which as yet he kept darkly to himself. For this reason he tried to fancy how her new life would seem to her. It should be hard enough, her work,–he was determined on that; her strength and endurance must be tested to the uttermost. He must know what stuff was in the weapon before he used it. He had been reading the slow, cold thing for years,–had not got into its secret yet. But there was power there, and it was the power he wanted. Her history was simple enough: she was going into the mill to support a helpless father and mother; it was a common story; she had given up much for them;–other women did the same. He gave her scanty praise. Two years ago (he had keen, watchful eyes, this man) he had fancied that the poor homely girl had a dream, as most women have, of love and marriage: she had put it aside, he thought, forever; it was too expensive a luxury; she had to begin the life-long battle for bread and butter. Her dream had been real and pure, perhaps; for she accepted no sham love in its place: if it had left an empty hunger in her heart, she had not tried to fill it. Well, well, it was the old story. Yet he looked after her kindly, as he thought of it; as some people look sorrowfully at children, going back to their own childhood. For a moment he half relented in his purpose, thinking, perhaps, her work for life was hard enough. But no: this woman had been planned and kept by God for higher uses than daughter or wife or mother. It was his part to put her work into her hands.
The road was creeping drowsily now between high grass-banks, out through the hills. A sleepy, quiet road. The restless dust of the town never had been heard of out there. It (the road) went wandering lazily through the corn-fields, down by the river, into the very depths of the woods,–the low October sunshine slanting warmly down it all the way, touching the grass-banks and the corn-fields with patches of russet gold. Nobody in such a road could be in a hurry. The quiet was so deep, the free air, the heavy trees, the sunshine, all so full and certain and fixed, one could be sure of finding them the same a hundred years from now. Nobody ever was in a hurry. The brown bees came along there, when their work was over, and hummed into the great purple thistles on the roadside in a voluptuous stupor of delight. The cows sauntered through the clover by the fences, until they wound up by lying down in it and sleeping outright. The country-people, jogging along to the mill, walked their fat old nags through the stillness and warmth so slowly that even Margaret left them far behind. As the road went deeper into the hills, the solitude and quiet grew even more penetrating and certain,–so certain in these grand old mountains that one called them eternal, and, looking up to the peaks fixed in the clear blue, grew surer of a world beyond this where there is neither change nor death.
It was growing late; the evening air grew more motionless and cool; the russet gold of the sunshine mottled only the hill-tops now; in the valleys there was a duskier brown, deepening every moment. Margaret turned from the road and went down the fields. One did not wonder, feeling the silence of these hills and broad sweeps of meadow, that this woman, coming down from among them, should be strangely still, with dark questioning eyes dumb to their own secrets.
Looking into her face now, you could be sure of one thing: that she had left the town, the factory, the dust far away, shaken the thought of them off her brain. No miles could measure the distance between her home and them. At a stile across the field an old man sat waiting. She hurried now, her cheek coloring. Dr. Knowles could see them going to the house beyond, talking earnestly. He sat down in the darkening twilight on the stile, and waited half an hour. He did not care to hear the story of Margaret’s first day at the mill, knowing how her father and mother would writhe under it, soften it as she would. It was nothing to her, he knew. So he waited. After a while he heard the old man’s laugh, like that of a pleased child, and then went in and took her place beside him. She went out, but came back presently, every grain of dust gone, in her clear dress of pearl gray. The neutral tint suited her well. As she stood by the window, listening gravely to them, the homely face and waiting figure came into full relief. Nature had made this woman in a freak of rare sincerity. There were no reflected lights about her: no gloss on her skin, no glitter in her eyes, no varnish on her soul. Simple and dark and pure, there she was, for God and her master alone to conquer and understand. Her flesh was cold and colorless,–there were no surface tints on it,–it warmed sometimes slowly from far within; her voice was quiet,–out of her heart; her hair, the only beauty of the woman, was lustreless brown, lay in unpolished folds of dark shadow. I saw such hair once, only once. It had been cut from the head of a man, who, quiet and simple as a child, lived out the law of his nature, and set the world at defiance,–Bysshe Shelley.
The Doctor, talking to her father, watched the girl furtively, took in every point, as one might critically survey a Damascus blade which he was going to carry into battle. There was neither love nor scorn in his look,–a mere fixedness of purpose to make use of her some day. He talked, meanwhile, glancing at her now and then, as if the subject they discussed were indirectly linked with his plan for her. If it were, she was unconscious of it. She sat on the wooden step of the porch, looking out on the melancholy sweep of meadow and hill range growing cool and dimmer in the dun twilight, not hearing what they said, until the sharpened, earnest tones roused her.
“You will fail, Knowles.”
It was her father who spoke.
“Nothing can save such a scheme from failure. Neither the French nor German Socialists attempted to base their systems on the lowest class, as you design.”
“I know,” said Knowles. “That accounts for their partial success.”
“Let me understand your plan practically,” eagerly demanded her father.
She thought Knowles evaded the question,–wished to leave the subject. Perhaps he did not regard the poor old schoolmaster as a practical judge of practical matters. All his life he had called him thriftless and unready.
“It never will do, Knowles,” he went on in his slow way. “Any plan, Phalanstery or Community, call it what you please, founded on self-government, is based on a sham, the tawdriest of shams.”
The old schoolmaster shook his head as one who knows, and tried to push the thin gray hairs out of his eyes in a groping way. Margaret lifted them back so quietly that he did not feel her.
“You’ll call the Republic a sham next!” said the Doctor, coolly aggravating.
“The Republic!” The old man quickened his tone, like a war-horse scenting the battle near at hand. “There never was a thinner-crusted Devil’s egg in the world than democracy. I think I’ve told you that before?”
“I think you have,” said the other, dryly.
“You always were a Tory, Mr. Howth,” said his wife, in her placid, creamy way. “It is in the blood, I think, Doctor. The Howths fought under Cornwallis, you know.”
The schoolmaster waited until his wife had ended.
“Very true, Mrs. Howth,” he said, with a grave smile. Then his thin face grew hot again.
“No, Dr. Knowles. Your scheme is but a sign of the mad age we live in. Since the thirteenth century, when the anarchic element sprang full-grown into the history of humanity, that history has been chaos. And this republic is the culmination of chaos.”
“Out of chaos came the new-born earth,” suggested the Doctor.
“But its foundations were granite,” rejoined the old man with nervous eagerness,–“granite, not the slime of yesterday. When you found empires, go to work as God worked.”
The Doctor did not answer; sat looking, instead, out into the dark indifferently, as if the heresies which the old man hurled at him were some old worn-out song. Seeing, however, that the schoolmaster’s flush of enthusiasm seemed on the point of dying out, he roused himself to gibe it into life.
“Well, Mr. Howth, what will you have? If the trodden rights of the human soul are the slime of yesterday, how shall we found our empire to last? On despotism? Civil or theocratic?”
“Any despotism is better than that of newly enfranchised serfs,” replied the schoolmaster.
The Doctor laughed.
“What a successful politician you would have made! You would have had such a winning way to the hearts of the great unwashed!”
Mrs. Howth laid down her knitting.
“My dear,” she said, timidly, “I think that is treason.”
The angry heat died out of his face instantly, as he turned to her, without the glimmer of a covert smile at her simplicity. She was a woman; and when he spoke to the Doctor, it was in a tone less sharp.
“What is it the boys used to declaim, their Yankee hearts throbbing under their roundabouts? ‘Happy, proud America!’ Somehow in that way. ‘Cursed, abased America!’ better if they had said. Look at her, in the warm vigor of her youth, most vigorous in decay! Look at the dregs of nations, creeds, religions, fermenting together! As for the theory of self-government, it will muddle down here, as in the three great archetypes of the experiment, into a puling, miserable failure!”
The Doctor did not hear. Some sharper shadow seemed to haunt him than the downfall of the Republic. What help did he seek in this girl? His keen, deep eyes never left her unconscious face.
“No,” Mr. Howth went on, having the field to himself,–“we left Order back there in the ages you call dark, and Progress will trumpet the world into the ditch.”
“Comte!” growled the Doctor.
The schoolmaster’s cane beat an angry tattoo on the hearth.
“You sneer at Comte? Because, having the clearest eye, the widest sweeping eye ever given to man, he had no more? It was to show how far flesh can go alone. Could he help it, if God refused the prophet’s vision?”
“I’m sure, Samuel,” interrupted his wife with a sorrowful earnestness, “your own eyes were as strong as a man’s could be. It was ten years after I wore spectacles that you began. Only for that miserable fever, you could read short-hand now.”
Her own quiet eyes filled with tears. There was a sudden silence. Margaret shivered, as if some pain stung her. Holding her father’s bony hand in hers, she patted it on her knee. The hand trembled a little. Knowles’s sharp eyes darted from one to the other; then, with a smothered growl, he shook himself, and rushed headlong into the old battle which he and the schoolmaster had been waging now, off and on, some six years. That was a fight, I can tell you! None of your shallow, polite clashing of modern theories,–no talk of your Jeffersonian Democracy, your high-bred Federalism! They took hold of the matter by the roots, clear at the beginning.
Mrs. Howth’s breath fairly left her, they went into the soul of the matter in such a dangerous way. What if Joel should hear? No doubt he would report that his master was an infidel,–that would be the next thing they would hear. He was in the kitchen now: he finished his wood-chopping an hour ago. Asleep, doubtless; that was one comfort. Well, if he were awake, he could not understand. That class of people—-And Mrs. Howth (into whose kindly brain just enough of her husband’s creed had glimmered to make her say, “that class of people,” in the tone with which Abraham would _not_ have spoken of Dives over the gulf) went tranquilly back to her knitting, wondering why Dr. Knowles should come ten times now where he used to come once, to provoke Samuel into these wearisome arguments. Ever since their misfortune came on them, he had been there every night, always at it. She should think he might be a little more considerate. Mr. Howth surely had enough to think of, what with his–his misfortune, and the starvation waiting for them, and poor Margaret’s degradation, (she sighed here,) without bothering his head about the theocratic principle, or the Battle of Armageddon. She had hinted as much to Dr. Knowles one day, and he had muttered out something about its being “the life of the dog, Ma’am.” She wondered what he meant by that! She looked over at his bearish figure, snuff-drabbled waistcoat, and shock of black hair. Well, poor man, he could not help it, if he were coarse, and an Abolitionist, and a Fourierite, and—-She was getting a little muddy now, she was conscious, so turned her mind back to the repose of her stocking. Margaret took it very quietly, seeing her father flaming so. But Margaret never had any opinions to express. She was not like the Parnells: they were noted for their clear judgment. Mrs. Howth was a Parnell.
“The combat deepens,–on, ye brave!”
The Doctor’s fat, leathery face was quite red now, and his sentences were hurled out in a sarcastic bass, enough to wither the marrow of a weak man. But the schoolmaster was no weak man. His foot was entirely on his native heath, I assure you. He knew every inch of the ground, from the domination of the absolute faith in the ages of Fetichism, to its pseudo-presentment in the tenth century, and its actual subversion in the nineteenth. Every step. Our politicians might have picked up an idea or two there, I should think! Then he was so cool about it, so skilful! He fairly rubbed his hands with glee, enjoying the combat. And he was so sure that the Doctor was savagely in earnest: why, any one with half an ear could hear that! He did not see how, in the very heat of the fray, his eyes would wander off listlessly. But Mr. Howth did not wander; there was nothing careless or two-sided in the making of this man,–no sham about him, or borrowing. They came down gradually, or out,–for, as I told you, they dug into the very heart of the matter at first,–they came out gradually to modern times. Things began to assume a more familiar aspect. Spinoza, Fichte, Saint Simon,–one heard about them now. If you could but have heard the schoolmaster deal with these his enemies! With what tender charity for the man, what relentless vengeance for the belief, he pounced on them, dragging the soul out of their systems, holding it up for slow slaughter! As for Humanity, (how Knowles lingered on that word, with a tenderness curious in so uncouth a mass of flesh!)–as for Humanity, it was a study to see it stripped and flouted and thrown out of doors like a filthy rag by this poor old Howth, a man too child-hearted to kill a spider. It was pleasanter to hear him when he defended the great Past in which his ideal truth had been faintly shadowed. How he caught the salient tints of the feudal life! How the fine womanly nature of the man rose exulting in the free picturesque glow of the day of crusader and heroic deed! How he crowded in traits of perfected manhood in the conqueror, simple trust in the serf, to color and weaken his argument, not seeing that he weakened it! How, when he thought he had cornered the Doctor, he would color and laugh like a boy, then suddenly check himself, lest he might wound him! A curious laugh, genial, cheery,–bubbling out of his weak voice in a way that put you in mind of some old and rare wine. When he would check himself in one of these triumphant glows, he would turn to the Doctor with a deprecatory gravity, and for a few moments be almost submissive in his reply. So earnest and worn it looked then, the poor old face, in the dim light! The black clothes he wore were so threadbare and shining at the knees and elbows, the coarse leather shoes brought to so fine a polish! The Doctor idly wondered who had blacked them, glancing at Margaret’s fingers.
