v/* >'>'i'>''-'fV>'>'rf 'I •''^-:a.'kja;!.>^a^-a^a^aaa^l>sy^kayMt^S>lt^^^ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM Date Due 1 r-iai»f -iir-iiirt— ■ .^.^^^..^^ "'"■^■r ^^^^WH^^^ RJi-fT^ ^ av— .A. MP 41367B 19 IT ^^^5^^" JftW" »i r->ri*^ 1-™" ■TTS^^ik 1 Qt^vT/ go A/ m K« _^' '■" , ^ .. - -t^ "5ftr"pi i««jfi^ * ^ Comelt University Library E415.9.M185 M36 olin 3 1924 032 767 414 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032767414 LIFE AND LETTERS GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. HBHoUtBowTirk. cAA-tfur-i/^^i. LIFE AND LETTERS GEORGE PERKINS MARSH COMPILED BY CAROLINE CRANE MARSH IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. 1. NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1888 c6 CORNEL \ LIBRARY^ Copyright, 1888, by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS TR0W8 PHINTINO AND BOOKBINDINQ COMPANT, NEW YORK. PREFACE. TTTE preparation of the following " Life and Letters " was committed to an intimate friend of the Marsh family — one whose competence for the task, hoth as an accomplished scholar and as a finished writer, was beyond question — the late Rev. Dr. Samuel Gilman Brown. Unfortunately, the difl&cnlty of collecting the necessary ma- terials was considerable, and these had been in Dr. Brown's hands only long enough for him to arrange in his own mind a general plan of the book, and to write out a small portion of it, when his own life was suddenly cut short. This most unexpected and deeply lamented event left the present compiler no alternative but to assume the duty herself or leave it undone. There were certainly others to whom it might have been most safely intrusted ; but they were already immersed in pro- fessional, scholastic, or private occupations which it was impos- sible to ask them to renounce, even for a labor of friendship. How much has been lost in form by this change of hands cannot be overstated ; and that this loss may not be too appar- ent by contrast, it has been thought best to write out the me- moir from the beginning, making use of only occasional quota- tions from Dr. Brown's pages. One sole merit the compiler must claim for herself, namely, that it has been her most earnest aim to give a faithful portrait of her subject. The remembrance of his passionate love of the pure truth, his abhorrence of exaggeration or even concealment, VI PBEFACE. has been ever present with her ; and any attempt to represent him greater or better than he was would have been even more disloyal to him than to the public. The lack of the learning required to portray justly a man of his attainments has been keenly felt, and the extent of these (though by no means embracing their measure) must be in- ferred from his own published works. It only remains to acknowledge the great kindness of the late Professor S. F. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, and others, in furnishing letters ; and of the Eev. Dr. Francis Brown, Professor in the Union Theological Seminary in New York, whose advice and encouragement, together with that of other friends — some of whom have sent frequent words of cheer from amidst the languor of painful disease — were indispensable to the completion of a work undertaken " in weakness and in fear." Cajkolike C. Majssh. ScAKSDALE, N. T., November 17, 1887. CONTENTS. CHAPTEB I.— 1801-1834. Ancestry — Sie Father, Charles Marsh — Birth — Scenery of Neighborhood — Character of his Parents — Childhood — Early Youth — College Life — Professional Study — Appointed by the Legislature to report on the Education of Deaf-mutes — Ad- mission to the Bar — Settlement at Burlington, Vt. — Marriage — Birth of a Son — Prospect of Happiness — Anxiety for his Wife's Health — Birth of a second Son — lUnesB and Death of Wife and oldest ChUd 1 CHAPTEB II.— 1835-1843. Elected Member of the Supreme Council of the State — Death of his Partner, and Formation of new Firm — Land-purchases — Wool-growing — Fanning— Pro- < jected WooUeu-memuf aotory — Journey to the West — Icelandic Grammar — Wool- len-factory built — New Road to Winooski — ^Physical and Moral Characteristics — Extracts from Letters-Second Marriage — House and Mode of Living — ^Personal Habits — Business Perplexities — His Brother Joseph's ill Health — Withdrawal from Profession — Standing as a Lawyer — Anecdotes — Articles on Olaf Rudbeck and Horberg — Death of his Niece, Mary Burnell — Death of his Sister, Mrs. Ly- man — Death of his Brother, Joseph — Death of Dr. James Marsh — Dr. Leonard Marsh — ^Address before Mechanics' Institute 87 CHAPTEB m.— 1843-1844. Candidacy for Congress proposed — Reasons for giving it Consideration — Discourse at Middlebnry College — Impressions produced by it — Decides to accept the Nom- ination for Congress and is elected — Illness of Child — Journey to Washington — Letter to Mrs. Hickok — Composition of Congress — Slavery Question — Feeling outside Congress — Relations with Senators and Representatives — Letter of Hon. R. C. Winthrop — Speech on Tariff— Extract from Letter of Rev. G. Allen — Letter to Mrs. Hickok — Returns to Vermont and takes active Part in the Presi- dential Canvass of 1844 — Address at Dartmouth College — Sees Mr. Clay in Wash- ington — ^Mr. Polk elected — Place of Residence and Mode of Life in Washington — Illness — Anniversary Address before the New England Society of New York — Extract from Letter of Rev. G. Allen — Letter to Hon. Charles D. Drake — Cir- cumstances that determined the Character of the Address 52 VIU CONTENTS. OHAPTEE IV.— 1844-1848. Great QueBtion dividing the two Political Parties — Speech on Annexation of Texas — Views taken therein — Characterization of the Speech — Anecdote — Acquaint- ance with Colonel and Mrs. Estconrt — Anecdote — Selection of Church — ^Rev. Mr. Biewend — German Readings — Summer in Vermont — Business Difficulties — ^Ver- mont Railroads — Infianimation of Eyes — Extracts from Letters — Return to Washington, in November, 1845 — Texas annexed — Difficulties with Great Britain — Constraint of Social Intercourse at Washington — Dinner at Executive Mansion— Speech on Establishment of Smithsonian Institution — Views taken therein — Ultimate Action of the Regents — Professor Baird — Congressional Li- brary — Second Speech on Tariff — Relations with Diplomatic Corps at Washing- ton — German Readings resumed — Reads Swedish to his Family — Returned North in a Sailing-vessel — Increased Business Perplexities — Factory at Winooski sacrificed — Return to Washington, Autumn of 1846 — Extract from Letter — Party Feeling — Reading during the Winter — Return to New England, March, 1847 — Visit to Boston — Acquaintances made and renewed — ^Return to Vermont — Anecdote — Letter to Mrs. Estcourt — Visit from the Estcourts at Burling- ton — Mr. Crampton — Letter to Mrs. Estcourt — Address before the Phi Beta Eappa Society, Cambridge — Anecdote of Mr. Jeremiah Mason — Address at Union College, Schenectady — Address before Agricultural Society of Rutland County — Places his Son at School — Extract from Letter to Mrs. Hickok — His Family and Social Life at Washington during the Winter — Portraits by John- son and Healy — Anecdote of Mr. Healy — Predictions — Speech on the Mexican War — Letter from Rev. Dr. Storrs 83 CHAPTER v.— 1848-1849. European Revolutions of 1848— Captain Ernst Hang— Mr. Marsh's Hopes and Pears as to these Revolutions — Letter to Mrs. Estcourt— Letter to Dr. Lieber Extracts from Letters to Mr. Baird — Impression produced in Vermont by Nomination of General Taylor for the Presidency— Mr. Marsh's own Convictions and Course Note — ^Letter to Mrs. Estcourt — Mr. Marsh's Political Work during the Sum- mer — Removal of Son from School — Letters to Mr. Baird — Letter to Mrs. Est- court— Letters to Mr. Baird- Death of Mr. Marsh's Father— Wish for Diplo- matic Appointment- Letter to Mrs. Estcourt- Difficulties in the Way of receiving the desired Appointment— Letter to Charles D. Drake, Esq. Colonel Bliss— Appointed Minister to Turkey— Letter to Colonel Estcourt— Disposes of his Engravings- Causes of Delay in leaving for his Post— Extract from Letters to Mr. and Mrs. Baird— Final Preparations 1^5 OHAPTEE VI.— 1849-1850. Voyage— First Day in Europe— Extracts from Letter to the Estcourts— Letter to Colonel Peter Force-Short Stay in Paris— Journey from Paris to Marseilles- Prom Marseilles to Florence— Impressions produced by Country and People of Italy— Political Peeling in Tuscany— Meeting with Mr. Powers— Public Discon- CONTEI^TS. IX tent and Depression at Rome — Condition of Naples — ^Incident witnessed there — Eruption of Vesuvius — First Visit to the Crater — Subsequent Visits to the Moun- tain — Death of Midshipman Bayard — Kmbarks on Steam Frigate '* Mississippi " for Constantinople— Arrival on February 23d— First View of Stambonl— First Experiences in Pera — Presentation to the Sultan — Count SauH (note) — Cordial Reception by the American Residents and Diplomatic Corps at Constantinople — Peculiar Duties of a Minister to the Ottoman Porte — First Embarrassment from Ijack of Acquaintance with Torkiah — American Missionaries then in Turkey — Relations of Mr. Marsh with his Colleagues, especially with Sir Stratford Can- ning — Political Refugees — Their great Distress— Mr. Marshes Action in their Be- half — Sacrifices for them on the Part of American Missionaries — Letter to his Brother Charles — Letters from Mr. and Mrs. Marsh to Mrs. Estcourt — Letters from Mr. Marsh to Mr. Baird — InsufiSciency of Salary — Letter to Mr. Charles Drake — Asks and obtains Leave for Visit to Egypt, etc. — Letter to the Est- courta referring to Death of the President and that of Mr. Daniel Seymour — Letters from Mr. Sejonour to Mr. Marsh (note) — Special Agent from Turkey to the United States — Mr. Brown accompanies this Agent — Mr. Henry A. Homes, Secretary and Dragoman ad interim 1^ CHAPTEE Vn.— 1851. First Letter from Egypt to Mrs. Estconrt — Extracts from Letter to Colonel Bliss — Extracts from Letter to Mr. Francis Markoe — Letter to Mr. Henry A. Homes — Extracts from Letter to Mr. Charles Marsh — Letter to Lady Canning — A Steamer takes Mr. Marsh and Family from Cairo to Assouan — Extracts from Letter to Mr. J. G. Saxe — ^Italian Fellow-travellers (note) — Letter to Prof essor C. C. Jewett — ^To Professor Baird — To Mr. Lyndon Marsh — Extracts from Letters to Dr. and Mrs. Wislizenns — Arrival at Assouan — Voyage in Dahabieh to Second Cataract — ^Letter to Mr. Homes — ^Extracts from Letters to Mrs. Estconrt from Thebes and from the Nile near the Pyramids— Return to Cairo — Experience with an Arab Doctor — Preparations for a Journey in the Desert — Letter to Professor Baird — Journey begun May 7, 1851 185 CHAPTEE Vni.— 1851. Ebrtract from a Letter to the American Consul-General at Cairo, dated Akaba, June 2, 1851 — ^Letter from Mr. Marsh to his Mother, Hebron, June 18th — Letters to Colonel and Mrs. Estconrt from Hebron and Jerusalem — Leaves Jerusalem for the North, July 4, 1851 — His Illness at Nazareth— Goes to Mount Carmel— Mrs. Marsh taken 111 there— The Party set out again for Damascus— Increased Ill- ness — ^Halt at Hatteen— Remove to Mijdol— Medical Priest at Nazareth sent for — Rev. Mr. Bowen comes to the Relief of the Distressed Travellers — His Wisdom and Energy — The Encampment moved by Stages of an Hour to Safed — Nine Days' Rest at Safed — Joined by American Missionaries — Damascus is given np, and the Convalescent Party set off for Beirut— Incidents of the Journey — Arrival at Beirut, August 18th— Taken the following Day by Steamer to Smyrna —Extracts from Mr. Marsh's Letters while at Quarantine in Smyma^The Frig- ate "Mississippi" takes Mr. Marsh and his Family to Constantinople— Mrs. Marsh's Subsequent lUness— Dr. Humphrey Sandwith 225 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IX. —1851-1852. Negotiations with the Porte for the Transportation of Befngeea to the United States — Unexpected Difficulties — Mr. Kossuth's Hesitation — Letter to Mr. Raymond — Letter to the Estcourts — Dreams of Another Oriental Journey — Letters to Pro- fessor Baird — News from America of Fresh Pecuniary Disasters — Mr. Marsh's Long and Severe lUness — Occupations of the Winter — Extract from a Note of Mr. H. A. Homes' — Letter to Lieutenant Gilliss — Letter to Colonel Bliss — Let- ter to Professor Baird— Treaty with Persia — Principessa Cristina Trivulzio di Belgioso — Count Ladislaus Vay — Letter from the Polish Legion in the Hunga- rian Insurrection — Letter from Deacon Tamo — Letter to Professor Baird — Let- ter to the Estcourts — Letter to Lord Stratford de RedcUffe — ^Lord Stratford's Reply 350 CHAPTEE X— 1852. Receives Instructions to go to Athens — Embarks for Greece— Difficulty of the Nego- tiation with which he is charged — Case of Rev. Dr. King^Letter to Professor Baird — Letter to his Mother — Decides to finish his Reports at the Springs of Gleichenberg — Embarks for Trieste— Extracts from Letters to his Mother Journey from Trieste to Gleichenberg— His Account, to his Brother, of the Cave of Adelsberg— Letter to the Little Sou of Mr. Homes— Extracts from Letters containing Observations on the Country between Adelsberg and Laibach ; be- tween Laibach and Gratz ; between Gratz and Gleichenberg — Letters to his Brother from Gleichenberg — Journey from Gleichenberg to Vienna— Remarks to his Brother about the Austrian Capital — Letter to Professor Baird 279 CHAPTEE XI.— 1852-1853. Journey through a Part of Austria and Germany— Portions of Letters from Prague ; from Dresden ; from Nuremberg ; from Munich ; from Lmsbrack ; from Salz- burg ; from Gmunden— Return to Vienna, and Departure for Italy— First Visit to Venice— Extract from Letters to his Mother from Padua and Verona— Letter from Milan to Professor Baird— Journey from Milan to Genoa and Florence- Extracts from Letters to his Brother referring to this Journey— Letter from Florence to Professor Baird— Death of Mr. Marsh's Mother— First Acquaintance with the Brownings- Arrival of Fresh Instructions— Goes to Naples- Letter to Professor Baird— Embarks on the Corvette " Levant" for Athens— Further Ne- gotiations with the Greek Minister-Asks for Final Instructions, and returns to Constantinople— Farewell Letter from Sir Thomas Wyse 3O4 CHAPTEE XII.— 1853-1854. Important Business awaits Mr. Marsh at Constantinople-Arrest of Martin Koszta by the Austrian Authorities-Consequent CompUcationa-Conrse of Mr. J. P. CONTENTS. Xi Brown — His Advice to Captain Ingraham — Prompt Action of Captain Ingraham — Grounds taken by Mr. Marsh in sustaining the Official Action of the Charge d' Affaires and of the American Naval Commander — Settlement of the Difficulty on Terms thankfully accepted by Koszta — Objections raised afterward — Notifica- tion of Successor— War Prospects— Lord Stratford's Return as Ambassador- Fleets in the Bosphorus — New and Agreeable English Acquaintances made — Letters to Professor Baird — Short Excursion into Asia Minor — Extract from Let- ter to Mrs. Marsh — Letters to Professor Baird — Plans for the Winter — Unex- pected Russian Attack on Sinope — Embarks for Malta — Correspondence between Mr. Marsh and American Missionaries — ^Extracts from Communication of an American Resident at Constantinople — General Regret at Mr. Marsh's Depart- ure — Stay in Malta — Proceeds to Sicily — Letter to Professor Baird from Messina — Journey through Sicily — Embarks for Civita Vecchia — Meeting with General Estconrt — Two Months in Rome — Mrs. and Miss Estcourt — The Brownings — Letters to Professor Baird — ^La£t Weeks in Rome — Journey over the Alps — Let- ter to Professor Baird from Berne — Brief Stay in England 381 CHAPTEE Xni.— 1854^1857. Homeward Voyage — State of Affairs at Burlington — Arrangement with Creditors — Extract from Letter to his Wife on the Death of her Mother — Extracts from other Letters — Letters to Professor Baird — Goes to Washington to present Claim for Extra Services — Unexpected Difficulties — Defeat of Claim — Effect of this Disappointment — Letter from Mr. Ticknor to Mr. Marsh — Mr. Marsh's Reply — Letters to Professor Baird — News of the Death of General Sir James Bucknall Estcourt — Letters to his Widow and Sister — Invitations to Lecture — Not suc- cessful as a Popular Lecturer — Takes an Active Part in Presidential Campaign of 1856— Letter to the Hon. C. D. Drake — Letter to Professor Baird — Question of Candidacy for the Senate — Letter from the Hon. S, Foot — Occupations dur- ing Winter of 1856-57 — Letters to Professor Baird — ^Letter to Lady Estconrt — Letters to Professor Baird — Illness of Mr. Marsh's Son — His own subsequent Blness and Depression — ^Is appointed Railroad Commissioner for the State of Vermont — Letter to Professor Baird — Visit to New York — Extract from a Letter to Lady Estcourt 861 CHAPTEE XIV.— 1858-1861. Consequences of Visit to New York- Engages to lecture on the English Language before Post-Graduates of Columbia College— Letter to Colonel Peter Force — Let- ters to Professor Baird — Extracts from Letters to Mrs. Marsh — Begins Course of Lectures in New York- Their Reception — Letter to Colonel Force— Social Ad- vantages in New York — Letter to Professor Baird — Letter to Lady Estcourt — Letters to Professor Baird — War between Austria and Italy — Letter to Dr. Lieber — Letter to Lady Estconrt — Letter to Dr. Lieber — Publication of First Series of Lectures on the English Language — Impression produced by them — Inducements to go to New York — The proposed Establishment of 2%o World — Correspondence on that and other Subjects between Mr. Marsh and Dr. Lieber — Final Passage of Claim through both Houses, and consequent Release from Pe- Xii CONTENTS. cuniaiy Obligations — Disappointment in the Course of The World — Letter re- ferring to it— Letter to Mr. C. B. Norton— Undertakes to edit "Wedgwood's Etymology" — Invitation to lecture before the Lowell Institute — Portion of Win- ter of 1860-61 spent in Boston— Death of his Nephew, Benjamin Swan Marsh- Letter on the Political Situation, dated Burlington, February 5, 1861— Proposal of a Mission Abroad — Appointment as Minister to Italy — Extract from Letter to Hon. C. D.Drake 394 APPENDIX I. Human Knowledge. — A Discourse delivered before the MassaohusettB Alpha of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, August 26, 1847 431 APPENDIX n. The Mexican War. — Speech delivered in the House of Bepresentatives of the United States, February 10, 1848 453 APPENDIX m. Account op Mr. Marsh's Engravings 472 APPENDIX IV. The Late General Bstcourt 474 LIFE AND LETTERS GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. CHAPTER I. 1801-18^4. Ancestry— His Father, Charles Marsh— Birth— Scenery of Neighborhood— Character of his Parents- Childhood— Early Youth— College Life— Professional Study- Appointed by the Legislature to report on the Education of Deaf-mutes— Ad- mission to the Bar— Settlement at Burlington, Vt. — Marriage — Birth of a Son — Prpspeot'of Happiness— Anxiety for his Wife's Health— Birth of a second Son — niness and Death of Wife and oldest Child. GEOEGE PEEKENS MAESH was the second son, by a second marriage, of the Hon. Charles Marsh, of "Wood- stock, Vt. Charles Marsh was the son of Joseph Marsh, whose ancestor, John Marsh, of good old English lineage, had emigrated from the mother country to Massachusetts in 1633, and in 1635 removed, with the Eev. Dr. Hooker, to Lebanon, Conn., to form a new colony. Joseph Marsh left Lebanon in 1773, and purchased a large tract of land in the township of Hartford, in. what was after- ward Yermont, but was then known as the 'New Hampshire Grants. Here he settled, building for himself a comfortable residence on the rich meadows of the Queechee Eiver (or Otta Queechee, as it was called by the Indians), a little below the present village that has taken its name from the stream. 1 2 GEOKGE PERKINS MABSH. [Chap. L Joseph Marsh was a man of an active and energetic tem- perament, as well as of marked ability, and he soon occupied a leading position in the vigorous pioneer community with which he was now connected. He was twice elected delegate to the Provincial Congress of New York ; was commissioned colonel of one of the regiments raised for the war of the Kevolution, in what was then called Cumberland County, which included the whole of the, southeastern part of Yermont, now known as Windham and Windsor Counties and a portion of Eutland and Bennington Counties. A somewhat doubtful family tradi- tion claims that he was present at the battle of Bennington, but it is quite certain that he afterward actively followed Bur- goyne's army. The town of Hartford sent him as its repre- sentative to the first General Assembly under the State Con- stitution, in 1778, and he was the first Lieutenant-Governor of the new State. Before emigrating from Connecticut, Colonel Marsh had married Dorothy Mason,* sister of Jeremiah Mason, the dis- tinguished father of a still more eminent son who bore the same name, and who, until his death in 1848, occupied a fore- most place among New England lawyers and statesmen. Mrs. Marsh bravely shared with her husband the first hardships and privations of the wilderness to which he had removed ; but their son Ciiarles, then eight years of age, was a boy of so deli- cate a constitution that it was not thought safe to expose him to such risks, and he was accordingly left in Connecticut under the charge of a sister. The following year, however, he joined his father's family, and here, in the new forest-home, he soon manifested much of that love of nature and those powers of observation for which his son, George Perkins Marsh, was so remarkable. * It would seem that the reverence for women which was so noticeable a trait in the descendants of Colonel Marsh was theirs by right of inheritance. When Mrs. Marsh died, at an advanced age, her venerable husband, in spite of all remonstrance refused to follow the funeral-procession in a carriage, but walked, with bared head behind the heaise until it reached the distant cemetery. 1801-1834.] CHARLES MABSH. 3 The boy's eagerness and capacity for acquiring knowledge decided his father to give him every opportunity in his power to obtain it, and in 1782 he entered Dartmouth College. Tliis institution had received its charter and its name, only nineteen years before, from "Wentworth, the last of the royal governors of New Hampshire, and the different branches of the Marsh family have taken the deepest interest in its prosperity from its first germ in Lebanon, Conn., in 1754, to the present day. Charles Marsh, almost immediately after his graduation, in 1786, went to Litchfield, Conn., where he studied law under the direction of the celebrated Tapping Eeeve. After com- pleting the course at the school he was admitted to the Bar in Connecticut, but very soon returned to Vermont, having first married Miss Nancy Collins, of Litchfield. The same year he purchased a house and tract of land near the rising little village of Woodstock. This tract extended from the banks of the Queechee over the hills, including a part of what is still known in the neighborhood as Mount Tom, and is now the property of the Hon. Frederick Billings, who has converted the old family mansion into a very fine and tasteful summer residence, but who, with characteristic delicacy, has carefully preserved every memorial of the original proprietorship consistent with modern ideas of comfort. Soon after his establishment at Woodstock, Mr. Charles Marsh became known as one of the ablest lawyers in the State ; but his satisfaction in his professional success, and in the com- manding position he had won among his fellow-citizens, was embittered by the death of his wife, in 1793. She left him a son and a daughter, of whom, especially the former, there will be occasion to speak hereafter. In 1797 he received from General Washington the appoint- ment of United States District Attorney, and his legal reputa- tion soon extended beyond the bounds of his own State. As illustrating this, a friend who was present at a meeting be- 4 GEOEGB PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. I. tween Mr. "Webster and Mr. George P. Marsh, in 1846, re- calls this portion of the conversation: "How old is your father ? " asked Mr. Webster. " He is now eighty," was the reply. " Eighty ? " repeated Mr. Webster, in a tone of in- quiring surprise. Then, leaning his head against the back of his arm-chair, and passing his hand over his eyes, he added, after a moment's silence, and as if to himself, " Eighty ! yes, it must be so ! " and addressing Mr. Marsh again, after a half-suppressed sigh, he said : " Perhaps you do not know that I was on the point of being one of your father's stu- dents. His high reputation took me to Woodstock, in 1802, in the hope of entering his office, but he was not in town, and not likely to return for some days. I was young and could not wait." In 1798 the Hon. Charles Marsh married the widow of J. Lyndon Arnold, a lawyer of St. Johnsbury, Yt. Mrs. Ar- nold was the daughter of Dr. Elisha Perkins of Plainfield, Conn. One who knew her well says of her : " She was a lady of strong native endowments, of cultivation and refine- ment, and her home in Woodstock was for more than fifty years the centre of all those influences which tend to elevate and adorn society." She was the mother of one little girl at the time of her second marriage, and had afterward four sons and one daughter, all of whom lived long enough to crown their parents with honor, and to be themselves deeply honored and beloved by the communities in which they lived. The second son, whose life and character it is the object of these pages to illustrate, was born on March 15, 1801, and was named, from his mother's family, George Perkins. The singular union of wildness, beauty, and tenderness that characterized the scenery in the midst of which his childish days were spent had no doubt a strong influence in forming the future man. But, on the other hand, only one born with ex- traordinary susceptibility to such influences could have profited by them as he did. 1801-1834.] CHILDHOOD. O " No more beautiful place * to spend one's boyhood could be found than that with which he was favored. The residence of his father, on an eminence a little outside the village, com- manded a view of the entire valley ; the Queechee, a gentle and musical stream in summer, always sensitive to the heavy rains of the autumn, and rough and turbulent in the spring, flowed round the base of the hill on which the house was placed, and skirted the broad meadows on its way to the Connecticut. The land- scape was rich in mountains and pastures and fertile fields." But unquestionably the feature that most delighted the eyes of the boy was tlie near range of mountains clothed with huge forest-trees, many of which had rooted themselves there before Columbus realized his bold dream of a New "World. The moral atmosphere in which the child grew up will be best understood from the following faithful and graphic char- acterization ,of the father, taken also from the MS. of Dr. Brown : " The village itself was flourishing, and as the county-seat, with the court and public offices, had gathered an intelligent and cultivated population, and soon became distinguished for the number and eminence of its Bar, at the head of which was undoubtedly Mr. Charles Marsh. " Mr. Marsh was a man of high legal attainment, and even more eminent for vigor and strength of mind, his power of grasping the principles of the law, and the force of argument with which he could apply them. The virtues which he cher- ished were justice, sincerity, truth, and thoroughness. He never condescended to flattery, and the language which he employed' was sometimes the very opposite of compliment when righteous- ness or truth seemed to demand. He was a man of scrupulous integrity, stern and unyielding in defence of what he thought was the right, tenacious of his opinions, independent and fear- less in expressing them, and not infrequently severe toward his opponents. » From Dr. Brown's MS. 6 GEORGE PEKKINS MAESH. [Chap. I. " But if somewhat stern and uncompromising, he had all the high virtues which ought to accompany such a character. He was never double-tongued, never deceitful ; you knew the ground on which he stood. He was upright in walk and speech. His word was absolutely trusted. His acts were hon- est acts. He was thorough in whatever he did. He sought for principles in religion, in government, in civil and social life, which should bear the severest strain and the most trying tests. He had regard to the end as much as to the beginning. The supei-ficial, the pretentious, he despised. He aimed at the real, the solid and permanent. He was a prominent member of the Congregational Church, one of the original founders of the Colonization Society, and foremost in every religious and be- nevolent enterprise." It will not appear extraordinary that the son of such a man should manifest through life a profound respect for the Ynri-iy tan virtues, and a profound reverence for the Puritan faith. In his family Mr. Charles Marsh was affectionate, kind, and considerate, but firm and undemonstrative. To his servants he was more than just as to wages and the amount of work re- quired, but his manner toward them was somewhat distant and reserved. The following anecdote will serve to give an idea of his management of his boys. His son Joseph, two years younger than George, was sent to school at Hanover, N. H., when he was eleven years of age. In the first week he became homesick, and the malady overmastered him. Late one night he left his bed, stole quietly from the house, and set off for "Woodstock, sixteen miles distant. Just before the breakfast hour he reached home, tired and foot-sore, and probably not without some misgivings. He was, however, kindly received by all, and his heart grew light as the ordinary genial family talk went on through the breakfast. That over, and the morn- ing prayer also, the father said, in the quietest way, to a servant, " William, harness the horse and take Master Joseph back to 1801-1834.] CHILDHOOD. 7 school." There was bo remonstrance on the part of the judi- cious mother, and, it is hardly necessary to say, no more home- sickness on the part of the boy. George Pei-kins did not often, in his later life, speak of his childhood or his boyhood. This ai-ose partly from constitu- tional aversion to talking of himself, and partly from a con- viction that continued retrospection of that kind was hurtful. Occasionally, however, he would state some circumstance or fact relating to his very early years, if it were recalled by the immediate subject of conversation. The following is his own account of a drive over the hills with his father, when the lat- ter was called to attend court in a town several miles distant : " I was four years and a half old at the time, and sat on a little stool between my father's knees in the two- wheeled chaise in which he always drove. That ' one-Jwrse shay'' must have been as strong as the old deacon's, for the roads in those days were shocking. But little I heeded that, for to my mind the whole earth lay spread out before me. My father pointed out the. most striking trees as we passed them, and told me how to distinguish their varieties. I do not think I ever afterward failed to know one forest-tree from another. Nor did my father limit his lessons to the individual objects in the land- scape. He called my attention to the general configuration of the surface ; pointed out the direction of the different ranges of hills ; told me how the water gathered on them and ran down their sides, and where the mountain-streams would be likely to be found. But — what struck me, perhaps, most of all — he stopped his horse on the top of a steep hill, bade me notice how the water there flowed in different directions, and told me that such a point was called a water-shed. I never for- got that word, nor any part of my father's talk that day ; and even now a vivid picture of the country through which we passed often flashes upon me, when my thoughts are very dif- ferently employed." 8 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. I. Speaking of a still earlier period, he once said : " When I was little more than a baby, my mother brought me from Bos- ton an ivory horse, with gilded mane, tail, and hoofs. I can't now say what its artistic merits were, but to me it was a revela- tion, and from that day I date that love of art which has afforded me so much enjoyment since." It was about this time — that is, during the year 1805 — that Mr. Charles Marsh, finding liis roof too narrow to shelter his growing family, and to answer the demands of hospitality, which in those days were not few, began to build a new house only a short distance from the old one. The delight the chil- dren of the family derived from this circumstance will be understood by all who have had a similar experience in very early life ; but to the little George it was much more than the mere pleasurable excitement of seeing the gathering piles of stone and brick and mortar and timber — it was to him a school of the greatest value. Holding the hand of his brother Lyn- don, two years older than himself, he followed day by day the workmen, examining their tools as far as he was permitted, and watching all their processes. This experience he always reckoned as one of the most important instruments in his early training ; but the lesson learned at this time, upon which he set the most value in after-life, was that of thoroughness. He was allowed to accompany his f athey in his daily supervision of the work, and he never forgot the stern rebukes administered to the laborers when their work was found to be ignorantly or carelessly done. Forty-five years later, when the cords that suspended the weights by which the windows were raised gave way for the first time, Mr. Marsh said : " I remember perfectly well when these weights were suspended, and how many cords were rejected by ray father before he was satisfied with the strength of those furnished." The little brothers, Lyndon and George, were almost in- separable in their early years, and they continued to cherish 1801-1834.] CHILDHOOD. 9 the liveliest interest in each other's welfare until the death of the former in 1873. They both, as children, manifested a strong predilection for the companionship of girls rather than of boys, and their half-sister's little friends were always pre- ferred to their male school-fellows. There was, however, one exception to this. Hiram Powers, afterward the distinguished sculptor, was born in Woodstock, and lived there until he was twelve years of age. At this early age he had a most extraor- dinary gift at story-telling, and would hold, as if by enchant- ment, a circle of wild school-boys during the whole noon-day recess, simply relating his imaginary adventures on his morn- ing way to school. Young George Marsh took great delight in the society of this boy ; and though, after the Powers family removed to the West in 1817, they never met until in Florence in 1849, yet their friendship was unbroken until the death of Mr. Powers in 1873. One of Mr. Charles Marsh's most intimate and valued friends was Judge Elijah Paine, of Williamstown, Vt. He was United States Senator from Yermont from 1795 to 1801, and a man every way worthy the high social and political dis- tinction which he enjoyed. Yisits between the Marshes and Paines were frequent, and George Perkins, though very shy, particularly enjoyed these visits, as there was a little girl in the Paine family, of just his own age, whose society he greatly appreciated. When he was seven years old, his mother having taken him with her on one of these occasions, the boy found his play- mate engaged in a task of sewing set her by her grandmother. She had been a little idle, it seems, and was told she must finish her work before she went out to play. George waited patiently, but with so disconsolate a face that the good grand- mother finally said : " Caroline, how much rhore have you to do on that handkerchief ? " " About a rod ! " was the injured answer. The grandmother relented, and the children went off to play together. Many years afterward Mr. Marsh was heard 10 GEOBGE PEEKINS MAESH. [CHAP. I. to recall this anecdote to his old friend, to the great amuse- ment of both. The home library was a considerable one for the country at tliat time, and the children of the family had unlimited access to it. Mrs. Marsh, in her latter years, often told her intimate fiiends that, at the age of seven, it was the habit of her son George to take down a volume of the " Encyclopaedia Britan- nica," which he could scarcely lift, lay it open on the floor, and, leaning over it on his elbows, read for hours at a time. When these readings were too prolonged, the volume was sometimes taken from him and he was sent out to play. After a few ex- periences of this kind the book was no longer brought into his mother's room, and she, supposing the child had lost his fancy for it, thought no more of it for months. Passing, however, one day through an unfrequented hall, she saw the boy lying under a table in the old posture, poring in the imperfect light over one of his favorite volumes. This had no doubt been going on for a long time, and here was the explanation of the pain in his head and eyes from which he had been suffering for some weeks. The mother communicated her discovery to her husband, who thereupon called his son and questioned him as to what he had been reading. The child's answers filled him with gratified astonishment, but the injury to his eyes proved a permanent one, and for a long time he was compelled to abstain from reading altogether. How he struck his companions at this time will appear from the following extract : * " My father's family lived for more than two years in the ' old Marsh house,' and I was much with the brothers Lyndon and George, then respectively ten and eight years old. . There was always something about George in advance of his years. He was a large-sized, well-formed boy, with a fine head, * From a letter written by Mr. Thomas Storrow Brown, of Montreal, more than seventy years after the period to which it refers. 1801-1834.] EARLY YOUTH. 11 which he carried well, and there was always an air about him, even when engaged in our boyish pastimes, that indicated a half indifference to childish amusements. ... I can still recall George Perkins Marsh as a boy separate from other boys and marked out for purposes not common to them all." In 1809, when the subject of this memoir was eight years old, his eldest brother, Charles Marsh, Jr., entered Dartmouth College. He was a youth of extraordinary promise, was at the head of his class during his collegiate course, and George Per- kins through his whole life spoke of him with the most grate- ful tenderness. He was often heard to say : " I owe everything^- to Charles. It was he who excited my curiosity about books, when I was not much more than an infant, and who kindled my love of knowledge to a passion." Though .there seems to be no precise record of the time when George began to study Latin and Greek, it is probable that he received his first lessons at an early age from this highly-endowed brother, and that these lessons were given vwa voce, to spare the pupil's eyes. It is not till the age of eleven that we find him allowed to read again with any freedom, and in the meantime he had be- come so near-sighted as to be compelled to use glasses for that and almost every other purpose. He once, long afterward, told a friend what grief he felt on discovering, one day, that he could scarcely make . out the general form of a clearing on a mountain-side where, a few months before, he had watched from his father's door the woodmen at their work. 1^0 time, however, had really been lost. Whenever his eyes could bear the out-door light, the hills, the woods, and the river furnished him with abundant and most satisfying occupation, and he soon knew the note of every bird, and the track and habit of every little quadruped, that frequented the neighbor- hood. A gentle rain was a special joy to him ; and if he could so far escape observation as to let the falling drops come down 12 GEOEGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. I. upon his bared head, it was a double luxury. Even to old age, his inclination to take off his hat, if overtaken by a shower, was the source of amused remonstrance on the part of his friends. "When he was suffering too much from his eyes to endure the sunlight, one of his brothers or sisters read to him, or he occupied himself with the piano, or with his tools. His passion for music was very strong, and his talent for it very marked. The trouble with his eyes in its earlier stages was for a time attended with a slight diflSculty of following a con- versation carried on in a low tone, but the sensibility of his ear to the most delicate musical notes was never for a moment im- paired, while all loud or harsh sounds gave him acute physical pain — and this last was true to the end of his life. His mechanical tastes also were very decided ; and with all his love for books and music, he would not have been made really unhappy had circumstances compelled him to give up these, and to exercise some mechanical art as his life-work. In fact, so universal were his sympathies, his tastes, and his tal- ents, that it was long before any one could predict in what direction he would ultimately turn his best energies. A letter, dated in 1812, from Mr. Charles Marsh to the Rev. Francis Brown, then pastor of the Congregational Church in North Yarmouth, Me., and afterward President of Dartmouth College, shows that an arrangement had been made for the eleven-years-old boy to be received into Mr. Brown's family as a pupil. Mr. Marsh says : " George is very impatient for the time to come when I shall send him to your care. The poor boy, I believe, reads more hours every day, besides going to a common school, than any one in the family. His eyes are still weak, his hearing a little impaired, and his health otherwise not very good. You must not forget your engagement re- specting him." There is no evidence that this arrangement was ever carried out. At any rate, we hear no more of school until he was sent to Phillips Academy, Andover, in 1815. Here he remained but 1801-1834] COLLEGE LIFE. 13 a few months ; whether because his eyes gave way again, or be- cause he was found ah-eady prepared to enter college, does not appear.* Among his schoolmates at Andover were the Eev. Dr. "William Adams, Francis Cabot Lowell, for whom the city of Lowell was named ; President Leonard Woods, Jr.; Levi Lincoln, and the two famous merchants, Robert Hooper and Benjamin T. Eeed. The following year, 1816, George Perkins Marsh entered the Freshman class at Dartmouth College. His father, one of its most influential and active trustees, was at this time pro- foundly interested in the contest then going on between the college and the State — a contest finally closed by a triumph on the part of the former, in which President Brown deservedly shared the honors with Mason and "Webster. From the first, young Marsh took a high rank in his class. The Hon. Nathan Crosby thus writes of him, in a letter t ad- dressed to Dr. S. G. Brown, in 1885 : " I am delighted to know that yon are to give us a biography of my classmate, Marsh. It is most opportune for the college and yourself that you have been called to the great and* grateful task of giving to the world of men and letters the life and labors of Dartmouth's most distinguished scholars, Choate and Marsh. Bush and President James Marsh were eminent scholars, as was also (excuse me for saying it) my brother Alpheus, but George P. Marsh gave broader range and made deeper explorations in his varied life-studies and writings than any other alumnus of Dartmouth or any other American col- lege. Marsh was a remarkable student. In the fii-st place, he was the youngest save two in his class, was still in his fifteenth * The Hon. James Barrett, judge of the Supreme Conrt of Vermont, first a stu- dent in the office of Mr. Charles Marsh, and afterward his partner, says: "In one of my conversations with him about his son, he told me he never knew how or when George prepared for college, but when the time came he passed the prescribed exami- nation with credit." t This letter was written but a few weeks before the death of Judge Crosby, at the advanced age of eighty-seven. 14 GEOEGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. L year at his entrance, with youthful visage and marked modest deportment, bordering on bashf ulness, although trained in a family of high social position ; scrupulously present at his recitations, and without an error in his preparations, appearing without any air of pre-eminence or any assumption of superi- ority — always words enough to meet the demands of the text, but none for display. He was studious to excess — a stranger to rambling, and without any taste for sports or idle gossip. He was remarkable for his genial bearing toward his class- mates. His books were his especial friends ; yet while social friendships and class amusements were unsought, he never failed to put himself in gentle recognition of his classmate callers by lovable manners and pleasant tete-d-tete interviews. His short-sightedness caused embarrassment in his social man- ners, and in the prompt action of ready courtesy, which was sure to be forgotten by his agreeable voice and the charming diction of his frank and friendly conversation. He was far ahead of his class from the start, but was never censorious or unkind in his relations with his classmates, or unwilling to give aid to .any classmate who found his lessons a 'hard road to travel.' He was a great and good scholar, and everybody loved and ad- mired him ; but he was so intensely delighted with his books that he made few intimate friendships." In the second year of George's college life the Marsh fam- ily sustained a severe affliction in the death of Charles Marsh, the oldest son. Soon after graduating at the head of his class, in 1813, he went to Lansingburg, N. Y., where he at once be- gan the practice of law, a profession for which he had almost entirely prepared himself during his collegiate course. Here he rapidly distinguished himself, and in 1817, in his twenty- seventh year, was a candidate for the United States Congress, his father having been elected to that body in 1815. Soon after his nomination his health became precarious, and the young lady to whom he was engaged being delicate, by medical 1801-1834.] DEATH OF CHARLES MAESH, JE. 15 advice the young couple, immediately after their marriage, set off on a journey on horseback to what was then the Far West. Their letters to friends were bright and cheerful, and no serious anxiety was felt for them. One day, like a bolt from a clear sky, the news came to the father that his son had died suddenly, at a little settlement near Louisville, Ky. The blow was a heavy one to all the family, but especially to the parents. As a child, Charles had won the devoted affection of his step-mother by his sweet and gentle temper, and he had returned this affec- tion in full measure. The father not only loved his son, but felt the greatest pride in his career thus far, and cherished the highest expectations with regard to his future eminence and usefulness. To complete the tragedy, the desolate young wife survived her husband only six weeks. It was remarked by Mr. Charles Marsh's friends that during the first few weeks after the loss of his son he passed from the prime of manhood to the threshold of old age, and that he never really recovered his former interest in life. The following extract, from a letter written at this time by the Hon. Charles Marsh to the Eev. Francis Brown, who had then become President of Dart- mouth College, is here introduced, not merely to show that, though regarded by his fellow-men as a model of stern and lofty virtue, he " walked humbly with his God," but as an explanation of a conspicuous trait in the character of his son George, which, though always apparent, grew more and more marked in the latter years of his life, and was no doubt to a great extent hereditary : " I have felt for a week past almost incapable of attending to any ordinary business, and my disinclination to it is still much the same. I thank you very much for your friendly con- dolence in our severe affliction, and especially for your endeav- ors to comfort us with the consolations and promises of the Gospel. I know that these are the wells of salvation, from which we must draw all the rational comfort, and all the well- 16 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. I. grounded hopes and consolations wliicli God has provided for His people while passing through this vale of tears. But, alas ! I have often to take up the saying of the woman of Samaria, ' The well is deep, and I have nothing to draw with.' My faith (if any I have) is so weak, my hope so faint, that instead of filling my mouth with arguments at the throne of grace, I am dumb before my Judge. My sins stare me in the face. I am made to possess the sins of my youth as well as those of my riper years, and my heart inquires, ' If He enter into judg- ment with me, how shall I answer Him for one of ten thou- sand of my transgressions ? ' Yet I know that the promises of the Gospel are our only refuge, and I am not conscious of de- siring any other. I thank God with my whole soul that ' we have not an High Priest who cannot be touched with the feel- ing of our infirmities.' Pray for us, my dear sir, that we may enjoy the light of God's countenance, and that this dispensation of His providence may be sanctified to each one of us." George Marsh seldom talked of his college life in after years. When he spoke of it at all, it was either in praise of some fellow-student or in self-blame for wasted time. Of Kufus Choate, who was in the class two years before him, he always spoke with unqualified admiration. " The rest of us," he used to say, " could not be named with him. He was alto- gether on a different plane." It is not surprising that this wonderfully brilliant man excited the admiring enthusiasm of his younger fellow-student, who, in his turn, was appreciat- ingly recognized as a future compeer by the acknowledged king of the undergraduates. This college acquaintance rip- ened afterward into a firm friendship, interrupted only by Mr. Choate's death. That Mr. Marsh did not limit his studies to the regular col- lege course is evident from bills, found among his papers, for books purchased at this time. Among these are the following : Lusiad, Gerusalemme, Dante, Pastor Fido, Boccaccio, Diction- 1801-1834.] SCHOLABSHIP. 17 naire Portugais-Fran9ais, Italian Grammar, Cartas Marruecas, Fabulas Literarias de Yriarte, Spanish Dictionary, Portuguese Grammar, Italian-English Dictionary. ISTor did he devote him- self to modern languages to the neglect of either the classics or mathematics. At the period of his graduation his Latin and Greek reading had extended far beyond the requirements of the curriculum, and one of his classmates said of him, that " when he left college he read the Greek poets and historians with as much ease as an ordinary man would read a newspaper." His aptitude for mathematics was not less remarkable, and his familiarity with it seemed almost intuitive. Indeed, he must have acquired every branch of knowledge with extraor- dinary ease, or, under all the difficulties, physical and otherwise, against which he had to contend during the greater part of his life, he could never have achieved what he did. But it must not be supposed that he never joined in any college convivialities. That he did not indulge in them fre- quently seems to be the united testimony of all his surviving college acquaintances, though a certain dry, delicate humor, for which he was remarkable through life, made his society partic- ularly acceptable on such occasions. At the age of seventy, however, when asked to take a hand at a whist-table, he said, with a smile, " ]^o, I believe not. I did too much of that in my college days, and I have never taken a card in my hand since." After graduating with the highest honor, in 1820, Mr^ Marsh was invited by Captain Alden Partridge, of Norwich, Yt., to become an instructor in his Military Academy, an insti- tution at that time very popular in JSTew England. The vicin- ity of Norwich to Dartmouth and its library was a strong in- ducement to the young student, and he accepted the proposal. But he lacked the peculiar gifts required to communicate sys- tematic instruction to young persons. He could excite an ar- dent thirst for knowledge, but he could never lead his pupils by those slow paths through which most minds must travel in 2 18 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. I. order to reach points his own had arrived at by a single bound. The consciousness of this deficiency made his duties irksome, and he retained the position only a few months. On his return to "Woodstock, with the intention of studying law in his father's oflace, he found that late night-reading, into which he had been tempted by easy access to the college library, and by the necessity of employing the daylight hours in the in- struction of his classes, had caused increased weakness of sight, attended with symptoms of a very threatening character. After several weeks of entire rest, without any sensible improvement, he went to ITew York and put himself under the care of one of the best oculists of that day. Here he remained some months ; but receiving, as he believed, no local benefit, and finding his general health much impaired by the severe treatment then in vogue, he retiirned home. Under these circumstances the pursuit of his legal studies was difficult. Still, he was able from time to time to secure the help of a reader ; his father was always ready to serve him as a book of reference, and he attended the courts whenever any important case was to be discussed or decided. Once or twice during the next three years he was induced to seek further medical advice ; and for that purpose he spent some months in Philadelphia, and afterward some time with his sister, Susan Arnold, who had married and was then living in Providence E. I. These changes were no doubt advantageous to him morally, as they greatly enlarged his social relations and sym- pathies; but they brought no apparent improvement in his sight. When in Woodstock he spent most of his time in the open air, especially during the last year previous to his admis- sion to the bar. To this fact he attributed the recovery of hisV eyes, so far as they ever, did recover. To this period, also, may be referred a rapid development in those powers of observation which had been so remarkable in his boyhood. He himself always afterward spoke of it as one of the most growing sea- sons of his whole life. 1801-1834.] EDUCATION OF DEAF-MUTES. 19 In 1823, Mr. Marsli was appointed by the Governor of the State of Yermont, in -pursuance of a resolution of the General Assembly, to make a report on the education of the deaf and dumb. In consequence of this appointment he visited the American Asylum for Deaf-mutes at Hartford, Conn., the New York Institution for the Deaf and Dumb, and the two institutions for the same in Philadelphia ; and corresponded with the managers of the asylum at Danville, Ky., and of that at Canajoharie, K. Y., these being the only institutions of the kind then existing in the United States. His report was pre- sented at the next session of the Legislature, and embraced all the results of the then comparatively limited experience on the subject. The following extract is somewhat characteristic: " The deaf and dumb in a state of nature possess no means of receiving ideas from others ; consequently aU the ideas of an uneducated deaf-mute must be original, and derived only from personal observation ; and inasmuch as the ideas which we our- selves originate, or which are the result of personal observation, bear but a small proportion to those which are derived from others, either directly by conversation and writing, or iu directly by reflection and comparison, it is obvious that the stock of ideas of the deaf and dumb must fall very far short of that possessed by those in the enjoyment and use of all their facul- ties. But there is another and more important disadvantage resulting from the want of a sense of hearing. The use of the general terms of language is the only means we possess of re- flection and the comparison of ideas. As the deaf-mute is deprived of language, and consequently possesses no determi- nate signs for fixing, recalling, and combining his ideas, it is clear that no original idea can be fixed in his mind, and he is therefore incapable of acquiring new ideas by reflection and the comparison of the few which can be derived from personal experience. His impressions are all transient, and his sensa- tions fugitive. Without the means of comparison he cannot 20 GEOEGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. I. deduce the most simple consequence by reasoning. His mind is affected solely by liis present sensations, and he is happy or miserable according as they are pleasant or disagreeable. He cannot have the satisfaction of reflecting on the past, nor the pleasure of devising the means of future enjoyment. Alone amidst his fellows, he obeys the impulses of passion without re- straint or moderation, and without reference to future personal interest or regard to the- rights of others. Inferior to the savage, who possesses the means of communication with his fel- lows, enjoys the advantages of society, and is connected with his race by political and moral relations, he is but a moving machine, possessing little to elevate him above the brutes ; des- titute even of that sure instinct which serves them as an infal- lible guide, and their inferior in corporeal organization, in use- fulness, and in happiness. ... To educate a deaf-mute is to add a new member to society, to give life to that which was before dead, and almost to convert matter into mind." This report was followed by an act on the part of the Yer- mont Legislature, providing for the education of the indigent deaf-mutes of the State at the American Institution for Deaf- mutes, established at Hartford, Conn., in 1817. In 1825 he was admitted to the bar ; and soon afterward he went to Burlington and entered upon his professional life, forming a partnership with the Hon. George Bailey. Burlington was at this time the largest town in the State, and the remarkable beauty of its situation and surroundings, unrivalled probably in New England, and its many other ad- vantages, gave promise that it would more than hold its relative position. The families that composed the society of the town were for the most part intelligent and refined, and in posses- sion of sufficient means to live in a manner corresponding to their culture. Mr. Marsh's cousin. Dr. James Marsh, was at this time President of the University of Vermont, which has its seat in Burlington, and his wide reputation had brought 1801-1834.] SETTLEMENT ITS' BITKLINGTON. 21 around him a worthy corps of professors. It is not strange, therefore, that a country town which offered so much to grat- ify his special tastes should have been chosen by Mr. Marsh as a professional field in preference to a city. Though he went to Burlington soon after his admission to the bar, his name does not appear on the assessment-rolls of the town until 1827, and it was probably then that he took up his permanent residence in that place. Speaking of him at this time. Dr. Brown says : " Here he found room enough to satisfy whatever ambition he indulged for professional advancement. He bore a name which was a passport to the best social position, and which of itself would secure him respect from the courts. The firm of which he became a member was one of the most prominent in the county, and nothing seemed to stand in the way of his highest hopes. His success was equal to his highest expectations, and v probably exceeded them." Mr. Marsh's love of his profession, however, was not strong enough to induce him to give up other favorite pursuits. The fact that he was dependent upon it as a source of income, and, what was with him a far stronger motive, the sense of duty to his clients, made him scrupulously faithful in his attention to all his eases ; but the attraction in other directions was too strong to allow him to make any efforts to enlarge his prac- tice. Every moment that he could spare from graver duties he devoted to literature or art. His love of music resumed much of its old sway, and a close friendship formed with Dr. Lincoln, the leading medical man of Burlington, and a decided musical genius, tempted him to study the mathematical relations of sound with the keenest interest. The progress he made in this science may be inferred from the fact that when Dr. Lincoln, some years later, in the prime of manhood, felt death approaching, he, in his will, committed to Mr. Marsh the care of editing a very learned and original musical treatise 22 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. I. which he had left in an unfinished state. Unfortunately, the fragmentary condition in which this MS. was sent to him, and the illegibility of the characters traced by a hand weakened by a long and painful illness, made the performance of this duty impossible. The loss of this highly gifted friend, and his own inability to fulfil his dying wish, was a source of painful regret to Mr. Marsh during his whole life. As far as can now be ascertained, it was in the early years of his Burlington life that he began the study of the languages of Northern Europe. French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and German he read fluently when he left college, and he had been collecting books in those languages as fast as his limited means would permit. What first drew his attention to the ]!^orthern European languages does not clearly appear, though his interest in early English history and literature probably ex- plains it. At any rate, he seems to have taken them up, not only with zeal, but with success, for as early as 1832 we find him in frequent correspondence with Professor C. C. Kafn, the eminent antiquarian of the university at Copenhagen. This correspondence, which was kept up till the death of Professor Eafn, in 1864, was carried on indifferently in English and Danish.* Perhaps the most remarkable feature in Mr. Marsh's lin- guistic attainment was his ability to speak and write a language as soon as he could read it fiuently. His ear was extremely acute in distinguishing vocal sounds, and his power of repro- ducing them not less remarkable. He never lost an opportu- nity of listening to the conversation of those to whom the language he was studying was native, and always joined in it when possible. His memory, naturally very tenacious, and * The difficulty of recovering, in time for use, any considerable portion of Mr. Marsh's side of the correspondence with Professor Bafn and other distinguished Northern scholars has obliged the compiler to omit this correspondence altogether an omission which will leave a serious desideratum in the history of the intellectual life and activity to be depicted, and which cannot fail to be regretted by all students of Scandinavian literature. 1801-1884.1 MAKKIAGE. 