The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862

One minute past the appointed time master Hiram arrived, direct from the office, where he had been so immersed in accounts, head and hands so full of business, as almost to forget the tea-hour.

Yes, he came direct from the office. But previously he had stepped to his room, and without 'dressing up,' or apparently disturbing the usual arrangement of his wardrobe, managed to make himself especially presentable. In short, he had done just what Sarah Burns had done.

I wish you could have witnessed the meeting between them. You would have thought Hiram in the habit of going all his life to the house, instead of entering it for the first time. No forwardness, though, no assumption, yet entire freedom from awkwardness or embarrassment.

Sarah, on her part, received him with a pleasant lady-like greeting, quite unconscious, as we have already intimated, of having given Hiram any cause of offense.

Various topics were discussed: the condition of the Sunday-school, the health of the clergyman, the high water at Slab City, the lecture of the celebrated Charles Benjamin Bruce, the prospects of the Lyceum, the new town-hall.

Mr. Burns said but little. It was very unusual to see him engrossed with any business matter to the exclusion of social enjoyments. Was he thinking of business altogether? Occasionally and unconsciously his eye would glance from his daughter to Hiram and then back again. Little did he know, little could he guess what was passing in that crafty, scheming brain—else....

Mr. Burns was called out for a few moments just as tea was concluded.

'So,' exclaimed Sarah suddenly, 'you are going to New-York?'

'How do you know that?' returned Hiram.

'How do I know it? Are you not aware that I know every thing going on? I was very jealous of you at first.'

'Of me?'

'Yes, for depriving me of my situation.'

'You speak in riddles.'

'Did you not know I was father's 'confidential clerk' before you cut me out?'

'Indeed I did not. If I had, I should never have presumed to offer my services.'

'I suppose it was well you did. Some time I will tell you what I used to do. But father talks to me about every thing just as ever. Oh! I hope you can do something with that Mr. Joslin. Do you think you can?'

'I hope so; I shall try, and—(he hesitated, looked down, and blushed—consummate actor that he was)—'and all the harder now that I find you take such an interest in it.'

'Oh! thank you,' replied Sarah.

[There was the slightest perceptible hauteur in her tone, and the slightest perceptible drawing in from her previous pleasant, free manner—only the slightest.]

'For,' continued Hiram, lifting his eyes and looking at her boldly, as if not noticing the remark, 'if you take so much interest in my mission, you will be forced to feel some sort of interest in me.'

'If you succeed, why, I will say yes,' replied Sarah, with entire good humor. 'If you do not—'

'I accept the alternative,' interrupted Hiram, 'but do not forget your pledge.'

Here Mr. Burns came in, and the two proceeded at once to business. He did not see Sarah again.

It was at a late hour that Hiram left the house. With Mr. Burns's aid he had mastered the whole subject, accounts and all. He was happy. Once as he walked along he turned and cast his eyes up at the window. I do not like to think of the look which flitted across his face. He nodded significantly, and went on his way.

Louisa Hawkins opened the door for him the moment he put his foot on the step.

'Where have you been?' she whispered, 'I was so frightened. I persuaded them to go to bed. Did you think I would be waiting for you?'

'I was sure of it, Lily.'

'You were, weren't you?'

They went in and sat half an hour in the parlor together. But Hiram gave her no inkling of where he passed the evening.

The next day our hero started for New-York. Of his adventures there, and the result of his interview with Elihu Joslin, we will speak in another chapter.

KENTUCKY

The Dark and Bloody Ground of yore,Kentucky, thou art that once more.But where is he who gave the name—The Indian? Lost like meteor's flame!Gone, as the bandits soon shall be,Who brought the name again to thee!

LITERARY NOTICES

Life and Letters of Washington Irving. By Pierre Irving. Vol. II. New-York: G. P. Putnam. Boston: A. K. Loring. 1862.

