No More Learning

I leave them to do both. Have you brought
any news from Judea? - They have not had a true prince there
since the first Herod; and he was quite a Greek, a cut-throat,
and a man of taste. He understood the arts. -I sent for you to
see what sort of animal a Jewish rebel was. Your dress is hand-
some, but too light for our winters. -You cannot die before sun-
set, as till then I am engaged with my music master. We all
――――


## p. 4200 (#578) ###########################################

4200
GEORGE CROLY
―――――――――
must die when our time comes. - - Farewell-till sunset may
Jupiter protect you! "
I retired to execution! and before the door closed, heard this
accomplished disposer of life and death preluding upon his lyre
with increased energy. I was conducted to a turret until the
period in which the Emperor's engagement with his music-
master should leave him at leisure to see me die. Yet there was
kindness even under the roof of Nero, and a liberal hand had
covered the table in my cell. The hours passed heavily along,
but they passed; and I was watching the last rays of my last
sun, when I perceived a cloud rise in the direction of Rome. It
grew broader, deeper, darker, as I gazed; its centre was suddenly
tinged with red; the tinge spread; the whole mass of cloud
became crimson: the sun went down, and another sun seemed to
have risen in his stead. I heard the clattering of horses' feet in
the courtyards below; trumpets sounded; there was confusion in
the palace; the troops hurried under arms; and I saw a squad-
ron of cavalry set off at full speed.
As I was gazing on the spectacle before me, which perpetu-
ally became more menacing, the door of my cell slowly opened,
and a masked figure stood upon the threshold. I had made up
my mind; and demanding if he was the executioner, I told him
"that I was ready. " The figure paused, listened to the sounds.
below, and after looking for a while on the troops in the court-
yard, signified by signs that I had a chance of saving my life.
The love of existence rushed back upon me. I eagerly inquired
what was to be done. He drew from under his cloak the dress
of a Roman slave, which I put on, and noiselessly followed his
steps through a long succession of small and strangely intricate
passages. We found no difficulty from guards or domestics.
The whole palace was in a state of extraordinary confusion.
Every human being was packing up something or other: rich
vases, myrrhine cups, table services, were lying in heaps on the
floors; books, costly dresses, instruments of music, all the append-
ages of luxury, were flung loose in every direction, from the
sudden breaking up of the court. I might have plundered the
value of a province with impunity. Still we wound our hurried
way. In passing along one of the corridors, the voice of com-
plaining struck the ear; the mysterious guide hesitated; I glanced
through the slab of crystal that showed the chamber within. It
was the one in which I had seen the Emperor, but his place


## p. 4201 (#579) ###########################################

GEORGE CROLY
4201
was now filled by the form of youth and beauty that had crossed
me on my arrival. She was weeping bitterly, and reading with
strong and sorrowful indignation a long list of names, probably
one of those rolls in which Nero registered his intended victims,
and which in the confusion of departure he had left open. A
second glance saw her tear the paper into a thousand fragments,
and scatter them in the fountain that gushed upon the floor.
I left this lovely and unhappy creature, this dove in the vul-
ture's talons, with almost a pang. A few steps more brought us
to the open air, but among bowers that covered our path with
darkness. At the extremity of the gardens my guide struck
with his dagger upon a door; it was opened: we found horses.
outside; he sprang on one; I sprang on its fellow; and palace,
guards, and death, were left far behind.
He galloped so furiously that I found it impossible to speak;
and it was not till we had reached an eminence a few miles
from Rome, where we breathed our horses, that I could ask to
whom I had been indebted for my escape. But I could not
extract a word from him. He made signs of silence, and pointed
with wild anxiety to the scene that spread below. It was of a
grandeur and terror indescribable. Rome was an ocean of flame.
Height and depth were covered with red surges, that rolled
before the blast like an endless tide. The billows burst up the
sides of the hills, which they turned into instant volcanoes,
exploding volumes of smoke and fire; then plunged into the
depths in a hundred glowing cataracts, then climbed and con-
sumed again. The distant sound of the city in her convulsion
went to the soul. The air was filled with the steady roar of the
advancing flame, the crash of falling houses, and the hideous
outcry of the myriads flying through the streets, or surrounded
and perishing in the conflagration.
Hostile to Rome as I was, I could not restrain the exclama-
tion: "There goes the fruit of conquest, the glory of ages, the
purchase of the blood of millions! Was vanity made for man? "
My guide continued looking forward with intense earnestness, as
if he were perplexed by what avenue to enter the burning city.
I demanded who he was, and whither he would lead me. He
returned no answer. A long spire of flame that shot up from a
hitherto untouched quarter engrossed all his senses. He struck
in the spur, and making a wild gesture to me to follow, darted
down the hill. I pursued; we found the Appian choked with
―――――――――――――――――


## p. 4202 (#580) ###########################################

4202
GEORGE CROLY
wagons, baggage of every kind, and terrified crowds hurrying
into the open country. To force a way through them was
impossible. All was clamor, violent struggle, and helpless death.
Men and women of the highest rank were on foot, trampled by
the rabble, that had then lost all respect of conditions. One
dense mass of miserable life, irresistible from its weight, crushed
by the narrow streets, and scorched by the flames over their
heads, rolled through the gates like an endless stream of black
lava.
We turned back, and attempted an entrance through the gar-
dens of the same villas that skirted the city wall near the Pala-
tine. All were deserted, and after some dangerous leaps over
the burning ruins we found ourselves in the streets. The fire
had originally broken out upon the Palatine, and hot smoke that
wrapped and half blinded us hung thick as night upon the
wrecks of pavilions and palaces: but the dexterity and knowledge
of my inexplicable guide carried us on. It was in vain that I
insisted upon knowing the purpose of this terrible traverse. He
pressed his hand on his heart in reassurance of his fidelity, and
still spurred on.
We now passed under the shade of an immense range of lofty
buildings, whose gloomy and solid strength seemed to bid
defiance to chance and time. A sudden yell appalled me. A
ring of fire swept round its summit; burning cordage, sheets of
canvas, and a shower of all things combustible, flew into the air
above our heads. An uproar followed, unlike all that I had ever
heard,—a hideous mixture of howls, shrieks, and groans. The
flames rolled down the narrow street before us, and made the
passage next to impossible. While we hesitated, a huge frag-
ment of the building heaved as if in an earthquake, and for-
tunately for us fell inwards. The whole scene of terror was
then open.
The great amphitheatre of Statilius Taurus had
caught fire; the stage with its inflammable furniture was intensely
blazing below. The flames were wheeling up, circle above circle,
through the seventy thousand seats that rose from the ground to
the roof. I stood in unspeakable awe and wonder on the side of
this colossal cavern, this mighty temple of the city of fire. At
length a descending blast cleared away the smoke that covered
the arena.
The cause of those horrid cries was now visible.
The wild beasts kept for the games had broken from their dens.
Maddened by affright and pain, lions, tigers, panthers, wolves,


