral repugnance to the very A B C of its principles. It was at this time that Captain Lyon contributed to the _Manhattan Express_, a weekly journal of the neighborhood, a series of papers in which he took an earnest, manly and decided stand in favor of the principles which his thoughtful mind recognized as alone 'reliable,' and harmonious with the grand design and end of the great Republic of the West. To these articles we shall hereafter refer, at present hastening through the career, so striking and so sad, which a few brief months cut short, leaving only the memory of General Lyon as a legacy to the country his single aim and wise counsels would have saved.

The guns of Fort Sumter had flashed along our coast an appeal whose force no words can ever compute. The days had been busy with the assembling of armies, the nights restless with their solemn marches, and forge and factory rang with the strokes of the hammer and the whirr of flying shafts, whose echoes seemed measured to the air of some new Marseillaise. From our homes rushed forth sons, husbands, brothers, fathers, followed by the prayers and blessings of dear women, who yielded them early but willingly to their country. And while regiments clustered along the Potomac, and Washington lay entrenched behind white lines of tents, we find our soldier, fresh from Kansas strifes, in command of the United States Arsenal at St. Louis; and to his prompt action and decided measures at this important juncture the early success of the Union cause in Missouri is to be attributed. For a time St. Louis was the theatre of action. The police commissioners, backed by Governor and Legislature, in the demanded the removal of the Union troops from the grounds of the arsenal, claiming it as the exclusive property of the State, and asserting that the authority usurped by the general government as but a partial sovereignty, and limited to the occupation, for purposes exclusively military, of the certain tracts of land now pending in this novel court of chancery. This highly enigmatical exposition of State rights, pompous and inflated though it was, failed to convince or convert Captain Lyon, who, being unable to detect, in his occupancy of the arsenal, any exaggeration of the rights vested by the Constitution in the general government, declined to abandon his post, and proceeded to call out the Home Guard, then awaiting the arrival of General Harney, and temporarily under his command. His little army of ten thousand men was then drawn up upon the heights commanding Camp Jackson, then occupied by the Missouri militia under Col. Frost, whoso command had been increased by the addition of numerous individuals of avowed secession principles. Uninfluenced by the reception of a note from this officer asserting his integrity and his purpose to defend the property of the United States, and disavowing all intention hostile to the force at the arsenal, Captain Lyon replied by a peremptory summons for an unconditional surrender. He found it incredible that a body assembled at the instigation of a traitorous governor, and acting under his instructions and according to the 'unparalleled legislation' of a traitorous legislature, receiving under the flag of the Confederate States munitions of war but lately the acknowledged property of the general government, could have any other than the as most unfriendly designs upon its enemies. The force of Camp Jackson (which notwithstanding its professed character, boasted its streets Beauregard and Davis) being numerically inferior, and perhaps not entirely prepared to do battle for a cause whose legitimacy must still have been a question with many of them, decided, after a council of war, to comply with the demands of Capt. Lyon, and became his prisoners. A few days afterward General Harney arrived, and Captain Lyon was elected Brigadier General by the 1st Brigade Missouri Volunteers.

Convinced of the imminence of the crisis and the peril of delay, Gen. Lyon immediately commenced active operations against the secessionists at Potosi, and ordered the seizure of the steamer which had supplied the offensive army with material of war from the United States property at Baton Rouge. In the meantime, Gen. Harney, with a culpable blindness, had made an extraordinary arrangement with Gen. Price, by which he pledged himself to desist from military movements so long as the command of Gen. Price was able to preserve order in the State. Upon his removal by the authorities at Washington, nine days later, Gen. Lyon was left in command of the department. At this time the rebel general took occasion, in a proclamation to the people of Missouri, to feel assured that 'the successor of Gen. Harney would certainly consider himself and his government in honor bound to carry out this agreement (the Harney-Price) in good faith.' But his assurance was without foundation. The temper of the new commander had been tried in the Camp Jackson affair, and an interview between Price, Jackson and other prominent secessionists and Gen. Lyon, resulted, after a few hours' consultation, in the declaration of the Union general that the authority of his government would be upheld at any cost and its property protected at all hazards. Three days later, Jackson fled to Booneville, fearing an attack upon Jefferson City, which was immediately occupied by Gen. Lyon, who was received with acclamation by the citizens. Unwilling to grant by delay what he had refused to an underhand diplomacy,--opportunity to the enemy to possess the government property, or entrench themselves strongly in their new quarters,--the general, with characteristic promptness, ordered an advance upon Booneville. The rebel force was stationed above Rockport, but retreated, after a skirmish which did not assume the proportions of a battle; and the Union army, two thousand strong, entered the town, where the national colors and the welcomes of the inhabitants testified their joy at the change.

