No More Learning

7351 (#145) ###########################################

7351
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
(1824-)
M
Y LITERARY life, such as it has been," writes Colonel Higgin-
son, "affords no lesson greatly worth recording, unless it
be the facility with which a taste for books may be trans-
mitted and accumulated from one generation to another, and then
developed into a lifelong pursuit by a literary environment. To go no
further back, my paternal ancestors in America were Puritan clergy-
men, who wrote many books, a few of which are still quoted. .
My father wrote several pamphlets, and my mother some children's
books, in one or two of which I figured; my
eldest brother wrote a little book against
slavery. All this must surely have been
enough to guarantee a little infusion of
printer's ink into my blood. Then as to
externals: my father, having lost a mod-
erate fortune by Jefferson's embargo, came
to Cambridge [Massachusetts] and became
-steward- or, as it is now called, bursar
of Harvard College. He built a house, in
which I was born, at the head of a street
then called Professors' Row, because so
many professors lived on it.
"I was thus born and cradled within THOMAS W. HIGGINSON

the college atmosphere, and amid a world
of books and bookish men, the list of these last including many
since famous who were familiar visitors at our house.
My
first nurse, if not a poet, was the theme of poetry, being one Rowena
Pratt, the wife of Longfellow's Village Blacksmith'; and no doubt
her singing made the heart of her young charge rejoice, as when she
sang in that Paradise to which the poet has raised her. Later I
'tumbled about in a library,' as Holmes recommends, and in the
self-same library where he practiced the like gymnastics.
At
home the process could be repeated in a comfortable library of Queen
Anne literature in delightful little old-fashioned editions, in which I
began to browse as soon as the period of 'Sandford and Merton' and
Miss Edgeworth's 'Frank' had passed.
"It passed early, for it was the custom in those days to teach
children to read, and sometimes to write, before they were four years
•


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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7352
old- -a practice now happily discontinued. Another more desirable
custom prevailed in the household, for my mother read aloud a great
deal in the evening; and I thus became familiar with Scott's novels,
as I sat gazing in the fire or lay stretched in delicious indolence upon
the hearth-rug. . . . Lowell and Story were my schoolmates, though
five years older; and when to all this early circle of literary per-
sons was added the unconscious weight of academic influence behind,
with all the quaint bookish characteristics of that earlier Cambridge, it
will be seen that merely to have lived in such a milieu was the begin-
ning of a literary training. This must be my justification for dwell-
ing on items which would otherwise be without interest to any one
but myself: they indicate the class of influences which not only made
a writer out of me, but accomplished a similar result for Hedge,
Holmes, Margaret Fuller, Lowell, and Norton.
"My father's financial losses secured for me a valuable combina-
tion of circumstances-the tradition of social refinement united with
the practice of economy. This last point was further emphasized by
his death when I was ten years old; and I, as the youngest of a
large family, was left to be brought up mainly by women, and for-
tunately by those whom I was accustomed to seeing treated with
intellectual respect by prominent men. Their influence happily coun-
teracted a part of that received from an exceedingly rough school to
which I was sent at eight years old.
"At thirteen I entered Harvard College, being already very tall
for my age and of mature appearance, with some precocity of intel-
lect and a corresponding immaturity of character. . . . I graduated
at about the time when young men now enter college-seventeen
and a half years; and spent two years in teaching before I came
back for post-graduate studies to Cambridge. Those two years were
perhaps the most important in my life. Most of them were passed
in the family of a cousin. . . . All my experience of college
instructors had given me no such personal influence as that of my
cousin, and it so fell in with the tendencies of that seething period —
the epoch of Brook Farm, of receding Transcendentalism, of dawning
Fourierism that it simply developed more methodically what would
probably have come at any rate.
When I came to him I
had begun the study of the law, and all my ambition lay that way;
but his unconscious attrition, combined with the prevailing tenden-
cies of the time, turned me from that pursuit and from all 'bread
studies, as they used to be called, toward literature and humani-
tarian interests.
·
"I came back to Cambridge expecting to fit myself for some
professorship in philology, or metaphysics, or natural science. Not
knowing exactly what the result would be, I devoted two happy


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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7353
years to an immense diversity of reading, in which German litera-
ture on the whole predominated. . . . Circumstances and influences
drew me at last aside to the liberal ministry; a thing which I have
never regretted, though it occupied me only temporarily, and I grav-
itated back to literature at last. "
These fragments of a sketch which Colonel Higginson wrote for
the Forum in 1886 clearly forecast the general character of his life;
but they do not adequately indicate the humanity and the benevolent
sympathy with the oppressed which have given that life its crowning
grace. After leaving the theological school in 1847, he was settled
over the first religious society of Newburyport. He became not long
after-in 1850-a candidate for Congress on the Free Soil ticket.
After his defeat, his antislavery principles having become distasteful
to his parish, he resigned his charge and undertook the ministry of
the Free Church at Worcester. The year following this settlement,—
that is, in 1853,- he was at the head of the body of men who attacked
the Boston court-house for the rescue of Anthony Burns the fugitive
slave. He played a manful part throughout the political imbroglio
which preceded the Civil War, and in 1856 assisted in forming Free
State emigrant parties for Kansas. Journeying to the very heart of
the turbulent district, he served as a soldier with the free settlers
against the pro-slavery invaders from Missouri. In 1858 he retired
from the ministry and devoted himself to literature. 'Thalatta,' a
collection of verse relating to the sea, to which he contributed and
which he in part edited, was published in 1853.
Immediately following the outbreak of the Civil War, Mr. Higgin-
son recruited several companies of Massachusetts volunteers, and in
1862 organized the regiment of South Carolina volunteers, the first
regiment of blacks mustered into the Federal service. With such
crude soldiery he made raids into the interior, at one time penetrat-
ing so far south as Florida, and capturing Jacksonville. In 1864 he
retired from service on account of general debility caused by a
wound. Some years later he removed from Newport to his birth-
place, Cambridge, where he established a permanent home. In 1880-81
he was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives,
and in 1889 was made State military and naval historian.
Higginson's identification with nearly every movement of his time
looking to the amelioration of human life has been complete, and
he has never been backward in declaring his adherence during the
unpopular phases of the questions; such, for instance, as concern slav-
ery, and the right of women to make the most of themselves always
and everywhere. His sympathies with the questions involved in the
latter issue, in fact, the justice of giving to women higher educa-
tion, equal opportunities with men in the business world, and political


