Chapter VIII: Part 8

The leaders of the people in the early part of the revolution, with a view to check importations from Britain, aimed a blow at these expensive customs, from which they never recovered. The example commenced in the highest places, of an entire abandonment of all the outward trappings of grief which had been wont to be displayed, and of all luxury in dress, which extended over the whole community. In the later stages of the revolution however, an extravagant and luxurious style of living and dress was revived, encouraged by the large amount both of specie and paper money in circulation, and the great quantity of foreign articles of luxury brought into the country by numerous captures.

The evils here noticed did not exist in this part of the country in any considerable degree, especially after the revolution; the people were too poor to indulge in an expensive style of living. They were literally a working people, property had not descended upon them from a rich ancestry, but whatever they had accumulated had been the result of their own industry and economy. Our ladies too at that period had not forgotten the use of the distaff, and occasionally employed that antiquated instrument of domestic labor for the benefit of others as well as of themselves. The following notice of a _spinning bee_ at Mrs. Deane's on the first of May 1788, is a flattering memorial of the industry and skill of the females of our town at that period.

"On the first instant, assembled at the house of the Rev. Samuel Deane of this town, more than one hundred of the fair sex, married and single ladies, most of whom were skilled in the important art of spinning. An emulous industry was never more apparent than in this beautiful assembly. The majority of fair hands gave motion to not less than sixty wheels. Many were occupied in preparing the materials, besides those who attended to the entertainment of the rest, provision for which was mostly presented by the guests themselves, or sent in by other generous promoters of the exhibition, as were also the materials for the work. Near the close of the day, Mrs. Deane was presented by the company with _two hundred and thirty-six_ seven knotted skeins of excellent cotton and linen yarn, the work of the day, excepting about a dozen skeins which some of the company brought in ready spun. Some had spun six, and many not less than five skeins apiece. To conclude and crown the day, a numerous band of the best singers attended in the evening, and performed an agreeable variety of excellent pieces in psalmody."

Some of the ante-revolutionary customs "more honored in the breach than in the observance"--have been continued quite to our day, although not precisely in the same manner, nor in equal degree. One was the practise of helping forward every undertaking by a deluge of ardent spirit in some of its multifarious mistifications. Nothing could be done from the burial of a friend or the quiet sessions of a town committee; to the raising of the frame of a barn or a meeting-house, but the men must be goaded on by the stimulus of rum. Flip and punch were then the indispensable accompaniments of every social meeting and of every enterprise.

It is not a great while since similar customs have extensively prevailed not perhaps in precisely the instances or degree above mentioned, but in junkettings, and other meetings which have substituted whiskey punch, toddy, &c. for the soothing but pernicious compounds of our fathers. Thanks however to the genius of temperance, a redeeming spirit is abroad, which it is hoped will save the country from the destruction that seemed to threaten it from this source.

The amusements of our people in early days had nothing particular to distinguish them. The winter was generally a merry season, and the snow was always improved for sleighing parties out of town. In summer the badness of the roads prevented all riding for pleasure; in that season the inhabitants indulged themselves in water parties, fishing and visiting the islands, a recreation that has lost none of its relish at this day.

Dancing does not seem to have met with much favor, for we find upon record in 1766, that Theophilus Bradbury and wife, Nathaniel Deering and wife, John Waite and wife, and several other of the most respectable people in town were indicted for dancing at Joshua Freeman's tavern in December 1765. Mr. Bradbury brought himself and friends off by pleading that the room in which the dance took place, having been hired by private individuals for the season, was no longer to be considered as a public place of resort, but a private apartment, and that the persons there assembled had a right to meet in their own room and to dance there. The court sustained the plea. David Wyer was king's attorney at this time.

It was common for clubs and social parties to meet at the tavern in those days, and Mrs. Greele's in Backstreet was a place of most fashionable resort both for old and young wags, before as well as after the revolution. It was the _Eastcheap_ of Portland, and was as famous for _baked beans_ as the "Boar's head" was for sack, although we would by no means compare honest Dame Greele, with the more celebrated, though less deserving hostess of Falstaff and Poins. Many persons are now living on whose heads the frosts of age have extinguished the fires of youth, who love to recur to the amusing scenes and incidents associated with that house.

When we look back a space of just two hundred years and compare our present situation, surrounded by all the beauty of civilization and intelligence, with the cheerless prospect which awaited the European settler, whose voice first startled the stillness of the forest; or if we look back but one hundred years to the humble beginnings of the second race of settlers, who undertook the task of reviving the waste places of this wilderness, and suffered all the privations and hardships which the pioneers in the march of civilization are called upon to endure; or if we take a nearer point for comparison, and view the blackened ruin of our village at the close of the revolutionary war, and estimate the proud pre-eminence over all those periods which we now enjoy, in our civil relations and in the means of social happiness, our hearts should swell with gratitude to the Author of all good that these high privileges are granted to us; and we should resolve that we will individually and as a community sustain the purity and moral tone of our institutions, and leave them unimpaired to posterity.