The army of General Lyon, amounting at one time to ten thousand, had decreased by the first of August--the term of enlistment of many of the soldiers having expired--to six thousand; and it was with this number that, having swept the south-west, and believing the enemy intended to attack him at Springfield, he advanced to meet them at Dug Springs. The army of the enemy was larger and their position a strong one, but they were unable to hold it, and, after a sharp skirmish, fled in disorder, while Gen. Lyon continued his march toward Springfield. His situation had now become a critical one. The reinforcements for which he had telegraphed in vain, and in vain sent messengers to entreat from the chief of the department, Gen. Fremont, then in St. Louis, did not arrive. His army was subsisting on half rations, and wearied with exhausting marches over the uneven country in the extreme heat of midsummer. And now, for the first time, hope seemed to desert the general. Under his direction the cause had hitherto triumphed in Missouri. Now, with zeal unabated and courage unflinching, he must fall before the enemy he had so successfully opposed, or retreat where retreat was disaster, disgrace, and defeat. No wonder that, as from day to day he looked for the expected aid as men in drought for the clouds that are to bless them, he grew restless and perplexed and despairing; no wonder that the face that had never before worn the lines of indecision, should now lose its accustomed cheerfulness and glance of calm purpose, and challenge sympathy and pity for the heart that had never before asked more than admiration and respect. He felt that the hour had its demands, and that they must be met. Action, even in the face of disaster, was less a defeat than an inglorious retirement. The public, surely unaware of the fearful odds against him, clamored for an engagement; the State expected it of its hero; the government awaited it, and with a brave heart, but no hope, Gen. Lyon prepared for the attack. The result all the world knows. Was it a victory where the conquerors were obliged to retire from the field, and carry out their wounded under a flag of truce? Was it a defeat where the enemy had been thrice repulsed, once driven from the ground, had burned their baggage train, and made no pursuit of the retreating army?

But most mournful are those last moments of the faithful soldier's life; most solemn those last tones of his voice as his orders rang out on that misty morning amid the smoke and shouts of the battle-field. He stands here bare-headed, the blood streaming from two wounds which he does not heed, the cloud of perplexity settling over his face like a pall, his troubled eyes fixed upon the enemy. He turns to head a regiment which has lost its colonel--"Forward! men; I will lead you!" A moment, and he lies there: no more striving for victory here; no more anxious hours of weary watching for the succor that never came; no more goadings from an exacting public, nor any more appeals to an unheeding chief. Even the triumphant hush of life could not smooth out those lines cut by unwonted care upon his face, or answer the mute questioning of that painful indecision there. So from the West they brought him, by solemn marches, to the East, and colors hung at half-mast, and bells were tolled as the flag-draped hero was borne slowly by. And to the music of tender dirges, he, whose whole life had been, inspired by the whistling of fifes and rolling of drums, was laid to rest. A handful of clods falling upon his breast, their hollow sound never thrilling the mother heart that lay again so near her son's, a volley fired over the grave, and all was over. Of all the brave men gone, no fate has seemed to us so sad. Winthrop, young and ardent, with the tide of great thoughts rashing in upon his princely heart, died in the flush of hope with the fresh enthusiasm of poetry and undimmed patriotism shining in his eyes, and we laid our soldier to sleep under the violets. Ellsworth fell forward with the captured flag of treason in his hand, and the whole nation cheering him on in his early sally upon the 'sacred' Virginia soil. Brave and honorable, with fine powers cultured by study and earnest thought, death took from him no portion of the fame life would have awarded him. Baker rode into the jaws of death in that fatal autumn blunder; but the ignominy of defeat rested upon other shoulders. His only to obey, even while 'all the world wondered.' But he did not fall before the honor of a country's admiration and the meed of her grateful thanks were his. Soldier, orator and statesman, he had gained in a brilliant career a glory earned by few, and could well afford to die, assured of a memory justified from all reproach. But to Lyon, whom there were so few to mourn, death in the midst of anticipated defeat was bitter indeed. No time to retrieve the losses and disasters the cruel remissness of others had entailed upon him; the fruit of the anxious toil of months wrested from him even as it began to ripen; all his glad hopes chilled by suspicion, but his faith, we may well believe, still strong in the ultimate success of the cause he loved. A whole life he had given to his country, and she had not thought it worth while to redeem it from disgrace with the few thousands that he asked. He had outlived the elasticity of youth, when wrongs are quickly remedied, and new impulses spring, like phoenixes, from the ashes of the old. Uncertain whether he were the victim of a conspiracy, the tool of a faction, or the martyr to some unknown theory, he died, and as the country had been to him wife and children, he left her his all.