We have perused this second volume of 'Irving's Life and Letters' with even greater relish than the first, and return sincere thanks to its editor for the zeal and skill shown in his work. Such compilations, when not very well done, are proverbially dull; it is therefore the highest compliment which we can pay to say that the work thus far is extremely interesting. We have in it, as in the brilliant memoir of some great man of the world, constantly recurring glimpses of world-wide celebrities, pictures of travel, bits of gossip of people in whom every body is interested, the whole interwoven with the kindliest and most genial traits of character. If Irving's works are essential to every library, it may be said with equal truth that the 'Life and Letters' are quite as inseparable from the works themselves.

Bayard Taylor's Works. Northern Travel. New-York: G. P. Putnam. Boston: A. K. Loring.

Within a few years the tide of English and of American travel has flown far more than of old over Scandinavia, a land so little known as to bear a prestige of strange mystery to many. Books of travel describing it are comparatively rare; it has not, like Germany or England, been 'done to death,' and the consequence is, that a good book describing it, like this of Taylor's, has a peculiar charm of freshness and of novelty. In it, as in every volume of his travels, Bayard Taylor gives us the impression that the country in question is his specialty and favorite, the result being a thoroughly genial account of all he saw. Readers not familiar with this series may be pleased to know that as regards typography, illustration, and binding, it is in all respects elegant, though furnished at an extremely moderate price.

Edwin Brothertoft. By Theodore Winthrop. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.

To a certain extent novels are like dishes; while there is no dispute as to the surpassing excellence of a few, the majority are prized differently, according to individual tastes. Public opinion has unanimously rated the Winthrop novels highly, some readers preferring 'Cecil Dreeme,' while to judge by the press, it would seem that 'Edwin Brothertoft' best pleases the majority. It is certainly a book of marked character, and full of good local historical color. The author had one great merit—he studied from life and truth, and did not rehash what he had read in other novels, as do the majority of story-tellers at the present day, when a romance which is not crammed with palpable apings of 'Jane Eyre' and 'Adam Bede' is becoming a rarity. In 'Edwin Brothertoft' we have a single incident—as in 'John Brent'—the rescue of a captive damsel by a dashing 'raid,' as the nucleus, around which are deftly woven in many incidents, characters, and scenes, all well set forth in the vigorous style of a young writer who was deeply interested in his own work. That he is sometimes rather weakly grotesque, as in his sporting with the negro dialect, which in the person of a servant he affects to discard and yet resumes, is a trifle. That he shows throughout the noblest sympathies and instincts of a gentleman, a philanthropist, and a cosmopolite is, however, something which can not be too highly praised, since it is these indications which lend a grace and a glory to all that Winthrop wrote. Noblesse oblige seems to have been the great consciousness of his nature, and he therefore presented in his life and writings that high type of a gentleman by birth and culture, who without lowering himself one whit, was a reformer, a progressive, yes, a 'radical' in all things where he conceived that the root to be extracted was a great truth.

In many things 'Edwin Brothertoft' is most appropriate to these our times, since its scenes are laid in that Revolutionary War for the cause of freedom, of which this of the present day is, in fact, a repetition. We feel in its every page the anxiety and interest of war, an American war for the right, sweeping along through trials and sorrows. To characterize it in few words, we may say that in it the author reminds us of Cooper, but displays more genius and life than Cooper ever did.

Out of His Head. By T. B. Aldrich. New-York. Carleton.