THE CHEROKEE'S THREAT.

By N. P. Willis.

At the extremity of a green lane in the outer skirt of the fashionable suburb of New-Haven, stood a rambling old Dutch house, built, probably, when the cattle of Mynheer grazed over the present site of the town. It was a wilderness of irregular rooms, of no describable shape in its exterior, and from its southern balcony, to use an expressive gallicism, _gave_ upon the bay. Long Island Sound, the great highway from the northern Atlantic to New York, weltered in alternate lead and silver (oftener like the brighter metal, for the climate is divine) between the curving lip of the bay, and the interminable and sandy shore of the island some six leagues distant, the procession of ships and steamers stole past with an imperceptible progress, the ceaseless bells of the college chapel came deadened through the trees from behind, and (the day being one of golden Autumn, and myself and St. John waiting while black Agatha answered the door-bell) the sun-steeped precipice of East Rock with its tiara of blood-red maples flushing like a Turk's banner in the light, drew from us both a truant wish for a ramble and a holiday.

In a few minutes from this time were assembled in Mrs. Ilfrington's drawing-room the six or seven young ladies of my more particular acquaintance among her pupils--of whom one was a new-comer, and the object of my mingled curiosity and admiration. It was the one day of the week when morning visiters were admitted, and I was there in compliance with an unexpected request from my friend, to present him to the agreeable circle of Mrs. Ilfrington. As an _habitue_ in her family, this excellent lady had taken occasion to introduce to me a week or two before, the new-comer of whom I have spoken above--a departure from the ordinary rule of the establishment, which I felt to be a compliment, and which gave me, I presumed, a tacit claim to mix myself up in that young lady's destiny as deeply as I should find agreeable. The new-comer was the daughter of an Indian chief, and her name was Nunu.

The transmission of the daughter of a Cherokee chief to New-Haven, to be educated at the expense of the government, and of several young men of the same high birth to different colleges, will be recorded among the evidences in history that we did not plough the bones of their fathers into our fields without some feelings of compunction. Nunu had come to the seaboard under the charge of a female missionary, whose pupil she had been in one of the native schools of the west, and was destined, though a chief's daughter, to return as a teacher to her tribe, when she should have mastered some of the higher accomplishments of her sex. She was an apt scholar, but her settled melancholy when away from her books, had determined Mrs. Ilfrington to try the effect of a little society upon her, and hence my privilege to ask for her appearance in the drawing-room.

As we strolled down in the alternate shade and sunshine of the road, I had been a little piqued at the want of interest and the manner of course with which St. John had received my animated descriptions of the personal beauty of the Cherokee.

"I have hunted with the tribe," was his only answer, "and know their features."

"But she is not like them," I replied with a tone of some impatience; "she is the _beau-ideal_ of a red skin, but it is with the softened features of an Arab or an Egyptian. She is more willowy than erect, and has no higher cheek-bones than the plaster Venus in your chambers. If it were not for the lambent fire in her eye, you might take her in the sculptured grace of her attitudes, for an immortal bronze of Cleopatra. I tell you she is divine!"

St. John called to his dog and we turned along the green bank above the beach, with Mrs. Ilfrington's house in view, and so opens a new chapter of my story.

* * * * *

I have seen in many years wandering over the world, lived to gaze upon, and live to remember and adore--a constellation, I almost believe, that has absorbed all the intensest light of the beauty of a hemisphere--yet with your pictures coloured to life in my memory, and the pride of rank and state thrown over them like an elevating charm--I go back to the school of Mrs. Ilfrington, and (smile if you will!) they were as lovely and stately, and as worthy of the worship of the world.

I introduced St. John to the young ladies as they came in. Having never seen him except in the presence of men, I was a little curious to know whether his singular _aplomb_ would serve him as well with the other sex, of which I was aware he had had a very slender experience. My attention was distracted at the moment of mentioning his name to a lovely little Georgian, (with eyes full of the liquid sunshine of the south,) by a sudden bark of joy from the dog who had been left in the hall; and as the door opened, and the slight and graceful Indian girl entered the room, the usually unsocial animal sprung bounding in, lavishing caresses on her, and seemingly wild with the delight of recognition.

In the confusion of taking the dog from the room, I had again lost the moment of remarking St. John's manner, and on the entrance of Mrs. Ilfrington, Nunu was sitting calmly by the piano, and my friend was talking in a quiet undertone with the passionate Georgian.

"I must apologise for my dog," said St. John, bowing gracefully to the mistress of the house; "he was bred by Indians, and the sight of a Cherokee reminded him of happier days--as it did his master."

Nunu turned her eyes quickly upon him, but immediately resumed her apparently deep study of the abstruse figures in the Kidderminster carpet.

"You are well arrived, young gentlemen," said Mrs. Ilfrington; "we press you into our service for a botanical ramble, Mr. Slingsby is at leisure, and will be delighted I am sure. Shall I say as much for you, Mr. St. John?" St. John bowed, and the ladies left the room for their bonnets, Mrs. Ilfrington last.