It was known to but few that the soldier, whose career had been rather useful than brilliant, had, when the scheming of politicians and their doubly-refined arguments threatened to deceive and ruin the country, put by his sword and taken up the pen. In a series of articles, short, concise, and to the point, he effectually canvassed the State. They are addressed to thinking men everywhere. Free from all trickery, strictly impartial, relying entirely upon the soundness of his premises for success,--for elegance of diction he had not, and he was too honest even to become a sophist,--these papers manifest at once the true patriot and the intelligent man. Thousands of adherents the Republican cause had in 1860, but not one more indefatigable or more heartily in earnest than Lyon. Outside the limits of party interests, and uninfluenced personally by the predominance of either faction, he had worked out in his own way the problem of national life, and now spread its solution before his readers. 'Our cause,' said he, 'is to honor labor and elevate the laborer.' Here we have the kernel of the whole matter; the spirit, if not the letter, of the whole republican system of government. The secret that philosophers have elaborated from the unconquerable facts of physics, ethics, and psychology, that men of genius have evolved with infinite difficulty from the mass of crude aesthetic associations that cluster around every object of nature or of art, Lyon, working and thinking alone as a citizen, has discovered, with the sole aid of common sense and the habit of practical observation. Carey and Godwin have proved by statistics for unbelievers the reasonableness of the doctrine enunciated by Lyon. Now, thanks to the untiring efforts of a few stout-hearted patriots, it is no new one to the North; but in the late presidential contest it was a strange weapon glittering in strong hands. Our society, diluted and weakened by the Southern element, revolted at first from the creed that is to prove its salvation. Not alone in our border States had the dragon crept, searing our fair institutions with his hot breath, but even upon the sturdy old Puritan stock were engrafted many of the petty notions that pass for 'principles' in Dixie. True, we were educated, all of us, into a sort of decent regard for the good old element of labor,--we call it industry,--more antique, since antiquity is a virtue, than aristocracy, for it began in Paradise. But this was a feature of our Northern character that was to be hurried out of sight, ignominiously buried without candle or bell, when the giant of Southern chivalry stalked across our borders. The bravado and gentlemanly ruffianism of youthful F.F.V-ism at college, and the supercilious condescension of incipient Southern belledom in the seminary, impressed young North America with a respect that was indeed unacknowledged, but that grew with its growth and strengthened with its strength. But this mock romance of ancestry, this arrogant assumption by the South of all the social virtues and courtesies of which the nation, or indeed the universe, could boast, was like the flash of an expiring candle to Lyon. He had little to do with first families North or South; his mission was to the _people_. His practical mind gathered in, sheaf after sheaf, a whole harvest of political facts. He saw that the government of the United States, originally intended to be administered by the people, had been for years in the power of the minority. Against this perversion of the purpose of the founders of the republic, this outrage to the memory of men who labored for its defense and welfare, he entered his earnest protest. The shallow effort of the Democratic party to establish upon constitutional grounds the monstrous phantom of justice they called government, was met by his hearty indignation. He says, 'With the artfulness of a deity and the presumption of a fiend, our own Constitution is perversely claimed by the Democracy as the aegis for the establishment of a slave autocracy over our country.'

No element more fatal to our growth or freedom could Lyon conceive than this slave autocracy. It sapped the very foundations of republicanism, and, stealthily advancing to the extreme limits of the law, enjoyed the confidence of the people, while it plotted their subjugation. All the varied machinery of the new social system, falsely styled government, had for its object the extinction of individual rights and the deification of capital. Church and state united in the unholy effort to Crush the masses, and intriguing politicians, by dint of dazzling rhetoric and plausible promises, lured the people on to secure their own downfall at the polls. The only remedy for this Lyon saw in the elevation of the masses. 'It is the greatest political revolution yet to be effected,' he says, 'to bring the laboring man to know that honest industry is the highest of merits, and should be awarded the highest honor; and, properly pursued, contributes to his intelligence and morality, and to the virtues needed for official station.' 'The calamity,' says an eminent writer from his far Platonean heights, 'is the masses;' but liberty is a new religion that is to sweep over the world and regenerate them. And to this end Lyon boldly advocated emancipation for the sake of the white man. If to-day, when patriotism is at a premium, men tremble before the acknowledged necessity of this measure, and are either too cowardly or too indolent to meet the demands of the times, it required no little boldness in 1860 to advance a theory so decided, even in a Kansas newspaper. But Lyon knew the inefficiency of half-way measures, and the moral degradation they inevitably entail upon the community so weak or so deluded as to adopt them. The hue and cry of abolitionism did not disturb him; he was not afraid of names. Conservatism that sat in state at Washington, and pulled the wires all over the country,--a tremendous power, none the less fearful in that it was only a galvanized one,--was a dead letter to him, its dignity departed with the age that had demanded it. Conservatism would have resented no impositions, established no new landmarks, asserted no independence; would carry its mails on horseback, creep over the ocean in schooners, fight by sea in piked brigantines, and by land with spear and battle-axe; it would have emancipated no slaves in Great Britain and France, and no serfs in Russia. But if freedom means anything, it means _Progress_,--liberty to advance, never to retrograde. 'Nothing in the world will ever go backward,' said the old lizard to Heine. All the authority of a new Areopagus could never sanction that; and yet this liberty the South claims, nay, has already acted upon, so that the world may see the result of the experiment, and against its continuance Lyon protests. In the long silent years of preparation for the fray he has nursed strange thoughts on the ultimate destiny of man. He has seen in dreams, prophetic of a mighty accomplishment, his country growing great, and vigorous, and powerful, extending to struggling humanity everywhere the protection of her friendship, building up noble institutions, encouraging science and the useful arts, and leading the van in the world's great millennial march; and this not through any miraculous interposition of Providence, but by means of an exalted intelligence and the power of thought stimulating to action, and that of the noblest kind.