There was a flower stuck in the buttonhole of the schoolmaster’s coat, a pale tea-rose. If Dr. Knowles had been a man of fine instincts, (which his opaque shining eyes would seem to deny,) he might have thought it was not unapt or ill-placed even in the shabby, scuffed coat. A scholar, a gentleman, though in patched shoes and trousers a world too short. Old and gaunt, hunger-bitten even it may be, with loose-jointed, bony limbs, and yellow face; clinging, loyal and brave, to the knightly honor, to the quaint, delicate fancies of his youth, that were dust and ashes to other men. In the very haggard face you could find the quiet purity of the child he had been, and the old child’s smile, fresh and credulous, on the mouth.
The Doctor had not spoken for a moment. It might be that he was careless of the poetic lights with which Mr. Howth tenderly decorated his old faith, or it might be that even he, with the terrible intentness of a real life-purpose in his brain, was touched by the picture of the far old chivalry, dead long ago. The master’s voice grew low and lingering now. It was a labor of love, this. Oh, it is so easy to go back out of the broil of dust and meanness and barter into the clear shadow of that old life where love and bravery stand eternal verities,–never to be bought and sold in that dusty town yonder! To go back? To dream back, rather. To drag out of our own hearts, as the hungry old master did, whatever is truest and highest there, and clothe it with name and deed in the dim days of chivalry. Make a poem of it,–so much easier than to make a life!
Knowles shuffled uneasily, watching the girl keenly, to know how the picture touched her. Was, then, she thought, this grand dead Past so shallow to him? These knights, pure, unstained, searching until death for the Holy Greal, could he understand the life-long agony, the triumph of their conflict over Self? These women, content to live in solitude forever because they once had loved, could any man understand that? Or the dead queen, dead that the man she loved might be free and happy,–why, this _was_ life,–this death! But did pain, and martyrdom, and victory lie back in the days of Galahad and Arthur alone? The homely face grew stiller than before, looking out into the dun sweep of moorland,–cold, unrevealing. It baffled the man that looked at it. He shuffled, chewed tobacco vehemently, tilted his chair on two legs, broke out in a thunder-gust at last.
“Dead days for dead men! The world hears a bugle-call to-day more noble than any of your piping troubadours. We have something better to fight for than a vacant tomb.”
The old man drew himself up haughtily.
“I know what you would say,–Liberty for the low and vile. It is a good word. That was a better which they hid in their hearts in the old time,–Honor!”
Honor! I think, Calvinist though he was, that word was his religion. Men have had worse. Perhaps the Doctor thought this; for he rose abruptly, and, leaning on the old man’s chair, said, gently,–
“It is better, even here. Yet you poison this child’s mind. You make her despise To-Day; make honor live for her now.”
“It does not,” the schoolmaster said, bitterly. “The world’s a failure. All the great old dreams are dead. Your own phantom, your Republic, your experiment to prove that all men are born free and equal,–what is it to-day?”
Knowles lifted his head, looking out into the brown twilight. Some word of pregnant meaning flashed in his eye and trembled on his lip; but he kept it back. His face glowed, though, and the glow and strength gave to the huge misshapen features a grand repose.
“You talk of To-Day,” the old man continued, querulously. “I am tired of it. Here is its type and history,” touching a county newspaper,–“a fair type, with its cant, and bigotry, and weight of uncomprehended fact. Bargain and sale,–it taints our religion, our brains, our flags,–yours and mine, Knowles, with the rest. Did you never hear of those abject spirits who entered neither heaven nor hell, who were neither faithful to God nor rebellious, caring only for themselves?”
He paused, fairly out of breath. Margaret looked up. Knowles was silent. There was a smothered look of pain on the coarse face; the schoolmaster’s words were sinking deeper than he knew.
“No, father,” said Margaret, hastily ending his quotation, “‘_io non averei creduto, che [vita] tanta n’ avesse disfatta._'”
Skilful Margaret! The broil must have been turbid in the old man’s brain which the grand, slow-stepping music of the Florentine could not calm. She had learned that long ago, and used it as a nurse does some old song to quiet her pettish infant. His face brightened instantly.
“Do not believe, then, child,” he said, after a pause. “It is a noble doubt in Dante or in you.”
The Doctor had turned away; she could not see his face. The angry scorn was gone from the old master’s countenance; it was bent with its usual wistful quiet on the floor. A moment after he looked up with a flickering smile.
“‘_Onorate l’ altissimo poeta!_'” he said, gently lifting his finger to his forehead in a military fashion. “Where is my cane, Margaret? The Doctor and I will go and walk on the porch before it grows dark.”
The sun had gone down long before, and the stars were out; but no one spoke of this. Knowles lighted the schoolmaster’s pipe and his own cigar, and then moved the chairs out of their way, stepping softly that the old man might not hear him. Margaret, in the room, watched them as they went, seeing how gentle the rough, burly man was with her father, and how, every time they passed the sweet-brier, he bent the branches aside, that they might not touch his face. Slow, childish tears came into her eyes as she saw it; for the schoolmaster was blind. This had been their regular walk every evening, since it grew too cold for them to go down under the lindens. The Doctor had not missed a night since her father gave up the school, a month ago: at first, under pretence of attending to his eyes; but since the day he had told them there was no hope of cure, he had never spoken of it again. Only, since then, he had grown doubly quarrelsome,–standing ready armed to dispute with the old man every inch of every subject in earth or air, keeping the old man in a state of boyish excitement during the long, idle days, looking forward to this nightly battle.
It was very still; for the house, with its half-dozen acres, lay in an angle of the hills, looking out on the river, which shut out all distant noises. Only the men’s footsteps broke the silence, passing and repassing the window. Without, the October starlight lay white and frosty on the moors, the old barn, the sharp, dark hills, and the river, which was half hidden by the orchard. One could hear it, like some huge giant moaning in his sleep, at times, and see broad patches of steel blue glittering through the thick apple-trees and the bushes. Her mother had fallen into a doze. Margaret looked at her, thinking how sallow the plump, fair face had grown, and how faded the kindly blue eyes were now. Dim with crying,–she knew that, though she never saw her shed a tear. Always cheery and quiet, going placidly about the house in her gray dress and Quaker cap, as if there were no such things in the world as debt or blindness. But Margaret knew, though she said nothing. When her mother came in from those wonderful foraging expeditions in search of late pease or corn, she could see the swollen circle round the eyes, and hear her breath like that of a child which has sobbed itself tired. Then, one night, when she had gone late into her mother’s room, the blue eyes were set in a wild, hopeless way, as if staring down into years of starvation and misery. The fire on the hearth burned low and clear; the old worn furniture stood out cheerfully in the red glow, and threw a maze of twisted shadow on the floor. But the glow was all that was cheerful. To-morrow, when the hard daylight should jeer away the screening shadows, it would unbare a desolate, shabby home. She knew; struck with the white leprosy of poverty; the blank walls, the faded hangings, the old stone house itself, looking vacantly out on the fields with a pitiful significance of loss. Upon the mantel-shelf there was a small marble figure, one of the Dancing Graces: the other two were gone, gone in pledge. This one was left, twirling her foot, and stretching out her hands in a dreary sort of ecstasy, with no one to respond. For a moment, so empty and bitter seemed her home and her life, that she thought the lonely dancer with her flaunting joy mocked her,–taunted them with the slow, gray desolation that had been creeping on them for years. Only for a moment the morbid fancy hurt her.
The red glow was healthier, suited her temperament better. She chose to fancy the house as it had been once,–should be again, please God. She chose to see the old comfort and the old beauty which the poor schoolmaster had gathered about their home. Gone now. But it should return. It was well, perhaps, that he was blind, he knew so little of what had come on them. There, where the black marks were on the wall, there had hung two pictures. Margaret and her father religiously believed them to be a Tintoret and Copley. Well, they were gone now. He had been used to dust them with a light brush every morning, himself, but now he said,–
“You can clean the pictures to-day, Margaret. Be careful, my child.”
And Margaret would remember the greasy Irishman who had tucked them under his arm, and flung them into a cart, her blood growing hotter in her veins.
It was the same through all the house; there was not a niche in the bare rooms that did not recall a something gone,–something that should return. She willed that, that evening, standing by the dim fire. What women will, whose eyes are slow, attentive, still, as this Margaret’s, usually comes to pass.
The red fire-glow suited her; another glow, warming her floating fancy, mingled with it, giving her quiet purpose the trait of heroism. The old spirit of the dead chivalry, of succor to the weak, life-long self-denial,–did it need the sand waste of Palestine or a tournament to call it into life? Down in that trading town, in the thick of its mills and drays, it could live, she thought. That very night, perhaps, in some of those fetid cellars or sunken shanties, there were vigils kept of purpose as unselfish, prayer as heaven-commanding, as that of the old aspirants for knighthood. She, too,–her quiet face stirred with a simple, childish smile, like her father’s.
“Why, mother!” she said, stroking down the gray hair under the cap, “shall you sleep here all night?” laughing.
A cheery, tender laugh, this woman’s was,–seldom heard,–not far from tears.
Mrs. Howth roused herself. Just then, a broad, high-shouldered man, in a gray flannel shirt, and shoes redolent of the stable, appeared at the door. Margaret looked at him as if he were an accusing spirit,–coming down, as every woman must, from heights of self-renunciation or bold resolve, to an undarned stocking or an uncooked meal.
“Kittle’s b’ilin’,” he announced, flinging in the information as a general gratuity.
“That will do, Joel,” said Mrs. Howth.
The tone of stately blandness which Mrs. Howth erected as a shield between herself and “that class of people” was a study: a success, I think; the _resume_ of her experience in the combat that had devoured half her life, like that of other American housekeepers. “Be gentle, but let them know their place, my dear!” The class having its type and exponent in Joel stopped at the door, and hitched up its suspenders.
“That will _do_, Joel,” with a stern suavity.
Some idea was in Joel’s head under the brush of red hair,–probably the “anarchic element.”
“Uh was wishin’ toh read the G’zette.” Whereupon he advanced into the teeth of the enemy and bore off the newspaper, going before Margaret, as she went to the kitchen, and seating himself beside a flaring tallow-candle on the table.
Reading, with Joel, was not the idle pastime that more trivial minds find it: a thing, on the contrary, to be gone into with slow spelling, and face knitted up into savage sternness, especially now, when, as he gravely explained to Margaret, “in _his_ opinion the crissis was jest at hand, and ev’ry man must be seein’ ef the gover’ment was carryin’ out the views of the people.”
With which intent, Joel, in company with five thousand other sovereigns, consulted, as definitive oracle, “The Daily Gazette” of Towbridge. The schoolmaster need not have grumbled for the old time: feudality in the days of Warwick and of “The Daily Gazette” was not so widely different as he and Joel thought.
Now and then, partly as an escape-valve for his overcharged conviction, partly in compassion to the ignorance of women in political economics, he threw off to Margaret divers commentaries on the text, as she passed in and out.
If she had risen to the full level of Joel’s views, she might have considered these views tinctured with radicalism, as they consisted in the propriety of the immediate “impinging of the President.” Besides, (Joel was a good-natured man, too, merciful to his beast,) Nero-like, he wished, with the tiger drop of blood that lies hid in everybody’s heart, that the few millions who differed with himself and the “Gazette” had but one neck for their more convenient hanging. “It’s all that’ll save the kentry,” he said, and believed it, too.
