No More Learning

Mr.
Roosevelt's other writings-historical, bio-
graphical, or of the lighter essay sort-are
robustly American in spirit, and enjoyable
in point of style. He is a vigorous person-
ality, whether in life or literature.
Theodore Roosevelt was born in New York city, on October 27th,
1858; and is the son of a successful business man and philanthropist
of the same name, well known and honored in that city. The son's
uncle was R. B. Roosevelt, also distinguished as politician and author.
Theodore the younger was educated at Harvard, being graduated in
1880. He at once interested himself in local politics; and became
a New York State Assemblyman 1882-4. The latter year he was a
member of the National Republican Convention; in 1886 a Republican
candidate for mayor of New York; in 1889 he was made a United
States Civil Service Commissioner, serving until 1895, when he be-
came president of the New York Board of Police Commissioners,—
holding this position until 1897, when he accepted the post of Assist-
ant Secretary of the Navy.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT


## p. 12385 (#435) ##########################################

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
12385
Mr. Roosevelt began to publish books as a young man of twenty-
five. His Hunting Trips of a Ranchman' appeared in 1883; other
books in the order of their publication are History of the Naval
War of 1812 (1885), the lives of Thomas Hart Benton (1887) and
of Gouverneur Morris (1888) in the American Statesmen Series,'
'Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail' (1888), Essays on Practical Pol-
itics (1888), The Winning of the West' (fourth volume 1895), His-
tory of New York City' (1891), and The Wilderness Hunter' (1893).
This is a considerable literary baggage for so young a writer. His
papers descriptive of his hunting and camp life are very readable;
but Mr. Roosevelt's most important work has been the presentation
of different phases of the American historical development. His
studies on the naval war and the New York municipality are done
in the true spirit of scholarly investigation. Most comprehensive and
valuable of all is his The Winning of the West'; in which he tells
the story with admirable freshness, grasp, and a sense of the drama
underlying the evolution of the Western States. His taste for and
experience in the adventurous overcoming of material difficulties,
and the rough-and-ready life of the open, have led him to select sym-
pathetically a fine subject, which he has treated in a way to re-create
the past, and make this series very acceptable for its clear, vivid
sketches of pioneer conditions out of which the West has sprung.
What interests Mr. Roosevelt, here and in his biographies, is the
development of American personalities and of the American idea
from all manner of untoward environment.
―
XXI-775
(
Mr. Roosevelt, because of his stalwart independence and aggressive
honesty in political life, has become a hero with those who are striv-
ing for the purification of American politics. He has been a strong
force for good; and his books reflect these same qualities of vigorous
thought and worthy ideals. His sturdy Americanism is to be felt
alike in his acts and words.
THE INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST
From The Winning of the West. ' Copyright 1889, by G. P. Putman's Sons
THE
HE Wyandots, and the Algonquins who surrounded them, dwelt
in a region of sunless, tangled forests; and all the wars we
waged for the possession of the country between the Alle-
ghanies and the Mississippi were carried on in the never-ending
stretches of gloomy woodland. It was not an open forest. The
underbrush grew, dense and rank, between the boles of the tall


## p. 12386 (#436) ##########################################

12386
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
trees, making a cover so thick that it was in many places impen-
etrable, so thick that it nowhere gave a chance for human eye
to see even as far as a bow could carry. No horse could penetrate
it save by following the game trails or paths chopped with the
axe; and a stranger venturing a hundred yards from a beaten.
road would be so helplessly lost that he could not, except by the
merest chance, even find his way back to the spot he had just
left. Here and there it was broken by a rare hillside glade, or
by a meadow in a stream valley; but elsewhere a man might
travel for weeks as if in a perpetual twilight, never once able
to see the sun through the interlacing twigs that formed a darl
canopy above his head.
This dense forest was to the Indians a home in which they
had lived from childhood, and where they were as much at ease
as a farmer on his own acres. To their keen eyes, trained for
generations to more than a wild beast's watchfulness, the wilder-
ness was an open book: nothing at rest or in motion escaped
them. They had begun to track game as soon as they could
walk; a scrape on a tree trunk, a bruised leaf, a faint indenta-
tion of the soil, which the eye of no white man could see,- all
told them a tale as plainly as if it had been shouted in their
ears. With moccasined feet they trod among brittle twigs, dried.
leaves, and dead branches, as silently as the cougar; and they
equaled this great wood-cat in stealth, and far surpassed it in
cunning and ferocity. They could no more get lost in the
trackless wilderness than a civilized man could get lost on a
highway. Moreover, no knight of the Middle Ages was so surely
protected by his armor as they were by their skill in hiding: the
whole forest was to the whites one vast ambush, and to them a
sure and ever-present shield. Every tree trunk was a breastwork
ready prepared for battle; every bush, every moss-covered bowl-
der, was a defense against assault, from behind which, themselves
unseen, they watched with fierce derision the movements of their
clumsy white enemy. Lurking, skulking, traveling with noiseless
rapidity, they left a trail that only a master in woodcraft could
follow; while on the other hand they could dog a white man's
footsteps as a hound runs a fox. Their silence, their cunning
and stealth, their terrible prowess and merciless cruelty, makes it
no figure of speech to call them the tigers of the human race.
Unlike the southern Indians, the villages of the northwestern
tribes were usually far from the frontier. Tireless, and careless