## p. 4203 (#581) ###########################################

GEORGE CROLY
4203
whole herds of the monsters of India and Africa, were inclosed
in an impassable barrier of fire. They bounded, they fought,
they screamed, they tore; they ran howling round and round the
circle; they made desperate leaps upwards through the blaze;
they were flung back, and fell only to fasten their fangs in each
other, and with their parching jaws bathed in blood, died raging.
I looked anxiously to see whether any human being was
involved in this fearful catastrophe. To my great relief I could
see none. The keepers and attendants had obviously escaped.
As I expressed my gladness I was startled by a loud cry from
my guide, the first sound that I had heard him utter. He
pointed to the opposite side of the amphitheatre. There indeed.
sat an object of melancholy interest; a man who had either been.
unable to escape, or had determined to die. Escape was now
impossible. He sat in desperate calmness on his funeral pile.
He was a gigantic Ethiopian slave, entirely naked. He had
chosen his place, as if in mockery, on the imperial throne; the
fire was above him and around him; and under this tremendous
canopy he gazed, without the movement of a muscle, on the
combat of the wild beasts below: a solitary sovereign with the
whole tremendous game played for himself, and inaccessible to
the power of man.
I was forced away from this absorbing spectacle, and we
once more threaded the long and intricate streets of Rome. As
we approached the end of one of these bewildering passages,
scarcely wide enough for us to ride abreast, I was startled by
the sudden illumination of the sky immediately above; and ren-
dered cautious by the experience of our hazards, called to my
companion to return. He pointed behind me, and showed the
fire bursting out in the houses by which we had just galloped.
I followed on. A crowd that poured from the adjoining streets
cut off our retreat. Hundreds rapidly mounted on the houses
in front, in the hope by throwing them down to check the con-
ration. The obstacle once removed, we saw the source of
the light-spectacle of horror! The great prison of Rome was
on fire. Never can I forget the sights and sounds-the dismay
-the hopeless agony-the fury and frenzy that then over-
whelmed the heart. The jailers had been forced to fly before
they could loose the fetters or open the cells of the prisoners.
We saw those gaunt and woe-begone wretches crowding to their
casements, and imploring impossible help; clinging to the heated


## p. 4204 (#582) ###########################################

GEORGE CROLY
4204
bars; toiling with their impotent grasp to tear out the massive
stones; some wringing their hands; some calling on the terrified
spectators by every name of humanity to save them; some vent-
ing their despair in execrations and blasphemies that made the
blood run cold; others, after many a wild effort to break loose,
dashing their heads against the walls, or stabbing themselves.
The people gave them outcry for outery; but the flame forbade
approach. Before I could extricate myself from the multitude a
whirl of fiery ashes shot upwards from the falling roof; the walls
rent into a thousand fragments; and the huge prison with all
its miserable inmates was a heap of red embers.
Exhausted as I was by this restless fatigue, and yet more by
the melancholy sights that surrounded every step, no fatigue.
seemed to be felt by the singular being that governed my move-
ments. He sprang through the burning ruins,- he plunged into
the sulphurous smoke,- he never lost the direction that he had
first taken; and though baffled and forced to turn back a hun-
dred times, he again rushed on his track with the directness of
an arrow. For me to make my way back to the gates would be
even more difficult than to push forward. My ultimate safety
might be in following, and I followed. To stand still and to
move were equally perilous. The streets, even with the im-
provements of Augustus, were still scarcely wider than the
breadth of the little Italian carts that crowded them. They
were crooked, long, and obstructed by every impediment of a
city built in haste, after the burning by the Gauls, and with no
other plan than the caprice of its hurried tenantry. The houses
were of immense height, chiefly wood, many roofed with thatch,
and all covered or cemented with pitch. The true surprise is
that it had not been burned once a year from the time of its
building.
The memory of Nero, that hereditary concentration of vice,
of whose ancestor's yellow beard the Roman orator said, "No
wonder that his beard was brass, when his mouth was iron and
his heart lead," the parricide and the poisoner-may yet be
fairly exonerated of an act which might have been the deed
of a drunken mendicant in any of the fifty thousand hovels of
this gigantic aggregate of everything that could turn to flame.
We passed along through all the horrid varieties of misery,
guilt, and riot that could find their place in a great public
calamity: groups gazing in woe on the wreck of their fortunes,
-


## p. 4205 (#583) ###########################################

GEORGE CROLY
4205
rushing off to the winds in vapor and fire; groups plundering in
the midst of the flame; groups of rioters, escaped felons, and
murderers, exulting in the public ruin, and dancing and drink-
ing with Bacchanalian uproar; gangs of robbers trampling down
and stabbing the fugitives to strip them of their last means;
revenge, avarice, despair, profligacy, let loose naked; undisguised
demons, to swell the wretchedness of this tremendous infliction
upon a guilty and blood-covered empire.
Still we spurred on, but our jaded horses at length sank
under us; and leaving them to find their way into the fields,
we struggled forward on foot.
――――
A WIFE'S INFLUENCE
Α
URELIA - One hope there is, worth all the rest-Revenge!
The time is harassed, poor, and discontent;
Your spirit practiced, keen, and desperate,-
The Senate full of feuds,- the city vext
With petty tyranny- the legions wronged-
Catiline [scornfully]—
From Catiline >
―――
Aurelia
Catiline - Hear me, bold heart!
Yet who has stirred? Woman, you paint the air
With Passion's pencil.
Were my will a sword!
The whole gross blood of Rome
Could not atone my wrongs! I'm soul-shrunk, sick,
Weary of man! And now my mind is fixed
For Sylla: there to make companionship
Rather of bear and tiger-of the snake-
The lion in his hunger-than of man!
Aurelia I had a father once, who would have plunged
Rome in the Tiber for an angry look!
You saw our entrance from the Gaulish war,
When Sylla fled?
Catiline
My legion was in Spain.
Aurelia-We crept through Italy, a flood of fire,
A living lava, rolling straight on Rome.
For days, before we reached it, the whole road
Was thronged with suppliants-tribunes, consulars;
The mightiest names o' the State. Could gold have bribed,
We might have pitched our tents, and slept on gold;


