Chapter XLII: Front Matter (42)

The result of all these communications, was a determination on the parts of the Commander of the forces, and the Consul General, to abandon the co-operation with Hamet and to enter into a negotiation with Yusuf. Barron considered the moment the most favorable for concluding peace, on advantageous terms, as the capture of Derne must doubtless have produced a powerful effect on the Pasha's mind; and although discarding the idea of yielding any point of national honor or advantage, to obtain the liberation of the prisoners, he yet contended that "the lives of so many valuable and estimable Americans should not be sacrificed to abstract points of honor." Mr. Lear in reply, conceived it his {329} duty, "to open and bring to a happy issue, a negotiation for peace consistent with the tenor of their instructions, whenever the Commander of the American naval forces in the Mediterranean should judge the occasion proper and favorable;" he would therefore at once proceed to Tripoli for the purpose; he _could not however believe that any impression favorable to the United States had been made on Yusuf, by the measures in concert with his brother, unless the bravery and perseverance of the Americans at Derne, had given him a proof of what might be done against him without extraneous aid_.

Preparations were instantly made to carry both these resolutions into effect. The Hornet was sent back to Derne with despatches notifying Eaton of the projected negotiation, directing him at the same time explicitly to inform Hamet, that all supplies of arms and money were at an end, and he must trust entirely to his own resources and exertions; that as he was now "_in possession of the most valuable province of Tripoli_," and at the post from which he was driven when he first solicited the assistance of the United States, all had been done for him which he had a right to expect; but that endeavors would be made to stipulate some conditions in his favor, provided they could be obtained "without any considerable sacrifice of national advantage." Eaton and his companions were not indeed directly ordered to retire from Hamet's service, but the expressions of the letter conveyed a hint that they were expected to do so which could not be mistaken; in addition to which, Captain Hull, who commanded the ships at Derne, was required to proceed with them immediately to Tripoli.

The necessary arrangements being also made for carrying Mr. Lear to Tripoli, he sailed in the Essex frigate for that place, off which he arrived on the 26th of May. He bore with him a letter from Barron to Rodgers, resigning to the latter the command of the American forces in the Mediterranean, a station which, as he said, "the languor of sickness, and consequent mental as well as bodily inactivity, prevented him from filling any longer, with approbation to himself, or with advantage to the service." Some remarks are here necessary.

Commodore Barron had arrived in the Mediterranean, affected with a disease which universally weakens the mental powers of those who are subject to it; in his case we have the evidence of his officers, that during the whole winter and spring, he had been "disqualified from transacting any business, his mind being so mach impaired, that he scarcely recollected what transpired from one day to another; and on applications being made to him for instructions, he would lose the recollection of what passed in the course of conversation." It was also generally believed by the officers in the Mediterranean, "that Mr. Lear had a great ascendancy over the Commodore in all his measures relative to the squadron." For merely exercising such an ascendancy, Mr. Lear cannot certainly be blamed; nor can it be imputed as a fault to Barron, that in his situation it should have existed; he had been intrusted with an important command, which he wished to retain, particularly as he was much better acquainted with the views and wishes of his government, than the officer who would succeed him in case of his resignation could possibly have been. Under these circumstances it was natural, that being himself aware of his debilitated state, he should have looked for counsel and assistance to one in whom their government had manifested such implicit confidence. Respecting the course to be pursued with Tripoli, Mr. Lear in all his despatches and recorded conversations, had advocated the propriety of strong measures, for which he considered the forces of the United States alone as perfectly adequate. To the plan of co-operation with Hamet, he had been from the first opposed, pronouncing it visionary and impracticable; he insisted that Yusuf might be compelled to accede to honorable terms without any extraneous assistance whatever, and "that more reliance might be placed on a peace with him if well beaten into it, than with his brother, if placed on the throne by the aid of the Americans." When the accounts arrived of Eaton's junction with Hamet, and their projected expedition from Egypt, he declared his conviction openly that it would prove fruitless, and "that they with their adherents, would be sacrificed before reaching Derne." For these opinions there were certainly strong grounds; but knowing as he did, that Yusuf had manifested the utmost uneasiness ever since he had been informed of his brother's intended expedition, how could Mr. Lear have supposed that no impression favorable to the United States had been made on him, by the capture of Derne and the defeat of his army? We have certainly a right here to suspect the existence of prejudice or of personal feeling, or of too great a disinclination to acknowledge the erroneousness of previous assertions. That "a deep impression had in reality been made on the Pasha by the heroic bravery of the few Americans at Derne, and by the idea that the United States had a large force and immense supplies at that place," he indeed afterwards admitted, and endeavored from thence to make an arrangement favorable to Hamet. From the terms of Rodgers's letter already quoted, it appears that he was by no means desirous to negotiate until the Pasha should have been humbled; and he declares in another letter, that he never had entertained any apprehensions for the lives of the prisoners. It is therefore possible, that had not Barron before his relinquishment, taken such decided steps with regard to the abandonment of Hamet's cause, and (at least apparently) induced Mr. Lear to enter upon the negotiation with Yusuf, those measures might have met with some opposition from Rodgers, which delicacy under the actual circumstances forbade.

