ESSAYS (continued 2)

Quid non mortalia pectora cogis,

Joci sacra fames!

But it is well that it should follow the buildings with which it held companionship through so many quiet years. The charm of the old street has been destroyed, and the sooner the last monument of its former state is removed the better it will be. The land on which it stands formerly belonged to the Boston Theatre corporation. It was transferred to its present proprietorship in the last week of the last century, and the first Catholic church in New England was erected upon it. That church (enlarged considerably by the late Bishop Fenwick) is the one which still stands, and towards which I feel a veneration similar in kind to that inspired by the cathedrals of the old world. Even now I remember with pleasure how I used to enjoy an occasional visit to that strange place in my boyhood. "Logic made easy" and "Geometry for Infant Schools" were things unknown in my young days. I was weaned from the Primer and Spelling-book with the Arabian Nights' Entertainments, and the works of Defoe, Goldsmith, Addison, and Shakespeare. Therefore the romantic instinct was not entirely crushed out of my youthful heart, and it would be difficult, dear reader, for you to conceive how much I found to feed it on, within those plain brick walls.

The lamp which used to burn constantly before the altar, until an anxiety for "improvement" removed it out of sight behind the pulpit, filled me with an indescribable awe. I was ignorant of its meaning, and for years was unaware that my childish reverence for its mild flicker was a blind homage to one of the profoundest mysteries of the Catholic faith. I remember to this day the satisfaction I took in the lighting of those tall candles, and what a halo of mysterious dignity surrounded even the surpliced boys grouped around that altar. That strange ceremonial surpassed my comprehension. The Latin, as I heard it sung there, was pronounced so differently from what I had been taught at school, that it was all Greek to me. Yet, when I saw the devotion of that congregation, and the pious zeal of the devoted clergymen who built that church, I could not call their worship "mummery," nor join in the irreverent laughter of my comrades at those ancient rites. There was something about them that seemed to fill up my ideal of worship—a soothing and consoling influence which I found nowhere else.

I never entertained the vulgar notion of a Catholic priest. Of course my education led me to regard the dogmas of the Roman Church with any thing but a friendly eye; but my ideas of the clergy of that Church were not influenced by popular prejudice. I was always willing to believe that Vincent de Paul, and Charles Borromeo, and Fénelon were what they were, in consequence of their religion, rather than in spite of it, as some people, who make pretensions to liberality, would fain persuade us. When I recall the self-denying lives of the two founders of the Catholic Church in Boston,—Matignon and Cheverus,—I wonder that the influence of their virtues has not extended even to the present day, to soften prejudice and do away with irreligious animosity. They were regarded with distrust, if not with hatred, when they first came among us to take charge of that humble flock; but their devotedness, joined with great acquirements and rare personal worth, overcame even the force of the great Protestant tradition of enmity towards their office. Protestant admiration kept pace with Catholic love and veneration in their regard, and when they built the church which is now so near the term of its existence, there were few wealthy Protestants in Boston who did not esteem it a privilege to aid them with liberal contributions. The first subscription paper for its erection was headed by the illustrious and venerable name of John Adams, the successor of Washington in the presidency of the United States.

The memory of the first Bishop of Boston, Dr. Cheverus, is (for most Bostonians of my age) the most precious association connected with the Cathedral. He was endeared to the people of this city by ten years of unselfish exertion in the duties of a missionary priest, before he was elevated to the dignity of the episcopate. His unwillingness to receive the proffered mitre was as characteristic of his modest and humble spirit, as the meekness with which he bore his faculties when the burden of that responsibility was forced upon him. His "episcopal palace," as he used facetiously to term his small and scantily-furnished dwelling, which was contiguous to the rear of the church, was the resort of all classes of the community. His simplicity of manner and ingenuous affability won all hearts. The needy and opulent, the learned and illiterate, the prosperous merchant and the Indians in the unknown wilds of Maine, found in him a father and a friend. Children used to run after him as he walked down Franklin Place, delighted to receive a smile and a kind word from one whose personal presence was like a benediction.

His face was the index of a pure heart and a great mind. It was impossible to look at him without recalling that fine stanza of the old poet.—

"A sweete attractive kind of grace,

A full assurance given by lookes,

Continuall comfort in a face,

The lineaments of Gospel bookes;—

I trow that countenance cannot lie

Whose thoughts are legible in the eye."

One of the ancient Hebrew prophets, in describing the glories of the millennial period, tells us that upon the bells of the horses shall be the words, Holiness unto the Lord—a prophecy which always reminded me of Cheverus; for that divine inscription seemed to have been written all over his benign countenance as with the luminous pen of the rapt evangelist in Patmos.

But Bishop Cheverus was not merely a good man—he was a great man. He did not court the society of the learned, for his line of duty lay among the poor; but, even in that humble sphere, his talents shone out brightly, and won the respect even of those who had the least sympathy with the Church to which his every energy was devoted. Boston valued him highly; but few of her citizens thought, as they saw him bound on some errand of mercy through her streets, that France envied them the possession of such a prelate, that the peerage of the old monarchy was thought to need his virtuous presence, and that the scarlet dignity of a Prince of the Church was in reserve for that meek and self-sacrificing servant of the poor. Had he been gifted with prophetic vision, his humility would have had much to suffer, and his life would have been made unhappy, by the thought of coming power and honour. He had given the best part of his life to Boston, and here he wished to die. He had buried his friend and fellow-labourer, Dr. Matignon, in the Church of St. Augustine at South Boston, and when he placed the mural tablet over the tomb of that venerable priest, he left a space for his own name, and expressed the hope that, as they had lived together harmoniously for so many years, they might not in death be separated. It was a strange sight to see more than two hundred Protestants remonstrating against the translation of a Catholic bishop from their city, and speaking of him in such terms as these: "We hold him to be a blessing and a treasure in our social community, which we cannot part with, and which, without injustice to any man, we may affirm, if withdrawn from us, can never be replaced." And when he distributed all that he possessed among his clergy, his personal friends and the poor, and left Boston as poor as he had entered it, with the single trunk that contained his clothes when he arrived, twenty-seven years before,—public admiration outran the power of language. Doctrinal differences were forgotten. Three hundred carriages and other vehicles escorted him several miles on the road to New York, where he was to embark.

Of his life as Bishop of Montauban, Archbishop of Bordeaux, a Peer of France, and a Cardinal, there is not space for me to speak. Suffice it to say, that amid all the dignities to which he was successively promoted, he lived as simply and unostentatiously as when he dwelt in Franklin Street; and that in time of pestilence and public distress he showed the same unbounded charity which caused his departure from Boston to be considered a public calamity. To the last day of his life he maintained his interest in his American home, and would gladly have relinquished all his dignities to return and minister at the altar of the church he here erected. Throughout France he was honoured and beloved, even as he had been in the metropolis of New England, and a nation sorrowed at his death. Full as his life was of good works, it was not in his eloquence, nor his learning, nor in the pious and charitable enterprises which he originated, that the glory of Cardinal Cheverus consisted; it was in the simplicity of his character and the daily beauty of his life:—

"His thoughts were as a pyramid up-piled,

On whose far top an angel stood and smiled,

Yet in his heart he was a little child."

The gentle and benevolent spirit of that illustrious prelate has never departed from the church he built. When Channing died, and was buried from the church which his eloquence had made famous, the successor of Cheverus caused the bell of the neighbouring Cathedral to be tolled, that it might not seem as if the Catholics had forgotten the friendly relations which had existed between the great Unitarian preacher and their first bishop. And when the good Bishop Fenwick was borne from the old Cathedral, with all the pomp of pontifical obsequies, his courtesy and regard for Dr. Channing's memory was not forgotten, and the bell which was so lately removed from the tower, where it had swung for half a century, joined with that of the Cathedral in giving expression to the general sorrow, and proved that no dogmatic differences had disturbed the kindly spirit which Channing inculcated and had exemplified in his blameless life.

Of the later history of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross I may not speak. My youthful respect for it has in no degree diminished, and I shall always consider it a substantial refutation of the old apothegm, "Familiarity breeds contempt." There are, I doubt not, those who regard that old edifice with deeper feelings than mine. Who can estimate the affection and veneration in which it is held by those who may there have found an asylum from harassing doubts, who have received from that font the joy of a renovated heart, and from that altar the divine gift which is at the same time a consolation for past sorrows and a renewal of strength to tread the rough path of life!

I am told that it will not probably be long before the glittering cross which the pure-hearted Cheverus placed upon the old church will be removed, and the demolition of his only monument in Boston will be effected. Permit me to conclude these reminiscences with the expression of the hope that the new Cathedral of Boston will be an edifice worthy of this wealthy city, and that it may contain some fitting memorial of the remarkable man who exercised his beneficent apostolate among us during more than a quarter of a century. The virtues which merited the gratitude of the poor and the highest honours which pontiffs and kings can bestow, ought not to go uncommemorated in the city which witnessed their development, and never hesitated to give expression to its love and veneration for their possessor. But whatever the new Cathedral may be,—however glorious the skill of the architect, the sculptor, and the painter may render it,—there are those in whose affections it will never be able to replace the little unpretending church which Cheverus built, and which the remembrance of his saintly life has embalmed in all their hearts.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF SUFFERING

I am old,

And my infirmities have chained me here

To suffer and to vex my weary soul

With the vain hope of cure. * * *

Yet my captivity is not so joyless

As you would think, my masters. Here I sit

And look upon this eager, anxious world,—

Not with the eyes of sour misanthropy,

Nor envious of its pleasures,—but content,—

Yea, blessedly content, 'mid all my pains,

That I no more may mingle with its brawlings.