## p. 4206 (#584) ###########################################

4206
GEORGE CROLY
But we had work to do! Our swords were thirsty.
We entered Rome as conquerors, in arms;
I by my father's side, cuirassed and helmed,
Bellona beside Mars.
Catiline [with coldness] –
Aurelia
―
The world was yours!
- Rome was all eyes; the ancient tottered forth;
The cripple propped his limbs beside the wall;
The dying left his bed to look, and die.
The way before us was a sea of heads;
The way behind a torrent of brown spears:
So, on we rode, in fierce and funeral pomp,
Through the long living streets, that sunk in gloom,
As we, like Pluto and Proserpina,
Enthroned, rode on-like twofold destiny!
Catiline [sternly, interrupting her]—
Those triumphs are but gewgaws. All the earth,
What is it? Dust and smoke. I've done with life!
Aurelia [coming closer and looking steadily upon him]—
Before that eve, one hundred senators
And fifteen hundred knights had paid in blood
The price of taunts, and treachery, and rebellion!
Were my tongue thunder, I would cry-Revenge!
Catiline [in sudden wildness]-
―
No more of this! In to your chamber, wife!
There is a whirling lightness in my brain,
That will not now bear questioning. -Away!
[Aurelia moves slowly towards the door.
Where are our veterans now? Look on these walls;
I cannot turn their tissues into life.
Where are our revenues- our chosen friends?
Are we not beggars? Where have beggars friends?
I see no swords and bucklers on these floors!
I shake the State! I-what have I on earth
-
But these two hands? Must I not dig or starve? --
Come back! I had forgot. My memory dies,
I think, by the hour. Who sups with us to-night?
Let all be of the rarest,
-spare no cost.
If 'tis our last,-it may be, let us sink
In sumptuous ruin, with wonderers round us, wife!
One funeral pile shall send up amber smoke!
We'll burn in myrrh, or-blood!
---
-
[She goes.
I feel a nameless pressure on my brow,
As if the heavens were thick with sudden gloom;


## p. 4207 (#585) ###########################################

GEORGE CROLY
4207
A shapeless consciousness, as if some blow
Were hanging o'er my head.
Partake of prophecy.
They say such thoughts
The air is living sweetness.
Shall I be like thee yet? The clouds have passed —
And, like some mighty victor, he returns
WHI
[He stands at the casement.
Golden sun,
To his red city in the west, that now
Spreads all her gates, and lights her torches up
In triumph for her glowing conqueror.
THE LILY OF THE VALLEY
HITE bud, that in meek beauty so dost lean
Thy cloistered cheek as pale as moonlight snow,
Thou seem'st beneath thy huge high leaf of green,
An eremite beneath his mountain's brow.
White bud! thou 'rt emblem of a lovelier thing,
The broken spirit that its anguish bears
To silent shades, and there sits offering
To Heaven the holy fragrance of its tears.


## p. 4208 (#586) ###########################################

4208
GEORGE CUPPLES
(1822-1891)
A
LTHOUGH the Scotch Lowlands were settled by men of pure
Anglican blood, the neighboring Highlands and the original
Celtic inhabitants of the locality have contributed a strain
from another of the primitive Aryan stocks, to the great enrichment
in fervor and emotional expressiveness of the people. The Scotch-
man retains the energy, perseverance, and executive masterfulness
of his brothers in Yorkshire and Northumberland, but has in addi-
tion a vein of romantic imagination and a touch of Celtic excitability.
He may be "dour and canny," and yet not destitute of an instinct
for music and color. His name may contain the Celtic "Mac" or
"Col," or the English "ton" or "son," but even when his name
comes from one source is genius may derive from the other. Steven-
son's name is English; but his literary work has the Celtic vivid-
ness, brilliancy, pathos, and sense of congruous form. Carlyle's name
is Celtic; but in him lies the grim hardness of the Norse seafarers,
and the deification of duty, and the impulse to subordinate form to
substance, characteristic of the Saxon.
-
The Scotchman is born to a rich inheritance of tradition, — Eng-
lish wars, border forays, centuries of turbulent life embalmed in
legend and ballad. He lives on the scene of action of historical per-
sonages, who become as real to him as Holyrood or Arthur's Seat.
Scotch national consciousness lies deep in the soul of Scotchmen,
though the kingdom be merged into Great Britain, and gives them
an individuality and pride of lineage which colors their literature.
They are loyal to the Bruce even when they sing 'God Save the
Queen. Blackwood's of the middle of the century, though reckoning
the Englishmen Bulwer-Lytton and De Quincey among its honored
contributors, was an intensely Scottish magazine; and its Scottish
staff was marked by a distinctive literary tone,- a compound of boy-
ish high spirits and old-fashioned conservatism such as we sometimes
notice in the cadets of a noble house, to whom their family tra-
ditions are sacred, but the necessity of a decorous bearing before
the world not at all apparent. The wit of the 'Noctes' is not very
subtle, but it is hearty and clean, though it needs high spirits to
make it seem amusing. The scholarship is not very profound, but
it reaches back to traditions of gentlemanly culture and thoroughly
distrusts modern preciosity. Nothing is literature in the estimation


## p. 4209 (#587) ###########################################

GEORGE CUPPLES
4209
of these writers unless it is classic or Scotch. All of them are
marked by a hearty love for outdoor sports, and a patriotism enthu-
siastic indeed, but rather circumscribed, though perhaps on that very
account all the more intense. Professor Wilson is the most typical
individual of these writers, and George Cupples of the next genera-
tion one of the most interesting, and on the whole the one whose
literary gift was the most decided and original.
George Cupples was born at Legerwood, August 2d, 1822, and died
October 7th, 1891. His father was a minister of the Free Kirk, and
his paternal ancestors had been Calvinistic ministers for at least three
generations.
It was natural that the young man should be intended
for the same profession, but he did not feel drawn to it, and when
about seventeen went to sea for two years. Although of a firm physi-
cal constitution, the life of the seaman wearied him, and he resumed
his education at the University of Edinburgh. He fell naturally into
a literary career, and though much of his work was journalistic, he
was reckoned in his day a critic of true insight. His novels are his
best title to reputation, and show a vein of genuine creative power.
Cupples combined some of the sterling and attractive traits of the
cultured Scotchman of the period into a genuine, manly, and winning
personality. Though slightly whimsical, his peculiarities were of the
kind that endear a man to his friends; and Cupples numbered among
his, Dr. John Brown, Dr. Stirling, Blackwood, and many others of
the cultivated Scotchmen of the period.
'The Green Hand,' which came out in Blackwood from 1848 to
1851, is one of the best sea stories ever written. If we put Steven-
son's 'Treasure Island' first for balance of description and narration,
and sureness in the character touches, The Green Hand' and 'Tom
Cringle's Log' are close seconds. Cupples's book is perhaps slightly
overloaded with description, and deficient in technical construction as
a narrative; but it is nevertheless a story which we read without
skipping, for the descriptive pages are highly charged with the poetic
element, and bear the unmistakable marks of being based on actual
observation. Life in a sailing vessel has closer contact with the
elemental moods of nature than in a steamer, where the motive
power is a mechanical contrivance with the tiresome quality of regu-
larity. To be in alliance or warfare with the wind, and dependent
on its fitful moods, brought an element of variety and interest into
the seaman's life which steam navigation, with its steadily revolving
screw and patent valves, must always lack. Of this Cupples avails
himself to the fullest extent; and it would be difficult to find a better
presentation of the mysterious life and vastness of the ocean, and of
the subtle impression it makes on those brought in daily contact with
it, not excepting Victor Hugo's 'Toilers of the Sea. This is due to
VII-264


