Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 by Various (page 2)

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_Monday, 10th._ Fine breeze of wind at N.W., with a large sea. At 5 A.M. saw Hog Island & the island of Providence. Fired a gun & lay to for a pilot to take us in. At 8 a pilot boat came off, & Jeremiah Harman, Master of our prize, in her, having arrived the day before. Passed by the Rose man of war, stationed here. We saluted her with 7 guns, & she returned us 5. Ran aground for’ard & lay some time off of Major Stewart’s house, but the man of war sent his boat to carry out an anchor for us, and we got off. The Cap’t went ashore to wait on his Excellency, & sent the pinnace off for the prisoners, who were immediately put in jail.

_Thursday, 13th._ Landed all our corn, and made a clear hole of the prize. At 9 P.M. it began to thunder & lighten very hard. Our sloop received great damage from a thunderbolt that struck our mast & shivered it very much, besides tearing a large piece off the hounds. As it fell, it tore up the bitts, broke in the hatch way, and burst through both our sides, starting the planks under her wale, melting several cutlasses & pistols, and firing off several small arms, the bullets of which stuck in her beam. It was some time before we perceived that she leaked, being all thunder struck; but when the Master stepped over the side to examine her, he put his foot on a plank that was started, and all this time the water had been pouring in. We immediately brought all our guns on the other side to give her a heel, & sent the boat ashore for the Doctor, a man having been hurt by the lightning. When we got her on a heel, we tried the pumps, not being able to do it before, for our careful carpenter had ne’er a pump box rigged or fit to work; so, had it not been for the kind assistance of the man of war’s people, who came off as soon as they heard of our misfortune, & put our guns on board the prize, we must certainly have sunk, most of our own hands being ashore. This day, James Avery, our boatswain, was turned out for neglect of duty.

_Friday, 14th._ This morning came on board Cap’t Frankland to see the misfortune we had suffered the night before, & offered to assist us in all he could. He sent his carpenter, who viewed the mast & said he thought he could make it do again. The Cap’t, hearing of a piece of timber for his purpose, waited on his Excellency to desire him to lay his commands on Mr Thompson to spare it him. He sent Mr Scott, Judge of the Admiralty, to get it in his name, promising to make it good to him in case of any trouble arising from the timber not belonging to him. Unloaded all our provisions & put them on board the prize, in order to get ready for the carpenters to repair the sloop.

_Saturday, 15th._ A court was called at 4 o’clock P.M., Cap’t Norton’s petition read, and an agent appointed for the owners. The Company’s Quartermaster & myself were examined, with John Evergin & Samuel Eldridge, the two English prisoners, concerning the prize, and so the court was adjourned till Monday, at 10 of the clock, A.M.

_Monday, 17th._ The court met according to adjournment. Jean Baptiste Domas was examined concerning the freedom of the prisoners, and his deposition taken in writing. All the evidence and depositions were then read in court, sworn to, and signed, after which the court adjourned to Wednesday at 10 of the clock. There are no lawyers in this place, the only blessing that God could bestow on such a litigious people.

_Wednesday, 19th._ At 10 A.M., the court being opened, & the libel read, I begged leave of his Honour to be heard, which being granted, I spoke as follows:[A]–

[Footnote A: The speech of Peter Vezian is characteristic of the times and of the privateering spirit. It gives expression to the popular hatred of the Spaniards and the Romanists, to the common false charges against the brave Oglethorpe, to the general inhuman feeling toward negroes, and to the distrust of the pretenders to religious experience during the “Great Revival” under the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield. Its faults of diction add to its genuine flavor.]

May it please your Honour,–As there is no advocate appointed by this Hon’ble Court to appear in behalf of the Capturers of a sloop taken by Don Pedro Estrado July the 5th, belonging to some of His Majesty’s subjects of Great Britain or Ireland, and retaken by Cap’t Benj. Norton & Comp’y in a private sloop of war called the Revenge, July the 20th, & brought into this court for condemnation, I, as Captain’s Quartermaster, appear in behalf of the owners, Cap’t, & Comp’y, to prove that the said sloop & cargo, together with the three mulattoes & one negro, which are all slaves, belonging to some of the vassals or subjects of the King of Spain, ought to be condemned for the benefit & use of the capturers as aforesaid.

I’m certain I’m undertaking a task for which I am no ways qualified. But as I have leave to speak in a court instituted by the laws of England, and before a judge who I am certain is endued with the strictest honour and justice, I don’t doubt, that, if, through ignorance, I should omit any proof that would be of advantage to us, your Honour will be so good as to aid & assist me in it.

It will be needless, I believe, Sir, to bring any further proof than what has been already brought & sworn to in Court to prove the right & power we had to seize this sloop & cargo on the high seas, & bring her here for condemnation. There is a late act of parliament, made in the 12th year of his present Majesty’s reign, wherein it says, that all vessels belonging to His Majesty’s subjects of Great Britain or Ireland, which shall have been taken by the enemy, and have been in their possession the space of 96 hours, if retaken by any private man of war, shall belong one half to the capturers, as salvage, free from all charges. As this has been fully proved in court, that the time the enemy has had her in possession is above 96 hours, I don’t doubt but the one half, free of all charges, will be allotted us for salvage. The thing about which there is any dispute is the three mulattoes & one negro, all slaves, taken by the prize, & said to belong to some vassals or subjects of the King of Spain; and it is put upon us by this court to prove that they are so, which I hope to do by several circumstances, and the insufficiency of the evidence in their favour, which amounts to nothing more than hearsay.

The first evidence in their favour is that of John Evergin, a native of N’o Carolina, who professes himself to be a child of the Spirit. In April last, having been taken prisoner by the said Don Pedro Estrado, & brought to S’t Augustine, he consented, for the value of a share in the profits, to pilot them in the bowels of his native country, and betrayed his countrymen to that cruel and barbarous nation. Can your Honour confide in a man who has betrayed his countrymen, robbed them of their lives, and what was dearer to them, their liberty? One who has exposed his brethren to imminent danger & reduced them and their families to extreme want by fire & sword, can the evidence, I say, of such a vile wretch, who has forfeited his liege to his King by entering the enemy’s service, and unnaturally sold his countrymen, be of any weight in a court of justice? No, I am certain, and I hope it will meet with none to prove that these slaves are freemen; for all that he has said, by his own confession, was only but hearsay. The other evidence is of a villain of another stamp, a French runnagado, Jean Baptiste Domas. His evidence is so contradictory that I hope it will meet the same fate as I think will befall the first. I will own that he has sworn to it. But how? On a piece of stick made in the shape of a thing they name a cross, said to be blest and sanctified by the polluted words & hands of a wretched priest, a spawn of the whore of Babylon, who is a monster of nature & a servant to the Devil, who for a _real_ will pretend to absolve his followers from perjury, incest, or parricide, and canonize them for cruelties committed upon we heretics, as they style us, and even rank them in the number of those cursed saints who by their barbarity have rendered their names immortal & odious to all true believers. By devils such as these they swear, and to them they pray. Can your Honour, then, give credit to such evidence, when there is no doubt that it was agreed between the witnesses to swear that the negroes were free? This they might easily do, for there is no question but they told him so; and to swear it was but a trifle, when absolution can be got so cheap. It does not stand to reason, that slaves, who are in hopes of getting their freedom, would acknowledge themselves to be slaves. Do not their complexion and features tell all the world that they are the blood of negroes, and have sucked slavery & cruelty from their infancy? Can any one think, when we call to mind that barbarous action[B] committed on his Majesty’s brave subjects at the retaking of the fort at S’t Augustine, which was occasioned by the treachery of their vile General, when he sacrificed them to that barbarous colour, that it was done by any who had the least drop of blood either of liberty or Christianity in them? No, I am confident your Honour can’t think so; no, not even of their Gov’r, under whose vile commission this was suffered to be done, and went unpunished. It was headed by this Francisco, that cursed seed of Cain, cursed from the foundation of the world, who has the impudence to come into Court and plead that he is free. Slavery is too good for such a savage; nay, all the cruelty invented by man will never make amends for so vile a proceeding; and if I may be allowed to speak freely, with submission, the torments of the world to come will not suffice. God forgive me, if I judge unjustly! What a miserable state must that man be in, who is under the jurisdiction of that vile & cruel colour! I pity my poor fellow creatures who may have been made prisoners in this war, and especially some that were lately sent to the Havanah, and all by the treachery of that vile fellow, John Evergin, who says he is possessed with the spirit of the inward man, but was possessed with the spirit of Beelzebub, when he piloted the cursed Spaniards over the bar of Obricock, as it has been proved in Court.

[Footnote B: It was reported that the English and American prisoners of war had been barbarously mutilated and tortured.]

I don’t doubt but this tragical act, acted at St Augustine, has reached home before now. This case, perhaps, may travel as far; and when they remember the sufferings of their countrymen under the command of this Francisco, whom we have got in possession, together with some of his comp’y who were concerned with him & under his command in that inhuman act, they will agree, no doubt, as I hope your Honour will, that they must be slaves who were concerned in it. I hope, therefore, that by the contradictions which have been shown in Court between this Jean Baptiste Domas, who affirms he never saw them till on board the privateer, and the evidence of Francisco & Augustine, which proves that they knew him some months before, and conversed with him, is proof enough they are slaves; and I hope that by the old law of nations, where it says that all prisoners of war, nay, even their posterity, are slaves, that by that law Pedro Sanche & Andrew Estavie will be deemed such for the use of the capturers. So I rest it with your Honour.

Then the Judge gave his decree, that the sloop & cargo should be sold at vendue, & the one half thereof should be paid the Capturers for salvage, free from all charges; that Jean Baptiste Domas, Pedro Sanche, & Andrew Estavie, according to the laws of England, should remain as prisoners of war till ransomed; and that Augustine & Francisco, according to the laws of the plantations, should be the slaves, & for the use of the Capturers. So the Court broke up.

_Friday, 21st._ This day made an end of selling the cargo of the prize. Sold 55 bush. corn, 41 bb’s pork, 6 bb’s of beef, 4 bb’s of oil, and then set up Signor Cap’t Francisco under the name of Don Blass. He was sold to Mr. Stone for 34L 8s. 8d. Pork & beef very much damnified.

_Thursday, 27th._ Got all our sails & powder from on shore, and took an inventory of the prize’s rigging and furniture, as she was to be sold on Saturday next. Capt Frankland came on board to view her, intending to buy her, I believe.

_Saturday, 29th._ To-day the sloop & furniture was sold, & bought by Cap’t Frankland.

_Monday, 31st._ The captain settled with everybody, intending to sail to-morrow. He took bills of Exchange of Capt Frankland on his brother, Messrs. Frankland & Lightfoot, merchants in Boston, and endorsed by the Company’s Quartermaster, for 540L, New England currency. The first bill he sent to Cap’t Freebody by Capt Green, bound to Boston in the prize, with a letter.

_Wednesday, Sept. 2nd._ This morning at 8 A.M. weighed anchor, having a pilot on board. The man of war’s barge with their Lieut came on board to search our hold & see that we did not carry any of his hands with us.

_Thursday, 3d._ At 10 A.M. had a vendue at the mast of the plunder taken in the prize, which was sold to the amount of 50L.

_Friday, 4th._ Moderate weather till 4 A.M., when we hauled down our mainsail to get clear of the keys & brought to under our ballast mainsail, the wind blowing a mere hurricane.

_Sunday, 6th._ Out both reefs our mainsail. Hope to God to have fine weather. Got clear of the reefs, and stood out the hurricane, which was terrible. Very few godly enough to return God thanks for their deliverance.