The Spanish Consul boarded the Essex immediately on her arrival off Tripoli; Mr. Lear informed him that he had come at the Pasha's request to treat for peace, but that the terms which had been already proposed through him were inadmissible, and that unless they were put aside entirely, no progress could be made in the affair. The Consul returned to Tripoli, and came on board again on the 29th, bringing a commission from the Pasha to treat on the principal points of accommodation; Yusuf relinquished all demands of payment for peace, and offered to restore the prisoners for a hundred and thirty thousand dollars, the Tripolines in the hands of the Americans being given up gratis. Mr. Lear replied by other propositions, which were--that the prisoners should be restored on both sides, the Americans immediately, the Tripolines as soon as they could be brought from America and Sicily where they then were; that as the Americans exceeded the Tripolines in number by about two hundred, the {330} sum of sixty thousand dollars would be paid as ransom for the balance in favor of the Pasha; and that a treaty of peace should then be made on mutually honorable and beneficial terms. After some difficulties, Yusuf agreed to these propositions, except that he refused to give up his prisoners until the Tripolines were ready to be delivered to him in return for them.

This was probably only a pretence to gain time. Indeed, within the preceding year, the question between the United States and Tripoli had been materially changed. The Americans had appeared in such force in the Mediterranean, that they could no longer be regarded as supplicants for peace, and the great object was to obtain the liberation of their captive fellow-citizens; on the other hand, the Pasha had suffered so much from the blockade and the expenses of the war, that he was desirous to have it terminated on as good terms as he could obtain. Hamet's success at Derne had much increased his anxiety, and knowing that it was entirely due to the assistance of the Americans, he was determined not to give up the advantages he possessed by means of the prisoners, without securing in return the withdrawal of this important aid from his brother's cause; for this reason he wished to have the treaty of peace made before the execution of any other measures. As to the restoration of his own subjects who were in the hands of the Americans, he was entirely indifferent; often declaring when exchange was proposed, "that he would not give an orange apiece for them."

On the 1st of June, Bainbridge came on board, under guaranty of Mahomet D'Ghies and the Danish Consul. He assured Mr. Lear that Yusuf would not consent to surrender the prisoners, until a treaty of peace were made. As the objects of the Americans were to obtain the liberation of their countrymen and security for their commerce and navigation in future, it was not worth while to oppose this, and Bainbridge was directed to inform the Pasha, that if the terms proposed were accepted, a negotiation would be immediately entered into for a treaty, with any proper person duly authorized by him, but that no farther communication would be held with the Spanish Consul. Yusuf upon this accordingly commissioned Mr. Nissen to confer with Mr. Lear on the terms of the treaty; instructing him specially to have an article inserted, stipulating that the American forces should be withdrawn from Derne, and that efforts would be used to persuade Hamet to leave the Tripoline dominions. This stipulation was agreed to by Mr. Lear, who, however insisted that the Prince's family, who still remained in the Pasha's hands, should be restored to him. Yusuf objected and the negotiation was almost at a stand; at this crisis the Nautilus arrived from Malta, bringing notices of Eaton's farther successes at Derne, and also information of the arrival of additional forces from the United States. Rodgers here expressed his anxiety to try the effect of farther offensive operations against him; but Mr. Lear "would not suffer the business to be broken off and leave his countrymen longer in slavery," and therefore consented that _time should be allowed for the delivery of Hamet's family_. The difficulties between him and the Pasha were then removed and the preliminaries were assented to by both parties. Mr. Lear landed directly after, and on the 4th of June 1805, corresponding with the 6th of the first month of Rabbia of the year of the Hegira 1220, a _Treaty of Peace and Amity between the United States of America and the Pasha, Bey and subjects of Tripoline Barbary_, was signed at Tripoli.

By this treaty, firm and inviolable peace and sincere friendship was to exist between the two nations; the prisoners were to be returned on each side, sixty thousand dollars being paid by the Americans for the difference in number against them; the forces of the United States, in hostility against the Pasha at Derne or elsewhere in his dominions, were to be withdrawn, and no supplies to be given by the Americans during the continuance of the peace, to any of his subjects who may be in rebellion against him; the Americans were to use all means in their power to persuade Hamet to retire from the Tripoline territory, but they were to use no force or improper means to that effect, and in case he should thus retire, the Pasha was to deliver up to him his wife and children. The stipulations respecting commerce and navigation, the rights of citizens and of consuls of either party in the territories of the other, the assistance to be given to stranded vessels, the protection to be afforded to vessels pursued by an enemy, &c. were placed on the most equal footing; and it was moreover declared, that in case a war should hereafter break out between the two parties, the prisoners taken on either side should not be made slaves, but should be returned at a stated ransom. This provision was at least harmless, and it held out inducements to humane conduct.

The American prisoners were sent on board the squadron, immediately after the signing of the treaty, and the Constitution frigate was sent to Malta and Syracuse for the money to be paid as ransom and the Tripolines. The American flag was again hoisted in the town, a Consul was installed, and the inhabitants testified their pleasure on the termination of a war by which they had so severely suffered.