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7354
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
enfranchisement,- have given rise to many of his happiest and most
popular essays. It is as an essayist that he is best known. The ele-
gance of his style, the precision and finish of his diction, and his high
obedience to art, are not unfair evidence that Addison and his Spec-
tator had a permanent influence over the youthful mind, in the com-
fortable library of Queen Anne literature of which he speaks in the
fragments quoted above. His amenity of manner, grace of feeling,
and gleaming humor, belong wholly to our own half of the nineteenth
century; and the very essence of Queen Anne's age of wigs — an
artificiality that covered and concealed nature-is replaced in him
by a sane and simple naturalness.
Colonel Higginson's published volumes are numerous; but nearly
all are collections of essays, in which literature, outdoor life, history,
and heroic philanthropy in a wide sense, furnish the chief themes.
'Army Life in a Black Regiment' may be regarded as a chapter of
autobiography, or as a memorable leaf in the story of the great
Civil War. His romance Malbone' is largely a transcript from act-
ual life, the chief character being drawn from the same friend of
Higginson who figures as Densdeth in Winthrop's 'Cecil Dreeme. '
The Life of Margaret Fuller,' again, was a labor of love, a tribute
of loyalty to a woman who had most vitally influenced his early
years. His translation of Epictetus may be explained in a somewhat
similar fashion. The volume of his verse is small, and includes no
ambitious creative work. He is lyric in quality, and has a tender-
ness, purity, and simplicity which endear his verse to some readers
for whom his exquisitely elaborated prose is less effective.
In the Atlantic Monthly for 1897 Colonel Higginson publishes his
memoirs, under the happily characteristic title, 'Cheerful Yesterdays. '
MY OUTDOOR STUDY
Copyright 1863, by Ticknor & Fields. Reprinted by
permission of Longmans, Green & Co. , publishers, New York
From Outdoor Papers.
E
VERY summer I launch my boat to seek some realm of en-
chantment beyond all the sordidness and sorrow of earth,
and never yet did I fail to ripple with my prow at least the
outskirts of those magic waters. What spell has fame or wealth
to enrich this midday blessedness with a joy the more? Yonder
barefoot boy, as he drifts silently in his punt beneath the droop-
ing branches of yonder vine-clad bank, has a bliss which no Astor
can buy with money, no Seward conquer with votes,— which yet


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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7355
is no monopoly of his, and to which time and experience only add
a more subtile and conscious charm. The rich years were given
us to increase, not to impair, these cheap felicities. Sad or sinful
is the life of that man who finds not the heavens bluer and the
waves more musical in maturity than in childhood. Time is a
severe alembic of youthful joys, no doubt: we exhaust book after
book, and leave Shakespeare unopened; we grow fastidious in
men and women; all the rhetoric, all the logic, we fancy we have
heard before; we have seen the pictures, we have listened to the
symphonies: but what has been done by all the art and literature
of the world towards describing one summer day? The most
exhausting effort brings us no nearer to it than to the blue sky
which is its dome; our words are shot up against it like arrows,
and fall back helpless. Literary amateurs go the tour of the
globe to renew their stock of materials, when they do not yet
know a bird or a bee or a blossom beside their homestead door;
and in the hour of their greatest success they have not a horizon
to their life so large as that of yon boy in his punt. All that
is purchasable in the capitals of the world is not to be weighed
in comparison with the simple enjoyment that may be crowded
into one hour of sunshine. What can place or power do here?
"Who could be before me, though the palace of Cæsar cracked
and split with emperors, while I, sitting in silence on a cliff of
Rhodes, watched the sun as he swung his golden censer athwart
the heavens? "
It is pleasant to observe a sort of confused and latent recog-
nition of all this in the instinctive sympathy which is always.
rendered to any indication of outdoor pursuits. How cordially
one sees the eyes of all travelers turn to the man who enters the
railroad station with a fowling-piece in hand, or the boy with
water-lilies! There is a momentary sensation of the freedom of
the woods, a whiff of oxygen for the anxious money-changers.
How agreeable sounds the news-to all but his creditors — that
the lawyer or the merchant has locked his office door and gone
fishing! The American temperament needs at this moment noth-
ing so much as that wholesome training of semi-rural life which
reared Hampden and Cromwell to assume at one grasp the sov-
ereignty of England, and which has ever since served as the
foundation of England's greatest ability. The best thoughts and
purposes seem ordained to come to human beings beneath the
open sky, as the ancients fabled that Pan found the goddess