The door was scarcely closed when Nunu re-appeared, and checking herself with a sudden feeling at the first step over the threshold, stood gazing at St. John, evidently under very powerful emotion.

"Nunu!" he said, smiling slowly and unwillingly, and holding out his hands with the air of one who forgives an offence.

She sprang upon his bosom with the bound of a leveret, and, between her fast kisses broke the endearing epithets of her native tongue--in words that I only understood by their passionate and thrilling accent. The language of the heart is universal.

The fair scholars came in one after another, and we were soon on our way through the green fields to the flowery mountain side of East Rock, Mrs. Ilfrington's arm and conversation having fallen to my share, and St. John rambling at large with the rest of the party, but more particularly beset by Miss Temple, whose Christian name was Isabella, and whose Christian charity had no bowels for broken hearts.

The most sociable individuals of the party for a while were Nunu and Last, the dog's recollections of the past seeming, like those of wiser animals, more agreeable than the present. The Cherokee astonished Mrs. Ilfrington by an abandonment of joy and frolic which she had never displayed before, sometimes fairly outrunning the dog at full speed, and sometimes sitting down breathless upon a green bank, while the rude creature overpowered her with his caresses. The scene gave rise to a grave discussion between that well-instructed lady and myself upon the singular force of childish association--the extraordinary intimacy between the Indian and the trapper's dog being explained satisfactorily, to her at least, on that attractive principle. Had she but seen Nunu spring into the bosom of my friend half an hour before, she might have added a material corollary to her proposition. If the dog and the chief's daughter were not old friends, the chief's daughter and St. John certainly _were_!

As well as I could judge by the motions of two people walking before me, St. John was advancing fast in the favor and acquaintance of the graceful Georgian. Her southern indolence was probably an apology in Mrs. Ilfrington's eyes for leaning heavily on her companion's arm, but, in a momentary halt, the capricious beauty disembarrassed herself of the light scarf that had floated over her shoulders, and bound it playfully around his waist. This was rather strange on a first acquaintance, and Mrs. Ilfrington was of that opinion.

"Miss Temple!" said she, advancing to whisper a reproof in the beauty's ear.

Before she had taken a second step, Nunu bounded over the low hedge, followed by the dog with whom she had been chasing a butterfly, and springing upon St. John, with eyes that flashed fire, she tore the scarf into shreds, and stood trembling and pale, with her feet on the silken fragments.

"Madam!" said St. John, advancing to Mrs. Ilfrington, after casting on the Cherokee a look of surprise and displeasure, "I should have told you before, that your pupil and myself are not new acquaintances. Her father is my friend. I have hunted with the tribe, and have hitherto looked upon Nunu as a child. You will believe me, I trust, when I say, her conduct surprises me, and I beg to assure you, that any influence I may have over her, will be in accordance with your own wishes exclusively."

His tone was cold, and Nunu listened with fixed lips and frowning eyes.

"Have you seen her before since her arrival?" asked Mrs. Ilfrington.

"My dog brought me yesterday the first intelligence that she was here. He returned from his morning ramble with a string of wampum about his neck, which had the mark of the tribe. He was her gift," he added, patting the head of the dog and looking with a softened expression at Nunu, who drooped her head upon her bosom and walked on in tears.

* * * * *

The chain of the Green Mountains, after a gallop of some five hundred miles from Canada to Connecticut, suddenly pulls up on the shore of Long Island Sound, and stands rearing with a bristling mane of pine-trees, three hundred feet in air, as if checked in midcareer by the sea. Standing on the brink of this bold precipice, you have the bald face of the rock in a sheer perpendicular below you; and, spreading away from the broken masses at its foot, lies an emerald meadow inlaid with a crystal and rambling river, across which, at a distance of a mile or two, rise the spires of the university from what else were a thick serried wilderness of elms. Back from the edge of the precipice extends a wild forest of hemlock and fir, ploughed on its northern side by a mountain torrent, whose bed of marl, dry and overhung with trees in the summer, serves as a path and guide from the plain to the summit. It were a toilsome ascent but for that smooth and hard pavement, and the impervious and green thatch of pine-tassels overhung.

The kind mistress ascended with the assistance of my arm, and St. John drew stoutly between Miss Temple and a fat young lady with an incipient asthma. Nunu had not been seen since the first cluster of hanging flowers had hidden her from our sight as she bounded upward.

The hour or two of slanting sunshine, poured in upon the summit of the precipice from the west, had been sufficient to induce a fine and silken moss to show its fibres and small blossoms above the carpet of pine-tassels, and, emerging from the brown shadow of the wood, you stood on a verdant platform, the foliage of sighing trees overhead, a fairies' velvet beneath you, and a view below, that you may as well (if you would not die in your ignorance) make a voyage to see.