23 Strengthened by the necessity of trusting to it rather than to his eyes, served him for the rest. It was also about this time that he conceived the idea of forming a collection of engravings that should illustrate the history of the art. To a very small beginning additions were gradually made, until, in 1849, it was admitted to be one of the largest and finest collections of the kind then existing in the country, and superior, probably, to every other as exhibiting chronologically the progressive stages in the history of that beautiful art. In 1828, Mr. Marsh was married to Miss Harriet Buell, the daughter of Colonel O. Buell, a prominent citizen of Burling- ton. Miss Buell was of a cheerful, even lively, temperament, possessed more than ordinary personal attractions, and had en- joyed the best opportunity for instruction then offered to girls. As was to be expected, the connection proved a very happy one. In 1829 a son was born to them, who was named Charles, from his grandfather, and life seemed opening before them with exceptional promise. But a shadow had already fallen on Mr. Marsh's path. A few months after his marriage he noticed in his wife symptoms that he feared might indicate serious heart disease. He communicated these fears to his friend. Dr. Lincoln, and begged him to avail himself of the first opportu- nity that offered to observe these symptoms without alarming Mrs. Marsh. A cold soon served as an excuse for the use of the stethoscope, and the doctor reported to her husband that there was some slight malformation in the region of the heart, but that, with even ordinary prudence, the life of the patient would not probably be shortened by it. From that time Mr. Marsh was never entirely free from anxiety, and no favorite pursuit, no other duty even, interfered with his watchful care that his wife should not overexert or fatigue herself. " He would walk for hours at night," said his sister, " with a sick or restless child in his arms, whom tlie nurse could not quiet, in order that the mother's sleep might not be disturbed." But 24 GEORGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. L Mrs. Marsh's generally excellent health and spirits tended grad- ually to allay this anxiety. In 1832 she became the mother of a second son, who was named George, and everything seemed to promise a continuance of domestic happiness. The following year, however, much more startling symptoms manifested them- selves. Mrs. Marsh herself began to suspect, for the first time, that there was some troiible with her heart, and desired to be taken to a specialist who would tell her the whole truth. Her husband used every argument to dissuade her from this course, partly because he feared that, in those days of difficult travel, the journey might prove fatal to her, and partly because he dreaded the effect that the certainty of an organic difficulty might have upon her. She, however, was so decided in her wishes that he yielded to them and took her to New York and Phila- delphia. In both cities the professional opinions expressed were unfavorable, but they seemed to make little impression on Mrs. Marsh at the time, her anxieties being suddenly turned in an- other direction. News had reached them that their eldest boy was attacked with scarlet fever, and the distressed parents has- tened home as fast as the mother's state of health would per- mit. On their arrival at Burlington they found that the acute stage of the fever had passed, and the child was believed to be convalescent. But the reaction from the fatigue and excite- ment of the journey was soon apparent, and Mrs. Marsh's strength failed rapidly. On the morning of August 16, 1833, she was dressed as usual, and seated in an arm-chair, but evi- dently very weak. She turned her face toward her husband and said, abruptly, " George, do you think I shall leave you to- day ? " at the same time extending her hand, as if wishing him to feel her pulse. He sprang to her side, took her hand, and had only time to say, " I trust not ! " when, with a faint sigh, she leaned back in her chair, and the pain of parting was over for her. Her husband 'took the beloved form in his arms, laid her gently on her bed, kissed the beautiful forehead and lips, and never looked upon her face again. When asked the next 1801-1834] DEATH OF WIFE AND ELDER SON. 25 day if lie would not like to see her, he said, " I dare not ! I must live for my children's sake, if I can." During the last days of the mother's life an unfavorable change had taken place in the condition of little Charles, and the medical attendants were fearing water on the brain. The father had said nothing to his suffering wife of this new dread, but bore the double anguish as he could. When she was gone, although already much exhausted with watching and grief, he could not be persuaded to leave his child's bedside, and for days he took no rest except when sleep overcame him in his chair. When the little fellow asked for " Mama," his father replied, " She is resting, we cannot disturb her now ; " and he never insisted further. All answers to the child's questions were written out for him on a slate, as he could no longer hear ; and that slate, with the father's answer to the last question, was found, fifty years afterward, in a cabinet containing a few of Mr. Marsh's choicest souvenirs. On the eleventh day after the mother's death her first-born follovred her. He was laid by her side, the only epitaph above them, besides name and date, being, " The mother and her child." Those who have suffered similar bereavements know what^ an effort it requires to take up again the duties and interests of a broken life, and to such it will seem no proof of moral weak- ness that the stricken man did not at once return to his former occupations. Speaking of this period of his life, long afterward, he said : " Some of my well-meaning friends almost drove me mad by their ill-judged attempts to console me. They told me my ' wife and child had been taken away for my good.' The idea that the young mother had been snatched from her help- less children, and our boy from the light of life, for the good of such a one as I, implied to my mind a horrible injustice. I was willing to leave the dark mystery with God ; but such an inter- pretation of it was to me blasphemous, and I could not bear it." It was only after spending some time with his devoted sister 26 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Ohap. I. Sarah, who had married the Hon. Wjllys Lyman and was then living in Burlington, that Mr. Marsh roused himself so far as to return to the routine of his previous life. But no man of strong affections and profound sensibilities ever is, or ought to be, or from the very nature of things can be, the same after such an overwhelming shock as before. By resolutely, faithfully work- ing, Mr. Marsh found his interest in work gradually return. Liv- ing in the midst of scenery so lovely, his sympathy with nature revived by degrees, and with it much of his early enthusiastic love of literature and art. But the grave face had grown for- ever graver, and the silent man more silent. He lived alone for several years, boarding at a hotel, and sleeping in his own desolate house, which was kept in order by a single servant. His infant son George had been taken to "Woodstock, where he was tenderly cared for by his grandmother. CHAPTER II. 183^-1843. Elected Member of the Supreme Council of the State— Death of his Partner, and Formation of new Firm — Land-purchases — Wool-growing — Farming — Pro- jected Woollen-manufactory — Journey to the West — Icelandic Grammar — Wool- len-factory built — Sew Road to WinoosM — Physical and Moral Characteristics — Extracts from Letters — SecoQd Marriage — House and Mode of Living — ^Personal Habits — Business Perplexities — His Brother Joseph's ill Health — Withdrawal from Profession — Standing as a Lawyer — Anecdotes — Articles on Olaf Rudbeck and.HBrberg — Death of hia Niece, Mary Burnell — Death of his Sister, Mrs. Ly- man — ^Death of his Brother, Joseph — Death of Dr. James Marsh — Dr. Leonard Marsh — Address before Mechanics' Institute. MK. MARSH'S reputation as a lawyer, a scholar, and a man of taste had constantly increased from the time of his first establishing himself at Burlington, and he had now added to this the distinction of a man of rare practical wisdom. In 1835 he was chosen a member of the Supreme Executive Council of the State, then a very important body. Yermont had at that time no State Senate, and many of the functions of that higher legislative body devolved on the Council, which consisted of but thirteen members. There could hardly be a more honorable introduction into public life, perhaps hardly a better preparation for future public employments, than this position offered. It may be inferred that Mr. Marsh's tastes did not at this time lead him strongly in a political direction. The death of his partner, the Hon. George Bailey, had brought about a pro- fessional connection with his brother-in-law, and the new firm was known under the name of Lyman & Maesh. In 1835-36 there was unusual business activity in the State, especially in 28 GEORGE PEEKIWS MAKSH. [Chap. II. tlie neighborhood of Burlington ; and Mr. Marsh, wlio had always taken a lively interest in the agricultural and manu- facturing prosperity of Vermont, threw himself heartily into the new movement. "Lyman & Marsh" bought extensive tracts of wood- and pasture-land, not only within the limits of Bur- lington, but in the neighboring towns. The demand for wool was then large, and the newly purchased pasture-land was mainly devoted to the raising of sheep, which soon numbered many thousands. A beautiful farm in Shelburne, which had become Mr. Marsh's private property, was an object of especial enjoyment to him. In summer he visited it almost daily, look- ing after the fine cattle and sheep with which he had stocked it, and suggesting to his tenant new methods of cultivation or important improvements in old ones. l!^o professed agricult- urist could have appeared more thoroughly at home in" every detail of farming husbandry. The falls of Winooski Kiver had particularly attracted his attention as a water-power that might be utilized greatly to the advantage of the little village that took its name from the river, and also to that of the town of Burlington. Vermont was pre- eminently a wool-growing State — why should she not manufact- ure her own wool, and why should she not do it at Winooski ? The subject was talked over with some of the wealthier citi- zens of Burlington, and a very favorable view taken of the suggestion. But before any serious beginning was made, the great mone- tary crisis of 183Y, in which Vermont suffered severely, put a stop for a time to all new enterprises in that State. In that year Mr. Marsh made his first journey to the West, not, how- ever, going beyond the Falls of St. Anthony. He returned full of astonishment at the unbounded promise of the New Canaan, but without any disposition to "go in and possess the land," as the privations this step then implied would, he thought, be necessarily fatal to his best intellectual growth. He therefore resisted the temptations held out to him by his 1835-1843.] ICELANDIC GBAMMAE. 29 friend, Mr. William B. Ogden, then Mayor of Chicago, and came back to 'New England, in 1838, with a stronger desire than ever before to promote her intellectual, moral, and ma- terial prosperity. He regarded New England as the mother who was chiefly to form the character of the rising States of the "West, and, as such, worthy of every effort to render her equal to her great task. It was in the course of this year, 1838, that Mr. Marshy printed an Icelandic grammar, chiefly compiled from a work of Rask. This grammar, intended from the beginning for pri- vate circulation only, was found to be so full of typographical errors that every copy required many hundred corrections with a pen. This was too delicate a task for the author's eyes, and it was also one that he could not delegate to another. From time to time he corrected a single copy for a friend who ear- nestly wished for it, but, as a general rule, he did not even send this grammar to the institutions of learning in the country for which it was especially designed. In the meantime his friends had been carrying out the project of a woollen-manufactory at Winooski. The buildings were in readiness, and a new and more convenient road planned between Burlington and the former village. Tliis road Mr. Marsh laid out himself and superintended its execution, often lifting heavy logs and stones with his own hands in order to quicken the zeal of his Irish laborers. His physical powers were now in their fullest vigor, and he had little the appearance of a close student. The tall and slender aspect, which his six feet of stature gave him in his early youth, had disappeared in the development of full, strong muscles, and his firm step and erect bearing conveyed the im- pression of great bodily strength, which, in fact, he possessed. His habitual expression was grave ; the firm-set mouth might even be called stern ; and his earnest gray eyes always seemed to look through the object they were resting upon. There was, in short, an intense personality about him, which inspired 30 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. II. all who knew him with respect, and many who did not know him with something very like fear. Under this calm, self-contained exterior there was an ever- flowing fountain of kindly humor and "good-will to men" — it would be, perhaps, too much to say to all men at this time, for he had not yet reached the age which most of us must wait for before a fuller knowledge of ourselves teaches us the lesson of universal charity. His sympathy for the so-called lower classes was strong and active, and his hand was always open to the honest, needy poor. If the sons or daughters of indigent parents were aiming at a higher education than the family circumstances would permit, they never failed to receive encouragement and help from him. But it was well understood that his insight was keen, and that he did not spare rebukes where they were merited ; and conse- quently he was little sought after by questionable characters, whatever might be their social position. Indeed, there was something about him which seemed instinctively to repel per- sons of that class, and throughout his whole piiblic life he was remarkably free from all such following. A few extracts from letters written to an intimate young friend, in 1839, may serve to characterize Mr. Marsh, as he then was, better than any analysis by another. " - . . Indeed, almost the only trait in my character which gives me any self-complacency is that I never esteem any man the less for thinking evil of me, though unfortunately I am obliged to confess, by way of compensation, that I do soundly hate a good many who do not hate me." "... You must remember that my early intellectual advantages were of the commonest description, as compared with thos,e of most scholarly men, and that, between weakness of sight, business cares, and domestic sorrows, I have had ab- solutely no time for regular study or thought since I left college. But a worse evil has been the constant association with low, 1835-1843.] EXTEACTS FKOM LETTERS, 31 ignorant, and even depraved men, into which my profession and other business duties have forced me, and against which I have, for several years, enjoyed almost no counteracting influences. I have lost much of the precision and accuracy, and much of the extent of the general knowledge, of my youth ; my powers of observation have been weakened by disease, my entliusiasm cooled, and my spirit sobered by labors, disappointments, and griefs." " . . , "We should not indulge ourselves in the habit of thinking that the course which involves the greatest sacrifice to ourselves is necessarily the right one. Remember that we can have no duties to others paramount to those we owe to our- selves. Self-preservation is not only an instinct of nature, but it is the dictate of principle, and we ought, even out of regard to others, to husband our physical resources in such manner as to enable us, not only to do much, but to hold out long. It is only great occasions, and urgent necessity, which render self- sacrifice obligatory, or even lawful, and the good to be accom- plished must be both great and certain to justify us in doing for others that which will be attended with permanent evil to ourselves." " - . . The boat is just in with Mr. Clay on board, and thereupon great shouting, throwing up of caps, and blowing of brazen instruments. Mr. Clay is to remain until to-morrow night, unless the shakers demolish him before that time. I think I'll save him one shake by keeping out of his reach. I hate man-worship in all shapes. I know not whether this mode of testifying respect for the great is more painful to the idol or more degrading to the worshippers, but I should be loath to be in either category." "... I have been looking over a polyglot edition of Gray's ' Elegy ' (six languages), and it is wonderful to see how even the German has managed to sink the original. Every particularly fine thought is spoiled in all the translations. In- deed, I have hardly seen a good translation of any English 32 GEORGE PEEKISrS MAESH. [Chap. II. poet, except some specimens in German of the most difficult of all, Shakespeare. Schiller's ' Macbeth ' is extremely good, and some of the others are even superior to this. " . . .1 wish I could see a good work on the principles of the Art of Seeing, as distinguished from the faculty of sight. The latter we possess (though in an inferior degree) in common with the brutes, but the other is altogether human." " . . . We had, a little after nine last night, a most glo- rious aurora borealis, or, rather, australis, for it was pretty much confined to the south. The whole of that hemisphere was suffused with crimson, somewhat fainter than in the re- markable aurora of the winter of 1 837, and the spiculse were of Dante's dolce color cP oriental zaffiro, or, rather, chrysoprase, which we sometimes see reflected from the surface of the lake, in the very stillest svimmer evenings, when the sun goes down in gold and green and crimson. Toward ten the spiculse con- verged to a point, a little south of the zenith, and there formed a very perfect corona, with a trembling, undulatory, oval cen- tre, shooting forth in every direction lancinating rays of bright white light. The latter phenomenon is, perhaps, of rarer oc- currence in this latitude than the crimson color of the sky. Through the day the sky has been filled with long columnar, vertical clouds, very like the spiculse of the aurora, and at sun- set this evening the sky and the lake reproduced the colors of the aurora of last night, and many of its forms. I can hardly doubt that analogous causes have been concerned in the pro- duction of effects so similar. But I was obliged to view these beautiful sights alone, and, of course, with comparatively little pleasure." "... I have just received notice of the shipment of some interesting books from the North. But, ^oA dolor ! {cmglice — alas for my dollars !) the prices of some of them are such as astound even me, accustomed as I am to be fleeced in this way." " . . . As I have repaired and rebuilt four or five old 1835-1843.] EXTRACTS PKOM LETTEES. 33 houses, I claim great skill in the general arrangement of con- venience, but I always take care to show my independence of the trammels of custom and the shackles of architectural preju- dice by a noble contempt of external symmetry and the hack- neyed laws of proportion. In this kind I consider 's office my chef-Wo&wore / for though that gentleman was in some sort his own architect, yet I think that whatever of grace and beauty the exterior of his eoenobium possesses is due to the valuable hints I gave him, and I believe he is gratefully sensible of this, and willing to award me the meed of praise so justly my due. It is true that persons have ridiculed some of my highest flights of architectural genius as clumsy, awkward, dis- jointed ; and a carpenter, though in my pay, ungrateful varlet ! once told me that every dollar of money I expended on my old den added a new blemish." "... I found no acquaintance on board the boat last night ; but, unless my eye deceived me, I recognized among the passengers that enlightened hierophant who conceiveth Cat- lin's Indian gallery not to be an object of rational interest, speaketh contemptuously of painting, and findeth grounds for denying the truth of Espy's theory in Holy Writ. I did not address him, because, he being my superior in professional dig- nity (he a priest, or, at least, a priestling, and I but a petti- fogger), I held that the first token of recognition should come from him ; but he vouchsafed none, and so we glowered at each other and spake not." "... I received, a day or two since, an invitation to write a book for the Massachusetts School Library ; and what subject do you think I am desired to illuminate ? Why, truly, Lapland and its inhabitants, politically, morally, socially, etc. What do you say ? Shall we undertake it as a joint speculation, I translating the material, and you arranging, compacting, and dovetailing it together? I have store of good Swedish and Danish books on the subject, and could appropriate the stock with very little trouble." 3 34 GEORGE PEKKINS MARSH. [Chap. II. "... I found Gary's 'Dante' and the other missing books in the box after all. I have read several cantos of Gary, which I have not looked at before for many years. The trans- lation is an admirable one — as good, probably, as a version from partially antiquated Italian into modern English well can be ; but the translator has failed to give the English reader a full idea of the deep and solemn pathos of the original. If he had adopted an earlier dialect, I think a more accurate translation of the spirit of Dante might have been accomplished. It is a favorite idea of mine, that English translations from foreign languages, especially from writers of the Middle Ages, should be made in a dialect used in England in the period of a corre- sponding degree of artificial cultivation and polish. But perhaps this is a whim growing out of my passion for old English and all manner of Old World nonsense. In taking lessons of , I hope you will direct your attention as much as possible to the analysis of sounds, not only distinguishing between simple and compound, and determining what longs correspond to what shortfS, but observing the difference of effect produced upon the ear by the use of the same sound in different combinations. I think that very many of the sounds generally supposed to be simple may be resolved into yet simpler elements, and that when all the primary articulate sounds shall be ascertained, and a nomenclature invented, phonology may to a certain extent be taught by books. The most common error in pronouncing foreign languages, I believe, is the exaggeration, so to speak, of the sounds peculiar to them. In speaking German and Spanish, for example, we are very much inclined to aspirate the gutturals and palatals too forcibly ; and in French we roll the rs too much. I wish you would endeavor to ascertain from the precise relation which the gl Italian (as in gli, egli) bears to the French I mouiUee, to the English U in million; and the Spanish II in llamar, all of which differ somewhat from each other ; also, what is the difference between our Yankee o in coat and one of the Italian o's. I thought I got precise notions 1835-1843.] EXTRACTS FEOM LETTERS. 35 on these points from old Mr. Daponte, but I begin to forget, and am afraid I may over-refine in these matters." " — — came to look at my engravings this morning, and I give her a good deal of credit for not touching them, though she was probably never told that pictures are not to be tested, like cloth, by feeling, stretching, and snapping. I wish I had a few iasso-relievi after the fashion of printing for the blind, for the entertainment of those of my visitors who see with their fingers' ends, being resolved that they shall cultivate their sense of toiich at the expense of my engravings no longer." "... I believe no man was ever so constituted as to require the society of a sympathizing friend more imperiously than I. I do not know how it is, but I not only feel the neces- sity of communicating my thoughts and feelings, but it seems to me I cannot even see sightworthy objects alone." " . . . I have a great desire to see Taunton, for two reasons : First, the best razor-straps in the known world are made there ; and secondly, I wish to investigate on the spot the origin of the saying, ' As feeble as Taunton water, which is too weak to run down hill.' How do the people make their tea and coffee ? There are a multitude of curious questions connected with this singular fact, and I have meditated upon it as profoundly, and as fruitlessly, as did Don Quixote on Z,a rason de la sinrazon que & mi razon se hace de tal manera tni razon enflaqv,ece, etc. . . . But again about that water. Will the tea-leaf and the coffee-berry strengthen it so that it can be poured out of a tea-pot ? Will it, when thus medicated, run down the ' throat's red lane ' of itself, or do the good folk absorb their morning and evening potations by the help of a forcing- pump ? The last idea suggests to me the possible origin of the phrase * worrying down liquor,' of frequent use among topers. But these be foolish fancies, and perhaps there may be little foundation for the popular belief after all." " . . . I believe I owe my restoration to good humor 36 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [CHAP. II. partly to a ludicrous incident which occurred in my office this morning. An ignorant client of mine, who lias business with the traveller Stevens, having heard that he was appointed min- ister to Guatemala, came down in great haste and accosted me thus : ' Well, squire, have you been to York ? ' ' Yes,' said I. ' Well, did you see that 'ere Stevens ? ' ' Yes, I saw him.' ' Well, did you get that 'ere deed ? ' ' No.' ' Well, I wish you'd 'tend tew it, for I've hearn tell that the papers says he's guyin' off south somewheres a-preachin', and I s'pose there's no tellin' when he'll come back.' This is true to the letter." "... I saw Mr. F yesterday, who, rather to my surprise, spoke of your excursion as a very agreeable one. I thought his rencontre with not likely to contribute to his enjoyment, but he talked of woods, and groves, and meads af- ter a very poetical fashion, ' babbling of green fields ' as city people are wont to do. I told him, maliciously, that I hated all country rambles, always associating the idea of snakes with that of grass-plots ; and that I never saw a grove without think- ing of the gnats; midges, and mosquitoes with which our North- ern woods swarm." " . . . I have of late suffered much from being bepa- pered and bepainted ; but these trials are now wellnigh over, and, grievous as they are, they are small evils compared with that semi-annual operation yclept by country housewives ' house- cleaning.' A pail of soapsuds with a mop in it, a room with two windows out, and a grim virago in a short gown putting dirt to rout with a besom, inspire me with more terror than a good cool brook doth a rabid dog. On these occasions I betake myself to flight, humbly supplicating that my books and papers may not be ' put to rights. ' " "... I listen composedly to all manner of much talk- ing, provided it be not too circumstantial, but I have a happy knack of falling asleep in the middle of such discourses. I like not when one talketh as honest sire Jehan Froissart writ- etli : ' Then they arose and took leave and descended to the 1835-1843.] EXTKACTS FKOM LETTERS. 37 court and mounted their horses and rode to their hotels, and dismounted and gave their horses to their varlets and rested themselves.' Why not come to the point and say, ' Then they took leave and returned to their lodgings ? ' You know that I am for immediate results in all matters where that is possible, not liking, as a Yermont politician said, to ' await the ulterior bias of future events,' whereby he meant that he intended to remain ' on the fence ' until time should show which party was the strongest. Speaking of Froissart, I entertain a deliberate pur- pose of completing good old Lord Berner's translation of him in his own style, if I can ever get hold of it. It is the most delectable book in the language, and ought to be supplied, completed and reprinted, in preference to any book whatever, except our joint, unwritten work on Lapland." " . . . I have been looking over Hazlitt and Haydon on painting. I should hope the taste of both these writers in art was better than in English composition. Haydon is particu- larly bad, though I believe the printer has made him say many things which he never wrote. Some of the typographical blunders are ludicrous enough. Speaking of Fra Bartolomeo, he says, ' he invented the long figure? At this I stumbled and doubted what the ' long figure ' might be. At length I remem- bered that artists use what is called a lay figure, and the mys- tery vanished. A friend of mine in Yirginia wrote a book a few months since, and printed it at Boston. When it was sent him he found a sentence beginning thus: 'The houdon or Paris beau,' etc. ; and not recollecting what he had written, he was sorely puzzled to make out his own meaning, but on con- sulting his manuscript he found, ' The London or Paris beau.' He consoled himself for the bhmder by laughing at the idea of his readers consulting the dictionary to find whether ' houdon ' was the French for a dandy. I have often thought a man of multifarious reading might collect a very amusing book of blunders, and he would probably find as many among the literati as anywhere else." 38 GEOKGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. U. "... I have constitutionally the most invincible repug- nance to the influence of associations acting upon the principle of the greatest mass, or by animal sympathy, and, indeed, to every species of merely external influence, except the restraints of law and the rightful powers of rightfully constituted authori- ties; and nothing more surely disgusts me with any measure than an attempt to persuade me into it by the exercise of a mere personal influence which appeals neither to the reason nor the conscience." "... The Mus^e Fran5ais and the Musee Royal have just arrived, and I am, upon the whole, better pleased with them than I expected to be, although most of the plates in the Musee Frangais are badly worn and some of them unskilfully retouched. The landscapes in both works are, as all engravings of such subjects in the present state of the art must be, failures ; but in the representation of the human figure and of artificial objects many of these engravings seem to have reached the highest attainable point of excellence. Out of the five hundred or more engravings, one-half at least are of superior merit, and among these are the productions of Miiller, Longhi, Desnoyers, Eaphael Morghen, Girardet, etc., with all of whom I am nearly satisfied, except Longhi, who, unfortunately for my reputation as a connoisseur, is the most celebrated of them all. ... I fear you will think I am becoming jpazzo per VaHe ; but when you consider from what lower professional cares and business perplexities it partially withdraws me, you will rejoice that I am now making art, in its higher manifestations, my principal hobby." In the autumn of 1839, Mr. Marsh married Caroline Crane, daughter of Mr. Benjamin Crane, of Berkley, Mass. The acquaintance dated only from the previous winter ; for though Miss Crane had been living for some years with her brother, the Eev. Dr. Crane, then a resident of Burlington, yet as Mr. Marsh was never seen in general society during these years. 1835-1843.] SECOND MARRIAGE. 39 they had not met each other until then. Mr. Marsh was living at this time in the most quiet and simple way. He occupied a small curb-roofed cottage at the corner of Pearl and Church Streets, rather closely shaded by large maple and locust trees. In anticipation of his approaching marriage he had taken home his little son, and his household establishment then consisted of himself, his child, and two servants. His stable contained a single horse and a light carriage. The gen- eral furniture of the cottage was of the plainest description, but every space upon its inner walls, not lined with books, was occupied with clioice engravings. Fortunately, the tastes of the young wife did not differ greatly from those of her husband, and the only change in the previous household arrangements brought about by her presence was the addition of a little maid to the domestic force. It would be difficult to say what was Mr. Marsh's principal occupation at this time. He rose habitually at a very early hour, lighted a fire for himself in the little cabinet which he did not dignify with the name of a study, and was ready for reading or writing by five o'clock, alike in summer and winter. When artificial light was required, he occupied himself with some volume of exceptionally good type until full daylight. It was his habit to keep on his reading-table some half-dozen volumes at a time, usually in different languages, and he seldom read more than an hour in any one book, or on any one subject, unless actually studying that subject. At eight he breakfasted, after which he went at once to his office, where he remained till one o'clock, when he returned home for his country dinner. Soon after two he went again to his office for a couple of hours, but his evenings were invariably given to his family. Then he read and did nothing that they could not share in. Indeed, the ordinary interruptions of do- mestic life, so trying to most preoccupied men, never seemed to annoy liim, and the endless questions of his little boy were al- ways answered without a sign of impatience. Outside inter- 40 GEOKGE PERKINS MARSH. [Ohap. II ruptions he bore less complacently. The client who made him a business visit at his own house, if by any accident admitted at all, was likely to meet with a reception so cool as not to en- courage a second intrusion. Time had an inestimable value for him ; and even in his office he was apt to rise from his own chair by way of example, if his interlocutor did not of himself discover when the conversation was ended. But, as was said before, family claims were met with un- failing patience. His child was subject to frequent and severe attacks of illness, and on such occasions the father allowed no one to care'for him at night but liimself. During the winter of 1839-40 he had few nights of unbroken rest, and he often sat for hours together by the bedside of the little invalid, tell- ing him stories to soothe him to sleep. These watchings never interfered with his time for rising; but he had, almost through life, the happy gift of sleeping at will, and when his partner was present he often economized a leisure office-hour in that way. In the meantime business perplexities and other anxieties were thickening fast around him. His brother Joseph had been obliged to give up a large medical practice, on account of failing health, and winter in the West Indies. His sister, Mrs. Lyman, was seriously ill at Woodstock. The action of Con- gress on the tariff, actual or anticipated, had produced a most unfavorable effect on the manufactories of New England, espe- cially on new enterprises like that at Winooski. Wool had depreciated so rapidly in value that sheep were not worth the expense of keeping through the winter. In January, 1840, at a meeting of the owners of the new Winooski woollen fac- tory, it was found that the weekly losses exceeded five thousand dollars, and yet it was thought it would be still more ruinous to stop the works. Under these circumstances it became evident that a project which Mr. Marsh had been cherishing for some time, namely, that of going to Europe in the spring of 1840, must be given up. 1835-1843.] ANECDOTES. 41 In the expectation of being able to carry out this plan, he had gradually declined to assume new professional responsi- bilities of importance, and had notified his friends of his intention to withdraw altogether from the practice of law. As things now stood, the wisdom of this step seemed ques- tionable, but his growing distaste for the profession, and a firm conviction that his pecuniary affairs would soon be in a satisfactory condition, induced him to adhere to his resolu- tion.* Still, the business of the firm, the care of his own private affairs, and family anxieties were very engrossing through this and the following year, and only close economy of time and great power of concentration would have made possible the in- tellectual acquisitions he was daily adding to his already sur- prising store. He was at the same time keenly alive to every duty to the community in which he lived, though his method of perform- ing these duties was sometimes unexpected, as will appear from the following anecdotes related by eye-witnesses : "His little boy, on his way to school, met a blacksmith carrying in his hand an odd-looking iron. ' What is that ? ' said the inquisitive child. 'Take it and see,' said the man, holding out the iron to the boy, who, seizing the end of it, shrieked with pain, it being so hot as to take the skin from his hand. Mr. Marsh happened to be but a short distance behind the child, and therefore was a witness to the whole proceeding. He walked quietly up to the blacksmith, who was * Judge Barrett says : " When I first knew him he had already achieved a repu- tation for extraordinary attainments, and had become known and recognized in the State for ability and learning as a lawyer. But other pursuits were more congenial to him, and he early withdrew from professional practice. ... He was generally characterized as ' a great linguist.' This was but a single phase of his extraordinary capabilities. His imud was of the strongest, most capacious, and most versatile. If he had pursued the law, he would have been known as one of the most learned and able in all that appertains to it in scholarship and administration. As an advocate and debater he ranked with the foremost of his age,- and he would have held that rank throughout if he had kept on in professional life." 42 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. H. in the full enjoyment of liis brutal joke, and laid liis open palm about the astonished offender's ears, with a vigor and rapidity which only left him breath enough to cry out, ' I didn't know he was your son, sir ! I didn't know he was your son ! ' 'So much the worse, if yon thought him an unpro- tected child,' was the only and parting remark of the in- dignant father." " Some mischievous youths of the village had for some time greatly annoyed passers in the streets by suddenly flashing the light from a mirror into their eyes. One morning, as Mr. Marsh was passing a printing-office, one of the workmen flashed a glass full in his face. He went at once into the office, and the culprit, mirror in hand, stood before him. ' I didn't mean it for you, sir ! ' cried the petrified young printer, who, had he known the avenger better, would never have dreamed of secur- ing pardon by such an excuse. Suffice it to say, that a smart application to this boy's ears served as a permanent protection to the eyes of all the neighborhood against this pleasant pas- time." It would be a mistake to infer from tliese anecdotes that Mr. Marsh was of a hasty temper, or lacking in self-control. On the contrary, his equanimity was so exceptional that few of those who were most constantly and closely associated with him ever saw it disturbed. But he maintained that there were certain serious offences against the community which the law could not reach to punish, and which the mere censure of pub- lic opinion was powerless to prevent. He insisted, therefore, that every good citizen who suffered from such an offence was bound to inflict swift chastisement upon the culprit ; and that, too, of a nature likely to deter him from a repetition of the act. In January, 1841, Mr. Marsh published, in the Whig He- view, an article on the " Atlantica " of Olaf Eudbeck, a very rare and curious work, the Swedish accounts of which had greatly 1835-1843.] OLAF EUDBECK. 43 excited his curiosity and induced him to procure it at an ex- travagant price.* Mr. Marsh's article consisted in a large part of translations, either of Swedish critical notices of the work or of copious ex- tracts from the work itself. In these translations Mr. Marsh endeavored to carry out his theory, namely, that translations into another language should be made, as far as possible, in the form in which that language existed when in the same stage of development as was the language of the original when that original was composed. He even went so far as to translate the Latin of Eudbeck into somewhat antiquated English, as better fitted to give the true spirit of the author. The following ex- tract will serve as a specimen : " A certain learned Man doth opinion, that I have robbed other Lands and Kings of tlie Eenown that doth justly belong to them. But he goeth astray in his Conceit, for I have but recovered what of right appertaineth unto the Truth, and other Parts of the World have plundered from our Swedeland now these 4,000 years ; and I have proffered unto every Man the Liberty to come unto Sweden, and that at my own proper Cost and Charges, if he findeth aught to be untrue of what I set forth, that is to say the Groundwork of my Atlantiea, and have left open to all the Way to reclaim all that whereunto they can * The following note to this article was prefixed by the editor of the periodical : " Dibdin says of this work that it ' is doubtless among the greatest gems of a well- chosen collection ; ' and for a particular and faithful account of it refers to Brunet, who derived his materials from a work called ' Yoyage de deux Franpais an N'ord de I'Burope,' by Fortier de Piles, 1790. The main features of the work are only briefly alluded to by Dibdin. They are presented by Mr. Marsh, much more perfectly, in the present article, which, by most English as well as American readers, will be hailed as a most interesting contribution to the curiosities of literature. As will be seen, a perfect copy of the * Atlantiea ' is rarely to be found, and the prices at which it has been purchased show how highly it is valued by the bibliomaniacs of Knrope. The copy in the ValliSre library, in Prance, cost 1,351 francs ; and one was purchased at the sale of Meersman's library, in England, for £26 5s. A copy owned by Mr. Townley was sold in England, a few years since, for 80 guineas, and ' I cannot suppose,' says Dibdin, ' such a copy to be now fallen in price.' Mr. Marsh will be entitled to the thanks of American scholars for procuring and laying before the public the contents of so rare and expensive a work." 44 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. II. make good Title, but in any case having first well perused my Atlantica ten times througli ; and peradventure, indeed, it ought to be read througli twenty or more Times, before one can remember how all mine Arguments do hang together." These translations did not fail to attract notice from the few careful students of English then in the United States, but they were probably not even read by most of the subscribers to the magazine in which they were published. In March of the same year appeared another article from / his pen, containing a notice of the " Life and "Works of the Painter Horberg " — an article characterized by the same quaint humor so noticeable in the preceding one. In the spring of 1841, Mr. Marsh went to 'Sew York to meet his invalid brother Joseph on his return from a second winter in the West Indies. "While there he received letters from Wood- stock and Burlington that led him to return at once to Ver- mont, without waiting for the arrival of his brother. From Woodstock his sister Anne, who had married Dr. Burnell, of that town, wrote to tell him that her only child, an attractive and accomplished girl of twenty, about whose health some anxiety had been felt for several months, was sinking rapidly, and expressed a strong wish that he woiild come to them. From Burlington Mr. Lyman wrote that his wife also was seri- ously ill. Mr. Marsh went to Woodstock first, where he found his gifted niece in the last stages of the fatal disease which, though unknown in the family in the previous generation, was now threatening to desolate it. His sister, Susan Arnold, had already been its victim. Mary Burnell was perfectly aware that her earthly life was near its close, and perfectly calm in view of the change. She thanked her uncle for coming to her, and took leave of him, as she said, and as it proved, for the last time, with entire composure. He left her with a heart full of unspoken sympathy for her parents — his words were few on such occasions, though he could not be misunderstood — and 1835-1843.] DEATH OF MRS. LYMAN. 45 with the sense of a great family loss. The yoting girl was re- leased from her sufferings a few days afterward. Hurrying back to Burlington, he found Mrs. Lyman's con- dition more alarming than he had anticipated. Her illness proved a long and distressing one, and terminated fatally in the autumn. During all these months Mr. Marsh watched by his sister every third night. No woman's eye was ever more quick to anticipate a want ; no woman's hand more gentle in reliev- ing it. Whenever her husband could not be near her, Mrs. Lyman asked eagerly for her brother, and he, too, wished to lose as little as possible of a society and presence which he was evidently soon to lose altogether. In the meantime Dr. Joseph Marsh had returned, and, after a few days in Burlington, had gone to his parents in "Woodstock. There was now no mistaking the fact that the hand of death was upon him, and that the end could not be far off. On September 1st, Mrs. Lyman passed to her eternal rest. To say that the death of this highly gifted, refined, and gracious woman, this devoted Christian, was deeply felt by all who had ever known her, would give but a faint idea of the feeling called forth by this event. To Mr. Marsh it was a bitter loss. This sister had been his pet in her childhood, his pride and joy in her youth, and his best earthly comforter in the darkest hours of his life. The second blow followed sharply upon the first. At the beginning of November, Mr. Marsh was summoned to "Wood- stock by a letter from Mr. Lyndon Marsh, saying that Joseph thought that he had but a short time to live, and wished ear- nestly to see him. In those days, when there were in Vermont neither railways nor telegraphs, raessages of such a nature were very apt to arrive too late. The dying man listened eagerly for the stage-coach that he hoped would bring his brother. It passed without stopping. The disappointed sufferer placed his finger on his pulse, and, after a moment's pause, said, " George 46 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. H. did not receive the letter in time to leave Burlington last night. I shall be gone at least two or three hours before he can get here this evening." He did not, however, quite give up the hope of holding out for a few last words, and as it drew toward evening he asked for one little stimulant and another, always adding, " I should be glad to stay till he comes." At last, with his finger still on his wrist, he said, abruptly, " Too late ! too late ! Tell him he has been the best of brothers to me." And these were his last intelligible words. An hour or two after, Mr. Marsh arrived, but only in time to be such comfort as he might to his desolate parents. Early in the winter, Mr. Marsh retm-ned to Burlington and resumed his previous occupations, with a heavier heart, no doubt, but with all his former energy and diligence. If, in later life, when wearing anxieties and fresh bereavements crowded thickly upon him, the moral strength to support them seemed to have lost something of its elastic power, it is but just to remember the heavy and repeated demands made upon it in early manhood and in middle life. No force of purpose, strong even as was his, when united to affections so profound, could hold out to the end, against such multiplied uprootings, with- out giving some indications of the strain to which it had been subjected. The head, too, was severely taxed as well as the heart. There was no improvement in the aspect of business affairs during this or the following year. Almost all the wealthier citizens of Burlington had large interests in the manufactory at Winooski, which was still in operation, and running at a steady loss. The owners thought it wise to do this, in the reasonable hope of better times, rather than accept the ruin- ous consequences to themselves, and bring upon the opera- tives the distress, which an abandonment of the enterprise implied. In 1842, Mr. Marsh lost another dear and highly valued friend and relative, in the death of his cousin, Dr. James 1835-1843.] ADDRESS BEFOEE MECHANICS' ITifSTITUTE. 47 Marsh.* The removal of a man of such commanding ability and such purity of character would be severely felt, even in the larger circles of scholars that are the boast of our great cities, but in a small town like Burlington such a loss is irreparable. It is the drying up of a fountain of life-giving water, in whose generous outflow all have freely shared, and whose disappearance causes dismay in proportion to the small- ness of the chance that another of equal virtue will ever rise to take its place. There was, however, some compensation for this loss in the fact that Dr. Leonard Marsh, a brother of the eminent metaphysician, and his inferior only in social aptitudes and in power of expression, now took up his per- manent residence in Burlington. In addition to his schol- arly accomplishments, his medical skill was of a high order, and he was not only a priceless friend, but a tower of strength, to Mr. Marsh and his invalid family as long as Burlington con- tinued to be their home. In the spring of 1843 Mr. Marsh was invited to read an address before the Burlington Mechanics' Institute, and he se- lected as his subject, " The History of the Mechanic Ai-ts." Besides fitness for the occasion, his own predilection had no doubt much to do with his choice of theme. His early fond- ness for the mechanical arts has already been alluded to, and he never, imtil his very last years, laid aside the habit of prac- tising them whenever an opportunity offered. His friends still possess specimens of his work in wood, glass, steel, and brass, that would do no discredit to a craftsman skilled in the hand- ling of these materials. While engaged in recreations of this kind, he has often been heard to say, playfully, " I am afraid my father made a mistake in turning me out an indifferent law- * A brief memoir of Dr. James Marsh, by the late Professor Joseph Torrey, of the University of Vermont, prefaces a volume entitled, " The Remains of the Rev. James Marsh, D.D.," which was published in Boston in 1843. The Preliminary Essay prefixed by Dr. Marsh to his edition of Coleridge, in 1829, and republished in Dr. Shedd's edition of the same author (1853), seems to be admit- ted in all quarters to have had great weight in giving a new direction to the current of metaphysico-religious thought in this country. 48 GEORGE PEEKIKS MARSH. [Chap. II. yer instead of a really good mechanic." It was therefore with sincere pleasure that he entered upon the preparation of this address. He begins by saying that he does not intend to include in the mechanic arts the rude handicraft efforts of savages, which die out with the savage state, nor those arts designed rather for the embellishment of life than its maintenance, but that he confines the term to " the various modes of elaborating the raw material by artificial processes, whether of handicraft or ma- chine-labor, for the production of articles intended to be con- sumed by use." He then speaks of the difficulty of keeping precisely within these limits, because the germs of those arts are all found in a period antecedent to civilization, and some reference to them is indispensable to the history of their development ; while, on the other hand, the dependence of the fine arts on mechani- cal processes makes occasional allusion to those arts imavoid- able. He goes on to say that all the mechanic arts have their ori- gin in what would seem the physical imperfection of our struct- ure, such as our need of clothing and shelter, etc. In passing, he speaks of the high social position held by the mechanic in the earliest times — "he was the companion and friend of kings, and in most ancient mythologies the smith is met at the table of the gods." In the next place he gives a brief sketch of the origin, his- tory, and downfall of the guilds. Then follow some remarks about the difficulty of determining the priority of the several mechanic arts, with the conclusion that this varied in different countries according to circumstances, much depending on the raw material most ready at hand. He then calls the attention of his audience to the most fruitful sources of information with regard to the history of the mechanic arts, namely, the discoveries made, in recent times, among the ruined cities of Asia, Africa, and Europe, 1835-1843.] ADDRESS BEFORE MECHANICS' INSTITUTE. 49 especially instancing Herculaneum and Pompeii and tlie tem- ples and tombs of old Egypt. Assuming, then, that in most cases the art of the potter antedates the rest, he gives a rapid and picturesque sketch of its history, from the first rude bricks of ancient Babylon and Egypt to the finest porcelains of modern Saxony and the exqui- site Sevres of France. In this sketch he notices the different qualities of the material employed, describes many of the pro- cesses by which the happiest results of form, color, glazing, etc., have been obtained, and the knowledge of practical detail shown in the discussion of this and every other branch of his subject filled his listeners with delighted surprise. Next in his order is the worker in stone, beginning with the flint used as a scraper, knife, or arrow-head, followed by the stone-mortar and jar, and concluding with the mighty masses of hewn stone which, when combined by the genius of the architect, have produced the wonderful temples and palaces of Baalbec and Persepolis, the giant piles on the banks of the Nile, the glorious structures of Greece and Italy, and the still sub- limer creations of Gothic art. Even sculpture herself must acknowledge her indebtedness to the chisel. Masonry is considered as very closely connected with stone- cutting, pottery, and brick-making, and the union of all the mechanic arts in the erection of the arch, the dome, the pyra- mid, and the spire is pointed out. The subject of engra/oed gems is touched upon slightly, but not without giving much curious information. Perhaps the mechanic art most fully treated is that of the smith. From the rudest attempts to make use of copper to the perfection of the Damascus blade, the lecturer follows the progress of this art through every metal in turn, mingling detail of processes with myth, anecdote, and historic fact in a way to secure the lively interest of his hearers. Spinning and weaving, working in wood, glass-making, the many arts employed in the production of books — all these are 4 50 ' GEOEGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. II. in turn discussed with the same grasp of the subject, the same apparent familiarity with their actual practice. Then follows a survej' of some of the most important inventions of modern days, with striking suggestions as to their actual and prospec- tive influence on the mechanic arts, and, through these, upon human freedom and progress toward a higher general civiliza- tion. The address concludes with the following paragraph : " The general result of our observations appears to be this : That the moderns have invented many entirely new objects of ornament, convenience, and use, and discovered many new pro- cesses and some new principles, all tending to facilitate the production of the vast variety of artificial objects required for human consumption, and thus both to increase the supply of these objects and economize human time and life in their pro- duction ; but that in the character of the articles produced, in their adaptation to the purposes for which they are individu- ally designed, in the perfection of their execution and the gracefulness of their forms, there has been, in general, no im- provement within the period which authentic profane history embraces." Mr. Marsh's audience on the occasion embraced, not alone the members of the Mechanics' Institute — themselves a very intelligent body of men — but nearly all the culture and refine- ment of Burlington and many of the neighboring towns as well. The address, therefore, was not above the reach of his hearers, and the impression produced by it was such as to call forth their warm admiration. Vast as was the number of the facts stated, wide as must have been the reading to collect them, there was not the least appearance that special work had been done for the occasion. All seemed to have lain long in the mind of the speaker, to have been considered and recon- sidered, and so thoroughly assimilated as to have become part of its very structure. That such was actually the case may be 1835-1843.] ADDRESS BEFOKE MECHANICS' IlfSTITUTE. 51 inferred fi-om the fact that the address was written out with great rapidity. After the arrangement was once settled, not a new book was read with reference to it, nor an old one re-read, except so far as was necessary to remove some doubt on a par- ticular point. This address has been dwelt upon at the more length, be- cause it probably gave Mr. Marsh's friends the first thought of proposing him as a candidate for Congress. CHAPTER III. 1 843- 1 844. Candidacy for Congress proposed — Reasons for giving it Consideration — Discourse at Middlebnry College — Impressions produced by it — Decides to accept the Nom- ination for Congress and is elected — Illness of Child — Journey to Washington — Letter to Mrs. Hickok — Composition of Congress — Slavery Question — ^Feeling outside Congress — Relations vrith Senators and Representatives — Letter of Hon. R. C. Winthrop — Speech on Tariff— Extract from Letter of Rev. 6. Allen — Letter to Mrs. Hickok — Returns to Vermont and takes active Part in the Presi- dential Canvass of 1844 — Address at Dartmouth College — Sees Mr. Clay in Wash- ington — Mr. Polk elected — Place of Residence and Mode of Life in Washington — ^Illness — Anniversary Address before the New England Society of New York — Extract from Letter of Rev. G. Allen — Letter to Hon. Charles D. Drake — Cir- cumstances that determined the Character of the Address. VERMONT, from the very beginning of her existence as a State, seems to have made it a point to send those whom she regarded her worthiest sons to represent her at Washing- ton, and from this traditional policy, it will be admitted, she has seldom departed, even down to the present day. This noble ambition of her people has often secured for her the ser- vices of men who would never have filled those places of honor and trust if wire-pulling and intrigue had been the price to be paid for them. There is no evidence that Mr. Marsh himself had ever thus far thought of political life as a possible career ; but soon after the delivery of the address before the Mechanics' Institute the idea was suggested to him by some of the leading men of the State, and he at once gave it serious consideration. It was now clear that, though the extensive lands in his pos- session still seemed a guarantee of ultimate independence, the factory at Winooski was consuming the whole income of his property, and he must either return to his profession or enter 1843-1844.] DISCOURSE AT MIDDLEBUKT. S3 upon some other work which would afford him a moderate sup- port until more prosperous times. The difficulty of breaking away abruptly from important legal engagements, in case any favorable change should make a visit to Europe possible, was a strong argument against resuming his professional duties; while, on the other hand, the great interest he felt in the lead- ing political questions of the day made the idea of having an opportunity to exert some direct influence in their settlement very attractive to liim. He did not, however, come to a deci- sion until some weeks later. In the meantime he had been requested to deliver a dis- course before the Philomathesian Society of Middlebury, Vt., which he did, August 15, 1843. The title he gave this discourse was a somewhat startling X one : " The Goths in New England." It has been seen that for some years he had been largely occupied with the early literature of Iforthern Europe. Its songs and sagas, mythical, biographical, and historical, had taken strong hold upon his imagination, had excited a warm ad- miration for the men of the North, and thrown for him a new and vivid light on the history of the Middle Ages. The simple life, manners, and laws of these races, though so rude, struck him as singularly genuine and close to nature, and he believed he could trace in their heroic spirit, their passionate love of liberty, and their lofty thinking, the germs of all that is high- est and truest in the English character. This view of the English nation — now become familiar through a more wide-spread knowledge of the language, litera- ture, and history of the Northern races, and more especially through the researches of men gifted, like the lamented author of " A Short History of the English People," with the keenest insight and an equal love of truth — was a wholly novel one to most of his audience. While it appealed strongly to one class of mind, it was scarcely less unacceptable to another, and the character of the comments upon the discourse varied accordingly. 54 GEORGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. III. All agreed, however, that it was overflowing with fresh, vigor- ous, and earnest thought ; that its patriotism, i£ extreme, was by no means blind ; and that his denunciation of the course of England, when the better elements of her national character are in abeyance, if fierce, was not unmerited. It must be remembered that a strong reaction toward Ro- manism was manifesting itself at this time in the English Church, and that some of the higher clergy of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States were using language and setting up claims well calculated to call forth strong feeling on the part of one so thoroughly Puritan in every fibre of his nat- ure as was Mr. Marsh. One of the leading bishops in New England had openly asserted that the real objects of the early colonists were commercial, and that desire of gain was a far stronger motive with them than freedom of worship. Another in oiie of the Middle States, had declared himself the Yicar of Christ in his own diocese — a phrase, whatever he may have meant by it, far from acceptable to the ear of a true son of the Pilgrims. Many persons of shallow culture, even in Vermont, were ready to adopt such teachings, and several families of the old Pilgrim stock had actually gone over to the Church of Pome. Not a few of the prominent men of New England, ignoring the lofty virtues of their great forefathers, were losing no op- portunity to hold up their small weaknesses to ridicule, even when they went no farther. It is not strange, therefore, that a man of Mr. Marsh's de- cided opinions and ardent temperament should have uttered a vehement protest against what seemed to him a most dangerous retrograde movement, leading inevitably back into the darkness out of which human society had temporarily emerged. For he regarded as superficial and mistaken the notion that what has once been gained cannot be lost, for a time at least ; and he held that the struggle between the principle of authority and the principle of liberty in religion is not yet ended, and that we 1843-1844.] DISCOURSE AT MIDDLEBUBT. 55 have no certain guarantee in our age against a reaction as real, and possibly as terrible, as that which took place between the bright promises of the first years of Colet, Erasmus, and Sir Thomas More and the darkness and blood of the reign of Mary, or between the period of the Commonwealth and that of the Restoration. These opinions of the speaker, and the circumstances under which he spoke, will explain the warmth and earnestness of the discourse, even if they do not justify what may be regarded by some as either too strong statements of facts or exaggerated inferences from them. That Mr. Marsh himself, at a later period, would have modified some of these statements and in- ferences is apparent from his subsequent writings, but the gen- eral tenor of this address is certainly in harmony with what were his deepest convictions to the end of his life. After speaking of the two classes of men of which such an audience was likely to be composed, he says : " But speculative inquiry into the laws of matter or of mind, without reference to their connection with the duties of the present and their influence on the fortunes of the future, is but an idle dilettantism ; and calculation on the future, without re- course to the principles which observation of the past educes, is little better than a groping empiricism. The man of action, therefore, ought to be brought to seek the sometimes dim, but always steady, light of principle, and the man of speculation to remember that the effects which he has traced to their source have now, in their turn, become eflScient causes, and that the laws which he has investigated are more important in their relations to the boundless future than to the narrow present or limited past." " The most favorite theme of public discussion for the last fourscore years, both in this country and in Europe, has been the absolute rights of man; and in these discussions, by the common mistake of confounding the means and the end, his 56 GEOKGE PEEKIlSrS MAESH. [Chap. III. relative rights and correlative duties have been, unfortunately, too generally overlooked. For rights are truly valuable only because the enjoyment of thena is indispensable to the perform- ance of the duties which our relations to God and to man im- pose upon us." "Man's duties are first religious, including those to self, then domestic, then patriotic, then philanthropic. But when I say that the duties of religion include those referring to self, I do by no means assent to that characteristic doctrine of the English re- ligious philosophy of the eighteenth century, so fatal in religion and so degrading and demoralizing in ethics, which solves all questions of duty by a calculation of the balance of profit and loss ; nor do I recognize the self-seeking principle as a ground or foundation of moral obligation at all. Nor by distinguishing duties into classes do I mean to subordinate the one to the other, as inferior in point of obligation — for I hold that under the harmonious scheme of Christian morality all confiict of duty is but apparent — but I divide them upon grounds of con- venience, because they are most appropriately considered in connection with the different relations from which they flow." He then touches upon the danger that, in our own rapid growth, we may overlook our earlier history so far as to forget the true sources of our national greatness, and thus become in- capable of exercising an intelligent foresight in regard to the future. Then follows his estimate of the moral and intellectual character of our Puritan forefathers, which he holds to be " . . . derived by inheritance from our remote Gothic an- cestry, restored by its own inherent elasticity to its primitive proportions, upon the removal of the shackles and burdens which the spiritual and intellectual tyranny of Home had for centuries imposed upon it ; but its moral traits are a superin- duction of the temper and spirituality of Christianity upon the soul of the Goth, under conditions best suited to purify the heart, and steel to the utmost the energies of the spirit." 1843-1844.] DISCOTJESE AT MIDDLEBITEY. 57 He saj's the difference between the mind of New England and that of the mother country " is due partly to the circum- stances under which the colonies were planted and the subse- quent political disturbances in England, which both promoted the emigration of new colonists of like spirit with their pred- ecessors and protected the infant community from the inter- ference of the Stuarts ; but chiefly to the fact that our fore- fathers belonged to that grand era in British history when the English mind, under the impulse of the Reformation, was striv- ing to recover its Gothic tendencies by the elimination of the Roman element." And he adds : " The Goths, the common ancestors of the inhabitants of Northwestern Europe, are the noblest branch of the Caucasian race. We are their children. It was the spirit of the Goth that guided the Mayflower across the trackless ocean, the blood of the Goth that flowed at Bunker's Hill." "England Is Gothic by birth, Roman by adoption. What- ever she has of true moral grandeur, of higher intellectual pow- er, she owes to the Gothic mother ; while her grasping ambi- tion, her material energies, her spirit of exclusive selfishness are due to the Roman nurse." He then states what he believes to be the cardinal distinc- tion between these conflicting elements : " The Roman mistakes the means for the end, and subor- dinates the principle to the form. The Goth, valuing the means only as they contribute to the advancement of the end, looks beneath the form, and seeks the indwelling, life-giving principle, of which he holds the form to be but the outward expression. With the Goth, the idea of life is involved in the conception of truth ; and though he recognizes life as an immu- table principle, yet he perceives that its forms of expression, of action, of suffering, are indefinitely diversified, agreeing, how- ever, in this, that all its manifestations are characterized by de- 58 GEOBGE PERKINS MARSH. [CHAP. III. velopment, motion, progress. To him truth is symbolized by the phenomena of organic life. The living plant or animal that has ceased to grow has already begun to die. Living truth, therefore, though immutable in essence, he regards as active, progressive in its manifestations ; and he rejects truths which have lost their vitality, forms divorced from their spii'- ituality, symbols which have ceased to be expressive. With the Goth, all truth is an ever-living principle, whence should spring the outward expression, fluctuating, varying, according to the circumstances which call it forth ; with the Koman, its organic life is petrified, frozen into inflexible forms, inert." This idea he develops and illustrates through the remainder of the discourse, points out what he thinks the greatest dangers by which our national character is threatened, and concludes : " I do not expect for New England a high degree of pe- cuniary prosperity or political influence. Our rude climate and comparatively rugged and barren soil must yield the palm to the softer skies of the South and the luxuriant prairies of the West. The population of our mountains and our valleys will increase in a ratio far short of the rapid multiplication of the inhabitants of the newer States ; and our proportional weight in the national legislature will diminish with every census. But the mighty West will look back with filial reverence to the birthplace of the fathers of her people, and the schools of New England will still be nursing-mothers to the posterity of her widely scattered children. If, then, we cannot be the legisla- tors of our common country, let it be your care that we become not unworthy to be its teachers ; and though we cannot give it law, let us not cease to give it light." Mr. Marsh, having made up his mind in the early summer to accept the nomination, was elected to the Congress of 1843- 44, 1844-45, and took his seat in December. It had been his intention to go on to Washington early in the autumn, in order 1843-1844.] JOURNEY TO WASHINGTON. 