career with all amplitude and calmness. I found joy and pride in it, and discerned a golden chain of continuity not often seen in the works of men, apprising me that one good head and great heart remained in England, immovable,-superior to his own eccentricities and perversities,―nay, wearing these, I can well believe, as a jaunty coat or red cockade to defy or mislead idlers, for the better securing his own peace, and the very ends which the idlers fancy he resists. England's lease of power is good during his days. I have in these last years lamented that you had not made the visit to America, which in earlier years you projected or favored. It would have made it impossible that your name should be cited for one moment on the side of the enemies of mankind. Ten days' residence in this country would have made you the organ of the sanity of England and of Europe to us and to them, and have shown you the necessities and aspirations which struggle up in our Free States, which, as yet, have no organ to others, and are ill and unsteadily articulated here. In our today's division of Republican and Democrat, it is certain that the American nationality lies in the Republican party (mixed and multiform though that party be); and I hold it not less certain, that, viewing all the nationalities of the world, the battle for humanity is, at this hour, in America. A few days here would show you the disgusting composition of the Party which within the Union resists the national action. Take from it the wild Irish element, imported in the last twenty-five years into this country, and led by Romish Priests, who sympathize, of course, with despotism, and you would bereave it of all its numerical strength. A man intelligent and virtuous is not to be found on that side. Ah! how gladly I would enlist you, with your thunderbolt, on our part! How gladly enlist the wise, thoughtful, efficient pens and voices of England! We want England and Europe to hold our people stanch to their best tendency. Are English of this day incapable of a great sentiment? Can they not leave cavilling at petty failures, and bad manners, and at the dunce part (always the largest part in human affairs), and leap to the suggestions and finger-pointings of the gods, which, above the understanding, feed the hopes and guide the wills of men? This war has been conducted over the heads of all the actors in it; and the foolish terrors, "What shall we do with the negro?" "The entire black population is coming North to be fed," etc., have strangely ended in the fact that the black refuses to leave his climate; gets his living and the living of his employers there, as he has always done; is the natural ally and soldier of the Republic, in that climate; now takes the place of two hundred thousand white soldiers; and will be, as the conquest of the country proceeds, its garrison, till peace, without slavery, returns. Slave-holders in London have filled English ears with their wishes and perhaps beliefs; and our people, generals, and politicians have carried the like, at first, to the war, until corrected by irresistible experience. I shall always respect War hereafter. The cost of life, the dreary havoc of comfort and time, are overpaid by the Vistas it opens of Eternal Life, Eternal Law, reconstructing and uplifting Society,-breaks up the old horizon, and we see through the rifts a wider. The dismal Malthus, the dismal DeBow, have had their night. Our Census of 1860, and the War, are Poems, which will, in the next age, inspire a genius like your own. I hate to write you a newspaper, but, in these times, 'tis wonderful what sublime lessons I have once and again read on the Bulletin-boards in the streets. Everybody has been wrong in his guess, except good women, who never despair of an Ideal right. R. W. EMERSON. CONCORD, 26 September, 1864. George Lunt. BORN in Newburyport, Mass., 1803. DIED in Boston, Mass., 1885. REQUIEM. FOR ONE SLAIN IN BATTLE. 1862. [Poems. 1884.] BREATHE, trumpets, breathe Slow notes of saddest wailing,— Sadly responsive peal, ye muffled druins; And banners trailing, Attend him home, The youthful warrior comes. Upon his shield, Upon his shield returning, Borne from the field of honor Where he fell; Glory and grief, together clasped In mourning, His fame, his fate With sobs exulting tell. Wrap round his breast The flag his breast defended, His country's flag, In battle's front unrolled; "Be this," he cried, "my sign,— Take it, this hour is mine, The hush, the glow, the shade; Make thou this matchless flower Symbol in hall or bower Of vows and spoken thoughts, but unbetrayed." Since then, when cups went round, Or, long in silence bound, To love hearts yielded pride, Under the rose uphung, Words that, half whispered, clung To lips, or uttered, with the moment died. Thus, round the rose was wreathed, By Love and Silence breathed, That old, unbroken spell; From such sweet fountain flows The legend of the Rose, And thus, Sub Rosa means, You must not tell. Robert Montgomery Bird. BORN in New Castle, Del., 1803. DIED in Philadelphia, Penn., 1854. THE AVENGER. [Nick of the Woods, or The Jibbenainosay: a Tale of Kentucky. 