_Sunday, 13th._ The Captain gave the people a case bottle of rum, as a tropick bottle for his pinnace. The people christened her and gave her the name of _The Spaniard’s Dread_. At 11 A.M. made the land of Hispaniola & the island of Tortugas. We are now on cruising ground. The Lord send us success against our enemies!

_Monday, 14th._ Hard gales of wind. Brought to off Tortugas under our foresail, and about 5 A.M. saw a sloop bearing down upon us. Got all things ready to receive her, fired our bow chaser, hoisted our jib & mainsail & gave chase, and, as we outsailed her, she was soon brought to. She proved to be a sloop from Philadelphia, bound to Jamaica; and as it blew a mere fret of wind from N.E., we brought to again under our ballast mainsail.

_Thursday, 17th._ Still cruising as above. At 7 P.M. saw 2 sloops, one on our Starboard and the other on our Larboard bow, steering N.W. We fired several shot to bring them to, but one of them was obstinate. Capt. Hubbard, the Com’r of the other, came to at the first shot. He was from Jamaica & bound to York, & informed us that there was a large fleet just arrived from England to join the Admiral; that Admiral Vernon was gone to St. Jago de Cuba; that there was a hot press both by sea & by land; & that the Spanish Admiral was blown up in a large man of war at the Havanah, which we hope may prove true. The other sloop, he said, was one under Cap’t Styles, bound also to York, and had sailed in comp’y with him. Styles received some damage for his obstinacy in not bringing to, for our shot hulled him and tore his sails. At 5 A.M. saw a top sail schooner; but the master, while going to the mast head to see what course she steered, had the misfortune to fall & break his arm just above the wrist. Gave the vessel chase as far as Inagua Island, when she came to. We made the Captain come on board with his papers, from which we found that he came from Leogane, and was bound to Nantz in France, loaded with sugars, indigo, and hides, and also 300 pieces of 8/8 sent by the Intendant to the receiver of the customs of Nantz. We went aboard in the Captain’s yawl, and found the cargo agreeable to his bills of lading, manifest, and clearance, and so let him pass. He informed us that there was a brig belonging to the Spaniards at Leogane, that came in there in distress, having lost his mast, which gentleman we hope to have the honour of dining or supping with before long.

_Saturday, 19th._ Moderate weather. Saw a sail and gave chase.

_Sunday, 20th._ At 5 P.M. came up with the chase, which proved to be a French ship that had been blown out of Leogane in the hurricane 6 days ago. Her mizzen mast had been cut to get clear of the land; her quarters stove in; her head carried away; and there was neither anchor nor cable aboard. Of 16 hands, which were aboard, there was but one sailor, and he was the master, and they were perishing for want of water. There was on board 30 hhd sugar, 1 hhd & 1 bbl indigo, 13 hhd Bourdeaux wine, & provisions in plenty. We ordered the master on board, and, as soon as he came over the side, he fell on his knees and begged for help. When we heard his deplorable case, we spared him some water, &, as he was an entire stranger on the coast, put one of our hands aboard to navigate his vessel. They kept company with us all night, and in the morning sent us a hhd of wine. At 5 A.M., they being about a league to windward of us, we made in for the Molo by Cape Nicholas, and she steering after us, we brought her in. But the wind coming up ahead, & their ship out of trim, they could not work up so far as we, so they came to an anchor a league below us. The Cap’t of the ship is named Doulteau, the ship La Genereuse, Dutch built, and is from Rochelle in France.

_Monday, 21st._ Our Lieu’t with two hands went ashore to see if he could kill any cattle. Some others of the people went for water and found 7 wells. The people on board were busy in fishing, of which they caught an abundance; but some of the hands who eat of the fish complained that they were poisoned by them.

_Wednesday, 23d._ At 6 P.M. the master of the ship came on board to return thanks to our Cap’t for his kind assistance, & offered him anything he might have occasion for. He gave the people another hhd of claret & some sugar, & to the Cap’t a quarter cask of wine for his own drinking, also 6 lengths of old junk. At 6 A.M. left the poor Frenchman in hopes of letting his Cap’t know where he was, weighed anchor from the Molo, and, the weather being moderate, got on our cruising ground, the North side of Cuba.

_Saturday, 26th._ About 5 P.M. thought we saw a vessel at anchor under the land. Lay off & on till 5 A.M., when we saw 2 sails, a brigantine & a sloop. Gave them chase, the sloop laying to for us, & the brigantine making the best of her way to the leeward. We presently came up with the sloop, & when in gun shot, hoisted our pennant. The compliment was returned with a Spanish ensign at mast head, and a gun to confirm it. We then went alongside of him & received his broadside, which we cheerfully returned. He then dropped astern, & bore away before the wind, crowding all the sail he could, and we, having tacked and done the like, came again within gun shot. While chasing, we shifted our bow guns to our fore ports, and they had done the like with their after guns, moving them to their cabin windows, from which they polled us with their stern chasers, while we peppered them with our fore guns. At last, after some brisk firing, they struck. We ordered their canoe on board, which was directly manned, and brought their Capt, who delivered his commission & sword to our Cap’t, and surrendered himself a prisoner of war. He was desperately wounded in the arm, & had received several small shot in his head & body. Three of his hands were wounded, & one negro boy killed. This vessel had been new fitted out in November last from the Havanah, was on our coast early in the spring, & had taken several vessels and brought them in to the Havanah, where in August she was again fitted out, and had met with good success on the coast of Virginia. She mounted 6 guns & 12 swivels, & had a crew of 30 hands, two of whom were Englishmen, who had been taken prisoners, and had entered their service. We now made all the sail we could crowd after the brigantine, which by this time was almost out of sight. Our damage in the engagement was not much; one man slightly wounded by a splinter, two more by a piece accidentally going off after the fight, upwards of 20 shot in our sails, 2 through our mast, & 1 through our gunwale. This day the Revenge has established her honour, which had almost been lost by letting the other privateer go off with 4 ships, as before mentioned. Still in chase of the brigantine, which is making for the land.

_Sunday, 27th._ At 4 A.M. came up with the chase, fired two guns, & brought her to. She had been taken by the privateer 23 days before, in Lat. 26. deg. N., while coming from Barbadoes; was loaded with rum, sugar, & some bags of cotton, & was bound to Boston. Her owners are Messrs. Lee & Tyler, Merchants there, Thomas Smith was her commander, & there were 5 Spaniards aboard, whom we took.

_Monday, 28th._ Put the Lieut on board the privateer prize with 7 hands; also put on board the brigantine Capt Tho. Smith, with verbal orders to follow us until we could get letters written to send her to Rhode Island to Cap’t Freebody.

_Tuesday, 29th._ Lost sight of both prizes, & lay to the best part of the forenoon to let them come up with us.

_Wednesday, 30th._ Saw our prize, [the sloop,] bore down on her, & ordered her canoe on board. The Quartermaster went on board & brought off her powder & other stores, leaving 7 hands to navigate her, with verbal orders to keep us company. No news of the brigantine; we suppose she is gone to the northward. She has one of our hands on board.

_Thursday, Oct. 1st._ Calm weather, with thunder & rain. Brave living with our people. Punch every day, which makes them dream strange things, which foretells good success in our cruise. They dream of nothing but mad bulls, Spaniards, & bags of gold. Examined the papers of the sloop, & found several in Spanish & French, among which was the condemnation of Cap’t Stocking’s sloop.

_Friday, 2nd._ At 6 A.M. saw a ship under the land. Stretched in for her, when she hoisted a French pennant & an English ensign. Hoisted our Spanish Jack at mast head, and sent our pinnace aboard to discover what it was. She proved to be a ship that had been taken by Don Francisco Loranzo, our prisoner, off the Capes of Virginia. He had put a Lieu’t, 10 hands, & 5 Englishmen to carry her to the Havanah. But the Spaniards ran her ashore on purpose. We brought off the 5 Englishmen, the Spaniards having run for it. We caught one & brought him on board, and sent our prize alongside to save what goods we could, for the ship was bilged.

_Saturday, 3d._ The people busy in getting goods out of the ship, we laying off & on.

_Sunday, 4th._ Sent John Webb as master with 7 mariners on board the prize, & with them a Bermudian negro, who had been taken prisoner in a fishing boat by the Spanish Cap’t off the Bermudas, & a mulatto prisoner belonging to the Spaniards, with the instructions which are underneath.

Latitude 22. deg. 50′ N., Oct. 4th, 1741.

MR. JOHN WEBB,

You being appointed master of the sloop Invincible, late a Spanish privateer, commanded by Cap’t Don Francisco Loranzo, and taken by me & company, we order you to keep company with us till farther orders. But if, by some unforeseen accident, bad weather, or giving chase, we should chance to part, then we order that you proceed directly with said sloop & cargo to Rhode Island in New England. And if, by the Providence of God, you safe arrive there, you must apply to Mr. John Freebody, Merchant there, & deliver your sloop & cargo to him or his assigns.

You are also ordered to take care that you speak to no vessel, nor suffer any to speak with you, during your passage, nor permit any disorder on board; but you must take a special care of the cargo that none be embezzled, and, if weather permits, you must be diligent in drying the goods, to hinder them from spoiling. Wishing you a good voyage, we remain your friends.

B.N.

D.M.

Copy of a letter sent to Capt Freebody per John Webb in the sloop.

SIR,–I hope my sundry letters sent you by different hands are come safe.

This waits upon you with the agreeable news of our taking a Spanish privateer on the 26th Sep’t last, off Cape Roman, on the north side of Cuba. She was conveying to the Havanah a brigantine which she had taken, coming from Barbadoes & bound to Boston, & laden with rum, sugar, and some bags of cotton. We had the pleasure of meeting him early in the morning, & gave chase. When within about a mile of him we hoisted our pennant, which compliment he immediately returned with his ensign at mast head and a gun to confirm it. We received several shot from him, & cheerfully returned them. He then made the best of his way off, crowding all the sail he could; and we, doing the like, came again within gun shot, and plied her with our bow chasers, which were shifted to the fore ports for that purpose. They in return kept pelting us with their stern chasers out of their cabin windows, but after some brisk firing they struck. Our rigging, mast, & gunwale received some damage. Upwards of 25 shot went through our sails, 2 through our mast in its weakest part just below where it was fished, 1 cut our fore shroud on the Larboard side, & another went through our Starboard gunwale, port & all. Only one of our men was wounded by the enemy, and he slightly by a splinter. Two others were hurt in the arm by one of the people’s pieces going off accidentally after the engagement. The poor Cap’t of the privateer was wounded in the arm and the bone fractured, one negro boy killed, & others wounded. He was fitted out last November at the Havanah, proceeded to S’t. Augustine, & while on our coast early in the spring took several vessels. In August last he was again fitted out, & had taken several more vessels on our coast. But we had the good fortune to stop his course. His name is Don Francisco Loranzo, & by all report, though an enemy, a brave man, endued with a great deal of clemency, & using his prisoners with a great deal of humanity. The like usage he receives with us, for he justly deserves it.

We have sent you the sloop commanded by John Webb, loaded with sundry goods somewhat damaged, which I must desire you to unload directly & to take care to get them dried. There is also a negro boy that is sickly, a negro man said to have been taken off Bermudas by the privateer as he was a fishing, & a mulatto belonging to some of the subjects or vassals of the King of Spain, all of which we recommend to your care that they may not elope.

The number of Spanish prisoners taken on board, the Captain included, is 48, out of which 11 are of the blood of negroes, for which we don’t doubt that we shall have his Majesty’s bounty money, which is 5L sterling per head. We also desire that the vessel may not be condemned till our arrival, but only unloaded & a just account taken of what was on board. As to the brigantine, the Captain of her, whom we put in again out of civility, has used us in a very rascally manner; for he ran away from us in the night with the vessel, & no doubt designed to cheat us out of our salvage, which is the half of brig & cargo, the enemy having had possession of her for 22 days. As she is a vessel of value, I hope you’l do your endeavors to recover our just dues, and apply to the owners, who are, as we are credibly informed, Messrs Lee & Tyler of Boston, both of whom are under the state of conviction since the gospel of Whitfield & Tennant has been propagated in New England. So that we are in hopes they will readily give a just account of her cargo & her true value, & render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, which is the moral preached by Whitefield.