Human suffering is an old and favourite theme. From the time when the woes of Job assumed an epic grandeur of form, and the adventures and pains of Philoctetes inspired the tragic muse of Sophocles, down to the publication of the last number of the London Lancet, there would seem to have been no subject so attractive as the sufferings of poor humanity. Literature is filled with their recital, and, if books were gifted with a vocal power, every library would resound with wailings. Ask your neighbour Jenkins, who overtakes you on your way to your office, how he is, and it is ten chances to one that he will entertain you with an account of his influenza or his rheumatism. It is a subject, too, which age cannot wither nor custom stale. It knows none of the changes which will at times dwarf or keep out of sight all other themes. The weather, which forms the raw material of so much conversation, is nothing compared to it. There is nothing which men find so much pleasure in talking about as their own ailments. The late Mr. Webster, of Marshfield, was once stopping for a single day in a western city, where he had never been before, and where there was a natural curiosity among many of the inhabitants to see the Defender of the Constitution. He therefore set apart two hours before the time of his departure for the reception of such persons as might seek the honour of a shake of his hand. The reception took place in one of the parlours of a hotel, the crowd filing in at one door, being introduced by the mayor, and making their exit by another. In the course of the proceedings, a little man, with a lustrous beaver in one hand and a gold-headed cane in the other, and whose personal apparel appeared to have been got up (as old Pelby would have said) without the slightest regard to expense, and on a scale of unparalleled splendour, walked forward, and was presented by the mayor as "Mr. Smith, one of our most eminent steamboat builders and leading citizens." Mr. Webster's large, thoughtful, serene eyes seemed to be completely filled by the result of the combined efforts of the linen-draper, the tailor, and the jeweller, that confronted him, and his deep voice made answer—"Mr. Smith, I am happy to see you. I hope you are well, sir." "Thank you, thir," said the leading citizen, "I am not very well. I wath tho unfortunate ath to take cold yethterday by thitting in a draught. Very unpleathant, Mr. Webthter, to have a cold! But Mrs. Smith thays that the thinks that if I put my feet in thome warm water to-night, and take thome-thing warm to drink on going to bed, that I may get over it. I thertainly hope tho, for it really givth me the headache, and I can't thmell at all." Mr. Webster expressed a warm interest in Mr. Smith's case, and a hope that Mrs. Smith's simple medical treatment would result beneficially, and then turned with undisturbed gravity to the next citizen, who, with some six hundred others, was anxiously waiting his turn. We are all like Mr. Smith. We laugh, it is true, at his affectations, but we are as likely to force our petty ailments upon a mind burdened with the welfare of a nation; and we never tire of hearing ourselves talk about our varying symptoms. Politeness may hold us back from importuning our friends with the diagnosis of our case, but our self-centred hearts are all alike, and a cold in the head will awaken more feelings in its victim than the recital of all the horrors of the hospital of Scutari. Nothing can equal the heroic fortitude with which we bear the sufferings of our fellows, or the saintliness of our pious resignation and acquiescence in the wisdom of the divine decrees when our friends are bending under their afflictive stroke.

I wish to say a few words about suffering. Do not be afraid, beloved reader, that I am going to carry you into rooms from which the light is excluded, and which are strangers to any sound above a whisper, or the casual movement of some of the phials on the mantel-piece. I am going to speak of suffering in its strict sense of pain,—bodily pain,—and sickness is not necessarily accompanied with pain. I cannot regard your sick man as a real sufferer. His fever rages, and he tosses from side to side as if he were suffering punishment with Dives; but from the incoherent phrases which escape from his parched lips, you learn that his other self is rapt in the blissfulness that enfolds Lazarus. He prattles childishly of other lands and scenes—he thinks himself surrounded by friends whose faces once were grateful to his sight, but who long since fell before the power with which he is struggling—or he fancies himself metamorphosed into a favourite character in some pleasant book which he has lately read. After a time he wakes forth from his delirium, but he cannot even then be called a sufferer. On the contrary, his situation, even while he is so entirely dependent upon those around him, is really the most independent one in the world. His lightest wish is cared for as if his life were the price of its non-accomplishment. All his friends and kinsmen, and neighbours whom he hardly knows by sight, vie with each other in trying to keep pace with his returning appetite. He is the absolute monarch of all he surveys. There is no one to dispute his reign. The crown of convalescence is the only one which does not make the head that wears it uneasy. He has nothing to do but to satisfy his longings for niceties, to listen to kind words from dear friends, to sleep when he feels like it, and to get better. I am afraid that we are all so selfish and so enslaved by our appetites, that the period of convalescence is the pleasantest part of life to most of us.

Therefore I shut out common sickness, fevers, and the like, from any share in my observations on suffering. If you ask me what I should be willing to consider real bodily pain,—since I am unwilling to allow that ordinary sick men participate in it,—I should say that you can find it in a good, old-fashioned attack of rheumatism or gout. I think it was Horace Walpole who said that these two complaints were very much alike, the difference between them being this: that rheumatism was like putting your hand or foot into a vice, and screwing it up as tight as you possibly can, and gout was the same thing, only you give the screw one more turn. It is no flattery to speak of the victim to either of these disorders as a sufferer. The rheumatic gout is a complaint which possesses all the advantages and peculiarities which its compound title denotes. It unites in itself all the potentiality of gout and all the ubiquity of rheumatism. Its characteristics have been impressed upon me in a manner that sets at defiance that weakness of memory which generally accompanies old age. Sharp experience, increasing in sharpness as my years pile up, makes that complaint a specialty among my acquirements. These stinging, burning, cutting pains deserve the superlative case, if any thing does. Language (that habitual bankrupt) is reduced to a most abject state when called upon to describe rheumatic gout. The disease does not seem to feel satisfied with poisoning your blood by its aciduousness, it makes your flesh tingle and burn, and, like the late Duke of Wellington, does not rest until it has conquered the bony part. The very bone seems to be crumbling wherever the demon of gout pinches. There are moments in the life of every gouty man when it seems as if nothing would be so refreshing as to indulge for a while in the use of that energetic diction, savouring more of strength than of righteousness, which is common among cavalry troops and gentlemen of the seafaring profession, but which, in society, is considered to be a little in advance of the prejudices of the age. No higher encomium could be passed upon a gouty man than to say that, with all his torments, he never swore, and was seldom petulant. But there are very few whose merits deserve this canonization.

But gout, with all its pains, has yet its redeeming characteristics. That great law of compensation which reduces the inequalities of our lot, and makes Brown, Jones, and Robinson come out about even in the long run, is not inoperative here. The gout is painful, but its respectability is unquestionable. It is the disease of a gentleman. It is a certificate of good birth more satisfactory than any which the Heralds' College or the Genealogical Association can furnish. It is but right, too, that the man who can date back his family history to Plymouth or Jamestown in this country, and to Runnymede on the other side of the Atlantic, should pay something for such a privilege. A man may never have indulged in "the sweet poison of the Tuscan grape" himself, but can he reasonably complain of an incontrovertible testimony to the fact that his ancestors lived well! Chacun à son goût: for myself, I should much prefer my honoured family name, with all its associations with the brave knight who made it famous, accompanied by the only possession which I have received by hereditary right, to the most unequivocal state of health burdened with such a name as Jinkins.

Mentally and spiritually, the gout is far from being a useless institution. It ripens a man's judgment, and prunes away the radical tendencies of his nature. It will convert the wildest of revolutionists into the stiffest of conservatives. It teaches a man to look at things as they really are, and not as enthusiasm would have them represented. No gouty man would ever look to the New York Tribune as the exponent of his religious or political creed. His complaint has a positive character, and it makes him earnest to find something positive in religion and politics. The negativeness of radicalism tires him. He deprecates every thing like change. He thinks that religion, and society, and government were established for some better end than to afford a perpetual employment to the destructive powers of visionary reformers and professional philanthropists. He longs to find constancy and stability in something besides his inexorable disorder.