## p. 12387 (#437) ##########################################

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
12387
of all hardship, they came silently out of unknown forests, robbed
and murdered, and then disappeared again into the fathomless
depths of the woods. Half the terror they caused was due to
the extreme difficulty of following them, and the absolute impos-
sibility of forecasting their attacks. Without warning, and un-
seen until the moment they dealt the death stroke, they emerged
from their forest fastnesses, the horror they caused being height-
ened no less by the mystery that shrouded them than by the
dreadful nature of their ravages. Wrapped in the mantle of the
unknown, appalling by their craft, their ferocity, their fiendish
cruelty, they seemed to the white settlers devils and not men;
no one could say with certainty whence they came, nor of what
tribe they were; and when they had finished their dreadful work,
they retired into a wilderness that closed over their trail, as the
waves of the ocean close in the wake of a ship.
They were trained to the use of arms from their youth up;
and war and hunting were their two chief occupations, the busi-
ness as well as the pleasure of their lives. They were not as
skillful as the white hunters with the rifle,—though more so than
the average regular soldier,-nor could they equal the frontiers-
man in feats of physical prowess, such as boxing and wrestling;
but their superior endurance, and the ease with which they stood
fatigue and exposure, made amends for this. A white might out-
run them for eight or ten miles; but on a long journey they
could tire out any man, and any beast except a wolf. Like
most barbarians they were fickle and inconstant,-not to be
relied on for pushing through a long campaign; and after a
great victory apt to go off to their homes, because each man.
desired to secure his own plunder and tell his own tale of glory.
They are often spoken of as undisciplined; but in reality their
discipline in the battle itself was very high. They attacked,
retreated, rallied or repelled a charge, at the signal of com-
mand; and they were able to fight in open order in thick covers
without losing touch of each other-a feat that no European regi-
ment was then able to perform.
On their own ground they were far more formidable than
the best European troops. The British grenadiers throughout
the eighteenth century showed themselves superior, in the actual
shock of battle, to any infantry of continental Europe; if they
ever met an overmatch, it was when pitted against the Scotch
highlanders. Yet both grenadier and highlander, the heroes of


## p. 12388 (#438) ##########################################

12388
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Minden, the heirs to the glory of Marlborough's campaigns, as
well as the sinewy soldiers who shared in the charges of Preston-
pans and Culloden, proved helpless when led against the dark
tribesmen of the forest. On the march they could not be trusted
thirty yards from the column without getting lost in the woods,-
the mountain training of the highlanders apparently standing
them in no stead whatever,- and were only able to get around
at all when convoyed by backwoodsmen. In fight they fared
even worse. The British regulars at Braddock's battle, and the
highlanders at Grant's defeat a few years later, suffered the same
fate. Both battles were fair fights,- neither was a surprise; yet
the stubborn valor of the red-coated grenadier and the headlong
courage of the kilted Scot proved of less than no avail. Not
only were they utterly routed and destroyed in each case by an
inferior force of Indians (the French taking little part in the
conflict), but they were able to make no effective resistance
whatever; it is to this day doubtful whether these superb regu-
lars were able, in the battles where they were destroyed, to so
much as kill one Indian for every hundred of their own men who
fell. The provincials who were with the regulars were the only
troops who caused any loss to the foe; and this was true in but
a less degree of Bouquet's fight at Bushy Run. Here Bouquet,
by a clever stratagem, gained the victory over an enemy inferior
in numbers to himself; but only after a two-days' struggle in
which he suffered a fourfold greater loss than he inflicted.
When hemmed in so that they had no hope of escape, the
Indians fought to the death: but when a way of retreat was
open, they would not stand cutting like British, French, or Amer-
ican regulars; and so, though with a nearly equal force, would
retire if they were suffering heavily, even if they were causing
their foes to suffer still more. This was not due to lack of
courage, it was their system; for they were few in numbers, and
they did not believe in losing their men. The Wyandots were
exceptions to this rule, for with them it was a point of honor
not to yield; and so they were of all the tribes the most dan-
gerous in an actual pitched battle.
But making the attack, as they usually did, with the expecta-
tion of success, all were equally dangerous. If their foes were
clustered together in a huddle, they attacked them without hesi-
tation,- no matter what the difference in numbers,—and shot
them down as if they had been elk or buffalo; they themselves
__________


## p. 12389 (#439) ##########################################

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
12389
being almost absolutely safe from harm, as they flitted from
cover to cover. It was this capacity for hiding, or taking advan-
tage of cover, that gave them their great superiority; and it is
because of this that the wood tribes were so much more formi-
dable foes in actual battle than the horse Indians of the plains
afterwards proved themselves. In dense woodland, a body of
regular soldiers are almost as useless against Indians as they
would be if at night they had to fight foes who could see in the
dark: it needs special and long-continued training to fit them
in any degree for wood-fighting against such foes. But on the
plains, the white hunter's skill with the rifle and his cool reso-
lution give him an immense advantage: a few determined men
can withstand a host of Indians in the open, although helpless
if they meet them in thick cover; and our defeats by the Sioux
and other plains tribes have generally taken the form of a small
force being overwhelmed by a large one.
Not only were the Indians very terrible in battle, but they
were cruel beyond all belief in victory; and the gloomy annals
of border warfare are stained with their darkest hues, because
it was a war in which helpless women and children suffered
the same hideous fate that so often befell their husbands and
fathers. It was a war waged by savages against armed settlers, .
whose families followed them into the wilderness. Such a war
is inevitably bloody and cruel; but the inhuman love of cruelty
for cruelty's sake, which marks the red Indian above all other
savages, rendered these wars more terrible than any others.
For the hideous, unnamable, unthinkable tortures practiced by
the red men on their captured foes, and on their foes' tender
women and helpless children, were such as we read of in no
other struggle; hardly even in the revolting pages that tell the
deeds of the Holy Inquisition. It was inevitable - indeed it was
in many instances proper-that such deeds should awake in the
breasts of the whites the grimmest, wildest spirit of revenge and
hatred.
The history of the border wars, both in the ways they were
begun and in the ways they were waged, makes a long tale of
injuries inflicted, suffered, and mercilessly revenged. It could
not be otherwise when brutal, reckless, lawless borderers, despis-
ing all men not of their own color, were thrown in contact with
savages who esteemed cruelty and treachery as the highest of
virtues, and rapine and murder as the worthiest of pursuits.