We found Nunu lying thoughtfully near the brink of the precipice and gazing off over the waters of the sound, as if she watched the coming or going of a friend under the white sails that glanced upon its bosom. We recovered our breath in silence, I alone perhaps of that considerable company gazing with admiration at the lithe and unconscious figure of grace lying in the attitude of the Grecian hermaphrodite on the brow of the rock before us. Her eyes were moist, and motionless with abstraction, her lips just perceptibly curved in an expression of mingled pride and sorrow, her small hand buried and clenched in the moss, and her left foot and ankle, models of spirited symmetry, escaped carelessly from her dress, the high instep strained back, as if recovering from a leap with the tense control of emotion.

The game of the coquettish Georgian was well played. With a true woman's pique, she had redoubled her attentions to my friend from the moment that she found it gave pain to another of her sex; and St. John, like most men, seemed not unwilling to see a new altar kindled to his vanity, though a heart he had already won, was stifling with the incense. Miss Temple was very lovely: her skin of that teint of opaque and patrician white, which is found oftenest in Asian latitudes, was just perceptibly warmed toward the centre of the cheek with a glow like sunshine through the thick white petal of a magnolia: her eyes were hazel with those inky lashes which enhance the expression a thousand fold either of passion, or melancholy; her teeth were like strips from the lily's heart; and she was clever, captivating, graceful, and a thorough coquette. St. John was mysterious, romantic-looking, superior, and just now the only victim in the way. He admired, as all men do, those qualities, which to her own sex, rendered the fair Isabella unamiable, and yielded himself, as all men will, a satisfied prey to enchantments of which he knew the springs were the pique and vanity of the enchantress. How singular it is that the highest and best qualities of the female heart are those with which men are the least captivated!

A rib of the mountain formed a natural seat a little back from the pitch of the precipice, and here sat Miss Temple, triumphant in drawing all eyes upon herself and her tamed lion, her lap full of flowers which he had found time to gather on the way, and her fair hands employed in arranging a bouquet, of which the destiny was yet a secret. Next to their own loves, ladies like nothing on earth like mending or marring the loves of others; and, while the violets and already drooping wild flowers were coquettishly chosen or rejected by those slender fingers, the sun might have swung back to the east like a pendulum, and those seven-and-twenty misses would have watched their lovely schoolfellow the same. Nunu turned her head slowly around at last, and silently looked on. St. John lay at the feet of the Georgian, glancing from the flowers to her face, and from her face to the flowers, with an admiration not at all equivocal. Mrs. Ilfrington sat apart, absorbed in finishing a sketch of New-Haven; and I, interested painfully in watching the emotions of the Cherokee, sat with my back to the trunk of a hemlock, the only spectator who comprehended the whole extent of the drama.

A wild rose was set in the heart of the bouquet at last, a spear of riband-grass added to give it grace and point, and nothing was wanting but a string.

Reticules were searched, pockets turned inside out, and never a bit of riband to be found. The beauty was in despair.

"Stay!" said St. John, springing to his feet. "Last! Last!"

The dog came coursing in from the wood, and crouched to his master's hand.

"Will a string of wampum do?" he asked, feeling under the long hair on the dog's neck, and untying a fine and variegated thread of many-colored beads, worked exquisitely.

The dog growled, and Nunu sprang into the middle of the circle with the fling of an adder, and seizing the wampum as he handed it to her rival, called the dog and fastened it once more around his neck.

The ladies rose in alarm; the belle turned pale and clung to St. John's arm; the dog, with his hair bristling on his back, stood close to her feet in an attitude of defiance, and the superb Indian, the peculiar genius of her beauty developed by her indignation, her nostrils expanded and her eyes almost showering fire in their flashes, stood before them, like a young Pythoness, ready to strike them dead with a regard.

St. John recovered from his astonishment after a moment, and leaving the arm of Miss Temple, advanced a step and called to his dog.

The Cherokee patted the animal on the back, and spoke to him in her own language; and, as St. John still advanced, Nunu drew herself to her fullest height, placed herself before the dog, who slunk growling from his master, and said to him as she folded her arms, "the wampum is mine!"

St. John colored to the temples with shame.

"Last!" he cried, stamping with his foot, and endeavoring to frighten him from his shelter.

The dog howled and crept away, half crouching with fear toward the precipice; and St. John shooting suddenly past Nunu, seized him on the brink, and held him down by the throat.

The next instant a scream of horror from Mrs. Ilfrington, followed by a terrific echo from every female present, started the rude Kentuckian to his feet.

Clear over the abyss, hanging with one hand by an aspen sapling, the point of her tiny foot just poising on a projecting ledge of rock, swung the desperate Cherokee, sustaining herself with perfect ease, but with all the determination of her iron race collected in calm concentration on her lips.

"Restore the wampum to his neck!" she cried, with a voice that thrilled the very marrow with its subdued fierceness, "or my blood rest on your soul!"

St. John flung it toward the dog, and clasped his hands in silent horror.