But you argue the unfitness of the masses for this destiny. Lyon answers,--not in any musically-rounded sentences, in phrases nicely balanced; the man is plain and outspoken,--'This is a truth of philosophy and political economy, that man rises to a condition corresponding to the rights, duties and responsibilities devolved upon him; and therefore the only true way to make a man is to invest him with the rights, duties and responsibilities of a man, and he generally rises in intellectual and moral greatness to a position corresponding to these circumstances.' It is a mistake to suppose the great body of the people ignorant of their position, or unconscious of their growing importance and dignity as representatives of a mighty empire. Vice and poverty have indeed well-nigh quenched humanity in thousands in our great cities, but these are but a drop in the ocean. Behind lies our vast West, with its teeming population, sturdy, active and energetic. All our mountain districts are alive with men who, thanks to the press, are beginning to feel their power. Every advantage of physical development their hardy life gives them, and the growing consciousness and comprehension of freedom, blooming under a munificent free-school dispensation, will do the rest. Our internal manufacturing and agricultural elements at the North, already powerful and irrepressible, will soon exercise a tremendous influence in our government. Shall it be the influence of ignorance played upon by the sophistry of demagogues and helping to rebuild the vicious doctrines that have stood firmly for so many years, or the healthful influence of intelligent industry tending to our greatness and prosperity? This our war is to decide. No peaceful solution of the great question could be made. This Lyon foresaw in the truckling of politicians North to win the unit of Southern political sympathy: the main end and aim of the South being the appointment of Southern men to the Presidency, 'as security on the one hand against unfavorable executive action toward slavery, and on the other against executive patronage adverse to its interests, the democratic party North succeeded, by trimming party sails and decking party leaders, in suiting their fastidious Southern leaders.' The question once at issue, even a peaceful separation was impossible, though an amendment of the Constitution should sanction it. War was inevitable. The great bugbear of slavery would still exist; fugitive slave laws be forever upon the political carpet; formidable jealousies spring up between two nations founded upon such diverse principles, yet united by very natural circumstance of language and climate; internal wrangling would destroy all unity, conspiracies give the death-blow to all prosperity and all hope of advancement. All this if there were no great party at the North to rise upon the vast ground of humanity, claiming for its millions the privilege of an unfettered life, for its children a fair start in the future. Only one remedy Lyon knew, and he stood there, the early apostle of Emancipation, and preached it. His doctrine was not accepted then, it is not accepted now; but the time must come, when millions shall have been expended, and blood shall have flowed like water only to delay it, when we will fly to it for salvation. Let those who still cry 'Peace, peace,' when there is no peace, learn what is to be its price--Emancipation. It will be a bitter draught; well, so was the independence of her colonies to England. And every day makes it more bitter; the gall in the cup rises to the brim; a few more months and it will overflow; the people will take the matter into their own hands and legislate slavery into the swamps of Florida.

It is a lame and blind philanthropy that cries for a respite. 'A little more sleep, a little more slumber. After us the deluge.' And meanwhile the damnable lies gain ground, and a new generation is lost to its due development. Have we yet to learn that we are no longer individuals, but parts of a mighty nation, and responsible in some sort, every one, women and men, for its destiny? Poland has learned this lesson. Her eyes are upon us now. Shall she, still struggling, find that blood and treasure, and all the thousand dear blessings of peace, have been sacrificed in vain? If you cry 'War is an evil!' we grant it; but is it reserved for the nineteenth century to discover a creed for which there shall be no martyrs? What great gift has the world ever won that was not bought with blood? When has independence of action or thought been purchased otherwise than at the cost of persecution,--more revolution? Then let us not slander revolutions. They are the throes of nature undergoing her purification; if it is as by fire, oh! let us have courage and stand beside her in her hour of trial. St. George will not fight forever; the dragon of oppression is dying.

'Yes, although so slowly, he _is_ dying;
Many thousand years have fled in darkness,
Since the sword first cut his scaly armor,
And the red wound roused him into madness;
But the good knight is of race immortal,
Ever young, and passionate and fearless;
And the strength which oozes from the dragon,
Blooms reviving in the glorious warrior.'

And, after all, the demon of war is not so black as we have painted him. We do not shudder to-day as we read of the siege of Troy or the downfall of Carthage, or the Romance of the Cid. The song of Deborah, 'of the avenging of Israel _when the people willingly offered themselves_,' is one glorious burst of praise to God and gratitude to the martyrs. There was war in heaven when ambition was cast out:--what quiet pastoral appeals to our noblest impulses as Paradise Lost does? Wisely and well speaks the English clergyman when he says:--