It is said that the 'grotesque' romance is going out of fashion; if this be so, the beautiful and quaint collection of interwoven fancies before us proves that in literature as in horticulture, the best blooms of certain species are of the latest. Strange, indeed, is the conception of this work—the fancied biography of one literally 'out of his head,' who imagines himself surrounded by a world of people who act very singularly. Madmen are never ordinary; therefore the writer has not, while setting forth the most extraordinary fancies, once transgressed the limits of the probable. This was a bold stroke of genius in the very inception, and it is developed with a subtle tact which can hardly fail to claim the cordial admiration of the most carping critic. It is true that in using the strange aberrations of a lunatic as material for romance, Aldrich has provoked comparison with some of the world's greatest writers; and it is to his credit that he has met them evenly, and that too without in any particular incurring the charge of plagiarism. But had the thema of the work been less ingenious or striking, its defects would have been unnoticed among the beautiful pictures, the unconscious breathings of poetry, and the sweet caprices which twine around the strange plot, as the tendrils and leaves of the vine cover over, yet indicate by their course the fantastic twinings of the parent vine. It is needless to say, that we commend this most agreeable work to our readers. We are glad to see that 'Père Antoine's Date Palm' which has attained so great a popularity, and several other fascinating tales by Aldrich, are incorporated into the present volume as the 'library' of the hero.

Les Miserables. III. Marius. By Victor Hugo. New-York: Carleton.

'Sure an' didn't I tell ye I was a poor scholar,' said the young Irish sham-student-beggar to the gentleman who refused him alms because he could not read. In the same strain, as it seems to us, Victor Hugo might reply to the wearied readers of these tales: 'Why, do they not call themselves miserable?' Miserable indeed is the 'Marius' installment now before us—a mere sensation plot, brilliantly patched here and there with the purpureus pannus, or purple rag of a bit of imperial or later history, 'coached' up for display, but falling lamentably into what under any other name would be called a gross imitation of Eugène Sue. The point of the present volume, to which its scenes tend, is, of course, a robber's den—a decoyed victim—the police in waiting, and a tremendous leap from a window—the whole suggesting Mr. Bourcicault's moral sensational drama, or rather its French originals, to an amusing extent. Still the genius of the author, always erratic, of course, is shown in more than one chapter. The trials and sufferings of 'Marius,' and his noble independence of character, as well as the peculiar and widely differing traits of his friends the students are set forth with great spirit, and with the intention of a good purpose. Victor Hugo is in all his works unequal unless we except 'Hans of Iceland,' which is completely trashy throughout; but he was never more so than in 'The Miserables.' We have spoken of this third part as though its first title were an illustration of the nomen et omen so much believed in of old. We may add that like the Mois of Alexandre Dumas, it has simply an s too much,

The Fly-ing Dutchman. By John Q. Saxe. Illustrated. New-York: Carleton. 1862.

An amusing little series of pictures, drawn and written, setting forth the accidents which befell a 'Dutchman' in catching a fly.

The Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough. With a Memoir. By Charles Eliot Norton. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.

Arthur Hugh Clough was an English gentleman of high university education and honors, and gifted with liberal and progressive views in politics, who, after distinguishing himself somewhat in his native land, resided for one year in this country as an instructor at Cambridge, Mass. On returning to England to take a place in the Education Department of the Privy Council, he wrote: 'I am rather unwilling to be re-Englished after once attaining that higher transatlantic development. However, il faut s'y soumettre, I presume, though I fear I am embarked in the foundering ship. I hope to heaven you'll get rid of slavery, and then I shouldn't fear but you would really 'go ahead' in the long run. As for us and our inveterate feudalism, it is not hopeful.'

It is needless to say that an English poet with such feelings must be, if not vigorous, liberal, and original, at least ambitious of becoming such, and this Clough is. A vigorous naturalism, such as is becoming half the religion and all the art of the scholars and thinkers of the present day, inspires every page. Truthful yet picturesque, he is more than pleasant to read, he is good to think, and most relishing to feel with. Had he been a meaner mind, he would have been a mere Adam Bede-ish pre-Raffaelite in word-painting—'the Bothie of Taber-na-vuolich,' the first poem in this volume is often photographic in its rural views, as well as in its characters. As it is, literal nature is to him material for fresh brave thought. Through all his poems, owing to this simple vigorous truth, and an innate sense of refinement, he rises head and shoulders above the 'sweet-pretty' Miss Nancy Coventry Patmores or spasmodic Alexander Smiths or other cotemporary English stuff of later poetry.