59 to secure for himself and family a quiet Lome in the capital, instead of risking the discomforts of a hotel or boarding-house ; but early in September his son was attacked with typhoid fever of an alarming type, and continued in a critical condition for several weeks. Mr. Marsh, having exhausted himself by night- watching, was also taken ill, and the two patients recovered sufficiently to bear the journey only just in time for the open- ing of the session. The following extract from a letter to Mrs. Henry P. Hickok,* the only sister of his first wife, will show how severe the strain of his child's illness and his own, together with his anxiety about other members of his family, had been upon him : " Albany, Deo. — 184S. " Mt Dear Sistee : " . . . We left Whitehall at 12 o'clock, Tuesday ; ar- rived at Glen's Falls about 5 p.m, where we passed the night. Yesterday we went on to Saratoga, and to-day we reached Al- bany at li P.M. George bore the journey very well, and though he cannot yet walk, he is evidently gaining strength. I brought him in my arms the whole way. He has been very patient and docile, but both C. and L. are utterly worn out with fatigue and anxiety, and I do not believe we shall any of us ever again be quite what we were before this terrible illness. Dr. Marsh has done for us what none but a conscientious and skil- ful physician and an intimate and faithful friend could do, and I trust I shall never cease to be grateful to him and to all the other friends who have aided in lightening our burdens and bearing our ti-ials. I am fairly well now, but cannot shake ofE the impression that I shall never again fully recover my former health and strength. Every step I have taken since I began to prepare to go to Washington has been met by some disappoint- * Miss Maria Bnell, daughter of Colonel O. BueH, was bom at Kent, Conn., in 1796, was married to Mr. Henry P. Hickok, of Burlington, Vt., and died in 1881. She was a woman of fine intelligence and moat exemplar)- Christian life, and her faithful friendship and never-failing kind offices toward Mr. Marsh and his family, to the end of her life, were deeply appreciated both by him and by them. 60 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. III. ment that lias thwarted every calculation I had made. Still I trust to get my family soon settled around me quietly once more, and that we may then look forward to a winter of peace and comparative comfort. Dr. Marsh is still with us. Love to your husband and our little niece. " Your grateful and affectionate brother and friend, "Geo. p. Maesh." When Mr. Marsh entered Congress, that body included many of the greatest names that appear in the history of our country during the present century. W. P. Mangum, of North Carolina, was then President of the Senate ; John C. Calhoun, George McDuffie, John Berrien, Thomas Benton, and other distinguished men from the South, were members of it, and Henry Clay returned to it in 1845. Rufus Choate filled the seat of Mr. Webster, who was then in the Cabinet. Sam- uel Phelps, of Yermont, was also a Senator of commanding ability, and many others scarcely less conspicuous might be named. Mr. "Webster himself was re-elected to the Senate in 1845. In the House were John Q. Adams, R. C. Winthrop, S. Foot, J. E. Ingersoll, S. Yinton, A. H. Stephens, H. S. Foote, and many others who have left a permanent record of them- selves. Jefferson Davis was elected to the House in 1846. As a consequence of his late arrival in Washington, the new member was obliged to content himself with such winter arrangements as could be made most readily, with tolerable promise of comfort, and lie settled himself and family in a small hotel in C Street, kept by Mr. Tyler, of Yirginia, a cousin of the then President. The North and the South con- tributed about equally to furnish the forty or fifty guests at this hotel. Mr. Marsh did not go to Washington without being aware that the agitation of the slavery question was already assuming serious proportions. He knew that the Hon. J. Q. Adams and 1843-1844.] SLAVERY QUESTION. 61 the Hon. J. K. Giddings were there fighting vigorously for the "Eight of Petition ; " he knew that the Hon. E. B. Ehett and others were tliere threatening the dissohition of the Union in violent language ; but he certainly had no idea of the excite- ment existing at that time at the capital outside the halls of Congress. His education, as well as his moral instincts, made slavery an ofEence to him, but he held that the South was not altogether responsible for its existence in her borders ; that the letter of the Constitution of the United States sustained her slave-holding rights ; and that so long as that was in force, un- changed, the only weapon which could be justly used against slavery was a free expression of the public opinion of the North and of the whole Christian world. He trusted that this opinion would gradually touch the conscience and open the eyes of the South to its duty and its true interests, and that some way would be found to relieve the nation of this curse without destroying its own life. Having no feeling of animosity to- ward those whose misfortune it was to have been born in slave- holding States, he was certainly unprepared for so strong a manifestation of this feeling on the part of individuals from that section toward the North as he was soon obliged to wit- ness.* But while there was enough of this to give a sense of * As throwing light upon the actual state of feeling at this time, and therefore aa matter of history, the following anecdotes may be entitled to a place here, thongh they are recorded with no wish to keep alive resentments which are so happily dying out, and which the blood shed on both sides should be sufficient to extinguish forever. The first morning after bis arrival at his lodgings, Mr. Marsh found himself seated at the breakfast-table with a colleague from New England on his right hand, an old Vermont friend on his left, and three Southern gentlemen opposite, one of whom was a young gentleman from Baltimore, of ill-fated memory since. This young man was looking over a newspaper and commenting alond upon various para- graphs, sometimes to one of the gentlemen by him, and sometimes audibly soliloquiz- ing — all evidently for the benefit of those sitting opposite him. It would be difficult to imagine language more insulting to the North than that used by this young Balti- morean. The Northern ladies present kept quiet only long enough to reach their own apartments, and when there they asked their lords, with some earnestness, if they supposed "such language to be a part of the menu through the winter?" The cooler sex calmly replied that " an ill-bred boy was not to be heeded," eta; but they could not altogether conceal their own indignation. While the two or three North- em gentlemen were talking over the incident aside, the proprietor of the hotel came up and apologized for what had occurred, with an assurance that it should not hap- 62 GEORGE PEKKINS MAKSH. [Chap. III. discomfort and create serious apprehension lest the great lead- ers of Southern sentiment should find, when too late, that they had kindled a fire they could not quench at will, yet the true gentlemen of the South were always courteous in their treat- ment of Northern men, and Mr. Marsh made many most agree- able acquaintances among the Southern Senators and Repre- sentatives, such as Judge Berrien, of Georgia ; Mr. Clingman, of North Carolina ; Mr. Burt, of South Carolina ; Mr. Hilliard, of Alabama, etc., with some of wliom he formed a sincere and lasting friendship. With Mr. Adams his intercourse soon became easy and friendly, and so continued until the death of " the old man eloquent," in 1847. For Mr. Webster, Mr. Marsh had the ad- miration which that great man could never fail to inspire, and he always accepted an invitation from him with pleasure ; but he constitutionally shrank from seeking the society of any man who had a large following, and consequently the acquaint- ance was but a superficial one. His relations with Mr. Choate liave already been spoken of, and the opportunity how afforded pen again ; and, to do Mm justice, it did not happen again, thougli, charged as the atmosphere then was, everyone was prepared for unpleasant phenomena at any moment. In the course of the first month after Mr. Marsh's arrival in Washington, he and his family were invited one evening, with a few other Northern friends, to an informal weekly reception given by Mrs. Robert Tyler, the daughter-in-law of the President. The little party were most courteously received by the hostess and the ladies seated near her. A gentleman who had been previously talking with Mrs. Tyler then re- sumed his conversation : ''lam astonished to hear you, madam, a Virginia lady say that yon like the North. " " Yes, " said Mrs. Tyler, " I have the bad taste to be very fond of the North. I like the people, and I even prefer the climate to any farther south than Virginia." " How is that possible ? Why, in New Orleans, for instance, we have no winter, and we have green-peas and strawberries all through the so-called wmter months." "No doubt," said the lady, laughing; "but I like winter, and I donH like green-peas and strawberries in the winter months ; besides, I have heard of other things in New Orleans even less agreeable— yellow fever, for example." "Yellow fever!" exclaimed the gentleman (of some notoriety » few years later) ; "yellow fever is the greatest blessing we have. It kills off the cursed Yankees for Its." Mrs. Tyler fixed him for an instant with a stare of amazement ; then rising and turning from him with unmistakable meaning, she said to the ladies near her, "Will you come with me into the next room ? I would like to show you a portrait of the President, just finished by Healy." 1843-1844] LETTER OF ME. WINTHKOP. 63 liim of frequently enjoying the society of this brilliant friend was a source of great satisfaction to him. The Hon. Robert C. Winthrop and the Hon. Joseph R. Ingersoll were, perhaps, the members of the House with whom Mr. Marsh was on the most confidential terms. The rare culture, social refinement, and personal dignity of these gentlemen were very attractive to him ; and he then often spoke of the former, not only as having already achieved a high position as a statesman, but as likely to render still more con- spicuous services to his country, and to receive corresponding honors at her hands. Though they afterward took somewhat different views as to the best course to be pursued in certain great political crises, yet Mr. Marsh, to the end of his life, had the highest esteem for Mr. "Winthrop as a man, and a strong regard for him as a personal friend. The following extract from a letter, addressed to Dr. S. G. Brown by Mr. Winthrop, will show that this esteem was mu- tual : " I know not if I am indebted to you for the copy of your commemorative address on Mr. Marsh, but I am certainly your debtor for the discourse itself. It came to me with the ac- knowledgment of the volumes which, at the suggestion of a friend, I had ventured to send to the library of which Mr. Marsh's invaluable books are to constitute a part. I have only recently read your discourse, and I cannot forbear thanking you for so excellent a memoir of so excellent a man. " I was in Congress with Mr. Marsh during his whole ser- vice at Washington, and there was no member of the House with whom I had more friendly associations, or for whom I had a more cordial regard and respect. " I am glad to remember that we never differed in judg- ment in reference to public measures at that period, and that we voted together and alike on more than one bill which be- came the subject of acrimonious partisan controversy. I recall 64 GEOKGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. III. especially the Mexican War Bill, as it was called, when a con- ference with him at the last moment decided my vote, and I still preserve a letter of his on the subject among my most valued autographs. " I met him afterward both in Florence and in Home, and we exchanged occasional letters almost to the end of his life. I was in Europe at the time of his death, and lost the opportu- nity of paying him a little tribute at our Massachusetts Histor- ical Society. But I have always regarded him as among the most remarkable and best men whom I have been privileged in a long life to count as a friend, and I cherish the warmest re- spect for his memory. " Your admirable discourse has renewed and confirmed my impressions of his character and accomplishments, and 1 have read it with the deepest interest and sympathy." For the first few months Mr. Marsh seldom spoke in the House,— never at length ; but on April 30, 1844, he made a speech on the tariff. Though entirely without oratorical charm of manner, he was listened to with profound attention, and warmly congratulated afterward. Whatever might be thought of the conclusiveness of the argument, there was but one ver- dict as to the power, eloquence, and ability with which it was presented. Alluding to this speech, many years after, Mr. Marsh said : " I was fully convinced of the truth of my position then ; but, though not yet prepared to declare myself a convert to free trade, I can now see that there is another side to the question." This remark illustrates a salient feature in his character. He was never afraid of being inconsistent. If re- minded that any expression of opinion was not in accordance with some previous utterance, he would answer : " Yery likely not. A man who cares for the truth can't afford to care for consistency." There is no doubt, also, that some of the strong opinions incidentally expressed in this speech, on other subjects 1843-1844.] SPEECH ON THE TABIFE. 65 bearing on the discussion, likewise underwent more or less mod- ification as the years went on, but this will sufficiently appear from his subsequent writings. The following brief extracts are from the speech itself : " That this is a question upon which sectional interests and sectional feeling have a very strong bearing I am not disposed to deny. Nor do I pretend that I can divest myself of their influence. Sir, I should be ashamed if I could. I dare not as- sume to be above the partialities which belong to humanity ; and were I insensible to such considerations I should be beneath them. I cannot — nay, sir, I will not— shut my eyes to the inter- ests, the claims, of my own region, of my own humble State, "While I conscientiously believe that the policy of protection is demanded by the best interests of all her sisters, to her I know it is vital ; and so deeply rooted is this conviction among those whom I, "with my colleagues, have the honor to represent, that the very agitation of this question has already produced a panic whose influence upon the price of our only staple will cost the wool-growers of Vermont not less than half a million." " Myself, unhappily, a manufacturer, I know too well the indispensable necessity of the most rigorous exactness in the calculation of the numerous elements of profit and loss. I have learned how disastrously an apparently insignificant change in the arrangement of duties may affect a large establishment, and that a trivial modification of the tariff, which shall not percep- tibly vary the amount of revenue, and shall scarcely save a penny to any individual consumer, may work utter ruin to the manufacturing capitalist and the hundreds who depend upon him." " "We may infer, in general, that the protection of domestic industry is or is not advantageous to the interests of a nation; but it is impossible to determine, even approximately, the effect of a given duty upon either revenue or home production otherwise than by experiment. But the interests involved in these ques- 6 66 GEOEGE PERKINS MARSH. iChap. III. tions are of such vast magnitude that experiments are always in tlie highest degree dangerous ; and when you have a tariff which satisfies at once the demands of the revenue, the producer, and the consumer, it is the very acme of madness to adventure upon extensive changes, except upon such cogent evidence as, in the nature of things, is hardly attainable. An alteration of the tar- iff which shall add but a few thousands to the revenue may not improbably destroy a business in which millions are invested." " I am sorry to say, Mr. Chairman, that I am not among those who discern in the signs of the times sure tokens of abid- ing peace. The age of conquest, it is said, has passed away ; but at a moment when our own administration is meditating a war of conquest, and has already virtually declared hostilities in that unholy cause, it lies not in our mouths to say that such wars are no longer possible." " No man can more cordially detest the practice or deplore the necessity of a resort to arms ; none can more deeply abhor the hellish passions, the awful crimes, that constitute the very being of war, than myself ; and I am not prepared to say that any, or even all, of the pending or adjourned questions between us and Great Britain are worth a war." In reference to this speech, his friend, the Rev. George Allen,* thus writes to him : * The Rev. George Allen, LL.D., was born at Milton, Vt., in 1808. His father, the Hon. Heman Allen, was a prominent lawyer in that State, was elected member of Congress, and afterward appointed United States Minister to Chili. His son George graduated at the University of Vermont, and was for a time Professor in that insti- tution. Under the influence of Dr. James Marsh he became an ardent disciple of Coleridge. He was admitted to the bar, but eventually studied theology, under the direction of Bishop Hopkins, of Vermont, and assumed the rectorship of the Episco- pal Church in St. Albans. Delicacy of the throat compelled him to resign this charge, and he was appointed Professor of Ancient Languages in Delaware College and afterward Professor of Greek in the University of Pennsylvania. In this last appointment Mr. Marsh took an active part, for he had great esteem for his charac- ter, and a high opinion of his classical attainments, and thoroughly sympathized with him in his enthusiastic love of art and all manner of quaint learning. Mr. AUen'a chess library— a, most remarkable one— is now in the Ridgeway Collection, Philadel- phia. He became a Roman Catholic in 1847, to the great regret, but little surprise, of his friend. He died in 1876. 1843-1844.] LETTER OF DR. ALLEK. 67 " I have read your tariff speech through twice, and lent it to besides, who, being in your sense more of a Puritan than I, liked every part of it, Cromwell and all. I think it has more merit in point of style than anything else you have written. I have often wondered (for you and I can be plain with each other without breaking squares) that, with so very fine an ear for style in others, you should sometimes miss the tune yourself. Strong, terse, precise in expression, you al- ways are ; but this speech has style, and a rare good stj'le, too. As to the matter of it, I don't know anything of the kind that has given me so much satisfaction. One does not often find such views presented in our Congressional speeches. I wish I had time to notice here several points where you seem to me mighty strong. SuiBce it to say, without the slightest flattery, that I feel proud, as a Vermonter, at what you have done and shown yon can do. Long may you have the opportunity of giving honor to our native State ! I delight in seeing that our mountains can breed a lion ! " But now, dear Marsh, you are too much of a man to be offended if I put a few words ^er contra. Tou are one of the few members who belong to the class who can and ought to stand above mere party pre-eminence. Such men can afford to use different weapons from the mere gladiators of a party, how- ever skilful. Some of your thrusts seem to me too much after the fashion of a party-fighter, and not worthy the vast intel- lectual superiority of George P. Marsh. Don't condescend to use a bowie-knife when you can use a broadsword with such tremendous effect." The mild winter at the capital, as compared with Vermont, had been very agreeable to Mr. Marsh, and the early, beautiful, flowery spring of Washington, which all who have ever enjoyed its luxurious sweetness will praise, brought him keen delight. In the early mornings and evenings he took long walks with his family, or other friends, and never seemed to suffer from the 68 GEORGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. IIL lassitude experienced by so many to whom the climate was new. But the close confinement consequent upon what were then the Congressional hours was very irksome to him, though he could never be persuaded to absent himself, even for half a day. In June, 184i, Mr. Marsh wrote as follows to Mrs. Hickok : " . . . I have no other excuse for my long silence than the demands of a very large correspondence, which compels me to employ my pen so constantly that I am thoroughly weary of it. C, L., and G. left for Massachusetts on Tuesday eve. I hope to get away the day of the adjournment, June 17th, and, unless I am unavoidably detained by business in Philadelphia or New York, shall go directly to "Woodstock, by way of Mass., and expect to be in Burlington by the end of the month. I have received alarming accounts of my mother's present illness, and from what my brother writes me of her symptoms, I am afraid we have cause to dread an unfavorable result. There has been some reason before to fear the existence of organic disease, but I still trust she may be spared to us. " George has been in better health since his recovery than ever before in his life. . . . There are serious objections to bringing him here another winter. The schools are unsatisfac- tory, the influence of the servant-boys about the hotel is bad, and, of course, we cannot confine the child entirely to our own rooms. This last objection may be removed by an arrange- ment for a different way of living, which we hope to make, but the school difficulty seems insurmountable. We sent him for a few weeks to the only well-recommended boys' school in Washington, but from fault of pupil or teachers the experiment proved very unsuccessful. I have a great partiality for the old New England fashion of domestic clerical instruction ; and if I could find a satisfactory place for George in the family of some clergyman who would take charge of him and two or three other boys (he has the faults of an only child, and a delicate 1843-1844.], ADDRESS AT DAKTMOUTH COLLEGE. 69 one at that), I should be better satisfied than I could be with any other provision for him. I have hoped there might be such a place as I liave described near Dr. Marsh's new residence, where, in case of G.'s illness. Dr. M. conld take care of him. . . . I find the confinement to the House tedious. The session be- gins at 10 A.M. and continues, without recess, till 5 p.m., besides which we must frequently attend committees, and these meet at 9 A.M. This makes a long interval between breakfast and ■dinner ; and as I never take anything whatever in the mean- time, it reduces my daily meals to two. But I find the climate highly favorable to me, though less so to C. than I had hoped." Mr. Marsh returned to Vermont in the early summer of 1844, more deeply impressed than ever before with the impor- tance of the questions that divided the two great political par- ties, and convinced that the safety of the country depended upon the success of the Whigs in the approaching Presidential election. He accordingly threw himself into the canvass very earnestly, and gave up most of his summer to it. In the month of July, however, he gave an address at Dart- mouth College, as appears from the following extract from a letter to Mrs. Hickok, but it is believed this address was never published : "- • . We arrived at Topsham, a little town on the mountain, on Saturday eve, and remained there until Tuesday morning. Then we drove over to Hanover, which we reached at evening; and as my Address, which I had only begun to write at Topsham, was not finished, I was obliged to sit up all night, and only had it ready an hour before the time for delivering it. T had not time even to read it over before going to the church, but it was very kindly received. " I wish I could look for a little respite now, but must be at the Williston political convention on Wednesday, and at Man- chester on the 7th of Aug. 70 GEORGE PEEKINS MARSH. [CHAP. III. " We left George with Eev. Mr. Bliss. He bore the sepa- ration bravely, and I trust he will do well there ; but we have had heavy hearts ever since we parted from him." Mr. Choate was present at the Commencement at Dartmouth, referred to above, and Mr. Marsh had an opportunity of wit- nessing the effect produced on a stranger by a first meeting with him. " Who is that wonderful man ? " exclaimed a friend to Mr. Marsh, who had just spoken to Mr. Choate on the church- steps, as the latter, with one of his lightning smiles, was saying to Miss C , " l^ow let us walk away together, hand in hand, like the babes in the wood ! " " Who is that wonderful man ? I never saw such a face, head, and expression in my life before." At the beginning of the political campaign, Mr. Marsh had felt the strongest confidence in Mr. Clay's success ; but as soon as the unfortunate candidate began to write letters, he foresaw that the cause was lost. Circumstances took him to Washing- ton a few days before-the State elections came off. During that time he called on Mr. Clay, who was then in Washington, and came back from the interview in a state of amazement. " Mr. Clay is infatuated," he said ; " he believes he shall carry every State but two ! If there were a few weeks instead of days between this and the election, I verily think he would manage to lose every State but two" On a Saturday evening, at the beginning of November, election news was pouring into the capital from every quarter. The excitement was intense. Torch-light processions paraded the streets with wild hurrahs ; heavy guns were firing, now by one party, now by another, according to the latest news re- ceived. At last, an hour after midnight, a yell of triumph, protracted, hideous, demoniac, rang out from one end of the city to the other. There was no occasion to ask questions. Everybody knew what it meant. Early the next morning Mr. Marsh called a friend to the window and pointed out a huge flag floating over a distant quarter of the town. " Do you 1843-1844.] LIFE IN WASHINGTON. 71 know what that flag is waving over ? " he asked, with an ex- citement of manner very rare with him. " There is the Slave Market of "Washington ! and that flag means Texas ; and Texas means civil war, before we have done with it." The experience of a single winter had satisfied Mr. Marsh that life in Washington would be out of the question for him, miless, at least, " in his own hired house," and in the autumn of 1844 he made his arrangements accordingly. He selected the west end of the city as his residence ; and here he lived from 1844 to 1849, always walking to and from the Capitol, leaving his house in time for the early committee meetings, and return- ing after the close of the day's session. The two miles which separated him from the centre of the political activity of Wash- ington no doubt spared him the visit of many an office-seeker, the intrusion of many a reporter. But under no circumstances would either of these classes have taken up much of his time. There was, however, one set of importunates who strongly ex- cited his sympathy, even when they followed him to his own house — namely, unsuccessful inventors. To these he listened patiently, pointed out the fatal flaw, when he saw it, and some- times even succeeded in persuading the disappointed, half- demented victim of false hopes, and too often of false promises, to give up his project and return to his family. From the commencement of Mr. Marsh's Congressional life to its close, nothing but force majeure ever kept him from the House during its sessions, and his attendance upon committee meetings was no less punctual. It was his habit to answer every business letter the day it was received, if its character admitted so prompt a reply. In those days the luxury of a stenographic secretary was unknown, and Mr. Marsh carried on his correspondence without assistance of any kind, beyond the mere addressing of documents to his constituents. He was generally able to write all his letters at the House, when its time was taken up with formalities or by speakers who had nothing special to say to him. Sometimes it happened that 72 GEORGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. IH. there was more leisure time of this kind than his correspond- ence required, and this he frequently utilized in quite another way. It became, in fact, almost a standing pleasantry among some of the frequenters of the galleries, to predict when J. Q. Adams and G. P. Marsh would go to sleep. These gentlemen occupied adjacent seats, and it was amnsing to see them both quietly alert until they saw who was to have the floor for the next hour, and then, if they did not care to listen, both uncon- sciously assuming the same restful attitude and dropping at once into a profound sleep, broken simultaneously by the sound of the Speaker's hammer. Talking of this habit, Mr. Marsh feaid that it enabled him to bear the occasional late hours of his "Washington life without interfering with his practice of early rising. From this practice he never departed, and he always insisted that all the work of his life worth the doing had been done between the hours oijwe and nine in the morning. For him, perhaps the chief attraction of "Washington so- ciety was the small circle of congenial friends whom he could gather round his own table, or whom he met in the same way elsewhere. Evening entertainments were generally distasteful to him, and gentlemen^s parties he invariably shunned, unless they were of an official character. Anything like really unbroken evenings at home was of course impossible, but such fragments as he could command were spent in the old way with his family, and always in some reading or study in which they could share. Even his precious morning hours were not selfishly employed, and he often sac- rificed a large portion of them to those whose eye-infirmities at this time happened to be greater than his own. The neighbor- hood in which he lived was a most agreeable one, consisting chiefly of refined old Washington households, and of army and navy officers temporarily residing there with their families. Many pleasant and permanent friendships were formed among them ; and varied as was Mr. Marsh's experience afterward, he often referred to these years as among the happiest of his life. 1843-1844.] ILLNESS. 73 The little children of all bis acquaintances were' especially at- tached to him ; and as the grave, preoccupied man walked down F Street toward the Capitol, it was the commonest thing to see little feet hurrying after him, and a little hand laid in his with the most touching confidence — a confidence that never met with a repulse. It has often been remarked that children recognize instinctively those who sympathize keenly with them ; but it is difficult to explain how a face whose intensely concentrated expression was so often a restraint to men and women should have so uniformly attracted children. Toward servants he was always gentle and forbearing.* Being once asked how he managed never to speak a harsh or even impatient word to them, he said, " By always remember- ing how little their poor and narrow lives can give them at the best." Before the end of November, probably in consequence of overwork during the summer and anxiety for the future of the country, Mr. Marsh had a very severe attack of neuralgia, which nearly cost him his life. Owing to the apparent urgency of the case, the nearest medical man, a stranger, was called in, at a late hour at night, and, totally mistaking the character of the pain, he administered a powerful dose of tartar emetic. This produced so profound a poisoning that the action of the heart seemed to cease almost entirely for some hours, and so complete was the prostration that the doctor himself became seriously alarmed. It was several days before Mr. Marsh could walk, or even stand. In a letter to Mrs. Hickok, dated some weeks later, he says : * To his Washington servants he was for a long time an enigma. An old woman, who was on her second year of service in his family, was noticed one day standing be- fore his portrait smd apparently studying it intently. When asked what she was do- ing, she replied, " Laws ! Missus ! I'se trying to see how Massa looks. 'Pears like I'se 'feard to look at him real." "But why are you afraid? He always speaks kindly to you." " Oh ! yes ! Missus, it's just that ! he speaks to us all kine o' quiet like, just zif we'se white folks. If he'd on'y swear at us sometimes, and say he'd break 'er heads, we wouldn't be 'feard no way. But he's so drefful stUl and deep ! " Then turning away from the portrait, she added, by way of soliloquy, " Yes, Massa's deep as the sea ! Even a poor nigger can make that out. But he does smile beau- tiful ! " 74 GEOKGE PEKKINS MAKSH. [Chap. IU. " . . . This unlucky affair, and the necessity of incessant work ever since, have affected my nerves to such a degree that I sleep very little — an unusual thing for me." In December of this year (1844), Mr. Marsh gave, by invita- tion, the anniversary address before the New England Society of New York. The character of the association, the occasion, the feelings of the speaker, made the choice of subject impera- tive. After touching upon the natural features of the birth- place of the New Englauder, and its characteristic institutions, he says : " It is to the fundamental principles on which these last rest that I shall call your attention," and a little later he adds : "In discussing the only subject appropriate to the occasion, it is not my aim to pamper or excite a feeling of sectional and disdainful pride in the descendants of those to whom the cause of civil and religious liberty is so deeply indebted, but to awaken in you a conviction that your virtues and your liberties can be maintained inviolate only by a steady adherence to the grounds upon which they are founded, and in these days of evil omen, when the principles of your fathers are everywhere spoken against, and the fierce strifes of contending factions and the last of temporal and ecclesiastical dominion are threatening to rend the very framework of our social fabric, to rouse to action some of those heroic spirits whose glory it is to deserve -well of their country by hoping when other good men see cause only of despair." He then alludes to the theory that everything into whose constitution material substance enters has, in its very nature, its periods of inception, youth, maturity, decay, and death, and that man in his social capacity is subject to a similar law. After admitting that science and history seem thus far to favor this theory, he says : 1843-1844.] NEW EKGLAND SOCIETY ADDRESS. 75 " It is a question of grave and even fearful import whether there is in the constitution of modern civil society any con- servative element which promises duration to existing forms of social organization, any prophylactic against the corruptions of war and the cankers of peace, any mithridate against the in- sinuating and seductive poison of alien and antinational influ- ences, any corrective for that love of novelty and change which leads men so readily to abandon the old and well- approved truth and its fruit, the venerable civil or religious institution, for the plausible but uncertain theory and the specious and hollow show of reform in Church or State ; or whether, on the other hand, it is the inexorable decree of the Creator that nations, as well as individuals, shall have their ages of infancy and growth, their moment of full maturity, and their period of sudden convulsion, chronic disease and decline, or senile decay. . . . Are we bound to believe that the fort- imes of the future will be but a repetition of the history of the past ; that the Christian world will again be seared with fire and drenched in blood; that it will still be a theatre whose shifting scenes shall exhibit perpetual change — the alternate supremacy of might and right, now force and arbitrary will victorious over law and reason, now the brief triumpli of virtue over passion ; resistance to lawful authority, on the one hand, on the other, usurpation and contempt of human rights ? Are law and anarchy, freedom and tyranny, like the good and evil principles of the Manichsean system, to wage perpetual war, or shall the reason of State at length achieve a final victory over the rebellious passions of social man ? " These questions, he thinks, admit of no prospective solu- tion ; " but," he continues, " there are questions concerning the present hopes and probable fate of those institutions in which we of 'New England have been nurtured that demand our at- tention, because they involve matters of conscientious duty and immediate interest. In order well and wisely to discharge the 76 GEORGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. III. duty which every free man owes to the land of his birth, it is indispensable that he know the true nature of her institutions, and comprehend how they have been shaped and modified by the predominant traits of national character; for free govern- ments are never the result of accident, but always derive their origin from the intelligent exercise of the national will, and in their structure they conform to the genius of the people." In the discussion of the New England character that fol- lows, he adheres to the opinions expressed in the address of the previous year at Middlebury, namely, that the noblest traits in the English race are derived from their Gothic ancestry, and that the Puritanism which settled New England was a develop- ment of Gothic instincts under circumstances most favorable to their growth. Among the most important of these circum- stances were the astonishing intellectual activity caused by the stupendous discoveries and inventions of the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries, the spiritual awakening brought about by the Reformation, and, finally, to those quickening influences was added the hardening one of sharp persecution. " Under such impulses as I have described the Gothic mind attained its most perfect development in the character of the great sect to which the Pilgrims belonged, and partook of all the holy, purifying, and ennobling influences of the time. Happily for them and for humanity, the truly kingly argument of royal James prevailed — majesty executed its magnanimous threat, and our forefathers were ' harried out of the land ' before that character had become enervated or its lofty energies spent, and they brought with them the moral virtues of the rigid Puritan combined with the intellectual elevation of unfettered Christian philosophy and the chivalrous heroism of bannered knight- hood." He finds much in the home-life of New England (this in a measure the consequence of its climate) calculated to strengthen 1843-1844.] ifE-W ENGLAND SOCIETY ADDRESS. 77 the best traits of the Puritan character, and he notices how important an element of success was the presence of women among the earliest colonists. On this point he says : " Had that grand and heroic exodus, like the mere commer- cial enterprises to which most colonies owe their foundation, been unaccompanied by woman at its first outgoing, it had, without a visible miracle, assuredly failed. . . . Other com- munities, nations, races, may glory in the exploits of their fathers ; but it has been reserved for us of New England to know, and to boast, that Providence has made the virtues of our mothers a yet more indispensable condition, and certain ground, both of our past prosperity and our future hope." He dwells much on the Bible as the text-book of parental instruction, and ascribes to its persevering study the great in- tellectual power of the English Puritans of the seventeenth century, and the remarkable metaphysical talent shown by some of their American descendants. "We cannot follow this address through its discussion of the religious tenets of the Puritans,* nor can we give the striking picture of the Middle Ages here presented, as "With dreadful faces thronged, and fiery anna." The following extracts will show what dangers the author be- lieved he foresaw, and where he looked for the remedy : " The love of country, with all the reverential sympathies it implies, is among the strongest impulses in every rightly con- stituted mind, and, next to self-respect, is the most important ingredient in the character of a virtuous man. . . . It is to *Mr. Marsh used the name Puritan in a broad sense, embracing all earnest Chris- tian men who were at this time in revolt against ecclesiastical dogmatism and des- potism ; but the whole tenor of his life and writings proves that he had as little sjrm- pathy for the doctrine of church authority, and its right to punish heretics with death, when asserted by Thomas Cartwright as when claimed by a Land or a pope. 78 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. III. the want of an intelligent national pride — the universal solvent which melts and combines into a harmonious whole the other- i wise discordant traits of individual and local feeling — that we I must ascribe the non-existence of a well-defined and consistent American character. We have abundance of inflated compla- cency in the present, abundance of boastful expectation in re- spect to the future, but too little of sympathetic and reverent regard for a glorious past, without which neither this present nor that future had been possible. " . . . It is, therefore, a duty most solemnly incumbent upon every man who prizes institutions dependent, like ours, upon no other security than a sound public opinion, and who feels himself competent to appreciate the grounds upon which they are built, to exert that ' one talent which is death to hide ' in maintaining, defending, and popularizing their principles. Our American liberties are menaced, not by apathy and igno- rance alone, but we have too many proofs of the existence, even among ourselves, of a determined hostility to the cardinal prin- ciples on which they rest. Nor let any deny the approach of danger, because as yet he hears not the din and sees not the smoke of the encounter. . . , " We have too much of that blind zeal of the pupil which outruns the precepts of its foreign teachers ; too much of that questionable Protestantism that trembles with sympathetic fear when you attack the corruptions of Popery ; too much of that craven and traitorous spirit that is ashamed of its birth- place, murmurs against the Providence which appointed its fatherland, and grieves because it is only through the Pilgrims that it can trace its lineage to their titled and mitred oppressors. Nay, more than this, sons of ISTew England have dared to in- sult the memory, and blaspheme the God, of their fathers, by denying to that congregation which He gathered in the wilder- ness the name and attributes of a Christian church. . . . " We are, then, summoned by every consideration of pres- ent interest, of enlightened patriotism, of decent respect for 1843-1844.] LETTER OF REV. GEORGE ALLEN. 79 the memory of our fathers, of reverence for the religion of our God, to do our utmost to keep alive the sacred fire, and to transmit, inviolate and unimpaired, to future ages the heirloom which it is a crime to alienate. To our Pergamus a palladium is committed. To New England, our common countrj', must we look, as the purest source and surest repertory of those true conservative principles in Church and State, without which both Church and State will soon become no blessing, but a curse." That this discourse would call forth very severe comments from several quarters was to be expected. Even many of Mr. Marsh's friends, who did not differ from him widely in opinion, regretted the vehemence with which he had spoken, and others, who had come to different conclusions, remonstrated with him earnestly for his " narrow prejudices." His faithful, fearless friend, the Kev. George Allen, wrote to him with a frankness creditable alike to the writer and his correspondent : " Putting your last letter and your address together, it is im- possible not to conclude that you have started from a small sec- tarian prejudice (such as might be expected from the son of a narrow-minded Calvinist deacon, rather than from a man of your birth and almost unlimited reading), and that you have suffered yourself to be influenced by that prejudice in all your conclusions. You credit the Puritans with much of your mod- ern thought, which they never had, and you charge upon epis- copacy what is not true even of popery. Now, this is unpar- donable in a man of your learning. Why, if you were compelled to live with real Puritans, George Marsh, you would he soon driven to hang yourself to escape being burned by them ! All day the line of Horace ending with sjplendida hilis has been ringing in my ears. For heaven's sake, O thou Vermont lion, give thy views a little more statesman-like breadth, or thou wilt be the worst enemy to thine own great and growing repu- tation. So saith one who admires you, and heartily wishes you well." 80 GEOKGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Ohap. in. Unfortunately, the reply to this letter either does not exist or for some other cause is inaccessible, but it is certain that the correspondents were fast friends as long as Mr. Allen lived. On the other hand, from many distinguished quarters came letters of the warmest assent and approval. The following is the reply to a courteous request of the Hon. Charles D. Drake,* on behalf of his wife, for a copy of the New England address. This correspondence proved the be- ginning of a friendship between the Drake and Marsh fami- lies, not likely to be dissolved so long as a single member of each survives. " Washington, Teb. 15, 1845. " Deae Sie : " I received no copies of my late Address before the 'New England Society at New York until Thursday last, and yester- day I did myself the honor of forwarding a copy to Mrs. Drake, agreeably to her flattering request, addressed to me through you. " I cannot expect that strangers will confirm the favorable judgment which the partiality of my friends has pronounced upon the Address, but I hope Mrs. Drake will not find much in its principles from which she will feel herself obliged to dissent. I am particularly solicitous for the approbation of intelligent women, becauSe I look upon female influence as one of the * Charles D. Drake, son of Dr. Daniel Drake, the great and good Kentncky pio- neer, whose life the son has so graphically portrayed, was Iborn at Cincinnati in 1811, entered the navy at an early age, studied law later, was admitted to the Ohio bar in 1833, and removed to St. Louis in 18341 His reputation as a lawyer and the important services he rendered the country during the War of the Rebellion and the period of reconstruction are too well known to need mention here. It is enough to say that both his physical and moral courage proved equal to the strain to which a residence in St. Louis then exposed a prominent and energetic Union man. A St. Louis gen- tleman of opposite political opinions once said of him : " It was Drake's fearlessness alone that saved him from assassination in those days. Our rnfSans knew that he confidently expected such an attempt would be made, and that he was fully prepared to meet it. They dared not attach him." In 1867, Mr. Drake was elected to the United States Senate, and in 1871 he was appointed Chief Justice of the Court of Claims at Washington, an office which he re- signed in 1884, having performed its duties with signal ability for thirteen years. 1843-1844.] LETTER TO ME. DRAKE. 81 most important conservative principles of American society, and I shall never be quite sure that I am in the right in any cause which does not enlist the sympathies of my country- women. " If there is any fault in the character of American women, it is the want of a lively interest in the permanence and secu- rity of the institutions of their country, and of a sense that they, too, are under a solemn responsibility which requires them to exert all their influence in support of those principles of civU and religious hberty without which our system cannot be sus- tained for an hour. " If I can in any degree contribute to rouse this justly most influential sex to a sense of the duties they owe their country, I shall feel that I have done much to guard my countrymen against a departure from our hereditary principles, which I hold to be in us, not an error, but a crime. " With my best respects to Mrs. Drake, as well as to your- self, " I am, sir, very sincerely yours, "Geoege p. Mxesh." To judge fairly of this address, and of the impression it made at the time, it must be remembered that the great re- ligious movement in the English universities, which was to lead to such a sifting of facts and beliefs, was then in full ac- tion. No one could foresee its outcome, but many earnest men, like Mr. Marsh, thought they saw in it a retrograde tendency which threatened the loss of all that had been gained since the days of Luther. This was a loss not to be suffered without a struggle ; and when the reactionary wave reached the United States, sweeping backward the old landmarks, and threatening, as these men believed, the very foundation-principles on which the civil and religious liberty of the nation rested, it was natu- ral that they should raise a warning cry — one, too, that should give no " uncertain sound." Tlie influence of men like Mau- 6 82 GEOKGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. HI. rice, Kingsley, Eobertson, and Stanley, who, though differing among themselves in some points, were striving so heroically to stem the tide in England, seemed to weigh as nothing against the authority of Pusey, Manning, and Newman. 'No one in this country would then have ventured to predict tliat the victory would be with the former rather than the latter, and that the Church of England, stationary, if not worse, for two hundred years, would come out of the conflict, though with loss, yet with her ancient fetters in a measure broken, and in- spired with a new, fervent principle of Christian vitality, and a broad spirit of Christian toleration and charity, which fore- shadow for Protestant Episcopacy a future of the widest use- fulness. !N"or would it then have been expected that a lead- ing English historian, accepted by the most intelligent of his countrymen as the truest exponent of the facts of their history, would venture to describe the Puritan character and the Puri- tan cause as has been done by J. R. Green in his " History of the English People." Had the changes in public opinion here indicated been anticipated, so fervid a defence of the early colonists might have seemed unnecessary. But these very changes prove the substantikl justice of the views taken by Mr. Marsh at a time when the current was apparently setting strongly in another direction. CHAPTER IV. 1 844- 1 848. Great Question dividing the two Political Parties — Speech on Annexation of Texas — Views taken therein — Characterization of the Speech — Anecdote — Acquaint- ance with Colonel and Mrs. Estcourt — Anecdote — Selection of Church — Rev. Mr. Biewend — Gterman Readings — Summer in Vermont — Business Difficulties — Ver- mont Railroads — ^Inflammation of Eyes — Extracts from Letters — Return to Washington, in November, 1845 — Texas annexed — Difficulties with Great Britain — Constraint of Social Intercourse at Washington — Dinner at Executive Mansion — Speech on Establishment of Smithsonian Institution — Views taken therein — Ultimate Action of the Regents — Professor Baird — Congressional Li- brary — Second Speech on Tariff — Relations with Diplomatic Corps at Washing- ton — German Readings resumed — Reads Swedish to his Family — Returned North in a Sailing-vessel — Increased Business Perplexities — Factory at Winooski sacrificed — Return to Washington, Autumn of 1846 — Extract from Letter — Party Peeling — Reading during the Winter — Return to New England, March, 1847 — Visit to Boston — Acquaintances made and renewed — Return to Vermont — Anecdote — Letter to Mrs. Estcourt— -Visit from the Estcourts at Burling- ton — Mr. Crampton — Letter to Mrs. Estcourt — Address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Cambridge — Anecdote of Mr. Jeremiah Mason — Address at Union College, Schenectady — Address before Agricultural Society of Rutland County — Places his Son at School — Extract from Letter to Mrs. Hickok — His Family and Social Life at Washington during the Winter — Portraits by John- son and Healy — Anecdote of Mr. Healy — Predictions — Speech on the Mexican War — Letter from Rev. Dr. Storrs. THE burning question between the two great political par- ties during the winter of 18 11 1 5 was the annexation of Texas. It was in reality a question which lay between the North and South, between freedom and slavery ; but party interests in many cases had more weight than any considera- tions of sectional advantage or any regard for great moral principles. Many a Northern man was in favor of annexation because the majority of the Democratic party, to which he be- longed, was so ; and it is possible that of the Southern "Whigs who were opposed to it, some were influenced by similar mo- 84 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. IV. tives, though it is difficult to imagine, when all the circum- stances are called to mind, that these men were not controlled by a clear sense of justice, and by a spirit of lofty patriotism. It is certain, however, that party lines, rather than geographi- cal, were conspicuous in the debate, and that, as a general rule, the Whigs were against annexation, the Democrats in favor of it. On January 20th, Mr. Marsh made a speech in the House on the subject of annexation. Without entering upon the question whether Congress had the constitutional right to an- nex Texas — a point in the debate which he considered pretty well exhausted — he proposed to consider the expediency of the measm-e. As a member from Yermont, however, he felt him- self called upon, first, to make a brief statement showing that the asserted parallelism between the cases of Vermont and Texas had no foundation whatever. After this statement he says : " I cannot agree with the gentleman from Ohio, that the constitutional power is the only question in the case, because it is not to me, as it is to his clearer intuition, a seK-evident prop- osition that the annexation of Texas would be a blessing. I can conceive an enlargement of territory, burdened by incum- brances, or attended by conditions, that would render it a curse ; and this seems to me, very clearly, one of those cases where the orms jprobandi lies upon the affirmative, both as regards the legality and the expediency of the measure." He then enumerates the four main arguments offered in support of the measure as expedient : 1st. That the annexation of Texas will promote emancipa- tion in the Northern slave-holding States, etc. 2d. That it will enlarge American commerce and increase the demand for Northern manufactures. 3d. That it will extend the area of freedom. 1844-1848.] SPEECH ON TEXAS. 85 4th. That it will fortify and perpetuate the peculiar insti- tution. The first argument he regards as somewhat inconsistent with the fourth / for if this institution is a blessing to be cher- ished, he does not see why it should be desirable to deprive Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky of so great a good. Of the second he says : " It is singular that this argument should come from the lips of those who, in the same breath, denounce the Northern man- ufacturers as a band of robbers, and, as a manufacturer, I own I am a little jealous of this new-born zeal in behalf of interests even now so furiously assailed from the same quarter. Perhaps some subtle advocate of annexation may be able to reconcile these seeming incongruities, but in the meantime, until better advised, I, a poor spinner and weaver, shall look upon these new friends of my interests with some distrust. " "We now come to the third argument — that which is, per- haps, the most frequently used, and with the greater effect from its equivocal signification — the annexation of Texas will extend the area of freedom. It was beautifully said by Sir Humphrey Davy, ' The broader the sphere of light, the more extensive will be the boundary of darkness by which it is sur- rounded.' It is, perhaps, to a sort of inversion of this remark that we owe this argument ; for in no other sense can the in- corporation within our jurisdiction of a country already as free as our own, and the consequent diffusion of slavery through all its vast borders, be said to extend the area of freedom." He then goes on to show that at the time of the adoption of the Constitution " the wise and good of the South as well as the North both regarded slavery as an evil and a wrong, and looked forward to its entire extinction at no very_ distant day. . . If we, then, honestly believe that you are thus pledged to the abolition of slavery, we have clearly the right to ask of 86 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. IV. you, in temperate language, the redemption of this pledge, and to use all such fair arguments and persuasions as we think fitted to induce you to do so." After pointing out to the Southern States the fact that they held the question of an amendment of the Constitution in their own power — it being necessary that the present number of the free States, thirteen, should be increased to thirty-nine before such an amendment could be legally brought about by these States — and that only a change of sentiment in the South itself could endanger their peculiar institution, he adds : " Gentlemen of the South, who participate in debates in- volving this topic, are somewhat lavish of epithets, and indulge rather freely in personalities. They have stigmatized the peo- ple of the North as a whole, and in terms broad enough to in- clude every member of this House who advocates the right of petition, as abolitionists, fanatics, incendiaries. If by the first of these terms gentlemen mean that the North and its represent- atives here both desire and hope the ultimate abolition of slavery, the charge is just ; but if by this, and the other harsher terms, they mean to accuse us of a fixed design to accomplish this object by illegal, unconstitutional, or immoral means, they do us great injustice. Sir, we come here as defenders of the Constitution, not its assailants. We neither seek nor desire to infringe upon your constitutional privileges, or to interfere with your domestic pol- icy. Within the limits to which the original compromise ex- tended, we are content to leave the continuance or abolition of slavery to the operation of natural causes and the wisdom of Providence ; but we can make no sacrifice of national honor or private principle for its extension or perpetuation. That there is a great degree of excitement on this question I shall not deny. Men who contend for principle are always enthusiastic. But if this excitement partakes of the character of overheated zeal. Southern gentlemen have themselves to thank for it. Instead 1844^1848.] SPEECH ON TEXAS. 87 of intrenching themselves behind the bulwarks of the Consti- tution and the rights inherent in the States in virtue of their sovereignty, they have chosen to put themselves in the wrong by denying us the exercise of a right ' inestimable to free- men and formidable only to tyrants,' and the effect of this im- politic step they have now before them." " Some gentlemen find a ready panacea for the impending evils which seem inseparable from this subject in the dissolution of the Union. They would divide this goodly confederacy, and carve out of it two, three, or four independent republics — or, it may be, empires — as if the body politic were like a polypus, which multiplies by division. But have gentlemen weighed the practical difficulties which attend this measure ? Have they definitely settled where the lines shall be drawn ? Are they quite sure that the northernmost slaveholding States are pre- pared, in case of division, to make common cause with the ex- treme South ? Have they determined the proportions in which the public property and the public liabilities shall be divided ? Do they remember that the public domain — that inexhaustible source of national wealth — lies chiefly in the free States and Territories, and is it safe to calculate that the strong man in possession will yield to his weaker brother a right which he is unable to enforce ? Have they forgotten the old question in respect to the right of those who inhabit the valley of a nav- igable river to follow its current to the ocean ? Is it certain that the mighty "West, connected, as she is, with both the North and the South by vital bonds, arteries which it is death to sever, will, in any event, permit a dissolution ? What hope is there that such questions as these can ever be settled by any arbiter but the ultima ratio of nations ? "Again: Are gentlemen prepared to risk the moral and political effect of the self-immolation of this mighty empire, this model republic ? Do they not know that the first step toward dissolution, the first outbreak of violence, will be hailed by the despotic governments of Europe as a token that their 88 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [ChAP. IV. prey awaits them, and as a signal of a richer partition than the dismemberment of Poland ? " . . . The conduct of the South upon this whole mat- ter is far from being characterized by the discretion which has marked their action in regard to their other great interests. There is a feverish restlessness in relation to slavery, which seems to indicate a lurking consciousness that they are in the wrong on this great question of the age, where they are op- posed to the main body of their own countrymen, and not to them only, but to all Christendom and the whole civilized world ; not to this world only, but, as I firmly believe, to the universal empire of that just and impartial God who created all men in his own image, and therefore free and equal. " . . . Because Northern gentlemen insist upon the sa- cred right of petition, the right of the worm to turn when it is trodden upon, they are charged with a reckless hatred of the South and its institutions. Sir, men truly hate only those whom they fear, and those whom they have wronged. To the South we say, We tremble not at your menaces, we have done you no wrong." To those who know how strongly Mr. Marsh felt on the sub- ject of slavery, and on the question of the annexation of Texas as affecting that institution and, through it, the future destinies of the nation, the language of this speech will appear noticeably moderate. He was, in fact, deeply impressed with the terrible significance of the crisis, and almost overwhelmed by a sense of personal responsibility, feeling it, on the one hand, a solemn duty to speak out what he believed to be true, and, on the other, desiring not wantonly to add fuel to a flame that was already threatening an awful conflagration. The result was not unsat- isfactory. The opponents of annexation characterized the speech as clear and strong in argument, and manly and firm in tone ; the advocates of the measure pronounced it candid in admis- sion, and self -restrained in expression. 1844-1848.] FRIENDSHIP WITH THE ESTCOTTETS. 89 Through all Mr. Marsh's Congressional life certain mem- bers of the House, and sometimes even Senators, were in the habit of coming to his house to talk over with him questions under discussion, especially when they intended to take part in the debate. After one of these visits a young member of liis family said, in a tone of half -impatient remonstrance, "Brother, I wonder you will allow Mr. to ' pick your brains ' in this way. I thought you were to speak yourself on that subject ; and now Mr. will go away, as he has so often done before, and make use of everything you have said to him." " Oh," said Mr. Marsh, with a look of conscious possession very un- usual with him, " I'm not so poor that I can't afford to bestow upon all the crumbs he can digest." Then, with an entire change of manner, he said : " I always tell every one who asks with an earnest purpose all I know about the subject of his inquiries, but I never do so without finding that I know more about it afterward than I did before. ' The more one gives, the more one has,' runs the proverb ; and this is certainly true of the best of our treasures." It was during this year that Mr. Marsh and his family made the acquaintance of Colonel and Mrs. Estcourt, afterward Sir James and Lady Bucknall Estcourt. Colonel Estcourt was the British commissioner for the settlement of the boundary question between the United States and the British provinces in North America from the Bay of Fnndy to the St. Lawrence. This acquaintance, which gradually ripened into a warm and intimate friendship, gave Mr. Marsh an insight into a phase of English character with which he had not hitherto been brought in contact. There will be occasion later to quote his own words with reference to his estimate of Colonel Est- court ; but it may be said here that, with an entire absence of all the repellent traits of the typical John Bull, he found in Colonel and Mrs. Estcourt, united to that perfect and unfailing courtesy which annihilates all friction in social intercourse, a simplicity of character as well as of manners, and a moral and 90 GEOEGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. IV. religions elevation that were even more attractive to him than their exceptional culture and accomplishments. One day, soon after the beginning of this acquaintance, on coming home from church in one of those deluging spring showers that sometimes turn the streets of Washington into rivers, Mr. Marsh said : " I have just seen something that has given me a sharp twinge of conscience for some of my sayings about the EngUsh aristocracy. Colonel and Mrs. Estcourt were walking a little distance in front of me, and just before them, at a crossing, stood an old, half-blind negro woman, feeling about with her staff for a place where she might avoid the rushing current which she heard sweeping past her feet. Colo- nel Estcourt put the umbrella he was carrying into the hand of his wife, went up to the poor, ragged, helpless creature, took her by the arm and led her, by the least-flooded way, carefully over to the opposite sidewalk. Mrs. Estcourt meanwhile stood still in the drenching rain, quietly looking on, as if it was all the most natural thing in the world, while I was demanding of my own conscience whether this democratic Yankee would have had the grace to do what that aristocratic Briton was doing, and whether some fashionable American dames would not have felt themselves aggrieved by such a procedure on the part of their ' natural protectors.' " After attending for a few times several of the Congre- gational and Episcopal churches in Washington, Mr. Marsh finally settled on a small German Lutheran chapel, in his im- mediate neighborhood, as a regular place of public worship. The pastor of this humble little congregation was the Rev. Mr. Biewend,* a very scholarly young man, with much strength as well as gentleness of character, and deeply in earnest as a Christian. Mr. Marsh had a great regard for him, and often availed himself of his rare accomplishment as a reader when * This excellent man was elected to a prof eesorship of Philosopliy and Languages, Ancient and Modem, in Conooidia College, St. Loais, Mo., in 1849, and died theie, in the prime of life, in 1858. 1844-1848.] SUMMER IN VERMONT. 