'But the truth is that here, as elsewhere, poetry has reached the truth, while science and common sense have missed it. It has distinguished--as, in spite of all mercenary and feeble sophistry, men ever will distinguish--war from mere bloodshed. It has discerned the higher feelings which lie beneath its revolting features. Carnage is terrible. The conversion of producers into destroyers is a calamity. Death, and insults to women worse than death--and human features obliterated beneath the hoof of the war-horse--and reeking hospitals, and ruined commerce, and violated homes, and broken hearts--they are all awful. But there is something worse than death: cowardice is worse. And the _decay of enthusiasm and manliness is worse_. And it is worse than death, aye, worse than one hundred thousand deaths, when a people has gravitated down into the creed, that the "wealth of nations" consists, not in generous hearts, "fire in each breast, and freedom on each brow," in national virtues, and primitive simplicity, and heroic endurance, and preference of duty to life--not in _men_, but in silk and _cotton_, and something that they call "capital." Peace is blessed--peace arising out of charity. But peace springing out of the calculations of selfishness is not blessed. If the price to be paid for peace is this, that wealth accumulate and men decay, better far that every street, in every town of our once noble country, should run blood.'[K]

As we write, every telegram proves the vaunted unity of the South a sham, a visionary political bugbear, no longer strong or hideous enough to frighten the most inveterate conservative dough-face. But a few victories do not end the war; still earnestness and effort and sacrifice, for the sick man of America will fight even when his 'brains are out.' Not until we have proved to Breckenridge, the traitor, that we are not 'fighting for principles that three-fourths of us abhor,' and that the Union is not only 'a means of preserving the principles of political liberty,' but that in it is irrevocably bound up every living principle of all liberty, social, religious and individual; that in its shelter only we have security against wrong at home and insult from abroad; not until Emancipation has instituted a new order of things in society as well as in politics, will the death of the out-spoken patriot and brave man, Lyon, be avenged, and the Struggle be at an end. 'Genius is patient,' but patience has had her perfect work, and the days of Rebellion are numbered. On with the crusade!

* * * * *

MACCARONI AND CANVAS.

II.

The voice of Rome is baritone, always excepting that of the Roman locomotive,--the donkey,--which is deep bass, and comes tearing and braying along at times when it might well be spared. In the still night season, wandering among the moonlit ruins of the Coliseum, while you pause and gaze upon the rising tiers of crumbling stone above you, memory retraces all you have read of the old Roman days: the forms of the world-conquerors once more people the deserted ruin; the clash of ringing steel; hot, fiery sunlight; thin, trembling veil of dust pierced by the glaring eyes of dying gladiators; red-spouting blood; screams of the mangled martyrs torn by Numidian lions; moans of the dying; fierce shouts of exultation from the living; smiles from gold-banded girls in flowing robes, with floating hair, flower-crowned, and perfumed; the hum of thrice thirty thousand voices hushed to a whisper as the combat hangs on an uplifted sword; the--

Aw-waw-WAUN-ik! WAW-NIK! WAUN-KI-w-a-w-n! comes like blatant fish-horn over the silent air, and your dream of the Coliseum ends ignominiously with this nineteenth-century song of a jackass.

At night you will hear the shrill cry of the screech-owl sounding down the silent streets in the most thickly-populated parts of the city. Or you will perhaps be aroused from sleep, as Caper often was, by the long-drawn-out cadences of some countryman singing a _rondinella_ as he staggers along the street, fresh from a wine-house. Nothing can be more melancholy than the concluding part of each verse in these rondinellas, the voice being allowed to drop from one note to another, as a man falling from the roof of a very high house may catch at some projection, hold on for a time, grow weak, loose his hold, fall, catch again, hold on for a minute, and at last fall flat on the pavement, used up, and down as low as he can reach.

But the street-cries of this city are countless; from the man who brings round the daily broccoli to the one who has a wild boar for sale, not one but is determined that you shall hear all about it. Far down a narrow street you listen to a long-drawn, melancholy howl--the voice as of one hired to cry in the most mournful tones for whole generations of old pagan Romans who died unconverted; poor devils who worshiped wine and women, and knew nothing better in this world. And who is their mourner? A great, brawny, tawny, steeple-crowned hat, blue-breeched, two-fisted fish-huckster; and he is trying to sell, by yelling as if his heart would break, a basket of fish not so long as your finger. If he cries so over anchovies, what would he do if he had a whale for sale?

Another _primo basso profundo_ trolls off a wheelbarrow and a fearful cry at the same time; not in unison with his merchandise, for he has birds--quail, woodcock, and snipe--for sale, besides a string of dead nightingales, which he says he will 'sell cheap for a nice stew.' Think of stewed nightingales! One would as soon think of eating a boiled Cremona violin.

But out of the way! Here comes, blocking up the narrow street, a _contadino_, a countryman from the Campagna. His square wooden cart is drawn by a donkey about the size of, and resembling, save ears, a singed Newfoundland dog; his voice, strong for a vegetarian,--for he sells onions and broccoli, celery and tomatoes, _finocchio_ and mushrooms,--is like tearing a firm rag: how long can it last, subjected to such use?

It is in the game and meat market, near the Pantheon, that you can more fully become acquainted with the street cries of Rome; but the Piazza Navona excels even this. Passing along there one morning, Caper heard such an extraordinary piece of vocalization, sounding like a Sioux war-whoop with its back broken, that he stopped to see what it was all about. There stood a butcher who had exposed for sale seven small stuck pigs, all one litter; and if they had been his own children, and died heretics, he could not have howled over them in a more heart-rending manner.