This pacification has proved most advantageous for the Americans; no tribute has been since paid by them to Tripoli, nor has any infraction of the treaty been made either by the government, or the subjects of that regency, without full indemnification having been promptly obtained for it. The Pasha has indeed always appeared ready to do or to submit to any thing, rather than have another war with the United States. There is however every reason to suppose that the peace might have been made on terms more honorable to the Americans; and it is difficult to conceive what proper motives could have induced their commissioner, to offer a sum of money as ransom for the prisoners, with so strong a force at his disposal, and with the finest province of the Tripoline dominions actually in the hands of his countrymen. The proposition must certainly have surprised Yusuf, who had up to that moment received from him nothing but expressions of a fixed determination to seek peace only at the cannon's mouth.

Although it was expected that the information conveyed by the Hornet would have induced Eaton and the other Americans to evacuate Derne, still it was thought proper to despatch the frigate Constellation to that place, with accounts of the peace which had been concluded; it carried also one of Yusuf's officers, who was empowered to proclaim a general amnesty, {331} and her captain was instructed to receive Hamet and his immediate followers on board, should they choose to accompany him.

The communications previously received by the Hornet had prepared Eaton for these results; and he had instantly made known to Hamet the critical state in which his affairs were placed; the poor Prince very naturally exclaimed, that "to abandon him then, was to co-operate not with him, but with his brother"--and seeing that it would be impossible for him to prosecute the war, after the withdrawal of the American forces, he prepared to leave Derne with them whenever they should go. Eaton, however, could not bear "to strike the flag of his country in presence of an enemy, who had not merited the triumph, and to see the unbounded confidence placed by the inhabitants in the American character, sink into contempt and eternal hatred;" he had, therefore, resolved not to give up the advantages already obtained at Derne, and carefully concealing his apprehensions, continued to pursue the measures best calculated to advance the success of the enterprise. In this determination he seems to have been seconded by Captain Hull, and the other officers of the ships on the station, who had been induced by the declarations of Commodore Barron and Mr. Lear, to expect that an opportunity would have been afforded them in the approaching season to chastise the insolence of the Pasha, and fully establish the reputation of the Americans in the Mediterranean.

The Constellation arrived off Derne on the 11th of June, and it being at once supposed that she brought supplies and troops in aid of Hamet, the hopes of his partizans were excited to the highest pitch, while the Tripolines were so much dismayed, that they broke up their camp in haste, and retreated to the distance of fifteen miles from the town. When Eaton had examined the despatches brought by her, he saw at once that it would be a nice and difficult task to embark the Christians with Hamet and his followers in safety, as the inhabitants would place but little confidence in the Pasha's amnesty, and might be disposed to sacrifice their lives in revenge for this apparent desertion. He therefore took measures to conceal the real state of affairs; he ordered the troops to be inspected, distributed ammunition and rations, and sent off spies as if in anticipation of an attack. At night, patroles were placed to cut off all communication between the battery near the sea, which was occupied by the Christians and the town; the Constellation's boats came to the wharf, and the Christians, to their great astonishment, were all embarked and rowed off to the frigate, except the Americans. A message was then sent to Hamet, requesting an interview; he understood what was meant and instantly came with his retinue; they entered the boats, which had by that time returned, the Americans followed, and last of all went Eaton, just in time to escape the soldiery and inhabitants, who learning what was going on, rushed in distraction to the beach. Finding themselves deserted by those who had led them to take up arms against their tyrannical master, their rage burst forth in execrations against Hamet and his infidel friends. In the morning, the Tripoline agent landed and proclaimed amnesty to those who would return to their allegiance; but the place was already nearly deserted; the Arabs had plundered it of all that could be carried away and retreated to the mountains, accompanied by many of the inhabitants; those who remained rejected the terms of pardon offered them, and prepared to defend themselves to the last from the tops of their houses. What was their fate we have been unable to learn. At noon, on the 13th of June, Eaton writes, "In a few minutes, we shall lose sight of this deserted city, which has experienced as strange a reverse in as short a time, as ever recorded in the disasters of war." The Constellation arrived in a few days at Syracuse, where the men who had served with Eaton at Derne were paid off. The whole expenses of the expedition amounted to about forty thousand dollars.