## p. 12390 (#440) ##########################################

12390
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Moreover, it was sadly inevitable that the law-abiding borderer
as well as the white ruffian, the peaceful Indian as well as the
painted marauder, should be plunged into the struggle to suffer
the punishment that should only have fallen on their evil-minded
fellows.
BACKWOODSMEN AND OTHER EARLY TYPES
From The Winning of the West. ' Copyright 1889, by G. P. Putnam's Sons
THE
HE first duty of the backwoodsmen who thus conquered the
West was to institute civil government. Their efforts to
overcome and beat back the Indians went hand in hand
with their efforts to introduce law and order in the primitive
communities they founded; and exactly as they relied purely on
themselves in withstanding outside foes, so they likewise built
up their social life and their first systems of government with
reference simply to their special needs, and without any outside
help or direction. The whole character of the westward move-
ment the methods of warfare, of settlement, and of government
were determined by the extreme and defiant individualism of
the backwoodsmen, their inborn independence and self-reliance,
and their intensely democratic spirit. The West was won and
settled by a number of groups of men, all acting independ-
ently of one another, but with a common object, and at about
the same time. There was no one controlling spirit: it was
essentially the movement of a whole free people, not of a single
master-mind. There were strong and able leaders, who showed
themselves fearless soldiers and just lawgivers, undaunted by
danger, resolute to persevere in the teeth of disaster; but even
these leaders are most deeply interesting because they stand
foremost among a host of others like them. There were hun-
dreds of hunters and Indian-fighters like Mansker, Wetzel, Ken-
ton, and Brady; there were scores of commonwealth-founders
like Logan, Todd, Floyd, and Harrod; there were many advent-
urous land speculators like Henderson; there were even plenty of
commanders like Shelby and Campbell. These were all men of
mark; some of them exercised a powerful and honorable influ-
ence on the course of events in the West. Above them rise four
greater figures, fit to be called not merely State or local, but
-


## p. 12391 (#441) ##########################################

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
12391
national heroes. Clark, Sevier, Robertson, and Boon are emphat-
ically American worthies. They were men of might in their
day, born to sway the minds of others, helpful in shaping the
destiny of the continent. Yet of Clark alone can it be said that
he did a particular piece of work which without him would have.
remained undone. Sevier, Robertson, and Boon only hastened,
and did more perfectly, a work which would have been done
by others had they themselves fallen by the wayside. Important
though they are for their own sakes, they are still more import-
ant as types of the men who surrounded them.
The individualism of the backwoodsmen, however, was tem-
pered by a sound common-sense, and capacity for combination.
The first hunters might come alone or in couples; but the actual
colonization was done not by individuals, but by groups of indi-
viduals. The settlers brought their families and belongings either
on pack-horses along the forest trails, or in scows down the
streams; they settled in palisaded villages, and immediately took
steps to provide both a civil and military organization. They
were men of facts, not theories; and they showed their usual
hard common-sense in making a government. They did not try
to invent a new system; they simply took that under which they
had grown up, and applied it to their altered conditions.
They
were most familiar with the government of the county; and there-
fore they adopted this for the framework of their little independ-
ent, self-governing commonwealths of Watauga, Cumberland, and
Transylvania.
They were also familiar with the representative system; and
accordingly they introduced it into the new communities, the
little forted villages serving as natural units of representation.
They were already thoroughly democratic, in instinct and prin-
ciple; and as a matter of course they made the offices elective,
and gave full play to the majority. In organizing the militia
they kept the old system of county lieutenants, making them
elective, not appointive; and they organized the men on the basis
of a regiment,- the companies representing territorial divisions,
each commanded by its own officers, who were thus chosen by
the fighting men of the fort or forts in their respective districts.
Thus each of the backwoods commonwealths, during its short-
lived term of absolute freedom, reproduced as its governmental
system that of the old colonial county; increasing the powers of


## p. 12392 (#442) ##########################################

12392
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
the court, and changing the justices into the elective representa-
tives of an absolute democracy. The civil head, the chairman of
the court or committee, was also usually the military head,— the
colonel-commandant. In fact, the military side of the organization
rapidly became the most conspicuous, and, at least in certain crises,
the most important. There were also some years of desperate
warfare, during which the entire strength of the little common-
wealth was drawn on to resist outside aggression; and during
these years the chief function of the government was to provide
for the griping military needs of the community, and the one
pressing duty of its chief was to lead his followers with valor
and wisdom in the struggle with the stranger.
These little communities were extremely independent in feel-
ing, not only of the Federal Government, but of their parent
States, and even of one another. They had won their positions
by their own courage and hardihood; very few State troops and
hardly a Continental soldier had appeared west of the Allegha-
nies. They had heartily sympathized with their several mother
colonies when they became the United States, and had manfully
played their part in the Revolutionary war. Moreover, they
were united among themselves by ties of good-will and of services
mutually rendered. Kentucky, for instance, had been succored
more than once by troops raised among the Watauga Carolinians
or the Holston Virginians, and in her turn she had sent needed
supplies to the Cumberland. But when the strain of the war
was over, the separatist spirit asserted itself very strongly. The
groups of Western settlements not only looked on the Union
itself very coldly, but they were also more or less actively hostile
to their parent States, and regarded even one another as foreign
communities; they considered the Confederation as being literally
only a lax league of friendship.
Up to the close of the Revolutionary contest, the settlers who
were building homes and States beyond the Alleghanies formed
a homogeneous backwoods population. The wood-choppers, game-
hunters, and Indian-fighters, who dressed and lived alike, were
the typical pioneers. They were a shifting people. In every
settlement the tide ebbed and flowed. Some of the new-comers
would be beaten in the hard struggle for existence, and would
drift back to whence they had come. Of those who succeeded,
some would take root in the land, and others would move still