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7356
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
Ceres when he was engaged in the chase, whom no other of
the gods could find when seeking seriously. The little I have
gained from colleges and libraries has certainly not worn so
well as the little I learned in childhood of the habits of plant,
bird, and insect. That "weight and sanity of thought" which
Coleridge so finely makes the crowning attribute of Wordsworth,
is in no way so well matured and cultivated as in the society of
Nature.
There may be extremes and affectations, and Mary Lamb de-
clared that Wordsworth held it doubtful if a dweller in towns had
a soul to be saved. During the various phases of transcendental
idealism among ourselves in the last twenty years, the love of
Nature has at times assumed an exaggerated and even a pathetic.
aspect, in the morbid attempts of youths and maidens to make it
a substitute for vigorous thought and action,-a lion endeavoring
to dine on grass and green leaves. In some cases this mental
chlorosis reached such a height as almost to nauseate one with
Nature, when in the society of the victims; and surfeited com-
panions felt inclined to rush to the treadmill immediately, or get
chosen on the board of selectmen, or plunge into any conceivable
drudgery, in order to feel that there was still work enough in
the universe to keep it sound and healthy. But this, after all,
was exceptional and transitory; and our American life still needs
beyond all things else the more habitual cultivation of outdoor
habits.
Probably the direct ethical influence of natural objects may be
overrated. Nature is not didactic, but simply healthy. She helps
everything to its legitimate development, but applies no goads,
and forces on us no sharp distinctions. Her wonderful calmness,
refreshing the whole soul, must aid both conscience and intellect
in the end, but sometimes lulls both temporarily, when immediate
issues are pending. The waterfall cheers and purifies infinitely,
but it marks no moments, has no reproaches for indolence, forces.
to no immediate decision, offers unbounded to-morrows; and the
man of action must tear himself away when the time comes, since
the work will not be done for him. "The natural day is very
calm, and will hardly reprove our indolence. "
And yet, the more bent any man is upon action, the more
profoundly he needs this very calmness of Nature to preserve his
equilibrium. The radical himself needs nothing so much as fresh
The world is called conservative, but it is far easier to
air.


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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7357
impress a plausible thought on the complaisance of others than to
retain an unfaltering faith in it for ourselves. The most dogged
reformer mistrusts himself every little while, and says inwardly,
like Luther, "Art thou alone wise? " So he is compelled to exag-
gerate, in the effort to hold his own. The community is bored
by the conceit and egotism of the innovators; so it is by that of
poets and artists, orators and statesmen: but if we knew how
heavily ballasted all these poor fellows need to be, to keep an
even keel amid so many conflicting tempests of blame and praise,
we should hardly reproach them. But the simple enjoyments of
outdoor life, costing next to nothing, tend to equalize all vexa-
tions. What matter if the governor removes you from office? he
cannot remove you from the lake; and if readers or customers
will not bite, the pickerel will. We must keep busy, of course;
yet we cannot transform the world except very slowly, and we
can best preserve our patience in the society of Nature, who does
her work almost as imperceptibly as we.
And for literary training especially, the influence of natural
beauty is simply priceless. Under the present educational sys-
tems, we need grammars and languages far less than a more
thorough outdoor experience. On this flowery bank, on this
ripple-marked shore, are the true literary models.
How many
living authors have ever attained to writing a single page which
could be for one moment compared, for the simplicity and grace
of its structure, with this green spray of wild woodbine or yon-
der white wreath of blossoming clematis? A finely organized
sentence should throb and palpitate like the most delicate vibra-
tions of the summer air. We talk of literature as if it were a
mere matter of rule and measurement, a series of processes long
since brought to mechanical perfection: but it would be less in-
correct to say that it all lies in the future; tried by the outdoor
standard, there is as yet no literature, but only glimpses and
guideboards; no writer has yet succeeded in sustaining, through
more than some single occasional sentence, that fresh and perfect
charm. If by the training of a lifetime one could succeed in
producing one continuous page of perfect cadence, it would be
a life well spent; and such a literary artist would fall short of
Nature's standard in quantity only, not in quality.
It is one sign of our weakness, also, that we commonly assume
Nature to be a rather fragile and merely ornamental thing, and
suited for a model of the graces only. But her seductive softness


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7358
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
is the last climax of magnificent strength. The same mathe-
matical law winds the leaves around the stem and the planets
around the sun. The same law of crystallization rules the slight-
knit snowflake and the hard foundations of the earth. The thistle-
down floats secure upon the summer zephyrs that are woven into
the tornado. The dewdrop holds within its transparent cell the
same electric fire which charges the thunder-cloud. In the softest
tree or the airiest waterfall, the fundamental lines are as lithe
and muscular as the crouching haunches of a leopard; and with-
out a pencil vigorous enough to render these, no mere mass of
foam or foliage, however exquisitely finished, can tell the story.
Lightness of touch is the crowning test of power.
Yet Nature does not work by single spasms only. That chest-
nut spray is not an isolated and exhaustive effort of creative
beauty: look upward and see its sisters rise with pile above pile
of fresh and stately verdure, till tree meets sky in a dome of
glorious blossom, the whole as perfect as the parts, the least part
as perfect as the whole. Studying the details, it seems as if
Nature were a series of costly fragments with no coherency; as
if she would never encourage us to do anything systematically,
would tolerate no method but her own, and yet had none of her
own; were as abrupt in her transitions from oak to maple as the
heroine who went into the garden to cut a cabbage-leaf to make
an apple-pie: while yet there is no conceivable human logic so
close and inexorable as her connections. How rigid, how flexible
are, for instance, the laws of perspective! If one could learn to
make his statements as firm and unswerving as the horizon line;
his continuity of thought as marked, yet as unbroken, as yon-
der soft gradations by which the eye is lured upward from lake
to wood, from wood to hill, from hill to heavens,- what more
bracing tonic could literary culture demand? As it is, Art misses
the parts, yet does not grasp the whole.
Literature also learns from Nature the use of materials: either
to select only the choicest and rarest, or to transmute coarse to
fine by skill in using. How perfect is the delicacy with which
the woods and fields are kept throughout the year! All these
millions of living creatures born every season, and born to die;
yet where are the dead bodies? We never see them. Buried
beneath the earth by tiny nightly sextons, sunk beneath the
waters, dissolved into the air, or distilled again and again as food
for other organizations,-all have had their swift resurrection.