A few words will suffice to trace the subsequent history of Hamet. It has been stated that provision was made in the treaty of June 4th, for the restoration of his family; but when he demanded them, his brother refused to comply or to give him any assistance whatever. He had been aided by Eaton, and by the orders of the Commodore of the squadron, he received two hundred dollars per month for the support of himself, and fifteen or twenty dependants in Syracuse. Two thousand four hundred dollars were afterwards appropriated by Congress, for his "immediate and temporary relief." The American Consul at Tripoli was also instructed to require the delivery of his family; he did so, but in reply a paper was exhibited, which proved to be a secret article signed in due form by Mr. Lear, on the day after the conclusion of the treaty, by which it was stipulated, that Yusuf should not be required to give up his brother's wife and children, until the expiration of four years, during which, Hamet was to evince his peaceful disposition, and his determination not to disturb the tranquillity of the Tripoline dominions. Of this article, no copy, and indeed no notice whatever, had been transmitted by Mr. Lear to his Government; whether from miscarriage or from other causes is not ascertained. The Consul was however ordered to urge the delivery of the family by the Pasha, and to endeavor to obtain some arrangements for their support and that of Hamet. This was at length effected through the aid of Mahomet D'Ghies; and on the 25th of October, 1807, his wife and children arrived at Syracuse in an American sloop of war, with the exception of one of the daughters, who had married the Bey Mahomet, Yusuf's eldest son; an offer was also made by the Pasha, to settle a handsome allowance on his brother, provided he would establish his residence in Morocco. This Hamet positively refused, demanding at least the restoration of his former governments of Derne and Bengazi; after some difficulties Yusuf consented to his demand, and he went to Derne in 1809, where he passed the remainder of his life in quiet, as Bey of the two Eastern Provinces. Eaton immediately resigned his situation as navy agent, and returned to the United States, where he was universally received with interest and attention; but never recovered his equanimity; he had been as he conceived, disappointed in the opportunity of distinguishing himself, and moreover unjustly robbed of his share in the credit of reducing the Pasha to terms. His natural irritability was increased, and he was on many occasions tempted to assert his claims, in a manner which savored of boastfulness. His own peaceful {332} country offered no field for the display of his peculiar talents; he had no taste for the quiet occupations of the farm, or for the petty intrigues and wordy war of politics; he tried both and failed. He became involved in pecuniary embarrassments, his spirits deserted him, and he sought for consolation in the bowl. Those who knew him only at this period, represent him as an intemperate disagreeable vain-glorious man, and the few friends who followed him to the grave in June 1811, had reason to regret that he had not died earlier.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

ANECDOTES OF PATRICK HENRY.

_From the Manuscripts of the late David Meade Randolph_.

The birth of party spirit has been variously conjectured: the result of the Richmond Convention for the adoption of the Federal Constitution, was one of its imputed parents. In the evening of the day of the final vote, General Meade and Mr. Cabell assembled the _discontents_ in the old Senate Chamber; and after a partial organization of the party, a deputation was sent to Patrick Henry inviting him to take the chair. The venerated patriot accepted. Understanding that it was their purpose to concert a plan of resistance to the operations of the Federal Government, he addressed the meeting with his accustomed animation upon important occasions; observing, "he had done his duty strenuously, in opposing the Constitution, in the _proper place_,--and with all the powers he possessed. The question had been fully discussed and settled, and, that as true and faithful republicans, they had all better go home! They should cherish it, and give it fair play--support it too, in order that the federal administration might be left to the untrammelled and free exercise of its functions:" reproving, moreover, the half suppressed factious spirit which he perceived had well nigh broken out. The impressive arguments of Mr. Henry produced the gratifying effect he had hoped for.

* * * * *

The purity of Henry's republicanism was such, as when dining with his brother Col. John Syme, at the Rocky Mills, during a May session of the Circuit Court held by Judge Iredell in Richmond, the company, composed of very respectable characters of both parties--'THE PEOPLE' as the first toast, upon removing the cloth, was pronounced very audibly by the host. Mr. Henry pushing his old black wig aside, as was his custom when much excited;--and, with _elbows akimbo!_ exclaimed, "What--brother, not drink GENERAL WASHINGTON? as we used to do!--for shame brother, for shame;"--and filled up his glass with a bumper of Thomson's Madeira, announcing the name of WASHINGTON.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

YOUNG ROSALIE LEE.

I love to forget Ambition
And Hope, in the mingled thought
Of valley and wood and meadow,
Where whilome my spirit caught
Affection's holiest breathings;
Where, under the skies, with me
Young Rosalie roved--aye drinking
From Joy's bright Castaly.

I think of the valley and river,
The old wood bright with blossoms;
Of the pure and chastened gladness
Upspringing in our bosoms;
I think of the lonely turtle
So tongued with melancholy;
And the hue of the drooping moonlight,
And the starlight pure and holy!

Of the beat of a heart most tender;
The sigh of a shell-tinct lip,
As soft as the land tones, wandering
Far leagues, over ocean deep;
Of a step, as light in its falling,
On the breast of the beaded lea,
As the fall of the fairy moonlight,
On the leaf of yon tulip tree.

I think of these and the murmur
Of bird and katadyd,
Whose home is the grave yard cypress,
Whose goblet the honey-reed;
And then I weep! for Rosalie
Has gone to her early rest;
And the green-lipped reed and the daisy,
Suck sweets from her maiden breast.

L. L.

_Winchester, Va._

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

STRAY LEAVES.

See'st thou yon withered tree,
Which stretches towards the sea,
Its long and ghastly arms--
Does it not say to thee,
How speedily shall flee,
Thy now so envied charms.

That forehead high
In the dust shall lie,
And that soft dark eye
Shall be shrivelled and dry;
And those pearly teeth,
Shall be trodden beneath,
The foot of the idle passer-by.

* * * * *

Change the subject, change the measure,
Sing not of death--let life and pleasure
Be the theme of Poet's lay;
Our earth contains full many a treasure--
Let us seek them while we may.

Fill the glass with yellow juice,
Of Rhine's old banks, the rich produce;
Or let the ruby claret flow,
Or Portugal's dark streams unloose--
They all bring joy and banish woe.