## p. 12393 (#443) ##########################################

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
12393
further into the wilderness. Thus each generation rolled west-
ward, leaving its children at a point where the wave stopped no
less than at that where it started. The descendants of the vic-
tors of King's Mountain are as likely to be found in the Rockies
as in the Alleghanies.
With the close of the war came an enormous increase in
the tide of immigration; and many of the new-comers were of a
very different stamp from their predecessors. The main current
flowed towards Kentucky, and gave an entirely different charac-
ter to its population. The two typical figures in Kentucky so
far had been Clark and Boon, but after the close of the Revolu-
tion both of them sank into unimportance; whereas the careers
of Sevier and Robertson had only begun. The disappearance of
the two former from active life was partly accidental, and partly
a resultant of the forces that assimilated Kentucky so much more
rapidly than Tennessee to the conditions prevailing in the old
States. Kentucky was the best known and most accessible of the
Western regions; within her own borders she was now compara-
tively safe from serious Indian invasion, and the tide of immi-
gration naturally followed thither. So strong was the current,
that within a dozen years it had completely swamped the original
settlers, and had changed Kentucky from a peculiar pioneer and
backwoods commonwealth into a State differing no more from
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, than these differed
from one another.
The men who gave the tone to this great flood of new-comers
were the gentry from the sea-coast country: the planters, the
young lawyers, the men of means who had been impoverished
by the long-continued and harassing civil war. Straitened in
circumstances, desirous of winning back wealth and position, they
cast longing eyes towards the beautiful and fertile country beyond
the mountains; deeming it a place that afforded unusual oppor-
tunities to the man with capital, no less than to him whose sole
trust was in his own adventurous energy.
Most of the gentlefolks in Virginia and the Carolinas, the
men who lived in great roomy houses on their well-stocked and
slave-tilled plantations, had been forced to struggle hard to keep
their heads above water during the Revolution. They loyally
supported the government with blood and money; and at the
same time they endeavored to save some of their property from
the general wreck, and to fittingly educate their girls, and those


## p. 12394 (#444) ##########################################

12394
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
The men
of their boys who were too young to be in the army.
of this stamp who now prepared to cast in their lot with the
new communities formed an exceptionally valuable class of immi-
grants: they contributed the very qualities of which the raw
settlements stood most in need. They had suffered for no fault
of their own: fate had gone hard with them. The fathers had
been in the Federal or Provincial Congresses; the older sons had
served in the Continental line or in the militia. The plantations
were occasionally overrun by the enemy; and the general dis-
order had completed their ruin. Nevertheless the heads of the
families had striven to send the younger sons to school or col-
lege. For their daughters they did even more; and throughout
the contest, even in it darkest hours, they sent them down to
receive the final touches of a lady-like education at some one of
the State capitals not at the moment in the hands of the enemy
- such as Charleston or Philadelphia. There the young ladies
were taught dancing and music; for which, as well as for their
frocks and «< pink calamanco shoes," their fathers paid enormous
sums in depreciated Continental currency.
Even the close of active hostilities, when the British were
driven from the Southern States, brought at first but a slight
betterment of condition to the struggling people. There was no
cash in the land, the paper currency was nearly worthless, every
one was heavily in debt, and no one was able to collect what
was owing to him. There was much mob violence, and a general
relaxation of the bonds of law and order. Even nature turned
hostile: a terrible drought shrunk up all the streams until they
could not turn the grist-mills, while from the same cause the
crops failed almost completely. A hard winter followed, and
many cattle and hogs died; so that the well-to-do were brought
to the verge of bankruptcy, and the poor suffered extreme priva-
tions,- being forced to go fifty or sixty miles to purchase small
quantities of meal and grain at exorbitant prices.
This distress at home inclined many people of means and
ambition to try their fortunes in the West; while another and
equally powerful motive was the desire to secure great tracts of
virgin lands for possession or speculation. Many distinguished
soldiers had been rewarded by successive warrants for unoccupied
land, which they entered wherever they chose, until they could
claim thousands upon thousands of acres. Sometimes they sold
these warrants to outsiders; but whether they remained in the