If Margaret fell suddenly from the peak of outlook on life to the homely labor of cooking supper, some of the healthy heroic flush of the knightly days and the hearth-fire went down with her, I think. It brightened and reddened the square kitchen with its cracked stove and meagre array of tins; she bustled about in her quaint way, as if it had been filled up and running over with comforts. It brightened and reddened her face when she came in to put the last dish on the table,–a cozy, snug table, set for four. Heroic dreams with poets, I suppose, make them unfit for food other than some feast such as Eve set for the angel. But then Margaret was no poet. So, with the kindling of her hope, its healthful light struck out, and warmed and glorified these common things. Such common things! Only a coarse white cloth, redeemed by neither silver nor china, the amber coffee, (some that Knowles had brought out to her father,–“thrown on his hands; he couldn’t use it,–product of slave-labor!–never, Sir!”) the delicate brown fish that Joel had caught, the bread her mother had made, the golden butter,–all of them touched her nerves with a quick sense of beauty and pleasure. And more, the gaunt face of the blind old man, his bony hand trembling as he raised the cup to his lips, her mother and the Doctor managing silently to place everything he liked best near his plate. Wasn’t it all part of the fresh, hopeful glow burning in her consciousness? It brightened and deepened. It blotted out the hard, dusty path of the future, and showed warm and clear the success at the end. Not much to show, you think. Only the old home as it once was, full of quiet laughter and content; only her mother’s eyes clear shining again; only that gaunt old head raised proudly, owing no man anything but courtesy. The glow deepened, as she thought of it. It was strange, too, that, with the deep, slow-moving nature of this girl, she should have striven so eagerly to throw this light over the future. Commoner natures have done more and hoped less. It was a poor gift, you think, this of the labor of a life for so plain a duty; hardly heroic. She knew it. Yet, if there lay in this coming labor any pain, any wearing effort, she clung to it desperately, as if this should banish, it might be, worse loss. She tried desperately, I say, to clutch the far, uncertain hope at the end, to make happiness out of it, to give it to her silent hungry heart to feed on. She thrust out of sight all possible life that might have called her true self into being, and clung to this present shallow duty and shallow reward. Pitiful and vain so to cling! It is the way of women. As if any human soul could bury that which might have been in that which is!
The Doctor, peering into her thought with sharp, suspicious eyes, heeded the transient flush of enthusiasm but little. Even the pleasant cheery talk that pleased her father so was but surface-deep, he knew. The woman he must conquer for his great end lay beneath, dark and cold. It was only for that end he cared for her. Through what cold depths of solitude her soul breathed faintly mattered little. Yet an idle fancy touched him, what a triumph the man had gained, whoever he might be, who had held the master-key to a nature so rare as this, who had the kingly power in his hand to break its silence into electric shivers of laughter and tears,–terrible subtle pain, or joy as terrible. Did he hold the power still, he wondered? Meanwhile she sat there quiet, unread.
The evening came on, slow and cold. Life itself, the Doctor thought, impatiently, was cool and tardy here among the hills. Even he fell into the tranquil tone, and chafed under it. Nowhere else did the evening gray and sombre into the mysterious night impalpably as here. The quiet, wide and deep, folded him in, forced his trivial heat into silence and thought. The world seemed to think there. Quiet in the dead seas of fog, that filled the valleys like restless vapor curdled into silence; quiet in the listening air, stretching gray up to the stars,–in the solemn mountains, that stood motionless, like hoary-headed prophets, waiting with uplifted hands, day and night, to hear the Voice, silent now for centuries; the very air, heavy with the breath of the sleeping pine-forests, moved slowly and cold, like some human voice weary with preaching to unbelieving hearts of a peace on earth. This man’s heart was unbelieving; he chafed in the oppressive quiet; it was unfeeling mockery to a sick and hungry world,–a dead torpor of indifference. Years of hot and turbid pain had dulled his eyes to the eternal secret of the night; his soul was too sore with stumbling, stung, inflamed with the needs and suffering of the countless lives that hemmed him in, to accept the great prophetic calm. He was blind to the prophecy written on the earth since the day God first bade it tell thwarted man of the great To-Morrow.
He turned from the night in-doors. Human hearts were his proper study. The old house, he thought, slept with the rest. One did not wonder that the pendulum of the clock swung long and slow. The frantic, nervous haste of town-clocks chorded better with the pulse of human life. Yet life in the veins of these people flowed slow and cool; their sorrows and joys were few and life-long. The slow, enduring air suited this woman, Margaret Howth. Her blood could never ebb or flow with sudden gusts of passion, like his own, throbbing, heating continually: one current, absorbing, deep, would carry its tide from one eternity to the other, one love or one hate. Whatever power was in the tide should be his, in its entirety. It was his right. Was not his aim high, the highest? It was his right.
Margaret, looking up, saw the man’s intolerant eye fixed on her. She met it coolly. All her short life, this strange man, so tender to the weak, had watched her with a sort of savage scorn, sneering at her apathy, her childish, dreamy quiet, driving her from effort to effort with a scourge of impatient contempt. What did he want now with her? Her duty was light; she took it up,–she was glad to take it up; what more would he have? She put the whole matter away from her.
It grew late. She sat down by the lamp and began to read to her father, as usual. Her mother put away her knitting; Joel came in half-asleep; the Doctor put out his everlasting cigar, and listened, as he did everything else, intently. It was an old story that she read,–the story of a man who walked the fields and crowded streets of Galilee eighteen hundred years ago. Knowles, with his heated brain, fancied that the silence without in the night grew deeper, that the slow-moving air stopped in its course to listen. Perhaps the simple story carried a deeper meaning to these brooding mountains and this solemn sky than to the purblind hearts within. It was a dim, far-off story to them,–very far off. The old schoolmaster heard it with a lowered head, with the proud obedience with which a cavalier would receive his leader’s orders. Was not the leader a knight, the knight of truest courage? All that was high, chivalric in the old man sprang up to own him Lord. That he not only preached to, but ate and drank with publicans and sinners, was a requirement of his mission; nowadays—-. Joel heard the “good word” with a bewildered consciousness of certain rules of honesty to be observed the next day, and a maze of crowns and harps shining somewhere beyond. As for any immediate connection between the teachings of this book and “The Daily Gazette,” it was pure blasphemy to think of it. The Lord held those old Jews in His hand, of course; but as for the election next month, that was quite another thing. If Joel thrust the history out of the touch of common life, the Doctor brought it down, and held it there on trial. To him it was the story of a Reformer who had served his day. Could he serve this day? Could he? The need was desperate. Was there anything in this Christianity, freed from bigotry, to work out the awful problem which the ages had left for America to solve? People called this old Knowles an infidel, said his brain was as unnatural and distorted as his body. God, looking down into his heart that night, saw the fierce earnestness of the man to know the truth, and judged him with other eyes than ours.
When the girl had finished reading, she went out and stood in the cool air. The Doctor passed her without notice. The story stood alive in his throbbing brain, demanding a hearing; it stood there always, needing but a touch to waken it. All things were real to this man, this uncouth mass of flesh that his companions sneered at; most real of all the unhelped pain of life, the great seething mire of dumb wretchedness in our streets and alleys, the cry for aid from the starved souls of the world. You and I have other work to do than to listen,–pleasanter. But this man, coming out of the mire, his veins thick with the blood of a despised race, had carried up their pain and hunger with him: it was the most real thing on earth to him,–more real than his own share in the unseen heaven or hell. By the reality, the peril of the world’s instant need, he tried the offered help from Calvary. It was the work of years, not of this night. Perhaps, if they who preach Christ crucified had first doubted and tried him as this man did, their place in the coming heaven might be higher,–and ours, who hear them.
He went, in his lumbering way, down the hill into the city. He was glad to go back; the trustful, waiting quiet oppressed, taunted him. It sent him back more mad against Destiny, his heart more bitter in its great pity. Let him go back into the great city, with its stifling gambling-hells, its negro-pens, its foul cellars. It is his place and work. If he stumble blindly against unconquerable ills, and die, others have so stumbled and so died. Do you think their work is lost?
* * * * *
TIME’S HOUSEHOLD.
Time is a lowly peasant, with whom bred Are sons of kings, of an immortal race. Their garb to their condition they debase, Eat of his fare, make on his straw their bed, Conversing, use his homely dialect,
(Giving the words some meaning of their own,) Till, half forgetting purple, sceptre, throne, Themselves his children mere they nigh suspect. And when, divinely moved, one goes away, His royal right and glory to resume,
Loss of his rags appears his life’s decay, He weeps, and his companions mourn his doom. Yet doth a voice in every bosom say,
“So perish buds while bursting into bloom.”
WHAT WE ARE COMING TO.
In the year 1745 Charles Edward Stuart landed in the wilds of Moidart and set up the standard of rebellion. The Kingdom of Scotland was then, in nearly all but political rights, an independent nation. A very large part of its population was of different blood from that of the southern portion of the British Island. The Highland clans were as distinct in manners, disposition, and race from their English neighbors as are the Indian tribes remaining in our midst from the men of Massachusetts and New York. They held to the old religion, the cardinal principle of which is to admit the right of no other form, and which never has obtained the upper hand without immediately attempting to put down all rivalry. They were devotedly attached to their chiefs. They represented a patriarchal system. They lived by means of a little agriculture and a great deal of plunder. They were bred to arms, and despised every other calling. The whole country of Scotland was possessed with an inextinguishable spirit of nationality, stronger than that of Hungary or Poland. They were traditional allies of France, the hereditary foe of England. Seven hundred years of fighting had filled the border-land with battle-fields, some of glorious and some of mournful memory, on which the Cross of Saint Andrew had been matched against that of Saint George. Some of the noblest families of the realm had won their knightly spurs and their ancient earldoms by warlike prowess against the Southron. Flodden and Bannockburn were household words, as potent as Agincourt and Cressy. Nor had the conduct of the House of Hanover been such as to conciliate the unwilling people. There was known to be a widespread disaffection even in England to the German princes. These had governed their adopted for the benefit of their native country. The sentiment of many counties was thoroughly Jacobite. A corrupt and venal administration was filled with secret adherents of the king over the water. One great university was in sympathy with the fallen dynasty. A large part of the Church was imbued with doctrines of divine right and passive obedience, of which the only logical conclusion was the return of the Stuarts.
Between the two countries there was an antagonism of customs, of manners, of character, more marked, more offensively displayed, and breeding more rancorous hatred than any which can now exist between the people of Boston and Charleston, between the Knickerbockers of New York and the Creoles of New Orleans. A Scotchman was to the South a comprehensive name for a greedy, beggarly adventurer, knavish and money-loving to the last degree, full of absurd pride of pedigree, clannish and cold-blooded, vindictive as a Corsican, and treacherous as a modern Greek. An Englishman was to the North a bullying, arrogant coward,–purse-proud, yet cringing to rank,–without loyalty and without sentiment,–given over to mere material interests, not comprehending the idea of honor, and believing, as the fortieth of his religious articles, that any injury, even to a blow, could be compensated by money.