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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7359
Their existence blooms again in these violet-petals, glitters in the
burnished beauty of these golden beetles, or enriches the veery's
song. It is only out of doors that even death and decay become
beautiful. The model farm, the most luxurious house, have their
regions of unsightliness; but the fine chemistry of Nature is
constantly clearing away all its impurities before our eyes, and
yet so delicately that we never suspect the process. The most
exquisite work of literary art exhibits a certain crudeness and
coarseness when we turn to it from Nature, as the smallest
cambric-needle appears rough and jagged when compared through
the magnifier with the tapering fineness of the insect's sting.
Once separated from Nature, literature recedes into meta-
physics or dwindles into novels. How ignoble seems the current
material of London literary life, for instance, compared with the
noble simplicity which, a half-century ago, made the Lake Coun-
try an enchanted land forever! Is it worth a voyage to England
to sup with Thackeray in the Pot Tavern? Compare the "enor-
mity of pleasure" which De Quincey says Wordsworth derived
from the simplest natural object, with the serious protest of
Wilkie Collins against the affectation of caring about Nature at
all. "Is it not strange," says this most unhappy man, "to see
how little real hold the objects of the natural world amidst which
we live can gain on our hearts and minds? We go to Nature
for comfort in joy and sympathy in trouble, only in books.
What share have the attractions of Nature ever had in the
pleasurable or painful interests and emotions of ourselves or our
friends? . . . There is surely a reason for this want of inborn
sympathy between the creature and the creation around it. ”
·
THE SCENES AND THE ACTORS
From Mademoiselle's Campaigns,' in 'Atlantic Essays. Copyright 1871, by
J. R. Osgood & Co. Reprinted by permission of Longmans, Green &
Co. , publishers, New York.
HE heroine of this tale is one so famous in history that her
THE
proper name never appears in it. The seeming paradox
is the soberest fact. To us Americans, glory lies in the
abundant display of one's personal appellation in the news-
papers. Our heroine lived in the most gossiping of all ages,
herself its greatest gossip; yet her own name, patronymic or


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7360
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
baptismal, never was talked about. It was not that she sunk
that name beneath high-sounding titles; she only elevated the
most commonplace of all titles till she monopolized it and it
monopolized her. Anne Marie Louise d'Orléans, Souveraine de
Dombes, Princesse Dauphine d'Auvergne, Duchesse de Mont-
pensier, is forgotten, or rather was never remembered; but the
great name of MADEMOISELLE, La Grande Mademoiselle, gleams
like a golden thread shot through and through that gorgeous
tapestry of crimson and purple which records for us the age of
Louis Quatorze.
In May of the year 1627, while the slow tide of events was
drawing Charles I. toward his scaffold,-while Sir John Eliot
was awaiting in the Tower of London the summoning of the
Third Parliament,- while the troops of Buckingham lay dying,
without an enemy, upon the Isle of Rhé,- at the very crisis of
the terrible siege of Rochelle, and perhaps during the very hour
when the Three Guardsmen of Dumas held that famous bastion
against an army, the heroine of our story was born. And she,
like the Three Guardsmen, waited till twenty years after for a
career.
The twenty years are over. Richelieu is dead. The strong-
est will that ever ruled France has passed away; and the poor
broken King has hunted his last badger at St. Germain, and then
meekly followed his master to the grave, as he has always fol-
lowed him. Louis XIII. , called Louis le Juste, not from the
predominance of that particular virtue (or any other) in his char-
acter, but simply because he happened to be born under the
constellation of the Scales, has died like a Frenchman, in peace
with all the world except his wife. That beautiful and queenly
wife, called Anne of Austria (though a Spaniard),- no longer the
wild and passionate girl who fascinated Buckingham and em-
broiled two kingdoms,- has hastened within four days to defy
all the dying imprecations of her husband, by reversing every
plan and every appointment he has made. The little prince has
already shown all the Grand Monarque in his childish "Je suis
Louis Quatorze," and has been carried in his bib to hold his first.
Parliament. That Parliament, heroic as its English contempo-
rary, though less successful, has reached the point of revolution at
last. Civil war is impending. Condé, at twenty-one the great-
est general in Europe, after changing sides a hundred times in
a week is fixed at last. Turenne is arrayed against him. The


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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7361
The per-
young, the brave, the beautiful cluster around them.
formers are drawn up in line, the curtain rises, - the play is
'The Wars of the Fronde,'-and into that brilliant arena, like
some fair circus equestrian, gay, spangled, and daring, rides
Mademoiselle.
Almost all French historians, from Voltaire to Cousin (St.
Aulaire being the chief exception), speak lightly of the Wars of
the Fronde. "La Fronde n'est pas
>>>>
sérieuse. Of course it was
not.
Had it been wholly serious, it would not have been wholly
French. Of course French insurrections, like French despotisms,
have always been tempered by epigrams; of course the people
went out to the conflicts in ribbons and feathers; of course over
every battle there pelted down a shower of satire, like the rain
at the Eglinton tournament.
More than two hundred pamphlets
rattled on the head of Condé alone, and the collection of Mazarin-
ades, preserved by the Cardinal himself, fills sixty-nine volumes
in quarto. From every field the first crop was glory, the second
a bon-mot. When the dagger of De Retz fell from his breast
pocket, it was "our good archbishop's breviary"; and when his
famous Corinthian troop was defeated in battle, it was "the First
Epistle to the Corinthians. " While, across the Channel, Charles
Stuart was listening to his doom, Paris was gay in the midst of
dangers, Madame de Longueville was receiving her gallants in
mimic court at the Hôtel de Ville, De Retz was wearing his
sword-belt over his archbishop's gown, the little hunchback Conti
was generalissimo, and the starving people were pillaging Maza-
rin's library, in joke, "to find something to gnaw upon. " Outside
the walls, the maids of honor were quarreling over the straw
beds which annihilated all the romance of martyrdom, and Condé,
with five thousand men, was besieging five hundred thousand.
No matter, they all laughed through it, and through every suc-
ceeding turn of the kaleidoscope; and the "Anything may happen.
in France," with which La Rochefoucauld jumped amicably into
the carriage of his mortal enemy, was not only the first and best
of his maxims, but the keynote of French history for all coming
time.
But behind all this sport, as in all the annals of the nation,
were mysteries and terrors and crimes. It was the age of caba-
listic ciphers, like that of De Retz, of which Guy Joli dreamed
the solution; of inexplicable secrets, like the Man in the Iron
Mask, whereof no solution was ever dreamed; of poisons, like
XIII-461