## p. 4210 (#588) ###########################################

GEORGE CUPPLES
4210
the fact that he spent two years before the mast when a young man.
Especially noticeable too is his admirable use of adjectives denoting
color, which are descriptive because they image truly the observations
of a
man of genius, and are not, as in so much modern writing,
purple patches sewed on without any real feeling for the rich and
subtle scheme of nature. In calling up to the imagination the sounds
of the sea, the creaking of the blocks, the wind in the rigging, the
wash of the water on the sides, the ripple on the bow, and the
infinite variety of the voice of the waves, Cupples shows true poetic
power. It is not too much to say that 'The Green Hand' does not
suffer from the fact that one of the parts stands in the magazine in
juxtaposition to De Quincey's Vision of Sudden Death. '
'Kyloe Jock and the Weird of Wanton-Walls' is a transcript from
the boy life of the author. It appeared in Macmillan's Magazine, in
the autumn numbers of 1860. It is but a short sketch of a group of
simple people in a secluded border parish, but the quality of the
writer is shown as well in small things as in great ones. In it the
wintry scenes especially are given with broad and sure touches, for
the author is a genuine lover of nature; but the characters of Kirstie
the nurse, and of Kyloe Jock, the half-savage herd-boy who knows
so well the wild creatures of the woods and fields that he has even
given names to the foxes, show the feeling for human nature and the
ability to embody it which marks the artist. Kyloe Jock's Scotch is
said to be an absolutely perfect reproduction of the vernacular; and
it might be said that this book, like some of our modern Scotch
stories, would be better if the dialect were not quite so good.
-
―
The peculiar qualities of the author are not seen to such good
advantage in another book of his, 'Scotch Deerhounds and Their
Masters. ' He was
a breeder and unquestioned authority on the
"Grand Dog," and accumulated a store of curious information on its
origin and history; but his enthusiasm for this noble breed, or
"race" as he loves to call it,—and it certainly is the finest and most
striking of all the varieties of the "friend of man,"-led him into
some strange vagaries. One would almost suspect him of holding
the theory that dogs domesticated man, so high does he rank them
as agents of early civilization. His etymology and his ethnology are
alike erratic. He holds that every ancient people in whose name can
be found the combinations "gal," "alb," or "iber," or any other
syllable of a Celtic word, was of the Celtic family, and that the
Scotch deerhound and the Irish greyhound are descendants of the
primeval Celtic dog. In this way he proves that the Carthaginians
and the shepherd kings of Egypt were undoubtedly Celts, for their
sculpture shows that they hunted with large swift dogs that sprang
at the throat of their prey. On the other hand, every tribe that


## p. 4211 (#589) ###########################################

GEORGE CUPPLES
4211
owned large clumsy dogs that barked is probably non-Celtic. Mr.
Cupples's contempt for such dogs is too intense for definite statement,
and he evidently thinks that the tribe that owns them cannot hope
to rise very high in the scale of civilization. This is certainly Philo-
Celticism run mad, and is the more remarkable because Mr. Cupples
could discover no Celtic strain in his own ancestry. He gave his
dogs, however, Celtic names, as Luath, Shulach, Maida, Morna, Mal-
vina, Oscar, etc. It would have been quite impossible for him to
disgrace one of his "tall, swift, venatic hounds" with so Saxon a
name as Rover or Barkis. But his enthusiasm is so genuine, and
there is such a wealth of curious information in his pages, that his
book has a charm and a substantial value of its own.
The other work of Mr. Cupples was, like that of most of the
journalistic men of letters of the period, largely anonymous. His
essay on Emerson, contributed to the Douglas Jerrold's Magazine, is
very highly spoken of. Personally, Mr. Cupples must have been a
man of great simplicity and charm, a happy combination of the
genuine and most agreeable traits of that hearty and outspoken
variety of man, the literary Scotchman.
IN THE TROPICS
From The Green Hand›
LOOKED up the after-hatchway.
I
It seemed still quite dark;
and a patch of the deep dark-blue sky showed high over the
square opening, with two or three keen sparks of stars, green
ones and blue ones-you'd have thought the ladder, short as it
was, went up to somewhere clean above the world. But the
moment I got on deck I saw it was really lighter-the heavy
fog creeping slowly astern off the ship on both hands; the white
mist rolling faster over it before the sea breeze against her bows,
which had swung seaward by this time from the tide, that
rushed like a mill-stream upon both her tight cables; while the
muddy river water, bubbling, eddying, and frothing away past,
spread far up in the middle, into the dusk astern. Such a
jabbering, croaking, hissing, shrieking, and yelling, too, as burst
into one's ears out of the dark, as if whole legions of monkeys,
bullfrogs, parrots, parrakeets, and what not, were coming
together full upon us from both sides, one band nearer than
the other; till the heavy boom of the surf round the point, and
the roar of the tide coming in over the shallows about the river-
mouth, pretty well drowned it. The sudden change was a good


## p. 4212 (#590) ###########################################

4212
GEORGE CUPPLES
relief,- Babel though it seemed after the closeness below,-
with what had been going on; and I looked ahead toward the
sea, which lay away out off our larboard bow, round the head-
land, and over the opposite point; a cold watery streak of light
showing it from where the breakers rose plunging and scattering
along the sandy bar, to the steady gray line of horizon, clipped
by one of the two brown chops we had got into. It looked
dreary enough as yet, the mouth of it being wider than I'd
fancied it from seaward at night: though even with full water
over the long spit of sand in the middle, there was no draught
at all for the Indiaman except by the channel betwixt it and the
bold point on our right; and pretty narrow it appeared from our
present berth, heaving as it did with the green swell that set in,
while meantime the mist scudding across the face of the head-
land let us see but the hard lump of bare black rock underneath.
In less time than I've taken to speak, however, the full space
of sky aloft was turning clear; the sea far away suddenly shone
out blue, with the surges tipped white; you saw a sparkling star
high over it sink slowly in, and the fog spread off the water
near us, till here and there you caught the muffled-up shape of
a big tree or two looming through, not half a mile off our star-
board quarter; the mist creeping over the headland till the sharp
peak of it stood out against its shadow on the shoulder of a hill
beyond, and old Bob Martin's single clump of cocoas on the rise,
waving in landward from the brisk sea breeze. One passenger
after another came peeping sleepily out of the companion-hatch,
at the men clearing away the wreck of the spars and swabbing
the quarter-deck down; but scarce had Smith, one of the young
writers, reached the poop, when he gave a shout that covered
both poop ladders in no time, with people scrambling over each
other to get up. Next minute you'd have fancied them a knot
of flamingoes with their wings out, as the bright red daybreak
brought out the edge of the woods far astern, through a hazy
lane in the purple mist, topped so with stray cocoanut-trees and
cabbage-palms, dabbled like brushes in the color, that they
scarce knew them to be woods at all, and not a whole lot of
wild savages fresh from other business of the kind, coming down
with all sorts of queer tools upon us; more especially when one
heard such a chorus of unaccountable cries, whistling, and
screaming, as seemed to struggle with the sound of the sea
ahead of us, and the splash alongside. The huge round sun