1837. Revised Edition. 1852.] THE HE steps approached; they reached the door; Nathan threw himself back, reclining against his pile of furs, and fixed his eye upon the mats at the entrance. They were presently parted; and the old chief Wenonga came halting into the apartment,-halting, yet with a step that was designed to indicate all the pride and dignity of a warrior. And this attempt at state was the more natural and proper, as he was armed and painted as if for war, his grim countenance hideously bedaubed on one side with vermilion, on the other with black; a long scalping-knife, without sheath or cover, swinging from his wampum belt; while a hatchet, the blade and handle both of steel, was grasped in his hand. In this guise, and with a wild and demoniacal glitter of eye, that seemed the result of mingled drunkenness and insanity, the old chief stalked and limped up to the prisoner, looking as if bent upon his instant destruction. That his passions were up in arms, that he was ripe for mischief and blood, was indeed plain and undeniable; but he soon made it apparent that his rage was only conditional and alternative, as regarded the prisoner. Pausing within three or four feet of him, and giving him a look that seemed designed to freeze his blood, it was so desperately hostile and savage, he extended his arm and hatchet,-not, however, to strike, as it appeared, but to do what might be judged almost equally agreeable to nine-tenths of his race, that is, to deliver a speech. "I am Wenonga!" he cried, in his own tongue, being perhaps too much enraged to think of any other,-"I am Wenonga, a great Shawnee chief. I have fought the Long-knives, and drunk their blood: when they hear my voice, they are afraid;-they run howling away, like dogs when the squaws beat them from the fire-who ever stood before Wenonga? I have fought my enemies, and killed them. I never feared a white-man why should I fear a white-man's devil? Where is the Jibbenainosay, the curse of my tribe?-the Shawneewannaween, the howl of my people? He kills them in the dark, he creeps upon them while they sleep; but he fears to stand before the face of a warrior! Am I a dog? or a woman? The squaws and the children curse me, as I go by: they say I am the killer of their husbands and fathers; they tell me it was the deed of Wenonga that brought the white-man's devil to kill them; 'if Wenonga is a chief, let him kill the killer of his people!' I am Wenonga; I am a man; I fear nothing: I have sought the Jibbenainosay. But the Jibbenainosay is a coward; he walks in the dark, he kills in the time of sleep-he fears to fight a warrior! My brother is a great medicine-man; he is a white-man, and he knows how to find the white-man's devils. Let my brother speak for me; let him show me where to find the Jibbenainosay; and he shall be a great chief, and the son of a chief: Wenonga will make him his son, and he shall be a Shawnee!" "Does Wenonga, at last, feel he has brought a devil upon his people?" said Nathan, speaking for the first time since his capture, and speaking in a way well suited to strike the interrogator with surprise. A sneer, as it seemed, of gratified malice crept over his face, and was visible even through the coat of paint that still invested his features; and, to crown all, his words were delivered in the Shawnee tongue, correctly and unhesitatingly pronounced; which was itself, or so Wenonga appeared to hold it, a proof of his superhuman acquirements. The old chief started as the words fell upon his ear, and looked around him in awe, as if the prisoner had already summoned a spirit to his elbow. "I have heard the voice of the dead!" he cried. "My brother is a great Medicine! But I am a chief-I am not afraid." "The chief tells me lies," rejoined Nathan, who, having once unlocked his lips, seemed but little disposed to resume his former silence;—“ the chief tells me lies: there is no white-devil hurts his people!" "I am an old man, and a warrior,-I speak the truth!" said the chief, with dignity; and then added, with sudden feeling,-"I am an old man : I had sons and grandsons-young warriors, and boys that would soon have blacked their faces for battle-where are they? The Jibbenainosay has been in my village, he has been in my wigwam-there are none left -the Jibbenainosay killed them!" "Ay!" exclaimed the prisoner, and his eyes shot fire as he spoke, "they fell under his hand, man and boy-there was not one of them spared-they were of the blood of Wenonga!" "Wenonga is a great chief!" cried the Indian: "he is childless; but childless he has made the Long-knife." "The Long-knife, and the son of Onas!" said Nathan. The chief staggered back, as if struck by a blow, and stared wildly on the prisoner. "My brother is a medicine-man, he knows all things!" he exclaimed. "He speaks the truth: I am a great warrior; I took the scalp of the Quakel" "And of his wife and children-you left not one alive!-Ay!" con |