## p. 12395 (#445) ##########################################

THEODORE ROOSEVELT
12395
hands of the original holders or not, they served as a great stim-
ulus to the westward movement, and drew many of the repre-
sentatives of the wealthiest and most influential families in the
parent States to the lands on the farther side of the mountains.
At the close of the Revolution, however, the men from the
sea-coast region formed but an insignificant portion of the Western
pioneers. The country beyond the Alleghanies was first won and
settled by the backwoodsmen themselves, acting under their own
leaders, obeying their own desires, and following their own meth-
ods. They were marked and peculiar people. The good and
evil traits in their character were such as naturally belonged to
a strong, harsh, and homely race; which, with all its shortcom-
ings, was nevertheless bringing a tremendous work to a tri-
umphant conclusion. The backwoodsmen were above all things
characteristically American; and it is fitting that the two greatest
and most typical of all Americans should have been respectively
a sharer and an outcome of their work. Washington himself
passed the most important years of his youth heading the west-
ward movement of his people; clad in the traditional dress of the
backwoodsmen, in tasseled hunting-shirt and fringed leggings, he
led them to battle against the French and Indians, and helped to
clear the way for the American advance. The only other man
who in the American roll of honor stands by the side of Wash-
ington, was born when the distinctive work of the pioneers had
ended: and yet he was bone of their bone and flesh of their
flesh; for from the loins of this gaunt frontier folk sprang mighty
Abraham Lincoln.
Looking back, it is easy to say that much of the wrong-doing
could have been prevented; but if we examine the facts to find
out the truth, not to establish a theory, we are bound to admit
that the struggle was really one that could not possibly have
been avoided. The sentimental historians speak as if the blame
had been all ours, and the wrong all done to our foes, and as if it
would have been possible by any exercise of wisdom to reconcile
claims that were in their very essence conflicting; but their utter-
ances are as shallow as they are untruthful. Unless we were
willing that the whole continent west of the Alleghanies should
remain an unpeopled waste, the hunting-ground of savages, war
was inevitable; and even had we been willing, and had we re-
frained from encroaching on the Indians' lands, the war would
have come nevertheless, for then the Indians themselves would


## p. 12396 (#446) ##########################################

12396
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
have encroached on ours. Undoubtedly we have wronged many
tribes; but equally undoubtedly our first definite knowledge of
many others has been derived from their unprovoked outrages
upon our people. The Chippewas, Ottawas, and Pottawatamies
furnished hundreds of young warriors to the parties that devas-
tated our frontiers, generations before we in any way encroached
upon or wronged them.
Mere outrages could be atoned for or settled: the question
which lay at the root of our difficulties was that of the occupa
tion of the land itself; and to this there could be no solution save
war. The Indians had no ownership of the land in the way in
which we understand the term. The tribes lived far apart; each
had for its hunting-grounds all the territory from which it was
not barred by rivals. Each looked with jealousy upon all inter-
lopers, but each was prompt to act as an interloper when occasion
offered. Every good hunting-ground was claimed by many nations.
It was rare indeed that any tribe had an uncontested title to a
large tract of land: where such title existed, it rested not on
actual occupancy and cultivation, but on the recent butchery of
weaker rivals. For instance, there were a dozen tribes, all of
whom hunted in Kentucky, and fought each other there, all of
whom had equally good titles to the soil, and not one of whom
acknowledged the right of any other: as a matter of fact they
had therein no right, save the right of the strongest. The land
no more belonged to them than it belonged to Boon and the
white hunters who first ted it.


## p. 12397 (#447) ##########################################

12397
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
(1830-1894)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
NGLISH poetry enjoys a unique distinction in the possession of
two women whose works must be ranked with all but the
highest achievements of our song. It is neither misplaced
sentiment nor mistaken chivalry, but the dispassionate verdict of a
searching and objective criticism, that claims for Elizabeth Browning
and Christina Rossetti two seats in the temple of fame not far below
those in which the greatest English poets
of the Victorian era are enthroned. It is
idle to inquire from which of the two we
have received the more enduring work; but
a brief comparison in general terms may be
found instructive. Mrs. Browning has un-
doubtedly won a wider acceptance than Miss
Rossetti, and enjoyed a greater popularity;
on the other hand, the acceptance won by
the latter poet has probably included the
more distinguished suffrages, while her pop-
ularity has of recent years grown apace,
and may in time outstrip that of the older
singer. Again, the matter of Mrs. Brown- CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI
ing's work was to a considerable extent
timely, which does not often mean of lasting interest; the achieve-
ment of Italian unity has somewhat outworn the passion of "Casa
Guidi Windows,' and the problems of 'Aurora Leigh are not exactly
the problems of the present day. But time is not so likely to wither
the flower of Miss Rossetti's work; for there is little of the temporal
about its themes, which are as a rule the everlasting verities of the
spirit. Finally, it must be allowed that Miss Rossetti was endowed
with a more exquisite perception of poetical form than, was attained
to by Mrs. Browning, and that her work as a whole has a higher
degree of purely artistic finish. The rich emotional nature of the
former woman was too frequently content to rely upon the first
impulsive form with which the thought became clothed in the white
heat of her imagination; in the case of the latter, with no less of

:


## p. 12398 (#448) ##########################################

12398
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
imaginative glow at heart, there were superadded the powers of
intellectual control and artistic restraint.
Christina Rossetti was born December 5th, 1830; the youngest of
the remarkable group of four children that, with their parents,
made up the London household of the exiled Italian patriot and phi-
losopher, Gabriele Rossetti. She died December 29th, 1894, after an
externally uneventful life of sixty-four years,-a life happy in its do-
mestic relations, and in its intercourse with the circle of distinguished
people that were gathered about the Rossettis; but darkened by much
physical suffering, and in its closing years by a painful and incurable
disease. She was one of the most precocious of poets, and began at
the early age of eleven to write verses, which have been carefully
preserved, and which her brother, Mr. W. M. Rossetti, has thought it
worth while to publish in the posthumous collection edited by him
not quite two years after her death. A volume of her Verses' was
privately printed as early as 1847, and in 1850 she was a contributor
to the Germ. Nearly all of her work that calls for serious consider-
ation is included within the three volumes (Goblin Market and Other
Poems, 1862; The Prince's Progress and Other Poems,' 1866; and
'A Pageant and Other Poems,' 1881) published during her lifetime,
and the posthumous volume of New Poems' (1896) to which allus-
ion has already been made. The titles of her other books, most of
which are of a devotional nature and in prose, are as follows: 'Com-
monplace and Other Short Stories,' 'Sing-Song: A Nursery Rhyme-
Book,' 'Speaking Likenesses,' 'Annus Domini: A Prayer for Every
Day in the Year,' 'Seek and Find,' 'Called to the Saints,' 'Letter
and Spirit,' and Time Flies. ' These books would be noticeable
enough if they stood alone; but the thoughts and the moods which
they embody find a far more intense and rapturous expression in
the four volumes of poems upon which the author's reputation is so
securely based.
Very varied are the contents of these volumes, which range from
a divine simplicity to a richness that is the very ecstasy of religious.
utterance; from a cloying sweetness of diction to a noble auster-
ity; from a picturesque and almost dramatic style to one so chast-
ened and so ethereal that the spirit soars with it to a higher than
the earthly plane. Yet certain insistent characteristics may hardly
be missed anywhere in Christina Rossetti's work: certain qualities of
dreamy tenderness and ardent mysticism, a certain strain of pensive
melancholy, based upon a recognition of the essential vanity of the
external forms of human existence, and upon an unshaken faith in
the reality of that "city of the soul" whereof poets and philosophers
have in all ages dreamed. It is indeed as the poet of religious aspi-
ration and spiritual vision that she is pre-eminent among English


## p. 12399 (#449) ##########################################

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12399
singers. Compared with her work, the best of Newman and Keble
seems forced and formal; the inspiration of Herbert and Vaughan
seems to flash out but fitfully when contrasted with the steady glow
of hers. Such poems as 'Up-Hill,' 'Amor Mundi,' and 'Old and
New Year Ditties' must be ranked among the very noblest examples
of the religious lyric to be found in English literature. And although
these poems, together with their many fellow-songs, were inspired by
the doctrines of the Anglican communion, of which the author was
ever a devoted adherent, there is nothing narrow or dogmatic about
them; rather do they appeal to the general religious consciousness
that is shared by all fervid and lofty souls: while their stately har-
monies of thought and of emotion move in a region in which all
symbols are valued but as symbols, in which theology becomes but
the handmaid of religion, and in which all technical differences of
belief fade in the effulgence of the vision vouchsafed to the spirit.
Cette layer
HOPE IS LIKE A HAREBELL
H
OPE is like a harebell, trembling from its birth;
Love is like a rose, the joy of all the earth.
Faith is like a lily lifted high and white;
Love is like a lovely rose, the world's delight.
Harebells and sweet lilies show a thornless growth,
But the rose with all its thorns excels them both.
DREAM-LAND
From Poems. Macmillan & Co. : 1894
HERE sunless rivers weep
Their waves into the deep,
She sleeps a charmèd sleep:
Awake her not.
WH
Led by a single star,
She came from very far
To seek where shadows are
Her pleasant lot.


## p. 12400 (#450) ##########################################

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12400
She left the rosy morn,
She left the fields of corn,
For twilight cold and lorn
And water springs.
Through sleep, as through a veil,
She sees the sky look pale,
And hears the nightingale
That sadly sings.
Rest, rest, a perfect rest
Shed over brow and breast;
Her face is toward the west,
The purple land.
She cannot see the grain
Ripening on hill and plain;
She cannot feel the rain
Upon her hand.
Rest, rest, forevermore
Upon a mossy shore;
Rest, rest at the heart's core
Till time shall cease:
Sleep that no pain shall wake,
Night that no morn shall break,
Till joy shall overtake
Her perfect peace.
A BIRTHDAY
From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
Y HEART is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a watered shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
Μ'
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these
Because my love is come to me.
Raise me a dais of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;


## p. 12401 (#451) ##########################################

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12401
XXI-776
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys:
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.
AFTER DEATH
From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. . 1894
THE
HE curtains were half drawn, the floor was swept
And strewn with rushes; rosemary and may
Lay thick upon the bed on which I lay,
Where through the lattice ivy shadows crept.
He leaned above me, thinking that I slept
And could not hear him; but I heard him say,
"Poor child, poor child! " and as he turned away
Came a deep silence, and I knew he wept.
He did not touch the shroud, or raise the fold
That hid my face, or take my hand in his,
Or ruffle the smooth pillows for my head.
He did not love me living: but once dead
He pitied me; and very sweet it is
To know he still is warm, though I am cold.
REMEMBER
From 'Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
R
EMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more, day by day,
You tell me of our future that you planned;
Only remember me: you understand
It will be late to counsel then, or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve;
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.


## p. 12402 (#452) ##########################################

12402
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
ECHO
From 'Poems. Macmillan & Co. : 1894
OME to me in the silence of the night;
Come in the speaking silence of a dream;
Come with soft rounded cheeks and eyes as bright
C
As sunlight on a stream;
Come back in tears,
O memory, hope, love, of finished years.
O dream how sweet, too sweet, too bitter sweet,
Whose wakening should have been in Paradise,
Where souls brimful of love abide and meet;
Where thirsting longing eyes
Watch the slow door
That opening, letting in, lets out no more.
Yet come to me in dreams, that I may live
My very life again though cold in death;
Come back to me in dreams, that I may give
Pulse for pulse, breath for breath:
Speak low, lean low,
As long ago, my love, how long ago!
SONG
From 'Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
HEN I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress-tree:
WHEN
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise or set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.