The Cherokee bore down the sapling till its slender stem cracked with the tension, and rising lightly with the rebound, alit like a feather upon the rock. The subdued Kentuckian sprang to her side; but, with scorn on her lip and the flush of exertion already vanished from her cheek, she called to the dog, and with rapid strides took her way alone down the mountain.

* * * * *

Five years had elapsed. I had put to sea from the sheltered river of boyhood; had encountered the storms of a first entrance into life; had trimmed my boat, shortened sail, and with a sharp eye to windward, was laying fairly on my course. Among others from whom I had parted company, was Paul St. John, who had shaken hands with me at the university-gate, leaving me, after four years' intimacy, as much in doubt as to his real character and history as the first day we met. I had never heard him speak of either father or mother; nor had he, to my knowledge, received a letter from the day of his matriculation. He passed his vacation at the university. He had studied well, yet refused one of the highest college-honors offered him with his degree. He had shown many good qualities, yet some unaccountable faults; and, all in all, was an enigma to myself and the class. I knew him clever, accomplished, and conscious of superiority, and my knowledge went no farther.

It was five years from this time, I say, and in the bitter struggles of first manhood, I had almost forgotten there was such a being in the world. Late in the month of October, in 1829, I was on my way westward, giving myself a vacation from the law. I embarked on a clear and delicious day in the small steamer which plies up and down the Cayuga Lake, looking forward to a calm feast of scenery, and caring little who were to be my fellow passengers. As we got out of the little harbor of Cayuga, I walked astern for the first time, and saw the not very unusual sight of a group of Indians standing motionless by the wheel. They were chiefs returning from a diplomatic visit to Washington.

I sat down by the companion-ladder, and opened soul and eye to the glorious scenery we were gliding through. The first severe frost had come, and the miraculous change had passed upon the leaves, which is known only in America. The blood-red sugar-maple, with a leaf brighter and more delicate than a Circassian's lip, stood here and there in the forest like the sultan's standard in a host, the solitary and far-seen aristocrat of the wilderness; the birch, with its spirit-like and amber leaves, ghosts of the departed summer, turned out along the edges of the woods like a lining of the palest gold; the broad sycamore and the fan-like catalpa, flaunted their saffron foliage in the sun, spotted with gold like the wings of a lady-bird; the kingly oak, with its summit shaken bare, still hid its majestic trunk in a drapery of sumptuous dies like a stricken monarch, gathering his robes of state about him to die royally in his purple; the tall poplar, with its minaret of silver leaves, stood blanched like a coward in the dying forest, burdening every breeze with its complainings; the hickory, paled through its enduring green; the bright berries of the mountain-ash flushed with a sanguine glory in the unobstructed sun; the gaudy tulip-tree, the sybarite of vegetation, stripped of its golden cups, still drank the intoxicating light of noonday in leaves than which the lip of Indian shell was never more delicately teinted; the still deeper-died vines of the lavish wilderness, perishing with the nobler things whose summer they had shared, outshone them in their decline, as woman in her death is heavenlier than the being on whom in life she leaned; and alone and unsympathizing in this universal decay, outlaws from nature, stood the fir and the hemlock, their frowning and sombre heads, darker and less lovely than ever in contrast with the death-struck glory of their companions.

The dull colors of English autumnal foliage, give you no conception of this marvellous phenomenon. The change here, too, is gradual. In America it is the work of a night--of a single frost! Ah, to have seen the sun set on hills, bright in the still green and lingering summer, and to wake in the morning to a spectacle like this! It is as if a myriad of rainbows were laced through the tree-tops--as if the sunsets of a summer--gold, purple and crimson--had been fused in the alembic of the west, and poured back in a new deluge of light and color over the wilderness. It is as if every leaf in those countless trees had been painted to outflush the tulip--as if, by some electric miracle, the dies of the earth's heart had struck upward, and her crystals and ore, her sapphires, hyacinths and rubies, had let forth their imprisoned dies to mount through the roots of the forest, and like the angels that in olden time entered the bodies of the dying, reanimate the perishing leaves, and revel an hour in their bravery.

I was sitting by the companion-ladder, thinking to what on earth these masses of foliage could be resembled, when a dog sprang upon my knees, and, the moment after, a hand was laid on my shoulder.

"St. John? Impossible!"

"Bodily!" answered my quondam classmate.

I looked at him with astonishment. The _soigne_ man of fashion I had once known, was enveloped in a kind of hunter's frock, loose and large, and girded to his waist by a belt; his hat was exchanged for a cap of rich otter-skin; his pantaloons spread with a slovenly carelessness over his feet, and altogether there was that in his air which told me at a glance that he had renounced the world. Last had recovered his leanness, and after wagging out his joy, he couched between my feet, and lay looking into my face as if he was brooding over the more idle days in which we had been acquainted.

"And where are _you_ bound?" I asked, having answered the same question for myself.

"Westward with the chiefs!"

"For how long?"

"The remainder of my life."

I could not forbear an exclamation of surprise.

"You would wonder less," said he, with an impatient gesture, "if you knew more of me. And by the way," he added, with a smile, "I think I never told you the first half of the story--my life up to the time I met you."