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7362
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
that diamond dust which in six hours transformed the fresh
beauty of the Princess Royal into foul decay; of dungeons, like
that cell at Vincennes which Madame de Rambouillet pronounced
to be "worth its weight in arsenic. " War or peace hung on the
color of a ball dress, and Madame de Chevreuse knew which
party was coming uppermost by observing whether the binding
of Madame de Hautefort's prayer-book was red or green. Per-
haps it was all a little theatrical, but the performers were all
Rachels.
And behind the crimes and the frivolities stood the Parlia-
ments, calm and undaunted, with leaders like Molé and Talon,
who needed nothing but success to make their names as grand
in history as those of Pym and Hampden. Among the Brienne
Papers in the British Museum there is a collection of the mani-
festoes and proclamations of that time; and they are earnest,
eloquent, and powerful, from beginning to end. Lord Mahon
alone among historians, so far as my knowledge goes, has done
fit and full justice to the French Parliaments; those assemblies
which refused admission to the foreign armies which the nobles
would gladly have summoned in, but fed and protected the ban-
ished princesses of England, when the court party had left
those descendants of the Bourbons to die of cold and hunger in
the palace of their ancestors. And we have the testimony of
Henrietta Maria herself, the only person who had seen both
revolutions near at hand, that "the troubles in England never
appeared so formidable in their early days, nor were the leaders
of the revolutionary party so ardent or so united. " The charac-
ter of the agitation was no more to be judged by its jokes and
epigrams, than the gloomy glory of the English Puritans by the
grotesque names of their saints, or the stern resolution of the
Dutch burghers by their guilds of rhetoric and symbolical melo-
drama.
But popular power was not yet developed in France, as it was
in England; all social order was unsettled and changing, and
well Mazarin knew it. He knew the pieces with which he played
his game of chess: the king powerless, the queen mighty, the
bishops unable to take a single straightforward move, and the
knights going naturally zigzag; with a host of plebeian pawns,
every one fit for a possible royalty, and therefore to be used
shrewdly, or else annihilated as soon as practicable. True, the
game would not last forever; but after him the Deluge.


## p. 7363 (#157) ###########################################

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7363
six
Our age has forgotten even the meaning of the word "Fronde ";
but here also the French and Flemish histories run parallel, and
the Frondeurs, like the Gueux, were children of a sarcasm. The
Counselor Bachaumont one day ridiculed insurrectionists as re-
sembling the boys who played with slings (frondes) about the
streets of Paris, but scattered at the first glimpse of a policeman.
The phrase organized the party. Next morning all fashions were
à la fronde, hats, gloves, fans, bread, and ballads; and it cost
ears of civil war to pay for the Counselor's facetiousness.
That which was, after all, the most remarkable characteristic
of these wars might be guessed from this fact about the fashions.
The Fronde was pre-eminently "the War of the Ladies. " Edu-
cated far beyond the Englishwomen of their time, they took a
controlling share, sometimes ignoble, often noble, always power-
ful, in the affairs of the time. It was not merely a courtly gal-
lantry which flattered them with a hollow importance. De Retz,
in his 'Memoirs,' compares the women of his age with Elizabeth
of England. A Spanish ambassador once congratulated Mazarin
on obtaining temporary repose. "You are mistaken," he replied:
"there is no repose in France, for I have always women to con-
tend with. In Spain, women have only love affairs to employ
them; but here we have three who are capable of governing
or overthrowing great kingdoms,-the Duchesse de Longueville,
the Princesse Palatine, and the Duchesse de Chevreuse. " And
there were others as great as these; and the women who for
years outwitted Mazarin and outgeneraled Condé are deserving of
a stronger praise than they have yet obtained, even from the
classic and courtly Cousin.
What men of that age eclipsed or equaled the address and
daring of those delicate and high-born women? What a romance
was their ordinary existence! The Princesse Palatine gave ref-
uge to Madame de Longueville when that alone saved her from
sharing the imprisonment of her brothers Condé and Conti,-
then fled for her own life, by night, with Rochefoucauld. Madame
de Longueville herself, pursued afterwards by the royal troops,
wished to embark in a little boat, on a dangerous shore, during
a midnight storm so wild that not a fisherman could at first be
found to venture forth; the beautiful fugitive threatened and
implored till they consented; the sailor who bore her in his arms
to the boat let her fall amid the furious surges; she was dragged
senseless to the shore again, and on the instant of reviving,