As this will require a lawsuit, I hope you will get the best advice you possibly can, &, if she is at Boston or elsewhere, get her seized & condemned. She was designed to be consigned to you, & the master was sent on board to take possession, & get things in order to sail, while we were writing letters & bills of lading, but he gave us the slip. So, relying on your care, we don’t doubt but you will recover her and add her to the privateer prize. The brigantine was called the Sarah, commanded by Tho’s Smith, & had on board 11 hhd of rum, 23 hhd of sugar, & 12 bags of cotton. She was well fitted with 4 swivels, one gun, & other stores. She was a new, pink stern vessel, & carried off one of our hands, who, no doubt, will acquaint you of the whole affair. We hope you will show no favour to the Cap’t for his ill usage, but get a just account of his venture, one half of which is our due. This affair is recommended to you by all the company, and we hope that you will serve us to the utmost of your power, not doubting in the least of your justice & equity.

Inclosed you will receive Cap’t Frankland’s 2 Bills of Exchange on his brother for 540L, also a list of the vessels which were taken by Francisco Loranzo since he first went out on his cruise, which you may use at pleasure either to publish or conceal. We are still cruising on the Northern side of Cuba, & are in hopes of getting something worth while in a short time.

We are all in good health; so, having no more to add but my kind remembrances to all friends,

I remain

sincerely yours,

B.N.

_Monday, 5th._ The company gave the Cap’t a night gown, a spencer wig, & 4 pair of thread stockings, & to the Lieut a pair of buck skin breeches. The Doctor bought a suit of broad cloth, which cost him 28 pieces of eight and is carried to his account in the sloop’s ledger.

* * * * *

Here Peter Vezian’s journal abruptly comes to an end. But we know from other papers, that the “Revenge,” after a successful cruise, returned safely to Newport; and thence in the next succeeding years often sailed out against the Spaniards. Queer legends of those privateering days still linger in Newport, and traces of ill-gotten wealth may still be discovered there. The sailors of the old seaport are as bold and adventurous as ever, but they are grown honester, and never again shall a crew be found there to man either slave-trader or privateer. Northern seamen have no liking for such occupation.

CONCERNING PEOPLE OF WHOM MORE MIGHT HAVE BEEN MADE.

It is recorded in history, that at a certain public dinner in America a Methodist preacher was called on to give a toast. It may be supposed that the evening was so far advanced that every person present had been toasted already, and also all the friends of every one present. It thus happened that the Methodist preacher was in considerable perplexity as to the question, What being, or class of beings, should form the subject of his toast. But the good man was a person of large sympathies; and some happy link of association recalled to his mind certain words with which he had a professional familiarity, and which set forth a subject of a most comprehensive character. Arising from his seat, the Methodist preacher said, that, without troubling the assembled company with any preliminary observations, he begged to propose the health of ALL PEOPLE THAT ON EARTH DO DWELL.

Not unnaturally, I have thought of that Methodist preacher and his toast, as I begin to write this essay. For, though its subject was suggested to me by various little things of very small concern to mankind in general, though of great interest to one or two individual beings, I now discern that the subject of this essay is in truth as comprehensive as the subject of that toast. I have something to say _Concerning People of whom More might have been Made_: I see now that the class which I have named includes every human being. More might have been made, in some respects, possibly in many respects, of _All People that on Earth do Dwell_. Physically, intellectually, morally, spiritually, more might have been made of all. Wise and diligent training on the part of others, self-denial, industry, tact, decision, promptitude, on the part of the man himself, might have made something far better than he now is of every man that breathes. No one is made the most of. There have been human beings who have been made the most of as regards some one thing, who have had some single power developed to the utmost; but no one is made the most of, all round; no one is even made the most of as regards the two or three most important things of all. And, indeed, it is curious to observe that the things in which human beings seem to have attained to absolute perfection have for the most part been things comparatively frivolous,–accomplishments which certainly were not worth the labor and the time which it must have cost to master them. Thus, M. Blondin has probably made as much of himself as can be made of mortal, in the respect of walking on a rope stretched at a great height from the ground. Hazlitt makes mention of a man who had cultivated to the very highest degree the art of playing at rackets, and who accordingly played at rackets incomparably better than any one else ever did. A wealthy gentleman, lately deceased, by putting his whole mind to the pursuit, esteemed himself to have reached entire perfection in the matter of killing otters. Various individuals have probably developed the power of turning somersets, of picking pockets, of playing on the piano, jew’s-harp, banjo, and penny trumpet, of mental calculation in arithmetic, of insinuating evil about their neighbors without directly asserting anything, to a measure as great as is possible to man. Long practice and great concentration of mind upon these things have sufficed to produce what might seem to tremble on the verge of perfection,–what unquestionably leaves the attainments of ordinary people at an inconceivable distance behind. But I do not call it making the most of a man, to develop, even to perfection, the power of turning somersets and playing at rackets. I call it making the most of a man, when you make the best of his best powers and qualities,–when you take those things about him which are the worthiest and most admirable, and cultivate these up to their highest attainable degree. And it is in this sense that the statement is to be understood, that no one is made the most of. Even in the best, we see no more than the rudiments of good qualities which might have been developed into a great deal more; and in very many human beings, proper management might have brought out qualities essentially different from those which these beings now possess. It is not merely that they are rough diamonds, which might have been polished into blazing ones,–not merely that they are thoroughbred colts drawing coal-carts, which with fair training would have been new Eclipses: it is that they are vinegar which might have been wine, poison which might have been food, wild-cats which might have been harmless lambs, soured miserable wretches who might have been happy and useful, almost devils who might have been but a little lower than the angels. Oh, the unutterable sadness that is in the thought of what might have been!

Not always, indeed. Sometimes, as we look back, it is with deep thankfulness that we see the point at which we were (we cannot say how) inclined to take the right turning, when we were all but resolved to take that which we can now see would have landed us in wreck and ruin. And it is fit that we should correct any morbid tendency to brood upon the fancy of how much better we might have been, by remembering also how much worse we might have been. Sometimes the present state of matters, good or bad, is the result of long training, of influences that were at work through many years, and that produced their effect so gradually that we never remarked the steps of the process, till some day we waken up to a sense of the fact, and find ourselves perhaps a great deal better, probably a great deal worse, than we had been vaguely imagining. But the case is not unfrequently otherwise. Sometimes one testing-time decided whether we should go to the left or to the right. There are in the moral world things analogous to the sudden accident which makes a man blind or lame for life: in an instant there is wrought a permanent deterioration. Perhaps a few minutes before man or woman took the step which can never be retraced, which must banish forever from all they hold dear, and compel to seek in some new country far away a place where to hide their shame and misery, they had just as little thought of taking that miserable step as you, my reader, have of taking one like it. And perhaps there are human beings in this world, held in the highest esteem, and with not a speck on their snow-white reputation, who know within themselves that they have barely escaped the gulf, that the moment has been in which all their future lot was trembling in the balance, and that a grain’s weight more in the scale of evil and by this time they might have been reckoned among the most degraded and abandoned of the race. But probably the first deviation, either to right or left, is in most cases a very small one. You know, my friend, what is meant by the _points_ upon a railway. By moving a lever, the rails upon which the train is advancing are, at a certain place, broadened or narrowed by about the eighth of an inch. That little movement decides whether the train shall go north or south. Twenty carriages have come so far together; but here is a junction station, and the train is to be divided. The first ten carriages deviate from the main line by a fraction of an inch at first; but in a few minutes the two portions of the train are flying on, miles apart. You cannot see the one from the other, save by distant puffs of white steam through the clumps of trees. Perhaps already a high hill has intervened, and each train is on its solitary way,–one to end its course, after some hours, amid the roar and smoke and bare ugliness of some huge manufacturing town; and the other to come through green fields to the quaint, quiet, dreamy-looking little city, whose place is marked, across the plain, by the noble spire of the gray cathedral rising into the summer blue. We come to such points in our journey through life,–railway-points, as it were, which decide not merely our lot in life, but even what kind of folk we shall be, morally and intellectually. A hair’s breadth may make the deviation at first. Two situations are offered you at once: you think there is hardly anything to choose between them. It does not matter which you accept; and perhaps some slight and fanciful consideration is allowed to turn the scale. But now you look back, and you can see that _there_ was the turning-point in your life; it was because you went there to the right, and not to the left, that you are now a great English prelate, and not a humble Scotch professor. Was there not a time in a certain great man’s life, at which the lines of rail diverged, and at which the question was settled, Should he be a minister of the Scotch Kirk, or should he be Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain? I can imagine a stage in the history of a lad in a counting-house, at which the little angle of rail may be pushed in or pushed back that shall send the train to one of two places five hundred miles asunder: it may depend upon whether he shall take or not take that half-crown, whether, thirty years after, he shall be taking the chair, a rubicund baronet, at a missionary society meeting, and receive the commendations of philanthropic peers and earnest bishops, or be laboring in chains at Norfolk Island, a brutalized, cursing, hardened, scourge-scarred, despairing wretch, without a hope for this life or the other. Oh, how much may turn upon a little thing! Because the railway train in which you were coming to a certain place was stopped by a snowstorm, the whole character of your life may have been changed. Because some one was in the drawing-room when you went to see Miss Smith on a certain day, resolved to put to her a certain question, you missed the tide, you lost your chance, you went away to Australia and never saw her more. It fell upon a day that a ship, coming from Melbourne, was weathering a rocky point on an iron-bound coast, and was driven close upon that perilous shore. They tried to put her about; it was the last chance. It was a moment of awful risk and decision. If the wind catches the sails, now shivering as the ship comes up, on the right side, then all on board are safe. If the wind catches the sails on the other side, then all on board must perish. And so it all depends upon which surface of certain square yards of canvas the uncertain breeze shall strike, whether John Smith, who is coming home from the diggings with twenty thousand pounds, shall go down and never be heard of again by his poor mother and sisters away in Scotland,–or whether he shall get safely back, a rich man, to gladden their hearts, and buy a pretty little place, and improve the house on it into the pleasantest picture, and purchase, and ride, and drive various horses, and be seen on market-days sauntering in the High Street of the county-town, and get married, and run about the lawn before his door, chasing his little children, and become a decent elder of the Church, and live quietly and happily for many years. Yes, from what precise point of the compass the next flaw of wind should come would decide the question between the long homely life in Scotland and a nameless burial deep in a foreign sea.