There is another disorder which people generally seem to consider a very trifling affair, but which any one who knows it will allow to be productive of the most unmistakable pain. I refer to neuralgia. Who pities a neuralgic person? Any healthy man, when asked about it, will answer in his ignorance that it is "only a headache." But ask the school teacher, whose throbbing head seems to be beating time to the ceaseless muttering and whispering of her scholars as they bend over their tasks—ask the student, whose thoughts, like undisciplined soldiers, will not fall into the ranks, and whose head seems to be occupied by a steam engine of enormous power, running at the highest rate of pressure, with the driver sitting on the safety-valve—ask them whether neuralgia is "only a headache"! Who can tell the cause of the prevalence of this scourge? whether it proceeds from our houses overheated with intolerable furnaces and anthracite coal, or from our treacherous and unconstant climate so forcibly described by Choate: "Cold to-day; hot to-morrow; mercury at eighty degrees in the morning, with wind at south-west; and in three hours more a sea turn, with wind at east, a thick fog from the very bottom of the ocean, and a fall of forty degrees of Fahrenheit." The uncertainty which seems to attend all human science, and the science of medicine in particular, envelops this mysterious disease, and thousands of us are left to suffer and wonder what the matter is.

But all of these pains, gouty, neuralgic, and otherwise, have yet their sweet uses, and like the vile reptile Shakespeare tells us of, are adorned with a precious jewel. The old Roman emperors in the hour of triumph used to have a slave stand behind them to whisper in their ear, from time to time, the unwelcome but salutary truth that they were but mortal men. Even now, on the occasion of the enthronement of a Pope, a lighted candle is applied to a bunch of flax fixed upon a staff, and as the smoke dissipates itself into thin air before the newly-crowned Pontiff, surrounded as he is by all the emblems of religion and all the insignia and pomp of worldly power, the same great truth of the perishableness of all mortal things is impressed upon his mind by the chanting of the simple but eloquent phrase, Sic transit gloria mundi. But we neuralgic and gouty wretches need no whispering slave nor smoking flax to remind us of our frailty and the transientness of our happiness and glory. We carry with us a monitor who checks our swelling pride, and teaches us effectually the brevity of human joys. We are very apt, in our impatience and short-sightedness, to think that if we had the management of the world and the dispensation of pleasure and suffering, every thing could be conducted in a much more satisfactory manner. If it were so, we should undoubtedly carry things on in the style of a French restaurant, so that we could have pain à discretion. But on the whole, I am inclined to think that we had better leave these matters to the management of that infinite Power which gives us day by day our daily pain, and from which we receive in the long run about what is meet for us. I hope that I shall not be thought ill-bred or profane in using such expressions as these. At my time of life it is too late to begin to murmur. A few twinges more or less are nothing when the hair grows gray and the eye is dimmed with the mists of age. The man who knows nothing of the novitiate of patience—who has passed through life without the chastening discipline of bodily pain—has missed one of the best parts of existence. To suffer is one of the noblest prerogatives of human nature. Without suffering, life would be robbed of half its zest, and the thought of death would drive us to despair.

When I was a young man, and gave little thought to the gout and the other ills that vex me at present, I saw a wonderful exhibition of patience, which I now daily recall to mind, and wish I could imitate. I was sojourning in Florence, that lovely city, whose every association is one of calm and satisfactory pleasure undisturbed by any thing like bodily suffering. I enjoyed the friendship of a young American amateur artist of unquestioned talent, but whose artistic efforts were interfered with by the frequent attacks of a serious and excruciating disorder. It was considerable time after I made his acquaintance before I knew that he was an invalid. I noticed his lameness, but whenever we met he wore a smiling face, and had a cheerful word for every body. One evening I called in at his quiet lodgings near the Lung' Arno, and found a party of some six or eight Americans talking over their recollections of home. He was entertaining them with the explanation of an imaginary panorama of New England, and a musical friend threw in illustrative passages from the piano in the intervals. The parlour resounded with our laughter at his irresistible fun; but in the midst of it all, he asked us to excuse him for a moment, and went into his bedroom. After a little while, another engagement calling me away, I went into his chamber to speak with him before leaving. I found him lying upon his bed, writhing like Laocoön, while great drops stood upon his brow and agony was depicted on his patient face. He resisted all my attempts to do any thing for him; the attack had lasted all day, but was at some times severer than at others; he should feel better soon, and would go back to his friends; I had better not stop with him, as it might attract their attention in the parlour, &c. So I took my leave. The next morning I met one of his friends, who told me that he returned to his company a few minutes after my departure, and entertained them for an hour or more with an exhibition of his powers of wit and humour, which eclipsed all his previous efforts. Poor S. C.! His weary but uncomplaining spirit laid down that crippled body, which never gave aught but pain to its possessor, three or four years ago, and passed, let us hope, into a happier state of existence, which flesh and blood, with their countless maladies and dolours, may not inherit.

The traveller in the south of Europe frequently encounters, in his perambulations through the streets and squares of cities, a group of people gathered around a monk, who is discoursing to them of those sublime truths which men are prone to lose sight of in their walks abroad. The style of the sermon is not, it is true, what we should look for from Newman, or Ravignan, or Ventura, but it has in it those fundamental principles of true eloquence, simplicity and earnestness; and the coarse brown habit, the knotted cord, and the pale, serene, devout face of the preacher, harmonize wondrously with the self-denying doctrine he teaches, and give a double force to all his words. His instructions frequently concern the simple moral duties of life and the exercise of the cardinal virtues, which he enforces by illustrations drawn from the lives of canonized saints, who won their heavenly crown and their earthly fame of blessedness by the practice of those virtues. Allow me to close my sermon on suffering in the manner of the preaching friars, though I may not draw my illustrations from the ancient martyrologies; for I apprehend that it will be more in keeping with the serious character of this essay to take them from another source. We have all laughed at Dickens's characters of Mark Tapley and Mr. Toots. The former was celebrated for "keeping jolly under disadvantageous circumstances," and seemed to mourn over those dispensations of good fortune which detracted from his credit in being jolly. The latter was never known to indulge in any complaint, but met every mishap and disappointment with a manly resignation and the simple remark, "It's of no consequence." Even when he was completely ingulfed in misfortunes, when Pelion seemed to have been heaped upon Ossa, and both upon him, he did not give way to despair. He only gave utterance more fervently to his favourite maxim, "It's of no consequence. Nothing is of any consequence whatever!" Now, laugh at it as we may, this is a great truth. It is the foundation of all true philosophy—of all practical religion. A few years more, and what will it avail us to have bargained successfully, to have lived in splendour, to have left in history a name that shall be the synonyme of power! A few years, and what shall we care for all our present sufferings and the light afflictions which are but for a moment! May we not say with Solomon, that "All is vanity," and with poor Toots, that "Nothing is of any consequence whatever"? Now, if there are any people who are likely to arrive at this satisfactory conclusion, and who need the consolation imparted by the reception and full appreciation of the deep truth it contains, it is the gouty, and rheumatic, and neuralgic wretches whom I have had in mind while writing this paper. Let me, in conclusion, as one who has had some experience, and is not merely theorizing, exhort all such persons to meditate upon the lives of the two great patterns of patience whom I have brought forward as examples; and to bear in mind that it is only through the resignation of Toots, that they can attain to the jollity of Tapley. Likewise let me counsel those who may be passing through life unharmed by serious misfortune and untrammelled by bodily pain, never to lose sight of that striking admonition of old Sir Thomas Browne's, "Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of thy grave; and reckon thyself above the earth, by the line thou must be contented with under it."

BOYHOOD AND BOYS

Human nature is a very telescopic "institution." It delights to dwell on whatever is most distant. Lord Rosse's famous instrument dwindles down to a mere opera glass if you compare it with the mental vision of a restless boy, looking forward to the time when he shall don a tail-coat and a beaver hat. How his young heart swells with pride as he anticipates the day when he shall be his own master, as the phrase is—when he shall be able to stay out after nine o'clock in the evening, and to go home without being subjected to the ignominy of being escorted by a chambermaid! If he be of a particularly sanguine temperament, his wild imagination is rapt in the contemplation of the possibility of one day having his name in the newspapers as secretary of some public meeting, or as having made a vigorous speech at a political caucus where liberty of speech runs out into slander, and sedition is mistaken for patriotism,—or perhaps even of being one day a Common Councilman, or a member of the Great and General Court. A popular poet of the present day has expressed the same idea in a less prosaic manner:—

"Not rainbow pinions coloured like yon cloud,

The sun's broad banner o'er his western tent,

Can match the bright imaginings of a child

Upon the glories of his coming years:"—

and another bard avers that human blessings are always governing the future, and never the present tense,—or something to that effect. The truth of this nobody will deny who has passed from the boxes of childhood upon the stage of manhood which so charmed his youthful fancy, and finds that the heroes who dazzled him once by their splendid achievements are mere ordinary mortals like himself, whom the blindness or caprice of their fellows has allowed to be dressed in a little brief authority; that the cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces he used to gaze on from afar, prove, on a closer inspection, to be mere deceptions of paint and canvas, and that he has only to look behind them to see the rough bricks and mortar of every-day life.