## p. 7364 (#158) ###########################################

7364
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
demanded to repeat the experiment; but as they utterly refused,
she rode inland beneath the tempest, and traveled for fourteen
nights before she could find another place of embarkation.
Madame de Chevreuse rode with one attendant from Paris
to Madrid, fleeing from Richelieu, remaining day and night on
her horse, attracting perilous admiration by the womanly loveli-
ness which no male attire could obscure. From Spain she went
to England, organizing there the French exiles into a strength
which frightened Richelieu; thence to Holland, to conspire nearer
home; back to Paris, on the minister's death, to form the faction.
of the Importants; and when the Duke of Beaufort was impris-
oned, Mazarin said, "Of what use to cut off the arms while
the head remains? " Ten years from her first perilous escape,
she made a second: dashed through La Vendée, embarked at St.
Malo for Dunkirk, was captured by the fleet of the Parliament,
was released by the governor of the Isle of Wight, unable to
imprison so beautiful a butterfly, reached her port at last, and in
a few weeks was intriguing at Liège again.
The Duchesse de Bouillon, Turenne's sister, purer than those
we have named, but not less daring or determined, after charm-
ing the whole population of Paris by her rebel beauty at the
Hôtel de Ville, escaped from her sudden incarceration by walk-
ing through the midst of her guards at dusk, crouching in the
shadow of her little daughter, and afterwards allowed herself to
be recaptured rather than desert that child's sick-bed.
Then there was Clémence de Maille, purest and noblest of all,
niece of Richelieu and hapless wife of the cruel ingrate Condé,
his equal in daring and his superior in every other high quality.
Married while a child still playing with her dolls, and sent at
once to a convent to learn to read and write, she became a
woman the instant her husband became a captive; while he
watered his pinks in the garden at Vincennes, she went through
France and raised an army for his relief. Her means were as
noble as her ends. She would not surrender the humblest of her
friends to an enemy, nor suffer the massacre of her worst enemy
by a friend. She threw herself between the fire of two hostile
parties at Bordeaux, and while men were falling each side of
her, compelled them to peace. Her deeds rang through Europe.
When she sailed from Bordeaux for Paris at last, thirty thou-
sand people assembled to bid her farewell. She was loved and
admired by all the world, except that husband for whom she dared


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THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7365
so much and the Archbishop of Caen. The respectable arch-
bishop complained that "this lady did not prove that she had
been authorized by her husband,- an essential provision, without
which no woman can act in law. " And Condé himself, whose
heart, physically twice as large as other men's, was spiritually
imperceptible, repaid this stainless nobleness by years of perse-
cution, and bequeathed her as a lifelong prisoner to his dastard
son.
•
Then on the royal side there was Anne of Austria, sufficient
unto herself,-Queen Regent, and every inch a queen (before
all but Mazarin) from the moment when the mob of Paris filed
through the chamber of the boy king, during his pretended sleep,
and the motionless and stately mother held back the crimson
draperies with the same lovely arm that had waved perilous
farewells to Buckingham, to the day when the news of the
fatal battle of Gien came to her in her dressing-room, and
"she remained undisturbed before the mirror, not neglecting the
arrangement of a single curl. "
In short, every woman who took part in the Ladies' War
became heroic,- from Marguerite of Lorraine, who snatched the
pen from her weak husband's hand and gave De Retz the order
for the first insurrection, down to the wife of the commandant.
of the Porte St. Roche, who, springing from her bed to obey
that order, made the drums beat to arms and secured the barrier;
and fitly, amid adventurous days like these, opened the career of
Mademoiselle.
THE FIRST CAMPAIGN
GRANDCHILD Of Henri Quatre, niece of Louis XIII. , cousin of
Louis XIV. , first princess of the blood, and with the largest income.
in the nation (500,000 livres) to support these dignities, Made-
moiselle was certainly born in the purple. Her autobiography
admits us to very gorgeous company; the stream of her personal
recollections is a perfect Pactolus. There is almost a surfeit of
royalty in it; every card is a court card, and all her counters
are counts. "I wore at this festival all the crown jewels of
France, and also those of the Queen of England. " "A far greater
establishment was assigned to me than any fille de France had
ever had, not excepting any of my aunts, the Queens of England
and of Spain, and the Duchess of Savoy. " "The Queen, my
grandmother, gave me as a governess the same lady who had


## p. 7366 (#160) ###########################################

7366
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
been governess to the late King. " Pageant or funeral, it is the
same thing. "In the midst of these festivities we heard of the
death of the King of Spain; whereat the queens were greatly
afflicted, and we all went into mourning. " Thus, throughout,
her 'Memoirs' glitter like the coat with which the splendid
Buckingham astonished the cheaper chivalry of France: they
drop diamonds.
But for any personal career Mademoiselle found at first no
opportunity, in the earlier years of the Fronde. A gay, fearless,
flattered girl, she simply shared the fortunes of the court; laughed
at the festivals in the palace, laughed at the ominous insurrec-
tions in the streets; laughed when the people cheered her, their
pet princess; and when the royal party fled from Paris, she
adroitly secured for herself the best straw bed at St. Germain,
and laughed louder than ever. She despised the courtiers who
flattered her; secretly admired her young cousin Condé, whom
she affected to despise; danced when the court danced, and ran
away when it mourned. She made all manner of fun of her
English lover, the future Charles II. , whom she alone of all the
world found bashful; and in general she wasted the golden hours
with much excellent fooling. Nor would she perhaps ever have
found herself a heroine, but that her respectable father was a
poltroon.
Lord Mahon ventures to assert that Gaston, Duke of Orléans,
was "the most cowardly prince of whom history makes mention. "
A strong expression, but perhaps safe. Holding the most power-
ful position in the nation, he never came upon the scene but to
commit some new act of ingenious pusillanimity; while, by some
extraordinary chance, every woman of his immediate kindred was
a natural heroine, and became more heroic through disgust at
him. His wife was Marguerite of Lorraine, who originated the
first Fronde insurrection; his daughter turned the scale of the
second. Yet personally he not only had not the courage to act,
but had not the courage to abstain from acting: he could no
more keep out of parties than in them, but was always busy,
waging war in spite of Mars and negotiating in spite of Minerva.
And when the second war of the Fronde broke out, it was
in spite of himself that he gave his name and his daughter to
the popular cause. When the fate of the two nations hung trem-
bling in the balance, the royal army under Turenne advancing
on Paris, and almost arrived at the city of Orléans, and that city