## p. 4213 (#591) ###########################################

GEORGE CUPPLES
4213
.
struck hot crimson along the far turn of the beach, with all
manner of twisted blots upon him, as it were, and the very
grass and long reeds seemingly rustling into his face, so one
didn't for the moment know him either; while the muddy, choco-
late-colored eddies, sweeping and closing beyond the ship's
rudder, glittered and frothed up like blood; and every here and
there, along the streak of light, the head of a log or a long
branch came dipping up terribly plain; no wonder the old Serin-
gapatam had apparently turned tail to it all, ready to bolt if she
could. Almost as soon as you took your hands off your eyes,
though, and could see without a red ball or two before them,
there was the nearest shore growing out toward our starboard
bulwark all along, crowded with wet green woods, up into steam-
ing high ground-all to eastward a dazzle of light, with two or
three faint mountain peaks shooting up far off in it, and a
woody blue hill or so between; while here and there a broad
bright hazy spoke off the sun came cutting down into the forest,
that brought a patch full of long big leaves, ten times greener
than the rest, and let look off the deck into the heart of it
among the stems over the bank. The jabber in the woods had
passed off all at once with the dusk, the water deepening over
the bar, and the tide running slower, so that every one's con-
fused face turned breathless with delight and it grew stiller and
stiller. The whole breadth of the river shone out by this time,
full and smooth, to the opposite shore three times as far away,
where the wood and bulrushes seemed to grow out of the water;
a long thick range of low muddy-looking mangroves, with a
cover of dark green, rounding from the farthest point one saw,
down to some sandy hummocks near the mouth, and a ridge of
the same drifted up by the wind off the beach. Beyond that side
there was nothing apparently but a rolling sweep of long
coarse grass, with a few straggling cocoanut-trees and baobabs
like big swollen logs on end, and taken to sprouting at top;
a dun-colored heave of land in the distance, too, that came out
as it got hotter, in a long, desert-like, red brick-dust sort of a
glare. The sole living things to be seen as yet were some small
birds rising up out of the long grass, and the turkey-buzzards
sailing high over all across, as if on the look-out.
The air was so cool and clear, however, from the tornado
over night,—not a cloud in the sky, and the strange scent of
the land reaching us as the dew rose off it, you could see far


## p. 4214 (#592) ###########################################

4214
GEORGE CUPPLES
and wide, with a delicious feeling of it all, that kept every one
standing there on the spot where he first gained the deck, even
the men looking over their shoulders with the ropes in their
fists, and the fresh morning breeze lifting one's hair.
NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA
From The Green Hand'
I
HAD to get fairly off the saddle,—rather sore, I must say,
with riding up St. Helena roads after so many weeks at sea,
and flung myself down on the grass, with little enough
fear of the hungry little beast getting far adrift. This said
crag, by the way, drew my eye to it by the queer colors it
showed-white, blue, gray, and bright red-in the hot sunlight;
and being too far off to make out clearly, I slung off the ship's
glass I had across my back, just to overhaul it better. The hue
of it was to be seen running all down the deep rift between, that
seemingly wound away into some glen toward the coast; while
the lot of plants and trailers half covering the steep front of it
would no doubt, I thought, have delighted my old friend the
Yankee, if he was the botanizing gentleman in question. By
this time it was a lovely afternoon far and wide to Diana's Peak,
the sky glowing clearer deep blue at that height than you'd have
thought sky could do, even in the tropics-the very peaks of
bare red rock being softened into a purple tint, far off around
you. One saw into the rough bottom of the huge Devil's Punch
Bowl, and far through without a shadow down the green patches
in the little valleys, and over Deadwood Camp,-there was noth-
ing, as it were, between the grass, the ground, the stones, and
leaves, and the empty hollow of the air; while the sea spread
far round underneath, of a softer blue than the sky over you.
You'd have thought all the world was shrunk into St. Helena,
with the Atlantic lying three-quarters round it in one's sight,
like the horns of the bright new moon round the dim old one;
which St. Helena pretty much resembled, if what the star-gazers
say of its surface be true, all peaks and dry hollows—if indeed
you weren't lifting up out of the world, so to speak, when one
looked through his fingers right into the keen blue overhead!
If I lived a thousand years I couldn't tell half what I felt
lying there; but as you may imagine, it had somewhat in it of


## p. 4215 (#593) ###########################################

GEORGE CUPPLES
4215
the late European war by land and sea. Not that I could have
said so at the time, but rather a sort of half-doze, such as I've
known one have when a schoolboy, lying on the green grass the
same way, with one's face turned up into the hot summer
heavens; half of it flying glimpses, as it were, of the French
Revolution, the battles we used to hear of when we were child-
ren- then the fears about the invasion, with the channel full
of British fleets, and Dover Cliffs-Trafalgar and Nelson's death,
and the battle of Waterloo, just after we heard he had got out of
Elba. In the terrible flash of the thing all together, one almost
fancied them all gone like smoke; and for a moment I thought
I was falling away off, down into the wide sky, so up I started to
sit. From that, suddenly I took to guessing and puzzling closely
again how I should go to work myself, if I were the strange
Frenchman I saw in the brig at sea, and wanted to manage
Napoleon's escape out of St. Helena. And first, there was how
to get into the island and put him up to the scheme. why, sure
enough, I couldn't have laid it down better than they seemed to
have done all along: what could one do but just dodge about
that latitude under all sorts of false rig, then catch hold of
somebody fit to cover one's landing. No Englishman would do
it, and no foreigner but would set Sir Hudson Lowe on his
guard in a moment. Next we should have to get put on the
island and really a neat enough plan it was, to dog one of the
very cruisers themselves, knock up a mess of planks and spars
in the night-time, set them all ablaze with tar, and pretend we
were fresh from a craft on fire; when even Captain Wallis of the
Podargus, as it happened, was too much of a British seaman not
to carry us straight to St. Helena! Again, I must say it was a
touch beyond me- but to hit the governor's notions of a hobby,
and go picking up plants around Longwood, was a likely enough
way to get speech of the prisoner, or at least let him see one
was there!
-
-
-
How should I set about carrying him off to the coast, though?
That was the prime matter. Seeing that even if the schooner-
which was no doubt hovering out of sight- were to make a
bold dash for the land with the trade-wind, in a night eleven
hours long, there were sentries close round Longwood from sun-
set, the starlight shining mostly always in the want of a moon;
and at any rate there was rock and gully enough betwixt here
and the coast to try the surest foot aboard the Hebe, let alone
――