The voyager who sails from the dark waters of the restless Atlantic into the deep blue Mediterranean, notices at sunset a rich purple haze which rises apparently from the surface of that fair inland sea, and drapes the hills and vales along the beautiful shore with a glory that fills the heart of the beholder with unutterable gladness. The distant, snow-covered peaks of old Granada, clad in the same bright robe, seem by their regal presence to impose silence on those whom their majestic beauty has blessed with a momentary poetic inspiration which defies all power of tongue or pen. It touches nothing which it does not adorn, and the commonest objects are transmuted by its magic into fairy shapes which abide ever after in the memory. Under its softening influence, the dingy sail of a fisherman's boat becomes almost as beautiful an object to the sight as the ruins of the temple which crowns the height of Cape Colonna. But when you approach nearer to that which had seemed so charming in its twilight robes, your poetic sense is somewhat interfered with. You find the fishing boat as unattractive as any that anchor on the Banks from which we obtain such frequent discounts of nasty weather, and the shore, though it may still be very beautiful, lacks the supernal glory imparted to it by distance. It is very much after this fashion with manhood, when we compare its reality with our childish expectations. We find that we have been deceived by a mere atmospheric phenomenon. But the destruction of the charm which age had for our eyes as children, is compensated for by the creation of a new glory which lights up our young days, as we look back upon them with the regret of manhood, and realize that their joys can never be lived over again.

Pardon me, gentle reader, for all this prosing. I have been reading that pleasant, hearty book, "Tom Brown's School Days at Rugby," during the past week, and it has set me a-thinking about my own boyhood; for, strange as it may seem, there was a time when this troublesome foot was more familiar with the football and the skate than with gout and flannel,—and Tom Brown's genial reminiscences have revived the memory of that time most wonderfully. There was considerable fun in Boston in my childhood, even though most of the faces which one met in Marlboro' Street and Cornhill were such as might have appropriately surrounded Cromwell at Naseby or Marston Moor. There were many people, even then, who did not regard religion as an affair of spasmodic emotions, and long, bilious-looking faces, and psalm-singing, and neck-ties. They thought that, so long as they were honest in their dealings, and did not swear to false invoices at the customhouse, and did as they would be done by, and lived virtuously, that He to whom they had been taught by parental lips to pray, would overlook the smaller offences—such as an occasional laugh or a pleasant jest—into which weak nature would now and then betray them. I cannot help thinking that they were about right, though I fear that I shall be set down as little better than one of the wicked by Stiggins, Chadband, Sleek & Co.

Yes, there was a good deal of fun among the boys in those old days. Boys will be boys, however serious the family may be; and if you take away their marbles, some other "vanity" will be sure to take their place. What jolly times we used to have Artillery Election! How good the egg-pop used to taste, in spite of the dust of Park Street, which mingled itself liberally with the nutmeg! How we used to save up our money for those festive days! How hard the arithmetic lessons seemed, particularly in the days immediately preceding vacation! How dreary were those long winters; and yet how short and pleasant they seemed to us! for we loved the runners, and skates, and jingling bells, and, as Pescatore, the Neapolitan poet, sings, "though bleak our lot, our hearts were warm."

Newspapers were not a common luxury in those times, and I suppose that I took as little notice of passing events as most children; yet I well remember the effect produced upon my mind one dark, threatening afternoon, near the close of the last century, by the announcement of the death of General Washington. I had been accustomed to hear him talked about as the Father of his Country; I had studied the lineaments of his calm countenance, as they were set forth for the edification of my patriotism on some coarse handkerchiefs presented to me by a public-spirited aunt, until I began to look upon him as almost a supernatural being. If I had been told that the Old South had been removed to Dorchester Heights, or that the solar system was irreparably disarranged, I should not have been more completely taken aback than I was by that melancholy intelligence. I need not say that afterwards, when I grew up and found that Washington was not only a mortal like the rest of us, but that he sometimes spelt incorrectly enough to have suited Noah Webster, (the inventor of the American language,) my supernatural view of that estimable general and patriot was very materially modified. I remember, too, how much I used to hear said about an extraordinary man who had risen up in France, and who seemed to be bending all Europe to his will. I never shall forget my astonishment on finding that Marengo was not a man, but a place. The discovery shamed me somewhat, and afterwards I always read whatever newspapers came in my way. When some slow tub of a packet had come across the ocean, battling with the nor'-westers, and was announced to have made a "quick passage of forty-eight days," how eagerly I followed the rapid fortunes of the first Napoleon! His successes, as they intoxicated him, dazzled and bewildered my boyish imagination. I understood the matter imperfectly, but I loved Napoleon, and delighted to repeat to myself those stirring names, Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, &c. How I hated Russia after the disastrous campaign of 1812! (By the way, the exhibition of the Conflagration of Moscow, which used to have its intermittent terms of exhibition here some years since, always brought back all my youthful feelings about the old Napoleon; the march of the artillery across the bridge, in the foreground of the scene, the rattling of the gun carriages,—that most warlike of all warlike sounds,—the burning city, the destruction of the Kremlin, all united in my mind to form a sentiment of admiration and sympathy for the baffled conqueror. If that admirable show were to be revived once more, I should be tempted to take a season ticket to it, for I have no doubt that it would thrill me just as it did before my head could boast of a single gray hair.) Nor was my admiration for Napoleon's old marshals much below that which I entertained for the mighty genius who knew so well how to avail himself of their surpassing bravery and skill. I felt as if the unconquerable Murat, Lannes, Macdonald, Davoust, were my dearest and most intimate friends. The impetuous Ney, "the bravest of the brave," as his soldiers called him; and the inflexible Masséna, "the favourite child of victory," figured in all my dreams, heading gallant charges, and withstanding deadly assaults, and occupied the best part of my waking thoughts. I do not doubt that there is many a schoolboy nowadays who has dwelt with equal delight on the achievements of Scott and Taylor, of Canrobert, Bosquet and Pélissier, of Fenwick Williams and Havelock, and poor old Raglan, (that brave man upon whom the Circumlocution Office tried to fasten the blame of its own inefficiency, and who died broken-hearted, a melancholy illustration of the truth of Shakespeare's lines,—

"The painful warrior, famouséd for fight,

After a thousand victories once foiled,

Is from the book of honour razéd quite,

And all the rest forgot for which he toiled,")

and who cherishes them as I did the heroes of half a century ago.

But, as I was saying, Tom Brown's happy reminiscences of Rugby have awakened once more all my boyish feelings; for New England has its Rugby, and many of the readers of the old Rugby boy's pleasant pages will grow enthusiastic with the recollection of their schoolboy days at Exeter,—their snowballings, their manly sports, their mighty contests with the boys of the town,—and, though they may not claim the genius of the former head-master of Rugby for the guardian of their youthful sports and studies, will apply all of the old boy's praises of Dr. Arnold to the wise, judicious, and lovable Dr. Abbot.

I always cherished an unbounded esteem for boys. The boy—the genuine human boy—may, I think, safely be set down as the noblest work of God. Pope claims that proud distinction for the honest man, but at the present time, the nearest we can come to such a mythological personage as an honest man, (even though we add Argand burners, expensive Carcels, Davy safeties, and the Drummond light to the officially recognized lantern of Diogenes,) is a real human boy, without a thought beyond his next holiday, with his heart overflowing with happiness, and his pockets chock full of marbles. Young girls cannot help betraying something of the in-dwelling vanity so natural to the sex; you can discern a self-consciousness in their every action which you shall look for in vain in the boy. Bless your heart!—you may dress a real boy up with superhuman care, and try to impress on his young mind that he is the pride of his parents, and one of the most remarkable beings that ever visited this mundane sphere, and he will listen to you with becoming reverence and docility; but his pure and honest nature will give the lie to all your flattery as soon as your back is turned, and in ten minutes you will find him kicking out the toes of his new boots, or rumpling his clean collar by "playing horse," or using the top of his new cap for a drinking vessel, and mixing in with the Smiths, and Browns, and Jinkinses, on terms of the most unquestioned equality. The author of Tom Brown says that "boys follow one another in herds like sheep, for good or evil; they hate thinking, and have rarely any settled principles." This is undoubtedly true; but still there is a generous instinct in boys which is far more trustworthy than those sliding, and unreliable, and deceptive ideas which we call settled principles. The boy's thinking powers may be fallible, but his instinct is, in the main, sure. There is no aristocracy of feeling among boys. Linsey-woolsey and broadcloth find equal favour in their eyes. What they seek is just as likely to be found under coarse raiment as under purple and fine linen. If their companion is a real good feller, even though he be a son of a rich merchant or banker, he is esteemed as highly as if his father were an editor of a newspaper.

The nature of the boy is full of the very essence of generosity. The boys who hide away their gingerbread, and eat it by themselves,—who lay up their Fourth of July five-cent pieces, for deposit in that excellent savings institution in School Street, instead of spending them for the legitimate India crackers of the "Sabbath Day of Freedom,"—are exceptions which only put the general rule beyond the pale of controversy. The real boy carries his apple in one of his pockets until it is comfortably warm, and he has found some companion to whom he may offer a festive bite; for he feels, with Goethe, that

"It were the greatest misery known

To be in paradise alone;"

and if, occasionally, when he sees his friend gratifying his palate with a fair round specimen of the same delicious fruit, he asks for a return of his kindness, with a beckoning gesture, and a free and easy—"I say, you know me, Bill!"—he is moved thereto by no mere selfish liking for apples, but by a natural sense of friendship, and of the excellence of the apostolic principle of community of goods. This spirit of generosity may be seen in the friendships of boys, which are more entire and unselfish than those by which men seek to mitigate the irksomeness of life. There are more Oresteses and Pyladeses, more Damons and Pythiases, at twelve years of age than at any later period of life. The devotedness of boyish friendship is peculiar from the fact that it is generally reciprocal. In this it is superior to what we call love, which, if we may believe the French satirist, in most instances consists of one party who loves, and another who allows himself or herself to be loved. This phenomenon has not escaped the notice of that great observer of human nature, Thackeray.