91 his own eyes failed. It so happened that the Estcourts as well as the Marshes were at this time much occupied with German literature, and these readings proved an attraction to the former that soon brought the two families together almost daily. In this way what might have been but an ordinary good-will soon became a thorough understanding of each other's tastes and characteristics, and ended in one of those intimate and un- clouded friendships which would almost make " life worth the living," even if there were no immortal hopes beyond. It cannot be questioned that this friendship led Mr. Marsh to a more careful study of modern English life, and thus tended to modify in a measui-e some preconceived ideas, derived in part from previous less fortunate personal experiences, and, perhaps, in part from strong patriotic prepossessions. The spring and summer of 1845 were spent by Mr. Marsh chiefly in Vermont, where business difficulties were becoming more and more complicated, and where all his efforts to free himself from entangling connections proved for the time un- availing. The great public interest of the State during this sum- mer was the projected railway communication between Bur- lington and Boston. There was great difference of opinion among leading Yermonters as to the route likely to be most conducive to the general prosperity of the State. Mr. Marsh advocated the Central line, through Montpelier, and labored earnestly for it. In enlarging a very small map of the State to proportions that might be visible to an audience in the Court- house, where he was to speak, he brought on an inflammation of the eyes so severe as nearly to prove fatal to his sight. The attack was so sudden and violent that when medical aid was called in, a very short time after the first symptoms of the mis- chief appeared, light was already intolerable to him, and the opening of a door leading into the darkened room where he was sitting caused acute suffering, though the eyes were covered with many folds of black silk, so arranged as not to press upon 92 GEOEGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Chap. IV. the swollen and sensitive eyelids. The doctor, finding it im- possible to examine his patient locally, listened to the history of the case and prescribed as intelligently as he could under the circumstances ; but six weeks of great suffering passed before the irritated eyes could bear a ray of light, and when at last the nervous dread was overcome, and the long-closed lids were raised, Mr. Marsh found that he could distinguish only dim outlines of objects even with his strongest eye, and that with the other he could only make out the fingers of his own hand. His friends were very anxious about the effect of this dis- covery on his health and spirits, he being much reduced by the long medical treatment and acute pain ; but he bore it with en- tire cheerfulness, and kept up the courage of those around him by an almost incessant play of dry humor. It was still some weeks before he could walk about freely without a hand to guide him, and his sight cleared so slowly that several months passed before he could read or write. During his convales- cence, as soon as he could bear out-door light, he resumed the habits of his boyhood and early youth, and lived almost con- stantly in the open air. "When sitting by the lake-side, or by some mountain-brook, he often expressed great satisfaction that . his early love of nature had lost nothing of its freshness, but was growing stronger continually. " I could even ' make ducks and drakes,' and ' build dams,' " he said, one day, " with as much pleasure as ever in my life, if I were not a little ashamed to do it. But I never liked fishing, even when a boy, and dear old Isaac Walton, with all his infinitely seductive charm, has not been able to convert me to it yet." As soon as Mr. Marsh was able to attend to his ordinary business affairs, the interests of some of his old clients took him to New York. The following are extracts from letters written while there : I have been constantly between B and M- and J since I came here, worse bested than Ulysses, who 1844-1848.] BETtTEN TO WASHINGTON. 93 was only between two such — namely, those respectable mon- sters, Scylla and Charybdis — while I have three to watch, and foil if I can. I have seen nobody, and done nothing but buy some remarkably fine engravings, which I could not resist. Some of them are fully equal to the very best we have." " . . . When I go out I always intend to look for novel- ties in ladies' dresses for your and L 's benefit, but I can't for the life of me remember any of the details when I get back, and I believe that among my good gifts the capacity for being a good man-milliner is not to be found. All the same, I know, and like it, when a woman is well dressed." "... No, I have not yet seen even the excellent and godly P ; but he is too good a man to have met with trials, and I doubt not he is prosperous." " . . . What you say of Mr. 's being a gentleman is very true ; and if he could be persuaded that God made his own country, and not Satan, and that paradise is not in England or Eome, but above them both, he would be a very proper man." Mr. Marsh and family returned to Washington at the be- . ginning of JS'ovember, 1845 ; and on December 27th the annexation of Texas was completed as far as it rested with Congress, and the Texan people accepted the act on February 19th following. The consummation of this vast addition to the slave territory greatly intensified party feeling at the cap- ital, and to the more earnest men of the North it seemed but the forerunner of still greater evils. The Government made use of all its resources to draw ofE the public attention of the North from the stupendous significance of this Annexation Act, and one of its measures was to give all possible weight to the differ- ences between Great Britain and the United States on the ques- tion of the Oregon boundary-line. No effort was spared to stimulate national animosity, in the belief that the North would, at least partially, forget the unscrupulous aggression of her sis- ter States in thegeneralresentmentof unjust claims on the part 94 GEORGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Chap. IV. of the common mother. It is by no means probable that the Government had the least idea there would be any actual con- flict between the two nations on the subject in dispute — it was too well aware of the pacific disposition of England, and of its own intentions with regard to concession — but it was its policy to stimulate, as far as was safe, the cry, " Forty-nine fifty, or fight ! " These valorous words were shouted through the streets of Washington by a rabble much resembling that which was heard, a quarter of a century later, yelling "a Berlin ! a Ber- lin ! " along the boulevards of the French capital, and they were written in chalk or paint on every blank wall. The ef- fect of this double agitation was felt even in the ordinary in- tercourse of society, which became more and more constrained. Subjects which a year or two before were often introduced * On one occasion, very early in the session, and just before the final passage of the Annexation Act, this constraint was strongly manifested, notwithstanding an earnest effort on both sides to remove it. The first formal dinner of the season given at the Executive Mansion was in honor of Mr. Clay, the defeated candidate. The guests were selected from the more distinguished of both parties, though Mr. Clay's friends were the most numerous. Mr. Marsh was among the latter. Not a little curiosity was felt by many to witness this first meeting between the President and his unsuccessful rival, but they were both too entirely men of the world to allow any outward signs of embarrassment to appear. They met with perfect ease, like old ac- quaintances as they were, and during the early part of the dinner everything went on much as at other dinners. However, after commonplaces were disposed of, conversa- tion between the members of opposing parties, side by side, languished. It seemed as if " Texas and Slavery " was uppermost in everyone's thought, and marked pauses were noticeable. As if to cover these pauses, Mr. Clay became more and more animated, though not more interesting, and his old chivalrous courtesy to ladies fell to the level of the most boyish attempts at personal flattery. This departiire from dignity was even more observable when the dinner-guests joined a larger circle in the drawing-room, where there were more ladies on whom to bestow his attentions. " Our friend is not doing himself justice to-night," said a Senator to a lady who had been sitting by Mr. Clay at the dinner-table ; "he is in an embarrassing position — and BO are we all, for that matter. Our political differences have become too grave for mixed social enjoyment. An effort is required that makes us all ill at ease." In reply to some criticisms made by his family on returning home, Mr. Marsh said, in substance : ' ' As to Mr. Clay's manner toward ladies, I believe all that can be found fault with is due entirely to the want of self-respect women have shown in re- lation to him. Ton remember how they followed him during the election campaign, begging for locks of his hair, etc. — an exhibition, on their part, of a kind of man- worship which I trust our progress in refinement wUl never suffer to be repeated among us. How could a man be expected to treat women with true and dignified respect after such an experience ! " 1844-1848.] SPEECH ON SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 95 into conversation, between gentlemen entertaining very differ- ent views upon them, were now carefully avoided ; for the old tone of persiflage, in which these conversations had been gener- ally carried on, was felt to be both out of place and dangerous. The general tone of depression which prevailed among the Whigs arose from a far more profound feeling than that of mere party discomfiture. The earnest men among them. Southern as well as Northern, regarded the political horizon with painful forebodings, and deeply felt a position wherein they were power- less to contend against the destructive and demoralizing elements which they believed to be threatening the country. Mr. Marsh went less into general society than he had done during the fij'st two winters of his Congressional life, associated himself more closely than before with chosen personal friends, and gave his time and thoughts, as far as possible, to such questions before Congress as were least connected with party or sectional in- terests. The most important subject of this character was the estab- lishment of the Smithsonian Institution. A Special Committee, of which Mr. Owen was chairman, and Mr. Marsh a member, had been appointed to report a bill, and on the provisions of this bill Mr. Marsh addressed the House on April 24, 1846.* The extracts below will show how far he was from being *Note prefixed to this speech : " The history of the Smithsonian Fund is briefly as follows: James Smithson, of London, who died at Genoa several years since, bequeathed the reversion of his whole estate to the United States of America, ' to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establish- ment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men.' "The bequest was communicated to Congress by the President on December 17, 1835, and was accepted by Congress, by an act approved July 1, 1836, pledging ' the faith of the United States ' to the due application of the fund to the purposes of the bequest. "On September 1, 1838, the proceeds of the estate, amounting to S508,818.46, were paid into the United States Mint, and, by authority of Congress, were invested in State stocks, principally of the State of Arkansas. " The bill reported by the Special Committee, at the present session, provides for expending the interest already accrued in buildings and other accommodations for the Institution, and for appropriating the interest hereafter to accrue to the pur- poses indicated in the following remarks." 96 GEORGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. IV. fully satisfied with the bill as reported, why he supported the bill in its present form, and what modifications he considered important. After expressing doubts as to the wisdom on the part of Congress of accepting such a trust — doubts confirmed by the fact that nearly ten years had already elapsed, leaving the pledged faith of the nation still unredeemed — he adds : " But it is now quite time that we apply ourselves in earnest to the work of redeeming our country from the reproach of in- fidelity in the discharge of so high and solemn a trust, and that, at the earliest practical period, and before the subject shall be- come an element in our party dissensions, we strive to make available to our fellow-citizens, and to all men, a gift as splendid as its purposes are noble." Then, alluding to the different plans proposed as best suited to carry out the objects of the bequest, he says : " In a case where there is room for so great a diversity of opinion as this, there can be no hope of the adoption of any plan not conceived in a spirit of compromise ; and on this, as on another larger question, however widely apart we may be at first, we shall probably find ourselves in the end obliged to settle down upon the parallel of 49°. The bill is reported by the Special Committee as a compromise, and probably no one of the gentlemen concerned in its preparation is quite satisfied with its provisions, no one believes it to be the best plan that could be devised ; but they felt the necessity of deferring to each other, as well as to the probable opinion of Congress, and were nearly unanimous in thinking it more likely to harmonize discordant views than any other plan suggested. It was in this belief, and in consideration of the importance and the duty of early action, that I, as a member of that Committee, assented to the report, regarding the scheme, however, not merely as a necessary compromise, but rather as an experiment which 1844r-1848.J SPEECH ON SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 97 admitted, and which I trusted would hereafter receive, great changes in its conditions, than as a complete working model." He then expresses the opinion that the large and compre- hensive language of the bequest — " The increase and diffusion of knowledge among men " — -was " the highest compliment that could have been paid to the nation ." " . . . These objects this bill seeks to accomplish by va- rious means. It proposes to increase knowledge by collecting specimens of the works of nature, from every clime and in each of her kingdoms; by gathering objects in every branch of indus- trial, decorative, representative, and imaginative art ; by accumu- lating the records of human action, and thought, and imagina- tion in every form of literature; by instituting experimental researches in agriculture, in horticulture, in chemistry, and in other studies founded iipou observation. It proposes to diffuse the knowledge thus accumulated, acquired, and extended by throwing open to public use the diversified collections of the Institution in every branch of human inquiry ; by lectures upon eveiy subject of liberal interest; by a normal school, where teachers shall become pupils, and the best modes that ex- perience has devised for imparting the rudiments of knowledge shall be communicated ; by preparing and distributing models of scientific apparatus, and by the publication of lectures, es- says, manuals, and treatises. "Of the various instrumentalities recommended by this noble and imposing scheme, the simplest and most eflBcient, both as it respects the increase and the diffusion of knowledge, is, in my judgment, the provision for collecting for public use a library, a museum, and a gallery of art ; and I should per- sonally much prefer that, for a reasonable period, the entire income of the fund should be expended in carrying out this branch of the plan. The bill . . . directs the. annual ex- penditure of a sum 'not exceeding ten thousand dollars, for the 7 98 GEORGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Chap. IV. gradual formation of a library composed of valuable works pertaining to every branch of human knowledge.' As I have already indicated, I consider this the most valuable feature of the plan, though I think the amount unwisely restricted." In arguing strenuously in behalf of the library, he shows the great lack at that time in our country of collections of books adequate to the wants of thorough scholars, and points out the length of time it would require, at the proposed rate of expenditure, to secure a library equal in number and value to that of Gottingen, in the miniature kingdom of Hanover. Throughout the speech, however, he endeavors to guard him- self against being understood to undervalue research and ex- periment in natural knowledge and the economic arts, and he recognizes everywhere the interdependence of all knowledges. But he cannot admit the view which " confines all knowledge to the numerical and quantitative values of material things," and he expresses a " hope that at this time and in this place one might safely venture a plea in behalf of all that higher knowledge which serves to humanize, to refine, to elevate, to make men more deeply wise, better, less thoughtful of material interests, and more regardful of eternal truths." The course of the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution on this subject, during the early years that followed the passage of this bill, is now a part of our national history, and need not be dwelt upon here. It is enough to say that, though deeply disappointed in the total overthrow of the plan for a library, Mr. Marsh was incapable of allowing any personal feeling on the subject to interfere with the interest he took in all that was actually done by the distinguished officers of the Smithsonian for the advancement of knowledge in whatever direction, and he never failed to further their objects as far as lay in his power. This will abundantly appear from his letters to his friend. Professor Spencer F. Baird, while the latter was As- 1844-1S48.] SECOND SPEECH ON TARIFF, 99 sistant Secretary of the Institution. "When Professor Baird became its head, Mr. Marsh's zeal in its behalf was naturally intensified, as his intimate knowledge of his friend was a guar- antee that the broadest spirit would pervade its management, and as long as he lived he listened to accounts of the astonish- ing extent and continued enlargement of its gigantic operations with the greatest satisfaction. As to the library, the disappointment was softened by the increased general interest manifested in the Congressional Li- brary, especially under the wise and scholarly direction of Mr. Spofford ; and by the hope that, in the end, such additions might be made to this library, through the liberality of Con- gress, as should meet the wants of advanced American students with reasonable fulness. In later life, also, he estimated the value of large libraries somewhat less, proportionally, than at an earlier period, his own experience in the great libraries of England and Europe having suggested unforeseen limitations to their utility. On June 30th, 1846, Mr. Marsh made a second speech in the House on the tariff — a speech described at the time as marked by wide and thorough knowledge of the subject, by forceful argument, by wealth of illustration, and by both courage and courtesy toward the South. Discussions involving party ques- tions, however, were not expected to influence the action of the House, and gentlemen in the minority had no motive for speak- ing except a sense of duty and a hope of enlightening public opinion outside of Congress. During this session Mr. Marsh's relations with the diplo- matic corps at "Washington had been becoming more and more informal. His familiarity with most of the languages and lit- eratures of Europe, his thorough acquaintance with the history of the Old "World, his enthusiastic love of art, and his cosmo- politan tastes generally, made him an agreeable associate for cultivated foreigners, though an excess of modest reserve often left upon strangers an unfair share of the burden of making 100 GEOBGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. IV. social advances. The friendly society of Mr. Calderon de la Barca, Minister from Spain ; Baron Von Gerolt, from Prussia ; Colonel Beaulieu, from Belgium ; Mr. Bille, from Denmark, and others of the corps, with that of their families, contributed not a little to ■ make the season pass pleasantly and profitably. Some years later, as will appear hereafter, Mr. Marsh received from several of these gentlemen very gratifying proofs of their esteem and confidence. The German readings of the preceding winter were resumed I with as much regularity as was possible ; and as the novels of ^ Frederika Bremer were at this time attracting much attention in their English dress, Mr. Marsh, seeing his family interested in them, proposed, by way of experiment, to read aloud in Swed- ish a novel by Mme. Carlane, leaving his auditors to make out what they could of it by the help of their English and German, and with full liberty to ask questions. At first almost every word was challenged, but the reader's patience never failed, until even the one of his listeners who could not use a book at all was able to follow the narrative with ease. The object of this experiment was to divert the attention of an invalid as much as possible from physical suffering, and the persevering devotion with which it was carried out can be fully appreciated only by those who prize time as Mr. Marsh prized it. The session of 1845-46 was continued into the month of August, and Mr. Marsh and his family did not altogether es- cape the effects of a Washington summer. It was thought that a short sea-vovage might be a good preparation for a change to the climate of Vermont, and accordingly they embarked at Bal- timore for Boston with a typical Yankee skipper. Three or four days of almost dead calm on the Chesapeake, iinder a burn- ing sun, were follow ed by a heavy blow after rounding Cape Charles, accompanied by violent rain and thunder. The morn- ing after the storm the captain told his passengers that during the night the masts and spars of the bark had been covered with the lights known to sailors as " St. Elmo's Eires," and that, 1844^1848.] SALE OF WINOOSKI FACTOBT. 101 tliougli he had followed the sea for thirty years, he had never seen them before. Mr. Marsh was much disappointed at hav- ing missed so rarB and curious a phenomenon ; and, oddly enough, lie missed a similar one on the Mediterranean, twenty years later. In this instance, also, the commander of the steamer stated that it was the first time he had himself seen these lights. After spending a very few days with family friends in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, Mr. Marsh made a brief visit to his parents in Woodstock, and then returned to Burlington, where he passed the remainder of the short Congressional va- cation. These weeks were anything rather than weeks of rest. He was again disappointed in the hope of seeing his business affairs in a more prosperous condition, and he and his friends decided that, with the Government completely in the hands of the South, it was idle, and worse, to continue to keep the Winooski factory in operation, and a sale of the buildings and machinery was decided upon. This course implied not only the loss of almost the entire capital embarked in the manufac- tory itself, and of the large sum that had been paid out over and above its returns while in operation, but also a very serious depreciation of all the land in the neighborhood. The pros- pect of pecuniary independence from the sources which had liitherto promised this result, though not annihilated, was becoming more and more remote. Fortunately, however, Mr. Marsh's happiness was by no means dependent on these circum- stances. No man with his intellectual and artistic tastes, united as they were with the broadest and readiest philanthropy, could fail to value money very highly as a means ; but he touched life at so many points, and drew enjoyment from so many sources with which wealth has comparatively little to do, that nothing short of absolute want would have greatly moved him at this time. The anxiety that others should not suffer through his losses was the only thing that gave him serious concern, and this he was most careful to provide against. If 102 GEOKGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. IV. he returned to "Washington, in the autumn of 1846, with the consciousness of being a much poorer man tlian he had hitherto supposed himself, he was far from being seriously depressed by it. Further purchases of books and engravings were certainly no longer to be thought of, but the habitual simplicity of his ordinary life left greater economy in any other direction almost entirely out of the question. On November 21st the family returned to "Washington, and went directly to their home in F Street, which their friends had in perfect readiness for them. They were much touched by the welcome they received from the neighborhood. Speak- ing of this, in a letter to Mrs. Hickok, Mr. Marsh says : "... "We received a very kind welcome from our neighbors, many of whom had collected at our house to meet lis, and we all passed the evening most pleasantly together at our friend Gilliss's.* I do not know when I have had the gratification of meeting a greater number of really good and interesting people who were heartily glad to see me and mine." In the summer of 1846 the Estcourts had returned to Eng- land for a year, and their society was now greatly missed by the Marsh family. The tension between political opponents, so marked during the previous session, was increased rather than relaxed, and the members of neither party sought association with tliose of the other. Northern "Whigs, especially, kept as far as possible out of the way of Northern Democrats, whom * J. C. GiUiss, of the United States Navy, who died at Washington, in 1865, having at that time the rank of commander, and being at the head of the National Observatory. Commander Gillies has the honor of having organized one of the first astronomical observatories in the United States (1838). He was sent by the Govern- ment on an astronomical expedition to Peru and Chili in 1849, where he remained till 1853, and on his return published an elaborate " Report of the Expedition." He in- troduced important improvements in several astronomical instruments, and published many valuable scientific papers. Mr. Marsh entertained a very high regard for him, as a man of the purest character and the most disinterested aims, and was warmly attached to him as a personal friend. Prom 1849 to 1865, frequent letters were ex- changed between them, but Mr. Marsh's part of the correspondence does not exist. 1844-1848.] GEEMAN READINGS. 103 tliey denounced as responsible, even more than the South, foi* the most unjustly provoked war already begun with Mexico. They had not, it was said, even the poor excuse of self-interest. War news was naturally the chief subject of conversation throughout the city, for there were few families of position who had not some member exposed to the hazards of the field, and among Mr. Marsh's personal friends more than one brave officer fell in that unholy cause. Under such circumstances the social atmosphere could not be a soothing or an elastic one, and the quiet, refining, refreshing element furnished by Colonel and Mrs. Estcourt the year before was regretted by all who had known them, most of all, perhaps, by Mr. Marsh, with whose pursuits they had so closely associated themselves. Their ab- sence was particularly felt at Mr. Biewend's German readings, which were still continued. After the weary, and often dreary, work of the day, Mr. Marsh generally selected the lighter Ger- man writers, or, at least, such as may be read in a more frag- mentary way. Tieck's fine humor charmed him ; Jean Paul's brilliant flashes, still more. He had a keen relish for German poetry, from the earliest to the latest, from the loftiest to the simplest, from the "Nibelungen Lied" to the last romantic ballad, from Goethe's "Faust" to Mathisson's "Wascherinn." There was no school that did not give him something of its own ; and he had small patience with that criticism which can- not praise the object of its worship without casting contempt elsewhere. No one could more admire the overmastering ge- nius of Goethe ; but his morality, or, rather, his utter want of morality, his profound, all-pervading egoism, detracted greatly from Mr. Marsh's enjoyment of his prose works especially, and all the explanations, apologies, and justifications offered by the eloquent reviewers and biographers of this almost superhumanly gifted German, could never make the New England Puritan admit more, by way of extenuation, than the syhlimity of his selfishness. That Mr. Marsh, instead of the more varied read- ing usual with him, gave most of his few leisure hours while at 104 GEORGE PEKKINS MAESH. [Chap. IV. Washington to German and Scandinavian literature, arose partly from a more abundant supply of books in those languages, and partly from the circumstance that his opportunities for associat- ing with cultivated Germans, Swedes, and Danes were such as to give special interest to their literatures. German thought, too, on almost every branch of human knowledge — philosophy, theology, history, science- — greatly attracted him at all times ; and it would be impossible to explain the wide extent of his reading on all these subjects without referring to his unusual power of grasping the contents of a page at a glance. "When reading by himself, the rapidity with which he went through a book was inconceivable to one who could not do the same; and yet the book so read would be found fully annotated, in almost the only way in which he ever made notes — namely, by a light pencil-mark on the margin of a page, which page was referred to on a fly-leaf at the end of the book. His memory was trusted for the rest. The session of 1846-47 being a short one, Mr. Marsh, with his family, went North before the end of March, spending a short time in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston before go- ing to Vermont. The few days in Boston afforded him partic- ular pleasure. They gave him an opportunity of seeing more of his father's cousin and friend, Mr. Jeremiah Mason, and of his family, than he had done for many years. On this occa- sion, also, he renewed his acquaintance with Mr. George Tick- nor, who had shown him much kindness when little more than a boy, and had written to his father in warm terms of the promise of his son. Mr. Marsh always spoke gratefully of the early encouragement he received from this truly distinguished man, and of the immense obligations New England was under to him for the healthy stimulus to all good learning which he so wisely and generously gave. Mr. Charles Sumner was at this time at the very zenith of his popularity as an accomplished scholar, an independent, high-minded thinker, and a man of the world in the best sense of that phrase. With him and his 1844^1848.] VISIT TO BOSTON. 105 like-conditioned friend, Mr. George Hillard, Mr. Marsh passed many most agreeable hours, and through them, Mr. Ticknor, and other friends, had access to as much of all that was best in Boston society and Boston art as could be enjoyed in so short a time. Mr. Francis C. Grey's collection of engravings, and Craw- ford's " Orpheus," which he had not before seen, were among the artistic treasures that best satisfied him. He did not leave Bos- ton for his country home without regretting the attractions of that city, and shrinking from the business cares that awaited him ; but he met these last firmly, and some progress was made during the summer, not toward brilliant pecuniary possibilities, nor even a competence, but toward a knowledge of how matters really stood, and a certainty that, for some years yet at least, the annual earnings must furnish the annual income. It was on this visit to Boston that Mr. Marsh made the ac- quaintance of Mr. Agassiz. They first met at a small dinner given by Mr. Marsh, where Mr. Choate was present, and also Mr. Baird, the late eminent head of the Smithsonian, then a young man. There the following incident occurred, which it may be pardonable to give here, as somewhat characteristic of the most prominent guests. The conversation, out of compli- ment to the distinguished foreigner, was chiefly on scientific subjects, and after dinner Mr. Baird proposed to show the com- pany a curious specimen of batrachia, which he had been car- rying about with him on a journey of some length. The box containing the treasure was produced, and the animal gently lifted from his bedding. " Oh, Spencer ! " exclaimed his newly married wife, snatching up the delicate web that lay at the bot- tom of the box, " this is my wedding-handkerchief, for which I have searched so long ! How could yon take it for such a pur- pose ? " "I was looking for something very soft, and did not notice that it was a handkerchief," said the husband, without the slightest discomposure, and the amused wife, more proud than ever of her young scientist, joined most heartily in the general laugh which followed. In the meantime, Mr. Choate, 106 GEOBGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. IV. whose extremely sensitive nervous organization is well known, had been much disturbed by the unsightly aspect of the strange animal, and perhaps even more so by a small snake that had been brought out at the same time, and was " dragging its slow length along " from one side of the table to the other. Moving quietly toward one of the ladies present, he said, "May I beg you to intercede with Baird for the re-incarceration of those enormities of nature ? " Then, seeing Mr. Agassiz absorbed in contemplating the singular little frog, he added, quickly, " No, no ; that gentleman is happy, I see — I shall do better to retire," and he was gone with the words. It may be imagined how inexplicable was the cause of his disappearance to the two nat- uralists. The following letter to Mrs. Estcourt, whose husband's du- ties brought them back temporarily to the United States, was written soon after Mr. Marsh's return to Yermont : "Burlington, May 11, 1847. "Deae Madam: " I have just returned from Boston, where Mrs. Marsh and I spent several very pleasant days, to the enjoyment of which the agreeable anticipation of meeting you and Colonel Estcourt contributed not a little. In this hope we prolonged our stay to await the arrival of the steamer of April 19th, but the day be- fore she came in we received your letter of March 30th, which Major Graham was good enough to forward, with a note from himself, telling us you would not sail before the 4th or the 19th of June. " My own business engagements will oblige me to be absent from Burlington during a great part of the recess of Congress, but if we can know something of your plans beforehand, we will contrive to meet you at some convenient point. It would be particularly agreeable to us to meet you at Boston, either on your arrival or departure, because we are unwilling to have you take a final leave of our country without seeing American so- 1844-1848.] VISIT FEOM THE ESTCOUKTS. 107 ciety in its very best aspects (and this we, as E"ew Englanders, are vain enough to think can be done only in Boston), and we should be very proud to introduce you to so pleasant a circle, wliile at the same time we should give ourselves value in their eyes by making you known to them as our friends. If by any chance we should be unable to- meet you in Boston, I shall, with your leave, take the liberty of asking a friend or two to call upon you, and show you some of the merkwurdigkeiten of the place. " Be good enough to present my sincere regards to Colonel Estcourt, and accept for yourself the best wishes of "Your friend and servant, "Gboege p. Maesh." Soon after the arrival of the Estcourts in America, at the beginning of July, they came to Burlington, and passed some weeks with the Marshes. The accommodations of the small Pearl Street cottage were so narrow, and so simple, that its in- mates had hesitated to ask their friends for a visit ; but what they had to offer was accepted with such a friendly frankness, and apparently so thoroughly relished, that nothing could have afforded their hosts greater pleasure. To Mr. Marsh these were golden days of rest. Most of the time was spent in the little fireproof library, which, for the relief of the cottage, and for the safety of the books and engravings, had been buUt, in 1842, a few rods from the house. Here ,host and guests met, almost immediately after the early breakfast, to look over books and prints ; here the modest lunch was served, and here, com- paratively sheltered from a degree of heat almost unparalleled in Vermont, the hours and days flew by only too rapidly. Toward evening a short walk or drive was taken before dinner ; some- times a second after dinner, or perhaps all sat about the cottage- or library-steps, while Mrs. Estcourt sketched with swift pencil the different groups. Sometimes Colonel Estcourt and Mr. Marsh talked over plans for the proposed cottage on the hill — which 108 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. IV. was to be a model of taste and comfort, but which was never realized. Sometimes the latter overcame the modest reserve of the former so far as to draw forth some stirring story of adventure when with Colonel Chesney on his expedition to the Euphrates. It may be doubted whether Mr. Marsh, during his compli- cated American life, had given, or ever again gave, himself so long and complete a holiday as this. The night before the Est- courts left Burlington a severe thunder-storm cleared the heated, heavy, vaporous atmosphere, and in the morning Lake Cham- plain, the Green Mountains, and the Adirondacks showed them- selves to the greatest possible advantage. The Marshes accom- panied their friends through the lake, and the families took leave of each other, with apparently small chance of ever meet- ing again — certainly not dreaming how often their lines of life would touch thereafter. Another pleasant episode in the home-life of this summer was a short visit from Mr. Crampton, then British Minister at "Washington, a gentleman whose artistic gifts and other accom- plishments had made him a great favorite in Washington so- ciety. The following, dated July 28th, is Mr. Marsh's reply to a letter from Mrs. Estcourt, written just before sailing from Boston : "Dear Madam: ""We much regret that our friend, Mr. Sumner, did not see you. I wrote to him before you left Burlington, and, to make the matter quite sure, carried the letter to the post-office mv- self, but the postmaster did not forward it till the lith, as I learn from Mr. Sumner, and he received it on the morning of the 16th, just in time to be a quarter of an hour too late (isn't that Irish ?) to see you. You will be very likely to meet Mr. Gray in Europe. He is a man of great learning, of a high order of intellect, and of a truly noble and generous character, 1844-1848.] LETTER TO MRS. ESTCOURT. 109 and we are very glad you have made the beginning of an ac- quaintance with him. " We are not quite reconciled to your leaving America with- out meeting more of our Boston friends, but we console our- selves with the reflection that you will remember us the longer for not having known them. " The weather was bad again for several days after you left us, but on Friday last we had the most glorious morn- ing and the most gorgeous sunset I have seen for a long time. " The valley of Lake Champlain is the only place in our country where a large body of fresh water is brought into the immediate vicinity of high ranges of mountains, and these in- fluences modify the formation of the clouds, and the refractive power and transparency of the aerial strata at different eleva- tions, in a way that produces a variety of atmospheric phenom- ena hardly witnessed elsewhere. One of these is a rare and somewhat paradoxical condition of the atmosphere, which allows an incredible distinctness of vision, at great distances, and without sharpness of outline. This we enjoyed in perfection on Friday, after a rain of some hours the night before. All the plans of the mountain-range opposite wei'e projected in clear relief, though at a distance of from ten to forty miles, and we could distinguish every variety of configuration, chia- roscuro, color, and almost texture of surface. At sunset, the clouds, tinted with every hue, and fringed with the richest metallic lustre, were spread like glaciers, or piled up in lofty, abrupt masses that seemed to outsoar the Andes ; but beautiful and sublime as these spectacles were, I believe our regret that von were not there to enjoy them with us made them a source of quite as much pain as pleasure. "We found after your departure, as is apt to be the case when we separate from friends after a short visit, that we had forgotten to show yon many books and other things which we had thought would interest you ; but we shall have so much the 110 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. IV. more left to entertain you, when Colonel Estcourt comes out as Commander of the Forces in Canada. " We looked after you, as we went up from the boat at Chimney Point, and from the windows of the house, but our eyes were dimmed, and we could not distinguish you. " I inclose Mr. Biewend's letter. Mrs. Marsh suggested the name of Charles or Carl for the little Tdufling, both as a favorite name of hers, and because, as a happy coincidence, it is the masculine form of your name and hers. " We hope soon to hear that you are once more at home in your own fair land, of which we have dreamed so much, and which our acquaintance with yourself and Colonel Estcourt has invested with a new and personal interest in the eyes of all of us. " In the meantime I am, dear madam, with the sincerest regard both for yourself and your husband, to whom I beg you to present my best respects, " Tour friend and servant, "Geo. p. Maesh." In August of this year (1847) Mr. Marsh returned to Bos- ton, and gave an address before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Cambridge. This discourse was warmly received at the time, and is reprinted at length in the Appendix (I.), as perhor.= <->ia best means of showing the author as he was at this pt^^v^vi ^jj. his life. After heartily congratulating him at the close of his ad- dress, his venerable friend, Mr. Mason, then in his eightieth year, alluded to some of the concluding remarks, and said, very signiiicantly, " So you would persuade us it is our own fault that we old fellows grow old ? Wait till you've tried the ex- periment yourself!" Mr. Marsh sometimes humorously re- ferred to this advice afterward, when, with advancing years, he felt the irresistible approach of infirmity, but he maintained to the last his belief that nature was not only better understood 1844-1848.] PLACES HIS SON AT SCHOOL. Ill but more thoronghly enjoyed, more reverently loved, by the old than by the young. In September, Mr. Marsh gave an address before the liter- ary societies at Union College, Schenectady, and, later in the month, another before the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Yt. The subject of the first was, "The American Historical School ; " that of the second was determined by the objects of the association. The limit of this memoir will not allow more to be said of these discourses than that they fully sustained their author's previous reputation for earnest patriot- ism, wide reading, and clear, independent, and original thinking. Early in November, Mr. Marsh visited Dr. S 's "School for Boys," near Boston, and decided to place his son there. The following is an extract from a letter to Mrs. Hickok, writ- ten at this time : "... On Tuesday, C. and I went to IST , and spent some hours, and to-daj' we all went there together and left George. My previous favorable impressions are all confirmed, and I think G. cannot be otherwise than happy there. There are eight boys from ten to eighteen, so that he will have com- panions of his own age. The family are cultivated and agree- able, and the advantages in many respects beyond any I have known in our schools. ... I shall be much gratified to have you write to George, and hope he will answer you. . . ^. "We are to leave for Washington on Monday, but shall go to see G. again on Saturday." Both the family and the social life of the Marshes this win- ter were much what they had been in previous seasons, but the former was brightened by a visit from a lovely young girl, a daughter of Mr. Frederic Buell, who always held in Mr. Marsh's affections the place of a very dear niece. The presence of another young lady in the house naturally drew to it a wider circle of young acquaintances, and the changes thus brought 112 GEORGE PEEKIlSrS MABSH. [Chap. IV. about in the daily routine left Mr. Marsh more time for his own private pursuits than he had had in any former Congres- sional year, though it was little even now. He had, from time to time, brought with him from Ver- mont a few portfolios of rare engravings, and these were an attraction to such artists as were in Washington, whether for a longer or shorter time. His strong desire to see a taste and love for genuine art taking root in the country led him to give such small encouragement as was in his power to every young man who, in his opinion, gave promise of excellence in that di- rection. He therefore endeavored to make his house an agree- able resort, not only for those artists who had already acquired a wide reputation, such as Mr. Healy, Mr. Crawford, etc., but for those who were then wellnigh unknown. Among the lat- ter was the now distinguished Mr. Eastman Johnson, whom Mr. Marsh employed, in 1845, to make crayon portraits of him- self and family, and in whose ever-growing reputation he al- ways took pride as well as pleasure. Mr. Healy painted a most successful portrait of Mr. Marsh about the same time, and the artist and his subject fortunately had afterward, in diiferent countries, not infrequent opportunities to strengthen the life- long friendship then begun in sincere mutual esteem.* * The following anecdote may serve to indicate a trait in Mr. Healy 's character that could not fail to be highly appreciated by Mr. Marsh : A rumor was afloat in Waahing- tonthat Mr. Wheaton, the eminent diplomatist and jurist, was about to be recalled by the Government from his post at Berlin. Mr. Healy, who had received much kindness from Mr. Wheaton and his famUy, and who knew that the threatened min- ister had no fortune whatever to fall back upon, was much pained by the report ; and as he was at that time making a portrait of President Polk, he took an opportunity at his next sitting to mention the rumor to the President. Then, courteously assum- ing that the whole responsibility rested upon the head of the State Department, he added : "I cannot think it possible Mr. Buchanan will be willing to face the oblo- quy that he must inevitably incur by depriving the country of the services of a man so eminent throughout Europe, and by forcing, at the same time, an able and faithful public servant, who has done such honor to the nation, to meet, in his seventh dec- ade, a struggle with poverty in which his family must share." The President, not entirely without embarrassment, assented to the justice of the praise awarded to Mr. Wheaton, but added something about the length of time Mr. Wheaton had been in diplomatic life, the policy of the Democratic party on that subject, etc. " Ah ! " esclaimed Mr. Healy, " then it is only too true ! " and a silence followed. 1844-1848.] SPEECH ON THE MEXICAN WAE. 113 Nor was he interested in rising artistic merit alone. Every phase of promise gave him pleasure, and though so many fin- ished their life-work, in success or failure, before his own was ended, yet more than one man, now occupying a foremost place among statesmen, scientists, and men of letters, will doubtless recall some hours of early manhood spent not amiss under Mr. Marsh's roof in F Street. Years afterward, when the prediction had been amply ful- filled, his friends recalled a remark of his about a young gen- tleman, a relative, who was often at his house in "Washington. Some one having expressed an2dety as to the health of this gentleman, Mr. Marsh said : " You need not worry about him — he has books in his head, and good books, too ; and the sooner he begins to write them out the better. He will be well enough when he gets fairly at work, and has made his mark, as he certainly will." The following brief extract from one of the earliest letters of a long and intimate correspondence with Professor Baird, to whose wife, the daughter of his friend, General Churchill, he was strongly attached, will show that he had well-founded ex- pectations elsewhere also : "... I am much gratified to hear of your success in your investigations, and the rather because I have promised great things of you, and set great value on my prophetical judg- ment. I am sorry you have promised Dr. Gray your Syno- nymiJcs, if, as I suppose, yon have thereby lost the opportunity of giving it to the world through another channel ; but you are young enough to afford to lose some of your earlier works. I hope you do not propose to make it a mere catalogue, and that you will preface it with an exposition of the principles upon which you hold that generic and specific distinctions ought to be based." On February 10th, 1848, Mr. Marsh made a speech before the House on the Mexican "War, and as, perhaps, none of his 8 114 GEORGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Gbav. IV. public efforts more distinctly portray the man himself, this is given in full in the Appendix (II.). Many thoughtful men, from different quarters, wrote to congratulate him and the country on the vigorous, manly, out- spoken way in which he had dealt with the subject. A single one of these letters is given below, as showing the general tone in all. "Bkaintbeb, March 30th, 1848. "Hon. GrEOEGE P. Maesh. " My Dbae Sir : I have the pleasure to acknowledge the receipt of your late speech in Congress, on the subject of the Mexican War, for which I beg you to accept the thanks of my whole heart. " Though I did not need so ably constructed an argument to confirm my views of the turpitude of the contest in which we are engaged, ah initio, nor the fervors of so pure an eloquence to raise all the feelings of my soul against it, yet I am gratified and encouraged to see the ability and the resolution displayed by yourself and others in stemming the tide of executive influ- ence and enlightening the public mind in regard to the dangers incurred to our civil liberties and great moral interests. " That God may crown your efforts with success and endue you with all the wisdom you feel the need of, and add to your days many years of public usefulness and honor, is the earnest prayer of " Yours most respectfully, "E. S. Stores." CHAPTER V. 1 848- 1 849. European Revolutions of 1848— Captain Ernst Haug — Mr. Marsh's Hopes and Pears as to these Kevolutions — Letter to Mrs. Estcourt — ^Letter to Dr. Lieber — Extracts from Letters to Mr. Baird — Lnpression produced in Vermont by Nomination of General Taylor for the Presidency — Mr. Marsh's own Convictions and Course — Note — ^Letter to Mrs. Estcourt — Mr. Marsh's Political Work during the Sum- mer — ^Removal of Son from School — Letters to Mr. Baird — Letter to Mrs. Est- court — ^Letters to Mr. Baird— Death of Mr. Marsh's Father — Wish for Diplo- matic Appointment — Letter to Mrs. Estcourt— Difficulties in the Way of receiving the desired Appointment — Letter to Charles D. Drake, Esq. — Colonel Bliss — Appointed Minister to Turkey — Letter to Colonel Estcourt — Disposes of his Engravings — Causes of Delay in leaving for his Post — Extract from Letters to Mr. and Mrs. Baird — Final Prepar.ations. IT was about tliis time that the news of the expulsion of Louis Philippe from France reached our shores. The sensation produced by this astounding intelligence was no doubt greater in Washington than elsewhere in our country. The whole diplomatic corps were aghast. A considerable number of am- bitious young oflBleers from the different European armies were then in Washington, seeking for that " active service " in our war with Mexico which they had believed there was no prospect of at home. Most of these, as was natural, returned precipi- tately to their posts ; but a few, who were either adventurers by nature, or who had become enthusiasts for American institu- tions, resigned their commissions in the regular army of their country and went back to join the revolutionists.* * Among these few was a young Austrian officer, Captain Ernst Haug, who had brought letters to Mr. Marsh, and who had been much at his house. He was a man of good birth, fine personal appearance, thorough military training, and rare social accomplishments. When he came to announce his resolution to Mr. Marsh, the lat- ter, who gave him credit for generous impulses rather than settled convictions, asked him " if he did not think he might serve the cause of real liberty as well by retaining 116 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH, [Chap. V. Mr. Marsh's inborn sympathy with the oppressed was> deeply roused by this great political convulsion. He had often been heard to say that the so-called paGification of Europe by the Great Powers, after the fall of the first Napoleon, was " the most flagitious betrayal of human liberty, on a gigantic scale, that the world had ever witnessed ; " and had he been less fully aware of the blind ignorance of the great masses on the Continent, he might now have hoped that the day of reason- able redress had come. As it was, his fears surpassed his hopes. In one quarter, at least, he had no illusions. " Do not, for heaven's sake," he had written to a friend, in 1847, " do not commit yourself to the belief in a liberal Pope ! It is a con- tradiction in terms — an impossibility in the very nature of things. "Whatever Pius IX. may think now, he will find that he can't be both Pope and patriot." The following extracts are from a letter to Mrs. Estconrt, written about this time. The first paragraph alludes to Mrs. Estcourt's account of a literary curiosity discovered by a learned German, and, in very original English, offered for sale to Lord Spencer, and, in case he declined, to Mr. Marsh. "... I have been much diverted with worthy Dr. F 's description of his literary nonpareil, though I think I his rank, at least till he should be again in his own country, where he would be in a better position to form a judgment ? " To this he agreed, but added : " My regiment was stationed in Italy for a long time, and it is understood that I know that country and people well. If I remain in the Austrian Army, I shall be sent to help keep that generous, patriotic nation down, and I am resolved never again to perform that ser- vice." Fifteen years afterward, this officer, then a general in Garibaldi's corps of volunteers, called on Mr. Marsh, at Turin, and gave him the story of his life subse- quent to his leaving America. He had not been mistaken — his regiment was or- dered to Italy. Thereupon he had resigned his commission, renounced his allegiance to the Austrian Government, joined Garibaldi, fought with him in the defence of the Republic of Rome against the French, in 1849, and had for the most part followed the fortunes of the heroic patriot from that time onward. When Garibaldi was ushered into Rome, in 1875 (by such a spontaneous popular triumph as even the Eternal City has seldom, if ever, witnessed), to take his seat in the Italian Parliament, General Haug was one of his personal suite. 1848-1849.] LETTER TO MES. ESTOOUET. 117 could match his English with some that I have heard from a number of foreign officers who have visited us often this win- ter. I am not quite sure that I quite comprehend all the Dr.'s meaning, and before buying I should beg to be informed more particularly touching the character of the steed bestridden by the great Corsican, 'on whose inch,' etc. Is inch {jpouce) thumh, and so the emperor a dwarf, and the marshal a giant ? If Earl Spencer buys the book, I hope he will paste honest Dr. F 's letter upon the cover. Posterity will, I think, value it as highly as the Giant St. Christopher which his Lordship found on the cover of an old book in the monastery of Bux- heim. " . . . I snppose Mrs. Marsh has given you all the local news, if, indeed, anything American can interest you now, situ- ated as you are in a position to look down into the yawning crater of the Gallic volcano which threatens again to over- whelm Europe with a fiery torrent. Even we have been so much absorbed with these great events that the Mexican war and all other public interests, excepting always the next Presi- dential election (which an American never loses sight of), are quite forgotten. I believe Mr. Crampton and Mr. Bodisco alone, among our diplomatic friends, have no reason to appre- hend that their own positions will be affected by these disturb- ances. I am afraid good Mr. Calderon is in some danger of being recalled for another reason — his inability to persuade Congress to pay for some Cuba negroes who took possession of a Spanish vessel on board of which they were embarked, and brouo-ht her into the United States, where they were liberated by a decree of our Supreme Court, and afterward restored to Africa. " . . . I have received little from the North of Europe since T saw you, but shall send you a few Nos. of a Swedish periodical and a parcel of Norwegian newspapers. If you have occasion to buy a new German dictionary, do not get the new edition of Fliigel. Wait for Adler's, which promises to be 118 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. V. more complete, and is to be published, at a low price, in New- York next autumn." The following to Dr. Francis Lieber was in reply to a brief note of inquiry from him, and this correspondence was the beginning of a warm and enduring friendship. Mr. Marsh re- garded Dr. Lieber not only as one of the most eminent states- men and jurists of this age, but also as a man of the rarest moral courage and excellence. "Washtnqton, March 7, 1848. " Dear See : " I have the pleasure of acknowledging the receipt of your note of Feb. 29, with the enclosure, which I have for- warded to its address. "I agree with you in thinking, both that the pardoning power ought to be limited (as the late flagitious abuses of that power in one of the Northern States have abundantly shown), and that the Legislature is, in general, an unfit body for its ex- ercise. The Legislature of Vermont, as you will observe, has, under our Constitution (and that, not by direct provision, but as an incident to its general legislative authority only), the power of pardon only in cases of treason, murder, and impeach- ment. I remember no instance of trial for treason, or of im- peachment, and I think not above a dozen convictions of mur- der have occurred since the adoption of the Constitution of 1793. So far as I remember, no inconvenience or difficulty has yet arisen respecting the exercise of the pardoning power, but increase of population and of crime may very probably hereafter teach us the expediency of new constitutional pro- visions on this subject. " I am, Sir, with great respect, " Your obedient servant, "Geo. p. Marsh." 1848-1849.] LETTERS TO ME. BAIKD. 119 The following extracts from letters to Mr. Baird all bear dates previous to the adjournment in 1848 : "Washington, April 4, 1848. " Deae Baied : " It is a rule with printers' devils to ' follow copy if it goes out of the window,' and with skippers ' to follow orders if it breaks owners.' In obedience to the great principle in- volved in these maxims, I send you Cuvier by Adams Ex- press, according to your directions, though I well know that my compliance with your request will occasion your bank- ruptcy. " That insatiable cormorant, Adams, will demand for the carriage of the parcel more than thrice, yea, more than ten times, the original cost thereof, and thou wilt be beggared by his exorbitance. Many harpies have I known in my day, but Adams exceedeth them all. Koeppen,* though, by reason of the similitude of his talks, a tiresome, is yet an instructive and an amusing companion. Learned in historical fact, he cares nothing for the principles of history or any other knowledge ; and, superficial observer as he is, in power of lively and pictu- resque description he surpasses all other men. " I am glad you are well over your Flytning (Scottice flit- ting). I suppose you are Dane enough to understand that. 'Three removes,' &c., you know. I pray your next may be into a wider field of fame and labor. " We have here a Deutscher, one Lischke, Secretary of the Prussian Legation, who is deplorably given to the shooting of little innocent (yea, and, being vermivorous, useful) birds, im- paling of insects, disembowelling of fish, and pickling of crusta- ceans. Shall I mention you to him as one similarly moon- struck, affected with like barbarous propensities, and disposed to exchange bloody trophies ? * Professor Koeppen, a Danish gentleman, who filled the Chair of History in the tTniversity of Athftns for eleven years. He came to this country in 1848, and was Mr. Marsh's guest for the first month after his arrival 120 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [CHAP. V. " Have you ever written to Mr. Wheeler, and if not, why not ? The love of all of us to all of you, and so farewell. " Your sincere friend, "Geo. p. Maesh." " Washington, April 18, 1848. " Deae Bated : " I give you joy of your salamanders, first because they are nasty creatures that nobody will steal, and secondly, because they are so incombustible (if you doubt, read Benvenuto Cel- lini) that when some envious rival naturalist sets your museum on fire they will escape unscathed. In them, therefore, you have an abiding treasure, and I trust your salamandrine and protean heads (which, we learn from Horace, omne cum Proteus, &c., were some years since driven out to pasture on the Alle- ghanies and Adirondacks) will multiply until they shall be as the sands of the sea-shore. " I will see the man with a hard name, who chiefly afEecteth malacology, and propound in your behalf a swap, between old Europe and young America. There is also a Thuringian, who looks like an American, but is none (as the poet sings : Thuringens Berge zum Exempel, geben Gewiichs, sieht aus wie Wein, Ist's aber nicht), ycelpt Wislizenus, who hath wandered in New Mexico, and written a book, and is very full of prickly pears, burs, and cacti iiberhaupt. Him also will I move to communicate with you. I wish you would come hither and see these men, whom yon would find not good naturalists merely, but accomplished and agreeable persons. . . . " Yours truly, "Geo. p. Maesh." " Since the above was written I have seen Herr Lischke, who will write you in High Dutch touching Umtausch, etc. Also, Captain Haug, of the Austrian Army, hath given me 1848-1849.] LETTERS TO ME. BAIED. 121 this slip, as the address of a great exchanger of exchanges, who dwells somewhere, and would fain. . . - " [imperfect.] " Washington, July 11, '48. " Deab Batrd : "The Smithsonian will come out right some time or other. . . . The National Institute here is making a move- ment towards reorganization, but nothing will come of it. I have heard that the Geolog. Assoc, proposed some plan of cen- tralization. "I'm glad youVe got all that arsenic, and hope you'll poison and pickle a good many reptiles with it, that there may be the fewer to plague honest people. Also, I wish you'd kill all the roaches and Wanzen in "Washington. They're a sore plague to housekeepers. I think you can afford to come by way of "Washington well enough. I'll give you a Patent Keport and a dinner toward your expenses, and perhaps a specimen, if I can find a good one. " But touching this matter of illustrations, let me most ear- nestly advise you to fall to and practise drawing and etching yourself. The only thing that I certainly know about Natural Plistory is, that nobody but a naturalist can draw such objects as you want to represent Therefore, let all your illustrations have at the bottom, S. F. Bawd del etfec. "I should like to look over Master Funk's tractate, of a rainy day. It seems to be just in the vein of the quaint writers of the 17th century, who are my favorite authors. I have a book which would make a pendant, namely, Pellieer's History of the Phoenix. " must be handled gingerly. He vrill do anything that and advise, but the better way is for me to play second fiddle to those gentlemen. I can do you more good thus, and less in any other way. I believe thinks me strong in punctuation, and not wholly ignorant of Low Dutch, but in ' Science ' a dummy. " Yours truly, "Geo. p. Marsh." 132 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. V. Early in June, 1848, the Whig Convention had nominated General Taylor as their candidate for the Presidency, and Mr. Marsh returned, immediately after the adjournment of Congress, to Vermont. lie knew that this nomination was not a popular one in his State, and that his own re-election was somewhat endangered by it. Still, tliough General Taylor would not have been his first choice, he had entire confidence in his unsectional patriotism and his incorruptible good faith, while he dreaded the policy of the Democratic candidate. With the main principles of the Free Soil party he was in sympathy, but he utterly distrusted its leader, and he greatly feared that the hopeless effort of that party to elect Mr. Yan Buren might give the strength of the State to the Democracy. Herein lay the only danger in Yermont, and the point now was to convince the " Green Mountain Boys " that the ultimate triumph of their principles would be best secured by the election of General Taylor. Mr. Marsh made many speeches during the summer, but, so far as he personally contributed to the favorable result, it was said at the time that the weight of his character, and the confidence of his fellow-citizens in his clear judgment and unflinching patriotism, influenced far more votes than did any argument of his, however strongly put.* The last paragraph of the following letter from Mr. Marsh to Mrs. Estcourt, dated a short time before leaving for Yermont, gives in his own words his view of the political situation. " Wabhinqton, June 10, 1848. " Deae Madam : " We send by the steamer of the 14th a packet containing sundry bulky tomes and solemn documents for the M.P., to- gether with divers papers and booklings for you. Among * The following may serve to show how elections — at least some of them — ^were managed forty years ago in Vermont. When an English friend inquired of Mr. Marsh, in 1850, " how much his Congressional elections had cost him," his answer was, "Not BO much as a glass of wine. I never asked a man to my house for the sake of his vote, nor, so far as I can now remember, did I ever do any man any ser- vice with that end in view. In my State such things are not necessary." May that State never have occasion to exclaim, On a change tout cela I 1848-1849.] LETTER TO MES. ESTCOUET. 