## p. 7367 (#161) ###########################################

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7367
-
likely to take the side of the strongest, then Mademoiselle's
hour had come. All her sympathies were more and more inclin-
ing to the side of Condé and the people. Orléans was her own
hereditary city. Her father, as was his custom in great emer-
gencies, declared that he was very ill and must go to bed imme-
diately: but it was as easy for her to be strong as it was for him
to be weak; so she wrung from him a reluctant plenipotentiary
power, she might go herself and try what her influence could
do. And so she rode forth from Paris one fine morning, March
27th, 1652,- rode with a few attendants, half in enthusiasm, half
in levity, aiming to become a second Joan of Arc, secure the
city, and save the nation. "I felt perfectly delighted," says the
young girl, "at having to play so extraordinary a part. "
The people of Paris had heard of her mission, and cheered
her as she went. The officers of the army, with an escort of five
hundred men, met her half-way from Paris. Most of them evi-
dently knew her calibre, were delighted to see her, and installed
her at once over a regular council of war. She entered into the
position with her natural promptness. A certain grave M. de
Rohan undertook to tutor her privately, and met his match. In
the public deliberation there were some differences of opinion.
All agreed that the army should not pass beyond the Loire: this
was Gaston's suggestion, and nevertheless a good one. Beyond
this all was left to Mademoiselle. Mademoiselle intended to go
straight to Orléans. "But the royal army had reached there
already. " Mademoiselle did not believe it. "The citizens would
not admit her. " Mademoiselle would see about that. Presently
the city government of Orléans sent her a letter, in great dismay,
particularly requesting her to keep her distance. Mademoiselle
immediately ordered her coach, and set out for the city. "I was
naturally resolute," she naïvely remarks.
Her siege of Orléans was one of the most remarkable military
operations on record. She was right in one thing,— the royal
army had not arrived: but it might appear at any moment; so
the magistrates quietly shut all their gates, and waited to see
what would happen.
――――――
Mademoiselle happened. It was eleven in the morning when
she reached the Porte Bannière, and she sat three hours in her
state carriage without seeing a person. With amusing politeness,
the governor of the city at last sent her some confectionery,-
agreeing with John Keats, who held that young women were


## p. 7368 (#162) ###########################################

7368
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
beings fitter to be presented with sugar-plums than with one's
time. But he took care to explain that the bonbons were not
official, and did not recognize her authority. So she quietly ate
them, and then decided to take a walk outside the walls. Her
council of war opposed this step, as they did every other; but
she coolly said (and the event justified her prediction) that the
enthusiasm of the populace would carry the city for her, if she
could only get at them.
«<
So she set out on her walk. Her two beautiful ladies of
honor, the Countesses de Fiesque and de Frontenac, went with
her; a few attendants behind. She came to a gate. The people
were all gathered inside the ramparts. Let me in," demanded
the imperious young lady. The astonished citizens looked at one
another and said nothing. She walked on, the crowd inside
keeping pace with her. She reached another gate. The enthu-
siasm was increased. The captain of the guard formed his troops
in line and saluted her. "Open the gate," she again insisted.
The poor captain made signs that he had not the keys. "Break
it down, then," coolly suggested the daughter of the House of
Orléans; to which his only reply was a profusion of profound
bows, and the lady walked on.
Those were the days of astrology; and at this moment it
occurred to our Mademoiselle that the chief astrologer of Paris
had predicted success to all her undertakings from the noon of
this very day until the noon following. She had never had
the slightest faith in the mystic science, but she turned to her
attendant ladies, and remarked that the matter was settled: she
should get in. On went the three until they reached the bank
of the river, and saw opposite the gates which opened on the
quay. The Orléans boatmen came flocking round her; a hardy
race, who feared neither queen nor Mazarin. They would break
down any gate she chose. She selected one, got into a boat, and
sending back her terrified male attendants, that they might have
no responsibility in the case, she was rowed to the other side.
Her new allies were already at work, and she climbed from the
boat upon the quay by a high ladder, of which several rounds
were broken away. They worked more and more enthusiasti-
cally, though the gate was built to stand a siege, and stoutly
resisted this one. Courage is magnetic; every moment increased
the popular enthusiasm, as these high-born ladies stood alone.
among the boatmen; the crowd inside joined in the attack upon
-