It seems to me to be one of the main characteristics of human beings, not that they actually are much, but that they are something of which much may be made. There are untold potentialities in human nature. The tree cut down, concerning which its heathen owner debated whether he should make it into a god or into a three-legged stool, was positively nothing in its capacity of coming to different ends and developments, when we compare it with each human being born into this world. Man is not so much a thing already, as he is the germ of something. He is, so to speak, material formed to the hand of circumstances. He is essentially a germ, either of good or evil. And he is not like the seed of a plant, in whose development the tether allows no wider range than that between the more or less successful manifestation of its inherent nature. Give a young tree fair play, good soil and abundant air,–tend it carefully, in short, and you will have a noble tree. Treat the young tree unfairly,–give it a bad soil, deprive it of needful air and light, and it will grow up a stunted and poor tree. But in the case of the human being, there is more than this difference in degree. There may be a difference in kind. The human being may grow up to be, as it were, a fair and healthful fruit-tree, or to be a poisonous one. There is something positively awful about the potentialities that are in human nature. The Archbishop of Canterbury might have grown up under influences which would have made him a bloodthirsty pirate or a sneaking pickpocket. The pirate or the pickpocket, taken at the right time, and trained in the right way, might have been made a pious, exemplary man. You remember that good divine, two hundred years since, who, standing in the market-place of a certain town, and seeing a poor wretch led by him to the gallows, said, “There goes myself, but for the grace of God.” Of course, it is needful that human laws should hold all men as equally responsible. The punishment of such an offence is such an infliction, no matter who committed the offence. At least the mitigating circumstances which human laws can take into account must be all of a very plain and intelligible character. It would not do to recognize anything like a graduated scale of responsibility. A very bad training in youth would be in a certain limited sense regarded as lessening the guilt of any wrong thing done; and you may remember, accordingly, how that magnanimous monarch, Charles II., urged to the Scotch lords, in extenuation of the wrong things he had done, that his father had given him a very bad education. But though human laws and judges may vainly and clumsily endeavor to fix each wrongdoer’s place in the scale of responsibility, and though they must, in a rough way, do what is rough justice in five cases out of six, still we may well believe that in the view of the Supreme Judge the responsibilities of men are most delicately graduated to their opportunities. There is One who will appreciate with entire accuracy the amount of guilt that is in each wrong deed of each wrong-doer, and mercifully allow for such as never had a chance of being anything but wrong-doers. And it will not matter whether it was from original constitution or from unhappy training that these poor creatures never had that chance. I was lately quite astonished to learn that some sincere, but stupid American divines have fallen foul of the eloquent author of “Elsie Venner,” and accused him of fearful heresy, because he declared his confident belief that “God would never make a man with a crooked spine and then punish him for not standing upright.” Why, that statement of the “Autocrat” appears to me at least as certain as that two and two make four. It may, indeed, contain some recondite and malignant reference which the stupid American divines know, and which I do not; it may be a mystic Shibboleth, indicating far more than it asserts; as at one time in Scotland it was esteemed as proof that a clergyman preached unsound doctrine, if he made use of the Lord’s Prayer. But, understanding it simply as meaning that the Judge of all the Earth will do right, it appears to me an axiom beyond all question. And I take it as putting in a compact form the spirit of what I have been arguing for,–to wit, that, though human law must of necessity hold all rational beings as alike responsible, yet in the eye of God the difference may be immense. The graceful vase, that stands in the drawing-room under a glass shade, and never goes to the well, has no great right to despise the rough pitcher that goes often and is broken at last. It is fearful to think what malleable material we are in the hands of circumstances.

And a certain Authority, considerably wiser and incomparably more charitable than the American divines already mentioned, recognized the fact, when He taught us to pray, “Lead us not into temptation!” We shall think, in a little while, of certain influences which may make or mar the human being; but it may be said here that I firmly believe that happiness is one of the best of disciplines. As a general rule, if people were happier, they would be better. When you see a poor cabman on a winter-day, soaked with rain, and fevered with gin, violently thrashing the wretched horse he is driving, and perhaps howling at it, you may be sure that it is just because the poor cabman is so miserable that he is doing all that. It was a sudden glimpse, perhaps, of his bare home and hungry children, and of the dreary future which lay before himself and them, that was the true cause of those two or three furious lashes you saw him deal upon the unhappy screw’s ribs. Whenever I read any article in a review, which is manifestly malignant, and intended not to improve an author, but to give him pain, I cannot help immediately wondering what may have been the matter with the man who wrote the malignant article. Something must have been making him very unhappy, I think. I do not allude to playful attacks upon a man, made in pure thoughtlessness and buoyancy of spirit,–but to attacks which indicate a settled, deliberate, calculating rancor. Never be angry with the man who makes such an attack; you ought to be sorry for him. It is out of great misery that malignity for the most part proceeds. To give the ordinary mortal a fair chance, let him be reasonably successful and happy. Do not worry a man into nervous irritability, and he will be amiable. Do not dip a man in water, and he will not be wet.

Of course, my friend, I know who is to you the most interesting of all beings, and whose history is the most interesting of all histories. _You_ are to yourself the centre of this world, and of all the interests of this world. And this is quite right.

There is no selfishness about all this, except that selfishness which forms an essential element in personality,–that selfishness which must go with the fact of one’s having a self. You cannot help looking at all things as they appear from your own point of view; and things press themselves upon your attention and your feeling as they affect yourself. And apart from anything like egotism, or like vain self-conceit, it is probable that you may know that a great deal depends upon your exertion and your life. There are those at home who would fare but poorly, if you were just now to die. There are those who must rise with you, if you rise, and sink with you, if you sink. Does it sometimes suddenly strike you, what a little object you are, to have so much depending on you? Vaguely, in your thinking and feeling, you add your circumstances and your lot to your personality; and these make up an object of considerable extension. You do so with other people as well as with yourself. You have all their belongings as a background to the picture of them which you have in your mind; and they look very little when you see them in fact, because you see them without these belongings. I remember, when a boy, how disappointed I was at first seeing the Archbishop of Canterbury. It was Archbishop Howley. There he was, a slender, pale old gentleman, sitting in an arm-chair at a public meeting. I was chiefly disappointed, because there was _so little_ of him. There was just the human being. There was no background of grand accessories. The idea of the Primate of England which I had in some confused manner in my mind included a vision of the venerable towers of Lambeth,–of a long array of solemn predecessors, from Thomas a Becket downwards,–of great historical occasions on which the Archbishop of Canterbury had been a prominent figure; and in some way I fancied, vaguely, that you would see the primate surrounded by all these things. You remember the Highlander in “Waverley,” who was much mortified when his chief came to meet an English guest, unattended by any retinue, and who exclaimed, in consternation and sorrow, “He has come without his tail!” Even such was my early feeling. You understand later that associations are not visible, and that they do not add to a man’s extension in space. But (to go back) you do, as regards yourself, what you do as regards greater men: you add your lot to your personality, and thus you make up a bigger object. And when you see yourself in your tailor’s shop, in a large mirror (one of a series) wherein you see your figure all round, reflected several times, your feeling will probably be, What a little thing you are! If you are a wise man, you will go away somewhat humbled, and possibly somewhat the better for the sight. You have, to a certain extent, done what Burns thought it would do all men much good to do: you have “seen yourself as others see you.” And even to do so physically is a step towards a juster and humbler estimate of yourself in more important things. It may here be said, as a further illustration of the principle set forth, that people who stay very much at home feel their stature, bodily and mental, much lessened when they go far away from home, and spend a little time among strange scenes and people. For, going thus away from home, you take only yourself. It is but a small part of your extension that goes. You go; but you leave behind your house, your study, your children, your servants, your horses, your garden. And not only do you leave them behind, but they grow misty and unsubstantial when you are far away from them. And somehow you feel, that, when you make the acquaintance of a new friend some hundreds of miles off, who never saw your home and your family, you present yourself before him only a twentieth part or so of what you feel yourself to be when you have all your belongings about you. Do you not feel all that? And do you not feel, that, if you were to go away to Australia forever, almost as the English coast turned blue and then invisible on the horizon, your life in England would first turn cloud-like, and then melt away?

But without further discussing the philosophy of how it comes to be, I return to the statement that you yourself, as you live in your home, are to yourself the centre of this world,–and that you feel the force of any great principle most deeply, when you feel it in your own case. And though every worthy mortal must be often taken out of himself, especially by seeing the deep sorrows and great failures of other men, still, in thinking of people of whom more might have been made, it touches you most to discern that you are one of these. It is a very sad thing to think of yourself, and to see how much more might have been made of you. Sit down by the fire in winter, or go out now in summer and sit down under a tree, and look back on the moral discipline you have gone through,–look back on what you have done and suffered. Oh, how much better and happier you might have been! And how very near you have often been to what would have made you so much happier and better! If you had taken the other turning when you took the wrong one, after much perplexity,–if you had refrained from saying such a hasty word,–if you had not thoughtlessly made such a man your enemy! Such a little thing may have changed the entire complexion of your life. Ah, it was because the points were turned the wrong way at that junction, that you are now running along a line of railway through wild moorlands, leaving the warm champaign below ever more hopelessly behind. Hastily, or pettedly, or despairingly, you took the wrong turning; or you might have been dwelling now amid verdant fields and silver waters in the country of contentment and success. Many men and women, in the temporary bitterness of some disappointment, have hastily made marriages which will embitter all their future life,–or which at least make it certain that in this world they will never know a joyous heart any more. Men have died as almost briefless barristers, toiling into old age in heartless wrangling, who had their chance of high places on the bench, but ambitiously resolved to wait for something higher, and so missed the tide. Men in the church have taken the wrong path at some critical time, and doomed themselves to all the pangs of disappointed ambition. But I think a sincere man in the church has a great advantage over almost all ordinary disappointed men. He has less temptation, reading affairs by the light of after-time, to look back with bitterness on any mistake he may have made. For, if he be the man I mean, he took the decisive step not without seeking the best of guidance; and the whole training of his mind has fitted him for seeing a higher Hand in the allotment of human conditions. And if a man acted for the best, according to the light he had, and if he truly believes that God puts all in their places in life, he may look back without bitterness upon what may appear the most grievous mistakes. I must be suffered to add, that, if he is able heartily to hold certain great truths and to rest on certain sure promises, hardly any conceivable earthly lot should stamp him a soured or disappointed man. If it be a sober truth, that “all things shall work together for good” to a certain order of mankind, and if the deepest sorrows in this world may serve to prepare us for a better,–why, then, I think that one might hold by a certain ancient philosopher (and something more) who said, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”