123 these I am afraid the works of a certain distinguished person- age who shall be nameless will be found in rather large propor- tion ; but I send the German paper (Blatter fiir, etc.) that you may see how a Yankee looks in a High Dutch dress, and as to the Agricultural Discourse, I thought possibly Mr. Torke or some other rural friend might be curious to know in what light we wild people, who are but 'just out of the woods,' regard agriculture and civilization. The portrait I send of Mr. Adams is the best I have seen. There is nothing among the Congres- sional Documents which I can recommend as likely to interest you, except the browbeating spectacle on pp. 326-327 of the proceedings in Col. Fremont's case, the only parallel to which in American history is a scene in the early life of a former gov- ernor of Vermont, who looked a bear out of countenance when he was but four years old. " According to the ' Golden Legend,' the English translation of which, printed by Caxton, is one of the rarest of books, the blessed ' Seynet Christopher,' whom you ask about, was a griev- ous reprobate before his conversion, but was called Christo- phorus (Christ-bearer) afterward, ' because he had borne the Saviour physically, corporeally, mentally, and orally.' He was a personage of very uncertain chronology, a ' Chananean ' by birth, of a grim visage, great strength, and tall stature, being not less than twelve cubits in longitude. Before his baptism, he went forth on a quest, after the fashion of knights errant, in search of the ' greatest prince ' of his time, got inveigled into the service of a well-known character, sometimes euphemistically called 'his dusky majesty,' and underwent many remarkable ad- ventures. The hermit, who was instrumental in his conversion, advised him to employ himself in carrying travellers over a crossing-place in a river, which his stature and strength enabled him to do to great advantage. The hermit recommended this as a good work, acceptable to the Saviour, and encouraged the ffiant to hope that our Lord would manifest himself to him. After some time, he was called upon in the night by a boy to 124 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. V. carry him over. The boy proved so heavy that the giant had the greatest difficulty in transporting him, and the child finally revealed himself as our Saviour, saying, 'Thou hast borne upon thy shoulders the world and him who created it,' and for a token he said that the saint's staff should put forth leaves and grow. Accordingly, in Christian art, St. Christopher is always depicted as a giant bearing a boy across a river. The earliest known, wood-cut is one of these representations, a little less than half a sheet of foolscap paper in size, and is in the cele- brated collection of Lord Spencer. It was discovered in the latter part of the last century, by Heineken, pasted on the in- side of the cover of a manuscript in the monastery of Buxheim, and was bought by Lord Spencer many years since. It is dated Millesimo CCCCXX tertio (1423), and I believe its genu- ineness is past dispute. Though of so early a date, it does not, so far as I can judge from Muir's copy, belong to the infancy of the art, as the lines, particularly in the drapery, are bold, free, and flowing, and it must therefore be considered as prov- ing that wood-engraving had been practised some time before the period of its date. Two Latin verses are cut at the bottom, and this gives additional interest to the engraving as one of the very earliest European specimens of the art of block-printing. " The nomination, by the Whigs, of Gen. Taylor, who is a Southern man and a slaveholder, will, I fear, prove an unfort- unate one, especially in Yermont, which has long been weary of Southern dictation ; and though I earnestly desire the success of the ticket, as compared with the Democratic nomination, yet I think it by no means improbable that it may prove so unpala- table to my constitutents that my support of it may put an end to my political life. This, however, would constitute a most insignificant part of the regret I should feel at the election of Gen. Cass. " With cordial regards for Col. Estcourt, " I am, dear Madam, your sincere friend, « Geo. p. Majbsh." 1848-1849.] POLITICAL ACTIVITY. 125 Mr. Marsh's political duties this sammer left him neither time nor strength for any other occupation, and his weari- ness of these was often excessive. Now and then, however, an agreeable little incident occurred, that brightened the day and left a pleasant memory. Once, when he was speak- ing to a crowd in one of the lake-shore towns, a company of young girls, fresh as their own mountains, rode up, and as soon as he had finished they all came toward him, the foremost carrying a beautiful banner, which she presented with admirable grace in the name of herself and companions, saying at the same time a few quiet words of thanks for the honor he had done the State, and especially for his gen- erous sympathy in every effort to advance the welfare of wom- en. It may be doubted whether any public testimonial ever moved him more deeply than did this simple recognition of an interest which he had more and more at heart to the end of his life. During the spring of 1848, Mr. Marsh had unexpectedly received a letter from Dr. S , saying that he desired him to remove his son from his school, on account of insubordi- nation. This was a great disappointment, as well as grief, to the father, for up to that time the doctor had uniformly de- clared himself "vollhommen zufrieden" with the boy. On inquiry, it turned out that George had made some purchases of clothing, which his parents, knowing of no regulation of the school to the contrary, had authorized. Being re- proached for a violation of discipline, the high-spirited boy justified himself as acting on his parents' orders, and feel- ing himself to be in the right did so, no doubt, in a manner very irritating to his master. It was this unfortunate affair that led Mr. Marsh to make inquiries about schools in pre- vious letters to Mr. Baird, and it is alluded to in these that follow : 126 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. V. " BuBLlNGTON, September 15, 1848. " Deae Bated : " I left my son with Dr. S until the adjournment of Congress, when, as I found they would part with mutual satis- faction, I took him away, and left him at his grandfather's to await my decision as to another school. He has learned a good deal of German, and speaks it with considerable fluency, though he hath a contempt for the superstitious observance of rules touching genders and cases, but, so far as I can discover, has made very little progress in anything else ; and learned as Dr. S. certainly is, I think he is far from being apt to teach. In the keeping of accounts, however, he is exemplary ; all errors, of which there are many, being in his own favor, and no frac- tions of terms being regarded. George went to N near a month after the beginning of the first term, and remained, upon sufferance, only three weeks after the beginning of the fourth ; yet Dr. S. sees no cause why I should not pay him for the whole year, and sends me a bill which, with former ones, amounts to $540 for little over nine months' instruction and board, including a little clothing and a few books. He con- fesses in his letter that his Forderung seems to himself unhiUig, when he compares it mit dem wirJdich geleisteten, and I am of the same opinion ; but as Dr. S s and Prof. B. think it all right, he concludes it must be so, and makes demand accord- ingly." . . . "P. S. " Deae Maet : " Not having heard of your husband since he left "Wash- ington, I have some fear that he is gone altogether astray in the wilds of Pennsylvania, and hath been swallowed by an an- aconda, or torn in sunder by a catamount. Didn't he bring home a goodly lot of salamanders ? Hath he read the news- paper account of the sea-serpent seen on the mountain here in Manchester, and doth he religiously believe it ? Will he chain up his asps and his cockatrices, so that they shall not endamage 1848-1849.] lETTEES TO THE BAIRDS. 127 lis, when we go to Carlisle a pleasuring ? Doth thy little one affect basilisk for her chief pets, and are her rattles made of the tails of Klapperschlangen ? " Give my best respects to thy mother, and believe me, " Thine ancient friend, " G. P. M." " BUBLINQTON, October 6, 1848. " Deak Spencee AiTD Deae Maet : " I am sorry I have given you so much trouble about schools, and have pretty much determined on sending George to Ando- ver, where 1 was (awful thought !) before either of you was born. " I congratulate you on your monopoly of Agassiz, and shall give you and him all aid and comfort with Prof. Henry. Put your proposal into tangible form, and it shall not lack support from me. "Lo, a discovery! Henceforth Vermont raiseth her own mammoths. Proclaim to Agassiz that last week, in excavating the summit level of the Rutland Kail Road, at Mount Holly, beneath a bog, and in a bed of gravel, 12 feet below the sur- face, was found a perfect grinder of a mammoth, mastodon, or other mammal beast. It is sound, processes and all, and not much fossilized, not rolled or worn, whence I argued that the rest of the skeleton would be found near, and urged special care in further excavations, which men in authority promised. A true report. These eyes have seen, these hands manipulated, the molar. I prayed Director Hodges to send Agassiz the bauble, and peradventure he will. Let Agassiz send a boy, or come himself, and dig, all men shall aid him. " I hope the people of the 3rd District in Vermont will be wise, but when a majority of 1,500 shrinketh to a minority of 500, men know not what to think. I have spoken to the mul- titude much, sometimes seven hours in a day, and shall speak more. Yea, I shall reason with them continually until Nov. 7th, when I hope there will be an end. 128 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. V. " Before I determine upon the missionary question, I must be advised touching the fees and profits. I do nothing for nothing; let the reverend fathers understand that. What countryman is Master Nadal? There be Portugals of that name. I trust he is none. This funeral discourse is good. Tell him that. " I am glad Mary is studying German. Let her not put her trust in Ollendorff, but study also Heyse's Schulgram- matiks, or the like, and read much. If Tieck be at hand, let her read the autobiography of the Kaiser Tonelli, in the 9th Yol., and if she laugh not more than she hath laughed yet, I am no true man. My poor Fran's health makes it more than doubtful whether we can go to Carlisle this fall, bnt I hope, faintly, that we may, and so farewell. " Your affectionate friend, " G. P. Maesh." " Burlington, October 10, 1848. " Dear Baied : " If Bartlett & "Welf ord, of New York, or more especially the Rev. R. W. Griswold, late of Phila, but now, as I believe, of New York, can't tell you where to find the periodicals you want, no man can. I presume they are in the Library of Congress, and they must also be to be found in the Boston Athenaeum, and in the public libraries in Phila. Catalogues of public libraries I have none. Inquire also at the Society Lib. in New York. You'll have no trouble with Danish, but the way of studying you propose is naught. Don't begin with analo- gies ; if you do, by and by you'll find you can't tell what is what, and when you think you are speaking German you'll be talking Danish. You can get dictionaries, etc., through Gar- rigue. Study the language ^er se, and the analogies will come fast enough to embarrass you, without being sought. " Dutch can be learned by a Danish & German scholar in a month. I'll lend you a dictionary and grammar, and bring them when I come. In the meantime, order, through Garrigue, 184&-1849.] LETTERS. 139 Enige Bladzyden uit het Boek der Natunr, door H. Conscience. He can get it from Antwerp in six weeks. Conscience is a dis- tinguished Flemish writer of works of fiction, and stylist. He is a pnrist, and is now engaged on a book to be called Wonder- spiegel der Natuur, a popular vein of natural history, one of the objects of which is to show and illustrate the capacity of the language for scientific nomenclature and description. The Bladzyden is & feeler for this purpose, and contains his termi- nology. Get also some of his novels, if you will, as Lambrecht Hensmans, Hoes man Schilder wordt, &c. " An't yon glad about our mammoth ? No Hydrarchos, nor any such gammon. Tooth really elephantine, vertical laminae, and all that. I rejoice with you over Prof. Henry's "Willfah- rigkeit, in the matter of your tractates. Give Mary my love, and ditto to the bantling, if it is old enough to understand the message. " Tours truly, " G. P. Maksh." Just before the election he writes again to Mrs. Esteourt : "BUELINGTON, Oct. 30, '48. " Dear Madaw ; " I believe you will acknowledge that I have quite as good an excuse for my long silence as Mrs. Marsh has for hers, when you learn that I have been incessantly engaged in a very active political canvass ever since my return from Washington. I generally make two, sometimes three, speeches a day, of from one and a half to three hours in length, at points from ten to thirty miles distant, and I have still twelve such to make before the 7th of Nov., on which day the election takes place.* As * Jndge Barrett says : "■'■ Onthe stump,' in the Presidential campaigns of '44 and '48 he was one of the ablest and most edifying and effective speakers that addressed political gatherings in Vermont. He was a great master of strong and condensed ex- piession, and his moral make-np caused his sentiments arid feelings to find most po- tent and scathing utterance against what he deemed base, false, wrong. He did not bluster or rant, but he exposed these things in terms most forceful and in a manner most effective." 9 130 GEOEGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. V. the law of Vermont requires a full majority at the first trial, and I fell three or four hundred short at the September elec- tion, I am of course not re-elected, but I have no doubt of my success at the next ballot, when a bare plurality is required. The objection to me is, that I am in favor of Gen. Taylor, who is a slaveholder, although I am not accused of being myself lukewarm in my opposition to slavery. There is good reason to hope that Gen. Taylor will be elected, though the question is not free from doubt. The success of Gen. Cass would be a serious calamity. His policy would be aggressive and irritating, and in case of another European war would be likely to involve us in it. " All the world at "Washington went mad, last winter, after Spanish, and the number of young masters and misses who made such proficiency in that copious tongue as to be able to say ' How do you do ! ' in pure Castilian was really surprising. I intend to brush up my small stock of Spanish, in order not to sit mum, next winter, while my Hispanized neighbors are mak- ing spasmodic efforts to articulate the jotas, which some of them will probably find as difficult as did the cockney young lady ' io hexasperate the haitch.' " I have received a few Swedish, and a great many Spanish, Catalan, Dutch, and especially Danish books since I saw you/ (all ordered long ago), and wish I were able to avail myself of the present facilities for procuring books in Europe, but the complete failure of a manufacturing establishment in which I am interested has involved me in such heavy losses that the further increase of my library is effectually at an end. "I hope you have seen Lamb's last. It is a melancholy book, but some of the letters, now first published, are among his best. Isn't it odd that, as Talfourd confesses. Lamb should be better appreciated and more familiarly known here than in England. " The newspapers I sent you, with the exception of the Phonographic sheet (which is an English invention, not a Yan- 1848-1849.] LETTERS. 131 kee notion), were Danish, or, as the Norwegians choose to call their common written language, Norse, and were printed partly in Wisconsin, where there are many thousands of Norwegians, and partly in Norway. " We are looking anxiously to hear of your safe return from the Continent, and to know how you felt among a generation of people who can't speak English or even Yorkshire. Be good enough to accept for yourself and for Col. Estcourt the sincere regards and kind wishes of " Yours most sincerely, " Geo. p. JVLiESH." "P. S. The government of Vermont is in possession of two brass four-pound guns, taken from the Hessians at the battle of Bennington. It is disputed whether they are of German or of English make. The only thing by which I can describe them is the maker's name. They are marked thus : I. & P. Yerbruggen fecerunt, J776. Can Col. E. solve this question ? " The next two letters are both dated at Washington, in De- cember, 1848, Mr. Marsh having returned there with his fam- ily about the middle of November. " Dear Baied : " If you knew how I groan in spirit at the sight of my mail, yon would think it a great compliment when I say I was, as I always am, glad to receive your letter. I can't reply to it in detail, in regard that (oh, shame on my ignorance !) I don't imderstand the 'ology part of it. Deest would be better Latin than desit, which is the subjunctive. Send your catalogue to me, and I will give it to Prof. Henry. I send you a Pat. Kep. You shall have Emory, when I can get it, and I'll send you all the menobranchi, and other evil beasts I can find when I go home. There isn't any Christmas vacation for us poor dogs now a days. Our mill goes, whether there is any water or no. We only adjourn one day for Yule and one for New Years, and 132 GEORGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Chap. V. work like horses the rest of the tLme. Dear Mary, don't be ' mad ' because we didn't go to Carlisle, we wanted to go bad enough, but my old woman has come to be a sad traveller, and can't go except where she must. I hope we shall see you on our way home. Bring up your baby well, but don't whip it much. I never agreed with Solomon about 'sparing the rod &c.' I shouldn't mention it, only I know your disposition, and thought a little caution might not be amiss. I don't believe anything in your husband's icthyometer. There are hump- backed fishes, wryneeked fishes, knock-kneed fishes, bowlegged fishes, just as there are christians. What, shall men be de- formed, and fishes symmetrical! It's a libel on the human specie, neither is it original. The idea of it was plainly taken, as was also Cuvier's system of Comp. Anatomy, from the geo- metrical plan adopted by the tailors of measuring people for clothes.* "Well I guess I'd better be going, good bye. Love to your father and mother. " Yours truly, « Geo. p. Maesh." "Deae Bated: " I send you by this mail in four envelopes 250 pages or so of a book Garrigue wants translated. It is the explanatory text of Brockhaus' Bilder- Atlas, and will make 1,000 pp. or more. G. proposed to me to undertake it, which I declined, and after proper reservations touching my own superior qualifi- cations, recommended you as the next best person to do the work. G. will pay, I think, $1 per page of printed matter, or * Taken in connection with the above bantering saggestions, the subjoined ex- tract is not without amusing interest : Two ren&arkable specimens of deformed fish, says Nature^ were taken from a rearing-pond at Delaf ord, and brought to the South Kensington Aquarium. One is a trout, about three years old, whose tail is bent to such an extreme that it stands at right angles with the body of the fish. Its mode of progress is labored, and its appearance is very peculiar. The other specimen is an ordinary stickleback, measuring four inches in length, whose body is swollen, through dropsy, to the extent of one inch in diameter. At first sight its appearance is similar to a young mouse, and it requires close inspection to grasp the fact that it is a fish. It moves very slowly, with great expenditure of force, the weight of the contorted body being considerable. 1848-1849.] DEATH OF ME. MAESH'S FATHER. 133 thereabouts. "Will you translate it, correcting, construing, and annotating, to some small extent ? If yea, write G. forthwith, and fix your terms and time. If nay, send him his book through me, and write him. In any case, write forthwith. " It is said there is here a young German in the Coast Sur- vey Office quite competent to make the translation, but he hath no name. Lucky you, and I, whose fame ringeth so loud and clear ! Yea, our names, thinketh Garrigue, will sell anything, and therefore he speereth (N. B. this is Scottish) whether, if you wUl not translate, you will revise, correct, extend and an- notate, putting your name on the title page ? Write without delay and put the poor man out of pain. Greet thy rib kindly. " Yours truly, «"g. p. Maesh." On January 13th, 1849, Mr. Marsh received the news of the death of his venerable and beloved father. He had left him in his usual health, but late letters from a brother had told him of a sudden attack of pneumonia, and prepared him for what followed. That such a son should not mourn for such a father is inconceivable, but the sorrow could not fail to be greatly alleviated by the knowledge that the life-work of the latter was done, and well done, and by the hope that the weakness and weariness of more than fourscore years had been exchanged for everlasting youth. From the time General Taylor's election to the Presidency was assured, Mr. Marsh had talked freely with his friends of his wish for a diplomatic appointment abroad. He had be- come satisfied that this was now his only remaining chance of going to Europe for many years to come, and he hoped the change involved in such an appointment would be beneficial to the health and the intellectual growth of himself and family, without being detrimental to the country. This possibility is alluded to in the following letter, of Feb- ruary 3d, to Mrs. Estcourt : 134 GEOEGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. V. " When I wrote you last I was, if I remember right, en- gaged in satisfying my constituents that Gen. Taylor and I were better men than Gen. Cass and Mr. Peck. You have learned of course that Gen. Taylor was successful, but I doubt whether ' all Europe ' has yet ' rung from side to side ' with the announcement that after having lost my election at the first trial by about three hundred votes, I prevailed at the second over two competitoi-s by a clear majority of a thou- sand. This was gratifying to my pride, but after all I doubt whether the ^jeu vaut le chandelle,' and I do not intend to make so many speeches again in the same length of time un- less upon some very strong inducement. The election of Gen. Taylor is a great triumph and I hope he will do something towards bringing us back to the political virtue of the better days of our Kepnblic. " You have already heard through Mrs. Marsh of our great family affliction. I cannot help feeling a keen regret that yon and Col. Estcourt should never have seen him, and you will pardon me for sending you an extract from a notice of him by Pres. Lord of Dartmouth College, which will hardly be re- garded as extravagant by any who knew him well : ' He will not be forgotten. Men will continue to speak of him as one of the conservators and benefactors of society. His children will be more honorable because he was their father. His town will be larger because he lived in it, the Church and State will be more enduring because he has left them an example of Chris- tian and patriotic virtue.' " Your friend Whipple * came to say good bye to us the other day, on his way to California, where he has some boun- dary questions to settle with Mexico. He was in good spirits, but says he expects the men in his service will all run away from him to the mines. It would not be easy to give yon an * A. W. Whipple, oflScer in the United States Army, afterward greatly distin- gnished for his gallantry in' the service from 1861 to 1863, commanded, as Major- General, the Third Army Corps of the Potomac, and was mortally wounded at ChanceUorsyUle. 1848-1849.] DIPLOMATIC APPOINTMENT. 135 idea of the excitement produced among the more adventurous portion of our people by the reports of the gold to be found in the newly acquired territory. " "Washington is just now uncommonly dull, but it will very soon be lively enough, for the scramble for office will be active after the inauguration. " Personally I do not know that I have anything at stake in the late Presidential election, though ' some of my friends ' (N. B. this is a technical phrase which Col. Estcourt, being in Parliament, can doubtless explain to you) think it possible I may be sent abroad in a diplomatic capacity. At any rate I have had a puflE in a Boston paper recommending me as Minis- ter at Berlin on the ground that I ' can speak German like a h-ick: " The limits of this Memoir compel the omission of many curious facts connected with the outgoing and incoming Ad- ministrations, which had a far wider bearing than their relation to any single individual. Little more can be said here than that Mr. Marsh's desire for a foreign appointment being known to his friends, it was warmly seconded by them. The selection of the Hon. J. Collamer for a place in the new Cabinet seemed greatly to diminish Mr. Marsh's chances, but this selection was no sooner known in his State than a paper, drawn up by the Hon. E. P. Walton, and signed by nearly all the leading men of Vermont, was presented to the President by the State delega- tion, asking that Mr. Marsh might be sent abroad as Minister, Another proof of regard, and a far more unexpected one, was the action on the part of several members of the diplomatic corps, who unofficially signified to the State Department that the accrediting of Mr. Marsh to their government would be par- ticularly acceptable. Private friends, also, were most kind in forwarding such letters as they thought likely to be serviceable with the appointing power. The following extracts from a let- ter to Mr. Charles D. Drake, then contemplating a removal to 136 GEORGE PEEKINS MARSH, [Chap. V. Washington, refer in part to that removal, and in part to let- ters of the character alluded to above : " . . . Upon the whole I am inclined to think favorably of your project of coming here. There is in W. little forensic business except in the Supreme Court, and it is now much the custom to employ lawyers from abroad in that Court. But there is a very great amount of business in the way of prose- cuting claims on Government, and many of the agents are ac- quiring wealth too rapidly for honest men. That an agent can do very well here I am sure, but whether, in order to thrive, he must be a thief also, I am not certainly advised ; at any rate most of the Washington agents are so. Are you good at stealing ? or are you pestered with a conscience and old-fash- ioned scruples about meum and tuum f . . . I am very thankful for the letters. Prof. Stowe's is the best I have had from any quarter as an argument, but I am afraid if he knew me better he would rate me lower." Gratifying, however, as were all these manifestations of good-will, the principle that party interests were to be regarded above all other considerations was already so firmly established that, though no word ever passed between Colonel Bliss and Mr. Marsh on the subject of his wishes, yet the latter always believed that Vermont would never have received another im- portant office at this time, had not the personal friendship of the President's distinguished son-in-law been a weight in the scale. Official notification of his appointment as Minister to Tur- key was given him on May 29, 1849. Almost immediately upon this notification Mr. Marsh wrote as follows to Colonel Estcourt. "... I believe I hinted in my last that it was possible that I should go to Europe in a diplomatic capacity upon the 1848-1849.] LETTER TO COL. ESTCOTTRT, 137 accession of General Taylor. This I am about to do, though the post to which I am appointed is not that which I should have selected nor that where I should expect to be most useful. We are to go to Constantinople, and hope to sail in July. Our route is as yet quite uncertain, and in determining it we shall be gnided partly by the state of Mrs. Marsh's health, and partly by the condition of things in Germany, through which country we desire to pass, if we find on reaching London that we can do so without danger of obstruction. . . . " Our stay in London, where we hop6 to meet you and Mrs. Estcourt, must necessarily be limited to a very few days, and we must defer seeing England until another opportunity. I need not add it would afford us the highest gratification if you and Mrs. Estcourt should be inclined to take another trip to the Continent this summer and would see us well on our way towards the rising sun. " We are not, I believe, threatened on this side of the At- lantic with any of the commotions which are agitating Europe, but ouv party relations are almost as doubtful as are the politi- cal ones of the Eastern world. When General Tayloi-'s election was ascertained, it was considered quite certain that we should have an administration majority in the House, and probable that we might also control the Senate. The unexpected result of the late elections in Virginia and Connecticut, in which two states we have lost eight representatives, makes it exceedingly questionable whether we shall even retain the House, and in that case the administration would be sadly cramped. Some grievous errors have been committed in dispensing the patron- age of the government, and I think our losses thus far are at- tributable to this cause mainly, but we may perhaps gain in another quarter what we have lost in these States. " The policy of Gen. Taylor will be eminently pacific, though the possibility of a collision with some European power in the present disturbed condition of the Eastern hemisphere will not be lost sight of, and, I believe, no further schemes of 138 GEOBGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Ohap. V. expansion and annexation are now on foot. The defeat of Gen. Cass was a great moral and political triumph and, I be- lieve, a victory almost as important to your best interests as to ours. We may now, I think, consider ourselves reasonably se- cure from intestine dissensions and foreign hostility, and I hope the wisdom of the Cabinet may enable us to exert a moral influence which we might just now make highly use- ful. . . . " I am very solicitous in regard to our diplomatic appoint- ments. Only three are yet made — Mr. Payton of New Orleans to Chili, Mr. Squier to Guatemala, and my own. Mr. Eeeves will be sent to France, and Mr. Lawrence of Boston will be offered the mission to London. In case he declines, the same offer may be made to Mr. Winthrop, but I suppose it will be thought hardly safe to allow him to resign, as he will again be so much needed in the Speaker's chair. Some of these appoint- ments will probably be announced on Monday, and you will in that case receive the intelligence by the same mail that carries out this letter. " In speaking of our political condition I ought to have said above that there is every reason to expect that California (and we hope also New Mexico) will be prepared to apply for admis- sion to the Union as States, with constihitions forbidding tJie introduction of Slavery, at the next session of Congress. If we are so fortunate as to accomplish this object, it will go far to remove one of the most threatening causes of alarm among us. California will serve as a good drain for some classes of our population whom we can well spare, and it is at the same time a very pleasant circumstance to know that thus far the emigra- • tion, in the main, has been composed of most excellent mate- rials for founding a new and great state. . . . Every new account from the mines surpasses former reports, and I suppose there can be no doubt that the placers on the Sacramento form the most extensive and the richest deposits ever found upon the globe. The country also seems to be very rich in other min- 1848 1849.] SALE OF ENGEAVINGS. 139 erals, as well as to possess many other important natm-al ad- vantages. Of course every wise man hopes that the exuberant abundance of gold may not last long, and that the emigrants may soon find time and inclination for engaging in pursuits of a better character than gold hunting, but the fever must last some time still. " Col. Bliss is as remarkable a person as the character of Gen. Taylor's despatches would lead one to expect their author to be. He is a man, not only of fine intellect, but of remark- able attainments, and knowing how comparatively slender his opportunities have been, I am quite unable to account for the extent of his knowledge. In fact he makes me quite ashamed, and to compare small things with great, I find myself, in con- versing with him, somewhat in the humor of Pope when he was piqued at being outdone by the red-coat. "You have heard no doubt of Fremont's shocking suffer- ings and losses. The military men and experienced western travellers here regarded his expedition by that route, and at that season, as little better than a desperate enterprise, and as Fremont, though a most bold and determined man, has never seemed foolhardy, it was the general belief among those who knew him that he had some very powerful secret motive for un- dertaking so hazardous a journey. The result has shown that these gentlemen were right in the estimation of the dangers of the expedition, but its private objects, if there were any, have not yet transpired. "When last heard from he was safe on the Gila, and has doubtless long before this met Mrs. Fremont at San Francisco. . . ." Before leaving "Washington Mr. Marsh offered his collection of engravings to the Smithsonian at a very low price, in com- parison with their cost or their actual marketable value. This he did, partly because he felt that his pecuniary affairs no longer justified him in keeping such a collection, but still more because he hoped it might form a nucleus for the art-museum contem- 140 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. V. plated by the bill he had advocated in Congress. This offer was accepted,* and Mr. Marsh immediately after returned to Vermont, to make other necessary arrangments for a protracted absence. Mrs. Marsh was left in New York under medical care. The summer was a very trying one. The problem, how to leave his business affairs in such a condition as to give reason- able promise of a small income when his political life should close, proved most difficult ; the cholera appeared in New York when his wife had become too ill to allow of her being removed from the city, and it was not till the beginning of September that her medical advisers admitted the possibility of her mak- ing the voyage safely. In the meantime, Mr. Marsh was pre- paring to turn his residence abroad to more than personal profit. The following extracts from hurried notes to the Bairds, this summer, will show, not only his affection for them, but his de- sire to further scientific investigation. " Son Baied : " "What volant, natant or repent thing, of those that fly, swim, or creep, over in or around the Bosphorus, do you most desire in pickle ? Name the volatile, aquatic, or reptile and it shall be sent you. . . ," " . . . The Admiralty Manual, saving Master Herschel's honored presence, is a humbug. Bating magnetism and one or two other branches, there is no advice about instruments, no formulae, no constant numbers, no tables, no precision of any sort. It is a big book full of emptiness, and only less bad than Jackson's. . . ." * Some years after this sale, Mr. Charles Sumner wrote to Mr. Marsh to the effect that he had recently inquired at the Smithsonian for the Marsh collection of engrav- ings, which he had formerly looked over ; that he had found many of the choicest prints nearly or totally destroyed by the fire that had occurred a considerable time before, that many of the remainder were otherwise badly injured, and the whole scattered about in such a way as showed they were not in the hands of those who properly valued them. Impressions of some of the Albert Durers in this collection were in no respect inferior to those that have been sold in New York within the last two years at from four hundred to five hundred dollars the single copy. For a par- tial list of the contents of this collection, see Appendix (III.). 1848-1849.] LETTEBS TO THE BAIEDS. 141 "... Give me the title of the book of directions for travellers, that I may order the same speedily. I rejoice with you over your salamanders and other creeping things. May they multiply and fill Carlisle, even as the frogs did Egypt — after we have been there. " I hope my friend at Burlington will have pickled you a keg of menobranchi." "... I know nothing of the 'learned body' you speak of. I hope the members enjoy sinecures and salaries, I being both lazy and poor." " What is the ' learned body ' Bezonian ? " Speak or die. . . ." "Daughtee Maet: " I confess the soft impeachment. We are treacherous (not voluntarily, but necessarily) in the matter of the promised visit. Seriously I do not think Mrs. M. could bear to travel ten miles, or even five by coach. I write in haste unspeakable, but will make it up when I shall have seen the grand Turk, and now, dear Mary, with love from me and mine to you and yours, fare- well. " Yours truly, " G. P. Maesh." Mr. Marsh forgot nothing that might be likely to con- tribute to the comfort and enjoyment of his family in a place so far removed as Constantinople from home friends and the ordinary resources of American life. With this view, as well as in the hope of mutual advantage, he prevailed on Miss Caro- line Paine, his early and life-long friend, and at this time an intimate friend of his wife, to join his family party, which con- sisted of himself, his wife, and son, and two young ladies— the niece and sister-in-law of his Washington household. Mr. Lovett, an accomplished young acquaintance from Washington, accompanied him as attache of the Legation. CHAPTER VI. 1849-18^0. Voyage— First Day in Europe — Extracts from Letter to the Estconrts — Letter to Colonel Peter Force — Short Stay in Paris — Journey from Paris to Marseilles — From Marseilles to Florence — Impressions produced by Country and People of Italy — Political Feeling in Tuscany — Meeting with Mr. Powers — ^Public Discon- tent and Depression at Rome — Condition of Naples — Incident witnessed there — Eruption of Vesuvius — First Visit to the Crater— Subsequent Visits to the Moun- tain — Death of Midshipman Bayard — Embarks on Steam Frigate " Mississippi " for Constantinople — Arrival on February 22d — First View of Stamboul — First Experiences in Pera — Presentation to the Sultan — Count Sauli (note) — Cordial Reception by the American Residents and Diplomatic Corps at Constantinople — Peculiar Duties of a Minister to the Ottoman Porte — First Embarrassment from Lack of Acquaintance with Turkish — American Missionaries then in Turkey — Relations of Mr. Marsh with his Colleagues, especially with Sir Stratford Can- ning — ^Political Refugees — Their great Distress — Mr. Marsh's Action in their Be- half — Sacrifices for them on the Part of American Missionaries — Letter to his Brother Charles — Letters from Mr. and Mrs, Marsh to Mrs- Estcourt — Letters from Mr. Marsh to Mr. Baird — Insufficiency of Salary — Letter to Mr. Charles Drake — Asks and obtains Leave for Visit to Egypt, etc. — ^Letter to the Est- courts referring to Death of the President and that of Mr. Daniel Seymour — Letters from Mr. Seymour to Mr. Marsh (note) — Special Agent from Turkey to the United States — Mr. Brown accompanies this Agent — Mr. Henry A. Homes, Secretary and Dragoman ad interim. THE voyage, -which, from considerations of health, Mr. Marsh had been advised to make in a sailing-packet rather than a steamer — advice that would seem strange enough to-day — was a tedious one of nearly a month, and the " New York " did not arrived at Havre until October 18th. But it was a happy landing. From the first appearance on the ship of the pom- pous, be-braided custom-house officers to the last formalities on the part of the octroi publicans at the gates of Paris, all, though read of and heard of a thousand times, was a series of delight- ful surprises. Any American who can recall his own first day in the Old World may fancy the excitement of an enthusiastic 1849-1850.] FIRST DAT I^S ETJROPE. 143 party of seven, en route from Havre to Paris, not one of whom had ever been in Europe before, all in perfect sympathy with each other, and with a railway-carriage to themselves, gazing hurriedly and eagerly from side to side, and each one every moment espying something that must be seen by the rest — now a thatched cottage, asleep, as it were, in the open meadows, or by some winding, willow-fringed stream ; now the shepherd, the flock, the very dog of the poets ; then the trees, brought by constant trimming to assume forms so extraordinary yet so pict- uresque to American eyes ; the fields, cultivated in long, sweep- ing tracts, marked by no visible division, except the different color of the grain or vegetable grown therein ; in short, a land- scape in every feature so novel, and yet dimly familiar, as if remembered from a dream. Among the many objects in nature and art of which Mr. Marsh had dreamed at home, and the seeing of which he so keenly relished afterward, perhaps none ever gave him more unmixed pleasure than did this first day's sight of France ; for here was no disappointed expectation, and such freshness of impression is not repeated many times in one's life. He him- self always spoke of that day as almost unrivalled in enjoy- ment. The following extracts from a letter to the Estcourts give his own account of the voyage, and of the first days in Paris : " . . . We sailed from N. T. on the 21st of Sept. and made the French coast on the seventeenth day, after a passage as pleasant, I suppose, as a sea-voyage can be. On the day be- fore we saw the light at Ushant, the wind changed and blew directly in our teeth, so that we were obliged to beat up the channel, and were ten days between Ushant and Havre. Dur- ing this time we were five times ofE the Lizard, and had many glimpses of the southern coast of England at other points. We often longed to know whether you might not be in Cornwall, 144 GEOKGE PEBKINS MAKSH. [Chap. VI. or elsewhere in the Southern counties, and perhaps looking at our ship in the distance at the very moment when we were gazing, with straining, curious eyes, upon the English coast. We all agreed we never knew how strong our attachment was to the land of our forefathers until we had this Pisgah sight of it. . . . On the vrhole, we probably had about the usual alternation of calm, fair wind and storm, but to me. Ocean, in all its phases, is an uninviting object, and the discomforts and disgusts of a sea-voyage are without any other compensation than the pleasure of escaping from them on reaching the des- tined shore. Mrs. Marsh will tell you of our day from Havre to Paris. Since our arrival here three days ago, I have spent my spare time principally in the gallery of the Louvre and the Cabinet des Estamjpes of the Bibliotheque du Eoi, and can truly say my expectations have been surpassed in both. . . . Mrs. Marsh, unhappily, is thus far little benefited by the voy- age, and, being unable to stand or walk, has seen nothing, as yet, except what could be observed in an hour's drive. ... It has been a sore disappointment to us to miss you, and though I am afraid there is little probability that we shall ever be able to visit England, yet we cannot give up the hope of meeting you before our return to America. ... I suppose I shall be allowed occasional absences from my post, so that if you find Stamboul too distant a point, we may manage to meet you at some intermediate place." A few days later he writes to his highly esteemed friend, Colonel Peter Force, of Washington : " . . . I have looked a good deal into the book-stores here, and have found almost nothing in your way. I saw, how- ever, an Essay by Viscount Santarem, in Portuguese, on the his- tory of Portuguese discovery in Africa, and the same gentleman is now publishing, at Paris, a large Atlas with facsimiles of rare old maps in a very good style. I think this, with his geo- 1849-1850.] LETTER TO COL. FORCE. 145 graphical disquisitions with which the Atlas will be accompa- nied, likely to be a very valuable contribution to our knowledge of early modern cosmography. "Mr. P. Margry of Paris has discovered, in the public archives, many original journals and memoirs of the old French travellers in Canada and in the Valley of the Mississippi, which, as he describes them, are of much interest. He will publish 5 vols. 4to of this matter, as a part of the government collection of memoirs relative to the history of France, and he proposes to offer an Essay on the subject to the Smith. Inst, for publication. " A friend here has given me Sewel's History of the Quak- ers in German, (originally written in Dutch). It is not exactly in my line, and I shall ask you to accept it. " The publisher of the Essays and Atlas of Santarem is Ailland, and I now remember that the Memoir on Discovery on the coast of Africa is published in French also." " Since writing the above, I have seen the first vol. (just published in large 8vo) of the text which accompanies San- tarem's Atlas. It is a descriptive and critical essay on the Cosmography and Cartography of the Middle Ages, and I think, shows much ability. I hope the Smith. Inst, and the Library of Congress will order all Viscount Santarem's publications, which are got up at his own expense. "I have also examined with much interest Mr. Margry's collections. He has a large amount of unpublished matter re- specting Lasalle and other discoverers, of a very curious and valuable character, and, among other things, the original manu- script of the cosmography of Alphonse de Xaintonge (of which a mutilated fragment is given in Hakluyt). This is a folio of 500 pages, full of large and small maps, and is of the date of 1545, I think. Its existence has been known for some time, but not its contents until Mr. Margry examined it. I believe he has written you on the subject. He has also a manuscript journal of Lasalle's visit to the U. S. and Mexico, with a large 10 146 GEORGE PEBKIKS MABSH. [Chap. VI. number of plans, and quite spirited drawings of objects of nat- ural history, executed by Lasalle in water colors. " Can't you spare three months' time and money enough to come out here next summer ? . . ." These extracts indicate how Mr. Marsh occupied such por- tions of his two or three weeks in Paris as could be spared from the preparations indispensable for a life in Constantinople — a city which at that day furnished few of the comforts of West- ern civilization. But no interests or occupations could make him unmindful of the political condition of France. To him, as a passing observer, the republic seemed suiBciently prosper- ous, and gave no sign of an approaching collapse, though the recent French operations in Italy had created in his mind a profoirad distrust and dislike of Louis ISTapoleon. Still, he had little opportunity of learning more than could be gathered from the judgment of the foreign residents, and that was generally favorable. The public authorities were certainly very courteous. An exception was made in Mr. Marsh's favor to the rule pre- vailing at that time, of non-admission to the gallery on Mon- days ; a chaise-roulante was provided by the director, and the invalid wife, carried up the long flights of stairs in the arms of her husband, had an opportunity of spending many hours of uninterrupted quiet among the miracles of art there accumu- lated. As soon as the necessary arrangement could be made, the party set off for Italy, via Marseilles, all thought of Germany being given np, partly because of the unsettled political condi- tion of that country, and more because Mr. Marsh, though he had the express authorization of the State Department for delay, felt it his duty to reach his post at the earliest day possible. The railway then extended only a short distance beyond Paris, and the journey to Chalons, though interesting, was very fatigu- ing. Most of it was performed in poor carriages, hired from day to day, the diligence having been found impracticable on 1849-1850.] FROM MAESEILLES TO FLOKENCE. 147 account of its hours of travel and other inconveniences. At Chalons a little steamer was ready to leave for Lyons, from ■which place the steamboat and railway communication was complete to Marseilles.* On arriving at the latter town, Mr. Marsh went at once on board the boat that was about to leave for Genoa. The wind was high, and the sea very rough, but, worse than all, the Lilliputian accommodations of the diminu- tive steamer were in a most untidy condition. These circum- stances, and a letter from Captain Long, of the United States Navy, informing him that the orders given the " Mississippi " to take him to Constantinople could not be carried out until after the completion of certain repairs at Toulon, decided him to make the journey leisurely by vettnirino. This was done, and so entirely to the satisfaction of all interested that no other mode of travel was attempted, with the exception of the few miles between Pisa and Florence (the only line of railway then in operation in Italy), until they reached ISTaples. This journey through Italy was an almost uninterrupted succession of pleasurable excitements. The little contretemps inseparable from travelling were met by Mr. Marsh with such perfect good-humor that there were no scenes with hotel- keepers or vetturini, no disputes with guides or porters. It was not that he never had occasion to remonstrate, but when he did so, it was with a calm reasonableness that always commanded a respectful reply, and generally insured redress. His patience in answering the questions of his travelling companions was in- exhaustible, and they were in a constant state of surprise at his * In a letter to the Rev. Mr. Biewend, his Washington pastor, speaking of this part of the jonmey, Mr. Marsh says : " . . . Tell Mrs. Biewend that I, who generally shrink with pain at the sound of a church-bell, was delighted with that of the great cathedral at Lyons — I have seldom heard any music so grand. . . . We were particularly interested in Avi- gnon, not only from its historical associations, but because it was the first walled town we had seen, and the first region where we met the olive. We also visited the Pont dn Gard, and Nismes and Aries with their noble amphitheatres and other remains, and the impression produced upon me by these astonishing monuments of the power and greatness of Rome is not likely to be obliterated by anything I may see here- after." 148 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Ohap. VI. seeing a thousand things unnoticed by them until he pointed them out. The pictures and statues seemed as familiar to him as if he had frequented the great galleries from childhood, and he never forgot the precise place and position in which he first saw those that gave him most pleasure. During his whole European life, it was a source of serious annoyance to him that every change in the directorship of the museums of the Conti- nent brought about a change in the position of the objects of art contained in them, so that when he had perhaps half an hour in which to revive an old impression, the priceless mo- meats were wasted in a vain search. The natural features of the country afforded him no less enjoyment than did its artistic wealth, and in reply to an expression of regret that Italy was not in her summer beauty, he said : " We can see the configu- ration of surface much better as it is — our geography and geol- ogy will be the stronger for the winter frosts." But he was far from confining his observations to external nature and the creations of art. The people of Italy excited his liveliest inter- est, and he lost no opportunity of studying their character and condition. He was greatly struck by their almost incredible quickness of comprehension, by their ready and sincere sympa- thy with every form, of human suffering when not under the influence of some violent passion, by their patient endurance of physical privations, and, perhaps most of all, by the strength of their patriotism, which still believed that their Italy, though so cruelly betrayed by the Pope, and trampled upon by France, would one day live again and be free — a nation among the na- tions. It was this faith, which was so general among all classes of the Italians, and for which so many had shown themselves ready to die, and more than die, that in 1849 inspired Mr. Marsh with a like faith, from which he never afterward swerved, however dark the prospect. In Florence he found the Grand Duke Leopold — just re- called by his confiding subjects, after his weak flight in 1848 — governing, at least nominally, under the constitution he had 1849-1850.] AT EOME ANT) NAPLES. 149 solemnly sworn to observe in 1847, though he had faithlessly returned with an Austrian army at his back. The Tuscans were trying to believe in his good intentions, and, compared with the rest of Italy, were quiet and hopeful. But the spirit of liberty was awake there also, and it was easy to foresee that, as soon as the true character of the reinstated duke was known, he would be driven out a second time in scorn. Here, in addition to the pleasure derived from the natural and artistic charms of this most fascinating city, Mr. Marsh had the great satisfaction of meeting his old school-mate, Hiram Powers, then at the height of his reputation. When he arrived at Rome, preparations were going on for the reinstatement of Pope Pius IX., then at Gaeta, within his revolted capital. French soldiers swarmed everywhere. Pew Komans were seen in the streets, and the city presented a most gloomy aspect. The reserve of fear was apparent in the inter- course of the people with each other, but to Englishmen and Americans they talked freely, and freely threatened retribution. At Naples the appearance of things was somewhat different. Though the Neapolitans had been no less foully betrayed by their sovereign, yet they had suffered less in the replacing of their yoke of bondage, and being by nature more light-hearted than the Komans, there were fewer outward signs of sullen dis- content. Of bad government and extreme misery and degra- dation, however, there were indications more than enough. An incident that occurred a couple of days after Mr. Marsh's ar- rival in that city impressed him strongly. A young man, em- ployed in the bureau of the hotel where the American party had taken rooms, was arrested by a body of police and taken to prison, his half-distracted mother following him with her cries. The landlord, when questioned, declared that he knew no other reason for the arrest than that the young man wore his beard after a fashion against which a police-order had been issued. He had, he said, warned his clerk that, if he did not change it, it might bring him into trouble. A few hours later a distribu- 150 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. VI. ' tion of alms to the poor of the quarter took place directly be- fore the windows of the same hotel. It was a monthly dole on the part of the Prince of Syracuse, and consisted of a heavy sack of copper coin. This sack was brought by servants, and the contents tossed by handfuls to the crowd of beggars, who seemed to spring out of the ground by fifties at every new shower. In a few minutes the scene became horrible. The stronger fell upon the weaker, the younger upon the older ; they pushed, they struck, they pulled off their heavy wooden shoes and beat each other mercilessly about the head ; old men and old women fell bleeding on the street ; others, with loud outcries, held out their open palms to the dispensers of the charity, who lifted up the empty sack on a long pole to show there was no more. Then followed still wilder confusion. Those who had obtained nothing seized their more fortunate neighbors by the throat or hair, as they could, and endeavored to force them to divide the spoil. Shrieks, curses, and groans were all mingled together until the sights and sounds were no longer to be borne. In the meantime a group of police-officers stood on the oppo- site side of the street, apparently regarding the spectacle with quiet amusement. There was no word or act of interference on their part. While waiting for the " Mississippi," at Naples, Mr. Marsh had an opportunity of witnessing a remarkably brilliant eruption of Yesuvius. There were some indications of a serious disturb- ance the day he first visited the crater, but a day or two after, the lava broke forth on the northern side in a considerable cur- rent, and he immediately hurried to a point as near its source as he thought quite safe. On his return to Naples that even- ing, and while he was relating to his family what he had seen, a loud explosion, that seemed to shake the hotel to its founda- tions, brought everyone in an instant to the windows. There was the so often described pine-tree shape, hovering like a spectre over the mountain, its trunk, as seen through a glass, formed of a jet of liquid fire, mingled with flying, red-hot 1849-1850.] ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS. 151 stones, and soaring a thousand feet into the air, while its broad- spreading crown of pitchy smoke was every now and then seamed through and through with forked lightning. The northern profile of the mountain was bordered by a flame-col- ored band which marked the line of the lava-current, and the blue waters of the bay were changed to a livid crimson. In a few minutes every guest in the hotel was on his way to get a nearer view of the magnificent spectacle. Some set out for the observatory, intending to ascend the southern, unbroken side of the cone, if that should be found practicable ; others, and Mr. Marsh among these, resolved to go round on the northern side, and so approach as near the foot of the fiery stream as should seem prudent. On the way thither it appeared as if half the city had joined the procession, and the excitement increased as they ncared the broad, beautiful vineyards, over which the glowing mass was now slowly but irresistibly pouring. Hundreds of the peasantry were trying with long, iron-hooked poles to snatch out and save for fuel the crackling branches of trees already in the embrace of the devouring flood, and hundreds more stood para- lyzed with dismay at what had already happened and might still happen. Mr. Marsh timed the progress of the crescent- shaped current, which had already travelled a distance of about five miles, and found it was then advancing at the rate of three feet the minute only, though there was now and then a short, sudden leap forward, like the spring of a wild beast. The lava here, though still impressible, had become comparatively firm, and was pushed onward, by the incandescent waves behind, in the form of an almost perpendicular wall of solid fire, from fif- teen to twenty feet in height. Ashes were falling in a thick shower, and the ground trembled under foot as if from a con- tinuous earthquake. The probable fate of a little church, not far from the lava-track, was in eager discussion when Mr. Marsh left to return to the city, and the next morning he learned that not only the church had been destroyed, but that the very road over which he had driven was completely overfiowed an hour 152 GEORGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. VI. afterward. But Vesuvius itself was forgotten in the sad news that came from the party who had ascended the cone. Five persons had been killed by the falling stones, and among them a young American navy-officer of high promise, Midshipman Bayard. This event cast a gloom over all further excursions to the mountain, though Mr. Marsh continued to visit it every day while the eruption lasted. Enough has been shown of his interest in all the phenomena of nature to prove how pro- foundly he was affected by this novel and tremendous manifes- tation of her power. On February 15th the family party embarked on board the steam frigate " Mississippi " for Constantinople. The voyage was as agreeable as the unbounded courtesy and kindness of Captain Long and his officers, added to a smooth sea, broken by sunny shores and islands thronged with classic associations, could make it. Early on the morning of February 22d the "Mississippi" swept round the romantic little promontory of Seraglio Point into the Golden Horn, and the world-renowned capital of Caesars and Sultans came suddenly into full view. It was a sight never to be forgotten by those who beheld it, and as little to be described. To one looking up from the water on which the feet of the beautiful city were resting, her head, crowned by a thousand domes and minarets that glittered in the sunrise like burnished gold, seemed to touch the very sky. A few minutes more and the heavy guns of the frigate gave the customary salute, and the forts replied with a volley whose echoes were repeated and repeated by the near-encir- cling hills — crash after crash, peal after peal — all dying away at last in a most bewildering harmony. "Welcoming friends and officers of ceremony soon came on board, and by noon the whole party were on their way to the principal hotel of Pera. The warning that the beautiful city would not be found " all glorious within " was more than justified. The weather had changed suddenly ; the snow was falling fast on a layer of mud several inches deep, spread over coarse, irregular, and often 1849-1850.] AEEIVAL AT PEEA. 153 sharply pointed stones that bore the name of pavement, and over or, rather, through this the little company and their numerous escort made their way, as they best could, up the incredibly steep streets so picturesque from the water. Car- riages had been provided for the occasion, and entered without misgiving, but the occupants, finding the horses could not pos- sibly perform the duty assigned them, soon took to their feet, and the invalid alone remained in the lightest of the vehicles, one man pushing vigorously from behind, and another standing at each wheel, endeavoring to maintain something like a safe equilibrium. Mr. Marsh gave a glance at the grand apartment into which he was ushered at the hotel, and seeing there were no means of wanning it, asked for a smaller one with a fire, but was told there was neither fire-place nor stove in any of the rooms. A large, highly ornamented brazier was brought in, but the light clouds of sweet incense that rose from it did not do away with the mischief of the coal-gas to one not accus- tomed to it, and for the next fortnight the newly arrived Min- ister and his family sat, for the most part, in their sea-wraps. The season was, in fact, a very extraordinary one, most unlike any experienced by them afterward, and there was little com- fort until Mr. Marsh settled himself, near the middle of April, in a house at Therapia, on the banks of the Bosphorus, about twelve miles from Constantinople. In the meantime his official presentation to the Sultan had taken place, with the usual circumstance of oriental pomp and ceremony. The address was written in English, and so handed to the court interpreter, but, at the special request of that func- tionary, it was delivered in French, and the very gracious re- ply of the Padishah was in the same language.* * In 1863, while Mr. Marsh was Minister to Italy, Count Sauli, then a very old man, gave an amusing history of his own presentation, in 1835, as Minister from the Court of Sardinia to the then reigning Sultan. In enumerating the titles of his own sovereign, in his address to the Padishah, he inadvertently retained that of King of Jerusalem and Cyprus. He had no sooner uttered these words than the Grand Viz- ier demanded, in the rudest language, how the Christian dog dared thus to insnlt the 154 GEOKGE PEKKINS MAESH. [Chap. VL Mr. Marsh had been welcomed most cordially, not only by the American residents at Constantinople, but by the whole diplomatic corps. His reputation as a statesman and scholar had preceded him in a way that would have been highly preju- dicial to a man whose claim to it was less well founded. As it was, the consideration with which he was everywhere treated, though holding a very inferior actual rank in the corps, was most gratifying to him and his friends. The duties he found himself charged with were of a far more important character than lie had anticipated. It is true he had none of those pe- culiar responsibilities that rested on the representatives of the great European powers at the Turkish capital, so long the ac- knowledged world-centre of diplomatic negotiation, craft, and intrigue, but he was not slow in perceiving that he was in a po- sition where to " do justly " required extreme caution, and where he must personally examine every question that came before him as far as lay in his power. He felt keenly, at first, his want of knowledge of the Turkish language, for he had not been in the habit of leaning upon others in such matters, but the coniidence gradually inspired by Mr. John Porter Brown, his dragoman, whose mistakes, if he committed any, could al- ways be rectified by reference to some one of the learned American missionaries * then at or near Constantinople, soon Lord of the whole East ? The unfortunate Minister made the best apology in his power, and was afterward allowed to finish his speech. The Commander of the Faithful then opened his august lips to reply, but at that instant a spring was touched, the water gushed out from a fountain in the apartment, and not a sound ex- cept its dashing flow reached the ears of the infidel, who was held unworthy to hear the voice of the Vicegerent of the Prophet. * The body of American missionaries at this time in Turkey was composed chiefly of men of rare attainments, as well as of high character and of much practi- cal ability, and some of them possessed probably as thorough a knowledge of the races among whom they were living as it is possible for civiliiied man to acquire of the semi-civilized. To confirm this statement it will only be necessary to name Drs. Eli Smith, Goodell, Schauf&er, Hamlin, Riggs, Thomson, Calhoun, Van Dyck, Van Lennep, and Mr. H. A. Homes, though many more might be added to the list. The last-named gentleman resigned his post in the missionary service about the time of Mr. Marsh's arrival at Constantinople, and as he was then comparatively at leisure, the new Minister was the more able to profit by his great knowledge of the country, united, as it was, to a most cautious judgment. 1849-1850.] SIR STEATFOED CANNING. 155 put him at ease on that point. Besides, most of the real busi- ness that devolved upon him was necessarily transacted either in Greek, French, German, or Italian, where he needed no in- terpreter. Some of the duties of a Minister at Constantinople are of a character peculiar to that court. He is empowered by treaty to exercise judicial functions, to a certain extent, where the in- terests of Americans are at stake, and this not infrequently im- poses a weighty and trying responsibility. It is no easy mat- ter to distinguish the real right and wrong in these business transactions, in which very likely neither party has been over- scrupulous, and in such cases Mr. Marsh found his legal knowl- edge no less indispensable than his linguistic. Between Mr. Marsh and his colleagues the friendliest pri- vate relations were soon established and always maintained, though, as will appear, diplomatic questions of much delicacy and diflSculty sometimes arose. The most distinguished of these colleagues* was unquestionably Sir Stratford Canning, afterward Lord Stratford de KedclifEe. To his powerful influ- ence the Christian subjects of the Porte were largely indebted for the protection of their civil and religious privileges, and the Protestant missionaries of all nations looked to him as the special guardian of the rights of their converts. But the rights and privileges of the American missionaries were so often closely linked with those of the native Christians that frequent consultations between the British Ambassador and the Ameri- * Sir Stratford Canning had acted as British Ambassador ad interim in Spain as early as 1812, when he was but twenty-five years old. His diplomatic life, however, was chiefly spent in Turkey, where he was British Ambassador, with only now and then a short break, for thirty-three years. He died, widely honored and revered, in 1879, at the advanced age of ninety-three, his remarkable inteUectual vigor little impaired to the last The title of Viscount Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, acquired in 1853, became extinct at his death, as he left no sons. Among the foreign representatives then at the Porte were Count Stiirmer, Inter- nnntio from Austria ; Mr. Titoff, Ambassador from Russia ; Count Portales, from Prussia- General Aupio, from France; Count Souza, from Spain. Mr. Blondell represented Belgium ; Mr. Mortmann, Holland ; Baron Tecco, Sardinia. Many changes in the embassies and the legations took place soon afterward. 