Into an island thus divided the heir of the ancient family to whom in undoubted right of legitimacy the crown belonged, a young, gallant, and handsome prince, had thrown himself with a chivalrous confidence that touched every heart. There was every reason to suppose that the interests of England’s powerful enemy across the Channel were secretly pledged to sustain his cause. Scotland was soon ablaze with sympathy and devotion. The Prince advanced on Edinburgh. The city opened its gates. He was acknowledged, and held his court in the old Palace of Holyrood, where generation after generation of Stuarts had maintained their state. The castle alone, closely beleaguered, held out like our own Sumter in the centre of rebellion. A battle was fought almost beneath the walls of the Scotch capital, and the first great army upon which the English hope depended was ignominiously routed. A portion of the soldiery fled in disgraceful panic; those who stood were cut to pieces by the charges of a fiery valor against which discipline seemed powerless. The border fortress of Carlisle was soon after taken. Liverpool, not the great commercial port it now is, but of rising importance, and Manchester, were menaced. Even London was in dismay. Men like Horace Walpole wrote to their friends of a retreat to the garrets of Hanover. The funds fell. The leading minister had been a man of eminently pacific policy, whose chief state-maxim was _Quieta non movere_, and was taken by surprise. There are many historians and students of history who now admit, in looking back upon those times, that the fate of the established government hung upon a thread, and that the daring advance of the Pretender followed by another victory might have converted him into a Possessor and Defender. Had any one then asked as to the possibilities of a reconstruction of the severed Union, the answer would probably have been not much unlike the predictions of the croakers of to-day who clamor for acceptance of the Davisian olive-branch and an acknowledgment of the fact of Secession. Yet the strength of numbers, of means, and of public sentiment was altogether on the English side. Though paralyzed somewhat by the sense of private treachery, with the feeling that all branches of the public service were harboring men of doubtful loyalty, and the knowledge that a great body of “submissionists” were ready to acquiesce in the course of events, whatever that might be, the Government prepared for an unconditional resistance. _From the outset they treated it as a rebellion, and the adherents of the Stuarts as rebels_. Time, the ablest of generals and wisest of statesmen, happened to be on their side. The Pretender turned northward from Derby, and on the field of Culloden the last hope of the exiled house was forever broken. Yet it would even then seem as if reconstruction had been rendered impossible. The Chevalier escaped to France, guarded by the fond loyalty of men and women who defied alike torture and temptation. While he lived, or the family remained, the danger continued to threaten England, and the heart of Scotland to be fevered with a secret hope. The old conflict of nationalities had been terribly envenomed by the cruelties of Cumberland and the license of the conquering troops. There was the same temptation ever lurking at the ear of France to whisper new assaults upon England. Ireland was held as a subjugated province, and was in a state of chronic discontent. To either wing of the British empire, alliance with, nay, submission to France, was considered preferable to remaining in the Union.
Thus far we have been looking at probabilities from the stand-point of their times. There is a curious parallelism in the essentials of that conflict with the present attempt to elevate King Cotton to the throne of this Republic. It is close enough to show that the same great rules have hitherto governed human action with unerring fidelity. The Government displayed at the outset the same vacillation; the people were apparently as thoroughly indifferent to the Hanoverian cause as the Northern merchants, before the fall of Sumter, to the prosperity of Lincoln’s administration. The Russell of 1745, writing to the French court his views of the public sentiment of England and especially of London, probably gave an account of it not very dissimilar to that which the Russell of 1861 wrote to the London “Times” after his first encounter with the feeling of New York. There were doubtless the same assurances on the part of confident partisans that the whole framework of the British government would crumble at the first attack. There were, too, the same extravagant alarms, the same wild misrepresentations, the same volunteer enthusiasm on the part of loyal subjects a little later on in the history. There was on the part of the rebels the same confidence in the justice of their cause, the same utter blindness to results, as in the devotees of Slavery. There was then, as now, an educated and cultivated set of plotters, moved by personal ambition, swaying with almost absolute power the minds of an ignorant and passionate class. It was the combat so often begun in the world, yet so inevitably ending always in the same way, between misguided enthusiasm and the great public conviction of the value of order, security, and peace.
The enmity seemed hopeless; the insurrection was a smouldering fire, put out in one corner only to be renewed in another. If Virginia is a country in which a guerrilla resistance can be indefinitely prolonged, it is more open than the plains of Holland in comparison with the Highlands of that era. Few Lowlanders had ever penetrated them,–scarcely an Englishman. It was supposed that in those impregnable fastnesses an army of hundreds might defy the thousands of the crown. At Killiecrankie, Dundee and his Highlanders had beaten a well-appointed and superior force. Dundee had himself been repulsed by a handful of Covenanters at Loudoun Heath through the strength of their position. Montrose had carried on a partisan war against apparently hopeless odds. To overrun England might be a mad ambition, but to stand at bay in Scotland was a thing which had been again and again attempted with no inconsiderable success.
The rebellion failed, and there were several causes for the failure: Dissensions among the rebels, the want of efficient aid from France, the want of money, _and the conviction of a large part of the Scots themselves of the value of the Union_. The rebellion failed, and sullen submission to confiscation, military cruelty, and political proscription followed.
On Sunday, the 18th of June, 1815, not quite seventy years after, there charged side by side upon the _elite_ of a French army, with the men of London, the Highlanders and Irish. A descendant of Cameron of Lochiel fell leading them on. The last spark of Jacobite enthusiasm and Scottish hatred of Englishmen had died out years before. Those who witnessed the entry of the Chevalier into Edinburgh lived to see the whole nation devouring with enthusiasm the novel of “Waverley,”–so entirely had the bitterness of what had happened “sixty years since” passed from their minds!
We have thus selected two points of history as the short answer to the cry, “You can never reconstruct the Union,” which History, the impartial judge on the bench, pronounces to the wranglers at the bar below. “Never” is a long word to speak, if it be a short one to spell. Events move fast, and the logic of Fate is more convincing than the arguments of daily editors. The “_tout arrive en France_” is true of the world in general, so far as relates to isolated circumstances. The very fact that a threatened disruption of our Union has been possible ought to forbid any one from concluding that reconstruction, or rather restoration, is impossible. Twenty years after the Battle of Culloden, Jacobitism was a dream; fifty years after, it was a memory; a century after, it was an antiquarian study.
The real question we are to ask concerning the present rebellion, and the only one which is of importance, is, What is it based upon? an eternal or an arbitrary principle? An eternal principle renews itself till it succeeds,–if not in one century, then in another. An arbitrary principle makes its fierce fight and then is slain, and men bury it as soon as they can. The Stuarts represented an arbitrary principle. They were the impersonation of unconstitutional power. Hereditary right they had, and the Hanoverians had not. According to Mr. Thackeray, and according to the strictest fact, we suspect the Georges were no more personally estimable than the Jameses, and they were far less kingly-mannered. But they were willing to govern England according to law, and the Stuarts wore determined to govern according to prerogative.
What is the present issue? It is a contest, when reduced to its ultimate terms, between free labor and slavery. It is very true that this secession was planned before slavery considered itself aggrieved, before abolitionism became a word of war. But the antipathy between the slaveholder and the payer or receiver of wages was none the less radical. The systems were just as hostile. We admit that the South can make out its title of legitimacy. It has a slave population it must take care of and is bound to take care of till somebody can tell what better to do with it. It can show a refined condition of its highest society, which contrasts not unfavorably with the tawdry display and vulgar ostentation of the _nouveaux riches_ whom sudden success in trade or invention has made conspicuous at the North. There is a fascination about the Southern life and character which charms those who do not look at it too closely into ardent championship. Even Mr. Russell, so long as he looked into white faces in South Carolina, was fascinated, and only when he came to look into black faces along the Mississippi found the disenchantment. The decisive difference is, that the North is purposing to settle and possess this land according to the law of right, and the South according to the law of might.
We say, therefore, that the issue of the contest need not be doubtful. The events of it may be very uncertain, but, from the parallel we have sketched, we think we can indicate the four chief causes of the Scottish failure as existing in the present crisis.
DISSENSIONS AMONG THE REBELS. These of course are hid from us by the veil of smoke that rises above Bull Run. But as between the party of advance and the party of defence, between the would-be spoilers of New York bank-vaults and Philadelphia mint-coffers, and the more prudent who desire “to be let alone,” there is already an issue created. There are State jealousies, and that impatience of control which is inherent in the Southern mind, as it was in that of the Highland chieftains. There will be, as events move on, the same feud developed between the Palmetto of Carolina and the Pride-of-China of the Georgian, as then burned between Glen-Garry of that ilk and Vich Ian Vohr. There are rivalries of interest quite as fierce as those which roused the anti-tariff _furor_ of Mr. Calhoun. Much as Great Britain may covet the cotton of South Carolina, she will not be disposed to encourage Louisiana to a competition in sugar with her own Jamaica. Virginia will hardly brook the opening of a rival Dahomey which shall cheapen into unprofitableness her rearing of slaves. While fighting is to be done, these questions are in abeyance; but so soon as men come to ask what they are fighting for, they revive. There is selfishness inherent in the very idea of secession.
There is a capital story, we think, in the “Gesta Romanorum,” of three thieves who have robbed a man of a large sum of gold. They propose a carouse over their booty, and one is sent to the town to buy wine. While he is gone, the two left behind plot to murder him on his return, so as to have a half instead of a third to their shares. He, meanwhile, coveting the whole, buys poison to put into the wine. They cut his throat and sit down to drinking, which soon finishes them. It is an admirable illustration of the probable future of successful secession. Something very like this ruined the cause of James III., and something not unlike it may be even now damaging the cause of H.S.I.M.,–His Sea-Island Majesty, Cotton the First.
THE WANT OF EFFICIENT AID FROM ABROAD. We are not yet quite out of the woods, and it behooveth us not to halloo that we certainly have found the path. But it is more than probable that the Southern hope of English or French aid has failed. Either nation by itself might be won over but for the other. He is a bold and a good charioteer who can drive those two steeds in double harness.
Either without the other is simply an addition of _x–x_ to the equation. If by next November we can get a single cotton-port open, we shall have settled that Uncle Tom and the Duchess of Sutherland may return to the social cabinet of Great Britain,–and that being so, the political cabinet is of small account.
With the want of foreign aid comes the next want, that of MONEY. The Emperor of Austria has a convenient currency in his dominions, which you can carry in sheets and clip off just what you need. But cross a frontier and the very beggars’ dogs turn up their noses at the _K.K. Schein-Muenze_. The Virginian and other Confederate scrip appears to be at par of exchange with Austrian bank-notes,–in fact, of the same worth as that “Brandon Money” of which Sol. Smith once brought away a hatful from Vicksburg, and was fain to swap it for a box of cigars. The South cannot long hold out under the wastefulness of war, unless relief come. “With bread and gunpowder one may go anywhere,” said Napoleon,–but with limited hoecake and _no_ gunpowder, even Governor Wise would wisely retreat.
But most certain of all in the long run is THE CONVICTION OF THE MEN OF THE SOUTH THEMSELVES OF THE VALUE OF THE UNION. It is said that the Union feeling is all gone at the South. That may be, and yet the facts on which it was based remain. Feeling is a thing which comes and goes. The value to the South of Federal care, Federal offices, Federal mail facilities, and the like, is not lessened. The weight of direct taxation is a marvellous corrector of the exciting effects of rhetoric. It is pleasanter to have Federal troops line State Street in Boston to guard the homeward passage of Onesimus to the longing Philemon than to have them receiving without a challenge the fugitive Contrabands. It is pleasanter to have B.F. Butler, Esq., argue in favor of the Dred Scott decision than to have General Butler enforcing the Fortress Monroe doctrine. Better to look up to a whole galaxy of stars, and to live under a baker’s dozen of stripes, than to dwell in perpetual fear of choosing between the calaboose and the drill-room of the Louisiana Zouaves. We have noticed that the sympathizers of the North are quoting the sentence from Mr. Lincoln’s inaugural to this effect,–What is to be gained after fighting? We have got to negotiate at last, be the war long or short. This is a very potent argument, as Mr. Lincoln meant it. To men who must sooner or later negotiate their way back into the Union, it is a very important consideration how much fighting and how much money they can afford before negotiating. To us who cannot at any cost afford to stop until they are thus ready to negotiate, it is only comparatively a question. He says to the South, as a lawyer sure of a judgment and confident of execution to be thereafter satisfied might say to his adversary’s client,–“Don’t litigate longer than you can help, for you are only making costs which must come out of your own pocket.” To his own client, he says,–“They may delay, but they cannot hinder, our judgment.”
Meanwhile what shall we do with the root of bitterness, the real cause of antagonism? That will do for itself. We probably cannot do much to help or hinder now. The negro and the white man will remain on the old ground, but new relations must be established between them. What those shall be will depend on many yet undeveloped contingencies. But–when we reconstruct, it will be with a North stronger than ever before and a government too strong for rebellion ever to touch it again. Under a free government of majorities, such as ours, rebellion is simply the resistance of a minority. Secession has been acted out to the bitter end on a small scale ere now in this country. Daniel Shays tried it in Massachusetts; Thomas Wilson Dorr tried it in Rhode Island. When they had tried it sufficiently, they gave in. We remember the Dorr War, and how bitterly the “Algerines,” as they were called, were reviled. We doubt if a remnant of that hostility could be dug up anywhere between Beavertail Light and Woonsocket Falls. We have no doubt that men who then were on the point of fighting with each other fought side by side under Sprague, and fought all the better for having once before faced the possibilities of real war. When the minority are satisfied that they must give in, they do give in.