Let not woman enter here,
Woman brings but pain and care,
Woman smiles but to deceive,
In woman's tears let none believe.

Love is folly--fill the glass,
In mirth and glee, the hours we'll pass.
The smiling vine alone is true,
The grape's pure tears none ever rue.

{333}

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

BERENICE--A TALE.

BY EDGAR A. POE.

Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon like the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch, as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon like the rainbow! How is it that from Beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?--from the covenant of Peace a simile of sorrow? But thus is it. And as, in ethics, Evil is a consequence of Good, so, in fact, out of Joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which _are_, have their origin in the ecstasies which _might have been_. I have a tale to tell in its own essence rife with horror--I would suppress it were it not a record more of feelings than of facts.

My baptismal name is Egæus--that of my family I will not mention. Yet there are no towers in the land more time-honored than my gloomy, grey, hereditary halls. Our line has been called a race of visionaries: and in many striking particulars--in the character of the family mansion--in the frescos of the chief saloon--in the tapestries of the dormitories--in the chiseling of some buttresses in the armory--but more especially in the gallery of antique paintings--in the fashion of the library chamber--and, lastly, in the very peculiar nature of the library's contents, there is more than sufficient evidence to warrant the belief.

The recollections of my earliest years are connected with that chamber, and with its volumes--of which latter I will say no more. Here died my mother. Herein was I born. But it is mere idleness to say that I had not lived before--that the soul has no previous existence. You deny it. Let us not argue the matter. Convinced myself I seek not to convince. There is, however, a remembrance of ærial forms--of spiritual and meaning eyes--of sounds musical yet sad--a remembrance which will not be excluded: a memory like a shadow, vague, variable, indefinite, unsteady--and like a shadow too, in the impossibility of my getting rid of it, while the sunlight of my reason shall exist.

In that chamber was I born. Thus awaking, as it were, from the long night of what seemed, but was not, nonentity at once into the very regions of fairy land--into a palace of imagination--into the wild dominions of monastic thought and erudition--it is not singular that I gazed around me with a startled and ardent eye--that I loitered away my boyhood in books, and dissipated my youth in reverie--but it _is_ singular that as years rolled away, and the noon of manhood found me still in the mansion of my fathers--it is wonderful what stagnation there fell upon the springs of my life--wonderful how total an inversion took place in the character of my common thoughts. The realities of the world affected me as visions, and as visions only, while the wild ideas of the land of dreams became, in turn,--not the material of my every-day existence--but in very deed that existence utterly and solely in itself.

* * * * *

Berenice and I were cousins, and we grew up together in my paternal halls--Yet differently we grew. I ill of health and buried in gloom--she agile, graceful, and overflowing with energy. Hers the ramble on the hill side--mine the studies of the cloister. I living within my own heart, and addicted body and soul to the most intense and painful meditation--she roaming carelessly through life with no thought of the shadows in her path, or the silent flight of the raven-winged hours. Berenice!--I call upon her name--Berenice!--and from the grey ruins of memory a thousand tumultuous recollections are startled at the sound! Ah! vividly is her image before me now, as in the early days of her light-heartedness and joy! Oh! gorgeous yet fantastic beauty! Oh! Sylph amid the shrubberies of Arnheim!--Oh! Naiad among her fountains!--and then--then all is mystery and terror, and a tale which should not be told. Disease--a fatal disease--fell like the Simoom upon her frame, and, even while I gazed upon her, the spirit of change swept over her, pervading her mind, her habits, and her character, and, in a manner the most subtle and terrible, disturbing even the very identity of her person! Alas! the destroyer came and went, and the victim--where was she? I knew her not--or knew her no longer as Berenice.

Among the numerous train of maladies, superinduced by that fatal and primary one which effected a revolution of so horrible a kind in the moral and physical being of my cousin, may be mentioned as the most distressing and obstinate in its nature, a species of epilepsy not unfrequently terminating in _trance_ itself--trance very nearly resembling positive dissolution, and from which her manner of recovery was, in most instances, startingly abrupt. In the meantime my own disease--for I have been told that I should call it by no other appellation--my own disease, then, grew rapidly upon me, and, aggravated in its symptoms by the immoderate use of opium, assumed finally a monomaniac character of a novel and extraordinary form--hourly and momentarily gaining vigor--and at length obtaining over me the most singular and incomprehensible ascendancy. This monomania--if I must so term it--consisted in a morbid irritability of the nerves immediately affecting those properties of the mind, in metaphysical science termed the _attentive_. It is more than probable that I am not understood--but I fear that it is indeed in no manner possible to convey to the mind of the merely general reader, an adequate idea of that nervous _intensity of interest_ with which, in my case, the powers of meditation (not to speak technically) busied, and, as it were, buried themselves in the contemplation of even the most common objects of the universe.

To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention rivetted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography of a book--to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the floor--to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire--to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower--to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind--to lose all sense of motion or physical existence in a state of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in--Such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to any thing like analysis or explanation.