"What generous boy," he asks, "in his time has not worshipped somebody? Before the female enslaver makes her appearance, every lad has a friend of friends, a crony of cronies, to whom he writes immense letters in vacation; whom he cherishes in his heart of hearts; whose sister he proposes to marry in after life; whose purse he shares; for whom he will take a thrashing if need be; who is his hero."

The generosity, and all the priceless charms of boyhood, rarely outlive its careless years of happiness. They are generally severely shaken, if not wholly destroyed, when the youth enters upon that crepuscular period of manhood in which his jacket is lengthened into a sack, and he begins to take his share in the conceit, and ambition, and selfishness of full-grown humanity. It is sad to think that a human boy, like the morning star, full of life and joy, may be stricken down by death, and all his hilarity stifled in the grave; but to my mind it is even more melancholy to think that he may live to grow up, and be hard, and worldly, and ungenerous as any of the rest of us. For this latter fate is accompanied by no consolations such as naturally assuage our sorrow when an innocent child is snatched from among his playthings,—when "death has set the seal of eternity upon his brow, and the beautiful hath been made permanent" I have seen few men who would be willing to live over again their years of manhood, however prosperous and comparatively free from trouble they may have been; but fewer still are those whom I have met, in whose memory the records of boyhood are not written as with a sunbeam. No, talk as we may about the happiness of manhood, the satisfaction of success in life, of gratified ambition, of the possession of the Mary or Lizzie of one's choice,—what is it all compared to the unadulterate joy of that time when we built our card houses, and made our dirt pies, or drove our hoops, unvexed by the thoughts that Jinkins's house was larger than ours, or by any anxiety concerning the possibility of obtaining our next day's mutton-chop and potatoes? Except the momentary pain occasioned by the exercise of a magisterial rattan upon our persons, or an occasional stern reproof from a hair-brush or the thin sole of a maternal shoe, that halcyon period is imperturbed, and may safely be called the happiest part of life.

My venerated friend, Baron Nabem, who has been through all these "experiences," and therefore ought to know, insists upon it that no man really knows any thing until he is forty years old. For when he is eighteen or twenty years of age, he esteems himself to be a sort of combination of the seven wise men of Greece in one person, with Humboldt, Mezzofanti, and Macaulay thrown in to make out the weight; at twenty-five, his confidence in his own infallibility begins to grow somewhat shaky; at thirty, he begins to wish that he might really know a tenth part as much as he thought he did ten years before; at thirty-five, he thinks that if he were added up, there would be very little to carry; and at forty the great truth bursts upon him in all its effulgence that he is an ass. There are some who reach this desirable state of self-knowledge before they attain the age specified by the Baron; other some there are who never reach it at all,—as we all see numerous instances around us,—but these are mere exceptions strengthening rather than invalidating the common rule. It is a humiliating acknowledgment, but if we consider the uncertainty of all earthly things, if we try the depth of the sea of human science, and find how easy it is to touch bottom any where therein, if we convince ourselves of the impenetrability of the veil which bounds our mental vision,—I think that we shall be obliged to allow that the recognition of our own nothingness and asininity is the sum and perfection of human knowledge. Now, Solomon tells us that he who increases knowledge increases sorrow; and it naturally follows that when a man has reached the knowledge which generally comes with his fortieth year, he is less happy than he was when he wrapped himself in the measureless content of his twentieth year's self-deception. And it follows, too, most incontrovertibly, that he is happier when unpossessed by that exaggerated self-esteem which rendered the discovery of his fortieth year necessary to him; and when is that time, if not during the careless, happy years of boyhood?

The period of boyhood has been shortened very considerably within a few years; and real boys are becoming scarce. They are no sooner emancipated from the bright buttons which unite the two principal articles of puerile apparel, than they begin to pant for virile habiliments. Their choler is roused if they are denied a stand-up dickey. They sport canes. They delight to display themselves at lectures and concerts. Their young lips are not innocent of damns and short-sixes; and they imitate the vulgarity and conceit of the young men of the present day so successfully that you find it hard to believe that they are mere children. Since this period of dearth in the boy market set in, of course the genuine, marketable article has become more precious to me. I remember seeing an old physician in Paris, who was as true a boy as any beloved twelve-year-old that ever snapped a marble or stuck his forefinger into a preserve jar on an upper shelf in a china closet. A charming old fellow he was, too. He used to stop to see the boys play in the gardens of the Tuileries, and I knew him once to spend a whole afternoon in the avenue of the Champs Elysées looking at the puppet shows and other sights with the rest of the youngsters. He told me afterwards that that was one of the happiest days of his life; for he had felt as if he were back again in the pleasant time before he knew any thing of that most uncertain of all uncertain things—the science of medicine; and he doubted whether any boy there had enjoyed the cheap amusement more than himself. I envied him, for I knew that he who retained so much of the happy spirit of boyhood could not have outlived all of its generosity and simplicity. "Once a man and twice a child," says the old proverb; and I cannot help thinking that if at the last we could only recall something of the sincerity, and innocence, and unselfishness of our early life, second childhood would indeed be a blessed thing.

JOSEPHINE—GIRLHOOD AND GIRLS

A bright-eyed, fair, young maiden, whose satchel I should insist upon carrying to school for her every morning if I were half a century younger, came to me a day or two after the publication of my last essay, and, placing her white, taper fingers in my rough, Esau-like hand, said, "I liked your piece about the boys very much; and now I hope that you'll write something about girls." "My dear Nellie," replied I, "if I should do that I should lose all my female acquaintances. I have a weakness for telling the truth, and there are some subjects concerning which it is very dangerous to speak out 'the whole truth and nothing but the truth.'" The gentle damsel smiled, and looked

"Modest as justice, and did seem a palace

For the crown'd truth to dwell in,"

as she still urged me on, and refused to see any danger in my giving out the plainest truth about girlhood. She had no fear, though all the truth were told; and I suppose that if we had some of Nellie's purity and gentleness remaining in our sere and selfish hearts, we should be much better and happier men and women, and should dread the truth as little as she does. But I must not begin my truth-telling by seeming to praise too highly, though it must be confessed, even at my time of life, if I were to describe the charming young person I have referred to, with the merciless fidelity of a daguerreotype and an absence of hyperbole worthy of the late Dr. Bowditch's work on Navigation, I should seem to the unfortunate "general reader" who does not know Nell, to be indulging in the grossest flattery, and panting poesy would toil after me in vain. So I will put aside all temptations of that kind, and come down to the plain prose of my subject.

There is, in fact, very little that can be said about girlhood. Those calm years that come between the commencement of the bondage of the pantalettes and emancipation from the tasks of school, present few salient points upon which the essayist (observe he never so closely) may turn a neat paragraph. They offer little that is startling or attractive either to writer or reader,—

"As times of quiet and unbroken peace,

Though for a nation times of blessedness,

Give back faint echoes from the historian's page."

The rough sports of boyhood, the out-door life which boys always take to so naturally, and all their habits of activity, give a strength of light and shade to their early years which is not to be found in girlhood. It is not enough to say that there is no difference in kind, but simply one in degree,—that the years of boyhood are calm and happy, and that those of girlhood are so likewise,—that the former resemble the garish sunshine, and the latter the mitigated splendour of the moon; for the characters of boys seem to be struck in a sharper die than those of girls, which gives them an absoluteness quite distinct from the feminine grace we naturally look for in the latter. The free-hearted boy, plunging into all sorts of fun without a thought of his next day's arithmetic lesson, and with a charming disregard of the expense of jackets and trousers, and the gentle girl, who clings to her mother's side, like an attendant angel, and contents herself with teaching long lessons to docile paper pupils in a quiet corner by the fireside, are representatives of two distinct classes in the order of nature, and (untheologically, of course, I might add) of grace. There is not a greater difference between a hockey and a crochet needle than there is between them.