## p. 4216 (#594) ###########################################

4216
GEORGE CUPPLES
an emperor. With plenty of woods for a cover, one might steal
up close to Longwood, but the bare rocks showed you off to be
made a mark of. Whew! but why were those same blacks on
the island, I thought: just strip them stark naked, and let them
lie in the Devil's Punch Bowl, or somewhere beyond military
hours, when I warrant me they might slip up, gully by gully,
to the very sentries' backs! Their color wouldn't show them,
and savages as they seemed, couldn't they settle as many sen-
tries as they needed, creep into the very bedchamber where
Bonaparte slept, and manhandle him bodily away down through
some of the nearest hollows, before any one was the wiser? The
point that still bothered me was, why the fourth of the blacks
was wanting at present, unless he had his part to play elsewhere.
If it was chance, then the whole might be a notion of mine,
which I knew I was apt to have sometimes. If I could only
make out the fourth black, so as to tally with the scheme, on
the other hand, then I thought it was all sure; but of course
this quite pauled me, and I gave it up, to work out my fancy
case by providing signals betwixt us plotters inside and the
schooner, out of sight from the telegraphs. There was no use
for her to run in and take the risk, without good luck having
turned up on the island; yet any sign she could profit by must
be both sufficient to reach sixty miles or so, and hidden enough
not to alarm the telegraphs or the cruisers. Here was a worse
puzzle than all, and I only guessed at it for my own satisfac-
tion as a fellow can't help doing when he hears a question
he can't answer - till my eye
lighted on Diana's Peak, near
three thousand feet above the sea. There it was, by Jove!
'Twas quite clear at the time; but by nightfall there was always
more or less cloud near the top, and if you set a fire on the
very peak 'twould only be seen leagues off: a notion that
brought to mind a similar thing which I told you saved the
Indiaman from a lee-shore one night on the African coast-
and again, by George! I saw that must have been meant at first
by the negroes as a smoke to help the French brig easier in!
Putting that and that together, why it struck me at once what
the fourth black's errand might be-namely, to watch for the
schooner, and kindle his signal as soon as he couldn't see the
island for mist. I was sure of it; and as for a dark night com-
ing on at sea, the freshening of the breeze there promised noth-
ing more likely; a bright white haze was softening out the
-
-


## p. 4217 (#595) ###########################################

GEORGE CUPPLES
4217
horizon already, and here and there the egg of a cloud could be
seen to break off the sky to windward, all of which would be
better known afloat than here.
The truth was, I was on the point of tripping my anchor to
hurry down and get aboard again; but on standing up, the head
of a peak fell below the sail I had noticed in the distance, and
seeing she loomed large on the stretch of water, I pretty soon
found she must be a ship of the line. The telegraph over the
Alarm House was hard at work again, so I e'en took down my
glass and cleaned it to have a better sight, during which I
caught sight, for a minute, of some soldier officer or other on
horseback, with a mounted redcoat behind him, riding hastily up
the gully a good bit from my back, till they were round the red
piece of crag, turning at times as if to watch the vessel. Though
I couldn't have a better spy at him for want of my glass, I had
no doubt he was the governor himself, for the sentries in the
distance took no note of him. There was nobody else visible at
the time, and the said cliff stood fair up like a look-out place,
so as to shut them out as they went higher. Once or twice
after, I fancied I made out a man's head or two lower down
the gully than the cliff was; which, it occurred to me, might
possibly be the botanists, as they called themselves, busy finding
out how long St. Helena had been an island; however, I soon
turned the glass before me upon the ship, by this time right
opposite the ragged opening of Prosperous Bay, and heading
well up about fourteen miles or so off the coast, as I reckoned
to make James Town harbor. The moment I had the sight of
the glass right for her, though you'd have thought she stood
still on the smooth soft blue water,—I could see her whole
beam rise off the swells before me, from the dark side and
white band, checkered with a double row of ports, to the ham-
per of her lofty spars, and the sails braced slant to the breeze;
the foam gleaming under her high bows, and her wake running
aft in the heave of the sea. She was evidently a seventy-four;
I fancied I could make out her men's faces peering over the
yards toward the island, as they thought of "Boneypart"; a white
rear-admiral's flag was at the mizenroyal masthead, leaving no
doubt she was the Conqueror at last, with Admiral Plampin, and
in a day or two at farthest the Hebe would be bound for India.
I had just looked over my shoulder toward Longwood, letting
the Conqueror sink back again into a thing no bigger than
-


## p. 4218 (#596) ###########################################

4218
GEORGE CUPPLES
a model on a mantelpiece, when all at once I saw some one
standing near the brow of the cliff I mentioned, apparently
watching the vessel, with a long glass at his eye like myself.
'Twas farther than I could see to make out anything, save so
much; and ere I had screwed the glass for such a near sight,
there were seven or eight figures more appearing half over the
slope behind; while my hand shook so much with holding the
glass so long, that at first I brought it to bear full on the cracks
and blocks in the front of the crag, with the large green leaves
and trailers on it flickering idly with the sunlight against my
eyes, till I could have seen the spiders inside, I daresay. Next
I held it too high, where the admiral and Lord Frederick were
standing by their horses, a good way back; the governor, as I
supposed, sitting on his, and two or three others along the rise.
At length, what with kneeling down to rest it on one knee, I
had the glass steadily fixed on the brow of the rocks, where I
plainly saw a tall dark-whiskered man in a rich French uniform,
gazing to seaward. I knew him I sought too well by pictures,
however, not to be sadly galled. Suddenly a figure came slowly
down from before the rest, with his hands behind his back, and
his head a little drooped. The officer at once lowered the tele-
scope and held it to him, stepping upward as if to leave him.
alone - what dress he had on I scarce noticed; but there he was
standing, single in the round bright field of the glass I had hold
of like a vise- his head raised, his hands hiding his face, as I
kept the telescope fixed fair in front of me-only I saw the
smooth broad round of his chin. I knew, as if I'd seen him in
the Tuileries at Paris, or known him by sight since I was a boy,
-I knew it was Napoleon.
-
During that minute the rest of them were out of sight, so
far as the glass went-you'd have supposed there was no one
there but himself, as still as a figure in iron; watching the same
thing, no doubt, as I'd done myself five minutes before, where
the noble seventy-four was beating slowly to windward. When
I did glance to the knot of officers twenty yards back, 'twas as
if one saw a ring of his generals waiting respectfully while he
eyed some field of battle or other, with his army at the back of
the hill; but next moment the telescope fell in his hands, and
his face, as pale as death, with his lip firm under it, seemed
near enough for me to touch it - his eyes shot stern into me
from below his wide white forehead, and I started, dropping my