{334} Yet let me not be misapprehended. The undue, intense, and morbid attention thus excited by objects in their own nature frivolous, must not be confounded in character with that ruminating propensity common to all mankind, and more especially indulged in by persons of ardent imagination. By no means. It was not even, as might be at first supposed, an extreme condition, or exaggeration of such propensity, but primarily and essentially distinct and different. In the one instance the dreamer, or enthusiast, being interested by an object usually _not_ frivolous, imperceptibly loses sight of this object in a wilderness of deductions and suggestions issuing therefrom, until, at the conclusion of a day-dream _often replete with luxury_, he finds the _incitamentum_ or first cause of his musings utterly vanished and forgotten. In my case the primary object was _invariably frivolous_, although assuming, through the medium of my distempered vision, a refracted and unreal importance. Few deductions--if any--were made; and those few pertinaciously returning in, so to speak, upon the original object as a centre. The meditations were _never_ pleasurable; and, at the termination of the reverie, the first cause, so far from being out of sight, had attained that supernaturally exaggerated interest which was the prevailing feature of the disease. In a word, the powers of mind more particularly exercised were, with me, as I have said before, the _attentive_, and are, with the day-dreamer, the _speculative_.

My books, at this epoch, if they did not actually serve to irritate the disorder, partook, it will be perceived, largely, in their imaginative, and inconsequential nature, of the characteristic qualities of the disorder itself. I well remember, among others, the treatise of the noble Italian Coelius Secundus Curio "_de amplitudine beati regni Dei_"--St. Austin's great work the "City of God"--and Tertullian "_de Carne Christi_," in which the unintelligible sentence "_Mortuus est Dei filius; credibile est quia ineptum est: et sepultus resurrexit; certum est quia impossibile est_" occupied my undivided time, for many weeks of laborious and fruitless investigation.

Thus it will appear that, shaken from its balance only by trivial things, my reason bore resemblance to that ocean-crag spoken of by Ptolemy Hephestion, which steadily resisting the attacks of human violence, and the fiercer fury of the waters and the winds, trembled only to the touch of the flower called Asphodel. And although, to a careless thinker, it might appear a matter beyond doubt, that the fearful alteration produced by her unhappy malady, in the _moral_ condition of Berenice, would afford me many objects for the exercise of that intense and morbid meditation whose nature I have been at some trouble in explaining, yet such was not by any means the case. In the lucid intervals of my infirmity, her calamity indeed gave me pain, and, taking deeply to heart that total wreck of her fair and gentle life, I did not fail to ponder frequently and bitterly upon the wonder-working means by which so strange a revolution had been so suddenly brought to pass. But these reflections partook not of the idiosyncrasy of my disease, and were such as would have occurred, under similar circumstances, to the ordinary mass of mankind. True to its own character, my disorder revelled in the less important but more startling changes wrought in the _physical_ frame of Berenice, and in the singular and most appalling distortion of her personal identity.

During the brightest days of her unparalleled beauty, most surely I had never loved her. In the strange anomaly of my existence, feelings, with me, _had never been_ of the heart, and my passions _always were_ of the mind. Through the grey of the early morning--among the trellissed shadows of the forest at noon-day--and in the silence of my library at night, she had flitted by my eyes, and I had seen her--not as the living and breathing Berenice, but as the Berenice of a dream--not as a being of the earth--earthly--but as the abstraction of such a being--not as a thing to admire, but to analyze--not as an object of love, but as the theme of the most abstruse although desultory speculation. And _now_--now I shuddered in her presence, and grew pale at her approach; yet, bitterly lamenting her fallen and desolate condition, I knew that she had loved me long, and, in an evil moment, I spoke to her of marriage.

And at length the period of our nuptials was approaching, when, upon an afternoon in the winter of the year, one of those unseasonably warm, calm, and misty days which are the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon,[1] I sat, and sat, as I thought alone, in the inner apartment of the library. But uplifting my eyes Berenice stood before me.

[Footnote 1: For as Jove, during the winter season, gives twice seven days of warmth, men have called this clement and temperate time the nurse of the beautiful Halcyon.--_Simonides_.]

Was it my own excited imagination--or the misty influence of the atmosphere--or the uncertain twilight of the chamber--or the grey draperies which fell around her figure--that caused it to loom up in so unnatural a degree? I could not tell. Perhaps she had grown taller since her malady. She spoke, however, no word, and I--not for worlds could I have uttered a syllable. An icy chill ran through my frame; a sense of insufferable anxiety oppressed me; a consuming curiosity pervaded my soul; and, sinking back upon the chair, I remained for some time breathless, and motionless, and with my eyes rivetted upon her person. Alas! its emaciation was excessive, and not one vestige of the former being lurked in any single line of the contour. My burning glances at length fell upon her face.

The forehead was high, and very pale, and singularly placid; and the once golden hair fell partially over it, and overshadowed the hollow temples with ringlets now black as the raven's ring, and jarring discordantly, in their fantastic character, with the reigning melancholy of the countenance. The eyes were lifeless, and lustreless, and I shrunk involuntarily from their glassy stare to the contemplation of the thin and shrunken lips. They parted: and, in a smile of peculiar meaning, the teeth of the changed Berenice disclosed themselves slowly to my view. Would to God that I had never beheld them, or that, having done so, I had died!