England has of late years deluged and wearied us so much with thousand times told tales of herself and her social life, and her writers have run so exceedingly in ruts, that there are few really thinking men in America who have not begun to tire woefully of her endless novels and worn-out poetry. We could write against the whole 'connu, connu,' and at the end a 'deliver us'—from evil it might be, certainly from no great temptation. Let the world believe it—it will some day—English thought is at present exhausted, stagnant, and imitative. It is cursed with mannerism, even as the Chinese are cursed, and every honest man of mind knows it. In such a state of national art it is cheerful to open a volume like these poems, in which one hears, as it were, the first lark-notes of an early dawn and sees from afar a few gleams of morning red. It is not the full light nor the great poetry which reforms and awakes nations, but it is the forerunner in many things of such, and will be read with great pleasure by those who long for some faint realization of the great Nature-Art of the future.

EDITOR'S TABLE

It is evident enough that all questions between North and South must settle themselves, should the war only go far enough. When it comes to the struggle for life; to the last most desperate effort on either side for political and personal existence, then people will begin to open their eyes to the fact that the one who conquers must conquer effectually, and hold the vanquished at utter will. Very few among us have as yet realized this extreme case as the nations of the Old World have done a thousand times. We who lived at home, have, looking at the late wars of Europe, imagined that 'the army' might beat or be beaten, but that 'the country' and the mass of its in-dwellers would remain unharmed. We have not seen cities captured, farms laid waste, and experienced the horrors of war. When it comes to that, the case becomes desperate, and nothing is left at last but unconditional victory or defeat. Had we done so, we should have 'gone to extremes.'

The South has begun the war, dared its terrors, encountered them, and become desperate. It is win or lose with them. We too, with every loss gather fresh strength. Ere long we shall probably have every man in the Federal Union capable of bearing arms summoned to the field, and that less by Executive command than by an individual sense of duty, or dread. Our people have learned very slowly indeed what disasters may befall them in case of defeat, but they are gradually coming to the knowledge, and are displaying a rapidly advancing energy of interest and of action. They have immediate and terrible disasters from hostile armies to repel, and they have to apprehend in the future such a picture of ruin and disorganization as the result of secession as no one can bear to contemplate. We are coming to it, and may as well make up our minds at once to the fact that it is to be a Southern rule in the North or 'Northern' rule over the South—if we may call that 'Northern' which means simply the principles of the Constitution as applied to all States, and of justice as recognized by all nations. He must be blind who can not see that it is to this extreme stage of war to the knife that we are rapidly advancing, and that its result is far more likely to be complete conquest than reconciliation.

The nations of Europe are waiting for the crisis of the fever to be passed before they intervene. The sympathy of England is in great measure with the South; yet England may well doubt the expediency of any partial interference. This tremendous North can yet send forth another million if needs must be, and still leave those who with tears in their eyes and stern resolve in their hearts would plant and weave and work to sustain the soldiers a-field. When it comes to this death-struggle—when we begin to live in the war and for the war alone—where can the foe be? They have long since sunk in great measure from the social condition of peace into that olden-time state of full war, when as in Sparta, or Rome, in her early days all things in life were done solely with reference to maintaining the army. With us it has been—is as yet—very different. The voice of the highly-paid opera-singer is still heard in our large cities—Newport and Saratoga never saw gayer seasons than those of 1862—splendor and luxury are still the life of thousands, and even yet there exists in the North a large political party who are so far from feeling that there is any desperation involved as to still dally and coquet with the political principles of the enemy, and talk largely of compromise. When it comes to the bitter end, those trivial, superficial, temporary men will, we believe, in most cases, be changed into good citizens, for necessity is a hard master.

For surely as we live it is approaching; the terrible struggle of rule or ruin, which so few have dared to anticipate. We have ever been so free from tremendous crises of life and death that even with a war devouring scores of thousands of our best men, very few have realized what we must come to with a brave and desperate foe. Union victories may defer such a struggle—and God grant that they have such result!—but in case they do not, what hope remains for our foe? They have fought well, they are willing to hang out the black flag; but what then? They have not and can not establish a real superiority of strength, and yet have voluntarily forced upon a stronger opponent a war which must become deadly.