156 GEOEGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Chap. VI. can Minister Resident were absolutely necessary, and in this way they soon learned to know and esteem each other thor- oughly. The most painful duties that met Mr. Marsh at the begin- ning of his diplomatic life were connected with the refugees from all parts of Europe, who, after the abortive revolutions of 1848, had found among the Turks that shelter so scantily afforded them by Christian Europe. The most numerous of these were of course Hungarians, but all alike, of whatever na- tion, looked for sympathy, for intercession with the Porte in their favor, and even for pecuniary relief, to the representative of the great Republic of the West. It would be impossible to exaggerate the amount of distress there witnessed, nor would it be easy to do justice to the efforts of the Turkish Government to relieve it, though some of the leaders of the unsuccessful uprisings actually complained to Mr. Marsh that the appro- priation made them by the Porte was " not suited to the rank they had held in their own country." But if there were some unreasonable expectations, there were many more instances of pitiable misery. The American missionaries made personal and pecuniary sacrifices far beyond their means, and the Ameri- can Legation did not fail to exert itself to the utmost in behalf of these unhappy fugitives, its chief sparing neither time nor the slender material aid at his command. Almost his first of- ficial act was to address a note to the Porte, offering an asylum in the United States, and a free passage thither, to the so- called internes then at Bronssa, including Kossuth and about thirty other of the more distinguished refugees. This offer could not then be accepted, a proposal previously made by the Sultan to Austria being still under consideration at that court. The following letters will show something of the public and private life of this summer at Therapia. The first is from Mr. Marsh to his youngest brother, Charles, and is dated July, 1850. 1849-1850.] LETTER TO CHARLES MARSH. 157 " A few days after the return of the Sultan from his late visit to the Archipelago, the foreign ministers at Constantinople were notified by a circular from Ali Pacha, Minister of Foreign Affairs, that His Majesty would receive them, with their drag- omans, ' a I'occasion de son retour ' at the palace of Tchere- gan, on Monday the 1st of July (1850), at six d la Turqae. The Turkish day, like the Italian, commences at sun-set, but the hours, instead of running on to twenty-four as in Italy, are divided into two series of twelve hours each. Six a la Turgue therefore, as the sun now sets at about 7^, corresponds nearly to half-past one, p.m. At the appointed hour, the chiefs of the legations with their respective dragomans, but without other attendants, assembled at tlie palace and were received in one of the detached buildings by Ali Pacha. The palace of Tchere- gau (accent on the last syllable) lies on the water's edge, on the European shore of the Bosphorus, three or four miles above Constantinople, and is now the winter residence of the Sultan, Seraglio Point having been quite abandoned since the destruc- tion of the Janissaries, on account of the sad and superstitious associations connected with that tragical event, of which the great court of that palace was a principal theatre. The palace of Tcheregan is of wood, and consists of a square central build- ing of some architectural pretention, and two long, plainly built, detached wings, with several courts and smaller indepen- dent structures. Like all Turkish houses, the palace is low, having but two stories the ground floor included, and though the general effect is rather pleasing to the eye, it is, in the in- terior especially, but a sorry edifice. The ministers residing at Therapia and Buyukdere (with the exception of the British Ambassador) were conveyed to the palace in the steamers of the Kussian and French embassies, by the courteous invitation of Mr. Titoff and Gen. Aupic. The ministers residing at the other suburban villages came in their official caiques, and all of course in gala uniform. The room in which we were received by Ali Pacha is a plain apartment, cheaply furnished a I'Euro- 158 GEOKGE PERKINS MAESH. [Ohap. VI. p^enne, with sofas, chairs, etc., and had nothing to distinguish it as oriental except the divan on the water side, which was covered with cloth of silver, or perhaps glass, with raised fig- ures in black velvet. Kiamil Bey, Introducteur des Ambassor deurs, instructed us as to the order of precedence (my place being between the Sardinian Minister and the Persian Ambas- sador) and we then followed Ali Pacha, in the order of rank, to the north wing of the palace. A guard of perhaps one hundred soldiers, in plain scarlet jackets and white pantaloons, was drawn up in the court and saluted us, as we passed, by presenting arms. Pages were stationed at the angles of the staircase, and perhaps forty more arranged in a line in the antechamber. Besides these and three Turkish ofi&cers who accompanied us into the audience hall, the Sultan's private secretary who received us at the door, and the Minister of For- eign Affairs, no other guards, officers of ceremony, attendants or spectators were visible. There was no noise, no giving of orders, no bawling announcement, and everything was as quiet as at a visit at a private house. The only attempt at show is in the corps of pages. These are young men, twenty or twenty- five years old, wearing scarlet frock coats embroidered in front with heavy gold cord, and white pantaloons. They wear a plumed casque and are armed with a sort of hvpennis, the stafE of which weapon is six feet long with a lance head, and the two opposite blades somewhat resemble a hatchet in shape. The plumes are very large, white tipped with blue, aud either straight or curved and waving like the crest of an ancient hel- met. From the antechamber we passed directly into the Hall of Audience. This is an apartment forty feet square or more, of proportionate height, with five windows on the water side and as many on the north. The ceiling, which is pannelled and cheaply decorated, is supported by two ranges of white Corin- thian columns with gilt capitals and lists, in the intercolumnia- tions of which are placed two blue and white porcelain and two cut glass vases on plain white pedestals. The floor is matted. 1849-1850.] LETTER TO CHAELES MARSH. 159 The windows are lightly draped with white muslin delicately embroidered with vines and flowers in colors, with a festoon of red white and blue silk at the top. The only furniture is a mirror of good size tawdrily framed, with a few European chairs and sofas arranged round the walls. To omit nothing, I would add that the frames of these last are gilded and that they are covered with figured red and white satin. " The Sultan received us standing before a plain sofa at the upper end of the room, and we took our places in a semicircle around him, the British Ambassador at our right (the Sultan's left) and the three Turkisli officers at the opposite extremity of the curve. My place happened to be at the crown of the arch just opposite His Majesty (medium tenuere beati) and my Per- sian friend being next me the East and the West were brought into conjunction at the pole, which geographico-astronomical puzzle I commend to the consideration of persons curious in coincidences. The Persian wore a pelisse of light figured silk over a tunic of the same material with trousers, and a fine shawl about his waist. He wore neither sword nor dagger, and his only ornament was a diamond decoration. A conical cap of black lambskin two feet high, which he did not take off even in the presence, completed his costume, and as he is a tall man of good figure and fine (dyed) black beard, I thought him as imposing a personage as the best of us. The Sultan wore the fez (a plain scarlet cap with a black or very dark blue silk tas- sel) a frock coat of dark blue cloth bordered with narrow gold embroidery and loose white pantaloons. His sword belt was studded with diamonds, as was also the hilt of his sabre, the scabbard of which was of black leather with broad gold ferrules. The decoration suspended to his neck was the richest assem- blage of gems I have ever seen and the centre stone is I sup- pose among the half dozen finest diamonds in the world. It is a table diamond of an oval form, more than an inch in length and a little less in breadth. He had I believe some other dec- orations, but the splendor of this quite eclipsed the rest. 160 GEORGE PEEKIKS MARSH. [Chap. VI. " Our places being taken, the Sultan in a low voice addressed a few words of compliment to the corps, through Sir Stratford Canning as our Dean. This was translated into French by Ali Pacha, and replied to by Sir Stratford, in the same language, for himself and his colleagues. The Sultan then addressed Sir Stratford Canning individually, and then each member of the corps in succession, Ali Pacha still acting as interpreter. Of course his communications were not very weighty, and the re- plies, mine at least, not more so. At first the Sultan was much embarrassed, so much so indeed that he could not get his hand- kerchief out of his pocket and was obliged to use his hand, which trembled visibly, instead, but upon the whole he got through very well. After he had gone around the circle we bowed and retired backwards. The Grand Yizier then re- ceived us in another apartment and after a short interview with him we withdrew. The ceremony I have described is an innovation even on the later Ottoman ceremonial code, this be- ing the first time that a Sultan has addressed the members of the diplomatic corps individually. " Sultan Abdul-Medjid is now (1850) twenty-seven years old. His countenance bears an expression of great gentleness, almost sadness, (though his eye has an occasional twinkle which betrays a relish for fun) and is very far from being unintellect- ual. It is, I believe, a true index to his character. He is a man of fair abilities and of a truly noble and generous temper. Excess of liberality seems to be almost his only fault, and un- like as he is to a long line of cruel predecessors, he is almost worshipped by both Turks and Christians throughout his em- pire." Mrs. Marsh writes to Mrs. Estcourt from " Thebapia, on the Bosphobus, Aug. 4th, '50. " You will, I doubt not, be surprised at the news I have to give, for I am surprised to have it to tell. Dr. W , our family physician at Washington, arrived here a few weeks ago, 1849-1850.] ME8. MABSH TO MKS. ESTCOUET. 161 and has had the eloquence to persuade sister L to return with him to America as his wife. The attachment has been one of long standing, but some two years ago, when the thing was first proposed, our parents expressed a feeling of regret that L should marry & foreigner, (for this was the only ob- jection to be made) and she yielded to their wishes. But the presence of the Doctor here revived her old fancy, and we none of us thought it worth while to press such an objection further. If there are no greater differences in character and tempera- ment than those arising from difference of nationality, one may reasonably hope for domestic happiness, and I trust the newly- married pair will have their full share of it. The Dr. has an excellent repntation in his profession, and his strong passion for Geology and Botany has enabled him to make valuable contri- biitions to those sciences, as Humboldt acknowledges in his Ansichten der JVatur. After all, though, I think it was his uncommon musical accomplishments that went farther than anything else to win my sister's heart. They were married on the morning of the 23d of July, and set off immediately to visit the Dr.'s family in Germany. They went by way of the Danube, and we had very interesting letters from them dated at Galatz, parts of which I long to send you, but this time have too much to say for myself to allow time and space for copying. On the steamer with them was a Turkish pacha, with his Harem. He had just been made governor of one of the Provinces, and was on his way to take possession of his new dignity. They found him most courteous, as were also the ladies, who made L some trifling but very pretty presents. Altogether my sister was quite delighted with her new acquaintances. We cannot well hear from the ' happy couple ' again until they reach Vienna. They expect to be ready to embark for the United States the latter part of Sept., and I hope will be quietly settled in Washington by the beginning of winter. Now I liear you pitying me for my loss, and indeed it has been hard enough to part with her, but girls will do so, you know, and I 11 162 GEOEGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. VI. could never have been separated from her at a time vrhen I should miss her less. I have with me two very dear friends, just like sisters, or as nearly so as the dearest of friends can be, and Mr. Marsh happens to have more leisure than usual, so that I am never necessarily alone. The ladies of the diplomatic corps are also very kind, and the missionaries of themselves make a pleasant little society. So you see there is much more ground for gratitude than for complaint. " But you will wish to know something of our home here. How I wish I could take you to it at once, instead of attempt- ing a description which will, at best, but give you a most in- adequate idea of it. Will you not try to come out to this land of Faerie, while we are here, and take a look at the Turks be- fore every turban and yashmak have disappeared ? I know you will come if you can, for you like out of the way things as well as I do, and I would not for the world have missed the sight of this strange country and people. But to my description. "We will suppose that our fairy boat, with its furnishings of scarlet and gold, or what looks like it, (of which boat more anon) has just come up from old Stamboul with yon and us, and touched at the quay which alone separates our house from the Bosphorus. The wide front door, looking towards the water, is thrown open by a Bulgarian porter, who will certainly fall down and em- brace Mr. Marsh's knees unless the latter is quick-thoughted and active enough to prevent it. The broad hall into which we enter, and which runs through the whole house, is termi- nated by another door of the same size and exactly opposite the one through which we came in. This door opens on the garden, which is cut as it were out of the very hillside, and is extremely pretty. It consists of foiw terraces, the first being planted with box, laurels, pomegranates and many beautiful flowering shrubs. Orange and lemon trees are growing in large vases to be taken under shelter in case the winter proves a severe one, the roses are in great variety and profusion (though not more so than at "Washington) and vases containing plants rare even here line the 1849-1850.] MES. MARSH TO MRS. ESTCOTJRT. 163 alley which leads, by a flight of six or eight steps, to the second terrace. This is also prettily laid ont, with ornamental trees and arbours covered with jessamine, roses, etc., but here the useful is combined with the beautiful, for there are apricots, quinces, jujubes, cherries, etc. The third terrace is twenty feet above the second, is narrower and covered with large pine trees, among them the umbrella pine so common in Italy. The wall which supports this terrace is thickly overgrown with ivy, as are also the high walls which sustain the sides of the garden. The fourth terrace is very narrow, with only a number of tall, dark cypresses growing upon it, and contrasting finely with the pines below. At the back of this terrace the vineyard begins, runs up and over the hill, and down into the valley below. The grapes of this vineyard are said to be of a superior quality, including many varieties, but such fruits as are now in season seem to us lacking in flavour as compared with those of New England, l^otice that little thatched excrescence in the middle of the vineyard. It might be a dog-kennel, but it is in fact the sleeping place of the gardener from the time the grapes begin to ripen until after the vintage. There he is, just emerging from the covered pen he has been constructing for himself, and will pass us in a moment, but at a very respectful distance. Look well at him. He is a Croate, and was in the service of the proprietor of our house when we took it. His master recommended him in the strongest terms for his fidelity, and assured Mr. Marsh that, if he desired it, this man would most effectually avenge him of an enemy for the reasonable sum of four piastres. This seemed to us a questionable virtue, but on being further assured that the fellow had unlimited influence over a band of about forty of his fellow-counti-ymen, who were the terror of the neighborhood for their housebreaking, and that we should be perfectly safe from their depredations if their chief did not lose his place, that if he did, it might be otherwise — we decided not to turn him off at present. Find- ing the poor creature had no bed, I ordered one to be pre- 164 GEORGE PEKKINS MAKSH. [Chap. VI. pared for him in the stable where it was said he slept, but he soon made an earnest request to the groom that it might be ' taken out of his way.'' He throws himself down on the straw, in the dress you see, and will never change it until it begins to fall to pieces. Fortunately he never enters the house. Every morning he comes to the kitchen door and receives his bread and coffee at the hands of the cook's assistant, and at every meal this is repeated. He seldom eats meat, black bread, onions, garlic and olives, being his favorite food. See, he is bending on one knee as he passes us, and he never comes nearer than this to any member of the family. All directions are given him through other servants. "But let us sit down in this arbour and turn our faces towards the Bosphorus. The evening is lovely (we have no others in summer) and the last rays of the setting sun are shed- ding a purple glow upon the hills on the Asian shore. The highest point we see is dignified with the grim title of ' The Giant's Mountain.' Here, the faithful tell us, Joshua, whom they believe to have been a mighty giant, used to sit and bathe his feet in the clear, swift current below. His head (it does not appear what has become of his body) is buried, they say, on the summit of the hill, and they point out the spot with every appearance of good faith, to this very day. The grave, if one may so call it, is perhaps fifteen feet in length, and five or six in width, neatly planted over with flowers and carefully watched by a number of priests. Just below, where yon see that dainty little mosque and those fine, far-spreading plantains overtopped here and there by clumps of sombre cypresses, is the Yalley of the Grand Seigneur, a lovely place where we often go, but which I cannot now wait to tell you about. Far- ther to the right, on that gently rising ground, is the beautiful kiosk, not yet finished, built by the Pacha of Egypt as a pres- ent to the Sultan. But your attention, I see, is distracted by the numberless boats that are passing so near us, and it is better to look at them while the day-light lasts. Observe this 1849-1850.] MRS. MAESH TO MES. ESTCOTJKT. 165 large, strong, b^t roughly built boat, loaded with all sorts of odd- looking people — Turks, Jews and Greeks, Armenians, Croates, Bulgarians, with their merchandise, — men, women and children in every variety of costume. The eight men who row it rise at every stroke upon their oars, but with their utmost effort they make very slow progress against the rapid current. Now see how quickly this pretty caique with its rich cushions, and crim- son carpet -whose deep, shining fringes almost touch the water, passes by the clumsy bazaar boat we were looking at before. It contains three or four Turkish or Armenian girls, (we are not near enough to distinguish which) with their attendant slaves. They are veiled, but the yashmak is very thin, and shades rather than conceals their features. This leads me to think they are Armenians, as the Turkish women seldom or never use so light a material for their veils. Their very gay European parasols also, evidently open at this hour rather for display than use, give them a coquettish air which Moslem ladies as a rule are too dignified to assume. " But here is another of these fairy boats just landing at our neighbor's quay. The high, stiff, black cap of closely curled lamb's wool, the pointed extremity of which is slashed off diagonally to show the bright silk lining, the long, flowing damask gown and the fine shawl about the waist, show at once that these are Persians. Their servants are taking food and cooking utensils from the boat, so they are evidently to dine with their Greek friend, which they could not do except from their own cuisine. Presently they will come out again, and per- form their ablutions and devotions in front of the house. But now bursts forth the song of the nightingale, the Bulbul of the Eastern poets — but I forget this is no novelty to you, though none of us Yankees have ever heard it except on these wonderful shores. The young moon is now shining over the tops of these dark cypresses, which, seen by this light, seem to be suspended in the air above our heads. The ivy waves gently in the night-wind that, coming down from the Euxine, 166 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. VI. is still elastic though laden with the perfume, of a thousand flowers. Truly I am ashamed to remember, while enjoying such a paradise of a summer climate, how bitterly we com- plained of the cold and disagreeable days of the early spring. "Now I must tell you of an interesting little incident that happened to us a few weeks since. We were running in our caique along the Asiatic shore, on our way to the valley of the Celestial Waters. Suddenly, while we were in the most lapid part of the current, a large bazaar boat came round a project- ing point of land, and struck our frail little barque with such a shock as well nigh flung us all into the Bosphorus. Fortu- nately we were not upset, but a large hole was broken in the bottom of the caique, and it was with difficulty kept afloat till we could reach the shore. In the mean time at least half a dozen followers of the Prophet were looking calmly on from the bank, without making the slightest movement to come to our assistance, thinking, no doubt, that we should sink or swim as Allah willed. Scarcely, however, had we comfortably set- tled ourselves on our boat-cushions upon the quay, when we received a message from a Turkish gentleman living near by, saying that he had witnessed the accident from his window, that his house was entirely at our disposal, and begging us to come in and refresh ourselves. This was an opportunity not to be lost, and we gladly accepted the invitation. The master of the house received us courteously at the door, and in a few minutes, we (Mr. Marsh, my sister, niece and self) were in- stalled on the divan in the gentleman's apartment. A pretty fountain was playing near the centre of the room, in the basin of which were standing branches recently broken from a bean- tiful flowering acacia new to us. The walls of the room were broken by niches in which were vases of flowers or painted rep- resentations of them. The flat portion of the wall was deco- rated with graceful wood-carving, representing vines, which had been once thickly gilded, and the ceiling was a very taste- ful wood-mosaic. Our host was a grave and dignified Osmanli 1849-1850.] MES. MAESH TO MBS. ESTOOUET. 167 of the old school. He was perhaps fifty-five years of age, rather pale, with dark hair and eyes, heard slightly grey, nose aquiline and a decidedly intellectual expression. He wore the full turban, flowing dress and yellow boots of the olden time, and, as he sat cross-legged but very erect on the divan, I thought I had seldom seen a more imposing figure. At our left hand sat his brother, a less striking person, but still not without dignity. A young Turk was also present as a visitor. He wore the fez, highly polished French boots, pantaloons also alia Franca, as they say here, and a very rich silk dressing- gown. In his long white fingers he held a chibouk, occasion- ally touching the pale amber mouth-piece to his lips. His large, languid, black eyes rested now and then upon our girls, but he was too well bred to stare. Mr. Marsh, who sat on the other hand of our host, took up a book lying by him on the cushions, and expecting to find it a copy of the Koran, was surprised to discover that it was a Life of Catherine II. of Kussia. He had not time to make out whether it was an original work in Turkish or a translation. In the mean time oranges were served to us, followed by water and napkins for our fingers. Then came coffee, and a little later, sherbet and sweetmeats. We noticed that this was not the usual order in which these refreshments had been presented to us in Turkish houses. All this time a lively conversation was kept up, in- telligible only through the gestures that accompanied it. It was amusing to see our grave host, when he thought we were not noticing him, making signs to persons outside the door to come in and see the giaours. When we rose to take our leave, the amiable master of the house offered us his caique to take us home, directing his servants at the same time to put into the boat the acacia branches we had so much admired. We returned to Therapia in the best of spirits, and in full charity with the Osmanli, notwithstanding his peculiar interpretation, or rather application, of the dogma of predestination. " Were it not for fear of tiring you, I would give you a 168 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Ohap. VI. second-hand account of an Armenian wedding, to which Mr. Marsh and the rest of our party went the other evening. But, as there will probably be a long interval between this and another letter from me, I will risk it, begging you to lay aside what follows for another reading. " The wedding took place, as is usual, at the house of the bridegroom's parents. The guests entered by a very pretty garden which was literally illuminated by a thousand lamps. The apartment where the ceremony took place was about sixty feet in length and thirty in width, furnished in the European style with the addition of the oriental divan. The diplomatic corps were nearly all present, and at midnight a procession of about forty boys, dressed in rich pelisses with collars embroid- ered with gold, and each bearing a lighted wax candle, entered the room chanting, and formed two lines not far from the cen- tre of the room. Two other older boys carried candles six or seven feet high, beautifully twined with flowers. I should liave said that after the first forty, and before the last two boys, walked four archbishops and eight priests. Their robes were magnificent — our party thought them more so than any we had seen in Italy. Immediately after the last two boys came the bride and bridegroom, the latter accompanied by his brother, and leading the former, who was attended only by a female servant. Kich embroideries and shawls had been laid upon the floor where the clergy and the bridal pair were to stand. The archbishops were provided with chairs, the priests seated them- selves on cushions. The bride was dressed d la Pa^isienne, white satin, rich lace veil, etc., but over her head was thrown, in addition, a curiously wrought web of gold, half way between a fringe and very close net. This entirely concealed her face and the upper part of her person. The bridegroom wore the modern Turkish costume, including the fez of course. The re- ligious ceremony, which consisted chiefly in an alternate chant between the clergy and the boys, lasted more than an hour, during which time the bride and bridegroom stood with their 1849-1850.] MKS. MAESH TO MES. ESTCOTTET. 169 foreheads touchvag. One person held a crucifix between them, and another tied their heads together, three different times, with a cord. Once they sat down for a few minutes, no doubt to rest. When it was over, the old Patriarch thanked the foreign ministers for the honor of their presence. Then the bride left the room, but i-eturned soon after, the golden covering having been taken off, to receive the congratulations of her friends and to join in the lively dance which followed. There were many Armenian costumes among the guests, but Mr. Marsh thought them very ungraceful, diamond girdles, bracelets, necklaces and tiaras, even, failing to make the whole effect pleasing. The supper was just what it might have been in England or America, and the company separated between six and seven. It would be an inexcusable omission not to speak of the beauty of the bride. She had very dark hair in profusion, and those large Eastern black eyes the poets have made us all dream about ; her face was pale and her expression languid but very interesting. Her features were not regularly beautiful, but altogether there was an air of delicate refinement about her which is by no means common among the women of this countiy. " Aug. 15. Eleven days have passed since I began this letter. I detained it a few days in order to send it by the usual con- veyance, and in the mean time we have a newspaper report of the death of our excellent President. We are now waiting for official confirmation of the sad news, which will no doubt come only too soon. It is a great blow to us, and we fear exposes the nation to serious perils. You also have met with a great national loss in the death of Sir Eobert Peel. I hope you have not the additional pain of losing in him a personal friend as weU. " As this letter is already too long to apologize for with any reasonable hope of pardon, I may as well add a little to my transgression and give a brief account of the Baise-pied at Bairam, but it shall be brief, I promise, and it must be second 170 GEOKGE PEKKINS MAESH. [Chap. VI. hand too, for I was not strong enough to witness it. The feast of Bairain was ushered in by heavy firing from all the batteries and men-of-war on the Bosphorus, and what that means you will never understand until you have heard the wonderful echoes from these hills. Then I will not write of the illumina- tion which has been described so many times, and the magic effect of which can only he imagined by those who know the architecture of Constantinople and the configuration of these winding, rolling shores. The Sultan came forth from his pal- ace at sunrise, and went with a grand procession to the mosque of Achmet. The long train of Pachas, priests and pages, led horses and servants, added to the military, made a fine display. On his return from the mosque he entered the open square of the palace at Seraglio Point. Here his throne was placed, and here all his principal officers, the chiefs of the priesthood, etc., came and did him homage. A few of the most distinguished he received standing, the second in rank sitting, but these were allowed to kiss his foot. The last who came up only raised the hem of his robe to their lips. The Padishah himself looked pale and wearied — even sad. When the ceremony was over he returned to his new palace in the same state in which he had left it." Mr. Marsh to Mrs. Estcourt. "Constantinople, Aug. 19th, 1850. " Deae Madam : " I was about to write you a long letter giving you an ac- count of the haise-joied at Bairam and so forth, but when I saw how much (good matter I hope) Mrs. Marsh had dictated for you, I remembered that you had eyes and forbore. I made diligent inquiry for Ourzon, but in this most unbookish place I could find neither the work, nor any one who had seen it. In fact the nearest approach I made to it was hearing of a man that had heard of it. I found after some time that it had been re-priated in America, and immediately ordered it. We have 1849-1850.] ME. MAESH TO MES. ESTCOUET. 171 just finished Layard, and are now looking over Robinson's Palestine. We hope confidently to visit Egypt and Syria next winter, if (this is a great peradventure) Mrs. Marsh is well enough. " I don't know what Mrs. M. has said about our summer climate at Therapia, but she can't have written more than is true. From the first of June, &very day, with not half a dozen exceptions, has been as fine as any day you ever saw in America. We live just wie der Fisch im Wasse^; and are un- conscious of any such thing as external temperature. We had not an inch of rain from April to August, and but one shower (a heavy one) since. We, all but my poor wife, were out in that, coming home from Constantinople, and were drenched jusqu^ aux os. The ground is parched, and the fruits are poor, savourless, but the air is moist enough. " So L has really left us — married and gone, as Mrs. Marsh has told you. We were all taken by surprise, and so, I believe, was L herself. The Dr. is highly respectable in his profession, has strong scientific tastes, and is a very accom- plished amateur musician. I trust the connection will prove a happy one. " This is the last place in the world for news, nothing hap- pens at all, and as to the sights they are indescribable, because, excepting the buildings, they owe all their effects to color. Form is nothing. I never before felt the importance of know- ing how to draw, with half the force I do here. I see a thou- sand things every day that I want to copy exactly, and of which no description can give any notion. As to human faces, I don't think this a good place for studies. You see multitudes of what are called good looking persons, but not many impos- sible people. In Northern Italy, on the contrary, you can't turn a corner but you meet an old crone out of Mrs. Kadcliffe or some yet more extravagant romancer. You are not satisfied on the evidence of your eyes that it is a real woman made up out of flesh and blood, and phosphate of lime (I think it is ; 172 GEOBGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. VI. ask some Doctor) like the rest of us, but are convinced it is some unearthly thing that is begging for a bajocco. " Among the Turks one does not see many idlers or much squalid poverty, but the Greeks are horrid wretches. They have, besides Sundays, a hundred or more fete days, and are regularly drunk on every one, and are then the noisiest brutes in the world. I don't wonder the Turks, who know no Chris- tians but those of Constantinople, are so proud of the morality of Islamism, but I am at the end of my sheet, and must break off till next mail. " With sincere respects to Col. Estcourt, " I am truly your friend, "Geo. p. Maesh." To Mr. Baird. " CoNSTAHTiKOPLE, Augnst S3, 1850. " My Dear Old Young Feienb : " I was fully resolved not to write you until I could say ' herewith I send a cask of fish ' but yours of July 7th which I have just received is irresistible. However, I don't anticipate much, for I have been collecting the small fish of the Bos- phorus for several weeks, and have now about 20 species, with ten or twelve individuals of a kind, in spirit. They will be sent to Smyrna next week and be shipped from there about the middle of September. The larger fish are interesting, but I don't know what to do with them. There are many lizards and salamanders, but the lizards are almost impossible to catch, and besides the people are afraid of them. Scorpions are not yet in season. They will be plenty in October. I have a good many snails and some, bestimi I suppose, that hibernate in summer. "What ignorant wretches ! It's a real hibernicism, isn't it ? I shall pick you up all the rubbish, I can, but I think I shall only send the fishes next week, and keep the rest to fill a box. The other day, I found my fisherman had caught a dozen fish whose sting is poisonous, and lest I should be hurt, 1849-1850.] LETTER TO ME. BAIED. 173 he had carefully cut ofE the dangerous part. I told him that was just what I wanted. So he has gone in search of more. I could do a great deal better for you, but the expense of every material, and of eveiy sort of work, is so enormous that the revenue of the Smithsonian wouldn't suffice for one naturalist at Constantinople. I have seen nothing so rich in ichthyology as the fish market of Naples. It is wonderful what a variety of curious sea-bred creatures they eat there. I thought of you every time I went out. I am rejoiced with my whole heart, at the success of both your translations. I hope to be at home at "Washington again some day, and shall be very happy to promote your views so far as I am able. Yon will be a great aid and comfort to Jewett,* and will find him a most efficient and able auxiliary. I learn from Garrigue, that he is entirely content with you, and hope it will be a lucrative affair for both of you. The text, I confess disappoints me. It is far from being full enough. Do you add anything ? Well, I claim a part of the credit. Qui facit per alium &c and didn't I re- commend you to Garrigue ? " I wish the Smithsonian would send out a few sets of me- teorological instruments to be used here and at other mission- ary stations. Our missionaries are a truly noble set of men, and as remarkable for talent as for devotion to their cause. There are many excellent observers among them, and whatever they undertake will be faithfully and thoroughly done. We mean to go to Egypt this winter, and back by way of Syria, if my poor wife is well enough. What particular thing do you want me to look for in those countries ? I wish I had two or * Charles Coffin Jewett, born at Lebanon, Me., in 1816, became Librarian and Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in 1848-49, having previously had much experience asLibrarian at Andover, and at Brown University as well, where he was also Professor of Modern Languages. Mr. Jewett's position in the Smithsonian became untenable when the Regents of that institution decided to disregard altogether the provision for a library, and after a vain struggle he f otmd himself compelled to rSign. He was Superintendent of the Boston Public Library from 1858 to 1868, and died at Braintree, Mass. , at the age of fifty-two. Mr. Marsh not only regarded Mr. Jewett as very learned in bibliography, bat esteemed him most highly as a man. 174 GEOEGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. VI. three barometers, I would carry one and observe at every rest- ing place, and by leaving one at Alexandria and another at Beiront I suppose some interesting results might be arrived at. We shall try to go to Petra (this is a little confidential) but I'm afraid Mrs. M. can't cross the Desert. Our objects are health, instruction, and econorrm/. This you'll think odd, but actually our expenses in travelling in the necessarily expensive way Mrs. M.'s health obliged us to do in Italy were much less than they are here. Pera is unquestionably the most extravagant city in the world and I am assured we can spend three or four months in travelling in Egypt, Arabia and Syria, with every convenience, for less money than we can stay here. " The natural history of the Bosphorus, though you would find it interesting and full of life, is not striking to an igno- ramus. There being no forests, and scarcely any trees, there are few birds. Hawks of various kinds abound. There are a few storks, two kinds of gulls very abundant and very tame, and the ame damnee by thousands. There are many fish, prin- cipally small, and quite a variety of shell fish, but in coleoptera, as I learn from Mr. Souza, the Spanish minister, who is a good entomologist, and others, it is the richest place in the world. I have saved a few remarkable ones, and I shall catch more. " We had the most delightful journey imaginable through France and Italy. Mrs. M. had a portable bed in the carriage. We travelled thirty miles or so a day, and stopped when and where we pleased. It was to me a great thing to see Italy in the winter. All the plants I particularly cared for, oak, silex, aloes, palms, olives, myrtles, umbrella pines, lemons and oranges, you know are evergreens. So I lost nothing in the way of vege- tation, and had the great advantage of seeing the real surface, and getting a clear notion of the remarkable physical geography of Western Italy, which in summer is hidden from the traveller by the vines, and the foliage of the deciduous trees. Vesuvius we saw in all its glory. I went to the mountain almost every day or night during the eruption, and of course got a good idea 1849-1850.] LETTER TO ME. BATED. 175 of all the phases of that sublime phenomenon. In short, I en- joyed more during the winter, than I thought 1 could in the rest of my life, and yet I have said nothing of pictures, and statues and ruins. I can't tell you how ranch I long to get back among these scenes, and I pray you to make any sacrifice — conscience excepted — to purchase the same pleasure. " We live at Therapia, a dozen miles from Stamboul, but still in Constantinople, the summer climate is a celestial one, that of winter horrid. Since the first of June almost every day has been equal to our very finest in America and I believe, with proper care, it is as healthful as it is agreeable. Pera is a wretched place, Stamboul would be very pleasant for winter, but we are not permitted to live there. The diplomatic circle as a whole is much superior to that at Washington, but we are so scattered that we do not meet often. There is some other good society, but in general the people know nothing but lan- guages which they have acquired at the cost of everything else. " The death of Gen. Taylor gave me a great shock. I knew it was likely to prove a great injury to me, but I believe I thought of some of my friends before myself. . . . " Only a week before the President's death, Mr. Clayton wrote me promising to try to have my compensation raised. This I am afraid is all over now. I can't at all judge what ef- fect Gen. T.'s decease will have on the slavery question, but 1 hope it will not complicate it more. I doubt not you will bring home rich treasures from your ISTorthern tour. Take care of yourself, my dear boy. You are destined to great things, if you do not exhaust yourself too early by overwork. Spirits of wine cost here as much as liquid gold. Send me a cask through Yasigi and Goddard of Boston, or anybody there in the Smyrna trade, to the care of the American Consul at Smyrna. Yon shall have it back with interest. Lucy is married and gone. Her husband is Dr. Wislizenus (of New Mexico memory). They are going to live at Washington, and you will have them for neighbours. I shall direct the cask of fish to the Smith- 176 GEOBGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. VI. sonian. Mrs. Marsh joins me in warmest love to dear Mary as well as to yourself. "Write soon. "Yours affectionately, " G. P. Maesh." " P. S. I have forgotten whether you know my very good friends the Gillisses. You know G. is gone to Chili and his wife, who is one of the three best women in the world, is alone. I hope you and Mary will see her." " CONSTAHTINOPLE, Oct. 19, 1850. " Deak Baied : " By the Lucinda Sears, which sailed from Constantinople for Boston, via Smyrna, on the 29th of September, I shipped a keg of fish &c., directed to the Smithsonian Institution. The keg is consigned to Yasigi and Goddard of Boston, and I have written to them to send it hy packet unless directed to the con- trary. If therefore you want any other disposition made of it, write to Yasigi & Goddard accordingly. Of the smaller fish of the Bosphorus, there are about 250 specimens, of more than 20 species. There are a few crabs, and some pisces minutissimi, which latter with a couple of tree frogs, and other oddities, are by themselves in cotton batting. I could get but one lizard, and he is minus a part of , the tail, but I shall do better next time. Some of the specimens have lost the back fin, the fishei-- man, ignorant wretch, cut it out because it was poisonous. I am sorely afraid the whole will spoil. They were in perfect order, and I had two tin cases prepared to pack them. On the morning of the 28th Sept. I was informed that the ship would sail that day, instead of remaining a week longer, as had been intended, and immediately packed the fish in the cases in fresh spirit. Unluckily, in spite of the pains I had taken to have the cases re-soldered at all the joints, they proved leaky, and I was obliged to use a cask which had not been opened with proper precautions. The cooper warranted it tight, but after all, it did transfuse a little. The Captain promised to set his cooper about it and I hope he will make it tight, but after all it is not 1849-1850.] LETTER TO ME. DRAKE. 177 impossible that I may lose my labour and you your specimens. I hope to be off for Egypt early in December, and intend to be absent thi-ee months. We had hoped to cross the desert to Syria, but I have now no idea that Mrs. Marsh can bear the journey. We intend to go up the Nile as far as Thebes, per- haps even to Assouan. . . ." A few weeks at the Turkish capital showed Mr. Marsh that his salary would be utterly inadequate to his support there in anything like a manner becoming his position, and he accord- ingly made a statement to that effect to the State Department, and to such of his private friends as he thought likely to have influence with the Government in favor of an increase in his pay- He also strongly represented to the Government at Wash- ington, to private friends, and especially to leading journalists, the wretched condition of the refugees in Turkey, and their justifiable hope of some relief from the Great Eepublic. This will explain the following extracts from a letter to Mr. Drake, dated Constantinople, August 3, 1860. " ... I am much obliged to you for the Tribune of July 3d with the accompanying slips, and especially for your kind and able defence of me contained in one of them. " . . . I have put my request for an increase of salary on two grounds: " I. Its inadequacy to support me at all . . .A few facts will show that this is true." Here follow statements with regard to rents, means of conveyance, such as boats, carriages, etc., expenses of various articles of provision, clothing, etc., and he adds : " I can truly say I never lived in so poorly a furnished house, never fared so badly, never enjoyed so few luxuries or even comforts as here. I have given no entertain- ments of any sort, incurred none but necessary expenses, and yet my household expenditures have exceeded my salary. You 13 178 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. VI. know our mode of life at Washington. It was humble enough. Our style of living here does not at all approach that at Wash- ington in either appearance or comfort, and upon the experi- ence of several years' housekeeping there (where we kept a strict' account of our expenses) I have no hesitation in pledging my honor that one can live in all respects more comfortably and more respectably in our Capital for $2,000 per annum, than he can here for $6,000. " II. The Turks are a rude people and measure th« conse- quence of foreigners by the style they live in." He then dwells upon the comparative lack of influence consequent upon his manner of living when measured by that of the other mem- bers of the diplomatic corps, or even by that of a private gen- tleman of any position, and he concludes this subject by saying : " the addition of a few thousand dollars to my salary would en- able me to accomplish more for the extension of our commerce, and all other American interests, in one year, than all my predecessors have done from the time of Mr. K to this hour. . . . "The Hungarian affair has injured lis with the Turkish government. The bluster made in Ifew York and elsewhere about the refugees and their oppressors, and the intercession of our government on behalf of Kossuth, led the Turks to suppose we would do something for them, but finding we are not dis- posed to put our hands in our pockets they give us little credit for sincerity or generosity. " Not long since the Minister of Foreign Affairs sent for me to say that the Turkish Government would send as far as Liverpool the refugees who wished to go to the United States if we would carry them from Liverpool to America. There were about two hundred who wished to go and it would have cost us $5,000 (one per cent, of what we gave Ireland three years ago) but I could not accept the proposal though I was truly ashamed to be obliged to decline it. From America not one cent has been received for these people nor have any of my 1849-1850.] LEAVE TO VISIT EGYPT. 179 numerous official or private letters on the subject been an- swered. The missionaries as well as myself have been sorely taxed by the refugees, poor as we all are. They call upon me every day. I cannot resist the appeals of a starving man whom the conduct of my own countrymen and government has encouraged to expect relief from me, and I have given to these people in small sums during the five months I have been here." A summer spent amidst scenes so novel and a nature so sur- passingly lovely, though it made large demands on Mr. Marsh's official tact and sagacity as well as on his sympathies, and was greatly clouded by the death of the President, still could not fail to be rich in enjoyment. But as the season advanced, and the chill, damp winds from the Euxine came down upon Thera- pia, it became plain that the frail-built, wooden house would be untenantable in winter, and it was equally plain that the lim- ited salary would not provide a second and comfortable home at Pera. This, then, seemed a favorable time for carrying out a plan that had much occupied his thoughts during the summer. When forced to leave Therapia, Mr. Marsh took lodgings for himself and family at a small hotel in town, and, stating the facts to the Department at Washington, obtained leave to pass the winter in Egypt. The conge was given in very cordial terms, and not limited as to time, Mr. Webster adding a private note to the effect "that while he was in Turkey he would be expected to obtain as thorough a knowledge as possible of the Turkish Empire, and so be best able to serve the interests with which he was charged." The following was written a few days before he left for Egypt : " Tour letters of relieved us from anxiety for you and Col. Estcourt personally, but you will not doubt our sympathy with you in your severe family affliction. For ourselves, we 180 GEOEGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. VI. have abundant reason to be thankful. ... I have indeed to lament the death of a very particular friend — Mr. Daniel Seymour * of New York, a man in the prime of life, and one * The following extracts from letters of Mr. Daniel Seymour to Mr. Marsh will show how lively a correspondent was missed afterward, not to speak of the deeper character of the loss : "London, May, 1849. . . . I've been tossing about on land for a little more than a month, after having been tossed about at sea as long, and go back to Paris to-night, having crowded as much into a week in London as if I had been born t'other side of Byrum river. I've been among all sorts of people and shades of opinion in Paris — one night among ultra-legitimists, the next in St. An- toine, like George Selwyn who made amends for going to see a man's head cut off one day, by going to see it sewed on the next. ... I don't know what cross devil made me leave your memoranda at home. Paris is, after all, the great mart for books (except Greek) and if you want any, and will advise me, I will get them for you. But I can't speak so encouragingly of the ' Rohan necklace,' whicli^ I think, was what Mrs. Marsh wanted. Perhaps yon may be able to get it at your limit when you come out, for it is said here that you are to go to Naples. Well, it's like Kent, bona terra, mala gens. Cultivate a habit of swearing. It carries off the bile, and you'll find use for it every moment of your ministry there. . . ." " Beklin, July, 1849. . . . If I knew Gen. Taylor, I would congratulate him on your appointment . . . Don't go down the Danube — our Magyar friends are out in force on its banks. I want very much to pay them a visit, and, like Dalgetty, ' take a turn with Bethlem Gabor or the Janissaries,' but haven't time. . . . We are in a state of siege here, and there's a great display of whiskered Pandours at every railway station and an extra-fuss with passports. Our king thinks and says with Louis XVI. ; ' Seul je ferai le Wen de mes peuples,^ but just now he is so busy pun- ishing the revolutionists and filling up Spandau that he has no time for such trifles. . . . Literature is dead and buried. . . . Hamburg you would like, but to get there now, you would be obliged to give up the ghost in a London steamer, I worked hard there some days between An^talten and aesthetic teas and friends of the human race like Anacharsis Clootz and myself and other genies incompris. . . . You'll end, I think by going from London to Paris, thence to Marseilles. ... In Paris I hope to meet you, for you couldn't pass the French capital without calling in person, '* "New York, May, 1850. , , Paris papers have informed me that 'Mr. Marsch' has been presented to the Brother of the Sun and Moon. What did the Commander of the Faithful talk about — railroads, or gutta percha ? I wouldn't give a farthing for a civilized Sultan in frock-coat and cap — he's a sort of roi constitutionel. No doubt your influence is paramount at court, and you can order the bowstring at pleasure. Please have it applied to some of your slaves when I come— I should like to see the experiment. Does eating with your fingers come handy to you all? Have Madame and Miss Crane fattened up to the Turkish standard of beauty? How many wives have you just now ? What are prime Circassians worth ? " Heavens ! what a life for a respectable New England gentleman to be leading ! Yon wear moustaches too, I suppose, and smoke ! . . , What can I tell you of myself — just nothing, I am neither in politics nor in business, so I stand and watch the current rushing past, and wonder what makes it hurry so, and how dirty it is. I spent a good part of last winter in Albany, on a thankless errand for a charity, and had my work ruined by a Whig Gov'or. Though my red is a fast color, I'm think- ing of turning Whig since I've come in contact with & Co. — such a bold set of banditti— Buoh gigantic destructiveness — it's quite refreshing in these ' ultimate, 1849-1850.] LETTER TO THE ESTCOUETS. 181 of the three or four most learned persons I have known. Though very retiring in his habits and of the shyest modesty, yet when the ice was once broken, as we say, he displayed most extraordinary colloquial powers. His conversation was an end- less flow of the most original and instructive matter, seasoned with perpetual sallies of wit as quaint, as individual and as de- lightful as that of Charles Lamb, and always leaving his friends in the best possible humour with themselves and all around them. We had formed a strong attachment to him, and we liave few friends whose removal would leave a blank in our social circle so difficiilt to fill. " The death of Gen. Taylor, to say nothing of its public aspects (which are very grave to those who understand the character of Mr. Fillmore) is to me a serious evil. Had he lived to the end of the session of Congress, I have reason to believe I should have had an augmentation of diplomatic rank, and, what in this very expensive city is of more consequence, of sal- ary. This is now out of the question. The same national calamity has also removed almost out of the reach of our cor- respondence — our excellent and accomplished friend. Col. Bliss, son-in-law of Gen. Taylor, whom I think I have mentioned to yon as one of the remarkable men of our country. He is or- dered to join his regiment in the South West, and I fear will find little future opportunity for the gratification of his social and literary tastes. " The last steamer brought us the news of L 's safe arrival at Washington, which is to be her future home. She went over in the same ship with the Yon Gerolts, who are re- formalized ages' — they are as above board, as unsorupnlous, as your Klephts. . . . By the way, how does Miss L get on ? Does she go shopping in the bazaars, and buy bowls of jewels — ^forty large basins full of emeralds and pearls ? Does she find the yashmack becoming, and do they make cheese-cakes without pepper? . . . Wait till you come back — you'll be punished for having set your heart on strange gods by a perpetual hankering after European vanities — probatum est. . . . You quite forgot to give me your address. Would 'Mr. Marsh, Constantinople,' do? It might— the English Post OfiSce people undertook to deliver a letter to ' Mrs. Smith, back of the Church, England.' " 182 GEOEGE PEEKINS MARSH. ' [Chap. VI. appointed from Prussia, and she and her husband seem to have met with a warm welcome from our friends at the Capital. L 's letters during her tour in Germany afford- ed us much amusement. She certainly beats us all in that line. "Your account of your 'travels at home' interested us much, and I hardly know whether the old ruins, or the new Britannia Bridge are the most sehenswerlh of the objects you visited. " We confidently expected to be on our way to Egypt be- fore this, but Mr. Webster has not yet replied to my prayer for a conge, and we must wait at least another post for leave. " We came down here from T. about the last of Nov. hav- ing been fairly frozen out, (there being no possibility of hav- ing any other fire than that presided over by the cook) and are at a hotel temporarily. Mrs. Marsh is, for the most part, con- fined to her bed or lounge. I cannot be grateful enough to Lady Canning for her affectionate and sympathizing attentions to her, and indeed all the ladies of the Corps have been most kind. Fortunately, she is able to listen to reading without fa- tigue, and everything I read at all I read aloud. Lady Can- ning lent us Curzon before our copy arrived, and we agree with you in thinking his story extremely well told. The best Ameri- can book I have seen for a long time is our very good friend Mr. Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature, which I hope you will fall in with. " We hear you are likely to be over-run with Americans dur- ing the Great Exhibition. I hope they won't all come here ! Eighteen millions of bores at once ! What will Carlyle do ? I fear his next Latter Day pamphlet will be his last. Apropos of Latter Days, isn't it odd that the Latter Day Saints, alias the Mormons, should make so many converts in England ? Several shiploads of substantial people, I see, are embarking for the Salt Lake. At the last session of Congress the country 1849-1850.] SPECIAL AGENT FEOM TURKEY. 183 occupied by these people was erected into a Territory, and one of their elders made governor. This will of course give them consequence and confidence both at home and abroad. What will you do in England between the encroachments of this new church and that old, old one of Rome, and all manner of Dis- senters to boot ? Won't you come at last to be in as bad con- dition as the Frenchman said we were ? ' What a country ! ' quoth he, ' thirty religions, and but one sauce ! ' " I suppose Jenny Lind will set all America to learning Swedish, if Miss Bremer has not done so already, and I shall lose my monopoly of that literature. Well, I'll fall back on Catalan, which I have been amusing myself with for some time, and when I am overtaken there too, I can try Welsh. Now that the out-door weather has well nigh left us, we are driven to our books for amusement. I am re-reading with, or rather to, Mrs. Marsh, Horace and Jean Paul, and we are much interested in St. Augustine, new to us both. 1 am trying to rake up Greek enough to hear my son's recitations properly, while Mrs. Marsh is even nibbling at Turkish, being moved thereto by a desire to talk with the Turkish women. I have lately received Muir's Greek Literature, and have looked into it with satisfaction, beginning, as is my custom, in the middle, and reading both ways. . . . Should Mr. Lawrence resign, as is the rumor, Mr. Winthrop will, I think, certainly be sent to England, unless they find he cannot be spared from the Senate. We both greet you and your good husband with sin- cere affection. . . ." During the summer of 1850, Mr. Marsh had succeeded in inducing the Porte to send a special agent to the United States — a step which he thought likely to further commercial rela- tions between the two countries, and to strengthen the position of all American citizens in Turkey. It was indispensable to the utility of this measure that the agent should be accompa- nied by a person familiar with both countries and both Ian- 184 GEOKGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. VI. guages, and Mr. J. P. Brown, dragoman and secretary of the American Legation at Constantinople, received from the State Department leave of absence for that purpose. His place was supplied by Mr. H. A. Homes, to whose competent hands the Minister felt that all American interests might be most safely committed during his own absence from the capital. CHAPTER VII. 1851. First Letter from Bgypt to Mrs. Estconrt — Extracts &om Letter to Colonel Bliss — Extracts from Letter to Mr. Francis Markoe — Letter to Mr. Henry A- Homes — Extracts from Letter to Mr. Charles Marsh — Letter to Lady Canning — A Steamer takes Mr. Marsh and Family from Cairo to Assouan — Extracts from Letter to Mr. J. G. Saxe — Italian Fellow-travellers (note) — Letter to Professor C C. Jewett — To Professor Baird — To Mr. Lyndon Marsh — Extracts from Letters to Dr. and Mis. Wislizenus — Arrival at Assonan — Voyage in Dahabieh to Second Cataract — Letter to Mr. Homes — Extracts from Letters to Mrs. Estcourt from Thebes and from the Nile near the Pyramids — Return to Cairo — Experience with an Arab Doctor — ^Preparations for a Journey in the Desert — ^Letter to Professor Baird — Journey begun May 7, 1851. IT was never Mr. Marsh's liabit to keep a journal of any kind, but his letters to friends during these months of travel in the Turkish Empire are very full — too full to admit of publi- cation here. For the most part, fragmentary extracts only are selected, with the special object of making the narrative con- tinuous in his own words and, at the same time, avoiding un- necessary repetition. " Cairo, January 21st, 1851. " Dear Mes. Estcouet : " We sailed for Alexandria on the 7th instant, and had a passage, half smooth and half rough, of a week from Constanti- nople, including two days lost at Smyrna. Our sail through the Archipelago was very pleasant, and we saw — but did not visit — many of the purple mountain-islands, Mitylene, tragic Scio, sacred Patmos, chivalric Rhodes, and fabulous Crete. After this came the open sea, adverse winds, angry waters, and all the horrors, even some of the dangers, of a winter voy- age, and I believe we all suffered more than in crossing the 186 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. VIL Atlantic. Truly I hate tlie sea, and would be well content to pay my share of the cost of filling it up altogether, and build- ing good carriageable roads instead. We spent two days at Alexandria, where there is less to see than in any other city of equal antiquity, and then came hither, by steamer, via the Mali- moudieh canal and the Nile. " . . . The immediate environs of Cairo are in a good state of cultivation, and remind one of the country around the towns in the plains of Italy. The modern part of Cairo itself is well built after the Italian fashion, and with its public gar- dens, its pleasant drives, smooth streets, and handsome palaces, it contrasts most strikingly with the mesquinerie of Constanti- nople and the desert which surrounds it. "The trees about Cairo and Alexandria, and upon the shores of the river, are the date palm, the acacia, the sycamore, and the tamarisk. The date palm, though not one of the finest of its graceful tribe (the leaf-stalks being too short for the height of its ti-unk) is nevertheless a very pleasing object. In this latitude it does not exceed forty or fifty feet in height, and a foot and a half in diameter. It produces, I am told, from a hundred to a hundred and sixty pounds of dates, which sell at about a penny a pound, and of course are too dear food for laborers, who earn but two or three pence a day. The date-tree is propagated by shoots from the roots or by seed, the former mode being preferred because it secures a fruit of the same variety as the parent stock. The olive is also culti- vated here, but with moderate success, and lemons and oranges as well as the banana, thrive very well. The general aspect of Cairo is infinitely more oriental than that of Constantinople. The costumes are Eastern, the vegetation, the native houses, the troops of camels and asses, the strange birds, (crows with dove colored bodies among others) the water carriers, the women with babies perched astride their shoulder, and clinging to the hair or head-dress of the mother, and a thousand other odd sights, all belong to another world than ours, though with all this orien- 1851.] LETTER TO MES. ESTCOTTET. 187 talism one may enjoy here a hundred comforts and conveniences which are quite unattainable at Stamboul. The dress of the women, which is excellently described and figured in Mr. Lane's remarkable work, is much more graceful than that of the Turk- ish ladies, but as the colors worn here are soberer and less va- ried, the effect in a group is less striking, while on the other hand the men are much gayer than their brethren of the capi- tal. A striking feature of life in Cairo, and I believe in all oriental cities, is the silence of the night. The gates of the different quarters are closed at an early hour, and all is as still as in the depths of the forest, imtil day-break. Here too the people are quieter, less loud-voiced, more subdued in manner, than at Constantinople, and as Christians are either more effi- ciently protected, or less hated than elsewhere in thp Turkish Empire, I think Cairo must be upon the whole an agreeable residence for those who can dispense with the social pains and pleasures, and the intellectual resources, of European life. " To-day we drove to the citadel, which is built on a rocky eminence two hundred feet or more above the general level of the town. There we saw the beautiful mosque, yet unfinished, which is to serve as the mausoleum of Mehemet Ali. It is a square building of a single apartment, with a dome in the cen- tre, lined, cased and floored with alabaster, with a large clois- tered court in front, and the usual accompaniment of a foun- tain, and will I think be a very beautiful structure. The view from the platform of the citadel — embracing the town with its numerous mosques and their tower-like minarets so diffeient from the tall and slender shafts of the minarets of Constanti- nople, the green fields of the environs, the pyramids of Gizeh, of Sakkara, and Dashur, and the desert threatening to engulf all in its moving sands — is one of the finest I have ever seen. We saw also many mosques, and among others that of the Sul- tan Tooloon, well ascertained to be of the 9th century, and so important in the history of architecture for itspointed arches, and that of the Sultan Hassan, of later date, but still highly 188 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. VU. interesting. The mosques, however, are much inferior in grandeur of style and effect to those of Stamboul, whether seen from within or without, and none of the details of the pano- rama of Cairo, are as striking as parts of the scenery around Constantinople. We desire earnestly to go to Jerusalem by way of Mount Sinai and Petra, but that is a severe undertaking for a robust person, and I have no hope that Mrs. Marsh will be able to bear it. We must therefore content ourselves with some shorter excursions into the desert, and in this way we in- tend to occupy ourselves for some time after our return from upper Egypt. Probably we shall not return to Constantinople before the middle of April or even later, and indeed the first of May is quite as early as it is agreeable to be on the Bos- phorus. " The Great Exhibition we shall lose, if it be a loss to escape the confusion of such a multitude of sight- worthy objects and such a crowd of strange people. Yon remember that Coleridge quotes Avicenna as enumerating among things destructive to the memory ' riding with a multitude of camels.' "What Le- thean powers must we then ascribe to the monster exposition and its hordes of visitors ! I doubt whether my head is strong enough to bear such a medley of sights and sounds, and should hardly dare to risk the experiment, if it were in my power to try it." The following is from a letter to Colonel "W. W. S. Bliss, of about the same date : " - . . The city of Alexandria lies so nearly on a level with the general low coast of Egypt that one does not see it until it is very near, and then only a single line of unimpos- ing buildings is visible. Of antiquity there is nothing but the two obelisks and the great Column. The Column is a striking monument. It is Corinthian in style, and is in tol- erable preservation, though sorely disfigured by the names of 1851.] LETTEK TO COLONEL BLISS. 