We do not purpose to debate now the question of the mode of reconstruction. When the seceded States return, though they come back to the old Constitution, they will come under circumstances demanding new conditions. The wisdom of legislation will be needed to establish as rapidly as possible pacification. What the circumstances will be none can now say. But we are better satisfied than ever of the impracticability of permanent secession. The American Revolution is not a parallel case. The only parallel in history that we can now recall is the one we have used so freely in this article. It is one in which the parallel fails chiefly in presenting stronger grounds for a permanent disruption. Scotland struggled against a geographical necessity. She did so under the influence of far more powerful motives than now exist at the South. She had far less binding ties than now are still living between us and our revolted States. A geographical necessity as vast and potent now links the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes. The struggle is a more gigantic one, and in its fierce convulsions men’s minds may well lose their present balance, and men’s hearts their calm courage.
But everlasting laws are not to be put aside. The tornadoes which sweep the tropic seas seem for a time to reverse the course of Nature. The waters become turbid with the sands of the ocean’s bed. The air strikes and smites down with a solid force. The heaviest stones and beams of massy buildings fly like feathers on the blast. Vessels are found far up on the land, with the torn stumps of trees driven through their planking. Life and property are buried in utter ruin. But the storm passes, the sunshine comes back into the darkened skies, and the blue waves sparkle within their ancient limits. The awful tempest passes away into history,–for it is God, and not man, who measures the waters in the hollow of His hand, and sends forth and restrains the breath of the blasting of His displeasure.
* * * * *
PANIC TERROR.
In those long-gone days when the gods of Olympus were in all their glory, and when those gods were in the habit of disturbing the domestic peace of worthy men, there was born unto an Arcadian nymph a son, for whom no proper father could be found. The father was Mercury, who was a _Dieu a bonnes fortunes_, and he did not, like some Christian gentlemen in similar circumstances, altogether neglect his boy; for (so goes the story) the child was “such a fright” that his mother was shocked and his nurse ran away (Richard III. did not make a worse first appearance); whereupon Mercury seized him, and bore him to Olympus, where he showed him, with paternal partiality, to all the gods, who were so pleased with the little monster that they named him _Pan_, as evidence that they were _All_ delighted with his charming ugliness,–they being, it should seem, as fond of hideous pets as if they had been mere mortals, and endowed with a liberal share of humanity’s bad taste. There are other accounts of the birth of Pan, one of which is, that he was the child of Penelope, born while she was waiting for the return of the crafty Ulysses, and that his fathers were _all_ the aspirants to her favor,–a piece of scandal to be rejected, as reflecting very severely upon the reputation of a lady who is mostly regarded as having been a very model of chastity. It would have astonished the gods, who were so joyous over the consequence of their associate’s irregularities, had they been told that their pet was destined to outlast them all, and to affect human affairs, by his action, long after their sway should be over. Jupiter has been dethroned for ages, and exists only in marble or bronze; and Apollo, and Mercury, and Bacchus, and all the rest of the old deities, are but names, or the shadows of names; but Pan is as active to-day as he was, when, nearly four-and-twenty centuries ago, he asked the worship of the Athenians, and intimated that he might be useful to them in return,–which intimation he probably made good but a little later on the immortal field of Marathon. For not only was Pan the god of shepherds, and the protector of bees, and the patron of sportsmen, but to him were attributed those terrors which have decided the event of many battles. He is generally identified with the Faunus of the Latins, and a new interest in the _Fauni_ has been created by the genius of Hawthorne. If it be true that the popular idea of Satan is derived from Pan, we have another evidence therein of the breadth as well as the length of his dominion over human affairs; for Satan, judging from men’s conduct, was never more active, more successful, and more grimly joyous than he is in this year of grace (and disgrace) one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one. “The harmless Faun,” says Bulwer Lytton, “has been the figuration of the most implacable of fiends.” Satan and Pan ought to be one, if we regard the kind of work in which the latter has lately been engaged. The former’s sympathies are undoubtedly with the Secessionists, and to his active aid we must attribute their successes, both as thieves and as soldiers.
The number of instances of panic terror in armies is enormous. Panics have taken place in all armies, from that brief campaign in which Abram smote the hosts of the plundering kings, hard by Damascus, to that briefer campaign in which General McDowell did _not_ smite the Secessionists, hard by Washington. The Athenians religiously believed that Pan aided them at Marathon; and it would go far to account for the defeat of the vast Oriental host, in that action, by a handful of Greeks, if we could believe that that host became panic-stricken. At Plataea, the allies of the Persians fell into a panic as soon as the Persians were beaten, and fled without striking a blow. At the Battle of Amphipolis, in the Peloponnesian War, and which was so fatal to the Athenians, the Athenian left wing and centre fled in a panic, without making any resistance. The Battle of Pydna, which placed the Macedonian monarchy in the hands of the Romans, was decided by a panic befalling the Macedonian cavalry after the phalanx had been broken. At Leuctra and at Mantinea, battles so fatal to the Spartan supremacy in Greece, the defeated armies suffered from panics. The decision at Pharsalia was in some measure owing to a panic occurring among the Pompeian cavalry; and at Thapsus, the panic terror that came upon the Pompeians gave to Caesar so easy a victory that it cost him only fifty men, while the other side were not only broken, but butchered. At Munda, the last and most desperate of Caesar’s battles, and in which he came very nearly losing all that he had previously gained, a panic occurred in his army, from the effects of which it recovered through admiration of its leader’s splendid personal example. The defeat of the Romans at Carrhae by the Parthians was followed by a panic, against the effects of which not even the discipline of the legions was a preventive. At the first Battle of Philippi, the young Octavius came near being killed or captured, in consequence of the success of Brutus’s attack, which had the effect of throwing his men into utter confusion, so that they fled in dismay. What a change would have taken place in the ocean-stream of history, had the future Augustus been slain or taken by the Republicans on that field on which the Roman Republic fell forever! But the success of Antonius over Cassius more than compensated for the failure of Octavius, and prepared the way for the close of “the world’s debate” at Actium. Actium, by the way, was one of the few sea-fights which have had their decision through the occurrence of panics, water not being so favorable to flight as land. Whether the flight of Cleopatra was the result of terror, or followed from preconcerted action, is still a question for discussion; and one would not readily believe that the most gallant and manly of all the Roman leaders–one of the very few of his race who were capable of generous actions–was also capable of plotting deliberately to abandon his followers, when the chances of battle had not been tried. Whether that memorable flight was planned or not, the imitation of it by Antonius created a panic in at least a portion of his fleet; and the victory of the hard-minded Octavius over the “soft triumvir”–he was “soft” in every sense on that day–was the speedy consequence of the strangest exhibition of cowardice ever made by a brave man.
In modern wars, panics have been as common as ever they were in the contests of antiquity. No people has been exempt from them. It has pleased the English critics on our defeat at Bull Run to speak with much bitterness of the panic that occurred to the Union army on that field, and in some instances to employ language that would leave the impression that never before did it happen to an army to suffer from panic terror. No reflecting American ought to object to severe foreign criticism on our recent military history; for through such criticism, perhaps, our faults may be amended, and so our cause finally be vindicated. The spectacle of soldiers running from a field of battle is a tempting one to the enemies of the country to whom such soldiers may belong, and few critics are able to speak of it in any other than a contemptuous tone. Would Americans have spoken with more justice of Englishmen than Englishmen have spoken of Americans, had the English army failed at the Alma through a panic, as our army failed at Bull Run? Not they! The bitter comments of our countrymen on the inefficiency of the British forces in the Crimea, and the general American tendency to attribute the successes of the Allies in the Russian War to the French, to the Sardinians, or to the Turks,–to anybody and everybody but to the English, who really were the principal actors in it,–are in evidence that we are drinking from a bitter cup the contents of which were brewed by ourselves. It is wicked and it is foolish to accuse our armies of cowardice and inefficiency because they have met with some painful reverses; but the sin and the folly of foreigners in this respect are no greater than the sin and the folly that have characterized most American criticism on the recent military history of England.
The most important fruitful battle mentioned in British history, next to that of Hastings, is the Battle of Bannockburn, the event of which secured the independence and nationality of Scotland, with all the consequences thereof; and that event was the effect of a panic. The day was with Bruce and his brave army; but it was by no means certain that their success would be of that decisive character which endures forever, until the English host became panic-stricken. Brilliant deeds had been done by the Scotch, who had been successful in all their undertakings, when Bruce brought up his reserve, which forced even the bravest of his opponents either to retreat or to think of it; but their retreat might have been conducted with order, and the English army have been saved from utter destruction and for future work, had it not been for the occurrence of one of those events, in which the elements of tragedy and of farce are combined, by which the destinies of nations are often decided, in spite of “the wisdom of the wise and the valor of the brave.” The followers of the Scottish camp, anxious to see how the day went, or to obtain a share of the expected spoil, at that moment appeared upon the ridge of an eminence, known as the Gillies’ Hill, behind their countrymen’s line of battle, displaying horse-cloths and similar articles for ensigns of war. The struggling English, believing that they saw a new Scottish army rising as it were from the earth, were struck with panic, and broke and fled; and all that followed was mere butchery, though perfectly in accordance with the stern laws of the field. The English army was routed even more completely than was the French army, five centuries later, at Waterloo. Scott, with his usual skill, has made use of this incident in “The Lord of the Isles,” but he ascribes to patriotic feeling what had a less lofty origin, which was an exercise of his license as a poet.[A]
[Footnote A: An incident closely resembling that which created the English panic at Bannockburn happened, with the same results, in one of the battles won by the Swiss over their invaders; but we cannot call to mind the name of the action in which it occurred.]
“To arms they flew,–axe, club, or spear,– And mimic ensigns high they rear,
And, like a bannered host afar,
Bear down on England’s wearied war.
“Already scattered o’er the plain,
Reproof, command, and counsel vain, The rearward squadrons fled amain,
Or made but fearful stay:
But when they marked the seeming show Of fresh and fierce and marshalled foe, The boldest broke array.”
The last three lines describe almost exactly what, we are told, took place at Bull Run, where our soldiers were beaten, it is asserted, in consequence of the coming up of fresh men to the assistance of the enemy, but who were not camp-followers, but the flower of that enemy’s force. The reinforcements, contrary to what was supposed, were not numerous; but a fatigued, worn-out, ill-handled army cannot be expected to be very clever at its arithmetic. Our men greatly overrated the strength of the new column that presented itself,–at least, so we judge from some powerful narratives of the crisis at Manassas that have appeared. The eye of the mind did the counting, not the more trustworthy bodily organ. They “looked, and saw what numbers numberless” “the sacred soil of Virginia” appeared to be sending up to aid in its defence against “the advance,” and it cannot be surprising that their hearts failed them at the moment, as has happened to veterans who had grown gray since they had received the baptism of fire. Had there been a couple of trained regiments at the command of General McDowell, at that time, with which to have met the regiments that were restoring the enemy’s battle, the day would, perhaps, have remained with the Union army; but, as there was no reserve force, trained or untrained, a retreat became inevitable; and a retreat, in the case of a new army that had become exhausted and alarmed, meant a rout, and could have meant nothing else. We shall never hear the last of it, particularly from our English friends, who are yet jeered and joked about the business at Gladsmuir, in 1745, where and when their army was beaten in five minutes and some odd seconds by Prince Charles Edward’s Highlanders, their cavalry running off in a panic, and their General never stopping until he had put twenty miles between himself and the nearest of the plaid-men. Indeed, he did not consider himself safe until he had left even all Scotland behind him, and had got within his Britannic Majesty’s town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which, as it was well fortified, promised him protection for the time. Four months later, at Falkirk, a portion of another English army was thrown into a panic by the sight of “the wild petticoat-men,” and made capital time in getting out of their way. Two regiments of cavalry rushed right over a body of infantry lying on the ground, bellowing, as they galloped, “Dear brethren, we shall all be massacred this day!” They did their best to make their prediction true. A third regiment, and that composed of veterans, were so frightened, that, though they ran away with the utmost celerity, they did not have sense enough to run out of danger, but galloped along the Highland line, and received its entire fire. Some of the infantry were literally so swift to follow the example of the cavalry, that the Highlanders believed they were shamming, and so did not follow up their success with sufficient promptitude to reap its proper fruits. One of the regiments that ran was the Scots Royals, seeing which, Lord John Drummond exclaimed, “These men behaved admirably at Fontenoy: surely this is a feint.” This suspicion of the enemy’s purpose to entrap them actually paralyzed the Highland army for so long a time that the panic-stricken English were enabled for the most part to escape; so that to the completeness of their fright the English owed their power to rally their army, which did not stop in its retreat until it reached Edinburgh, the next day. In the same war, half a dozen MacIntosh Highlanders, commanded by a blacksmith, so acted as to throw fifteen hundred men, under Lord Loudoun, into a panic, which caused them all to fly; and though but one of their number was hurt by the enemy, they did much mischief to themselves. This incident is known as “The Rout of Moy,” as Loudoun’s force was marching upon Moy Castle, the principal seat of the MacIntoshes, for the purpose of capturing Prince Charles Edward, who was the guest of Lady MacIntosh, whose husband was with Lord Loudoun. To render the mortification of the flying party complete, the affair was suggested by a woman, Lady MacIntosh herself.