## p. 12403 (#453) ##########################################

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12403
REST
From Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
EARTH, lie heavily upon her eyes;
O
Seal her sweet eyes weary of watching, Earth;
Lie close around her; leave no room for mirth
With its harsh laughter, nor for sound of sighs.
She hath no questions, she hath no replies,
Hushed in and curtained with a blessed dearth
Of all that irked her from the hour of birth;
With stillness that is almost Paradise.
Darkness more clear than noonday holdeth her;
Silence more musical than any song;
Even her very heart has ceased to stir:
Until the morning of Eternity
Her rest shall not begin nor end, but be;
And when she wakes she will not think it long.
UP-HILL
From Poems. ) Macmillan & Co. : 1894
OES the road wind up-hill all the way? —
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day? —
From morn to night, my friend.
DOR
But is there for the night a resting-place? —
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face? —
You cannot miss that inn.
Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? -
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call, when just in sight? -
They will not keep you standing at that door.
Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? -
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.


## p. 12404 (#454) ##########################################

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12404
THE THREE ENEMIES
From 'Poems. ' Macmillan & Co. : 1894
THE FLESH
WEET, thou art pale. "
"SWEET,
Christ hung upon the cruel tree
And bore his Father's wrath for me. "
"Sweet, thou art sad. "
"More pale to see,
"Beneath a rod
More heavy, Christ for my sake trod
The wine-press of the wrath of God. "
"Sweet, thou art weary. "
"Not so Christ;
Whose mighty love of me sufficed
For Strength, Salvation, Eucharist. "
"Sweet, thou art footsore. »
"If I bleed,
His feet have bled; yea, in my need
His heart once bled for mine indeed. "
THE WORLD
"SWEET, thou art young. "
"So He was young
Who for my sake in silence hung
Upon the Cross with Passion wrung. "
"Look, thou art fair. "
"He was more fair
Than men, who deigned for me to wear
A visage marred beyond compare. "
"And thou hast riches. "
"Daily bread:
All else is His who living, dead,
For me lacked where to lay his head. ”
"And life is sweet. "
"It was not so
To Him whose cup did overflow
With mine unutterable woe. "


## p. 12405 (#455) ##########################################

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12405
THE DEVIL
"THOU drinkest deep. "
"When Christ would sup,
He drained the dregs from out my cup:
So how should I be lifted up? "
"Thou shalt win glory. "
"In the skies,
Lord Jesus, cover up mine eyes,
Lest they should look on vanities. "
"Thou shalt have knowledge. "
"Helpless dust,
In thee, O Lord, I put my trust:
Answer thou for me, Wise and Just. "
"And might. "
"Get thee behind me. Lord,
Who hast redeemed and not abhorred
My soul, O keep it by thy Word. "
OLD AND NEW YEAR DITTIES
From Poems. Roberts Bros. : 1866
I
NEW
EW YEAR met me somewhat sad:
Old Year leaves me tired,
Stripped of favorite things I had,
Balked of much desired;
Yet farther on my road to-day,-
God willing, farther on my way.
-
New Year, coming on apace,
What have you to give me?
Bring you scathe, or bring you grace,
Face me with an honest face;
You shall not deceive me:
Be it good or ill, be it what you will,
It needs shall help me on my road,
My rugged way to heaven, please God.


## p. 12406 (#456) ##########################################

12406
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
II
WATCH with me, men, women, and children dear,
You whom I love, for whom I hope and fear,
Watch with me this last vigil of the year.
Some hug their business, some their pleasure-scheme;
Some seize the vacant hour to sleep or dream;
Heart locked in heart some kneel and watch apart.
Watch with me, blessed spirits, who delight
All through the holy night to walk in white,
Or take your ease after the long-drawn fight.
I know not if they watch with me; I know
They count this eve of resurrection slow,
And cry, "How long? " with urgent utterance strong.
Watch with me, Jesus, in my loneliness:
Though others say me nay, yet say thou yes;
Though others pass me by, stop thou to bless.
Yea, thou dost stop with me this vigil-night;
To-night of pain, to-morrow of delight:
I, Love, am thine; thou, Lord my God, art mine.
III
PASSING away, saith the world, passing away:
Chances, beauty, and youth sapped day by day;
Thy life never continueth in one stay.
Is the eye waxen dim, is the dark hair changing to gray
That hath won neither laurel nor bay?
I shall clothe myself in spring and bud in May:
Thou, root-stricken, shalt not rebuild thy decay
On my bosom for aye.
Then I answered, Yea.
Passing away, saith my soul, passing away;
With its burden of fear and hope, of labor and play.
Hearken what the past doth witness and say:-
Rust in thy gold, a moth is in thine array,
A canker is in thy bud, thy leaf must decay.
At midnight, at cock-crow, at morning one certain day
Lo, the Bridegroom shall come and shall not delay:
Watch thou and pray.
Then I answered, Yea.
―