* * * * *

The shutting of a door disturbed me, and, looking up, I found my cousin had departed from the chamber. But from the disordered chamber of my brain, had not, alas! departed, and would not be driven away, the white and ghastly _spectrum_ of the teeth. Not a speck upon their surface--not a shade on their enamel--not a line in their configuration--not an indenture in their {335} edges--but what that brief period of her smile had sufficed to brand in upon my memory. I saw them _now_ even more unequivocally than I beheld them _then_. The teeth!--the teeth!--they were here, and there, and every where, and visibly, and palpably before me, long, narrow, and excessively white, with the pale lips writhing about them, as in the very moment of their first terrible development. Then came the full fury of my _monomania_, and I struggled in vain against its strange and irresistible influence. In the multiplied objects of the external world I had no thoughts but for the teeth. All other matters and all different interests became absorbed in their single contemplation. They--they alone were present to the mental eye, and they, in their sole individuality, became the essence of my mental life. I held them in every light--I turned them in every attitude. I surveyed their characteristics--I dwelt upon their peculiarities--I pondered upon their conformation--I mused upon the alteration in their nature--and shuddered as I assigned to them in imagination a sensitive and sentient power, and even when unassisted by the lips, a capability of moral expression. Of Mad'selle Sallé it has been said, "_que tous ses pas etaient des sentiments_," and of Berenice I more seriously believed _que tous ses dents etaient des idées_.

And the evening closed in upon me thus--and then the darkness came, and tarried, and went--and the day again dawned--and the mists of a second night were now gathering around--and still I sat motionless in that solitary room, and still I sat buried in meditation, and still the _phantasma_ of the teeth maintained its terrible ascendancy as, with the most vivid and hideous distinctness, it floated about amid the changing lights and shadows of the chamber. At length there broke forcibly in upon my dreams a wild cry as of horror and dismay; and thereunto, after a pause, succeeded the sound of troubled voices intermingled with many low moanings of sorrow, or of pain. I arose hurriedly from my seat, and, throwing open one of the doors of the library, there stood out in the antechamber a servant maiden, all in tears, and she told me that Berenice was--no more. Seized with an epileptic fit she had fallen dead in the early morning, and now, at the closing in of the night, the grave was ready for its tenant, and all the preparations for the burial were completed.

With a heart full of grief, yet reluctantly, and oppressed with awe, I made my way to the bed-chamber of the departed. The room was large, and very dark, and at every step within its gloomy precincts I encountered the paraphernalia of the grave. The coffin, so a menial told me, lay surrounded by the curtains of yonder bed, and in that coffin, he whisperingly assured me, was all that remained of Berenice. Who was it asked me would I not look upon the corpse? I had seen the lips of no one move, yet the question had been demanded, and the echo of the syllables still lingered in the room. It was impossible to refuse; and with a sense of suffocation I dragged myself to the side of the bed. Gently I uplifted the sable draperies of the curtains.

As I let them fall they descended upon my shoulders, and shutting me thus out from the living, enclosed me in the strictest communion with the deceased.

The very atmosphere was redolent of death. The peculiar smell of the coffin sickened me; and I fancied a deleterious odor was already exhaling from the body. I would have given worlds to escape--to fly from the pernicious influence of mortality--to breathe once again the pure air of the eternal heavens. But I had no longer the power to move--my knees tottered beneath me--and I remained rooted to the spot, and gazing upon the frightful length of the rigid body as it lay outstretched in the dark coffin without a lid.

God of heaven!--is it possible? Is it my brain that reels--or was it indeed the finger of the enshrouded dead that stirred in the white cerement that bound it? Frozen with unutterable awe I slowly raised my eyes to the countenance of the corpse. There had been a band around the jaws, but, I know not how, it was broken asunder. The livid lips were wreathed into a species of smile, and, through the enveloping gloom, once again there glared upon me in too palpable reality, the white and glistening, and ghastly teeth of Berenice. I sprang convulsively from the bed, and, uttering no word, rushed forth a maniac from that apartment of triple horror, and mystery, and death.

* * * * *

I found myself again sitting in the library, and again sitting there alone. It seemed that I had newly awakened from a confused and exciting dream. I knew that it was now midnight, and I was well aware that since the setting of the sun Berenice had been interred. But of that dreary period which had intervened I had no positive, at least no definite comprehension. Yet its memory was rife with horror--horror more horrible from being vague, and terror more terrible from ambiguity. It was a fearful page in the record of my existence, written all over with dim, and hideous, and unintelligible recollections. I strived to decypher them, but in vain--while ever and anon, like the spirit of a departed sound, the shrill and piercing shriek of a female voice seemed to be ringing in my ears. I had done a deed--what was it? And the echoes of the chamber answered me "what was it?"

On the table beside me burned a lamp, and near it lay a little box of ebony. It was a box of no remarkable character, and I had seen it frequently before, it being the property of the family physician; but how came it _there_ upon my table, and why did I shudder in regarding it? These were things in no manner to be accounted for, and my eyes at length dropped to the open pages of a book, and to a sentence underscored therein. The words were the singular, but simple words of the poet Ebn Zaiat. "_Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicæ visitarem curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas._"[2] Why then, as I perused them, did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body congeal within my veins?