The tremendous enthusiasm which spread over the country on the last day of August, 1862, was after all only an awakening. The extraordinary voluntary response to President Lincoln's calls for six hundred thousand men was merely a beginning. The South, in proportion to its strength did as much long ago. But the ball is rolling on and the storm grows more terrible. We have great trials, probably, still before us, but let no one despair. Out of our agony and our desperation must come victory—a dire and terrible victory it may be for us all—but it will be overwhelming, and after that victory there will be left no strength in the South to lift a hand.

And in those days the different principles involved in this war will have forced themselves so fiercely to a result that those who contended for them will seem to have acted almost as vainly as those who were such children as to resist them. What will become of the Negro if the South strives to the death, dragging the North down on and after it! What became of Serfdom during the Thirty Years' War and the other desperate and exhausting wars which followed it? What will become of Cotton if new markets are opened, as they must be? England has not realized, as we are beginning to do, that there is not, can not, and will not be a time, when both combatants, mutually wearied, must let go. Men do not weary of war; the new generation grows up fiercer than its fathers. The sooner England begins to plant her cotton in Jamaica, and Asia Minor and India, the better it will be for her. Unless we gain some extraordinary Union victories this autumn, there will be but little cotton planted next year in Dixie.

We are becoming too strong and fierce for intervention. These be the days of iron-clads and of great armies. Before England and France engage in war with a desperate nation like ours, it will be well to think twice. And we are not at the end yet.

Every man and woman in the North may as well, therefore, be warned betimes, and give all his and her aid to forwarding this war. It will not avail to be feeble, or lukewarm, or indifferent, to wish it well and do nothing, to give a little or dribble out mere kind wishes. Every one's property is at stake, or will be, and the sooner we go to work in right earnest the better. Had we one year ago done what we are even now doing—had we sprung up like a grizzly bear on a buffalo, and given it for its insolent kick a sudden, tremendous blow, tearing through its very heart, we should not have dragged out a year of doubt. It is our curse that we are always 'just a little' behind the enemy in enthusiasm. In due time we shall be in the struggle for life—the faster we advance, the better it will be for us.

On and on and on! We are marching on, and will we, nill we, must conquer or perish.

'Ye mountains that see us descend to the shoreMust view us as victors or view us no more!'

It is written that North-America is to rise purified, regenerated, and perfectly free from the most tremendous and probably exhaustive struggle in history. Believe it, you who live in it—premonitus, premunitus—'forewarned is to be forearmed.'

If President Lincoln were to call out every man in the North capable of bearing arms—according to medical judgment—between the ages of sixteen and sixty, there would be less difficulty in assembling them than in drafting a minority. If it were once realized that all must go, all would go, and with rare exceptions, right cheerfully. It is not so much the dread of battle and the trials of camp-life which keep men back as the idea that there should be any exempt. Unless the six hundred thousand be speedily brought into the field, and unless when once there, they secure us a speedy victory, the voice of the whole country will cry out for a general and unexcepted conscription.

And if so—why, then, hurrah for it! Let us show Europe and history how far a great nation can go for a great truth and for its rights. Why should we not all arise in tremendous power as whole races rose of old, and trample to the dust this insolent, slaveholding, liberty-defying foe to us and to the holiest rights of man? Such an uprising would be worthy of us—it would rank as the noblest deed of history—it would cast fresh lustre on the name, already great, of our noble President—it would be unparalleled in grandeur, in daring, and in majesty. Its very greatness would thrill the people and inspire them to do each man his utmost. Hurrah for the onward march of the millions!

Watch the times well, Father Abraham—and the instant that the time comes, call for us all. You are not afraid of great measures—neither are your people. What a thing it would be to have led such a movement—what a glory it would be for every man who marched in the great uprising.