“The Races of Castlebar” are very renowned in the military history of Britain. In 1798 _after_ the Irish Rebellion had been suppressed, a small French force was landed at Killala, under command of General Humbert, and soon established itself in that town. A British army, full four thousand strong, was assembled to act against the invader, at the head of which was General Lake, afterward Lord Lake,–elevated to the peerage in reward of services performed in India, and one of the most ruthless of those harsh and brutal proconsuls employed by England to destroy the spirit of the people of Ireland. The two armies met at Castlebar, the French numbering only eight hundred men, with whom were about a thousand raw Irish peasants, most of whom had never had a musket in their hands until within the few days that preceded the battle,–races, we mean. A panic seized the British army, and it fled from the field with the swiftness of the wind, but not with the wind’s power of destruction. The French had one small gun,–the British, fourteen guns. Humbert afterward kept the whole British force at bay for more than a fortnight, and did not surrender until his little army had been surrounded by thirty thousand men. It is calculated that the British made the best time from Castlebar that ever was made by a flying army. It was no exaggeration to say that “the speed of thought was in _their_ limbs” for a short time. Bull Run was a slow piece of business compared to Castlebar; and our countrymen did not run from a foe that was not half so strong as themselves, and who had neither position nor artillery. The English have accused the Irish of not always standing well to their work on the battle-field; but it would have required two Irishmen to run half the distance in an hour that was made at Castlebar by one Englishman. The most flagrant cases of panic that happened in the ‘Forty-Five affair befell Englishmen, and rarely occurred to Irishmen or to Scotchmen. The conduct of the Scots Royals at Falkirk was the only striking exception to what closely approached to the nature of a general rule.
The civil war which ours most resembles is that which was waged in England a little more than two centuries ago, and which is known in English history as “The Great Civil War,” though in fact it was but a small affair, if we compare it with that which took place nearly two centuries earlier than Cromwell’s time,–the so-called Wars of the Roses. The resemblance between our contest and that in which the English rose against, fought with, defeated, dethroned, tried, and beheaded their king, is not very strong, we must confess; but the main thing is, that both contests belong to that class of wars in which, to borrow Shakspeare’s words, “Civil blood makes civil hands unclean.” Were there no exhibitions of fear in that war, no flights, no panics on the _grand scale_? Unless history is as great a liar as Talleyrand said it was, when he declared that it was founded on a general conspiracy against truth,–and who could suppose an English historian capable of lying?–shameful exhibitions of fear, flights of whole bodies of troops, and displays of panic terror were very common things with our English ancestors who fought and flourished _tempore Caroli Primi_. The first battle between the forces of the King and those of the Parliament was that of Edgehill, which was fought on _Sunday_, October 23d, 1642. Prince Rupert led his Cavaliers to the charge, ordering them, like a true soldier, to use only the sword, which is the weapon that horsemen always should employ. “The Roundheads,” says Mr. Warburton, “seemed swept away by the very wind of that wild charge. No sword was crossed, no saddle emptied, no trooper waited to abide the shock; they fled with _frantic fear_, but fell fast under the sabres of their pursuers. The cavalry galloped furiously until they reached such shelter as the town could give them; nor did their infantry fare better. No sooner were the Royal horse upon them than they broke and fled; Mandeville and Cholmondely vainly strove to rally their _terror-stricken_ followers; they were swept away by the fiery Cavaliers.” If this was not exactly the effect of a panic, then it was something worse: it followed from abject, craven fear. The bravest and best of armies have been known to suffer from panic terror, but none but cowards run away at the first charge that is made upon them. It is said, by way of excuse for the men who thus fled, in spite of the gallant efforts of their officers to rally them, that they were new troops. So were our men at Bull Run new troops; and this much can be said of them, that, if they became panic-stricken, it was not until after they had fought for several hours on a hot day, and that they were not well commanded, the officers setting the example of abandoning the field, and not seeking to encourage the soldiers, as was done by the English Parliamentary commanders at Edgehill. Therefore the English Bull Run was a far more disgraceful affair than was that of America.
We shall not dwell upon the multitudinous panics and flights that happened on both sides in the Great Civil War, but come at once to what took place on the grand field-days of that contest,–Long-Marston Moor and Naseby. At Long-Marston Moor, fought July 2, 1644, English, Irish, and Scotch soldiers were present, so that all the island races were on the field in the persons of some of the best of their number. The Royalists charged the Scotch centre, and were twice repulsed; but their third charge was more successful, and then most of the gallant Scotch force broke in every direction, only some fragments of three regiments standing their ground. “The Earl of Leven in vain hastened from one part of the line to the other,” says Mr. Langton Sanford, “endeavoring by words and blows to keep the soldiers in the field, exclaiming, ‘Though you run from your enemies, yet leave not your general; though you fly from them, yet forsake not me!’ The Earl of Manchester, with great exertions, rallied five hundred of the fugitives, and brought them back to the battle. But these efforts to turn the fate of the day in this quarter were fruitless, and at length the three generals of the Parliament were compelled to seek safety in flight. Leven himself, conceiving the battle utterly lost, in which he was confirmed by the opinion of others then on the place near him, seeing they were fleeing upon all hands toward Tadcaster and Cawood, was persuaded by his attendants to retire and wait his better fortune. He did so, and never drew bridle till he came to Leeds, nearly forty miles distant, having ridden all that night with a cloak of _drap-de-berrie_ about him belonging to the gentleman from whom we derive the information, then in his retinue, with many other officers of good quality. Manchester and Fairfax, carried away in the flight, soon returned to the field, but the centre and right wing of their army were utterly broken. ‘It was a sad sight,’ exclaims Mr. Ash, [an eye-witness of the affair,] ‘to behold many thousands posting away, amazed with _panic fears_!’ Many fled without striking a blow; _and multitudes of people that were spectators ran away in such fear as daunted the soldiers still more_, some of the horse never looking back till they got as far as Lincoln, some others toward Hull, and others to Halifax and Wakefield, pursued by the enemy’s horse for nearly two miles from the field. Wherever they came, the fugitives carried the news of the utter rout of the Parliament’s army.”[B] This strong picture of the panic that prevailed in the very army that won the Battle of Long-Marston Moor is confirmed by Sir Walter Scott, who says that the Earl of Leven was driven from the field, and was thirty miles distant, in full flight toward Scotland, when he was overtaken by the news that his party had gained a complete victory. Yet Leven was an experienced soldier, having served in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, in which he rose to very high rank; and the Scottish forces had many soldiers who had been trained in the same admirable school. That there were many spectators of the battle, whose fright “daunted the soldiers still more,” shows that people were as fond of witnessing battles in 1644 as they are in 1861, and that their presence on the Moor was productive of almost as much evil to the Roundheads as the presence of Congressmen and other civilians at Manassas was to the Federal troops on the 21st of July. There would seem to be indeed nothing new under the sun, and folly is eternally reproducing itself. One of the names connected with our defeat is that of one of the most gallant of the Parliament’s commanders at Long-Marston: Fairfax being named after the sixth Lord Fairfax, whose singular history furnished to Mr. Thackeray the plan for his “Virginians.”
[Footnote B: Mr. Sanford quotes from a letter written by a spectator of the panic at Long-Marston Moor, which is so descriptive of what we should expect such a scene to be, that we copy it. “I could not,” says the writer, “meet the Prince [Rupert] until after the battle was joined; and in fire, smoke, and confusion of the day I knew not for my soul whither to incline. The runaways on both sides were so many, so breathless, so speechless, so full of fears, that I should not have taken them for men but by their motion, which still served them very well, not a man of them being able to give me the least hope where the Prince was to be found, both armies being mingled, both horse and foot, no side keeping their own posts. In this terrible distraction did I scour the country; here meeting with a shoal of Scots crying out, ‘Wae’s me! We’re a’ undone!’ and so full of lamentations and mourning, as if their day of doom had overtaken them, and from which they knew not whither to fly. And anon I met with a ragged troop, reduced to four and a cornet; by-and-by, a little foot-officer, without a hat, band, or indeed anything but feet, and so much tongue as would serve to inquire the way to the next garrisons, which, to say truth, were well filled with stragglers on both sides within a few hours, though they lay distant from the place of fight twenty or thirty miles.”–See _Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion_, (p. 606,) the best work ever written on the grand constitutional struggle made by the English against the usurpations of the Stuarts. The letter here quoted was written by an English gentleman, Mr. Trevor, to the best of the Royalist leaders, the Marquis (afterward first Duke) of Ormond.]
The panic at Naseby (June 14, 1645) was not of so pronounced a character as that at Long-Marston; but it helps to prove the Englishman’s aptitude for running, and shows, that, if we have skill in the use of heels, we have inherited it: it is, in a double sense, matter of race. In spite of the exertions of Ireton, the cavalry of the left wing of the Roundheads was swept out of the field by Prince Rupert’s dashing charge; while the foot were as deaf to the entreaties of old Skippon that they would keep their ranks. Later in the day the Cavaliers took their turn at the panic business, their horse flying over the hills, and leaving the infantry and the artillery, the women and the baggage, to the mercy of the Puritans,–and everybody knows what that was. The Cavaliers were even more subject to panics than the Puritans, as was but natural, seeing that they could not or would not be disciplined; and there were many of the leaders of the deboshed, godless crew of whom it could have been sung, as it was of Peveril of the Peak,–
“There was bluff old Sir Geoffrey loved brandy and mum well, And to see a beer-glass turned over the thumb well; But he fled like the wind, before Fairfax and Cromwell, Which nobody can deny!”