"It was not for the want of a catechist," I answered, setting myself in an attitude of attention.

"No! and I was often tempted to gratify your curiosity; but from the little intercourse I had with the world I had adopted some precocious principles, and one was, that a man's influence over others was vulgarism, and diminished by a knowledge of his history."

I smiled, and as the boat sped on her way over the calm waters of the Cayuga, St. John went on leisurely with a story which is scarce remarkable enough to merit a repetition. He believed himself the natural son of a western hunter, but only knew that he had passed his early youth on the borders of civilization, between whites and Indians, and that he had been more particularly indebted for protection to the father of Nunu. Mingled ambition and curiosity had led him eastward while still a lad, and a year or two of the most vagabond life in the different cities, had taught him the caution and bitterness for which he was so remarkable. A fortunate experiment in lotteries supplied him with the means of education, and with singular application in a youth of such wandering habits, he had applied himself to study under a private master, fitted himself for the university in half the usual time, and cultivated in addition the literary taste which I have remarked upon.

"This," he said, smiling at my look of astonishment, "brings me up to the time when we met. I came to college at the age of eighteen, with a few hundred dollars in my pocket, some pregnant experience of the rough side of the world, great confidence in myself and distrust of others, and, I believe, a kind of instinct of good manners, which made me ambitious of shining in society. You were a witness of my _debut_. Miss Temple was the first highly educated woman I had ever known, and you saw the effect on me!"

"And since we parted?"

"Oh, since we parted, my life has been vulgar enough. I have ransacked civilized life to the bottom, and found it a heap of unredeemed falsehoods. I do not say it from common disappointment, for I may say I succeeded in every thing I undertook."

"Except Miss Temple," I said, interrupting, at the hazard of wounding him.

"No. She was a coquette, and I pursued her till I had my turn. You see me in my new character now. But a month ago, I was the Apollo of Saratoga, playing my own game with Miss Temple. I left her for a woman worth ten thousand of her--but here she is."

As Nunu came up the companionway from the cabin, I thought I had never seen a breathing creature so exquisitely lovely. With the exception of a pair of brilliant moccasins on her feet, she was dressed in the usual manner, but with the most absolute simplicity. She had changed in those five years from the child to the woman, and, with a round and well-developed figure, additional height, and manners at once gracious and dignified, she walked and looked the chieftan's daughter. St. John took her hand, and gazed on her with moisture in his eyes.

"That I could ever put a creature like this," he said, "into comparison with the dolls of civilization!"

We parted at Buffalo--St. John with his wife and the chiefs to pursue their way westward by Lake Erie, and I to go moralizing on my way to Niagara.

GRECIAN AND ROMAN ELOQUENCE.

By Ashur Ware.

In the flourishing periods of the Grecian and Roman commonwealths, the forms of their governments, the state of society, and the passions and manners of the times, were more favorable to the developement of great talents, than have existed in any other age, or among any other people. In Athens and Rome, every citizen was a public man. The great powers of government were exercised by the people themselves in their primary assemblies. The practice of delegating the higher attributes of sovereignty to a small number of persons periodically elected is one of the greatest improvements, which the lights of modern experience have introduced into the constitutions of free governments. The advantages which are gained by this system in favor of internal tranquillity, the steadiness and permanency of political institutions and the security of private rights, can scarcely be estimated too highly, or purchased at too great a price. But nearly in the same proportion as this improvement contributes to the general tranquillity and the personal security of the citizen, does it narrow the field for the operation of great talents. The individual power of each man is hardly felt in the harmonious working of the great machine of government, and its character soon comes to depend much more on the system than on the genius of those by whom it is conducted. Precedents, fixed opinions, long established policy and constitutional maxims, throw an invisible net work over those, who are at the head of affairs, which a giant's strength cannot break through. An ordinary share of talent, enlightened by experience, is found to be about as useful in the regular movement of the system, as the highest gifts of genius.

But it was otherwise in the republics of Athens and Rome. There the power of the system was nothing, and the genius of the individual every thing. In the agitations of these popular commonwealths, the great actors on the stage were driven to a life of unremitted exertion. The revolutions of popular favor were sudden and appalling, and always liable to be carried to great extremes. A decisive moment lost might be fatal to the hopes of a whole life. Their powers were, therefore, constantly wound up to the utmost intensity of action. Second rate men, who are abundantly able to go through with the regular and quiet routine of official duty in our modern bureaus, would be quickly blown down by the storms which shook the tribunes of those turbulent democracies. The very imperfections in their political systems contributed to develope the genius of their statesmen, and necessarily called into action every faculty of the mind.