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You see, reader, that, in thinking of _People of whom More might have been Made_, we are limiting the scope of the subject. I am not thinking how more might have been made of us originally. No doubt, the potter had power over the clay. Give a larger brain, of finer quality, and the commonplace man might have been a Milton. A little change in the chemical composition of the gray matter of that little organ which is unquestionably connected with the mind’s working as no other organ of the body is, and, oh, what a different order of thought would have rolled off from your pen, when you sat down and tried to write your best! If we are to believe Robert Burns, some people have been made more of than was originally intended. A certain poem records how that which, in his homely phrase, he calls “stuff to mak’ a swine,” was ultimately converted into a very poor specimen of a human being. The poet had no irreverent intention, I dare say; but I am not about to go into the field of speculation which is opened up by his words. I know, indeed, that, in the hands of the Creator, each of us might have been made a different man. The pounds of material which were fashioned into Shakspeare might have made a bumpkin with little thought beyond pigs and turnips, or, by some slight difference beyond man’s skill to trace, might have made an idiot. A little infusion of energy into the mental constitution might have made the mild, pensive day-dreamer who is wandering listlessly by the river-side, sometimes chancing upon noble thoughts, which he does not carry out into action, and does not even write down on paper, into an active worker, with Arnold’s keen look, who would have carved out a great career for himself, and exercised a real influence over the views and conduct of numbers of other men. A very little alteration in feature might have made a plain face into a beautiful one; and some slight change in the position or the contractibility of certain of the muscles might have made the most awkward of manners and gaits into the most dignified and graceful. All _that_ we all understand. But my present subject is the making which is in circumstances after our natural disposition is fixed,–the training, coming from a hundred quarters, which forms the material supplied by Nature into the character which each of us actually bears. And setting apart the case of great genius, whose bent towards the thing in which it will excel is so strong that it will find its own field by inevitable selection, and whose strength is such that no unfavorable circumstances can hold it down, almost any ordinary human being may be formed into almost any development. I know a huge massive beam of rough iron, which supports a great weight. Whenever I pass it, I cannot help giving it a pat with my hand, and saying to it, “You might have been hair-springs for watches.” I know an odd-looking little man attached to a certain railway-station, whose business it is, when a train comes in, to go round it with a large box of a yellow concoction and supply grease to the wheels. I have often looked out of the carriage-window at that odd little man and thought to myself, “Now you might have been a chief-justice.” And, indeed, I can say from personal observation that the stuff ultimately converted into cabinet-ministers does not at an early stage at all appreciably differ from that which never becomes more than country-parsons. There is a great gulf between the human being who gratefully receives a shilling, and touches his cap as he receives it, and the human being whose income is paid in yearly or half-yearly sums, and to whom a pecuniary tip would appear as an insult; yet, of course, that great gulf is the result of training alone. John Smith the laborer, with twelve shillings a week, and the bishop with eight thousand a year, had, by original constitution, precisely the same kind of feeling towards that much-sought, yet much-abused reality which provides the means of life. Who shall reckon up by what millions of slight touches from the hand of circumstance, extending over many years, the one man is gradually formed into the giving of the shilling, and the other man into the receiving of it with that touch of his hat? Who shall read back the forming influences at work since the days in the cradle, that gradually formed one man into sitting down to dinner, and another man into waiting behind his chair? I think it would be occasionally a comfort, if one could believe, as American planters profess to believe about their slaves, that there is an original and essential difference between men; for, truly, the difference in their positions is often so tremendous that it is painful to think that it is the self-same clay and the self-same common mind that are promoted to dignity and degraded to servitude. And if _you_ sometimes feel _that_,–_you_, in whose favor the arrangement tends,–what do you suppose your servants sometimes think upon the subject? It was no wonder that the millions of Russia were ready to grovel before their Czar, while they believed that he was “an emanation from the Deity.” But in countries where it is quite understood that every man is just as much an emanation from the Deity as any other, you will not long have that sort of thing. You remember Goldsmith’s noble lines, which Dr. Johnson never could read without tears, concerning the English character. Is it not true that it is just because the humble, but intelligent Englishman understands distinctly that we are all of us _people of whom more might have been made_, that he has “learnt to venerate himself as man”? And thinking of influences which form the character, there is a sad reflection which has often occurred to me. It is, that circumstances often develop a character which it is hard to contemplate without anger and disgust. And yet, in many such cases, it is rather pity that is due. The more disgusting the character formed in some men, the more you should pity them. Yet it is hard to do _that_. You easily pity the man whom circumstances have made poor and miserable; how much more you should pity the man whom circumstances have made bad! You pity the man from whom some terrible accident has taken a limb or a hand; but how much more should you pity the man from whom the influences of years have taken a conscience and a heart! And something is to be said for even the most unamiable and worst of the race. No doubt, it is mainly their own fault that they are so bad; but still it is hard work to be always rowing against wind and tide, and some people could be good only by doing _that_ ceaselessly. I am not thinking now of pirates and pickpockets. But take the case of a sour, backbiting, malicious, wrong-headed, lying old woman, who gives her life to saying disagreeable things and making mischief between friends. There are not many mortals with whom one is less disposed to have patience. But yet, if you knew all, you would not be so severe in what you think and say of her. You do not know the physical irritability of nerve and weakness of constitution which that poor creature may have inherited; you do not know the singular twist of mind which she may have got from Nature and from bad and unkind treatment in youth; you do not know the bitterness of heart she has felt at the polite snubbings and ladylike tortures which in excellent society are often the share of the poor and the dependent. If you knew all these things, you would bear more patiently with my friend Miss Limejuice, though I confess that sometimes you would find it uncommonly hard to do so.

As I wrote that last paragraph, I began dimly to fancy that somewhere I had seen the idea which is its subject treated by an abler hand by far than mine. The idea, you may be sure, was not suggested to me by books, but by what I have seen of men and women. But it is a pleasant thing to find that a thought which at the time is strongly impressing one’s self has impressed other men. And a modest person, who knows very nearly what his humble mark is, will be quite pleased to find that another man has not only anticipated his thoughts, but has expressed them much better than he could have done. Yes, let me turn to that incomparable essay of John Foster, “On a Man’s writing Memoirs of Himself.” Here it is.

“Make the supposition that any given number of persons,–a hundred, for instance,–taken promiscuously, should be able to write memoirs of themselves so clear and perfect as to explain, to your discernment at least, the entire process by which their minds have attained their present state, recounting all the most impressive circumstances. If they should read these memoirs to you in succession, while your benevolence, and the moral principles according to which you felt and estimated, were kept at the highest pitch, you would often, during the disclosure, regret to observe how many things may be the causes of irretrievable mischief. ‘Why is the path of life,’ you would say, ‘so haunted as if with evil spirits of every diversity of noxious agency, some of which may patiently accompany, or others of which may suddenly cross, the unfortunate wanderer?’ And you would regret to observe into how many forms of intellectual and moral perversion the human mind readily yields itself to be modified.

* * * * *

“‘I compassionate you,’ would, in a very benevolent hour, be your language to the wealthy, unfeeling _tyrant of a family and a neighborhood_, who seeks, in the overawed timidity and unretaliated injuries of the unfortunate beings within his power, the gratification that should have been sought in their affections. Unless you had brought into the world some extraordinary refractoriness to the influence of evil, the process that you have undergone could not easily fail of being efficacious. If your parents idolized their own importance in their son so much that they never opposed your inclinations themselves nor permitted it to be done by any subject to their authority,–if the humble companion, sometimes summoned to the honor of amusing you, bore your caprices and insolence with the meekness without which he had lost his enviable privilege,–if you could despoil the garden of some nameless dependent neighbor of the carefully reared flowers, and torment his little dog or cat, without his daring to punish you or to appeal to your infatuated parents,–if aged men addressed you in a submissive tone, and with the appellation of ‘Sir,’ and their aged wives uttered their wonder at your condescension, and pushed their grandchildren away from around the fire for your sake, if you happened, though with the strut of pertness, and your hat on your head, to enter one of their cottages, perhaps to express your contempt of the homely dwelling, furniture, and fare,–if, in maturer life, you associated with vile persons, who would forego the contest of equality to be your allies in trampling on inferiors,–and if, both then and since, you have been suffered to deem your wealth the compendium or equivalent of every ability and every good quality,–it would indeed be immensely strange, if you had not become in due time the miscreant who may thank the power of the laws in civilized society that he is not assaulted with clubs and stones, to whom one could cordially wish the opportunity and the consequences of attempting his tyranny among some such people as those _submissive_ sons of Nature in the forests of North America, and whose dependants and domestic relatives may be almost forgiven when they shall one day rejoice at his funeral.”

What do you think of _that_, my reader, as a specimen of embittered eloquence and nervous pith? It is something to read massive and energetic sense, in days wherein mystical twaddle, and subtlety which hopelessly defies all logic, are sometimes thought extremely fine, if they are set out in a style which is refined into mere effeminacy.

* * * * *

I cherish a very strong conviction, (as has been said,) that, at least in the case of educated people, happiness is a grand discipline for bringing out what is amiable and excellent. You understand, of course, what I mean by happiness. We all know, of course, that light-heartedness is not very familiar to grown-up people, who are doing the work of life, who feel its many cares, and who do not forget the many risks which hang over it. I am not thinking of the kind of thing which is suggested to the minds of children, when they read, at the end of a tale, concerning its heroine and hero, that “they lived happily ever after.” No, we don’t look for that. By happiness I mean freedom from terrible anxiety and from pervading depression of spirits, the consciousness that we are filling our place in life with decent success and approbation, religious principle and character, fair physical health throughout the family, and moderate good temper and good sense. And I hold, with Sydney Smith, and with that keen practical philosopher, Becky Sharpe, that happiness and success tend very greatly to make people passably good. Well, I see an answer to the statement, as I do to most statements; but, at least, the beam is never subjected to the strain which would break it. I have seen the gradual working of what I call happiness and success in ameliorating character. I have known a man who, by necessity, by the pressure of poverty, was driven to write for the magazines,–a kind of work for which he had no special talent or liking, and which he had never intended to attempt. There was no more miserable, nervous, anxious, disappointed being on earth than he was, when he began his writing for the press. And sure enough, his articles were bitter and ill-set to a high degree. They were thoroughly ill-natured and bad. They were not devoid of a certain cleverness; but they were the sour products of a soured nature. But that man gradually got into comfortable circumstances: and with equal step with his lot the tone of his writings mended, till, as a writer, he became conspicuous for the healthful, cheerful, and kindly nature of all he produced. I remember seeing a portrait of an eminent author, taken a good many years ago, at a time when he was struggling into notice, and when he was being very severely handled by the critics. That portrait was really truculent of aspect. It was sour, and even ferocious-looking. Years afterwards I saw that author, at a time when he had attained vast success, and was universally recognized as a great man. How improved that face! All the savage lines were gone; the bitter look was gone; the great man looked quite genial and amiable. And I came to know that he really was all he looked. Bitter judgments of men, imputations of evil motives, disbelief in anything noble or generous, a disposition to repeat tales to the prejudice of others, envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness,–all these things may possibly come out of a bad heart; but they certainly come out of a miserable one. The happier any human being is, the better and more kindly he thinks of all. It is the man who is always worried, whose means are uncertain, whose home is uncomfortable, whose nerves are rasped by some kind friend who daily repeats and enlarges upon everything disagreeable for him to hear,–it is he who thinks hardly of the character and prospects of humankind, and who believes in the essential and unimprovable badness of the race.

* * * * *

This is not a treatise on the formation of character: it pretends to nothing like completeness. If this essay were to extend to a volume of about three hundred and eighty pages, I might be able to set out and discuss, in something like a full and orderly fashion, the influences under which human beings grow up, and the way in which to make the best of the best of these influences, and to evade or neutralize the worst. And if, after great thought and labor, I had produced such a volume, I am well aware that nobody would read it. So I prefer to briefly glance at a few aspects of a great subject just as they present themselves, leaving the complete discussion of it to solid individuals with more leisure at their command.

* * * * *

Physically, no man is made the most of. Look at an acrobat or a boxer: _there_ is what your limbs might have been made for strength and agility: _that_ is the potential which is in human nature in these respects. I never witnessed a prize-fight, and assuredly I never will witness one: but I am told, that, when the champions appear in the ring, stripped for the combat, (however bestial and blackguard-looking their countenances may be,) the clearness and beauty of their skin testify that by skilful physical discipline a great deal more may be made of that human hide than is usually made of it. Then, if you wish to see what may be made of the human muscles as regards rapid dexterity, look at the Wizard of the North or at an Indian juggler. I am very far, indeed, from saying or thinking that this peculiar preeminence is worth the pains it must cost to acquire it. Not that I have a word to say against the man who maintains his children by bringing some one faculty of the body to absolute perfection: I am ready even to admit that it is a very right and fit thing that one man in five or six millions should devote his life to showing the very utmost that can be made of the human fingers, or the human muscular system as a whole. It is fit that a rare man here and there should cultivate some accomplishment to a perfection that looks magical, just as it is fit that a man here and there should live in a house that cost a million of pounds to build, and round which a wide tract of country shows what may be made of trees and fields where unlimited wealth and exquisite taste have done their best to improve Nature to the fairest forms of which it is capable. But even if it were possible, it would not be desirable that all human beings should live in dwellings like Hamilton Palace or Arundel Castle; and it would serve no good end at all, certainly no end worth the cost, to have all educated men muscular as Tom Sayers, or swift of hand as Robert Houdin. Practical efficiency is what is wanted for the business of this world, not absolute perfection: life is too short to allow any but exceptional individuals, few and far between, to acquire the power of playing at rackets as well as rackets can possibly be played. We are obliged to have a great number of irons in the fire: it is needful that we should do decently well a great number of things; and we must not devote ourselves to one thing, to the exclusion of all the rest. And accordingly, though we may desire to be reasonably muscular and reasonably active, it will not disturb us to think that in both these respects we are people of whom more might have been made. It may here be said that probably there is hardly an influence which tends so powerfully to produce extreme self-complacency as the conviction, that, as regards some one physical accomplishment, one is a person of whom more could not have been made. It is a proud thing to think that you stand decidedly ahead of all mankind: that Eclipse is first, and the rest nowhere; even in the matter of keeping up six balls at once, or of noting and remembering twenty different objects in a shop-window as you walk past it at five miles an hour. I do not think I ever beheld a human being whose aspect was of such unutterable pride as a man I lately saw playing the drum as one of a certain splendid military band. He was playing in a piece in which the drum music was very conspicuous; and even an unskilled observer could remark that his playing was absolute perfection. He had the thorough mastery of his instrument. He did the most difficult things not only with admirable precision, but without the least appearance of effort. He was a great, tall fellow: and it was really a fine sight to see him standing very upright, and immovable save as to his arms, looking fixedly into distance, and his bosom swelling with the lofty belief, that, out of four or five thousand persons who were present, there was not one who, to save his life, could have done what he was doing so easily.