I have, as a general thing, a greater liking for boys than for girls; for the vanity so common to all mankind is not developed in them at so early an age as in the latter. Still I must acknowledge that I have seen some splendid exceptions, the mere recollection of which almost tempts me to draw my pen through that last sentence. Can I ever forget—I can never forget—one into whose years of girlhood the beauty and grace of a long, pure life seemed to have been compressed? It was many years ago, and I was younger than I am now—so pardon me if I should seem to catch a little enthusiasm of spirit from the remembrance of those days. Like the ancient Queen of Carthage, Agnosco veteris vestigia flammæ. I was living in London at that time, or rather at Hampstead, which had not then become a mere suburb of the great metropolis, but was a quiet town, whose bright doorplates, and well-scoured doorsteps, and clean window curtains contrasted finely with the dingy brick walls of its houses, and impressed the visitor with the general prosperity and quiet respectability of its inhabitants. In my daily walks to and from the city, I frequently met a gentleman whose gray hairs and simple dignity of manners always attracted me towards him, and exacted from me an involuntary tribute of respectful recognition. One day he overtook me in a shower, and gave me the benefit of his umbrella and his friendship—for an intimacy which ended only with his death commenced between us from that hour. He was a gentleman of good family and education, who had seen thirty years of responsible service in the employ of the Honourable East India Company, had attained a competency, and had forsworn Leadenhall Street for a pension and a quiet retreat on the heights of Hampstead. His wife was a lady of cultivated tastes, whose sober wishes never learned to stray from the path of simple domestic duty, and the presence of the books in which she found her daily pleasures.

"Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home."

Their only child, "one fair daughter, and no more," was a gentle and merry-hearted creature, who, in the short and murky days of November, filled that cottage with a more than June-like sunshine. Her parents always had a deep sympathy with that unfortunate Empress of France whose dismission from the throne was the commencement of the downward career of the first Napoleon, and bore witness to it by giving her name to their only child. They lived only three or four doors from my lodgings, and there were few days passed after the episode of the umbrella in which I did not find a welcome in their quiet home. Their daughter was their only idol, and I soon found myself a convert to their innocent system of paganism. We all three agreed that Josey was the incarnation of all known perfections, and the lapse of forty years has not sufficed to weaken that conviction in my mind. She had risen just above the horizon of girlhood, and the natural beauty of her character made the beholder content to forget even the promise of her riper years. I do not think she was what the world calls handsome. I sometimes distrust my judgment in the matter of female beauty; indeed, some of my candid friends have told me that I had no judgment in such things. Well, as I was saying, Josey was not remarkable for personal beauty—in fact, I think I remember some persons of her own sex who thought her "very plain"—"positively homely"—and wondered what there was attractive about her. There are circumstances under which I should not have hesitated to attribute such remarks to motives of envy and jealousy; but as they came from girls whose attractions of every kind were far below those of the gentle creature whom they delighted to criticise, how can I account for them? Josey's complexion was dark—her forehead, like those of the best models of female comeliness among the ancients, low. Her teeth were pearly and uniform, and her clear, dark eyes seemed to reflect the happiness and hope which were the companions of her youth. Her beauty was not of that kind which consists in mere regularity of features; it was far superior to that. You could discern under those traits, none of which were conspicuous, a combination of mental and social qualities which were far above the fleeting charms that delight so many, and which age, instead of destroying, would increase and perfect. She was quiet and gentle, without being dull or moody; light-hearted and cheery, without being frivolous; and witty, without being pert or conceited. Her unaffected goodness of heart found many an opportunity of exercise. I often heard of her among the poor, and among those who needed words of consolation even more than the necessaries of life. It was her delight to intercede with the magistrate who had inflicted a punishment on some disorderly brother of one of her poor clients, and to obtain his pardon by promising to watch over him and insure his future good behaviour; and there were very few, among the most reckless, who were not restrained by the thought that their offences would give pain to the kind-hearted girl who had so willingly become their protector.

During the months that I lived at Hampstead my intercourse with that excellent family was as familiar as if I had been one of their own kindred. A little attack of rheumatism, which confined me to my lodging for a fortnight or three weeks, proved the constancy of their friendship. The old gentleman came daily to see me—told me all the news from the city, and read to me; the mother sent me some of her favourite books; and Josey came to get assistance in her Latin and French, and brought me sundry little pots of grape jelly and other preserves, which tasted all the sweeter for being the work of her fair hands. It was a sad parting when I was called away to America—sad for me; for I told them that I hoped that my absence from England would be but temporary, when I felt inwardly that it might extend to several years.

Two or three months after my arrival at home, I received a letter from the old gentleman, written in his deliberate, round, clerk-like style, informing me of his wife's death. A note was enclosed from Josey, in which she described with her pencil the spot where her mother was buried in the old churchyard, and told me of her progress in her studies. More than a year passed by without my hearing from them at all, two or three of my letters to them having miscarried. Nearly seven years elapsed before I visited England again. Two years before that, I had read the decease of the old gentleman, in a stray London newspaper. I had written to Josey, sympathizing with her in her desolation, but had received no answer. So, the day after my arrival in London, I determined to make a search for the beloved Josey. I went to Hampstead, and my heart beat quicker as I approached the cottage where I had spent so many happy hours. My throat felt a little choky, as I recognized the neat bit of hedge before the door, the graceful vine which overhung it, and the familiar arrangement of the flower pots in the frames outside the windows; but my hopes received a momentary check when I found a strange name on the plate above the knocker. I knocked, and inquired concerning the former occupants of the house. After a severe effort to overcome the Bœotian stupidity of the housemaid, she ushered me into the little breakfast room, and said she would "call her missus." Almost before I had time to look about me, Josey entered the room. The little girl whose Latin exercises I had corrected, and who had always lived in my memory as she appeared in those days, suddenly came before me

"A perfect woman, nobly planned,

To warn, to comfort, and command;

And yet a spirit still and bright

With something of an angel light."

Yet she was hardly changed at all. She had lost none of those charming qualities which had made the thought of her precious to me during long years of absence. She had gained the maturity and dignity of womanhood without losing any of the simplicity and light-heartedness of girlhood. She was married. Her husband was a literary man of considerable reputation. Though only in middle age, he was a great sufferer with the gout. He was, generally speaking, a patient man; but I found, after I became intimate with him, that his pains sometimes made him express himself with a force of diction somewhat in advance of the religious prejudices of his gentle Josey, who tended him and ministered to his wants like an angel, as she was. But excuse me for wandering so far from my theme. To make a long story short, Josey went to Italy with her husband, who had been ordered thither by his physicians, and I never saw her afterwards. She deposited her husband's remains in the cemetery where those of Shelley and Keats repose, and found for two or three years a consolation for her bereaved spirit in residence in that city which more than all others proclaims to our unwilling hearts the vanity and transitoriness of this world's hopes, and the glory of the unseen eternal. Years after, I met one of her husband's friends in Paris, who told me that some four years after his death, she had entered a convent of a religious order devoted to the reclaiming of the degraded of her sex, in Brussels. There she had found a fitting occupation for the natural benevolence of her heart, and the peace which the world could not give. She had concealed the glory of her good works under her vow of obedience—her personality was hidden under the common habit of her Order—the very name which was so dear to me had been exchanged for another on the day that saw her covered with the white veil of the novice. I was about returning to England from the continent when I heard this, and I resolved to take Belgium's fair capital in my route. I found the convent readily enough, and waited in its uncarpeted but scrupulously clean parlour some time for the Lady Superior. She was a lady of dignified mien, with the clear complexion, the serene brow, and the dovelike eyes so common among nuns, and her face lighted up, as she spoke, with a gentle smile, which seemed almost like a presage of immortality. I explained my errand, and she told me that the good English sister had been dead more than a year. The intelligence pained me, and it gave me a feeling of self-reproach to notice that the nun, who had been with her in her last hour, spoke of her as if she had merely passed into another part of the convent we were in. The Superior, perceiving my emotion, conducted me through the garden of the convent to a shady corner of the grounds, where there were several graves. She stopped before a mound, over which a rose bush bent affectionately, as if its white blossoms craved something of the purity which was enshrined beneath it. At its head was a simple wooden cross, on which was inscribed the name of "Sister Helen Agnes," the date of her death, and the common supplication that she might rest in peace; and that was the only memorial of Josey that remained to me.

I have not forgotten, dear reader, that I am writing about girls; but having brought forward one who always seemed to me to be about as near perfection as it is vouchsafed to poor humanity to approach, I could not help following her to the end, and showing how she went from a beautiful girlhood to a still more beautiful womanhood, and a death which all of us might envy; and how lovely and harmonious was her whole career. For I feel that the consideration of the contrast which most of the young female readers of these pages will discover between themselves and Josey, will do them some good.

I do not know of a more quietly funny sight than a group of school-girls, all talking as fast as their tongues can wag, (forty-woman power,) and clinging inextricably together like a parcel of macaroni, à la Napolitaine. Their independence is quite refreshing. Lady Blessington in her diamonds never descended the grand staircase at Covent Garden Opera House with half the consciousness of making a sensation, that you may notice in these school-girls whenever you take your walks abroad. It is delightful to see them step off so proudly, and look you in the face so coolly, thinking all the time of just nothing at all. Their boldness is the boldness of innocence; for perfect modesty does not even know how to blush. How vain they grow as they advance in their teens! How careful they are that the crinoline "sticks out" properly before they venture on the road to school! If Mother Goose (of blessed memory) could take a look into this world now, she would wish to revise her ancient rhyme to her patrons,—

"Come with a whoop—come with a call," &c.,—

for she would find that it is now their custom to come with a hoop when they come for a call.