In all free and popular governments, eloquence is one of the principal instruments of power, and the fairest field is presented for its operations where the general powers of government are put in motion by the immediate agency of the mass of the people. In all the nations of modern Europe, where the semblance of deliberative assemblies is preserved, these are composed of a small and select number of persons; and in these small bodies, when a reasonable space is allowed for the coercive power of party training, for the operation of the subtle and diffusive poison of executive influence, and in some cases, for the gross and palpable application of direct corruption, the province of eloquence will be found to be greatly narrowed. Her most persuasive accents fall on ears that are spellbound by a mightier power, and on the most important questions, the votes are often counted, before deliberation commences. But this complicated machinery cannot be brought to bear with the same effect on the whole body of the citizens. If their movements are more irregular, and liable to greater excesses, they have their origin in the purer and more noble impulses of the heart. The natural love of equity, the instinctive principles of disinterestedness and generosity, originally implanted in the heart of man by the author of our being, cannot easily be extinguished in a whole people. After the tools of faction, and the minions of power, have exhausted the arts of corruption, these holier elements of our nature will kindle into spontaneous enthusiasm, when lofty and generous sentiments are brought home to the bosom in the accents of a manly and pathetic eloquence. The great and unsophisticated springs of human action are always touched with most effect in large assemblies. In these the prevailing tone of feeling, when highly exalted, spreads through the whole by a secret sympathy, with the rapidity of the electric fluid.

It was before such an audience that eloquence uttered her voice in ancient times. The orators of Greece and Rome brought their genius to bear directly on the popular mind. The public assemblies which were then held were for actual deliberation. It was not a mockery of consultation on matters upon which all opinions were definitely made up. They came together to be instructed, and were open to the seductive arts of their orators even to a fault. The objects of deliberation also were of the greatest moment, the fortunes of a province or a kingdom, the safety of the republic, the honor, or perhaps the life of the orator himself or his nearest friends. Every motive which hope or fear or pride or party could suggest, to animate the passions, was brought to act on the speaker's mind, and all depended on a doubtful decision, which was to be made on the spot, and before the separation of the assembly. These contests were not of rare occurrence. They were coming up continually. They were upon the most magnificent theatre in the world, and before judges who united a most refined and discriminating taste with an extraordinary degree of susceptibility to all the charms of a passionate and harmonious eloquence. The orators, therefore, were kept in constant training. Their faculties had no time to cool.

They had no intervals for luxurious repose. The dignities to which they had risen were watched by powerful and jealous rivals, always ready to wrest from them their honors, and they could be retained only by the same efforts by which they were won.

In these ancient republics eloquence was substantial and effective power and led to the highest dignities, which the most aspiring genius could hope to attain. It was cultivated with an assiduity bearing a just proportion to the honors with which it was crowned. The education of the orator commenced in his cradle, and did not terminate until he had reached the full maturity of manhood; or, to speak more correctly, it comprised the whole business of his life. All his studies were made subservient to the art of speaking, and the course of instruction descended into the most minute details which could improve him in his action or elocution. It was this entire devotion to a favorite and honored art, which raised it to a height of perfection, which it has never since been able to reach, and which produced those prodigies in the oratorical art, which have been the admiration and the despair of succeeding ages.

In the most brilliant period of antiquity there were two styles of eloquence cultivated by the different orators. One, calm, subtle and elegant, addressed almost exclusively to the understanding. In the time of Cicero this was called the Attic style, and those who belonged to this school assumed no little credit on the supposed purity of their Attic taste. The other affected a style of greater warmth and brilliancy, and intermingled with the scrupulous dialectics of the former, frequent appeals to the passions, and adorned their discourses with all the beauties which could captivate the imagination. What was then denominated the Attic style, forms the prevailing characteristic of modern oratory. It is cool and didactic. It relies almost wholly on the powers of a cultivated logic and seldom attempts to reach the understanding through the medium of the heart. It requires little reflection to determine which of these styles would bear away the palm before a popular audience. The former leaves one half the faculties of the hearer dormant, while the latter addresses itself to all the powers of man, the moral as well as the intellectual, instructs the reason while it agitates the passions, and gives at the same time one powerful and impetuous movement to the whole man. But if any one doubts upon this matter let him go to the pages of Demosthenes and especially to that most perfect of all his orations, in which he was contending with his great rival for the glory of a whole life in the presence of all that was most illustrious in Greece,--his oration for the crown. He will find from the beginning to the end, a clear and exact logic. But it is logic raised into enthusiasm by the dignity and elevation of sentiment by which it is surrounded. He will not find a metaphor or an observation introduced merely for the purposes of ornament. It is a continued stream of clear, rapid and convincing argument. But it is argument enveloped in a torrent of earnestness and exaggeration, environed with a blaze of anger and disdain and passion--it is argument clothed in thunder, which could no more be listened to with a composed and tranquil mind than the flashes of lightning could be viewed with an unblinking eye. Strip Demosthenes of these accompaniments, of these accessories, if you please to call them so, and you will leave enough perhaps to satisfy our modern Attics, but this residue will be no more like the living Demosthenes who "fulmined over Greece," than the unformed block of marble is like the Belvidere Apollo, or a naked skeleton like a living man.