So much of physical dexterity. As for physical grace, it will be admitted that in that respect more might be made of most human beings. It is not merely that they are ugly and awkward naturally, but that they are ugly and awkward artificially. Sir Bulwer Lytton, in his earlier writings, was accustomed to maintain, that, just as it is a man’s duty to cultivate his mental powers, so is it his duty to cultivate his bodily appearance. And doubtless all the gifts of Nature are talents committed to us to be improved; they are things intrusted to us to make the best of. It may be difficult to fix the point at which the care of personal appearance in man or woman becomes excessive. It does so unquestionably when it engrosses the mind to the neglect of more important things. But I suppose that all reasonable people now believe that scrupulous attention to personal cleanliness, freshness, and neatness is a Christian duty. The days are past, almost everywhere, in which piety was held to be associated with dirt. Nobody would mention now, as a proof how saintly a human being was, that, for the love of God, he had never washed his face or brushed his hair for thirty years. And even scrupulous neatness need bring with it no suspicion of puppyism. The most trim and tidy of old men was good John Wesley; and he conveyed to the minds of all who saw him the notion of a man whose treasure was laid up beyond this world, quite as much as if he had dressed in such a fashion as to make himself an object of ridicule, or as if he had forsworn the use of soap. Some people fancy that slovenliness of attire indicates a mind above petty details. I have seen an eminent preacher ascend the pulpit with his bands hanging over his right shoulder, his gown apparently put on by being dropped upon him from the vestry ceiling, and his hair apparently unbrushed for several weeks. There was no suspicion of affectation about that good man; yet I regarded his untidiness as a defect, and not as an excellence. He gave a most eloquent sermon; yet I thought it would have been well, had the lofty mind that treated so admirably some of the grandest realities of life and of immortality been able to address itself a little to the care of lesser things. I confess, that, when I heard the Bishop of Oxford preach, I thought the effect of his sermon was increased by the decorous and careful fashion in which he was arrayed in his robes. And it is to be admitted that the grace of the human aspect may be in no small measure enhanced by bestowing a little pains upon it. You, youthful matron, when you take your little children to have their photographs taken, and when their nurse, in contemplation of that event, attired them in their most tasteful dresses and arranged their hair in its prettiest curls, you know that the little things looked a great deal better than they do on common days. It is pure nonsense to say that beauty when unadorned is adorned the most. For that is as much as to say that a pretty young woman, in the matter of physical appearance, is a person of whom no more can be made. Now taste and skill can make more of almost anything. And you will set down Thomson’s lines as flatly opposed to fact, when your lively young cousin walks into your room to let you see her before she goes out to an evening party, and when you compare that radiant vision, in her robes of misty texture, and with hair arranged in folds the most complicated, wreathed, and satin-shoed, with the homely figure that took a walk with you that afternoon, russet-gowned, tartan-plaided, and shod with serviceable boots for tramping through country mud. One does not think of loveliness in the case of men, because they have not got any; but their aspect, such as it is, is mainly made by their tailors. And it is a lamentable thought, how very ill the clothes of most men are made. I think that the art of draping the male human body has been brought to much less excellence by the mass of those who practise it than any other of the useful and ornamental arts. Tailors, even in great cities, are generally extremely bad. Or it may be that the providing the human frame with decent and well-fitting garments is so very difficult a thing that (save by a great genius here and there) it can be no more than approximated to. As for tailors in little country villages, their power of distorting and disfiguring is wonderful. When I used to be a country clergyman, I remember how, when I went to the funeral of some simple rustic, I was filled with surprise to see the tall, strapping, fine young country lads, arrayed in their black suits. What awkward figures they looked in those unwonted garments! How different from their easy, natural appearance in their every-day fustian! Here you would see a young fellow with a coat whose huge collar covered half his head when you looked at him from behind; a very common thing was to have sleeves which entirely concealed the hands; and the wrinkled and baggy aspect of the whole suits could be imagined only by such as have seen them. It may be remarked here, that those strong country lads were in another respect people of whom more might have been physically made. Oh for a drill-sergeant to teach them to stand upright, and to turn out their toes, and to get rid of that slouching, hulking gait which gives such a look of clumsiness and stupidity! If you could but have the well-developed muscles and the fresh complexion of the country with the smartness and alertness of the town! You have there the rough material of which a vast deal may be made; you have the water-worn pebble which will take on a beautiful polish. Take from the moorland cottage the shepherd lad of sixteen; send him to a Scotch college for four years; let him be tutor in a good family for a year or two; and if he be an observant fellow, you will find in him the quiet, self-possessed air and the easy address of the gentleman who has seen the world. And it is curious to see one brother of a family thus educated and polished into refinement, while the other three or four, remaining in their father’s simple lot, retain its rough manners and its unsophisticated feelings. Well, look at the man who has been made a gentleman,–probably by the hard labor and sore self-denial of the others,–and see in him what each of the others might have been! Look with respect on the diamond which needed only to be polished! Reverence the undeveloped potential which circumstances have held down! Look with interest on these people of whom more might have been made!

Such a sight as this sometimes sets us thinking how many germs of excellence are in this world turned to no account. You see the polished diamond and the rough one side by side. It is too late now; but the dull colorless pebble might have been the bright glancing gem. And you may polish the material diamond at any time; but if you miss your season in the case of the human one, the loss can never be repaired. The bumpkin who is a bumpkin at thirty must remain a bumpkin to threescore and ten. But another thing that makes us think how many fair possibilities are lost is to remark the fortuitous way in which great things have often been done,–and done by people who never dreamt that they had in them the power to do anything particular. These cases, one cannot but think, are samples of millions more. There have been very popular writers who were brought out by mere accident. They did not know what precious vein of thought they had at command, till they stumbled upon it as if by chance, like the Indian at the mines of Potosi. It is not much that we know of Shakspeare, but it seems certain that it was in patching up old plays for acting that he discovered within himself a capacity for producing that which men will not easily let die. When a young military man, disheartened with the service, sought for an appointment as an Irish Commissioner of Excise, and was sadly disappointed because he did not get it, it is probable that he had as little idea as any one else had that he possessed that aptitude for the conduct of war which was to make him the Duke of Wellington. And when a young mathematician, entirely devoid of ambition, desired to settle quietly down and devote all his life to that unexciting study, he was not aware that he was a person of whom more was to be made,–who was to grow into the great Emperor Napoleon. I had other instances in my mind, but after these last it is needless to mention them. But such cases suggest to us that there may have been many Folletts who never held a brief, many Keans who never acted but in barns, many Vandyks who never earned more than sixpence a day, many Goldsmiths who never were better than penny-a-liners, many Michaels who never built their St. Peters,–and perhaps a Shakspeare who held horses at the theatre-door for pence, as the Shakspeare we know of did, and who stopped there.

Let it here be suggested, that it is highly illogical to conclude that you are yourself a person of whom a great deal more might have been made, merely because you are a person of whom it is the fact that very little has actually been made. This suggestion may appear a truism; but it is one of those simple truths of which we all need to be occasionally reminded. After all, the great test of what a man can do must be what a man does. But there are folk who live on the reputation of being pebbles capable of receiving a very high polish, though from circumstances they did not choose to be polished. There are people who stand high in general estimation on the ground of what they might have done, if they had liked. You will find students who took no honors at the university, but who endeavor to impress their friends with the notion, that, if they had chosen, they could have attained to unexampled eminence. And sometimes, no doubt, there are great powers that run to waste. There have been men whose doings, splendid as they were, were no more than a hint of how much more they could have done. In such a case as that of Coleridge, you see how the lack of steady industry and of all sense of responsibility abated the tangible result of the noble intellect God gave him. But as a general rule, and in the case of ordinary people, you need not give a man credit for the possession of any powers beyond those which he has actually exhibited. If a boy is at the bottom of his class, it is probably because he could not attain its top. My friend Mr. Snarling thinks he can write much better articles than those which appear in the “Atlantic Monthly”; but as he has not done so, I am not inclined to give him credit for the achievement. But you can see that this principle of estimating people’s abilities, not by what they have done, but by what they think they could do, will be much approved by persons who are stupid and at the same time conceited. It is a pleasing arrangement, that every man should fix his own mental mark, and hold by his estimate of himself. And then, never measuring his strength with others, he can suppose that he could have beat them, if he had tried.

* * * * *

Yes, we are all mainly fashioned by circumstances; and had the circumstances been more propitious, they might have made a great deal more of us. You sometimes think, middle-aged man, who never have passed the limits of Britain, what an effect might have been produced upon your views and character by foreign travel. You think what an indefinite expansion of mind it might have caused,–how many narrow prejudices it might have rubbed away,–how much wiser and better a man it might have made you. Or more society and wider reading in your early youth might have improved you,–might have taken away the shyness and the intrusive individuality which you sometimes feel painfully,–might have called out one cannot say what of greater confidence and larger sympathy. How very little, you think to yourself, you have seen and known! While others skim great libraries, you read the same few books over and over; while others come to know many lands and cities, and the faces and ways of many men, you look, year after year, on the same few square miles of this world, and you have to form your notion of human nature from the study of but few human beings, and these very commonplace. Perhaps it is as well. It is not so certain that more would have been made of you, if you had enjoyed what might seem greater advantages. Perhaps you learned more, by studying the little field before you earnestly and long, than you would have learned, if you had bestowed a cursory glance upon fields more extensive by far. Perhaps there was compensation for the fewness of the cases you had to observe in the keenness with which you were able to observe them. Perhaps the Great Disposer saw that in your case the pebble got nearly all the polishing it would stand,–the man nearly all the chances he could improve.

If there be soundness and justice in this suggestion, it may afford consolation to a considerable class of men and women: I mean those people who, feeling within themselves many defects of character, and discerning in their outward lot much which they would wish other than it is, are ready to think that some one thing would have put them right,–that some one thing would put them right even yet,–but something which they have hopelessly missed, something which can never be. There was just one testing event which stood between them and their being made a vast deal more of. They would have been far better and far happier, they think, had some single malign influence been kept away which has darkened all their life, or had some single blessing been given which would have made it happy. If you had got such a parish, which you did not get,–if you had married such a woman,–if your little child had not died,–if you had always the society and sympathy of such an energetic and hopeful friend,–if the scenery round your dwelling were of a different character,–if the neighboring town were four miles off, instead of fifteen,–if any one of these circumstances had been altered, what a different man you might have been! Probably many people, even of middle age, conscious that the manifold cares and worries of life forbid that it should be evenly joyous, do yet cherish at the bottom of their heart some vague, yet rooted fancy, that, if but one thing were given on which they have set their hearts, or one care removed forever, they would be perfectly happy, even here. Perhaps you overrate the effect which would have been produced on your character by such a single cause. It might not have made you much better; it might not even have made you very different. And assuredly you are wrong in fancying that any such single thing could have made you happy,–that is, entirely happy. Nothing in this world could ever make you _that_. It is not God’s purpose that we should be entirely happy here, “This is not our rest.” The day will never come which will _not_ bring its worry. And the possibility of terrible misfortune and sorrow hangs over all. There is but One Place where we shall be right; and _that_ is far away.