About sunrise, and even before it,--for the Romans are early risers,--you will hear in spring-time a sharp ringing voice under your window, '_Acqua chetosa! Acqua, chetosa!_' an abridgment of _acque accetosa_, or water from the fountain of Accetosa, considered a good aperient, and which is drank before breakfast. Also a voice crying out, '_Acqua-vi-ta!_' or spirits, drank by the workmen and others at an expense of a baioccho or two the table-spoonful, for that is all the small glasses hold. In the early morning, too, you hear the chattering jackdaws on the roofs; and then, more distinctly than later in the day, the clocks striking their odd way. The Roman clocks ring from one to six strokes four times during the twenty-four hours, and not from one to twelve strokes, as with us. Sunset is twenty-four o'clock, and is noted by six strokes; an hour after sunset is one o'clock, and is noted by one stroke; and so on until six hours after, when it begins striking one again. As the quarter hours are also rung by the clocks, if you happen to be near one you will have a fine chance to get in a muddle trying to separate quarters from hours, and Roman time from your own. Another noise comes from the game of _morra_. Caper was looking out of his window one morning, pipe in mouth, when he saw two men suddenly face each other, one of them bringing his arm down very quickly, when the other yelled as if kicked, '_Due!_' (two), and the first shouted at the top of his lungs, '_Tre!_' (three). Then they both went at it, pumping their hands up and down and spreading their fingers with a quickness which was astonishing, while all the time they kept screaming, 'One!' 'Four!' 'Three!' 'Two!' 'Five!' etc., etc. 'Ha!' said Caper, 'this is something like; 'tis an arithmetical, mathematical, etcetrical school in the open air. The dirtiest one is very quick; he will learn to count five in no time. But I don't see the necessity of saying "three" when the other brings down four fingers, or saying "five" when he shows two. But I suppose it is all right; he hasn't learned to give the right names yet.' He learned later that they were gambling.

While these men were shouting, there came along an ugly old woman with a tambourine and a one-legged man with a guitar, and seeing prey in the shape of Caper at his window, they pounced on him, as it were, and poured forth the most ear-rending discord; the old lady singing, the old gentleman backing up against a wall and scratching at an accompaniment on a jangling old guitar. The old lady had a bandana handkerchief tied over her head, and whilst she watched Caper she cast glances up and down the street, to see if some rich stranger, or _milordo_, was not coming to throw her a piece of silver.

'What are you howling about?' shouted Caper down to her.

'A new Neapolitan canzonetta, signore; all about a young man who grieves for his sweetheart, because he thinks she is not true to him, and what he says to her in a serenade.' And here she screechingly sung,--

But do not rage, I beg, my dear;
I want you for my wife,
And morning, noon, and night likewise,
I'll love you like my life.

CHORUS.

I only want to get a word,
My charming girl, from thee.
You know, Ninella, I can't breathe,
Unless your heart's for me!

'Well,' said Caper, 'if this is Italian music, I don't _see_ it.'

The one-legged old gentleman clawed away at the strings of the guitar.

'I say,'_llustrissimo_,' shouted Caper down to him, 'what kind of strings are those on your instrument?'

'_Excellenza_, catgut,' he shouted, in answer.

'_Benissimo!_ I prefer cats in the original packages. There's a _paolo_: travel!'

Caper had the misfortune to make the acquaintance of a professor of the mandolin, a wire-strung instrument, resembling a long-necked squash cut in two, to be played on with a quill, and which, with a guitar and violin, makes a concert that thrills you to the bones and cuts the nerves away.

But the crowning glory of all that is ear-rending and peace-destroying, is carried around by the _Pifferari_ about Christmas time. It is a hog-skin, filled with wind, having pipes at one end, and a jackass at the other, and is known in some lands as the bagpipe. The small shrines to the Virgin, particularly those in the streets where the wealthy English reside, are played upon assiduously by the _pifferari_, who are supposed by romantic travelers to come from the far-away Abbruzzi Mountains, and make a pilgrimage to the Eternal City to fulfil a vow to certain saints; whereas it is sundry cents they are really after. They are for the most part artists' models, who at this season of the year get themselves up _a la pifferari_, or piper, to prey on the romantic susceptibilities and pockets of the strangers in Rome, and, with a pair of long-haired goat-skin breeches, a sheepskin coat, brown rags, and sandals, or _cioccie_, with a shocking bad conical black or brown hat, in which are stuck peacock's or cock's feathers, they are ready equipped to attack the shrines and the strangers.

Unfortunately for Caper there was a shrine to the Virgin in the second-story front of the house next to where he lived; that is, unfortunately for his musical ear, for the lamp that burned in front of the shrine every dark night was a shining and pious light to guide him home, and thus, ordinarily, a very fortunate arrangement. In the third-story front room of the house of the shrine dwelt a Scotch artist named MacGuilp, who was a grand amateur of these pipes, and who declared that no sound in the world was so sweet to his ear as the bagpipes: they recalled the heather, haggis, and the Lothians, and the mountain dew, ye ken, and all those sorts of things.