189 impertinent travellers, written in chalk, charcoal or black paint. I think this column as large as any I have yet seen, except possibly some in a church at Rome, and if it is really but a survivor of four hundred like pillars, the portico or temple to which it belonged must have rivalled the grandeur of the fanes of old Hellas. . . . Alexandria appears to me a place of great military strength, and I am told the fortifications, which consist chiefly of detached works, are very creditable to the officers who planned them. There are many French and other Continental militaires in the Egyptian army, which consists of about 25,000 men, but is in a condition inferior to what it was before the accession of the present viceroy. . . . From Alexandria we came by steam through the Mahmoudieh canal about 50 miles, to Atfeh on the Nile, 100 miles below Cairo, where we were transferred to another steamer. The Mahmou- dieh canal is, I should think, about 100 ft. broad, and from 12 to 20 ft. deep, with no locks except at the termini. It is the work of Mehemet Ali, and was constructed in a little more than six months, the laborers for the most part having no im- plements but their own hands. . . . The delta, and I sup- pose the whole valley of the lower Nile, resemble in many points those of the Mississippi, the most striking difference be- ing that the banks of the Nile have no forests, nor indeed any trees of spontaneous growth. . . . The waters of the Nile are now about ten feet below their highest level (which they reach in October) and the fields require irrigation even now. The water for this purpose is raised by large wheels, with end- less chains of buckets or stone jars, and sometimes by the old- fashioned pole or sweep once so common in New England. Another circumstance which distinguishes the Nile from the Mississippi is that its waters bring down no trees to serve as nuclei for deposits, and these are therefore more uniform, and the changes in the course of the river more gradual and regular, than in the Mississippi. An immense work, called the Ian-age, is now constructing by French engineers at the head of the 190 GEORGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Chap. VIL delta. A tier of arched sluiceways is built across each arm of the river with a passage for steamers and other vessels in the middle of the stream, and a large canal is to be dug from the apex of the delta through its centre. The object of all this is to confine the waters of the Nile, after the inundation, in order to irrigate the delta during the dry season, but it strikes me as a work of questionable utility, both in its possible effect upon the navigation of the river, and because also there is already more land provided with sufficient means of irrigation than there are hands to cultivate. The check it gives to the current must greatly increase the deposits above the harrage, and one would think the river would soon be forced to form new chan- nels around the ends of the works which obstruct its flow." To Mr. F. Markoe, at that time the accomplished Chief Clerk in the Department of State, and a warm personal friend, he writes, on the 22d : " . . . We expect to embark for Thebes, in two or three days, in a dahahieh, as they call the boats of the coun- try. These are clumsy vessels about seventy feet long by twelve wide, with three small cabins on deck, two immense lateen sails, and a crew of a dozen men or so. We hire the boat and crew, and carry our own provisions and cook. We take one personal servant only beside the interpreter, and though cramped for space, I think we shall enjoy the trip. At any rate I trust it M'ill prove beneficial to Mrs. Marsh. . . . The climate of the Nile is celebrated with good reason for its restorative powers, but it is not true that ' it never rains at Cairo,' as we have had three showers within the last twenty- four hours. The thermometer has stood at sunrise, for three days past, at 48°, 53°, and 43°, and we should be glad of a fire, but that is a luxury little knovm at Cairo. Eain, however, is certainly neither frequent nor violent here, and no precautions are taken to protect anything from it. The grain from Upper 1851.] LETTER TO ME. MAKKOE. 191 Egypt lies in hnge heaps of many thousand bushels in the open air at Boulak, without any shelter whatever, and the roofs are so slight that a lady told us when it did rain at night she was obliged to take an umbrella to bed with her. " I find Mr. McCauley, our Consul-general, a very energetic and efficient officer. His long residence in these countries has made him well acquainted with the Turkish & Arab character, and he knows very well how to make himself respected by the inhabitants. . . . Mr. McOauley has suggested to the pres- ent Viceroy the expediency of sending an agent to the United States to examine our public establishments, and especially to inquire into our improved system of river navigation. There are no steamboats on the Nile except a few employed in the personal service of the Pasha, and in that of the Suez trans- portation administration, and the commerce of the country is conveyed in mde, clumsy and dangerous sail-boats. The intro- duction of steam tow boats and freight barges of light draught, which could navigate the river at all, or nearly all, seasons, would be of incalculable benefit to this country in various ways, but especially in releasing from the transportation service a great number of hands which are needed for the cultivation of the soil. Should such an agent be sent, though it would not be politic to receive him with the honors accorded to Emin Bey as the emissary of the Sultan, I hope our government will grant him all necessary facilities for the discharge of his duties. . . . I still believe that I shall meet you in Europe, and I know you well enough to be quite certain that you will find the reality as much more agreeable than the anticipation as I have done." To Henry A. Homes, Esq. " Cairo, Jan. 35, 1851. " Deab Sie : " At my first visit to Abbas Pacha, (which was of course unofficial) the Viceroy manifested a good deal of uneasiness in 192 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. VII. regard to the disposition of the Porte and the principal Euro- pean Legations at Constantinople towards him, and the next day sent to request me to give him a private interview. I had before told him that I had no political views in visiting Egypt, and no official duties to discharge here, and moreover that I pos- sessed very little knowledge of the policy of the Porte ; but as I saw no good cause for refusing to meet him in private, I acceded to his request, and had a long and free interview with him upon the points which specially interested him, no other person be- ing present, except E"ubar Bey, who officiated as interpreter. "My own impressions of the character of Abbas Pacha as derived not only from these two interviews, but from the gen- eral testimony of the European residents at Cairo, are very dif- ferent from those with which I left Constantinople, and I am very much deceived if he is either as foolish or as brutal as he is there so currently reported to be. His countenance is an intelligent one, his manners are courteous, and his whole air, during the conversations I had with him, was that of a man in earnest, understanding the matter of which he was speaking, and capable of weighing it in all its bearings. " The points on which he desired information were two ; whether the Porte would probably insist on the immediate and complete introduction of the Tanzimat, in Egypt, and whether he could hope for the countenance and support of any of the great European Powers at Constantinople. As to the first point I told him I could say nothing, but that I did not believe the European counsellors of the Porte would advise the Sul- tan to press the introduction of the Tanzimat more rapidly than Egypt could be prepared for it, or than was compatible with the security of the Pacha's government and of the Frank interests in the province. In regard to the latter point, I told him plainly that in my opinion the only European protection which would avail him anything was that of Great Britain. I said, that for the present at least, I thought England had no interests adverse to his, that I did not believe she would enter- 1851.] LETTER TO MR. HOMES. 193 tain a proposal for a partition of the Turkish Empire, that he could rely with greater confidence on the integrity, the generos- ity and the strength of that government, than on any other, — that the elevated position of Sir Stratford Canning in Constan- tinople, and his eminent services to the Turkish Empire, gave him an influence with the Porte that no other diplomat pos- sessed, and that in the personal character of Sir Stratford he had every guaranty for fair and liberal dealing that he ought to desire. " In reply to this, he said he was sensible of the truth of all this, and was ready to pledge himself to favor the wishes of England in regard to the Transit and all other local British in- terests to the extent of his power ; — that he would build a rail- way between Alexandria and Cairo, and hasten and promote the extension of the railroad to Suez as speedily as the state of his finances would permit, and, in short, that he would do his utmost to cultivate friendly and confidential relations with that Power. He said that long before his accession the French . . . and that he could not in a moment change the face of things in this particular, but would be happy to extend his patronage of English mechanical and practical science as rapidly as possible. With respect to the Tanzimat, he said that in the present condition of Egypt, its introduction must be gradual, and avowed his conviction that if an attempt were made to enforce that system at once in its full extent, neither his government nor the lives or the property of the European residents in Egypt would be safe for a month. Turkey, he observed, was environed by great Christian States, the fear of which kept in awe the more bigotted and intolerant of the Mussulmans, and besides, an immense proportion of the popu- lation of European Turkey was already Christian. Yet in spite of all this the introduction of the Tanzimat had been attended with difficulties and dangers even in Turkey, and the lives and property of European residents were at this moment less se- cure in that country than in his territories. The people of 13 194 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. VH. Egypt, on the other hand, were bigotted Mnssnlmans, and sur- rounded by Mohammedan tribes even more intolerant and fa- natical than themselves. In the eyes of liis native subjects, the Tanzimat was what Liberty is to the most lawless of European agitators, an emancipation, namely, from all the restraints of authority, and all the sanctions of law, an exemption from the conscription, from taxation, from obedience to the local magis- trates, and, in short, a complete overthrow of the Ottoman dy- nasty. If the Arabs of Egypt were thus allowed to suppose themselves released from all the obligations they had been ac- customed to respect, and let loose upon the Christian and Otto- man inhabitants of the province, all government, all order, all security would be at once at an end. For these reasons, he had felt himself compelled to pause in the introduction of a system, the hastening of which he thought a suicidal policy for those whose interests were identified with those of the Ottoman rule in Egypt. At the same time he professed a determination, (from which he declared he had never swerved) to observe the strictest loyalty to the Porte, and to introduce reforms just as rapidly as his people could bear them. In his own practice he said he had acted in the spirit of the new system, though he admitted that the necessities of his position had compelled him, sometimes, to dissimulate his real aims and opinions. He had taken no life, plundered no man, dishonored no man. The utmost security had been enjoyed by Franks and native Chris- tians ; various important improvements introduced ; monopo- lies abolished ; trade encouraged ; the burdens of his people lightened. In proof of which he said that the fellaheen had last year brought to market, for the first time, a large quan- tity of their own produce, (elsewhere I heard the quantity stated at .500,000 ardebs of grain) which had entered into com- petition with the government sales. Neither was it true, as his enemies alleged, that he had suppressed the schools. The number of pupils had indeed been reduced, but this was by the dismissal of those who, after five, ten, and in some 1851.] LETTER TO ME. CHARLES MAESH. 195 instances fifteen years of trial, had been found incapable of learning. " In all this Abbas Pacha appeared like a man who is speaking what he believes, and I think most of the European residents of Cairo in the main agree with him. I am told that the opinions of the French population are very much more fa- vorable to the Pacha than they were before the flight of , who is universally believed to be a very corrupt person, and to be responsible for many of the abuses which have thrown dis- credit on the government of the Yiceroy. It would be rash in me to express a decided opinion on these points ; nevertheless I cannot but believe that the considerations urged by Abbas Pacha are entitled to much weight. At any rate, I am sure he is thoroughly frightened, between his apprehensions of the Porte on one side, and the Arabs on the other, and 1 believe he will now listen to any advice Sir S. Canning may give him, provided the question of the Tanzimat is not pressed beyond a certain point. . . . " I am Sir, respectfully yours, " Geoegb p. Maush." To his brother Charles he writes, on the 26th of January: ". . . Boulak is about a mile and a half from Cairo, and is connected with the city by a beautiful, broad avenue, planted on both sides with sycamores and acacias, and crowded with camels and asses and their riders. The part of Cairo towards Boulak is taken up by a vast public square called the Usbekieh on which most of the hotels and houses occupied by the con- suls are built. I believe you have Lane's Modern Egyptians, so any description of Cairo on my part would be superfluous, for nothing could be more faithful than his accounts and his repre- sentations of the objects one sees here, though numerous im- provements have been made since his time in widening streets, introducing carriages, &c., all which detract from the Oriental 196 GEOKGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. VIL aspect of the town but at the same time conduce much to the comfort of the traveller. The passing of carriages through the narrow, crowded streets of the old town is a most serious annoy- ance to the inhabitants of that quarter, and they do not hesitate to testify their dislike of this troublesome innovation in modes intelligible enough even to those who do not understand Arabic. . . . The streets are not paved, but there is not rain enough to cause mud, and they are so well watered that there is little dust. The watering is done by men carrying on their back goat-skins full of water which they sprinkle very evenly on the groimd with a sort of dancing motion. The goat-skin is taken off the animal as nearly whole as possible, the legs being tied up and the hair left on. Donkeys are in very general use for riding, as well as for drawing light carts and carrying mod- erate burdens. The animal is large for his species, and the gait is very easy. Every donkey is attended by a driver, on foot, who follows his beast for hours without apparent fatigue, though the pace of the Egyptian donkey is nearly as swift as that of the horse. The camels are endless. They generally travel slowly, not more than 2 or 3 miles the hour, though I saw one the other day, belonging to the Viceroy, which kept up with his master's carriage driven at the rate of six or eight miles per hour. The cattle are large and well-formed, the horses very good, and the buffaloes much heavier than those of Italy. The oxen are generally used singly, and a breed with a hump, like that of the bison, but smaller, is common. . . . Yesterday, in driving, we saw pease in blossom, the peach-trees are in full flower, and the orange-trees are loaded with fruit. . . . We see the wonderful pyramids every time we go out, but shall not visit them until our return from Upper Egypt. After leaving Cairo we cannot hope to hear from any of you till our return, but then we hope to find many letters." The following is of the same date : 1851.] letter to lady canning. 197 " Deae Lady Canning : " I don't think I promised to write to you during our ab- sence, and therefore I hope the performance of this self-imposed duty may have enough of the meritorious character of a work of supererogation to atone in some sort for the want of interest, or other defects and deficiencies, of my epistle. Mrs. Marsh has told you how we fared on our voyage, and of our three days in Alexandria, so old and yet all new. . . . Well, we came hither in 28 hours by steam, part of the way through the Mahmoudieh Canal, the work of that gigantic old savage, Mehemet Ali. Just think of an excavation 50 miles long, 100 ft. wide, and from 12 to 20 ft. deep, almost entirely made by merHs hands, literally, in the short space of little more than six months, the laborers having no tools whatever, and carrying away all the earth in baskets. We ourselves saw repairs making on the canal in the same primitive fashion. . . . The hotel at which we are staying is situated on a great public garden, as are also most of the hotels and other modern baildings. Thus far there is nothing but the palm-trees, the camels, and the Arabs to remind us that we are among the Orientals. All is the work of Mehemet Ali. The carriages, the streets, the houses, the gardens, are Italian in appearance, and one looks in vain for any memorial of a Pharaoh or a Saladin. But in one minute's walk the scene is changed. A few paces in the rear of these modern buildings lies the Cairo of history, fable and romance, with its arched streets, as narrow as the narrowest of Constantinople, overshadowed by tall houses whose projecting stories meet or interlace with each other, here and there a foun- tain or a half -dilapidated mosque with rich portal or quaintly fretted walls, and minarets not soaring like the slender shafts of those of Stamboul, but tower-like, and curiously decorated with twisted columns, or narrow arches, or ribbed domes, or honey-combed recesses. And yet a little further, and one stands upon the verge of the Desert, with its flinty sands, its shining pebbles of agate and chalcedony, and its purple dis- 198 GEOEGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. YU. tance tinging by reflection even the noon-day clouds with violet. " Yesterday we drove to Heliopolis where we saw an obelisk of the eighteenth century before Christ, still standing on the spot where the great monarch of Egypt reared it nearly four thousand years ago. The ruins of Heliopolis, mere mounds, lie about two hours from Cairo. The road is a fine one, and passes first through fields of corn and beautiful palm-groves and plan- tations of the prickly pear, then, for a considerable distance, has rich meadows or gardens on one side and the Desert on the other. Here we saw the mirage for the first time. As we ob- served it in driving out, it was like two small lakes, with un- ruffled surface, about two or three miles from us, and connected together by a narrow isthmus. When we returned it was a bay lying near the horizon, opening into the broad ocean, but par- tially shut in by a long, low promontory, and having a small, conical island in the centre. lu both cases the illusion was ab- solutely perfect, and formed a beautiful feature in what would otherwise have been but a barren landscape in that direction. . . . Christians are either less hated here by the Moham- medans, or better protected by law, than at the capital. Frank ladies go every where alone, if they choose, and some have gone as far as the Second cataract without a European servant or at- tendant of any kind. . . . The out-door dress of the women is individually more graceful and pleasing than that of their sisters in Turkey, but the colors are sober and monotonous, and in a mass there is nothing of that fine effect which the varied and rich colors worn by the Turkish women give to the groups assembled under the trees of Gok Sou, or at the Sweet Waters of Europe. The most painful objects one sees here are the chil- dren. They are all pale, sickly and prematurely old in appear- ance, and one wonders how such infants can grow up to be as strong and healthy as their parents seem to be. . . Besides, the traveller is shocked by the great number of persons he meets who are blind of one eye or both. Almost one-half the popula- 1851.] LETTEE TO ME. SAXE. 199 tion eeem thus afflicted, and to us, who are so many of us pur- blind, it is rather an alarming indication of the dangers of the climate. "- . . We have completed our arrangements for our trip up the river, and expect to set off on Monday. A steamer * is to take us up to Assouan, at the foot of the first Cataract, towing the dahabieh in which we are to make the voyage to the second Cataract and thence back to Cairo. We propose to ascend the river with few stops, and to return very leisurely. " Mrs. Marsh is not better than when we left Pera. . . . She begs to be most kindly remembered to you and to Sir Strat- ford, and also to the young ladies, in all which she is heartily joined by " Yours very sincerely, " Geo. p. Maesh." To J. G. Saxe, Esq. " Upper Estpt, Lat. 25° 20', Feb. 7, 1851. "... The country, which as you know resembles the val- ley of the Mississippi in its general features, is very interesting, and Egypt is far in advance of Turkey in civilization. . . . It is now however reduced to the condition of a Turkish prov- ince, and will I fear soon lose all the advantages acquired by its virtual independence under that great semi-savage Mehe- met Ali. . . . The Turks seem incorrigible, and the Turk- ish Empire would soon become the prey of the Christian pow- ers, provided only they could agree on a partition. I have, I think, put sufficiently on record my jealousy of British influ- * On the occasion of Mr. Marsh's first interview with the Viceroy, the latter pro- posed to place at his service a steamer to take him and his party to Assouan, but the former declined the offer, on the ground that it would be contrary to the spirit of the instructions received from his Government to accept such a favor. When, however, all the conditions for the coimtry boat had been settled, and the day fixed for sailing, a message was received from Abbas Facha, saying that a steamer was about to leave for Assouan, and that the American Minister could not do him the discourtesy to refuse to avail himself of such an opportunity to make a quicker and more comfortable voyage thus far. This, of course, could not be declined, though it added consider- ably to the expense of the trip— a fact very intelligible to Oriental travellers. 200 GEOEGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. VII. ence in America, to be quite safe in doing England justice else- where, and I have no hesitation in saying, that I believe all the great interests of humanity, our own included, would be best advanced by an extension of British sway in the Levant. At the same time, I think that unless English influence is strength- ened on the Continent, there is great danger that the combined weight of Kussia and popery, acting in conjunction, will effect- ually smother, for a century to come, all the hopes of the friends of liberty in continental Europe. . . . Sardinia is waging a noble struggle, and I have been surprised to find how deep a root the true principles of human freedom have struck in the breasts of her people. I have not indeed been in Pied- mont, but I passed through the Mediterranean territories of Sardinia, and have, since my arrival at Constantinople, had oc- casion to see much of the more intelligent classes of the Pied- montese and the Genoese. Tliey are surely in the right path. . . . Indeed the people of Italy generally are much more enlightened as to the real cause of the enormous evils under which that finest of all European countries has so long groaned, than I expected. To my inquiries on this point I received one uniform answer : ' Priestly tyranny.' Indeed were it not that Jesuit influence predominates in France and Austria, Italy, left to herself, would soon relegate to their true position those lordly ecclesiastics who now, supported by foreign bayonets, tyrannize over her people. If I were called upon to specify the cause of the failure of the liberal movement generally, in 1848, 1 should most unhesitatingly say : the base treachery of Pope Pius IX., and the power of the Jesuits whose tool he is. . . . " We have for travelling companions on the steamer four Italians *— three of them Piedmontese— all liberalists, all ac- * Soon after Mr. Marsh's arrival in Italy as Minister, in 1861, three of these gen- tlemen (the fourth was not living) came from different points of the New Kingdom to give him a most cordial welcome — Signer Regaldi from Palermo, where he was then Professor ; Signer De Marchi, who had become a distinguished Orientalist from Milan ; Signer Verraui, who had in the meantime become head of his house and as- sumed a new title, left Nice, with a large following, as soon as it ceased to be an Ital- ian city, and took up bis residence in Genoa. 1851.] LETTER TO PEOFESSOE JEWETT. 201 complished, refined and agreeable young men whom it would be difficult to match by a chance assemblage in any country. " One of these gentlemen, I am sure, would interest you highly — Signer Regaldi, the most distinguished of living im- jirovisatori, and certainly a man of wonderful poetical talent. Every evening we meet in the ladies' cabin, and after two or three pieces on the violin from Signor Yerrani, who is an ad- mirable performer, Mr. Kegaldi gives us an improvisation on any theme we suggest. The other evening one of the young ladies asked him for a sonnet on a penknife. ' Well,' said he, ' I will communicate to Mr. Marsh my sonnet, all but the versification. The company shall give me the bouts rimes, and I will fill them up.' Accordingly he whispered in my ear the substance of his sonnet, the rhymes were finished, and in two or three minutes Regaldi pronounced his impromptu. It was almost in the words he had told me ; the iouts rimis were all introduced, and the versification was perfect. Then he said to me, ' I will communicate to one of the company a subject, you shall give me two unconnected verses from any Italian poet, and I will impi'ovise two stanzas in the same metre, introduc- ing one of the verses into each.' I gave him one verse out of Tasso, and another from Ariosto, and he instantly pronounced two stanzas, in ottama rima, introducing very felicitously the verses I gave him. Many of his performances are capital, and his travels, which he is now writing in prose and verse, will make, I doubt not, a highly interesting book, especially as it will contain some curious political experiences of his own." To Professor C. C. Jewett. " ESNEH, TJppEB Egypt, Feb. 8th, 1851. ". . . We remained in Cairo ten days, and are now on the twelfth of our voyage to Assouan, the ancient Syene, and the place of Juvenal's banishment, where we hope to arrive this evening or to-morrow. 202 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH, [Chap. VII. "... We have visited few of the monuments as yet, having stopped only at Luxor and here, but, though these tem- ples are not among the most remarkable in Egypt, yet I have found them more imposing in their architectm-e and in a better state of preservation than I expected. It is indeed wonderful that structures so long exposed to the action of the atmosphere, and so often assailed by the barbarous violence of political and fanatical hostility, should have suffered so little. The granite, basalt and sandstone appear absolutely unaffected by atmos- pheric influences, and it is only where they have been exposed to the salts and the moisture of the earth, or where they have been intentionally defaced, that the sculptures are in the slight- est degree injured. Even the polished surfaces, when freed from dust, retain their smoothness and lustre undiminished, and one sees not many tokens of wanton recent mutilation. The Persians appear to have committed the greatest devasta- tions, and the Romans, if they did not destroy temples, at least made a very unscrupulous use of those which former conquer- ors had overthrown. The Arabs do not seem to have been act- uated by the same destructive spirit as their Turkish brethren, and the Ottomans, at the time of their conquest of Egypt in the 16th century, must have found these monuments very nearly as the Persians had left them twenty centuries before. Even the Osmanlies have shown here much less of their characteristic destructiveness than they did in their warfares with the Chris- tians, and they have in general pulled down temples only when they wanted the material for new structures of their own. Foreign collectors and archaeologists have done almost as much to deface the monuments as the barbarians. . , . " I had, fortunately perhaps, seen so little of this good world before leaving America, that I am not yet hlase to the pleasures of travelling, and I enjoy new scenes and new peoples as keenly as I could have done at twenty, when I was less prepared to understand and appreciate them. I shall return a more zealous advocate of American institutions than ever, yet I shall cer- 1851.] LETTEE TO PEOFESSOE BAIED. 203 tainly hereafter regard the Eastern Continents and their vari- ous tribes of inhabitants with an interest and sympathy that I never entertained before. " The proper effects of travel seem to me to be to render us at once more patriotic and more philanthropic — cosmopolitan in the right sense. A passing visit to a strange country, still more a temporary residence in it, imposes a double obligation ; that, namely, of drawing from it some contribution to the ma- terial prosperity or the moral improvement of our own, and that of making to it some return for the pleasure and advantage which we have derived for ourselves or our country from it. The position of a diplomat is eminently favorable to the accom- plishment of both these objects, but unhappily the weak and mean-spirited niggardliness (I am sorry I can with truth use no milder language) of our government towards its foreign rep- resentatives almost wholly deprives them of every facility for making themselves useful to either of the countries between which they are the channel of official intercourse." To Professor 8. F. Baird. "Nile, Lat. 34° SC, Feb. 9th, '51. " . , . "We are thus far on our way to the First Cataract, just now resting on a sand-bank, with serious doubts whether the steamer which was to take us to Assouan, a few miles further up, can be got off. I had hoped to hear that you were safely established at Washington and had received the keg (leaky and spoiled, I fear) before I sailed from Constantinople, but the last I have received from you was dated just after your ap- pointment to the Smith. Inst. . . . As we came up in a steamboat, I could not stop to make collections, and besides, with the thermometer at 48°, asps, geckos, fresh crocodiles' eo-gs and the like can't be said to be just in season. ' When ice is in, serpents is out,' but I have brought with me divers jugs of spirits, and as we shall go down leisurely, I hope I shall 204 GEOEGE PEBKINS MAESH. [Chap. VU. be able to make some additions to your snakery, after it grows a little warmer. We saw five crocodiles lying on a sand-bank yesterday, and concluded they might prove ugly customers if a nearer acquaintance were too assiduously pressed. At Esneh, they told us, one lately came ashore in hot pursuit of an Arab, who only escaped by springing into a tree, and our dragoman says he saw, a short time since, a horse carried ofE by one of them. Of birds there is great store — water fowl chiefly — but I think the botany of Egypt cannot offer much, because the whole soil is covered with the cultivated growth. Above the First Cataract there is said to be greater variety. I refer you to Dr. Wislizenus for such vague observations as I have been able to make, but they are too loose to be of much interest. . . . Write often and fully, and make M. do the like, to " Your true friend, " Geo. p. Maesh." To his brother Lyndon he writes, on the 10th of February, from Assouan : "... We expect to leave here the day after to-morrow for the Second Cataract, and it will be at least six weeks before we shall return to Cairo. The Italian gentlemen, who came up with us in the steamer, here take a boat by themselves, but we shall keep near each other for the sake of greater security in case of accident, though there is probably no country where the dangers in travelling are less than in Egypt. The Cataract ex- tends nine miles — indeed it is only a rapid, and is passable by boats, but there are many rocks in the channel, and it is thought better for passengers to go up by land. We and our luggage are to be transported on camels to the head of the rapids. The current of the Nile is swift, and its waters are at all times as turbid as those of our streams after a freshet, but when fil- tered there is no better water for drinking than that of this famous river. Every boat is provided with large jars, three 1851.] LETTEE TO MK. LYNDON MAESH. 205 feet in height and pointed at the bottom, of nnglazed pottery, for filtering, and the water is cooled by being kept in bottles, also of unglazed ware, through which the fluid slowly transpires, and the rapid evaporation from the surface lowers the tempera- ture sufficiently. " The whole space between the rocky mountain-ranges that enclose the Nile valley is usually overflowed at high water, with the exception of the sites of the villages, which are a little more elevated and often occupy mounds composed of the ruins of ancient cities. The usual height of the banks is something over twenty feet, and the water is now twelve or fifteen feet below them. This year the Nile did not rise to its ordinary high-water mark, and more than 80,000 acres of land are left uncultivated in consequence. . . . The crops are rice, wheat, barley, pease, beans, dura, sugar-cane and cotton. The date- palm almost everywhere fringes the banks of the river, and few other trees are to be seen, except the sycamore and the mimosa, which were extensively planted by order of Mehemet Ali. Every sand-bank is covered with water-fowl of various kinds — herons and cranes of different colors and sizes, geese, ducks, cormorants, pelicans — and wherever one sees man he is accompanied by the camel. The houses of the peasantry are of dried mud, or rather of sunbaked brick, and, except in the larger towns, are the most wretched hovels imaginable, consisting of a single room from four to five feet high and eight or ten feet square, without win- dows, and huddled together like the nests of the mud-wasp. In Upper Egypt, however, they are much better built, remind- ing one, in their forms, of the architecture of their ancestors, and every house has a story composed of dove-cots which are made of earthen jars laid in mud. The people are a very de- based race, and are held in a sort of feudal servitude by the Turks who conquered the country three hundred years ago and still have possession of it. . . . There is one species of water-craft peculiar, so far as I know, to this river. It is the rafts of earthen jars, which are manufactured in Upper Egypt, 206 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. VH. and floated down to Cairo. These jars are pear-shaped, with two small handles at the neck, and hold, I should think, about four gallons. They are put into the water month downwards, and secured together with ropes of rushes or other plants, and layer is piled upon layer, sometimes, I am told, to the number of ten. The rafts are generally about 15 or 20 layers wide by from 30 to 40 in length, and we one morning met a fleet of twenty-seven of these floats in company. They have usually five men to each, are steered, and where the current is not suf- ficiently rapid, they are propelled by oars made of small trees with the branches left on and plaited together. All the water used for domestic purposes in the villages on the Nile, is brought up from the river in these vessels, on the heads of women, and I once saw one of these poor creatures balancing one jar on her head, and carrying an additional one on each shoulder. " . . . In Upper Egypt the cliffs near the river are often literally honey-combed with sepulchres, but there are not many temples remaining below Thebes." The extracts which follow, from letters to Dr. "Wislizenus and his wife, are of the same date as the last preceding. "... Thus far I have done nothing in the way of col- lection. The whole valley of the river is so completely sub- dued by long cultivation that few wild plants are to be seen, and these are not now in flower. In fact the only one I have yet foimd in blossom, except cultivated plants, is the Mimosa Nilotica, of which I have secured good specimens. But as the season is now advancing and we shall make frequent stops, I have no doubt I shall have gathered quite a herbarium for you, as well as many fishes and reptiles for Baird before our return. "... The lime-stone wall, behind which the desert commences, runs very near the river on the Eastern side, some- times overhanging it with a precipitous face from two to five hundred feet in height, and at times receding from it, and it is 1851.] TO DR. AND MES. "WISLIZENTTS. 207 quite certain that the river has at some period washed its base through its whole extent. The Libyan chain on the contrary is much more distant, and in fact is generally hardly visible from the deck of a steamer until you reach Ossiout, in latitude 27° 15'. There it comes nearly down to the bed of the stream and then retreats again, but approaches the river a second time at Thebes, Lat. 25° 45'. The height of both chains rises grad- ually from 200 feet, at Lat. 29°, where the Eastern range first reaches the Nile, to 650 feet at Lat. 25°. Here the proportion of silex becomes much larger, the square forms of the calcareous rock give place to the fragmentary outlines of the sandstone, or to rounded hillocks of broken stone and sand, the height of the range diminishes, the valley of the river grows narrower, sand- stone quarries appear, and some miles below Assouan, the gran- ite and syenite show themselves. ... I was told at Alex- andria that the date palm sometimes produced 150 pounds of dates, but this I doubt, because the Governor of Ossiout assured me that it did not there yield, upon an average, above 55 lbs., and never more than twice that quantity. This is the only palm I saw until Lat. 27°, where we met the Dom palm. This has a short fan-shaped leaf, its trunk is bifurcated, and the branches and boughs again divide in the same way. It bears a fruit resembling the eocoanut, about the size of a turkey's egg. The outside has the taste of coarse gingerbread, and the kernel, which is the size of a pigeon's egg, and has a small hollow in the centre, is white, and when ripe, harder than ivory. It is of some use in the arts, and would be very valuable if it were a little larger. I shall send you a quantity of the fruit. At Assouan and in Nubia there grows a date palm which is called the Dom palm. The fruit is larger and better flavored than the common date, and the tree has a much slenderer stem, with a softer and more delicate leaf, but whether it is a different spe- cies or only a variety, I cannot say. None of the palms are now in flower. It is said that no other trees grew in Egypt before the time of Mehemet Ali, who made numerous planta- 208 GEORGE PERKIITS MAESH. [Chap. VII. tions, but many of the sycamores are certainly of much earlier date. ... I know nothing as yet of the fish, but am told there is but one edible species in the river, and the only living reptile I have met is the crocodile. . . . The number of birds is very great, the species apparently not numerous. " . . . We saw the mirage admirably at Cairo. I did not observe the reflection of the surrounding hills from the sur- face of the mock water, but it had the striated appearance so common in still water when the heavens are half covered with broken masses of cloud, and the illusion was so perfect, that I should have been positive as to its reality, had I not known that there could be no water in that direction. " . . . Ophthalmia is frightfully frequent in Lower Egypt, and it is shocking to see the condition of the poorer classes in this respect, the children especially. ... In the Desert ophthalmia is quite unknown, and its cause must there- fore be sought elsewhere than in the glare of the sun, and the dust with which the atmosphere of Cairo is filled. "... Irrigation commences as soon as the inundation subsides a little, and goes on during the whole period of growth. Poles or sweeps, or rude wheels with endless chains of earthen jars driven by bullocks, occur every few rods, through the whole length of the river, and they are constantly at work. The creaking of the wheels is heard from early dawn till late into the night. Some wealthy proprietors have steam engines for raising the water, but I have seen no wind mills employed for this purpose. " The Government has several establishments for making and refining sugar, provided with every machinery and apparatus of French manufacture, and there are even distilleries in Upper Egypt which make rum from molasses, as well as arrack from the date. The Mussulmans of the upper classes, both here and in Turkey, drink great quantities of ardent spirits, and make as little of a tumbler of rum, as a Frenchman does of a glass of Bordeaux. They are rather shy of wine, less, I am afraid, be- 1851.] LETTEE TO MBS. "WISLIZENUS. 209 cause the Koran forbids it, than because it is not strong enough, though at Frank dinners they do not refuse champagne." "Deae L : " I suppose you will read enough of the historical part of the foregoing dull epistle to learn how we got to this strange place, [Assouan] but the rest of it I will not require you to pe- ruse. We have had a very agreeable trip thus far. I except, of course, our passage across the Mediterranean, the latter half of which was shocking. I was never so miserable, physically, in my life before and thought I was buying even the pyramids and the crocodiles too dear. A propos of crocodiles : we saw five, on Saturday, basking on sand banks. Some of them were large, and I could not help ' feeling ugly ' as I looked at them. They have a bad reputation among the natives and ai'e accused of many barbarous murders. The Governor of Assouan, who did me the honor to take pipe and coffee with me this morning before breakfast, says that one of these creatures carried off a woman and a boy, within sight of the village, less than two months since. It is some consolation that she (for it was a fe- male) was killed a few days after, and that her loving partner, who came to inquire for her the next day, shared the same fate. " At this place beginneth Nubia, and the wild, black, bar- barous people are here quite as numerous as the Arabs. Both races resemble our Indians in their mode of life. They are all in an abject condition, the whole country being ruled by the Turks, but still they are more prosperous and happy I believe than the lower classes in Turkey. The Governor of Esneh, who was very civil to us, showed us how they are managed. Our boat had stuck in the sand and his Excellency ordered a hundred Arabs to disrobe (an operation which, in regard that their drapery is rather light, did not consume much of their valuable time) and go into the water to shove us off. The Governor himself, though apparently far gone in consumption, 14 210 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. VII. came down to tlie beach to superintend the performance, and after exhausting his lungs in bawling at them, followed up his exhortations with a shower of stubble and stones with which he pelted such as he could hit, pour encourager les autres. . , . Good bye, good bye, dear L., and write often to " Tour affectionate brother, « G. P. Maesh." On February 12th, the travellers, leaving their dahabieh to be dragged up the rapids at Assouan, rode round by land to join it above the cataract. On their way they met three large giraffes, whose appearance so terrified the horses that their rid- ers had the greatest difficulty in controlling them. But the pict- uresqueness of the sight was ample compensation for the alarm the stately creatures caused. The boat was ready at the rendez- vous, and after twelve most enjoyable days the second cataract was happily reached. The following, to Mr. H. A. Homes, is dated at Wady Hal- feh, February 25, 1851. "... We arrived here yesterday, have visited the sec- ond cataract today, and shall commence our return voyage to- morrow. I have never turned my face backwards from a journey with so much reluctance. We have a good boat, excellent ser- vants, dragoman and crew, and I have nowhere enjoyed so many of the pleasures alloyed with so few of the discomforts of trav- elling as on this visit to the Nile. Indeed if the second cata- ract were passable by boats, I should certainly extend our trip further, but the navigation is here interrupted for many miles and above no boats are to be found below Dongola, eight days' journey up the river. " .... I have read many descriptions and seen pict- ures and engravings of the banks of the Nile — long rows of palm trees, some single, some in clumps, some erect, others in- clined at all angles and bending in graceful curves ; here and 1851.] LETTER TO ME. HOMES. 211 there a broad-spread acacia, or a line of mimosas or tamarisks ; long spits of sand with a crocodile basking at the point, and files of pelicans and white and gray herons solemnly gazing at their own image in the water, or slowly stalking along the shore in the hope of picking up a stray fish ; with now and then a flock of cormorants or geese diving, waddling and quacking in harmony ; and then the back ground, — on one side high lime- stone cliffs, now receding from and now approaching the river, on the other, broad green fields, or perhaps the Desert, with its yellow valleys and purple hillocks, and above all a sky borrowing all the tints of the iris, not as with us from the vapors floating in the air, but rather from the hues of the earth which are strangely reflected by the heavens, in a way that gives to the noon-day cloud the coloring of a northern sunset — all this, I say, I had heard described and seen painted, but I believed it as little as I did the tale of the ' Forty Thieves.' Neverthe- less it is true, and Nubia is even more picturesque and varied in its scenery than Egypt. . . . The geological changes from limestone to sandstone, then to granite, and again to sandstone, imply marked changes of outline and form in the landscape. In Nubia the Desert every where comes to the brink of the river, leaving only the mere talus of the bank on one side, and the arable land on the other is but a thread, sometimes three, five, ten, twenty, scarcely anywhere more than eighty, rods wide. The thermometer has been as high as 93° on one occasion since we passed the first cataract, and above 90°, two or three other times, but at sunrise it stands generally from 55° to 65°, and does not often rise above 80° in the afternoon. There has been, with the exception of a day or two only, a constant north breeze and we have suffered no inconvenience from heat, insects, or indeed anything else, during our whole trip. . . . " Assouan, March 10th. We left "Wady Halfeh on the 26th Feb., and having had adverse winds have but just arrived here. We have seen all the temples and other antiquities in Nubia, 212 GEOEGE PEEKIKS MAESH. [Chap. Vn. and have found them, of the greatest possible interest. Indeed Philse, at the head of the first cataract, is among the grandest, as well as most beautiful, localities I have ever visited. . . ." " Thebes, March 28th, 1851. " Deae Mes. Estcouet : " I rather think 1 just now owe Col. Estcourt more than I do you in the way of epistolary exchange, but I find it easier to write to a lady even when I mean the letter for her husband also. In corresponding with their wives one does not feel obliged to be quite so grave, judicious and didactic, as in com- municating directly with M. Ps. and M. Cs., and therefore lest now that I have grown careless by conversing with heathen an- cients and modern Mussulmans, I should let fall something in- fra dig. in writing to your spouse, I shall fancy myself talking altogether to you. . . . "We embarked, in the dahabieh you wot of, above the first cataract, on the 12th of February and went up tlie river as far as Wady Halfeh, a little south of Lat. 22°, at the beginning of the second cataract, climbed the great rock of Abouseer which overhangs it and set our faces northward with the extremest reluctance. . . . " We have now been lodged for five days at Thebes, in a house built of unburnt brick from ruins I know not how many thousand years old, its doors and window-shutters (for glass it has none) made of painted mummy cases (whose late occupants stripped of their cerements are ranged in a row against the court yard wall facing us) perched among the tombs in the great cemetery excavated on the eastern slope of the Libyan chain, and overlooking the Memnonium, the Colossi, the great plain of Thebes, Luxor, Karnac, and a long, long reach of the yellow Nile. Thus far our journey has been one of almost un- mingled enjoyment. The nature, so new to American eyes, has interested us exceedingly, and the narrow valley of Nubia, with its desert plains and its sandstone heights, now conical, now tabular, and now pyramidal, has been to us even more fas- 1851.] LETTER TO MBS. ESTCOUKT. 213 cinating than the comparatively broad champaign, and more regular mountain outline, of Egypt. The country at and about the first cataract (including the famous island of Philse) where a granite ridge crosses the valley, at the rapids of Kalabsheh, as well as at and above Ibreem, and near Korosko, and at the second cataract, though not the grandest (for few of the peaks are above five hundred feet high) is among the most strikingly picturesque I have seen. . . . The houses in Nubia are usually beyond and above the very narrow fields, and there one has only the Great Desert between one and the Ked Sea on the one hand, or between one and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. "The Nubians are a people distinct from the Egyptian Arabs in blood and language, and approximate much more closely to the general African type in both complexion and feature, though apparently much superior in intelligence to the negro of the Western coast. "We have seen a few of the Bisharee — a wild tribe, with Arab complexions and European features — who are believed to be the descendants of the people known in ancient history as the Ethiopians. They are un- doubtedly of Caucasian origin, and their language, which is a very rich and flexible speech, belongs to the Caucasian family. But how came they in Nubia ? "We saw at Philas and else- where many inscriptions in a character not Egyptian, and as yet nndeciphered. These are conjectured to be Ethiopie, and may perhaps some day find an interpreter. " - . , At the second cataract we made the nsual pur- chase of ostrich eggs and feathers, and one of the local gov- ernors of Nubia gave Mrs. Marsh a young ostrich fresh from the Desert. A pretty pet he was — standing not much above two and a half feet high — and, bating a way he had of trying to peck out one's eyes and teeth, and also of perpetually insist- ing on going just where you didn't want to have him, well-con- ditioned. He soon followed every movement made by Mrs. Marsh, and would rest his head on her knee in the most confid- 314 GEOKGE PEEKINS MAESH. [CHAP. VU. ing manner, peeping gently meanwhile like a young chicken, but in an unfortunate rencontre with some turkeys, wliose toes had excited his appetite, he received a wound in the neck. I think he would have recovered from this, had he not indulged too freely in sticks and stones, of which he swallowed incredi- ble quantities the first time he went on shore after the accident. This surfeit unhappily proved fatal to him, and we found him dead the next morning. This loss, however, was more than made up to us by the generosity of another functionary, who gave Mrs. Marsh 'two singing birds from Abyssinia,' as he described them, and a full-grown ostrich which carries his head higher than I do mine. For this last we have not room enough in our dahdbieh, and have been obliged to hire a man to take him in a small boat down to Cairo, where we may be able to give him away, without wounding the feelings of our host at Derr. The Abyssinian bipeds are pretty fowls to look at, but they are as like guinea-hens ' as my fingers is to my fin- gers,' and, I fear me, are none other than the wild stock of that sorry bird. Wild fowl are less mamerous in Nubia than in Lower Egypt. ". . . The monuments of Nubia are chiefly executed in the sandstone rock of which the mountains of that country are mostly composed, and the temples of Abou Simbol, and the smaller one at Kalabsheh, of the time of Rameses II. (Sesostris according to "Wilkinson) though less extensive than the sepul- chral grottoes of Egypt, are hardly inferior in interest to any ancient remains in the valley of the ISTile. It is most wonder- ful to see the advance which civilization and the arts had here made at a period anterior to the commencement of history, or even the establishment of social institutions, elsewhere. I am not learned enough in Egyptian chronology to know how far the startling conclusions of Bunsen and Lepsius, as to the great antiquity of some of these structures, are well founded, but we have at any rate noble architecture and skilful designs in some of these temples and tombs of a date certainly as old as the 1851.] LETTERS TO MES. ESTCOUET. 215 time of Joseph to say the very least. What a hoary antiquity for man do such things imply ! " The monuments of Egypt have fully realized our expec- tations, and the days we have passed in these old, old temples and sepulchres have impressed us as strongly as have any passed among the many other wonders which have crowded upon us in almost uninterrupted succession since our first day in Europe. I should like to know whether the newness of everything in America strikes a European as powerfully as the antiquity of the Eastern continent does us. To me, everything on this side of the Atlantic — not pyramids and temples and tombs only — but the very earth, the naked rocks, the sands of the Desert (which are but the debris of vast mountain chains) the meadows levelled and the hills rounded, not as with us by the action of mere natural forces, but by the assidu- ous husbandry of hundreds of generations, the gray olives, and even the grasses, have a hoary and ancient aspect that seems to belong rather to an effete and worn out planet than to the youthful globe which teems with the thousand fresh existences of the new world, and though I have great faith in the revela- tions of geology, I find it hard to believe with late inquirers, that our mountain ridges were really upheaved while the Eu- ropean chains were yet sleeping beneath the waters and the valley of the Nile was an estuary of the great Sea. "Nile, neak the Ptbamjds, AprU 19, '51. " We were at Thebes eleven days, seven on the West side and four on the East. During the latter portion of our stay there we inhabited an incredible mud hovel, built on the roof of one of the old temples of Luxor, by the French engineers who came for the great obelisk. I suppose you have seen as wretched a hut — not wotse — in L-eland, but this is a ' chateau ' forsooth, and we were enforced to occupy it in order not to mortify the very civil Governor of the Province, who had taken much pains to prepare it for us. 216 GEOEGE PEEKIWS MAESH. [ChXp. VH. " We are but indifferently furnished with books and archae- ological knowledge for studying Egyptian history in the monu- ments, and it is therefore the arts, and the social life, of the Egyptians, so curiously depicted in their sepulchres, which most interests us. As you know, almost all the customs and indus- trial processes of this remarkable people are more or less per- fectly illustrated in their sculptures and paintings, and these have been so well copied by Wilkinson and others, that with their works and such a collection as the British Museum offers, one may study Egyptian antiquity to as good advantage at Lon- don as at Thebes. The effect of the architecture, of course, cannot be given, and the peculiar gratification of seeing the works of the Egyptian artists in every state from the merest eiauche to the finished figure, can only be enjoyed on the spot. The sculptures on sandstone are wholly on the stone. The sur- face seems to have been first smoothed and then covered with a thin coating, or more probably wash, of lime laid on with a brush. On this coating the design was drawn in black outline, and (as I infer from the unfinished chamber in the larger tem- ple in Abou Simbol, where the sculpture is made upon the im- corrected sketch) in some cases at least by the sculptor himself, after which the figure was cut sometimes in intaglio, seldom in relievo by sinking the background but most generally in inta^ glio ril&vato, that is, relief within a deeply cut outline. The fig- ure when finished was again coated, and then the colors were applied. These colors are said to have been always mixed with water. I doubt this, because some of the figures at Kalabsheh have borne wetting and even scrubbing (see Miss Martineau) though the colors of those at Thebes are frequently entirely re- moved by having a mould taken from them in damp paper. The limestone in which the tombs at Thebes and elsewhere in Egypt are excavated is mixed with flint and is splintery. A plane surface could not therefore be easily obtained by cutting and a face for the sculptures was given by the application of a coating of plaster of the requisite thickness which of course 1851.] ' LETTER TO MKS. ESTCOUET. 217 Taries greatly. Upon this surface the figures were drawn (in the unfinished chamber in Belzoni's tomb, first in red, corrected afterwards in black) and then cut upon the stone or mortar as the case might be, so that a part of a figure may be wholly of stone, another part half its depth in mortar the rest in stone, and another wholly in plaster. Some of the very old tombs are excavated in a very frail stone and arched with rude bricks. In these cases the inner surface of the arch is plastered with clay over which is a thin coating of lime and upon this the fig- ures are painted. In these tombs there is no sculpture, and in- deed some of the ancient limestone tombs are only painted. " The best preserved colors are in these clay tombs, and in one we saw of the 16th century E. C, lately opened, they are absolutely unimpaired throughout, and there is nothing but the style of the execution to lead one to suspect that they were not painted yesterday. Several of the colors have a lustre as if mixed with varnish, and I doubt not they were tempered with something very different from the water of Nilus. " The method of squares seems to have been common. We saw at least half a dozen instances of its use, and at the temple of Kom Ombos, a curious example of a change of design, where the original figures had been left in chalk, and others, differing in subject and number, drawn, and if I remember right, partly sculptured over them. It is wonderful how, with such a knowl- edge of contour and such facility and freedom of design as many of their drawings exhibit, the Egyptian artists could have been so ignorant of color, chiaro-scuro, and especially perspec- tive, as they undoubtedly were. Color seems often to have been a mere decoration, and to have been applied with little reference to the actual hue of the object depicted, and therefore I do not attach much importance to the argument which would prove that the Egyptians were acquainted with steel because they sometimes painted a swordblade or an axe blue. But it is in- credible to what an extent the coloring injures the effect of the sculptures. What appears to be very rude stone-cutting when 218 GEOEGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. VII. colored, often turns out very respectable sculpture when the greens, the reds, and the yellows that disguised it are gone, and we all agreed that none of the colored figures at all approached the plain ones in grace or in expression. "It is gratifying to know that at least twenty tombs of the Kings remain to be discovered at Thebes, to say nothing of the memorials of older dynasties, which I doubt not will yet be found in the vicinities of Memphis and the Pyramids, and which may enable future archaeologists to carry back Egyptian history further even than Lepsius has done. " I have had no opportunity of examining the work of Lep- sius now publishing, or that of his collaborator, Bunsen, but I was much interested in a resume of the labors of Lepsius which he left in a sort of album at Thebes. I am ashamed to say that I had not before heard of his partial confirmation of the ancient accounts of the heights of the Cataracts. It seems that at Samneh, thirty-five miles above the Second Cataract, where there are two old temples, he found on the rocks hiero- glyphic records of the height to which the river rose in eigh- teen inundations, at a period about two thousand two hundred years before Christ, from which it appears that the level of the Nile at that point was twenty-two feet higher than it is at pres- ent, and as it is known that at Assouan its level was then at least three feet lower than it now is, we have twenty-five feet to add to the present height of the fall embraced by the two Cataracts. This would not quite make a Niagara, but it would make real Cataracts of what are now but rapids. " "We are so much delighted with Egypt that we dream of returning next winter, and unless my letters from home (we are now more than three months without a word of intelligence from Europe or America — what tidings of joy or sorrow may not await us three days hence ! ) interpose some unlooked for obstacle, we mean to spend a good part of the summer in prep- aration for a more extended journey in Arabia and Syria, which latter appendix to our present tour the lateness of the 1851.] EETUKN TO CAIEO. 219 season, and a bad sprain of the ankle ■which I got at Karnac are likely to deprive us of. " I am going to tax Col. Estcourt's kindness to select some instruments for me, not that I expect to make geographical discoveries in countries so well known, bnt I should like now and then to measure a height or determine a position for my- self. Egypt ought to be a dependency of England, and now that I have no immediate interest in having your husband Commander of the Forces in Canada I will authorize you to offer my aid to the Ministry in annexing this country, on con- dition that Col. Estcourt be appointed Consul General, so that we can visit Egypt again under his administration. " The climate has on the whole been cooler and more vari- able than we expected, and the thermometer was today 56° at sunrise and 86° at five P. M. Nor is it as dry on the river as I had supposed, and I think consumptive patients should use great precautions unless they keep away from the river altogether. "We have had coughs, colds, toothaches, rheumatism and the like, as often as at Washington. Mrs. Marsh has derived bene- fit from the journey, but her improvement was only marked during our stay on shore. I believe a few months in the actual Desert would re-establish her health, and I hope we may try the experiment next winter. She has been carried everywhere in a litter, sometimes by men and sometimes by asses, and in this way has been able to scale some heights and thread some passes formidable enough to a well appointed pedestrian. I reserve a page for Cairo. . . ." The travellers reached Cairo the last days of April, and were so happy as to find only good news awaiting them from distant family friends. There seemed, liowever, small chance that the proposed journey to Sinai, Petra, Jerusalem, etc., could be carried out. The season was already very far advanced for desert travel, Mr. Marsh had seriously sprained his ankle at Karnac, while carrying his wife through the great temple, and 220 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. VII. could not now walk without the assistance of two persons, and Miss Paine had been suffering from a somewhat similar sprain even before leaving Constantinople, and had profited little by the surgical skill of the Franks at that city or in Egypt. The dragoman, though it was clearly for his interest that the jour- ney should be made, admitted the impossibility of it under these circumstances, and gravely proposed that the two sprains should be cured at once by an Arab Doctor of his acquaint- ance. He entreated so earnestly, and with such apparent con- fidence in his miracle-worker, that a consultation was held with some of the oldest and most intelligent of the Frankish resi- dents at Cairo ; and though no one would exactly take the re- sponsibility of advising it, everyone said the evidence of these immediate cures was such that he should certainly try the ex- periment in his own case. Some, indeed, had tried it with entire success, and no one thought any harm could come of it. These considerations, added to an intense desire to see more of the mysterious East, decided the lame patients to call in the radouheur. So, the second morning after their re-installment in their hotel, Aclimet presented himself, bringing with him the most extraordinary looking creature that can well be im- agined. He was scarce five feet in height, and was clad in a single garment of blue cotton, fastened about the waist with a leather belt. His old, withered face was lighted up by one eye only, and that seemed but half open, while nothing about his person would have led one to believe that the waters of the broad Nile were within reach. There was an unmistakable look of mortification on the part of those who had consented to sum- mon this ^sculapius, but there was no help for it now. At this moment a visitor was announced to Mr. Marsh, and the lady, therefore, was the first to prove the wild man's skill. He examined the injured foot, placed it in warm water, dipped his own fingers in olive-oil, and rubbed and pressed the foot very gently for about twenty minutes. He then carefully dried it, and bade his patient walJc. She hesitated, having suffered so 1851.] THE AEAB DOCTOR. 