* * * * *

Yes, more might have been made of all of us; probably, in the case of most, not much more _will_ be made in this world. We are now, if we have reached middle life, very much what we shall be to the end of the chapter. We shall not, in this world, be much better; let us humbly trust that we shall not be worse. Yet, if there be an undefinable sadness in looking at the marred material of which so much more might have been made, there is a sublime hopefulness in the contemplation of material, bodily and mental, of which a great deal more and better will certainly yet be made. Not much more may be made of any of us in life; but who shall estimate what may be made of us in immortality? Think of a “spiritual body”! think of a perfectly pure and happy soul! I thought of this, on a beautiful evening of this summer, walking with a much valued friend through a certain grand ducal domain. In front of a noble sepulchre, where is laid up much aristocratic dust, there are sculptured, by some great artist, three colossal faces, which are meant to represent Life, Death, and Immortality. It was easy to represent Death: the face was one of solemn rest, with closed eyes; and the sculptor’s skill was mainly shown in distinguishing Life from Immortality. And he had done it well. _There_ was Life: a care-worn, anxious, weary face, that seemed to look at you earnestly, and with a vague inquiry for something,–the something that is lacking in all things here. And _there_ was Immortality: life-like, but, oh, how different from mortal Life! _There_ was the beautiful face, calm, satisfied, self-possessed, sublime, and with eyes looking far away. I see it yet, the crimson sunset warming the gray stone,–and a great hawthorn-tree, covered with blossoms, standing by. Yes, _there_ was Immortality; and you felt, as you looked at it,–that it was MORE MADE OF LIFE!

* * * * *

MY FRIEND’S LIBRARY.

That exquisite writer, Horae Subsecivae Brown, quotes, (without comment,) as a motto to one of his volumes, an anecdote from Pierce Egan, which I reproduce here:–

“A lady, resident in Devonshire, going into one of her parlors, discovered a young ass, who had found its way into the room, and carefully closed the door upon himself. He had evidently not been long in this situation before he had nibbled a part of Cicero’s Orations, and eaten nearly all the index of a folio edition of Seneca in Latin, a large part of a volume of La Bruyere’s ‘Maxims’ in French, and several pages of ‘Cecilia.’ He had done no other mischief whatever.”

Spare your wit, Sir, or Madam! Why should _you_ laugh, and apply the sting in Mr. Egan’s story to the case of “Yours Truly”?

* * * * *

I scarcely know a greater pleasure than to be allowed for a whole day to spend the hours unmolested in my friend’s library. So much _privilege_ abounds there, I call it _Urbanity Hall_. It is a plain, modestly appointed apartment, overlooking a broad sheet of water; and I can see, from where I like to sit and read, the sail-boats go tilting by, and glancing across the bay. Sometimes, when a rainy day sets in, I run down to my friend’s house, and ask leave to browse about the library,–not so much for the sake of reading, as for the intense enjoyment I have in turning over the books that have a personal history as it were. Many of them once belonged to authors whose libraries have been dispersed. My friend has enriched her editions with autographic notes of those fine spirits who wrote the books which illumine her shelves, so that one is constantly coming upon some fresh treasure in the way of a literary curiosity. I am apt to discover something new every time I take down a folio or a miniature volume. As I ramble on from shelf to shelf,

“Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures,”

and the hours often slip by into the afternoon, and glide noiselessly into twilight, before dinner-time is remembered. Drifting about only a few days ago, I came by accident upon a magic quarto, shabby enough in its exterior, with one of the covers hanging by the eyelids, and otherwise sadly battered, to the great disfigurement of its external aspect. I did not remember even to have seen it in the library before, (it turned out to be a new comer,) and was about to pass it by with an unkind thought as to its pauper condition, when it occurred to me, as the lettering was obliterated from the back, I might as well open to the title-page and learn the name at least of the tattered stranger. And I was amply rewarded for the attention. It turned out to be “The Novels and Tales of the Renowned John Boccacio, The first Refiner of Italian Prose: containing A Hundred Curious Novels, by Seven Honorable Ladies and Three Noble Gentlemen, Framed in Ten Days.” It was printed in London in 1684, “for Awnsham Churchill, at the Black Swan at Amen Corner.” But what makes this old yellow-leaved book a treasure-volume for all time is the inscription on the first fly-leaf, in the handwriting of a man of genius, who, many years ago, wrote thus on the blank page:

“To MARIANNE HUNT.

“Her Boccacio (_alter et idem_) come back to her after many years’ absence, for her good-nature in giving it away in a foreign country to a traveller whose want of books was still worse than her own.

“From her affectionate husband,

“LEIGH HUNT.

“August 23,1839–Chelsea, England.”

This record tells a most interesting story, and reveals to us an episode in the life of the poet, well worth the knowing. I hope no accident will ever cancel this old leather-bound veteran from the world’s bibliographic treasures. Spare it, Fire, Water, and Worms! for it does the heart good to handle such a quarto.

* * * * *

One does not need to look far among the shelves in my friend’s library to find companion-gems of this antiquated tome. Among so many of

“The assembled souls of all that men held wise,”

there is no solitude of the mind. I reach out my hand at random, and, lo! the first edition of Milton’s “Paradise Lost”! It is a little brown volume, “Printed by S. Simmons, and to be sold by S. Thomson at the Bishop’s-Head in Duck Lane, by H. Mortlack at the White Hart in Westminster Hall, M. Walker under St. Dunstan’s Church in Fleet Street, and R. Boulten at the Turk’s Head in Bishopsgate Street, 1668.” Foolish old Simmons deemed it necessary to insert over his own name the following notice, which heads the Argument to the Poem:–

“THE PRINTER TO THE READER.

“Courteous Reader, There was no Argument at first intended to the Book, but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procured it, and withall a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the Poem Rimes not.”

The “Argument,” which Milton omitted in subsequent editions, is very curious throughout; and the reason which the author gives, at the request of Mr. Publisher Simmons, why the poem “Rimes not,” is quaint and well worth transcribing an extract here, as it does not always appear in more modern editions. Mr. Simmons’s Poet is made to say,–

“The Measure is _English_ Heroic Verse without Rime, as that of _Homers_ in _Greek_, and of _Virgil_ in _Latin_; Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter; grac’t indeed since by the use of some famous modern Poets, carried away by Custom, but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse then else they would have exprest them.”

We give the orthography precisely as Milton gave it in this his first edition.

There is a Table of Errata prefixed to this old copy, in which the reader is told,

“for hun_dreds_ read hun_derds_.
for _we_ read _wee_.”

Master Simmons’s proof-reader was no adept in his art, if one may judge from the countless errors which he allowed to creep into this immortal poem when it first appeared in print. One can imagine the identical copy now before us being handed over the counter in Duck Lane to some eager scholar on the look-out for something new, and handed back again to Mr. Thomson as too dull a looking poem for his perusal. Mr. Edmund Waller entertained that idea of it, at any rate.

* * * * *

One of the sturdiest little books in my friend’s library is a thick-set, stumpy old copy of Richard Baxter’s “Holy Commonwealth,” written in 1659, and, as the title-page informs us, “at the invitation of James Harrington Esquire,”–as one would take a glass of Canary,–by _invitation!_ There is a preface addressed “To all those in the Army or elsewhere, that have caused our many and great Eclipses since 1646.” The worms have made dagger-holes through and through the “inspired leaves” of this fat little volume, till much strong thinking is now very perforated printing. On the flyleaf is written, in a rough, straggling hand,

“WILLIAM WORDSWORTH,

“Rydal Mount.”

The poet seems to have read the old book pretty closely, for there are evident marks of his liking throughout its pages.

* * * * *

Connected with the Bard of the Lakes is another work in my friend’s library, which I always handle with a tender interest. It is a copy of Wordsworth’s Poetical Works, printed in 1815, with all the alterations afterwards made in the pieces copied in by the poet from the edition published in 1827. Some of the changes are marked improvements, and nearly all make the meaning clearer. Now and then a prosaic phrase gives place to a more poetical expression. The well-known lines,

“Of Him who walked in glory and in joy, Following his plough along the mountain-side,”

read at first,

“_Behind_ his plough _upon_ the mountain-side.”

* * * * *

In a well-preserved quarto copy of “Rasselas,” with illustrations by Smirke, which my friend picked up in London a few years ago, I found the other day an unpublished autograph letter from Dr. Johnson, so characteristic of the great man that it is worth transcribing. It is addressed

“_To the Reverend Mr. Compton.

“To be sent to Mrs. Williams_.”

And it is thus worded:–

“Sir,

“Your business, I suppose, is in a way of as easy progress as such business ever has. It is seldom that event keeps pace with expectation.

“The scheme of your book I cannot say that I fully comprehend. I would not have you ask less than an hundred guineas, for it seems a large octavo.

“Go to Mr. Davis, in Russell Street, show him this letter, and show him the book if he desires to see it. He will tell you what hopes you may form, and to what Bookseller you should apply.

“If you succeed in selling your book, you may do better than by dedicating it to me. You may perhaps obtain permission to dedicate it to the Bishop of London, or to Dr. Vyse, and make way by your book to more advantage than I can procure you.

“Please to tell Mrs. Williams that I grow better, and that I wish to know how she goes on. You, Sir, may write for her to,

“Sir,

“Your most humble Servant,

“SAM: JOHNSON.

“Octo. 24, 1782.”

Dear kind-hearted old bear! On turning to Boswell’s Life of his Ursine Majesty, we learn who Mr. Compton was. When the Doctor visited France in 1775, the Benedictine Monks in Paris entertained him in the most friendly way. One of them, the Rev. James Compton, who had left England at the early age of six to reside on the Continent, questioned him pretty closely about the Protestant faith, and proposed, if at some future time he should go to England to consider the subject more deeply, to call at Bolt Court. In the summer of 1782 he paid the Doctor a visit, and informed him of his desire to be admitted into the Church of England. Johnson managed the matter satisfactorily for him, and he was received into communion in St. James’s Parish Church. Till the end of January, 1783, he lived entirely at the Doctor’s expense, his own means being very scanty. Through Johnson’s kindness he was nominated Chaplain at the French Chapel of St. James’s, and in 1802 we hear of him as being quite in favor with the excellent Bishop Porteus and several other distinguished Londoners. Thus, by the friendly hand of the hard-working, earnest old lexicographer, Mr. Compton was led from deep poverty up to a secure competency, and a place among the influential dignitaries of London society. Poor enough himself, Johnson never shrank back, when there was an honest person in distress to be helped on in the battle of life. God’s blessing on his memory for all his sympathy with struggling humanity!

* * * * *

My friend has an ardent affection for Walter Scott and Charles Lamb. I find the first edition of “Marmion,” printed in 1808, “by J. Ballantyne & Co. for Archibald Constable and Company, Edinburgh,” most carefully bound in savory Russia, standing in a pleasant corner of the room. Being in quarto, the type is regal. Of course the copy is enriched with a letter in the handwriting of Sir Walter. It is addressed to a personal friend, and is dated April 17, 1825. The closing passage in it is of especial interest.