Cromwell’s last victory but one, that of Dunbar, (September 3, 1650,) was due to the impertinent interference of “outsiders” with the business of the Scotch general, and to the occurrence of a panic in the Scotch army. The priests did for Leslie’s army what the politicians are charged with having done for that of General McDowell. The Scotch were mostly raw troops, and soon fell into confusion; and then came one of those scenes of slaughter which were so common after the Cromwellian victories, and which, in spite of Mr. Carlyle’s crazy admiration of them, must ever be regarded by sane and humane people as the work of the Devil. It is in dispute whether Cromwell’s last great victory, that of Worcester, (September 3, 1651,) was a panic affair or not; for while Cromwell himself wrote that “indeed it was a stiff business,” and that the dimensions of the mercy were above his thoughts, he complacently says, “Yet I do not think we have lost above two hundred men.” Now, as the English critics on the Battle of Bull Run will have it that it was but a cowardly affair on our side, because but few men were at one time reported to have fallen in it, it follows that Cromwell’s army at Worcester must have been an army of cowards, as it lost less than two hundred men, though it had to fight hard for several hours for victory. “As stiff a contest, for four or five hours,” said the Lord-General, “as ever I have seen.” And what shall we think of the Scotch, who lost fourteen thousand men? Mr. Lodge, whose sympathies are all with the Cavaliers, says that the action is undeservedly called the Battle of Worcester, “for it was in fact the mere rout of a _panic-stricken_ army.” Certainly all the circumstances of the day tend to confirm this view of what occurred on it: the heavy loss of the Scotch, the small loss of the English, and the all but total destruction of the Royal army. That Cromwell should make the most of his victory, of the “crowning mercy,” as he hoped it might prove, was natural enough. Nothing is more common than for the victor to sound the praises of the vanquished, that being a delicate form of self-praise. If they were so clever and so brave, how much greater must have been the cleverness and bravery of the man who conquered them? The difficulty is in inducing the vanquished to praise the victor. We have no doubt that General Beauregard speaks very handsomely of General McDowell; but how speaks General McDowell of General Beauregard? Wellington often spoke well of Napoleon’s conduct in the campaign of 1815; but among the bitterest things ever said by one great man of another great man are Napoleon’s criticisms on the conduct of Wellington in that campaign. We are not to suppose that Wellington was a more magnanimous person than Napoleon, which he assuredly was not; but he was praising himself, after an allowable fashion, when he praised Napoleon. There would have been a complete change of words in the mouths of the two men, had the result of Waterloo been, as it should have been, favorable to the French. Napoleon said that he never saw the Prussians behave well but at Jena, where he broke the army of the Great Frederick to pieces. He had not a word to say in praise of the Prussians who fought at the Katzbach, at Dennewitz, and at Waterloo. Human nature is a very small thing even in very great men.
As we see that the Roundheads triumphed in England, notwithstanding the panics from which their armies suffered, subduing the descendants of the conquering chivalry of Normandy, “to whom victory and triumph were traditional, habitual, hereditary things,” may we not hope that the American descendants and successors of the Roundheads will be able to subdue the descendants of the conquered chivalry of the South, a chivalry that has as many parents as had the Romans who proceeded from the loins of the “robbers and reivers” who had been assembled, as per proclamation, at the Rogues’ Asylum on the Palatine Hill? The bravery of the Southern troops is not to be questioned, and it never has been questioned by sensible men; but their pretensions to Cavalier descent are at the head of the long list of historical false pretences, and tend to destroy all confidence in their words. They may be aristocrats, but they have not the shadow of a claim to aristocratical origin.
Lord Macaulay’s brilliant account of the Battle of Landen (July 19, 1693) establishes the fact, that it is possible for an army of veterans, led by some of the best officers of their time, to become panic-stricken while defending intrenchments and a strong position. “A little after four in the afternoon,” he says, “the whole line gave way.” “Amidst the rout and uproar, while arms and standards were flung away, while multitudes of fugitives were choking up the bridges and fords of the Gette or perishing in its waters, the King, [William III.,] having directed Talmash to superintend the retreat, put himself at the head of a few brave regiments, and by desperate efforts arrested the progress of the enemy.” Luxembourg failed to follow up his victory, or all would have been lost. The French behaved as did the Southrons after Bull Run: they gave their formidable foe time to rally, and to recover from the effect of the panic that had covered the country with fugitives; and time was all that was necessary for either the English King or the American General to prevent defeat from being extended into conquest.
Two of Marlborough’s greatest victories were largely owing to the occurrence of panic among the veteran troops of France. At Ramillies, the French left, which was partially engaged in covering the retreat of the rest of their army, were struck with a panic, fled, and were pursued for five leagues. At Oudenarde, (July 11, 1708,) the French commander, Vendome, “urged the Duke of Burgundy and a crowd of panic-struck generals to take advantage of the night, and restore order; but finding his arguments nugatory, he gave the word for a retreat, and generals and privates, horse and foot, instantly hurried in the utmost disorder toward Ghent.” The retreat of this crowd, which was a complete flight, he covered by the aid of a few brave men whom he had rallied and formed, and whose firm countenance prevented the entire destruction of the French army. Yet the French soldiers of that time were men of experience, and were accustomed to all the phases of war.
At the Battle of Rossbach, (November 5, 1757,) the troops of France and of the German Empire fell into a panic, and were routed by half their number of Prussians. That defeat was the most disgraceful that ever befell the arms of a military nation. The panic was complete, and no body of terrified militia ever fled more rapidly than did the veteran troops of Germany and France on that eventful day. Napoleon, half a century later, said that Rossbach produced a permanent effect on the French military, and on France, and was one of the causes of the Revolution. The disgrace was laid to the account of the French commander, the Prince de Soubise, who was a profligate, a coward, and a booby, and who neither knew war nor was known by it.
The English army experienced whatever of pleasure there may be in a panic, or rather in a pair of panics, at the grand Battle of Fontenoy, (May 11, 1745,) on which field they were so unutterably thrashed by the French and the Irish. In the first part of the action, the Allies were successful, when suddenly the Dutch troops fell into a panic, and fled as fast as it is ever given to Dutchmen to fly. There is nothing so contagious as panic terror, and the rest of the army, exposed as it was to a tremendous fire, soon caught the disease, and was giving way under it, when their commander, the Duke of Cumberland, who was well seconded by his officers, succeeded in rallying them. They renewed the combat, and their enemy became so alarmed in their turn that even the French King, and his son the Dauphin, were in danger of being swept away in the rout. Again there came a turn in the battle, and, mostly because of the daring and dash of the famous Irish Brigade, the Allies were beaten and forced to retreat. It is stated that the whole body of heroic British Grenadiers who were engaged at Fontenoy gave a strong proof of the effect of the panic upon their minds–and bodies; thus establishing the fact that they had stomachs for something besides the fight. “Not to put too fine a point upon it,” they, with a unity of place and time that speaks well for their discipline, did that which was done by the valiant General Sterling Price at the Battle of Boonville, and which has caused them to leave a deep impression on the historic page, though nothing can be said in support of the attractiveness of the illustration which those gallant men contributed to that page.
There was a partial exhibition of panic terror made by the English troops at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill. They were twice made to run on that Seventeenth of June of which something has been said during the last six-and-eighty years; and they were brought up to the point of making a third attack only by the greatest exertions of their commanders, and after having been considerably reinforced. This third attack would have been as promptly repulsed as its predecessors had been, but that the American troops had used up all their powder, and few of them had bayonets. The firmness, and skill as marksmen, of a body of militia had caused a larger body of British veterans twice to retreat in great disorder, and under circumstances much resembling those that characterize what is known as a panic. Had a third repulse of the assailants occurred, nothing could have prevented their flight to their boats. But it was written that the Americans should retreat; and it is safe to say that they showed much more steadiness in the retreat than the enemy did alacrity in the pursuit.
Panic terror was no uncommon thing during the Reign of Terror in France, in the armies of the French Republic. The early efforts of the French Republicans in the field sometimes failed because of panics occurring in their armies; and they were not unknown to any of the armies that took part in the long series of wars that began in 1792 and lasted, with brief intervals of peace, down to the summer of 1815. At Marengo, both armies suffered from panics. As early as ten o’clock in the forenoon, a portion of Victor’s corps retired in disorder, crying out, “All is lost!” There were, in fact, three Battles of Marengo, the Austrians winning the first and second, and losing the third, which was losing all,–war not exactly resembling whist. When Desaix said, at three o’clock in the afternoon, that the battle was lost, but there was time enough to win another, he spoke the truth, and like a good soldier. The new movements that followed his arrival and advice caused surprise to the Austrians, and surprise soon passed into panic. The panic extended to a portion of the cavalry, no one has ever been able to say why; and it galloped off the field toward the Bormida, shouting, “To the bridges!” The panic then reached to men of all arms, and cavalry, artillery, and infantry were soon crowded together on the banks of the stream which they had crossed in high hopes but a few hours before. The artillery sought to cross by a ford, but failed, and the French made prisoners, and seized guns, horses, baggage, and all the rest of the trophies of victory. Thus a battle which confirmed the Consular government of Bonaparte, which prepared the way for the creation of the French Empire, and which settled the fate of Europe for years, was decided by the panic cries of a few horse-soldiers. The Austrian cavalry has long and justly been reputed second to no other in the world, and in 1800 it was a veteran body, and had been steadily engaged in war, with small interruption, for eight years; but neither its experience, nor its valor, nor regard for the character which it had to maintain, could save it from the common lot of armies. It became terrified, and senselessly fled, and its evil example was swiftly communicated to the other troops: for there is nothing so contagious as a panic, every man that runs thinking, that, while he is himself ignorant of the existence of any peculiar danger, all the others must know of it, and are acting upon their knowledge. That Austrian panic made the conqueror master of Italy, and with France and Italy at his command he could aspire to the dominion of Europe. The man who began the panic at Marengo really opened the way to Vienna to the legions of France, and to Berlin, and (but that brought compensation) to Moscow also.
There were panics in most of the great battles of the French Empire, or those battles were followed by panics. At Austerlitz the Austrians suffered from them; and though the Russian soldiers are among the steadiest of men, and keep up discipline under very extraordinary difficulties, they fared no better than their associates on that terrible field. They had more than one panic, and the confusion was prodigious. It was while flying in terror, that the dense, yet disorderly crowds sought to escape over some ponds, the ice of which broke, and two thousand of them were ingulfed. One of their generals, writing of that day, said,–“I had previously seen some lost battles, but I had no conception of such a defeat.” Jena was followed by panics which extended throughout the army and over the monarchy, so that the Prussian army and the Prussian kingdom disappeared in a month, though Napoleon had anticipated a long, difficult, and doubtful contest with so renowned a military organization as that which had been created by the immortal Frederick; and he had remarked, at the beginning of the war, that there would be much use for the spade in the course of it. In the Austrian campaign of 1809, there was the beginning of a panic that might have produced serious consequences. The Archduke John, the Patterson of those days, was at the head of an Austrian army which was expected to take part in the Battle of Wagram; but it was not until after that battle had been gained by the French that that prince arrived near the Marchfeld, in the rear of the victors. A panic broke out among the persons who saw the heads of his columns,–camp-followers, _vivandieres_, long lines of soldiers bearing off wounded men, and others. The young soldiers, who were exhausted by their labors and the heat, were conspicuous among the runaways, and there was a general race to “the banks of the dark-rolling Danube.” Nay, it is said that the panic was taken up on the other side of the river, and that quite a number of individuals did not stop till they had reached Vienna. Terror prevailed, and the confusion was fast spreading, when Napoleon, who had been roused from an attempt to obtain some rest under a shelter formed of drums, fit materials for a house for him, arrived on the scene. In reply to his questions, Charles Lebrun, one of his officers, answered, “It is nothing, Sire,–merely a few marauders.” “What do you call nothing?” exclaimed the Emperor. “Know, Sir, that there are no trifling events in war: nothing endangers an army like an imprudent security. Return and see what is the matter, and come back quickly and render me an account.” The Emperor succeeded in restoring order, but not without difficulty, and the Archduke withdrew his forces without molestation. The circumstances of the panic show, that, if he had arrived at his intended place a few hours earlier, the French would have been beaten, and probably the French Empire have fallen at Vienna in 1809, instead of falling at Paris in 1814; and then the House of Austria would have achieved one of those extraordinary triumphs over its most powerful enemies that are so common in its extraordinary history. The incident bears some resemblance to the singular panic that happened the day after the Battle of Solferino, and which was brought on by the appearance of a few Austrian hussars, who came out of their hiding-place to surrender, many thousand men running for miles, and showing that the most successful army of modern days could be converted into a mob by– nothing.
Seldom has the world seen such a panic as followed the Battle of Vittoria, in which Wellington dealt the French Empire the deadly blow under which it reeled and fell; for, if that battle had not been fought and won, the Allies would probably have made peace with Napoleon, following up the armistice into which they had already entered with him; but Vittoria encouraged them to hope for victory, and not in vain. The French King of Spain there lost his crown and his carriage; the Marshal of France commanding lost his _baton_, and the honorable fame which he had won nineteen years before at Fleurus; and the French army lost its artillery, all but one piece, and, what was of more consequence, its honor. It was the completest rout ever seen in that age of routs and balls. And yet the defeated army was a veteran army, and most of its officers were men whose skill was as little to be doubted as their bravery.