## p. 4219 (#597) ###########################################

GEORGE CUPPLES
4219
glass in turn. That instant the whole wild lump of St. Helena,
with its ragged brim, the clear blue sky and the sea, swung
round about the dwindled figures above the crag, till they were
nothing but so many people together against the slope beyond.
'Twas a strange scene to witness, let me tell you; never can
I forget the sightless, thinking sort of gaze from that head of
his, after the telescope sank from his eye, when the Conqueror
must have shot back with all her stately hamper into the floor
of the Atlantic again! Once more I brought my spy-glass to
bear on the place where he had been, and was almost on the
point of calling out to warn him off the edge of the cliff, for-
getting the distance I was away. Napoleon had stepped, with
one foot before him, on the very brink, his two hands hanging
loose by his side with the glass in one of them, till the shadow
of his small black cocked hat covered the hollows of his eyes,
and he stood as it were looking down past the face of the
precipice. What he thought of, no mortal tongue can say:
whether he was master at the time over a wilder battle than
any he'd ever fought; but just then, what was the surprise it
gave me to see the head of a man, with a red tasseled cap on
it, raised through among the ivy from below, while he seemed
to have his feet on the cracks and juts of the rock, hoisting
himself by one hand round the tangled roots till no doubt he
must have looked right aloft into the French Emperor's face;
and perhaps he whispered something-though for my part it
was all dumb show to me, where I knelt peering into the glass.
I saw even him start at the suddenness of the thing-he raised
his head upright, still glancing down over the front of the crag,
with the spread hand lifted, and the side of his face half
turned toward the party within earshot behind, where the gov-
ernor and the rest apparently kept together out of respect, no
doubt watching both Napoleon's back and the ship of war far
beyond. The keen sunlight on the spot brought out every motion
of the two in front-the one so full in my view, that I could
mark his look settle again on the other below, his firm lips part-
ing and his hand out before him like a man seeing a spirit he
knew; while a bunch of leaves on the end of a wand came steal-
ing up from the stranger's post to Napoleon's very fingers. The
head of the man on the cliff turned round seaward for one
moment, ticklish as his footing must have been; then he looked
back, pointing with his loose hand to the horizon,-there was


## p. 4220 (#598) ###########################################

4220
GEORGE CUPPLES
one minute between them without a motion, seemingly - the
captive Emperor's chin was sunk on his breast, though you'd
have said his eyes glanced up out of the shadow on his fore-
head; and the stranger's red cap hung like a bit of the bright
colored cliff, under his two hands holding among the leaves.
Then I saw Napoleon lift his hand calmly, he gave a sign with
it-it might have been refusing, it might have been agreeing,
or it might be farewell, I never expect to know; but he folded
his arms across his breast, with the bunch of leaves in his
fingers, and stepped slowly back from the brink toward the
officers. I was watching the stranger below it, as he swung
there for a second or two, in a way like to let him go dash to
the bottom; his face sluing wildly seaward again. Short though
the glance I had of him was,- his features set hard in some
bitter feeling or other, his dress different too, besides the mus-
tache being off, and his complexion no doubt purposely darkened,
- it served to prove what I'd suspected: he was no other than
the Frenchman I had seen in the brig; and mad or sensible, the
very look I caught was more like that he faced the thunder-
squall with, than aught beside. Directly after, he was letting
himself carefully down with his back to my glass; the party
above were moving off over the brow of the crags, and the
governor riding round, apparently to come once more down the
hollow between us. In fact, the seventy-four had stood by this.
time so far in that the peaks in the distance shut her out; but I
ran the glass carefully along the whole horizon in my view, for
signs of the schooner. The haze was too bright, however, to
make sure either way; though, dead to windward, there were
some streaks of cloud risen with the breeze, where I once or
twice fancied I could catch the gleam of a speck in it. The
Podargus was to be seen through a notch in the rocks, too,
beating out in a different direction, as if the telegraph had sig-
naled her elsewhere; after which you heard the dull rumble of
the forts saluting the Conqueror down at James Town as she
came in and being late in the afternoon, it was high time for
me to crowd sail downward, to fall in with my shipmates.


## p. 4221 (#599) ###########################################

4221
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
(1824-1892)
BY EDWARD CARY
In
EORGE WILLIAM CURTIS was born in Providence, R. I. , Febru-
ary 24th, 1824, of a New England family, his ancestry on
the father's side running back in unbroken line to the
Massachusetts settlers of the first half of the seventeenth century.
Though his home was in New York from early boyhood, he was
through life a type-one of the best-of New England manhood.
The firm, elastic, sometimes hard, fibre of a steadfast and intense
moral sense was always found, occasion requiring, beneath the social
grace and charm and the blithe and vivid
fancy of the author. His schooling was
brief- a few years only before the age of
eleven. The rest of his education, which
was varied and in some lines thorough,
was gained by reading, with private tutors,
with his accomplished and gifted step-
mother, and-richest of all-alone.
1842, while yet a lad of eighteen, he went
for a couple of years as a boarder to Brook
Farm. There, to quote his own words, «<
the ripest scholars, men and women of the
most æsthetic culture and accomplishment,
young farmers, seamstresses, mechanics,
preachers, the industrious, the lazy, the con-
ceited, the sentimental. But they associated in such a spirit and un-
der such conditions that, with some extravagance, the best of every-
body appeared. " "Compared with other efforts upon which time and
money and industry are lavished, measured by Colorado and Nevada
speculations, by California gold-washings, by oil-boring and the
Stock Exchange, Brook Farm was certainly a very reasonable and
practical enterprise, worthy of the hope and aid of generous men
and women. The friendships that were formed there were enduring.
The devotion to noble endeavor, the sympathy with what is most
useful to men, the kind patience and constant charity that were fos-
tered there, have been no more lost than the grain dropped upon
the field. "
were