One morning at breakfast in the Cafe Greco he discoursed at length about the pleasure the pifferari gave him; while Caper, taking an opposite view, said they had, during the last few days, driven him nearly crazy, and he wished the squealing hog-skins well out of town.

MacGuilp told him he had a poor ear for music: that there was a charm about the bagpipes unequalled even by the unique voices of the Sistine Chapel; and there was nothing he would like better than to have all the pipers of Rome under his windows.

Caper remembered this last rash speech of Master MacGuilp, and determined at an early hour to test its truth. It happened, the very next morning at breakfast, that MacGuilp, in a triumphant manner, told him that he had received a promise of a visit from the Duchess of ----, with several other titled English; and said he had not a doubt of selling several paintings to them. MacGuilp's style was of the blood-and-thunder school: red dawns, murdered kings, blood-stained heather, and Scotch plaids, the very kind that should be shown to the sweet strainings of hog-skin bagpipes.

In conversation Caper found out the hour at which the duchess intended to make her visit. He made his preparations accordingly. Accompanied by Rocjean, he visited Gigi, who kept a costume and life school of models, found out where the pipers drank most wine, and going there and up the Via Fratina and down the Spanish Steps, managed to find them, and arranged it so that at the time the duchess was viewing MacGuilp's paintings, he should have the full benefit of a serenade from all the pifferari in Rome.

The next morning Caper, pipe in mouth, at his window, saw the carriage of the duchess drive up, and from it the noble English dismount and ascend to the artist's studio. The carriage had hardly driven away when up came two of the pipers, and happening to cast their eyes up they saw Caper, who hailed them and told them not to begin playing until the others arrived. In a few moments six of the hog-skin squeezers stood ready to begin their infernal squawking.

'Go ahead!' shouted Caper, throwing a handful of _baiocchi_ among them; and as soon as these were gathered up, the pipers gave one awful, heart-chilling blast, and the concert was fairly commenced. Squealing, shrieking, grunting, yelling, and humming, the sounds rose higher and higher. Open flew the windows in every direction.

'_C'est foudroyante!_' said the pretty French _modiste_.

'What the devil's broke loose?' shouted an American.

'_Mein Gott im himmel! was ist das?_' roared the German baron.

'_Casaccio! cosa faceste?_' shrieked the lovely Countess Grimanny.

'_In nomine Domine!_' groaned a fat friar.

'_Caramba! vayase al infierno!_' screamed Don Santiago Gomez.

'_Bassama teremtete!_' swore the Hungarian gentleman.

Louder squealed the bagpipes, their buzz filled the air, their shrieks went ringing up to MacGuilp like the cries of Dante's condemned. The duchess found the sound barbarous. MacGuilp opened his window, upon which the pipers strained their lungs for the Signore Inglese, grand amateur of the bagpipes. He begged them to go away. 'No, no, signore; we know you love our music; we won't go away.'

The duchess could stand it no longer, her Servant called the carriage, the English got in and drove off.

Still rung out the sounds of the six bagpipes. Caper threw them more _baiocchi_.

Suddenly MacGuilp burst out of the door of his house, maul-stick in hand, rushing on the pifferari to put them to flight.

'_Iddio giusto!_' shouted two of the pipers; 'it is, IT IS the _Cacciatore_! the hunter; the Great Hunter!'

'He is a painter!' shouted another.

'No, he isn't; he's a hunter. _Gran Cacciatore!_ Doesn't he spend all his time after quails and snipe and woodcock? Haven't I been out with him day after day at Ostia? Long live the great hunter!'

MacGuilp was touched in a tender spot. The homage paid him as a great hunter more than did away with his anger at the bagpipe serenade. And the last Caper saw of him he was leading six pifferari into a wine shop, where they would not come out until seven of them were unable to tell the music of bagpipes from the music of the spheres.

So ends the music, noises, and voices, of the seven-hilled city.

SERMONS IN STONES.

One bright Sunday morning in January, Rocjean called on Caper to ask him to improve the day by taking a walk.

'I thought of going up to the English chapel outside the Popolo to see a pretty New Yorkeress,' said the latter; 'but the affair is not very pressing, and I believe a turn round the Villa Borghese would do me as much good as only looking at a pretty girl and half hearing a poor sermon.'

'As for a sermon, we need not miss that,' answered Rocjean, 'for we will stop in at Chapin the sculptor's studio, and if we escape one, and he there, I am mistaken. They call his studio a shop, and they call his shop the Orphan's Asylum, because he manufactured an Orphan Girl some years ago, and, as it sold well, he has kept on making orphans ever since.

'The murderer!'

'Yes; but not half as atrocious as the reality. You must know that when he first came over here he had an order to make a small Virgin Mary for a Catholic church in Boston; but the order being countermanded after he had commenced modeling in clay, he was determined not to lose his time, and so, having somewhere read of, in a yellow-covered novel, or seen in some fashion-plate magazine, a doleful-looking female called The Orphan, he instantly determined, cruel executioner that he is, to also make an orphan. And he did. There is a dash of bogus sentiment in it that passes for coin current with many of our traveling Americans; and the thing has "sold." He told me not long since he had orders for twelve copies of different sized Orphans, and you will see them all through his asylum. Do you remember those lines in Richard the Third,--

'"Why do you look on us, and shake your head,
And call us orphans--wretched?"'