## p. 7369 (#163) ###########################################

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
7369
the gate; the guard looked on; the city government remained
irresolute at the Hôtel de Ville, fairly beleaguered and stormed
by one princess and two maids of honor.
A crash, and the mighty timbers of the Porte Brûlée yield in
the centre. Aided by the strong and exceedingly soiled hands of
her new friends, our elegant Mademoiselle is lifted, pulled, pushed,
and tugged between the vast iron bars which fortify the gate;
and in this fashion, torn, splashed, and disheveled generally, she
makes entrance into her city. The guard, promptly adhering to
the winning side, present arms to the heroine. The people fill
the air with their applauses; they place her in a large wooden
chair, and bear her in triumph through the streets. "Everybody
came to kiss my hands, while I was dying with laughter to find
myself in so odd a situation. "
Presently our volatile lady told them that she had learned
how to walk, and begged to be put down; then she waited for
her countesses, who arrived bespattered with mud. The drums
beat before her as she set forth again; and the city government,
yielding to the feminine conqueror, came to do her homage.
She carelessly assured them of her clemency. She "had no doubt.
that they would soon have opened the gates, but she was nat-
urally of a very impatient disposition, and could not wait. "
Moreover, she kindly suggested, neither party could now find
fault with them; and as for the future, she would save them
all trouble, and govern the city herself,-which she accordingly
did.
By confession of all historians, she alone saved the city for
the Fronde, and for the moment secured that party the ascend-
ency in the nation. Next day the advance guard of the royal
forces appeared-a day too late. Mademoiselle made a speech.
(the first in her life) to the city government; then went forth to
her own small army, by this time drawn near, and held another
council. The next day she received a letter from her father
(whose health was now decidedly restored), declaring that she
had "saved Orléans and secured Paris, and shown yet more judg
ment than courage. " The next day Condé came up with his
forces, compared his fair cousin to Gustavus Adolphus, and wrote
to her that "her exploit was such as she only could have per-
formed, and was of the greatest importance. "
Mademoiselle stayed a little longer at Orléans, while the armies
lay watching each other, or fighting the battle of Bléneau, of


## p. 7370 (#164) ###########################################

7370
THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON
which Condé wrote her an official bulletin, as being generalis-
simo. She amused herself easily, went to mass, played at bowls,
received the magistrates, stopped couriers to laugh over their
letters, reviewed the troops, signed passports, held councils, and
did many things "for which she should have thought herself
quite unfitted, if she had not found she did them very well. "
The enthusiasm she had inspired kept itself unabated, for she
really deserved it. She was everywhere recognized as head of
affairs; the officers of the army drank her health on their knees
when she dined with them, while the trumpets sounded and the
cannons roared; Condé, when absent, left instructions to his offi-
cers, "Obey the commands of Mademoiselle as my own;" and
her father addressed a dispatch from Paris to her ladies of honor,
as field-marshals in her army: "À Mesdames les Comtesses
Maréchales de Camp dans l'Armée de ma Fille contre le Mazarin. ”
"SINCE CLEOPATRA DIED»
From The Afternoon Landscape. Copyright 1889, by T. W. Higginson.
Reprinted by permission of the author, and of Longmans, Green &
Co. , publishers, New York.
"Since Cleopatra died,
I have lived in such dishonor that the gods
Detest my baseness. "
"SIN
INCE Cleopatra died! " Long years are past,
In Antony's fancy, since the deed was done.
Love counts its epochs not from sun to sun,
But by the heart-throb. Mercilessly fast
Time has swept onward since she looked her last
On life, a queen.
For him the sands have run
Whole ages through their glass, and kings have won
And lost their empires o'er earth's surface vast
Since Cleopatra died. Ah! Love and Pain
Make their own measure of all things that be.
No clock's slow ticking marks their deathless strain;
The life they own is not the life we see;
Love's single moment is eternity:
Eternity, a thought in Shakespeare's brain.


## p. 7371 (#165) ###########################################

7371
RICHARD HILDRETH
(1807-1865)
NE who begins to study Hildreth's History of the United
States is alternately divided by feelings of impatience and
admiration. The latter will predominate in the end, pro-
vided the student is not too impetuous. The reason care must be
taken in assimilating Hildreth is that at times he becomes so intoler-
ably dry that his reader is liable to desert him forever, before once
discovering the excellences which have given him an assured place
among American historians. Though Bancroft's History is more stimu-
lating and more interesting to the general
reader, Hildreth's has the advantage of cov-
ering a much longer period, all of which he
treats exhaustively and with perfect accu-
racy in the presentation of facts. Moreover,
he shows such voluminous and discriminat-
ing research, and in general so unbiased a
judgment, that his achievement grows more
valuable in its results as the years go by.
The period which Hildreth covers SO
completely begins with the discovery of
America, and ends with the close of Presi-
dent Monroe's first administration. The first
three volumes bring us to the adoption of
the Constitution. In his preface to these,
he states that his object is "to set forth the personages of our
Colonial and Revolutionary history such as they really were in their
own day and generation, their faults as well as their virtues. " He
carries out this purpose, narrating events truthfully and candidly, and
without trying to bend them to any theory. He treats of old colo-
nial days in a sombre sort of way, quite disheartening to the lover of
picturesque anecdote and legend, and he appears to have imbibed
to the full the prim and severe Puritan spirit of which he wrote.
Life was a serious thing with the colonists of Massachusetts Bay, and
Hildreth was guilty of no attempt to brighten their annals or to turn
any part of their records into a history of merry-making. And thus,
in those first three volumes, one looks utterly in vain for the pictur-
esque or the amusing.

RICHARD HILDRETH


## p. 7372 (#166) ###########################################

RICHARD HILDRETH
7372
The last three volumes (written several years later), which deal
almost entirely with the growth of the Constitution and the political
forces at work, are more vivid and at the same time much more valu-
able to the student. The facts are absolutely accurate (unless where
new records have come to light since), and have been gathered with
much care from the original public documents and State papers. He
is on the whole wonderfully free from prejudice; his tone is one of
calm and clear conviction, and produces the same attitude in the
reader. His characterization of individuals is the best example: few
things of the kind have been better done. His criticism of men and
motives is sometimes most scathing, yet his manner is so quiet and
restrained that a full assent is instinctively given to his opinions,
without the critical hesitation which a more vehement style would
call forth. Nothing, for instance, could be further from the verdict
which posterity has passed on John Quincy Adams, than Hildreth's
portrayal of him as a crafty and self-seeking political soldier of for-
tune; but Hildreth's judicial manner and tone of severe impartiality
still produce much effect.
Hildreth was a writer of some repute before his History appeared.