When unhappy Romeo stands in old Capulet's garden, under the pale beams of the "envious moon," and watches the unconscious Juliet upon the balcony, he utters, in the course of his incoherent soliloquial apostrophe, these remarkable words concerning that interesting young person:—

"She speaks, yet she says nothing."

I have seen many young ladies of Juliet's time of life in my day of whom the same thing might be said. They indeed speak, yet say nothing. Yet take them on such a subject as the trimming of a new bonnet for Easter Sunday, or any of those entertaining topics more or less connected with the adornment of their persons, and how voluble they are! To the stronger sex, which of course cares nothing about dress, being entirely free from vanity, the terms used in their never-ending colloquies on such themes are mere unmeaning words; but I must do the gentler side of humanity the justice to say that they are not all vanity, as their fathers and husbands find to their dismay, when the quarterly bills come in, that gimp, and flounces, and trimming generally, have a real, tangible existence.

How sentimental they are! In my young days albums were all the rage among young ladies; but now they seem to be somewhat out of date, and young ministers have taken their place. What pains will they not take to get a bow from the Rev. Mr. Simkins! They swarm around him after service, like flies around the bung of a molasses cask. Raphael never had such a face as his; Massillon never preached as he does. What a wilderness of worsted work are they not willing to travel over for his sake! How do they exhaust their inventive faculties in the search after new patterns for lamp mats, watch cases, pen wipers, and slippers to encase the feet at which they delight to sit! But when Simkins marries old Thompson's youngest daughter and a snug property, he finds a sad abatement in his popularity. The Rev. Mr. Jenkins, a young preacher with a face every whit as milk-and-watery as his own, succeeds to the throne he occupied, and reigns in his stead among the volatile devotees; and Simkins then sees that his popularity was no more an evidence of the favour his preaching of the gospel found among those thoughtless young people than was the popularity of the good-looking light comedian, after whom the girls ran as madly as they did after his own white neckerchief and nicely-brushed black frock coat.

Exaggeration is one of the great faults of girlhood. Whatever meets their eyes is either "splendid" or "horrid." They delight to exaggerate their likes and dislikes. Self-restraint seems to be a term not contained in their lexicon. They take a momentary fancy to a young man, and flatter him with their smiles until some new face takes his place in their fleeting memory. In this way many young hearts are frittered away in successive flirtations before their possessors have reached womanhood. But it would be wrong to confine action from mere blind impulse and exaggeration to young girls alone. I think it is St. Paul who gives us some good counsel about "speaking the truth in love." I fear that very few victims of the tender passion, from Pyramus and Thisbe down to Petrarch and Laura, and from the latter couple down to Mr. Smith with Miss Brown hanging on his arm,—who have not sadly needed the advice of the Apostle of the Gentiles. I have seen very few people in my day who really speak the truth in love. Therefore I will not blame girls for a fault which is common to all mankind.

Impulse is commonly supposed to be inconsistent with cunning; but in most girls I think the two things are singularly combined. I am told that there is an academy in this city, frequented by many young women, known as the School of Design. The fact is a gratifying one to me; for my observation of girlish nature had led me to suppose that there were very few indeed of the young ladies of these days who required any tuition in the arts of design. I hail the fact as a good omen for the sex. Action from impulse carries its young victims to the extremes of good and evil. Queen Dido is a fair type of the majority of her sex. Defeated in their hopes, they are willing to make a funeral pile of all that remains to them. But there is a spirit of generosity in them which does not find a place in the hearts of men. It was the part of Eve to bring death into this world, and all our woe, by her inquisitiveness and credulity; but it was reserved for Adam to inaugurate the meanness of mankind by laying all the blame to his silly little wife. The accusation ought to have blistered Adam's cowardly tongue.

But I am making a long preachment, and yet I have said very little. I must leave my young friends, however, to draw their own lessons from the portrait I have given of one whose perfections would far outweigh the silliness and vanity of a generation of girls. Let them take the gentle Josey as the model of their youth, and they will not wish to sculpture their later career after any less perfect shape. There will then be fewer heartless flirts, fewer vain exhibitors of the works of the milliner and dressmaker parading the streets, and more true women presiding over the homes of America. The imitation of her virtues will be found a better preservative of beauty than any eau lustrale; for it will create a beauty which "time's effacing fingers" are powerless to destroy, and give to those who practise it a serene and lovely old age, whose recollection of the past, instead of awakening any self-reproach, shall be a source of perpetual benediction.

SHAKESPEARE AND HIS COMMENTATORS

It was a favourite wish of the beneficent Caligula that all mankind had but one neck, that he might finish them off at a single chop. It would ill comport with my known modesty, were I to lay claim to any thing like the all-embracing humanity of the old Roman philanthropist; but I must acknowledge that I have frequently felt inclined to apply his pious aspiration to the commentators on Shakespeare. Impatience is not my prevailing weakness; but these pestilent annotators have often been instrumental in convincing me that I am no stoic. I have frequently regretted the days of my youth, when no envious commentary obscured the brilliancy of that genius which has consecrated the language through which it finds utterance, and made it venerable to the scholars of all lands and ages. My love of Shakespeare, like the gout which has been stinging my right foot all the morning, is hereditary. My revered grandmother was very fond of solid English literature. She had not had, it is true, the advantages which the young people of the present day rejoice in; she had not studied in any of those seminaries which polish off an education in a most Arabian-Nightsy style of expedition, and send a young lady home in the middle of her teens, accomplished in innumerous ologies, and knowing little or nothing that is really useful, or that will attract her to intellectual pursuits or pleasure in after life. She had acquired what is infinitely better than the superficial omniscience which is so much cultivated in these days. The more active duties of life pleased her not; and Shakespeare was the never-failing resource of her leisure hours. Mr. Addison's Spectator was for her a "treasure of contentment, a mine of delight, and, with regard to style, the best book in the world." I shall never forget that happy day (anterior even to the jacket era of my life) when she took me upon her knee, and read to me the speeches of Marullus, and Mark Antony, and Brutus. In that hour I became as sincere a devotee as ever bent down before the shrine of Shakespeare's genius. Nor has that innocent fanaticism abated any of its ardour under the weight laid upon me by increasing years. The theatre has lost many of its old charms for me. The friendships of youth—the only enduring intimacies, for our palms grow callous in the promiscuous intercourse of the world, and cannot easily receive new impressions—have either been terminated by that inexorable power whose chilling touch is merciless alike to love and enmity, or have been interfered with by the varying pursuits of life. But Shakespeare still maintains his wonted sway, and my loyalty to him has not been disturbed by any of the revolutionary movements which have made such changes in most other things. Martin Farquhar Tupper has written, but I am so old-fashioned in my prejudices that I find myself constantly turning to my Shakespeare, in preference even to that gifted and proverbially philosophic bard.

But I am wandering. From the day I have mentioned, Robinson Crusoe was obliged to abdicate, and England's "monarch bard" (as Mr. Sprague calls Anne Hathaway's husband) reigned in his stead. I first devoured the Julius Cæsar. I say "devoured," for no other word will express the eager earnestness with which I read. The last time I read that play through, it was "within a bowshot where the Cæsars dwelt," and but a few minutes' walk from the palace which now holds great Pompey's statua, at whose foot the mighty Julius fell. Increase of appetite grew rapidly by what it fed on, and I was not long in learning as much about the black-clad prince, the homeless king, the exacting usurer, the fat knight and his jolly companions, the remorseful Thane, and generous, jealous Moor, as I knew about Brutus and the other red republican assassins of imperial Rome. My love of Shakespeare was greatly edified by a friendship which I formed in my earliest foreign journeyings. It was before the days of railways,—which, convenient as they are, have robbed travelling of half its zest, by rendering it so common. I had been making a little tour through the north of France. I had admired the white caps and pious simplicity of the peasants of Normandy, and had drunk in that exaltation of soul which the lofty nave of the majestic Cathedral of Amiens always imparts, and was about returning to Paris, when a rheumatic attack arrested my progress and prolonged my stay in the pleasant city of Douai. I there met accidentally with an English monk of that grand old Benedictine order, whose history for more than twelve centuries has been the history of civilization, and literature, and religion. He was descended from one of those old families which refused to modify their creed at the demand of a divorce-seeking king. He was a man of clear intellect and fascinating simplicity of character. He seemed to carry sunshine with him wherever he went. He occupied a professional chair in the English College attached to the Benedictine Monastery at Douai, and when his class hours were ended, he daily came to visit me. His sensible and sprightly conversation did more towards untying the rheumatic knots in my poor shoulder, than all the pills and lotions for which M. le Médecin charged me so roundly. When I visited him in his cell, I found that a well-worn copy of Shakespeare was the only companion of his Breviary, his Aquinas and St. Bernard on his study table. He loved Shakespeare for himself alone. He never used him as a lay figure on which he might display the drapery of a pedant. He hated commentators as heartily as a man so sincerely religious can hate any thing except sin, and was as earnest in his predilection for Shakespeare, "without note or comment," as his dissenting fellow-countrymen would have wished him to be for a similar edition of the only other inspired book in the world. He had his theories, however, concerning Shakespeare's characters, and we often talked them over together; but I must do him the justice to say that he never published any of them. I always regarded this fact as a splendid evidence of the entireness of his self-abnegation, and of his extraordinary advancement in the path of religious perfection. Many have taken the three monastic vows by which he was bound, and have lived up to them with conscientious fidelity; but few scholars have studied Shakespeare as he did, and yet resisted the temptation to tell the world all about it in a book.