There were panics at Waterloo, not a few; and, what is remarkable, they happened principally on the side of the victors, the French suffering nothing from them till after the battle was lost, when the pressure of circumstances threw their beaten army into much confusion, and it was not possible that it should be otherwise. Bylandt’s Dutch-Belgian brigade ran away from the French about two o’clock in the afternoon, and swept others with them in their rush, much to the rage of the British, some of whom hissed, hooted, and cursed, forgetting that quite as discreditable incidents had occurred in the course of the military history of their own country. One portion of the British troops that desired to fire upon those exhibitors of “Dutch courage” actually belonged to the most conspicuous of the regiments that ran away at Falkirk, seventy years before. At a later hour Trip’s Dutch-Belgian cavalry-brigade ran away in such haste and disorder that some squadrons of German hussars experienced great difficulty in maintaining their ground against the dense crowd of fugitives. The Cumberland regiment of Hanoverian hussars was deliberately taken out of the field by its colonel when the shot began to fall about it, and neither orders nor entreaties nor arguments nor execrations could induce it to form under fire. Nay, it refused to form across the high-road, _out_ of fire, but “went altogether to the rear, spreading alarm and confusion all the way to Brussels.” Nothing but the coming up of the cavalry-brigades of Vivian and Vandeleur, at a late hour, prevented large numbers of Wellington’s infantry from leaving the field. The troops of Nassau fell “back _en masse_ against the horses’ heads of the Tenth Hussars, who, keeping their files closed, prevented further retreat.” The Tenth belonged to Vivian’s command. D’Aubreme’s Dutch-Belgian infantry-brigade was prevented from running off when the Imperial Guard began their charge, only because Vandeleur’s cavalry-brigade was in their rear, with even the squadron-intervals closed, so that they had to elect between the French bayonet and the English sabre. There was something resembling a temporary panic among Maitland’s British Guards, after the repulse of the first column of the Imperial Guard, but order was very promptly restored. It is impossible to read any extended account of the Battle of Waterloo without seeing that it was a desperate business on the part of the Allies, and that, if the Prussians could have been kept out of the action, their English friends would have had an excellent chance to keep the field–as the killed and wounded. Wellington never had the ghost of a chance without the aid of Buelow, Zieten, and Bluecher.[C]
[Footnote C: There is no great battle concerning which so much nonsense has been written and spoken as that of Waterloo, which ought to console us for the hundred-and-one accounts that are current concerning the action of the 21st of July, no two of which are more alike than if the one related to Culloden and the other to Arbela. The common belief is, that toward the close of the day Napoleon formed two columns of the _Old_ Guard, and sent them against the Allied line; that they advanced, and were simultaneously repulsed by the weight and precision of the English fire in front; and that, on seeing the columns of the Guard fall into disorder, the French all fled, and Wellington immediately ordered his whole line to advance, which prevented the French from rallying, they flying in a disorderly mass, which was incapable of resistance. So far is this view of the “Crisis of Waterloo” from being correct, that the repulse of the Guard would not have earned with it the loss of the battle, had it not been for a number of circumstances, some of which made as directly in favor of the English as the others worked unfavorably to the French. When Napoleon found that the operations of Buelow’s Prussians threatened to compromise his right flank and rear, he determined to make a vigorous attempt to drive the Allies from their position in his front, not merely by employing two columns of his Guard, but by making a general attack on Wellington’s line. For this purpose, he formed one column of four battalions of the _Middle_ Guard, and another of four other battalions of the _Middle_ Guard and two battalions of the Old Guard. At the same time the corps of D’Erlon and Reille were to advance, and a severe _tiraillade_ was opened by a great number of skirmishers; and the attack was supported by a tremendous fire from artillery. So animated and effective were the operations of the various bodies of French not belonging to the Guard, that nothing but the arrival of the cavalry brigades of Vandeleur and Vivian, from the extreme left of the Allied line, prevented that line from being pierced in several places. Those brigades had been relieved by the arrival of the advance of Zieten’s Prussian corps, and were made available for the support of the points threatened by the French. They were drawn up in rear of bodies of infantry, whom they would not permit to run away, which they sought to do. The first column of the Guard was repulsed by a fire of cannon and musketry, and when disordered it was charged by Maitland’s brigade of British Guards. The interval between the advance of that column and that of the second column was from ten to twelve minutes; and the appearance of the second column caused Maitland’s Guards to fall into confusion, and the whole body went to the rear. This confusion, we are told, was not consequent upon either defeat or panic, but resulted simply from a misunderstanding of the command. The coming up of the second column led to a panic in a Dutch-Belgian brigade, which would have left the field but for the presence of Vandeleur’s cavalry, through which the men could not penetrate; and yet the panic-stricken men could not even see the soldiers before whose shouts they endeavored to fly! The second column was partially supported, at first, by a body of cavalry; but it failed in consequence of a flank attack made by the Fifty-Second Regiment, which was aided by the operations of some other regiments, all belonging to General Adam’s brigade. This attack on its left flank was assisted by the fire of a battery in front, and by the musketry of the British Guards on its right flank. Thus assailed, the defeat of the second column was inevitable. Had it been supported by cavalry, so that it could not have been attacked on either flank, it would have succeeded in its purpose. Adam’s brigade followed up its success, and Vivian’s cavalry was ordered forward by Wellington, to check the French cavalry, should it advance, and to deal generally with the French reserves. Adam and Vivian did their work so well that Wellington ordered his whole line of infantry to advance, supported by cavalry and artillery. The French made considerable resistance after this, but their retreat became inevitable, and soon degenerated into a rout. An exception to the general disorganization was observed by the victors, not unlike to an incident which we have seen mentioned in an account of the Bull Run flight. In the midst of the crowd of fugitives on the 21st of July, and forcing its way through that crowd, was seen a company of infantry, marching as coolly and steadily as if on parade. So it was after Waterloo, when the _grenadiers a cheval_ moved off at a walk, “in close column, and in perfect order, as if disdaining to allow itself to be contaminated by the confusion that prevailed around it.” It was unsuccessfully attacked, and the regiment “literally walked from the field in the most orderly manner, moving majestically along the stream, the surface of which was covered with the innumerable wrecks into which the rest of the French army had been scattered.” It was supposed that this body of cavalry was engaged in protecting the retreat of the Emperor, and, had all the French been as cool and determined as were those veteran horsemen, the army might have been saved. Troops in retreat, who hold firmly together, and show a bold countenance to the enemy, are seldom made to suffer much.]
The Russian War was not of a nature to afford room for the occurrence of any panic on an extensive scale, but between that contest and ours there is one point of resemblance that may be noted. The failures and losses of the Allies, who had at their command unlimited means, and the bravest of soldiers in the greatest numbers, were all owing to bad management; and our reverses in every instance are owing to the same cause. The disaster at Bull Run, and the inability of our men to keep the ground they had won at Wilson’s Creek, in Missouri, (August 10,) were the legitimate consequences of action over which the mass of the soldiers could have no control. It is due to the soldiers to say this, for it is the truth, as every man knows who has observed the course of the contest, and who has seen it proceed from a political squabble to the dimensions of a mighty war, the end of which mortal vision cannot foresee.
It would be no difficult task to add a hundred instances to those we have mentioned of the occurrence of panics in European armies; but it is not necessary to pursue the subject farther. Nothing is better known than that almost every eminent commander has suffered from panic terror having taken control of the minds of his men, and nothing is more unjust than to speak of the American panic of the 21st of July as if it were something quite out of the common way of war. True, its origin has never been fully explained; but in this point it only resembles most other panics, the causes of which never have been explained and never will be. It is characteristic of a panic that its occurrence cannot be accounted for; and therefore it was that the ancients attributed it to the direct interposition of a god, as arising from some cause quite beyond human comprehension. If panics could be clearly explained, some device might be hit upon, perhaps, for their prevention. But we see that they occurred at the very dawn of history, that they have happened repeatedly for five-and-twenty centuries, and that they are as common now in the nineteenth Christian century as they were in those days when Pan was a god. “Great Pan is _not_ dead,” but sends armies to pot now as readily as he did when there were hoplites and peltasts on earth. We can console ourselves, though the consolation be but a poor one, with the reflection that all military peoples have suffered from the same cause that has brought so much mortification and so great loss immediately home to us. Our panic is the greatest that ever was known only because it is the latest one that has happened, and because it has happened to ourselves. It is idle, and even laughable, to attempt to argue it out of sight. We should admit its occurrence as freely as it is asserted by the bitterest and most unfair of our critics; and we should recognize the truth of what has been well said on the subject, that the only possible answer to the attacks that have been made on the national character for military capacity and courage is _victory_. If we shall succeed in this war, the rout of Bull Run will no more destroy our character for manliness than the rout of Landen destroyed the character of Englishmen for the same virtue. If we fail, we must submit to be considered cowards: and we shall deserve to be so held, if, with our superior numbers, and still more superior means, we cannot maintain the Republic against the rebels.
OUR COUNTRY.
On primal rocks she wrote her name;
Her towers were reared on holy graves; The golden seed that bore her came
Swift-winged with prayer o’er ocean waves.
The Forest bowed his solemn crest,
And open flung his sylvan doors;
Meek Rivers led the appointed Guest To clasp the wide-embracing shores;
Till, fold by fold, the broidered land To swell her virgin vestments grew,
While Sages, strong in heart and hand, Her virtue’s fiery girdle drew.
O Exile of the wrath of kings!
O Pilgrim Ark of Liberty!
The refuge of divinest things,
Their record must abide in thee!
First in the glories of thy front
Let the crown-jewel, Truth, be found; Thy right hand fling, with generous wont, Love’s happy chain to farthest bound!
Let Justice, with the faultless scales, Hold fast the worship of thy sons;
Thy Commerce spread her shining sails Where no dark tide of rapine runs!
So link thy ways to those of God,
So follow firm the heavenly laws, That stars may greet thee, warrior-browed, And storm-sped Angels hail thy cause!
O Land, the measure of our prayers,
Hope of the world in grief and wrong, Be thine the tribute of the years,
The gift of Faith, the crown of Song!
THE WORMWOOD CORDIAL OF HISTORY.
WITH A FABLE.
The great war which is upon us is shaking us down into solidity as corn is shaken down in the measure. We were heaped up in our own opinion, and sometimes running over in expressions of it. This rude jostling is showing us the difference between bulk and weight, space and substance.
In one point of view we have a right to be proud of our inexperience, and hardly need to blush for our shortcomings. These are the tributes we are paying to our own past innocence and tranquillity. We have lived a peaceful life so long that the traditional cunning and cruelty of a state of warfare have become almost obsolete among us. No wonder that hard men, bred in foreign camps, find us too good-natured, wanting in hatred towards our enemies. We can readily believe that it is a special Providence which has suffered us to meet with a reverse or two, just enough to sting, without crippling us, only to wake up the slumbering passion which is the legitimate and chosen instrument of the higher powers for working out the ends of justice and the good of man.
There are a few far-seeing persons to whom our present sudden mighty conflict may not have come as a surprise; but to all except these it is a prodigy as startling as it would be, if the farmers of the North should find a ripened harvest of blood-red ears of maize upon the succulent stalks of midsummer. We have lived for peace: as individuals, to get food, comfort, luxuries for ourselves and others; as communities, to insure the best conditions we could for each human being, so that he might become what God meant him to be. The verdict of the world was, that we were succeeding. Many came to us from the old civilizations; few went away from us, and most of these such as we could spare without public loss.
We had almost forgotten the meaning and use of the machinery of destruction. We had come to look upon our fortresses as the ornaments, rather than as the defences of our harbors. Our war-ships were the Government’s yacht-squadron, our arsenals museums for the entertainment of peaceful visitors. The roar of cannon has roused us from this Arcadian dream. A ship of the line, we said, reproachfully, costs as much as a college; but we are finding out that its masts are a part of the fence round the college. The Springfield Arsenal inspired a noble poem; but that, as we are learning, was not all it was meant for. What poets would be born to us in the future without the “_placida quies_” which “_sub libertate_” the sword alone can secure for our children?