## p. 12407 (#457) ##########################################

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12407
Passing away, saith my God, passing away:
Winter passeth after long delay;
New grapes on the vine, new figs on the tender spray,
Turtle calleth turtle in heaven's May.
Though I tarry, wait for me, trust me, watch and pray.
Arise, come away; night is past, and lo, it is day,
My love, my sister, my spouse, thou shalt hear me say.
Then I answered, Yea.
AMOR MUNDI
From 'Poems. Macmillan & Co. : 1894
"O"
H, WHERE are you going with your love-locks flowing
On the west wind blowing along this valley track? ”.
"The down-hill path is easy; come with me an it please ye:
We shall escape the up-hill by never turning back. "
So they two went together in glowing August weather:
The honey-breathing heather lay to their left and right;
And dear she was to doat on, her swift feet seemed to float on
The air like soft twin pigeons too sportive to alight.
"Oh, what is that in heaven where gray cloud-flakes are seven,
Where blackest clouds hang riven just at the rainy skirt ? » —
"Oh, that's a meteor sent us, a message dumb, portentous,
An undeciphered solemn signal of help or hurt. ”
"Oh, what is that glides quickly where velvet flowers grow thickly,
Their scent comes rich and sickly? "-"A scaled and hooded
>>
worm.
"Oh, what's that in the hollow, so pale I quake to follow? "
"Oh, that's a thin dead body which waits the eternal term. "
-
"Turn again, O my sweetest,- turn again, false and fleetest:
This beaten way thou beatest I fear is hell's own track. ” —
"Nay, too steep for hill mounting; nay, too late for cost counting:
This downward path is easy, but there's no turning back. "


## p. 12408 (#458) ##########################################

12408
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
LIFE HIDDEN
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
OSES and lilies grow above the place
R
Where she sleeps the long sleep that doth not
dream.
If we could look upon her hidden face,
Nor shadow would be there, nor garish gleam
Of light; her life is lapsing like a stream
That makes no noise, but floweth on apace
Seawards, while many a shade and shady beam
Vary the ripples in their gliding chase.
She doth not see, but knows; she doth not feel,
And yet is sensible; she hears no sound,
Yet counts the flight of time and doth not err.
Peace far and near, peace to ourselves and her:
Her body is at peace in holy ground,
Her spirit is at peace where angels kneel.
WHITSUN EVE
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
HE white dove cooeth in her downy nest,
TH
Keeping her young ones warm beneath her breast;
The white moon saileth through the cool clear sky,
Screened by a tender mist in passing by;
The white rose buds, with thorns upon its stem,
All the more precious and more dear for them;
The stream shines silver in the tufted grass,
The white clouds scarcely dim it as they pass;
Deep in the valleys lily-cups are white,
They send up incense all the holy night.
Our souls are white, made clean in Blood once shed;
White blessed angels watch around our bed:
O spotless Lamb of God, still keep us so,
Thou who wert born for us in time of snow.


## p. 12409 (#459) ##########################################

CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
12409
HEAVEN OVERARCHES
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
Η HA
EAVEN overarches earth and sea,
Earth-sadness and sea-bitterness.
Heaven overarches you and me:
A little while and we shall be-
Please God-where there is no more sea
Nor barren wilderness.
Heaven overarches you and me,
And all earth's gardens and her graves.
Look up with me, until we see
The day break and the shadows flee.
What though to-night wrecks you and me
If so to-morrow saves?
THE HEART KNOWETH ITS OWN BITTERNESS
From New Poems. Copyright 1896, by Macmillan & Co.
HEN all the over-work of life
WHEN
Is finished once, and fast asleep
We swerve no more beneath the knife,
But taste the silence cool and deep:
Forgetful of the highways rough,
Forgetful of the thorny scourge,
Forgetful of the tossing surge,
Then shall we find it is enough?
How can we say "enough" on earth —
«< Enough" with such a craving heart?
I have not found it since my birth,
But still have bartered part for part.
I have not held and hugged the whole,
But paid the old to gain the new:
Much have I paid, yet much is due,
Till I am beggared sense and soul.
I used to labor, used to strive
For pleasure with a restless will:
Now if I save my soul alive,
All else what matters, good or ill?


## p. 12410 (#460) ##########################################

12410
CHRISTINA GEORGINA ROSSETTI
I used to dream alone, to plan
Unspoken hopes and days to come:
Of all my past this is the sum,-
I will not lean on child of man.
-
To give, to give, not to receive!
I long to pour myself, my soul,
Not to keep back or count or leave,
But king with king to give the whole.
I long for one to stir my deep,-
I have had enough of help and gift;
I long for one to search and sift
Myself, to take myself, and keep.
-
You scratch my surface with your pin,
You stroke me smooth with hushing breath:
Nay, pierce, nay, probe, nay, dig within,-
Probe my quick core and sound my depth.
You call me with a puny call,
-
You talk, you smile, you nothing do:
How should I spend my heart on you,
My heart that so outweighs you all?
Your vessels are by much too strait:
Were I to pour you, you could not hold.
Bear with me: I must bear to wait,
A fountain sealed through heat and cold.
Bear with me days or months or years:
Deep must call deep until the end,
When friend shall no more envy friend
Nor vex his friend at unawares.
Not in this world of hope deferred,
This world of perishable stuff;
Eye hath not seen nor ear hath heard
Nor heart conceived that full "enough":
Here moans the separating sea;
Here harvests fail; here breaks the heart:
There God shall join and no man part,
I full of Christ and Christ of me.


## p. 12410 (#461) ##########################################



## p. 12410 (#462) ##########################################


11110
110
1011011ONONI
園
​110010One
වන
梭
​0000000
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.
abs
1100221-
H
3191en
I
1
HONG
100000000000000000000


## p. 12410 (#463) ##########################################

T
1


## p. 12410 (#464) ##########################################

. . . .


## p. 12411 (#465) ##########################################

12411
DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
(1828-1882)
BY WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE
N THE tender 'One Word More' with which Browning dedi-
cated to his wife the "fifty poems finished" of "Men and
Women,' the poet speaks of the lost "century of sonnets »
said to have been written by Raphael, and of the painting affirmed
by tradition to have been begun by Dante. Since the days of
Dante and Raphael, other poets have been painters, and other
painters poets; but probably no one has attained to the high and
equal mastery of both arts that we find exemplified in the work of
Rossetti.