Mousing the other day in the library of a venerable citizen of Boston, who is no less skilled in the gospel (let us hope) than in the law, I stumbled over a seedy-looking folio containing A Treatise of Original Sinne, by one Anthony Burgesse, who flourished in England something more than two centuries ago. One of the discoloured fly-leaves of this entertaining tome informed me, in a hand-writing which resembled a dilapidated rail-fence looked at from the window of an express train, that Jacobus Keith me possedit, An. Dom. 1655; and also bore this inscription, so pertinent to my present theme: "Expositors are wise when they are not otherwise." I feel that it is safe to leave my readers to make the application of this apothegm to the Shakespearean annotators of their acquaintance, so few of whom are wise, so many otherwise. I think it was the late Mr. Hazlitt who said (and if it was not, it ought to have been) that if you desire to know to what sublimity human genius is capable of ascending, you must read Shakespeare; but that if you seek to ascertain to what a depth of imbecility the intellect of man may be brought down, you must read his commentators.

Notwithstanding the low estimate which I am inclined to place upon the labour of the majority of the commentators on Shakespeare, still I have often felt a strong temptation to enroll myself among them. Not all their stupidity in explaining things which are clear to the meanest capacity, not all their pedantry in elucidating matters which are simply inexplicable, not all their inordinate voluminousness, could quench my ambition to fasten my roll of waste paper to the bob (already so unwieldy) of the Shakespearean kite. Others have soared into fame by such means; why should not I? We ought not to study Shakespeare so many years for nothing, and I feel that a sacred duty would be neglected if the result of my researches were withheld from my suffering fellow-students. But let me be more merciful than other commentators; let me confine my remarks to a single play. From that one you may learn the tenor of my theories concerning the others; and if you wish for another specimen, I shall consider that I have achieved an unheard-of triumph in this department of literature.

The tragedy of Hamlet has always been regarded as one of the most creditable of Shakespeare's performances. It needs no new commendation from me. Dramatic composition has made great progress within the two hundred and sixty years that have elapsed since Hamlet was written, yet few better things are produced nowadays. We may as well acknowledge the humiliating fact that Hamlet, with all its age, is every whit as good as if it had been written since Lady Day, and were announced on the playbills of to-morrow night, with one of Mr. Boucicault's most eloquent and elaborate prefaces. The character of Hamlet has been much discussed, but, with all due respect for the genius of those who have fatigued their reader with their treatment of the subject, I would humbly suggest that they are all wrong. Hamlet resembles a picture which has been scoured, and retouched, and varnished, and restored, until you can hardly see any thing of the original. Critics and commentators have bedaubed the original character so thoroughly, and those credulous people who rejoice that Chatham's language is their mother tongue, have heard so much of their estimate of Hamlet's character, that they receive them on faith, flattering themselves all the while that they are paying homage to the Hamlet of Shakespeare. High-flown philosophy exerts its powers upon the theme, and Goethe gives it as his opinion that the dramatist wished to portray the effects of a great action, imposed as a duty upon a mind too feeble for its accomplishment, and compares it to an oak planted in a china vase, proper to receive only the most delicate flowers, and which flies to pieces as soon as the roots begin to strike out.

Now let us drop all this metaphysical and poetical cant, and go back to the play itself. Shakespeare will prove his own best expositor, if we read him with docile minds, having previously instructed ourselves concerning the history of the time of which he wrote. There is a tradition common in the north of Ireland that Hamlet's father was a native of that country, named Howndale, and that he followed the trade of a tailor; that he was captured by the Danes, in one of their expeditions against that fair island, and carried to Jutland; that he married and set up in business again in that cold region, but that he afterwards forsook the sartorial for the regal line, by usurping the throne of Denmark. The tradition represents him to have been a man of violent character, a hard drinker, and altogether a most unprincipled and unamiable person, though an excellent tailor. Now, if we take the old chronicle of Saxo Grammaticus, (Historia Danorum,) from which Shakespeare drew the plot for his tragedy, we shall find there little that does not harmonize with this tradition. Saxo Grammaticus tells us that Hamlet was the son of Horwendal, who was a famous pirate of Jutland, whom the king, Huric, feared so much, that, to propitiate him, he was obliged to appoint him governor of Jutland, and afterwards to give him his daughter Gertrude in marriage. Thus he obtained the throne. The old Irish name, Howndale, might easily have been corrupted into Horwendal by the jaw-breaking Northmen, and for the rest, the Danish chronicle and the Irish tradition are perfectly consistent. That there was frequent communication at that early period between Denmark and Ireland, I surely need not take the trouble to prove. All the early chronicles of both of those countries bear witness to it. It was to the land evangelized by St. Patrick that Denmark was indebted for the blessings of education and the Christian faith. But the visits of the Danes were not dictated by any holy zeal for the salvation or mental advancement of their benefactors, if we may believe all the stories of their piratical expeditions. An Irish monk of the great monastery of Banchor, who wrote very good Latin for the age in which he lived, alludes to this period in his country's history in a poem, one line of which is sometimes quoted, even now:—

Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.

"Time was, O Danes, we feared your gifts."

The great Danish poet, Œhlenschlæger, makes frequent allusions in the course of his epic, The Gods of the North, to the relations that once existed between Denmark and Ireland, and to the fact that his native land received from Ireland the custom of imbibing spirituous liquors in large quantities.

Hamlet's Irish parentage would naturally be concealed as much as possible by him, as it might prejudice his claims to the throne of Denmark; therefore we can hardly expect to find the ancient legend confirmed in the play, except in a casual manner. The free, outspoken, Irish nature would make itself known occasionally. Thus we find that when Horatio tells him that "there's no offence," he rebukes him with

"Yes, by St. Patrick, but there is, Horatio!"

There certainly needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us that no true-born Scandinavian would have sworn in an unguarded moment by the Apostle of Ireland. Again, when Hamlet thinks of killing his uncle, the wrongful king, he apostrophizes himself by the name which he probably bore when he assisted his father (whose death he wishes to avenge) in his shop in Jutland:—

"Now, might I do it, Pat, now he is praying."

Then, too, he speaks to Horatio of the "funeral baked meats" coldly furnishing forth the marriage table at his mother's second espousal. The custom of baking meats is as well known to be of Irish origin, as that of roasting them is to be peculiar to the northern nations of continental Europe.

The frequent allusions in the course of the play to drinking customs not only prove that Hamlet descended from that nation whose hospitality is its greatest fault, but that he and his family were far from being the refined and philosophic people some of the commentators would have us believe. Thus he promises his old companion,—

"We'll teach you to drink deep ere you depart,"—

which the most prejudiced person will freely allow to be truly a Corkonian phrase. This frailty of the family may be seen throughout the play. In the last scene, it is especially apparent. All the royal family of Denmark seem to have joined an intemperance society. The queen even, in spite of her husband's remonstrances, joins in the carousal. Hamlet, too, while he is dying, starts up on hearing Horatio say, "Here's yet some liquor left," and insists upon the cup being given to him. I know that it may be urged, on the other hand, that in the scene preceding the first appearance of the ghost before Hamlet, he indulges in some remarks which would prove him to have entertained sentiments becoming his compatriot, the noble Father Mathew. Speaking of the custom of draining down such frequent draughts of Rhenish, he pronounces it to his mind

"a custom

More honoured in the breach than the observance."

It must be remembered that the occasion on which this speech was uttered was a solemn one. Under such supernatural circumstances old Silenus or the King of Prussia himself might be pardoned for growing somewhat homiletic on the subject of temperance. The conclusion of this speech has given the commentators a fine chance to exercise their ingenuity.

"The dram of bale

Doth all the noble substance often doubt

To his own scandal."

They have called it the "dram of base," the "dram of eale," &c., and then have been as much in the dark as before. Some have thought that Shakespeare intended to have written it "the dram of Bale," as a sly hit at Dr. John Bale, the first Protestant Bishop of Ossory in Ireland, who was an unscrupulous dram-drinker as well as dramatist, for he wrote a play called "Kynge Johan," which was reprinted under the editorial care of my friend, Mr. J. O. Halliwell, by the Camden Society, in 1838. But this attempt to make it reflect upon the Ossory prelate is entirely uncalled for. A little research would have showed that bale was a liquor somewhat resembling our whiskey of the true R. G. brand, the consumption of which in the dram-shops of his country the Prince Hamlet so earnestly deplored. The great Danish philosopher, V. Scheerer Homboegger, in his autobiography, speaks of it, and says that like all the Danes he prefers it to either wine or ale, or water even: Der er vand, her er vun og oel,—men allested BAELE drikker saaledes de Dansker. (Autobiog. II. xiii. Ed. Copenhag.)