[Footnote 2: My companions told me I might find some little alleviation of my misery, in visiting the grave of my beloved.]

There came a light tap at the library door, and, pale as the tenant of a tomb, a menial entered upon tiptoe. His looks were wild with terror, and he spoke to me in a voice tremulous, husky, and very low. What said he?--some broken sentences I heard. He told of a wild cry heard in the silence of the night--of the gathering together of the household--of a search in the direction of the sound--and then his tones grew thrillingly distinct as he whispered me of a violated {336} grave--of a disfigured body discovered upon its margin--a body enshrouded, yet still breathing, still palpitating, still alive!

He pointed to my garments--they were muddy and clotted with gore. I spoke not, and he took me gently by the hand--but it was indented with the impress of human nails. He directed my attention to some object against the wall--I looked at it for some minutes--it was a spade. With a shriek I bounded to the table, and grasped the ebony box that lay upon it. But I could not force it open, and in my tremor it slipped from out my hands, and fell heavily, and burst into pieces, and from it, with a rattling sound, there rolled out some instruments of dental surgery, intermingled with many white and glistening substances that were scattered to and fro about the floor.

For the Southern Literary Messenger.

EXTRACT

From the Reminiscences of a Western Traveller.

"I presume," said I, "that having so long resided in Kentucky, you must have had some acquaintance with Indian warfare."

"I had no occasion," he replied, "to come to Kentucky to learn that. I may say, that I have had something to do with it all my life, and it had to do with me before I was born."

The speaker was a tall, handsome man, uncommonly stout, with an appearance of great strength, perfect health, and a quiet good humor, which disposed him to be communicative, merely by way of obliging. Though by no means garrulous, I had discovered that he was ready to tell whatever another might be desirous of hearing. He spoke with that strong accent, and deliberate tone, which characterize the Scotch Irish race, and which always, to my ear, conveys a promise that what is said will be said distinctly and clearly.

Here then was the very man I wanted. I had left the peaceful scenes of the Atlantic coast, expecting, not indeed to "roam through anters vast and deserts wild," in my western tour, (for my maps and gazetteer had taught me better,) but to find some traces of the scenes, which but a few years before, had made it dangerous for a white man to set his foot where we now rode along securely. My eye had eagerly scanned every object which afforded promise of food to my young and eager imagination; but as yet I had found none. The soft beauty and exuberant fertility of the country, need only the touch of civilization to take from it every appearance of wildness, and I could hardly bring myself to believe that it had been so lately the haunt of the prowling savage. My enthusiasm was consequently much damped; but it was not extinguished, and these last words of my companion blew it into a flame. A well directed question soon drew him out.

"I was born," said he, "among the mountains of Virginia. I never saw my father. He was killed at the battle of Point Pleasant, just before I came into the world. That is the reason why I said that Indian fighting had to do with me before I was born. But that was not all; many years before that, the Indians made a break on our settlement, and carried off my oldest brother, and kept him."

"Did you never see him again?"

"I suppose I have, but I did not know it at the time." As he said this, a gloom came over his countenance, which checked my inquisitiveness, and he rode on, perhaps a mile, in moody silence. At length his brow cleared, and he again spoke, but in a somewhat saddened tone.

"It is something strange; I am not superstitious, and yet it seems to me, as if at times, when people are in great distress of mind, they are apt to say things that turn out almost like a prophecy. It was a great grief to my mother, the loss of her child, and the longer she lived the more she mourned after him. He was quite small when they took him; and they carried him away over the lakes, so far, that they never heard where he was, until he was almost grown up, a perfect wild man. My mother was a religious woman; and the thought of his being brought up among savages, where the word of God could never reach him, went to her heart. She said, it was always borne upon her mind that he was not dead, and that he would grow up among those vile wretches, to be the death of his own father, and perhaps to die at last by the hand of one of his own brothers. When they raised a party to follow the Indians, she _would_ go with them, and all the way, she said, she looked and looked, in hopes to see where they had dashed out her poor child's brains against a tree. It was the only comfort she hoped for, and that was denied her.

"As I told you, they never heard of him till he was near or quite a man; and that was just before Dunmore's war. There was no chance to do any thing towards getting him home at that time, for it was dangerous to go near the Ohio. Indeed, all they knew was, that there was a white man of about his age among the Indians, who answered to his name. It was not until after the peace that we knew certainly all about him.

"Well! he was at the battle of the Point, fighting among the Shawanees; and there my father was killed. When my mother heard that he had been there, you may be sure her own words came back to her. No body knew who killed my father. But why not he as well as another? Flesh and blood could not have made her believe that it was not he.

"Just after that I was born, and then again my mother took it into her head that I had come into the world to revenge my father's death. There was no great comfort in that thought, you may be sure; so as soon as the war was over, they tried all they could to get my brother back. He was {337} told that my father was dead, and had left a good estate; and that he was the heir at law; (for you know that my father died under the old law,) but it all would not do. He was a complete Indian, and had an Indian wife and children that he would not leave. But he had kind feelings for us all, and sent us word to take the estate; for he wanted nothing but his rifle.