“I have seen Sheridan’s last letter imploring Rogers to come to his assistance. It stated that he was dying, and concluded abruptly with these words ‘they are throwing the things out of window.’ The memorialist certainly took pennyworths out of his friend’s character.–I sate three hours for my picture to Sir Thomas Lawrence during which the whole conversation was filled up by Rogers with stories of Sheridan, for the least of which if true he deserved the gallows.”

Ever Yours, “WALTER SCOTT.”

In the April of 1802 Scott was living in a pretty cottage at Lasswade; and while there he sent off the following letter, which I find attached with a wafer to my friend’s copy of the Abbotsford edition of his works, and written in a much plainer hand than he afterwards fell into. The address is torn off.

“SIR,

“I esteem myself honored by the polite reception which you have given to the Border Minstrelsy and am particularly flattered that so very good a judge of poetical Antiquities finds any reason to be pleased with the work.–There is no portrait of the _Flower of Yarrow_ in existence, nor do I think it very probable that any was ever taken. Much family anecdote concerning her has been preserved among her descendants of whom I have the honor to be one. The epithet of ‘_Flower of Yarrow_’ was in later times bestowed upon one of her immediate posterity, Miss Mary Lillias Scott, daughter of John Scott Esq. of Harden, and celebrated for her beauty in the pastoral song of Tweedside,–I mean that set of modern words which begins ‘What beauty does Flora disclose.’ This lady I myself remember very well, and I mention her to you least you should receive any inaccurate information owing to her being called like her predecessor the ‘Flower of Yarrow.’ There was a portrait of this latter lady in the collection at Hamilton which the present Duke transferred through my hands to Lady Diana Scott relict of the late Walter Scott Esq. of Harden, which picture was vulgarly but inaccurately supposed to have been a resemblance of the original Mary Scott, daughter of Philip Scott of Dryhope, and married to _Auld Wat_ of Harden in the middle of the 16th century.

“I shall be particularly happy if upon any future occasion I can in the slightest degree contribute to advance your valuable and patriotic labours, and I remain, Sir,

“Your very faithful

“and obt. Servant

“WALTER SCOTT.”

This letter is worthy to be printed, and the readers of the “Atlantic Monthly” now see it for the first time, I believe, set in type.

* * * * *

Old Bernard Lintott, at the Cross-Keys in Fleet Street, brought out in 1714 “The Rape of the Lock, an Heroi-Comical Poem, in Five Cantos, written by Mr. Pope.” He printed certain words in the title-page in red, and other certain words in black ink. His own name and Mr. Pope’s he chose to exhibit in sanguinary tint. A copy of this edition, very much thumbed and wanting half a dozen leaves, fell into the hands of Charles Lamb more than a hundred years after it was published. Charles bore it home, and set to work to supply, in his small neat hand, from another edition, what was missing from the text in his stall-bought copy. As he paid only sixpence for his prize, he could well afford the time it took him to write in on blank leaves, which he inserted, the lines from

“Thus far both armies to Belinda yield,”

onward to the couplet,

“And thrice they twitch’d the Diamond in her Ear, Thrice she look’d back, and thrice the Foe drew near.”

Besides this autographic addition, enhancing forever the value of this old copy of Pope’s immortal poem, I find the following little note, in Lamb’s clerkly chirography, addressed to

“Mr. Wainright, on _Thursday_.

“Dear Sir,

“The _Wits_ (as Clare calls us) assemble at my cell (20 Russell Street, Cov. Gar.) this evening at 1/4 before 7. Cold meat at 9. Puns at—-a little after. Mr. Cary wants to see you, to scold you. I hope you will not fail.

“Yours &c. &c. &c.

“C. LAMB.”

There are two books in my friend’s library which once belonged to the author of the “Elegy in a Country Churchyard.” One of them is “A Voyage to and from the Island of Borneo, in the East Indies: printed for T. Warner at the Black Boy, and F. Batley at the Dove, in 1718.” It has the name of T. Gray, written by himself, in the middle of the title-page, as was his custom always. Before Gray owned this book, it belonged to Mr. Antrobus, his uncle, who wrote many original notes in it. The volume has also this manuscript memorandum on one of the fly-leaves, signed by a well-known naturalist, now living in England:–

“August 28, 1851.

“This book has Gray’s autograph on the title page, written in his usual neat hand. It has twice been my fate to witness the sale of Gray’s most interesting collection of manuscripts and books, and at the last sale I purchased this volume. I present it to —- as a little token of affectionate regard by her old friend, now in his 85th year.”

Who will not be willing to admit the great good-luck of my friend in having such a donor for an acquaintance?

But one of the chief treasures in the library of which I write is Gray’s copy of Milton’s “Poems upon several occasions. Both English and Latin. Printed at the _Blew Anchor_ next Mitre Court over against Fetter Lane in Fleet Street.” When a boy at school, Gray owned and read this charming old volume, and he has printed his name, school-boy fashion, all over the title-page. Wherever there is a vacant space big enough to hold _Thomas Gray_, there it stands in faded ink, still fading as time rolls on. The Latin poems seem to have been most carefully conned by the youthful Etonian, and we know how much he esteemed them in after-life.

* * * * *

Scholarly Robert Southey once owned a book that now towers aloft in my friend’s library. It is a princely copy of Ben Jonson, the Illustrious. Southey lent it, when he possessed the _magnifico_, to Coleridge, who has begemmed it all over with his fine pencillings. As Ben once handled the trowel, and did other honorable work as a bricklayer, Coleridge discourses with much golden gossip about the craft to which the great dramatist once belonged. The editor of this magazine would hardly thank me, if I filled ten of his pages with extracts from the rambling dissertations in S.T.C.’s handwriting which I find in this rare folio, but I could easily pick out that amount of readable matter from the margins. One manuscript anecdote, however, I must transcribe from the last leaf. I think Coleridge got the story from “The Seer.”

“An Irish laborer laid a wager with another hod bearer that the latter could not carry him up the ladder to the top of a house in his hod, without letting him fall. The bet is accepted, and up they go. There is peril at every step. At the top of the ladder there is life and the loss of the wager,–death and success below! The highest point is reached in safety; the wagerer looks humbled and disappointed. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘you have won; there is no doubt of that; worse luck to you another time; but at the third story I HAD HOPES.'”

* * * * *

In a quaint old edition of “The Spectator,” which seems to have been through many sieges, and must have come to grief very early in its existence, if one may judge anything from the various names which are scrawled upon it in different years, reaching back almost to the date of its publication, I find this note in the handwriting of Addison, sticking fast on the reverse side of his portrait. It is addressed to Ambrose Philips, and there is no doubt that he went where he was bidden, and found the illustrious Joseph all ready to receive him at a well-furnished table.

“Tuesday Night.

“Sir,

“If you are at leisure for an hour, your company will be a great obligation to

“Yr. most humble sev’t.

“J. Addison.

“Fountain Tavern.”

That night at the “Fountain,” perchance, they discussed that war of words which might then have been raging between the author of the “Pastorals” and Pope, moistening their clay with a frequency to which they were both somewhat notoriously inclined.

My friend rides hard her hobby for choice editions, and she hunts with a will whenever a good old copy of a well-beloved author is up for pursuit. She is not a fop in binding, but she must have _appropriate_ dresses for her favorites. She knows what

“Adds a precious seeing to the eye”

as well as Hayday himself, and never lets her folios shiver when they ought to be warm. Moreover, she _reads_ her books, and, like the scholar in Chaucer, would rather have

“At her beddes head
A twenty bokes, clothed in black and red, Of Aristotle and his philosophy,
Than robes rich, or fiddle, or psaltrie.”

I found her not long ago deep in a volume of “Mr. Welsted’s Poems”; and as that author is not particularly lively or inviting to a modern reader, I begged to know why he was thus honored. “I was trying,” said she, “to learn, if possible, why Dicky Steele should have made his daughter a birth-day gift of these poems. This copy I found on a stall in Fleet Street many years ago, and it has in Sir Richard’s handwriting this inscription on one of the fly-leaves:–

“ELIZABETH STEELE
Her Book
Giv’n by Her Father
RICHARD STEELE.
March 20th, 1723.

“Running my eye over the pieces, I find a poem in praise of ‘Apple-Pye,’ and one of the passages in it is marked, as if to call the attention of young Eliza to something worthy her notice. These are the lines the young lady is charged to remember:–

“‘Dear Nelly, learn with Care the Pastry-Art, And mind the easy Precepts I impart:
Draw out your Dough elaborately thin. And cease not to fatigue your Rolling-Pin: Of Eggs and Butter see you mix enough;
For then the Paste will swell into a Puff, Which will in crumpling Sounds your Praise report, And eat, as Housewives speak, exceeding short.'”

Who was Abou Ben Adhem? Was his existence merely in the poet’s brain, or did he walk this planet somewhere,–and when? In a copy of the “Bibliotheque Orientale,” which once belonged to the author of that exquisite little gem of poesy beginning with a wish that Abou’s tribe might increase, I find (the leaf is lovingly turned down and otherwise noted) the following account of the forever famous dreamer.

“Adhem was the name of a Doctor celebrated for Mussulman traditions. He was the contemporary of Aamarsch, another relater of traditions of the first class. Adhem had a son noted for his doctrine and his piety. The Mussulmans place him among the number of their Saints who have done miracles. He was named Abou-Ishak-Ben-Adhem. It is said he was distinguished for his piety from his earliest youth, and that he joined the Sofis, or the Religious sect in Mecca, under the direction of Fodhail. He went from there to Damas, where he died in the year 166 of the Hegira. He undertook, it is said, to make a pilgrimage from Mecca, and to pass through the desert alone and without provisions, making a thousand genuflexions for every mile of the way. It is added that he was twelve years in making this journey, during which he was often tempted and alarmed by Demons. The Khalife Haroun Raschid, making the same pilgrimage, met him upon the way and inquired after his welfare; the Sofi answered him with an Arabian quatrain, of which this is the meaning:–

“‘We mend the rags of this worldly robe with the pieces of the robe of Religion, which we tear apart for this end;

“‘And we do our work so thoroughly that nothing remains of the latter,

“‘And the garment we mend escapes out of our hands.

“‘Happy is the servant who has chosen God for his master, and who employs his present good only to acquire those which he awaits.’

“It is related also of Abou, that he saw in a dream an Angel who wrote, and that having demanded what he was doing, the Angel answered, ‘I write the names of those who love God sincerely, those who perform Malek-Ben-Dinar, Thaber-al-Benani, Aioud-al-Sakhtiani, etc.’ Then said he to the Angel, ‘Am I not placed among these?’ ‘No,’ replied the Angel. ‘Ah, well,’ said he, ‘write me, then, I pray you, for love of these, as the friend of all who love the Lord.’ It is added, that the same Angel revealed to him soon after that he had received an order from God to place him at the head of all the rest. This is the same Abou who said that he preferred Hell with the will of God to Paradise without it; or, as another writer relates it: ‘I love Hell, if I am doing the will of God, better than the enjoyments of Paradise and disobedience.'”

* * * * *

With books printed by “B. Franklin, Philadelphia,” my friend’s library is richly stored. One of them is “The Charter of Privileges, granted by William Penn Esq: to the Inhabitants of Pennsylvania and Territories.” “PRINTED AND SOLD BY B. FRANKLIN” looks odd enough on the dingy title-page of this old volume, and the contents are full of interest. Rough days were those when “Jehu Curtis” was “Speaker of the House,” and put his name to such documents as this:–

“And Be it Further Enacted by the authority aforesaid, That if any Person shall wilfully or premeditately be guilty of Blasphemy, and shall thereof be legally convicted, the Person so offending shall, for every such Offence, be set in the Pillory for the space of Two Hours, and be branded on his or her Foreshead with the letter B, and be publickly whipt, on his or her bare Back, with Thirty nine Lashes _well laid on_.”

* * * * *