GEORGE W. CURTIS


## p. 4222 (#600) ###########################################

4222
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
These two years, and one spent on a farm at Concord, Massachu-
setts, near the homes of Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, were fol-
lowed by four years in Europe,-in Germany, Italy, France, Egypt;
and in 1851, at the age of twenty-seven, Curtis took up seriously the
work of a writer. Within a year he published two small volumes,
The Nile Notes of a Howadji,' and 'The Howadji in Syria. ' For a
couple of years he was a writer on the New York Tribune, where his
Brook Farm friends, Ripley and Dana, were engaged; and 'Lotus-
Eating' was made up of letters to that paper from the then famous
"watering-places. " He dropped newspaper work to become an editor
and writer with Putnam's Magazine, and the 'Potiphar Papers' and
'Prue and I were written for that periodical. For a time he formed
a connection with the printer of Putnam's in a publishing business;
in which, and through the fault of others, he failed; assuming, quite
beyond the requirements of the law, debts which it took a score of
years to discharge. Finally he found his publishing home with the
house of Harper and Brothers. At first a contributor to the Maga-
zine and the Weekly, he became the editor of the Weekly and the
writer of the "Easy Chair"; and from those two coignes of vantage,
until his death on August 31st, 1892, he did what, apart from his
lectures and addresses, was the work of his life. He made no more
books, save the one not successful novel of Trumps,' written as a
serial for the Weekly, and the volumes from the Addresses and the
"Easy Chair" published after his death; yet he fulfilled the prophecy
of Hawthorne on the appearance of the Nile Notes'—"I see that
you are forever an author. »
It would not be easy, were it worth while, exactly to classify
Curtis; and if in general phrase we say that he was an essayist, that
only betrays how comprehensive a label is needed to cover his work.
Essays, long or short, the greater number of his writings were; each
practically embraced a single subject, and of this presented one
phase, important perhaps and grave, or light, amusing, tender, and
sometimes satiric to the verge of bitterness—though never beyond it.
The Howadji books, which first gave him a name and fairly
launched him as a writer, were a singular and original product,
wholly different from what could have been expected of his training
and associations; a venture in a field which, curiously enough, since
the venture was in every sense more than ordinarily successful, he
promptly and forever abandoned. "I aimed," he says in one of his
private letters, "to represent the essentially sensuous, luxurious,
languid, and sense-satisfied spirit of Eastern life. " The style was
adapted with courage, not to say audacity, to the aim. No American
at that time had ever written English so riotously beyond the
accepted conventions, so frankly, almost saucily, limited only by what


## p. 4223 (#601) ###########################################

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4223
the writer chose to say of what he felt or fancied under the inspira-
tion of the East. Leigh Hunt compared the 'Nile Notes' to 'Eothen'
and to 'Hyperion,' but the relation was extravagantly remote. The
Howadji books were as individual as the lavish and brilliant bloom
of a plant in the hot rays of the southern spring-and as passing.
Once the shining and slightly gaudy flowers were shed, the normal
growth proceeded to substantial fruitage.
The Potiphar Papers' were like the Eastern books in this, that
they were at the time a still more successful venture in a field
which, if not wholly abandoned by Curtis, was not continuously cul-
tivated, but was only entered occasionally and never quite in the
same spirit. They were a series of satires, fanciful enough in con-
ception, but serious and almost savage in spirit, on the most conspic-
uous society of the day: its vulgarity, vanity, shallowness, and
stupidity, the qualities inherent in the prevalent rivalry in money-
spending. They were of marked importance at the time, because
they were the brilliant and stinging comment of a gentleman and a
patriot on a portion of society whose wealth gave dangerous promi-
nence to the false standards set up and followed. Happily the vices
Curtis scourged were those of an over-vigorous and unchastened
youth of society, and the chief value of the satire now is as a picture
of the past.
'Prue and I was a series of papers written, as Curtis's letters
show, in odd moments and with great rapidity, to meet the exigencies
of the magazine. But the papers survive as an example of the pure
literary work of the author. The opulence and extravagance of the
'Howadji' books disappear; but the rich imagination, the sportive
fancy, the warm and life-giving sentiment, the broad philosophy, are
expressed in a style of singular beauty, flexibility, and strength.
And it was in this line that the "Easy Chair" essays were con-
tinued, forming one of the most remarkable bodies of literary product
of the time. They were written for Harper's Magazine, four or five
monthly, equivalent each year to an ordinary duodecimo volume, and
the series closed with the death of the writer some thirty-five years
from their beginning. Their variety was very great. Some of them
touched the events and questions of the time, and the time embraced
the political contest with slavery, the Civil War, and the marvelously
rapid and complex development of the nation after the war.
when the events or questions of the day were touched, it was at
at once lightly and broadly, to illuminate and fix some suggestion of
philosophy; through all ran the current of wise and gracious and
noble thought or sentiment. Many of the essays were woven of
reminiscence and comment on persons. In the little volume selected
by himself and published shortly before his death, a dozen of the


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GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
4224
twenty-seven were of this nature, embracing such varying person-
alities as Edward Everett, Browning, Wendell Phillips, Dickens,
Thoreau, Jenny Lind, Emerson, Joseph Jefferson. Whoever was thus
brought under the clear, soft, penetrating light of Curtis's pen lived
thereafter in the mind of the reader with a character more real and
just. In many of the essays of the "Easy Chair" there was a tone of
gentle satire, but always hopeful and helpful, not bitter or discoura-
ging; as if in "Titbottom's Spectacles," that broke the heart of the
wearer with their revelation of the evil in those who passed before
them, new lenses had been set, revealing the everlasting beauty and
power of the ideal which evil violates, and to whose gracious and
blessing sway the writer, with a kindly smile at the incongruities of
the actual, invited his friend the reader. The very title had a gleam
of this subtle humor, it being well known to the profession, and
established by the experience of successive generations, that in
reality there is no such thing as an "editor's easy-chair. " Even if
we allow for the fact that Curtis's seat was in his tranquil library on
Staten Island, remote from the complications and vexations of the
magazine's office, we must still recognize that the ease was not in the
chair, but in that firm high poise of the writer's spirit which enabled
him, with wisdom as unfailing as his gracious cheer, "to Report and
Consider all Matters of What Kind Soever. "
Curtis was, perhaps, in his lifetime even more widely known as a
speaker than as a writer. At the very outset of his career he be-
came one of the half-dozen lecturers under the curious and potent
lyceum system, that in the third quarter of the century did so much
to arouse and satisfy a deep interest in things of the mind in the
widely scattered communities of the American republic. At the
very outset, too, he entered with all his soul into the political agita-
tion against slavery, and became one of the most stirring and most
highly regarded popular orators of the Republican party. Later he
was eagerly sought upon occasions of historical interest and for
memorial addresses.