It is said that the state of manners in modern society would not bear those bold appeals to the passions which abound in the ancient orators. We are ingenious in taking to ourselves credit even for our inferiority, and it is contended that our understandings are more cultivated and our passions more under the dominion of reason. If there be any foundation for this opinion it must be received with many qualifications. It has become a fashion of late to decry the manners and morals of the republics of antiquity. That their manners differed in many respects from the modes of fashion established in what is called good society in modern times is admitted, but it does not follow that the advantage is on our side. There is still less foundation for the opinion that in their intellectual powers the Greeks and Romans were less cultivated than the most polished nations of our times. There never existed a nation in which the intellectual education of the whole body of the people was carried to so high a pitch as in Athens. However extravagant the assertion may be thought, it is indisputably true that the "mob of Athens," as the people of that renowned commonwealth are affectedly called, were of a more refined, severe and critical taste in every thing that pertains to the beauties of eloquence than the members of the British House of Commons have been, at any period of its existence, from the first meeting of the Wittenagemote to the present day. They would allow, says Cicero, in their orators no violation of purity or elegance of language. _Eorum religioni cum serviret orator, nullum verbum insolens, nullum odiosum ponere audebat._ Many a speech has been cheered by the "_hear hims_" of the Treasury Bench in that house, which would have shocked the discriminating and critical ears, _aures teretes ac religiosas_, of that extraordinary people. The whole testimony of antiquity concurs in proving their extreme delicacy and fastidiousness in every thing which belongs to taste in letters and the arts.

There was another peculiarity in the circumstances of these ancient republics which favored the cultivation of eloquence. The press, that great engine by which public opinion is moved in modern times, was then unknown. Addresses in the assemblies of the people were not only the ordinary but almost the sole mode by which public men could influence or enlighten public opinion. All political discussion assumed this form and these popular harangues composed a very large portion of the literature of the times. The language of oral communication naturally assumes a tone of greater vivacity and passion than that of the closet. The predominance of this species of composition must have had a powerful influence in forming the national taste and would naturally impart its prevailing tone to every other species. Such seems to have been the fact. The philosophers and historians caught something of the animated and rhetorical manner of their public speakers, and in that species of eloquence which is suited to the nature of their subjects, surpass the moderns nearly as much as their orators do. Plato stands as far above all rivals in this particular, as his countryman and disciple Demosthenes. The easy and graceful movement of his dialogue, the splendid amplification and harmonious numbers of his declamation and the warm and animated glow of moral enthusiasm, which he has thrown over his mystical speculations, render his works the most perfect specimen of philosophical eloquence ever yet produced. His example will also show what importance was attached to style alone by the teachers of ancient wisdom. The last labors of a long life, which had been devoted to the most sublime philosophy of the age, were employed in retouching and remodelling the inimitable graces of his rich and flowing periods; _musæo contingens cuncta lepore_.

A superiority scarcely less imposing in this respect will be found in their historians. Their genius was also kindled by a coal from the altar of the orators. I am ready to acknowledge the great merit of the classic historians of modern times. I am not insensible to the calm and sustained dignity of Roberston, to the melody of his full and flowing style, though it sometimes fills the ear without filling the mind. He must be a much more morose critic who is not delighted with the simple and unaffected elegance of Hume, and with that admirable facility with which he intermingles the most profound reflections in a narration always easy, copious and graceful. Nor can the historian of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire be forgotten in an enumeration of those who have done honor to this branch of literature. After all that has been said and written against him, he has left a work which the world will not willingly suffer to die. The Randolphs and Taylors and Chelsums by whom he was assailed, have passed into an easy oblivion, but the great work of the historian will always find a place in every library and a reader in every well educated man. The pomp and stateliness of his style sometimes bordering on the turgid may provoke a sneer from those who look only to the surface, but he had a mind enriched by various and extensive learning, which he has exuberantly and tastefully displayed in every page of his work. It may also be admitted that in modern times history has in its general character received something more of a philosophical tone. But what it has gained on the side of philosophy it has more than lost on that of eloquence.

Compare the triumvirate of English historians in this respect with the inestimable remains of antiquity, and there is a disparity as striking as it is difficult to be accounted for. In this, as in every other department of literature, the Romans were the imitators of the Greeks; but in history while they imitated they surpassed their masters. The two great historians of Rome stand above all that preceded as well as all that followed them. The history of the rise of the Roman republic, from a small band of outlaws to the uncontrolled mastery of the world, is the most extraordinary chapter in the history of the human race. The annals of mankind present nothing that resembles it. A splendid or an affecting story may be degraded or belittled by being told in an unworthy style. But the style of Livy never falls below the dignity of his subject. His eloquence is as magnificent as the fortunes of the eternal city. In splendor of language, in glowing and picturesque description, in warmth and brilliancy and boldness of coloring, and in the dignified and majestic movement of his whole narrative, there is nothing in the literature of any country which will bear a comparison with the Decads of Livy. He is always on the borders of oratory and poetry, without ever passing the soberness of history. _Mille habet ornatus, mille decenter habet._