They found Chapin in his shop, alias studio, busily looking over a number of plaster casts of legs and arms. He arose quickly as they entered and threw a cloth over the casts.

'Hah! gudmornin', Mister Caper. Glad to see you in my studiyo. Hallo, Rocjan! you there? Why haven't you ben up to see my wife and daughters? She feels hurt, I tell you, 'cause you don't come near us. Do you know that Burkings of Bosting was round here to my studiyo yeserday: sold _him_ an Orphan. By the way, Mister Caper, air you any relation to Caper of the great East Ingy house of Caper?'

'He is an uncle of mine, and is now in Florence; he will be in Rome next week.'

A tender glow of interest beamed in Chapin's eyes: in imagination he saw another Orphan sold to the rich Caper, who might 'influence trade.' His tone of voice after this was subdued. As Caper happened to brush against some plaster coming in the studio, Chapin hastened to brush it from his coat, and he did it as if it were the down on the wing of a beautiful golden butterfly.

'I was goin' to church this mornin' long with Missus Chapin; but I guess I'll stay away for once in me life. I want to show you The Orphan.'

'I beg that you will not let me interfere with any engagement you may have,' said Caper; 'I can call as well at any other time.'

'Oh, no; I won't lissen to that; I don't want to git to meeting before sermon, so come right stret in here now. There! there's The Orphan. You see I've made her accordin' to the profoundest rules of art. You may take a string or a yard measure and go all over her, you won't find her out of the way a fraction. The figure is six times the length of the foot; this was the way Phidias worked, and I agree with him. Them were splendid old fellows, them Greeks. There was art for you; high art!'

'That in the Acropolis was of the highest order,' said Rocjean.

'Yes,' answered Chapin, who did not know where it was; 'far above all other. There was some sentiment in them days; but it was all of the religious stripe; they didn't come down to domestic life and feelin'; they hadn't made the strides we have towards layin' open art to the million--towards developing _hum_ feelings. They worked for a precious few; but we do it up for the many. Now there's the A-poller Belvidiary--beautiful thing; but the idea of brushin' his hair that way is ridicoolus. Did you ever see anybody with their hair fixed that way? Never! They had a way among the Greeks of fixing their drapery right well; but I've invented a plan--for which I've applied to Washington for a patent--that I think will beat anything Phidias ever did.'

'You can't tell how charmed I am to hear you,' spoke Rocjean.

'Well, it _is_ a great invention,' continued Chapin; 'and as I know neither of you ain't in the 'trade' (smiling), I don't care but what I'll show it to you, if you'll promise, honor bright, you won't tell anybody. You see I take a piece of muslin and hang it onto a statue the way I want the folds to fall; then I take a syringe filled with starch and glue and go all over it, so that when it dries it'll be as hard as a rock. Then I go all over it with a certain oily preparation and lastly I run liquid plaster-paris in it, and when it hardens, I have an exact mold of the drapery. There! But I hain't explained The Orphan. You see she's sittin' on a very light chair--_that_ shows the very little support she has in this world. The hand to the head shows meditation; and the Bible on her knee shows devotion; you see it's open to the book, chapter, and verse which refers to the young ravens.'

'Excuse me,' said Caper, 'but may I ask why she has such a _very_ low-necked dress on?'

'Well, my model has got such a fine neck and shoulders,' replied Chapin, 'that I re-eely couldn't help showing 'em off on the Orphan: besides, they're more in demand--the low neck and short sleeves--than the high-bodied style, which has no buyers. But there is a work I'm engaged on now that would just soot your uncle. Mr. Caper, come this way.'

Caper saw what he supposed was a safe to keep meat cool in, and approached. Chapin threw back the doors of it like a showman about to disclose the What Is It? and Caper saw a dropsical-looking Cupid with a very short shirt on, and a pair of winged shoes on his feet. The figure was starting forward as if to catch his equilibrium, which he had that moment lost, and was only prevented from tumbling forward by a bag held behind him in his left hand, while his right arm and hand, at full length, pointed a sharp arrow in front of him.

'Can you tell me what _that_ figger represents?' asked Chapin. As he received no reply, he continued: '_That_ is Enterprise; the two little ruts at his feet represent a railroad; the arrow, showin' he's sharp, points ahead; Go ahead! is his motto; the bag in his hand represents money, which the keen, sharp, shrewd business man knows is the reward of enterprise. The wreath round his head is laurel mixed up with lightnin', showin' he's up to the tellygraph; the pen behind his ear shows he can figger; and his short shirt shows economy, that admirable virtoo. The wings on his shoes air taken from Mercury, as I suppose you know; and--'

'I say, now, Chapin, don't you think he's got a little too much legs, and rather extra stomach on him, to make fast time?' asked Rocjean.