221 much and so long from every effort of that kind, but an im- perative " Imsheh, imsheh ! " decided her. She placed her foot firmly on the floor and took a step — another and another, and still no pain. In a few minutes she was in the street, and after strolling some hours among the bazaars of the city, re- turned without the least feeling of discomfort. The cure was perfect and permanent. In the meantime Mr. Marsh had passed through a more se- vere ordeal at the hands of the magician. His foot and ankle, which were both badly swollen and discolored, were very sensi- tive to the manipulation, and especially to the energetic pull- ing which, in his case, was a part of the treatment, and at the end of three-quarters of an hour he was wellnigh exhausted by pain. But then, on looking at his foot, he was surprised to find the swelling had disappeared, the color was almost entirely natural, and the shoe and stocking, which had been laid aside almost two weeks, were put on with perfect ease. He was then directed to walk, which, to his amazement, he found he could do without the least pain, and the only unpleasant sensa- tion experienced afterward was a slight stiffness for the first day or two, which, however, did not in the least interfere with walking. After this, preparations for a forty days' wandering in the desert were made as rapidly as possible, and in the interim the following was written to Professor Baird : " Caieo, May 3, 1851. " My Deak Bot : "I arrived here a week since after an absence of three months in Upper Egypt and Nubia, and found your welcome letter of Feb. 9th. I regret I have not heard from you earlier, as I could have found you several of the skulls you wish, had I known they were particularly desirable. As it was, I did the best I could, but my dragoman mistook my orders and got but 222 GEORGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. VIL little spirit at Cairo. In Upper Egypt I could get only arrack and every thing I put into that liquor spoiled. I had an asp, two cerastes, two large, (crocodile-egg-eating) and many small, lizards of various species, many species of fish, two pelicans' heads, with the and the parasitic animals that inhabit them, also the neck and curious respiratory apparatus, some other birds, and other curious things, but they are gone, and I have now only three large and a few small lizards of different species, a few beetles, shell fish, and other fish of the Nile, the head and neck of a small ostrich, the heads of two cerastes and an asp, scorpions quantum sufF., bats, frogs and toads, in small variety. They will be packed to day, and sent ofE in the course of next week. On Monday, we start for the "Wilderness, but I cannot carry much spirit on camels, though I hope to secure you the heads of some gazelles and wild goats. We saw many crocodiles, but though I offered large prices I coxild get neither eggs nor young. It is a dangerous diversion to look for the nest of this bird and the people don't like to undertake it. The crocodile is a very ferocious animal, and we heard many well authenticated accounts of the destruction of human life by them. The quadrupeds of the valley of the Nile are few. The gazelle (I have seen but three wild) the fox, the hyena, the jerboa and the ichneumon nearly make out the list, but the birds are incredibly numerous. The waders greatly predomi- nate and it is pleasant to see the harmony in which these poor creatures live with each other and even with the crocodile. I saw one of these beasts completely surrounded by a flock of white, blue and grey herons, spoonbills and geese, twenty of them at least within reach of his tail. The crocodile bird (Herodotus trochilus) is very common, but I saw it near the crocodile only once, and then it wasn't picking his teeth. As for the ibis, if in fact it was black as Herodotus says, it is no longer to be found here, though most persons take a very com- mon bird of snowy plumage to be the ibis. But insomuch as the lotos and papyrus are gone or nearly so, why not the ibis ? 1851.] LETTER TO PEOFESSOE BAIED. 223 I am ashamed to have traversed so much of Egypt and Nubia, and understood so little. How I envy you your knowledge of the many tongues in which mother Nature speaketh to her children. In fact I hold ignorance of geology, physical-geogra- phy, and natural history to be a crime, and if I am hung for it, I shall still say the sentence was just. I say to you in strict confidence that I hope to come back next winter and go as high as Khartoom in 16°, and if possible even further. Therefore send me not only spirits, but vessels. Casks are not good in this dry and cooperless land. Strong glass with wide mouths and good corks, bladders, or some other mode of making them tight, I should prefer, but I think good tins proved beforehand would answer well. The trouble or expense of collection I don't mind, but the materials of preservation can't be got here. Let me have every thing forthwith, not next winter, but now. You'll get this in June. Don't wait till cold weather, but send your traps to Tasigi and Goddard in a month at most, to be sent by first ship to Smyrna, otherwise they will come too late. I will look out sharp for salamanders and if I find a new one, you shall name it Salamandrilus Bairdii or the like. Don't make the name good Latin. The naturalists won't be able to construe it, if you do. Don't let your husband work himself to death, Mary. Take away his tools and let him journey. Wasn't that a good word I made in my last letter, snakery ? Put it into all the scientific glossaries and things. I like your plan of exchange, but am sorry your time should be taken up with clerk-work. The ^personnel of the Smithsonian ought to be increased. It is by no means large enough. What is Jewett doing ? I have not heard from him for a long time. I have many things to say to you, my son, but on Monday I go in pur- suit of the children of Isi-ael as Pharaoh did, and have no time. Go on as you have begun, but don't undertake too much, nor waste these golden hours of your precious youth on matters of mere routine. Let the dead bury their dead, but do thou fulfil thy vocation. Mary knoweth that she is dear unto me even as 224 GEOEGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Chap. VII. thou, and I thank her for her kind expressions of interest in her ancient friend, and now I bid ye both heartily farewell. " Your true well-wisher, " Geo. p. Maesh." "P. S. I send a box of shells and living snails, with a dried crocodile's egg. The palm fruit in the same bos is for Dr. Wislizenus. The snails are from the Desert." On May 7th the party left Cairo, attended by five servants and a troop of between thirty and forty camels with their driv- ers. The usual precaution was taken, namely, to encamp for the first night at a very short distance from the city, in order that anything forgotten could be sent for, or any unforeseen want supplied, the next morning, from the city. Many kind friends accompanied the pilgrims thus far, and returned that evening to Cairo. There being no occasion to send back to town, the tents were struck at a very early hour the following morning, and soon after the little caravan was on its way toward the rising sun. CHAPTER VIII. Extract from a Letter to the American Consiil-General at Cairo, dated Al:aba, Jnne 3, 1851 — Letter from Mr. Marsh to his Mother, Hebron, Jnne 18th — Letters to Colonel and Mrs. Eetconrt from Hebron and Jerusalem — Leaves Jernsalem for the North, July 4, 1851 — His Ilhiess at Nazareth — Goes to Mount Carmel — Mrs. Marsh taken HI there — The Party set out again for Damascus — Increased Ill- ness — Halt at Hatteen — Kemove to Mijdol — Medical Priest at Nazareth sent for — Rev. Mr. Bowen comes to the Belief of the Distressed Travellers — His Wisdom and Energy — The Encampment moved by Stages of an Hour to Safed — Nine Days' Best at Safed — Joined by American Missionaries — Damascus is given up, and the Convalescent Party set off for Beirut — Incidents of the Journey — Arrival at Beirut, August 18th — Taken the following Day by Steamer to Smyrna — Extracts from Mr. Marsh's Letters while at Quarantine in Smyrna — ^The Frig- ate "Mississippi" takes Mr. Marsh and his Family to Constantinople^Mrs. Marsh's Subsequent Illness — Dr. Humphrey Sandwith. MR. MARSH has recorded many of his observations on this journey in his little work on the Camel, and in articles for periodicals. In selecting the following extracts from private letters, it has been intended to omit all that he himself has published, as far as could be done, and give the narrative in his own words. Extract from a letter to the American Consul-General at Cairo, dated Akaba, June 2d. " . . . We arrived here on Saturday, after a very inter- esting' and, in most respects, prosperous journey. The nights were, almost without exception, cool, but during the day the thermometer stood as high as 106° in the shade, in the open air, and 110°-111° in our tents. The dryness of the atmos- phere made even the temperature very endurable, and though some of our party suffered from illness, none complained 15 226 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. VUI. greatly of the heat. , . . Being a student of nature (though not a naturalist) I have found the country we have passed over, unequalled as it is for facilities for geological and geographical observation, and at the same time rich in the grandest and most picturesque landscape, profoundly interest- ing. I have never seen any natural scenery so sublime as that of the Wadees el Ain and Weteer, or so wildly beautiful as the waters of the Gulf of Akaba near the island of Graia, with the gorgeous world of animal and vegetable life they cover, and the rugged shores around them. " The well-known Sheikh Hussein of Akaba accompanied U8 from Cairo, and is to start for Petra with us to-morrow. We were especially placed under his care by the kindness of the Viceroy, and though he will deny his nature and belie his repu- tation if he does not fleece us a little, yet 1 hope we may be able to escape out of his hands without being altogether shorn. Sheikh Hussein describes the condition of things here as alto- gether unfavorable to the maintenance of the vice-regal author- ity, and to the security of the lives and property of both resi- dents and travellers, and he is very desirous that some repre- sentation should be made to the Viceroy on the subject. I am inclined to believe the Sheikh's statements to be well-founded, and both because the number of American and English travel- lers in this quarter renders it highly desirable that efficient measures should be taken for their protection, and because I know jou have the means of communicating directly with the Viceroy, I think it best to write to you confidentially in the subject. I need not enlarge on the political and military im- portance of this port, that being of course well understood by both you and the Viceroy, but it is obviously essential that, simply as a matter of police, it should be in reliable and dis- creet hands, which at present I suspect is far from being the case. Of the governor I know, and have observed, nothing unfavorable, but Sheikh Hussein gives a bad account of his antecedents as well as of his present character, and if I can 1851.] LETTER TO CONSUL GENEEAL. 227 believe my dragoman's report of what he has to-day witnessed at the castle, it is quite certain that he is unable to control the garrison, which is represented to be constantly in a state of insubordination little better than mutiny. The governor has been here five years, the commandant of artillery from twenty to thirty, and the thirty-two soldiers (Mogrebbins from Tunis) of the garrison, many of them, for a very long period, there being no fixed or regular term of service. I have seen enough of these men to be quite confident that they are worthless for any regular military or police duty, and have no doubt that the security both of the Viceroy's government and of European travellers would be much advanced by the immediate with- drawal of the whole of this disorderly and dangerous troup, and the substitution of a different force which should again be re- lieved before it has remained long enough to form mischievous liaisons on the one hand, or to make itself too odious to the Arabs on the other. . . . What weight is to be attached to Sheikh Hussein's opinions and statements is better known to the Government at Cairo than to me, but if the subject is thought worthy of present attention in the critical state of the existing relations between the Yiceroy and the Porte, and as touching so nearly the interests of Frank travellers in these parts, I think useful information might be obtained from the oldest son of Sheikh Hussein, who is now at Cairo. . . ." The following, dated Hebron, June 16th, is to his mother. " . . . After more than forty days' journeying in the wilderness we have safely arrived at Hebron, and I am writ- ing in sight of the mosque which is built over the entrance to the cave of Machpelah. "We are now in the Quarantine (of which we are the only occupants, and where we are very com- fortable) and intend to go to Bethlehem on Thursday, and to Jerusalem the next day. We have all borne the journey very well, and I have often had occasion to remark that any forty 328 GEORGE PEEKINS MAE8H. [Chap. VIII. days of stage travelling in the United States would involve more of fatigue, danger, and discomfort of all sorts, than this trip lias done. We did not like to alarm you by writing from Cairo that we were going to undertake so formidable a journey as that to Mount Sinai and Petra is generally supposed to be, and therefore did not mention our route, but we have now passed through it in safety and with reasonable comfort, and are most abundantly repaid for all it has cost us. . . . " Our route was as follows : Four days to Suez ; twelve days to Mount Sinai, where we remained four days ; five days to Akaba (Ezion Geber) at the head of the Eastern arm of the Ked Sea. Here we remained two or three days ; four days to Petra, where, including a visit to Mount Hor, we remained four or five days ; and then six days to Hebron. The whole journey is through the desert and the only dwellings we saw on the route were at Suez, Mount Sinai and Akaba. I believe we saw but three or four Arab camps, and with that exception, met no living person between Suez and Hebron. We all rode camels except C. who travelled in the mahafa. . . . It is a fatiguing mode of travelling, but as C. cannot sit erect, there was no other way for her. We rose at a very early hour (some- times when we had a moon as early as two, but more commonly about four) and breakfasted before setting off, which we usu- ally did about five. We travelled nine, ten and sometimes eleven hours without stopping, and then we halted for the night. We carried four tents, an abundance of stores, beds, bedding, a portable table and chairs, cooking utensils, and a variety of other conveniences, so that we had in fact all the comforts necessary for health as well as many superfluities. Between Suez and Mount Sinai, we had the thermometer at 106° in the shade, in the open air, and 111° in the tent, and for days together above 100°, but elsewhere the weather had been comparatively cool. At Mount Sinai we had heavy rain with thunder and hail, but with this exception have scarcely seen a cloud. We have also rarely experienced a violent wind, 1851.] LETTEB TO HIS MOTHER. 229 but even a wind which is, in the main, not oppressively hot is alternated in the desert by frequent scorching gusts exactly like blasts from a furnace. These fiery blasts, however, were momentary only with us, and though lips, nostrils and throat were often thoroughly parched, yet we experienced none of the more serious effects usually ascribed to the Simoom. " With the exception of the distance from Cairo to Suez and a couple of days' journey south of Suez, our route has lain through what are called wadees, or across the mountain ridges that separate them. Almost any permanent depression of the surface into which water flows from the adjacent higher grounds, and by which it is conducted to other valleys, or to the sea, is called a,wadee. They are sometimes broad and shal- low, but in general narrow and with precipitous banks of rock of great height. Their bottoms usually present a tolerably smooth surface of gravel or pebbles, and a carriage might travel without difficulty two thirds of the way from Cairo to Hebron. At the head of a great wadee is generally a tremendous ra- vine, and the path leads through this to the commencement of another running in a different direction. The mountains intersected by the wadees are, with few exceptions, absolutely bare of vegetable earth, and it is said that the soil of the little gardens of the monks of Mount Sinai was brought from Egypt. Notwithstanding this nakedness, one is seldom out of sight of all vegetation. Many shrubs and hei'bs find nourishment in the decaying fragments of rock, and in the beds of the wa- dees there are generally scattered shrubs and small tree-like growths enough to furnish fuel for the traveller and food for the camels. The plants of the desert are almost all highly fragrant, and some of them, the smaller ones especially, are beautiful ; but they are rarely numerous enough to give the general surface anything like a green color, though this is sometimes the case, as particularly in the Wadee el Araba, which is some miles in width, and extends from the Ked Sea to the Dead Sea. In the greater part of this wadee, at the sea- 230 GEOEaE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. VIU. son we were there, the shrubs occur as often as one to every square rod, and of course the surface has a greenish aspect. The poetical phrase ' the sands of the Desert,' as applied to the Sinaitic peninsula and the adjacent country, is very far from being truly descriptive. Of really moving sands we have seen almost nothing, and very little so soft that a horse's hoof would sink deeply into it. The ground of the surface is, for the most, too firm to be acted upon by the wind, though we have seen many sand columns, and a few times sand clouds of a formidable appearance, and our dinner was frequently too thickly peppered with silicious sand to be altogether agreeable. " The scenery in the narrower wadees and ravines is grand beyond description, and though the mountains are not of great height (Mount St. Catharine, near Mount Sinai, the highest in the peninsula, not being much above 8,000 feet) the precipices are often truly stupendous. The nearly perpendicular sides of the narrow valley of El Arbain, through which we passed to ascend Horeb, are from 800 to 1,500 feet high, and those of the magnificent Wadees El Ain and Weteer are of about the same elevation. The walls of Wadee Moosa, (Petra) which are not simply perpendicular but often overhanging, are in many places 700 feet high, and there are numerous other precipices equally formidable in the same range of mountains. In pass- ing from one wadee to another, one skirts the base of such precipices, gradually ascending till near the head of the ravine. Then you begin to climb the side by paths so narrow, rough and steep that one who had never seen a camel ascend them, would say they were wholly impracticable for any beast of burden. There is often not the least appearance of a track, and the camel climbs from roc^k to rock like a mountain goat. There is not often a very high precipice, on either hand, but the path runs frequently over slippery rocks or the base of a steep ascent where a misstep of the camel would infallibly prove fatal to both the beast and his rider. The dangers of these passes are not very formidable to travellers in health, because the camel, 1851.] LETTER TO HIS MOTHEE. 231 with SO light a burden as a single person, is so sure-footed that accidents are almost unheard of, and besides, the rider, if he prefers it, can walk where he thinks his own feet safer than those of his beast. But with C. the case was far otherwise. The camel that carried her, though a very large and strong ani- mal, (7 ft. 3 inches high) was heavily burthened with the ma- hafa, and its contents, and the width of this mahafa was a great obstacle in the very narrow passages. . . . While walking over such perUons places behind her camel (which showed as much prudent caution at every step as if he had known the consequences of a slip) I was often obliged to shut my eyes until the most dangerous points were passed. . . . ""We have this morning dismissed our camels and our Arabs (forty-two of the former and twenty-seven of the latter) and the residue of our journey will be prosecuted with horses and mules, the mules serving to transport our luggage and C 's litter. " Hebron is situated on the very border of what is now the desert, though there are abundant evidences of former cultiva- tion ten or twelve miles further south. . . . It is very diffi- cult to convey an adequate idea of the peninsular Desert. One who has lived, as you have done, among mountains covered with verdure may easily imagine them stripped of all vegetation, — jagged peaks, bare precipices, bald rocks, etc. but the colors of the mountains of Arabia cannot be imagined — they must be seen. . . . " As we were nearly on the track of the Israelites, we have, of course, seen many of the localities famUiar to students of Bible history. The route of the fugitives from Egypt to the Bed Sea, and the point at which they crossed it, are not well settled, but there is every reason to suppose that the fountain of Moosa, which we passed, is the Marah of Scripture, and we spent a night near where were the 12 wells and the 1'ipal'm trees. There are still several wells there (the Arabs say 12, but we could find but 7) and a few palms, but no inhabitants. "We 232 GEORGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. Vni. went thence to the E.ed Sea (the western arm) and left it probably at the same point as did the Israelites, and "Wadee Feiran, where was so ill, is a part of the old Paran, Onr tents were tliere pitched very near the base of Serbal, which some hold to be the real Sinai, and we were four or five days at the base of Horeb, besides ascending that peak and the one held by the monks to be the true Sinai. What course the Israelites took to reach the eastern arm of the Ked Sea is doubt- ful, but we were again on tlieir track at Akaba (Ezion Geber) and in going north from that point we followed, in an opposite direction, the course they took after the Edomites refused them a passage. At Petra we climbed Mount Hor where Aaron died, and where a mosque now stands on his supposed tomb. We travelled some days along the base of Mount Seir, which the Israelites compassed so long, and passed through the defile by which they hoped to enter Edom. "There is, I believe, no doubt about the identity of the cave of Machpelah, but this we shall not see, as neither Jew nor Christian is ever permitted to enter the mosque built over it, which is guarded from profane eyes with great jealousy, and is surrounded by a wall forty or fifty feet high. . . . It is now more than fifty days since we have heard from Europe or America, and are every moment expecting our letters from Jerusalem — with what mingled dread and longing you will easily understand. ..." On the 18th of June he wrote from Hebron to Colonel and Mrs. Estcourt : "... We have at length achieved the adventure of Ara- bia Petrsea, slain the dragon, delivered the captive knights and released the enchanted damsel, and do freely testify that Burck- hardt, Irly and Mangles, Laborde, Stephens, and others who describe that country as an adust, thirsty and stony land, have but spoken the truth, and are henceforth to be regarded as 1851.] LETTER TO THE ESTCOXTETS. 233 veracious travellers. Into Arabia the Happy we penetrated not, because we were well advised that the felicity thereof con- sisteth chiefly in a higher degree of heat, drouthiness and rocki- ness, and the taste we have already had of these qualities suf- ficeth US for this time. . . " We had time to see with reasonable satisfaction all that is most noteworthy at the places we visited, except Petra, where, though we saw all that is described by former travellers, and some very interesting things apparently hitherto unobserved, I believe there is yet a good deal more to discover. ... To the members of our party who are well, the journey has by no means been one of great privation or fatigue, but it has been ' sharp practice ' for . Well as you know her, I doubt whether you understand what a forcible, feeble manikin it is. . . . While we were at Horeb, the commandant of the near- est post sent Tis a detachment of soldiers, with a non-commis- sioned officer, and these good fellows, whose discipline and habits of prompt obedience were here of signal service, carried her up most of the difficult ascent of that mountain. Before attempt- ing it, we were all much refreshed by a severe thunder-storm which brought us cool air and fresh water, both cordials after two weeks in the wilderness with the thermometer sometimes at 111° in the afternoon in our tents, and no water except our half -spoiled supply from the Nile. About 4 P. M. we left our tents at the foot of Horeb, ( being borne in a litter by 4 soldiers, with i to relieve them) and passed up the grand valley of El Arbain as far as the Convent of the same name where we spent the night. (I take this, and purpose to take every future, occasion to praise the water of this Monastery as the choicest of fluids). Early the next morning we were on our way to the summit of Horeb. The difficulties for the litter increased as we ascended, and though the soldiers did their duty admirably, not unfrequently invoking the aid or at least the name of their prophet, yet about half an hour before we reached the top tliey could carry it no further. Then a strong Arab lifted like 234 GEOEGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. VIII. a child in his arms, scrambled up the rocks and threaded the crooked ravines as if unconscious that he was carrying a burden, and deposited her safely on the pinnacle of the mighty moan- tain mass. ... I spare you even an attempt to describe what we saw there — it would be but the repetition of what any good guide-book will tell you — I will only say it was grander even than we had dreamed it. . . . We came down by a more direct route than that by which we had ascended, through a tremendous ravine which I had noticed from our tents, but had supposed to be q^uite impracticable for any less dexterous cUmber than a chamois. . . . The so-called Sinai did not attempt, but the rest of us found it easier than Horeb. " Col. Estcourt knowing the desert by experience, and you, dear Mrs. Estcourt, through him, I can say nothing new of its general features, but the Siniatic peninsula is distinguished from the African and the more Eastern Asiatic wilderness by its mountainous character. ... I have not seen Switzer- land, and therefore I will hope that it has yet greater things in store for us, but I cannot believe it has grander scenery than that of some of these great chasms, those particularly of El Arbain, El Ain, Weteer, and Abou Kshadek, the last the en- trance to Petra by the Wadee el Araba route. . . . The rocks which form the walls of these wadees, all primitive, are almost absolutely bare of earth or vegetation, and the syenite of which they are chiefly composed (itself grey or red) is traversed by a multitude of basaltic and porphyritic dykes of all the hues which belong to those formations — black, green of various shades, both sometimes weathering into maroon, bright red, etc., and here and there quartzose veins and metamorpliio shale in endless variety of form and tone. There is also great richness of coloring in the igneous rock and in the metamorphic lime- stone at the outlets of Wadees Taiyibeh and Shellal on the gulf of Suez, and more especially in the sandstone ridges of the mountains of Seir and the plutonic rocks which have burst through them. But the crowning marvel in the way of color 1851.] LETTEB TO THE ESTCOUETS. 235 ia in the natural painting of the rocks at Petra. At some dis- tance the shades soften down to a general surface of rich brown, but as you approach the rocks, and especially within the exca- vations, you find the sandstone composed of curiously winding, and sometimes convoluted, strata of all shades of color between black and white, both inclusive. Yarious comparisons have been suggested to give an idea of the effect of this veining, such as mahogany, and various other woods, etc., but one of our party has hit upon the best I have seen or heard — namely, that of marbled paper, which sometimes very exactly represents the strange arrangement of lines and colors one often sees at Petra. The veins are in general very thin, sometimes a mere film, oftener an inch or two, but more generally three or four, or even more, in thickness. In cirtting the walls of the excava- tions, the plane surface intersects these winding veins at all angles, and so gives ever varying widths and forms of differ- ently colored rock, and the effect is singularly brilliant, as you may well imagine. The style of finish of the interiors, however, though very pretty, must have much interfered with the effect I have tried to describe. The dressing of the walls was after this fashion, in the best excavations. Around the top of the wall, in place of a cornice, run four or more semi-cylindrical beads, half an inch, or a little less, in width, and the whole face of the wall below this is beaded in the same way in diagonal lines, and without panelling or other division. In some of the tombs, this dressing remains entire, but in most of them it has wholly or partly scaled off, and the regularity of the thickness of the scaling (the surface having, of course, been acted upon to an equal depth, by exposure to atmospheric influences) has led some hasty observers to mistake this tooled surface for a coating of stucco. In the architecture of the rock f a9ades in general, one does not find much to admire. They all, or nearly all, date, without doubt, from a period subsequent to the Eoman conquest, and are of an inferior style of art ; but still I can by no means agree with those, who find in the Khasne, or Treas- 236 GEORGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. Till. ury of Pharaoh, no beauties but those of position and material. This building, which is excavated in rose-colored sandstone, stands in the Sik, the narrow ravine that formed the principal entrance to Petra, and is conjectured to be of the time of Trajan. The fa9ade appears to have been finished, though the interior was never completed, and, with the exception of the statuary, which is more or less mutilated, is in extraordinarily fine preser- vation, and is to my eye, with all its architectural defects, among the most beautiful edifices I have ever seen. " I mentioned above some observations which I thought perhaps new ; one of these is the discovery of several Greek and Sinaitic inscriptions in the Sik, in the excavations, and es- pecially in an unfrequented ravine called Kaltara Deir, where they are quite numerous. But the object which interested me the most, and that of which I should like best to prove the discoverer, if I could suppose it possible that a thing so con- spicuous could have escaped the notice of former travellers, is a tunnel three hundred feet long, seventeen wide, and twenty high, cut through the rock near the entrance of the Sik, to prevent the stream (which in ordinary times was conveyed to the town by an aqueduct) from overflowing the city at high water. This remarkable work is so near (not above three hun- dred paces from) the arch across the entrance of the Sik, that I cannot believe it to have been hitherto unnoticed, though my dragoman, who has been many times at Petra, had never heard of it, and there is no mention of it in any of the books of travels I have fallen in with. In connection with this, there are still to be seen, at the head of the Sik, the remains of the dam of masonry laid in cement, by which the water of the stream was turned into the aqueduct and tunnel, though the channel leading to the latter is partly filled up by earth washed in from the sides. Another great work which I have not seen described is the widening of the channel of the stream helow the town, to prevent the waters from the basin of the city, and the neighboring ravines, from setting hack in heavy rains. 1851.] LETTER TO THE ESTCOURTS. 237 Here the roct-cntting is oii a gigantic scale, and for a consid- erable distance the height of the cut on both sides is not less, I think, than 70 feet, and there are other great excavations at points lower down the stream, evidently executed with the same object. But I am indulging in the vanity of the travel- ler, upon probably very slender grounds, and I will spare you further details. " We were much interested in the Arabs, both on account of the great light which the study of their habits and charac- ters throws on the patriarchal portion of Scripture history, and because they are, I believe, nearly the only people of really primitive manners left on the face of the earth. The Arabs of the Sinaitic peninsula have had so much intercourse with Egypt and with European travellers, that they are a good deal spoiled. We found them rather a stupid people, but very kind and obliging to us, though almost constantly in a quarrel among themselves. . . . " The Alloween (a branch of the great family of the Ha- meitat into whose hands we passed at Akaba) we found a very different people. They are quick, active, and intelligent, true sons of the Desert, and in spite of their bad reputation, both they and their famous old Sheikh Hussein treated us through- out with unbounded kindness and attention. The Sheikh even took along a milch camel for Mrs. Marsh, and at every halt brought her with his own hands a half pint or more of good fresh milk, which, except when the camel had no food but the strongly aromatic shrubs of the wilderness, she found very ao-reeable and refreshing. Upon the whole we found Desert travelling very pleasant, and the arrangements for travellers are now so complete that I can truly say I never travelled in the United States (except by rail road and steamboat) for so many days, with so little fatigue, privation, danger or des- agrement of any sort as I have experienced in the trip from Cairo to Palestine. . . ." 238 GEORGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Chat. VIII. " Jebusalbm, July 4tli, 1851. " I meant to have sent off my letter by the last post, but the illness of my son (a slow fever contracted by imprudent ex- posure after we left Hebron) has detained us until now at Je- rusalem, and as my letter did not go, and I have now more things to say, I think I'll even make a clean breast of it, and inflict upon you another sheet. " The country between Hebron and Jerusalem consists of a succession of low rounded limestone hills, with narrower val- leys between, anciently terraced and cultivated to the tops, but now for the most part barren and desolate. We spent a night at the Armenian convent at Bethlehem and saw the supposed sacred localities, now so bedizened and disguised that it is quite impossible they should produce any thing of the impression one would expect and desire from places consecrated by such stu- pendous events as the birth of our Saviour and the accompany- ing occurrences. Bethlehem is wholly inhabited by Christians, and is a populous and thriving town. Its immediate environs are well cultivated, and its dwellings are the only human habi- tations on the road from Hebron to Jerusalem, except an old castle at the Pools of Solomon, now occupied by a few sol- diers. . . . " We have visited all the places of historical interest, sa- cred and profane, in and about this city. I looked a little into the controversy about the site of the Sepulchre and Mount Calvary, and though I have not examined the evidence fully, I must say that the theory of Williams and Schultz about the course of the city-wall at the time of the crucifixion, and the relative position of the wall, the Sepulchre, and Mount Calvary, is as monstrous an improbability, upon the face of it, as was ever propounded as a historical fact. Williams' book (second edition, the first I have not seen) is a literary curiosity. In his preface he expresses much regret that he should have allowed himself to attack Dr. Robinson, in the former edition, with so much personality and virulence, and though he does not fairly 1851.] ILLNESS AT NAZARETH. 239 retract anything, he declares that, in this new edition, he has expunged all the passages of an objectionahle character. All this while it is evident, that this poor man. Dr. Kobinson, is, to liis mind, a personification of the Evil Principle, and that he thinks his own vocation in this life to be, not the establish- ment of any truth, but the overthrow and demolition of that fell enchanter, Robinson, who has wickedly cheated so many good people out of their cherished traditions. The whole book, in short, is nothing but an attack of the bitterest character on Dr. Robinson, and I should say I had never seen more personal malignity bound up between two pasteboards than is displayed in the volume which relates to these local questions. "On the first of July we went down to the Dead Sea. Contrary to our expectations we found the temperature of the air agreeable enough (though the water of the aea stood at 88°) and upon bathing in the sea I discovered much less of the extraordinary buoyancy, stickiness, and other odd qualities of the waters, than other observers have noticed. Today we start for the North — Damascus, Baalbec, and Beirut — and I shall take with me these sheets to be forwarded from the latter place." The party left Jerusalem as proposed, but Mr. Marsh, who had exhausted himself somewhat with watching by his son dur- ing his illness, and whose imprudent bath in the Dead Sea had given him some febrile symptoms, was not feeling as well as usual. At the end of the first day's journey, however, he seemed quite well, and continued so until his arrival at Nazareth. During that night he was attacked with so high a fever that he became unconscious in the course of an hour after the first com- plaint of pain in the head, and at 3 a.m. the old Spanish priest at the convent, who had received a medical education, declared he could survive but a short time if the heat of the body was not reduced, and he proposed copious bleeding. To this Mrs. Marsh objected, because her husband had told her that bleed- 240 GEOEGE PEEKIHTS MABSH. [Chap. TUI. ing, in his case, always brought on a spasmodic action of the heart, of a most distressing and dangerous character, and that his American medical advisers had warned him never to risk it again. After waiting a short time, during which other reme- dies were tried to no purpose, the good priest renewed his warning that no time was to be lost, and assured Mrs. Marsh that the inhalation of ammonia would prevent what she feared. The bleeding was assented to, but in a few minutes the dreaded spasms came on, and the priest, in his agitation, turned the liquid ammonia directly into the nostrils of his prostrate pa- tient. The effect, as may be imagined, was terrible to witness, but with his breath, which seemed gone forever, Mr. Marsh re- covered his full consciousness. The frightful scalding of the nose, mouth, and throat apparently relieved the brain, and the violence of the fever soon abated, though the suffering from the ammonia was very great. After a week it was thought best for him to go to Mount Carmel for better air. There Mrs. Marsh was prostrated by fever, but in four or five days thought herself well enough to continue the journey. Accordingly the travellers once more set off, in the hope of still reaching Damas- cus. At Hatteen a halt of a day or two was indispensable, but the dragoman became alarmed at the suspicious bearing of the Arabs, who were prowling about the tents, and insisted on a change of camp. Two hours farther, at Mijdol, or Magdala, the supposed home of Mary Magdalene, on the sea of Galilee, Mrs. Marsh was found too ill to proceed, and Mr. Marsh sent back to Nazareth for the good priest who had cared for him, but the priest had been summoned to Tyre, by an American family lying ill there, and it was two or three days before he reached the Marshes. In the meantime the Rev. John Bowen * * A memoir of this remarkable man was pnblished by his sister in 1861. On his return to England from the East, he took charge of a parish, and brought up a con- gregation that numbered scarce twenty at his first service to many hundreds in the course of two years. In 1857 he accepted the bishopric of Sierra Leone, for which he wa« singularly fitted by his familiarity with uncivilized or half-civilized peoples and his extraordinary personal influence over them, by his long experience of malarial 1851.] EEV. MK. BOWEN. 241 had come to their relief. He found Mr. Marsh not less ill than his wife. Great anxiety and constant care for her had brought on a relapse of fever, and he sank prostrate as soon as this friend appeared. Mr. Eowen saw at once that the sufferers (there were now three of the servants belonging to the party ill with fever) must at all hazards be removed from this deadly lo- cality, and he immediately set himself to contrive some practical mode of conveyance. Hammocks were suspended to long poles, and Arabs engaged as carriers. There were at this time between one and two hundred of this wild race hovering about the little encampment, evidently waiting for the right moment to plun- der it. The presence of Mr. Bowen seemed to hold them in awe. He spoke Arabic fluently, and had that rare gift of com- mand which compels obedience. When the priest arrived, all was in readiness for a move in case he should think it possible and advisable, which he did. One hour was the length of the first day's journey, and the second the same. Mr. Marsh was at this time suffering from severe neuralgia in the head, which for more than a week nearly deprived him of all conscious- ness except that of pain. The third day after leaving the sea of Galilee, Safed was reached in safety — a distance of about twelve miles. Here, on higher ground, some twenty-seven hundred feet above the sea, in a comparatively healthy air, the camp was pitched in an old olive-grove, at a little distance from the shattered town ; and here, after nine days, it was decided that the invalids were sufficiently recovered to set out for Beirut — all thought of Damascus and Baalbec being now given up. In the meantime, Mr. Marsh, as soon as sufficiently himself to decide upon anything, had sent a messenger to the American missionaries near Beirut, to ask one or two of those gentlemen to come to him, if possible, and relieve Mr. Bowen and the climates, and, above all, by his unbounded zeal in his Master's service. Soon after his consecration, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, he married the daughter of the Dean of Peterborough, who accompanied her husband to his perilous field of labor. Both husband and wife fell victims to the deadly climate in less than two years. 16 242 GEOEGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Ghap. VUI. medical priest, both of whom were needed elsewhere. His mes- senger met the Rev. Drs. Thomson and Vandyck, already on their way to Safed. Knowing the route Mr. Marsh was to take, and not hearing from him as soon as they expected, they had be- come anxious, and, as if by a sudden inspiration, had set out in the hope of meeting with him. Their arrival was hailed with great joy, not least of all by the two ladies who had remained well, but who were thoroughly worn out by the most assiduous nursing, not only of Mr. and Mrs. Marsh, but also of the poor servants, some of whom would no doubt have died but for their care. Two Syrian gentlemen in the American consular service also heard of Mr. Marsh's illness, and hastened to his assistance. In short, all that human kindness, energy, and good judgment could do, under the circumstances, was done, and on August 6th the little caravan, with undiminished numbers and grateful hearts, once more moved slowly forward. ^Notwithstanding Mr. Marsh's greatly exhausted condition, the journey from Safed to Beirut interested him profoundly. Almost every locality and every incident awakened some thrilling association. One evening, when the tents were pitched amid a throng of noisy, weary, hungry Arabs, who had either been employed as bearers, or had followed the travellers in the hope of being so employed, he was deeply impressed by the question of the dragoman : " Where shall we find bread to feed all this multitude, here in the wilderness ? " Twelve days brought the party safely to Beirut, and the following morning, August 19th, they embarked in an Austrian steamer for Smyrna, where the frigate " Mississippi " was wait- ing to take them to Constantinople. While in quarantine at Smyrna, Mr. Marsh wrote to the Estcourts a detailed account of his wife's illness, with a brief allusion to his ovra. Speaking of the journey from Safed to Beirut, he says : " We passed, by a route almost entirely unknown to travel- lers, along the southern and western flank of Lebanon, through 1851.] LETTER TO THE ESTCOTJETS. 243 scenery of extraordinary wildness and grandenr. . . . Though I left Safed in a litter, I was able to ride during the last days of the journey — greatly to my satisfaction." The following extract, from the same letter, will show that his recent experiences had not lessened his enthusiasm for Oriental travel : " Are you quite in earnest about coming to Constantinople ? If so, you may be there before us — though from Aug. 6th, Switzerland, to Aug. 31st, Stamboul, is rather short. We shall hardly meet you, unless you come to us, before 1853, as I do not intend to return to the United States at present, and though I suppose the Government will indulge me in travelling pretty largely in the Turkish Empire, I don't know whether an Ausjhtg to Christian Europe would be permitted. " I am delighted to learn that you have sent the Expedition to the Euphrates. I am sure I shall find it full of interest, and the rather, because we hope to penetrate the Desert of the Eu- phrates as far asTadmor, and perhaps beyond, next spring. " When I was in Paris I procured at the shop of ■ • sev- eral instruments, in fact nearly the same which you, Col. Est- court, have been so good as to procure for me at London. I had no time or opportunity in Paris to verify them, and told the makers beforehand, that I should rely entirely upon thcTn to select and verify them all. This they promised to do with scrupulous care, and the instruments were brought to me in the evening, and most of them packed and sent off by the roulage next morning. On arriving at Constantinople and examining them, I found myself shamefully cheated. Of the whole number there was scarcely one that was not defective in principle or construction, and I do not exaggerate when I say they were not worth more francs than they cost me napoleons. I have since been caught in a similar way with some other instruments pro- cured for me by a friend in Germany, and even out of a couple 244 GEOEGE PBEKINS MAESH. [Chap. VHI. of thermometers, bought for me last year of Troughton and Sims by our Despatch Agent at London, one has so large an air bubble in the tube as to be quite worthless. The globe maker, Malby of London, too, sent me a pair of 18 inch globes, in which, though the engraving is well enough, the brass and wooden parts are rude enough to disgrace an apprentice of two months' experience. There is to me something painful in this demoralization, which now seems to be universal among a class of artizans, that, in the time of the elder Dollond and Trough- ton, appear to have been quite above such cheating, and to have taken as much pride in their good name as a great painter does in his professional reputation. " It was my conviction, that the most celebrated instrument makers are no longer to be trusted, that led me to take the lib- erty to ask you. Col. Estcourt, to whom I thought they would not dare to sell a bad instrument, to procure these for me. I have no doubt they will all prove satisfactory, and the substitu- tion of the clinometer for the level is of no importance as the former will answer the same purpose. I had a clinometer and compass combined, in Egypt, but left it accidentally in the great temple of Abou Simbol in I^ubia — a circumstance I was glad of, because it was a very poor affair, though from a celebrated German shop, and I had now a good excuse for buying a better. The use I made of it was for the approximate measure of mod- erate heights, and either that, or the hand level, would answer a very good purpose in Arabia Petrsea, where the descent of the wadees often preserves almost exactly the same inclination through many sinuosities, and for several hours' journey in suc- cession. I regret very much I had not some instruments with me during our tour through the desert. The latest maps are astonishingly incorrect — Arrowsmith's the worst of all — and with a prismatic compass alone I could have made some important contributions to Arabian geography. At Cairo I could get ab- solutely nothing but a mere toy of a pocket-compass. "With this I took the bearings of almost every ten minutes' travel, but 1851.] LETTER TO THE ESTCOUKTS. 245 it was too imperfect an instrument to be reliable. Apropos of the Arabian desert — Bartlett's ' Forty Days ' is on the whole the best book I know on the subject. The illustrations ('tis a pity they are in that petty vignette style) are very faithful, and the descriptions very accurate. During 's illness in Wadee Feiran our tents were pitched in the palm grove at the left of the engraving opposite p. 54, and at Sinai we were encamped on the plain of El Rahal (p. 73) at the foot of the mountain spur, in a line between the vultures in the foreground and tlie convent in the background of Bartlett's engraving. We went up Horeb by passing up the wadee between Horeb and Mt. St. Catharine and then turning to the left, but we came down through the tremendous ravine through which the light falls in a direct line between the vultures and the word Sufsafeh (Horeb) at the top of the plate. This engraving is the most inaccurate view in the book, and gives one little notion of the true character of the scenery. The central group of mountains must, I think, have been sketched from memory. The steep depression at the right of the peak is quite imaginary, unless it is intended for the wadee called el Ledja, but in that case it should not be separated from Mt. St. Catharine by the inter- vening dark ridge. The group containing Sinai and Horeb abuts abruptly on the narrow el Ledja, which alone separates it from Mt. St. Catharine. The view of the Khasne at p. 130, without being strikingly inaccurate, fails nevertheless in giving an adequate idea of that superb fa9ade, but upon the whole Bartlett's drawings are very truthful. " Lord Castlereagh 1 find (what a shame) had the malice to anticipate me in my discovery of the tunnel, though after all he may refer to another which I did not see, inasmuch as mine is full three hundred feet long. It is a comfort to think that he did not discover the V;Se of it — that is mine at any rate — and as he describes his souterrain as only a hundred and twenty feet long, I sha'n't quite give up my claim till he makes out a better title. 246 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. Vm. " I have blotted over a vast deal of paper, and have only time to recur to a subject I have already alluded to — our great obligation to your countryman, the Rev. Mr. Bowen. With- out the aid of his energy and affectionate self-devotion, I do not believe that Mrs. Marsh or myself could ever have left Mijdol, and I think it more than probable that others of our party would have fallen a sacrifice to the pestilential air of that frightful spot. "We find Mr. Bowen (by the way he is a Welshman of Pembroke county) among the very best and most interesting men we have ever met, and I suppose we do not like him the less for being a little Americanized by a seven years' residence in Canada. He is now in the employment of some English missionary association, and is about to return home to report the results of a two or three years' tour of in- spection in Asiatic Turkey and Persia." To his mother he wrote, also from Smyrna, telling her of the country through which he had been travelling, and an- nouncing the safety of all thus far, but without any allusion to illness by the way. For this he waited until reaching Constan- tinople, in order to spare her needless anxiety. After giv- ing a description of the general geography and topography of Palestine, since made so familiar by many travellers, he says : " The valleys are exceedingly fertile, and both upon the East- ern and Western borders, there are extensive plains of great richness of soil, such as that of Jericho to the East, and those of Zeb Jezreel (Esdraelon), Zebulon, and Sharon, to the West. The whole population, except the wandering Arabs, live in villages at distances from two to six hours, in small stone houses, and a solitary dwelling is never seen, the country being too insecure for anything of that sort. There are no wheeled carriages, and both men and burdens are always borne on horses or mules, though heavy goods are sometimes transported on camels. The word road in these countries does not mean an artificial 1851.] LETTER TO HIS MOTHEB. 247 highway, but merely a path worn by the feet of horses, mules and camels in or between the rocks, and if Mt. Tom were bare of trees, it would be easier of ascent for horses than are the or- dinary hills which lie in the travellers' routes through Palestine. On Mt. Lebanon, though excessively steep and difficult, the paths have received more care. "Wet places are there filled up with stones, and rude steps, half a foot or a foot high, and three or four feet wide, have been made on some hillsides, but in gen- eral the roads are every where alike. On Lebanon the scenery is very grand. Springs, which in Palestine are rare, abound in the mountains, and they are in general of great size. Some indeed are large mill-streams at the point where they issue from the ground. The chain, where we traversed it, consists of steep ridges, with tremendous chasms not unf requently two thousand feet deep and often with nearly precipitous sides. One of our baggage mules fell from one of these precipices, and was of course crushed to death. At the bottom of these ravines are narrow plains, with a torrent running through them, and small villages whenever there is room. Wherever it is possible, the hills are terraced, and covered with fig-trees, grape-vines and mulberry trees, which grow to the very top, and here, as in Palestine, the soil is of most wonderful fertility. Indeed these countries want nothing but the protection of a just government to become as rich and popidous as any on the face of the globe, and I hope the day is not distant when they will be ruled by some other power than that of the Turks. Cases of shocking oppression and injustice are of very frequent occurrence, and I had yesterday the pleasure of rescuing a Greek girl from some Turks who were C9,rrying her by force to Constantinople under the pretence that she was the child of a Mahomedan fellah, and must be examined before the highest religious tribunal at the capital, as to her desire to remain a Christian or become a Mahomedan. She was brought on board a Turkish vessel at Cyprus, and it is believed by the intelligent foreigners here that this story was a trick on the part of a Turkish oflScial to 248 GEORGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. VHI. steal her for his hareem. I applied to the pasha here for her release, and, with the aid of our Consul, she was discharged. " The principal interest of Syria and Palestine lies of course in their connection with sacred history, and it is astonishing what life and vividness familiarity with Oriental habits and scenery gives to the Scripture narrative. The same costumes, modes of architecture, habits of life, agricultural processes, all things in short which go to make the sum of external human ex- istence, remain, in a great degree, just as they were in the time of the patriarchs and prophets, and furnish one with a strik- ing illustration of all that portion of Biblical history. . . . In reply to a question of yours (which however I answered be- fore it was asked) I can say that my anticipations of pleasure and instruction from travel have been much more than real- ized, and that I hope neither necessity nor considerations of paramount duty will prevent our visiting other countries which we have not yet seen, before our return to America." A letter to his friend, the Eev. Mr. Biewend, concludes thus : " I can only sum up our Oriental travels by saying that we have experienced great enjoyment, great sufferings and great mercies." On the expiration of the quarantine the Minister and his family were at once taken on board the " Mississippi," and the captain and other officers did everything in their power to re- fresh and restore the worn and weary travellers. The whole party were landed at Constantinople, August 31st, in perfect health, with the exception of Mrs. Marsh. The fever had never entirely left her, after the first attack at Carmel, and a day and night of intense heat on the Austrian steamer had greatly aggravated it. Soon after the return to Constantinople, her case was pro- nounced hopeless by both the native and English medical men, and the former characteristically declined further attendance. 1851.] DE. HUMPHREY SANDWITH. 249 At the personal request of Sir Stratford Canning, a very young English physician, Dr. Humphrey Sandwith,* then visited the patient, and profiting by his own personal experience from a similar fever, when with Sir Henry Layard at Nineveh, he, with God's blessing, brought her back, as it were, from the grave. * A memoir of Humplirey Sandwith, by his nephew, Thomas Ward, published in London, in 1884, furnishes some of the most stirring pictures of romantic and daring adventure, coupled with patriotic and philanthropic devotion, that can be found in recent biography ; and ye b those who knew Dr. Sandwith through any considerable part of his life know also that the half is not there told. From his first romantic journey through France, when, but a boy, he donned a blouse and made a five pound note last him three months, to his noble sacrifices for the suffering victims of the last Eusso-Turkish war — a period which saw him, now in Nineveh with Layard, then a skilful physician in Constantinople, now a soldier-surgeon in Kars with Colonel Williams, and the hero of the siege who received the queen's thanks in person, then in the Mauritius in an important official position — all reads like the tale of a knight of Arthur's table. He died in Paris, May 16, 1881. TTia heroic wife and a lovely daughter followed him in less than a year. Three daughters and a son (the latter Mr. Marsh's godchild, and named Lincoln in honor of our martyr President) still survive. Canon Liddon says of Sandwith : "I have never known any one who seemed to be at once more intolerant of wrong and- more tenderly alive to suffering. He had the head of a man and the heart of a woman, if any one ever had, and it was this union of qualities which made him the king of men that he was felt to be by the Eastern peoples. ... It was absolutely impossible to suspect him of a selfish motive, or to doubt that his career was governed by a resolute determination to do the utmost he could for the good of bis fellow-creatures, at whatever cost to himself." CHAPTER IX. 1851-18^2. Negotiations with the Porte for the Transportation of Refugees to the United States — Unexpected DifSculties — Mr. Kossuth's Hesitation — Letter to Mr. Raymond — Letter to the Estoourts — Dreams of Another Oriental Journey — Letters to Pro- fessor Baird — News from America of Fresh Pecuniary Disasters — Mr. Marsh's Long and Severe Illness — Occupations of the Winter — Extract from a Note of Mr. H, A. Homes — Letter to Lieutenant Gilliss — Letter to Colonel Bliss — Let- ter to Professor Baird — Treaty with Persia — Principessa Cristina Trivulzio di Belgioso — Count Ladislaus Vay — Letter from the Polish Legion in the Hunga- rian Insurrection — Letter from Deacon Tamo — Letter to Professor Baird — Let- ter to the Estcourts — Letter to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe — Lord Stratford's Reply. VERY soon after Mr. Marsh's return to Constantinople, the year of the detention of the political refugees in Turkey- having expired, it became necessary to negotiate with the Porte for the transportation to the United States of such as desired it. In this affair, however, the Legation experienced many un- expected difficulties of a very perplexing character, arising, as afterward appeared clearly, from Mr. Kossuth's hesitation — a hesitation caused by his fear of falling into the hands of the Austrians, on the one hand, and his great reluctance to put the ocean between himself and his hopes, on the other. It was not till toward the end of September, 1851, that the great Hunga- rian exile, with about fifty of his companions, embarked on board the frigate " Mississippi," as was supposed, for the United States. Mr. Marsh's anxiety did not end here. He had a high re- gard for the ability, the character, and the aims of Mr. Kossuth, but the latter's want of experience as to the limitations inevitable at sea on a vessel like the " Mississippi," and the lack of a com- 1851-1852.] LETTER TO ME. EAYMOND. 251 raon language in which both he and the captain were equally at home, added to the strong desire of the noble exile to go to England, made the Minister foresee that a misunderstanding was almost inevitable between tlie plain naval commander, whose only thought was his duty as a United States officer, and the accomplished though unsuccessful leader of a great revolu- tion, who was still dreaming of the overthrow of a vast empire. Subsequent events proved that the temptation to visit England before going to America was irresistible on the part of the ex- governor. The following extracts from a private communica- tion, somewhat later, to Mr. H. J. Raymond, a personal friend of Mr. Marsh's, and editor of the New York Times, then recently established, will show the feeling of the latter about the public discussion which followed Mr. Kossuth's abandonment of the frigate at Gibraltar, though he was far from blaming the un- fortunate patriot for his wish to excite an enthusiasm amongst the English people in favor of the oppressed nationalities of the continent. " Dear Sie : " . . . I have been somewhat disappointed at the ap- parent results of Kossuth's mission to the United States, for though he has displayed an oratorical power which I had not supposed him capable of, in a foreign language at least, yet he certainly has not produced the impression on political men which I think was fairly to be looked for. I do not alto- gether understand this, though I suppose I comprehend why Southern statesmen are not inclined to sustain him, and I pre- sume the present, worse than equivocal, attitude of England with respect to all questions of continental liberty, lias been not without its influence. I do not believe the present policy of England can be long maintained, and the ministry, between the demands of the continental powers on the one hand and the liberal sympathies of her own people on the other, will be constrained to pronounce themselves the determined supporters 252 GEORGE PERKIlsrs MAESH. [Chap. IX. of free institutions or of arbitrary government throughout Europe.* ... I find myself constrained to express my entire dissent from your views of the controversy, (so far as it can be called a controversy) between Kossuth and Capt. Long. The latter I know intimately, and correspondence and other reliable sources have given me, I believe, a just appreciation of the character of the other. I hnow Captain Long to be utterly incapable of a wilful misrepresentation, and I have not the smallest doubt of the perfect truth of the statement he makes. Nor can I discover any such discrepancy between him and his officers (if you refer to their published letters) as you suppose in your editorial of the Weekly Times of Feb. 21st. " It does not appear that any of them heard the offensive order to leave the deck, and so far as they appear to contradict Capt. Long it is evident that they were writing under the mis- taken impression received by Kossuth, and doubtless by him communicated to them. I see no foundation for the charge that Kossuth was obliged to leave the Mississippi at Gibraltar, in consequence of Capt. Long's maltreatment of him. Before Kossuth leffAsia Minor, he expressed the most earnest desire to take England on his way to the United States, he urged the * Though Mr. Marsh's constitutional impatience of any delay in the performance of what seemed to him a clear duty often led him to speak very severely, not only of the action, or rather inaction, of the English Government, but of his own as well, and though he always firmly believed that a few emphatic words from England at this time would have saved the bloodshed and misery of the Crimean War, yet he always did f uU justice to the course she had taken, the preceding year, in generously sustaining the trembling Porte in its refusal to deliver up to their merciless governments the unhappy fugitives from Austrian and Russian territory. Sir Stratford Canning took it upon himself personally to encourage this resistance to the utmost until he could receive positive instructions from the British Ministry. The following extract from Dr. Sandwith's autobiographical notes gives an idea of the responsibility England assumed in 1849 : " Long and anxious was the suspense, while messengers were riding horses to death over the dreary plains of Adrianople. The momentous answer to the anxious question was entrusted to Col. Townley, who, with scarcely a break, rode six hun- dred and fifty miles, and staggered, almost like a dying man, into the Constantinople Embassy, with the short announcement that * Her Majesty's Ministers were prepared to support the Sultan morally and materially in his resistance to the demands of Austria,' ... and Reschid Pacha had the intense satisfaction of learning that the balance was turned in favor of his humane decision. " 1851-1852.] LETTER TO THE ESTCODETS. 253 Legation, 'before embarking, to agree that the ship should take him to England or wait for him at Gibraltar, and it was notori- ous, from the moment he went on board the ship, that he did not mean to proceed to America in her. Besides, his own let- ter, deliberately written at Gibraltar and which you, I believe, have published, shows that he left the ship for no such reason, but in pursuance of his original plan, and if there is any mean- ing in language it completely exonerates Capt. Long from all the charges yon have brought against him. I must say to you, therefore, in the sincerity and frankness of private friendship, that I think yoxi have greatly wronged a most excellent man and most meritorious officer, and that, were you as well ac- quainted with the parties and the real history of the voyage as I am, yon would see cause forthwith to retract every offensive and disparaging expression that you have used towards the commander of the Mississippi, whom I have no hesitation in pronouncing one of the most amiable and honest men, and one of the most valuable officers, I have known in the course of my life. " I am, dear Sir, " truly yours, " Geo. p. Mabsh." In a letter to the Estcourts, dated in October, after giving an account of Mrs. Marsh's illness, Mr. Marsh says : " . . . Miss Paine and our niece. Miss Buell, have been indefatigable in their devotion to the poor invalid, and Lady Canning's kindness has been unbounded. Indeed I do not know what we should have done without her aid, advice and sympathy. In fact we are always very fortunate in finding good fi-iends among your countrymen and countrywomen, but we are, at the same time, xinfortunate in perpetually incurring obligations to them which we can never hope to repay. Our good friend, the Eev. Mr. Bowen, who did so much for us in 254 GEORGE PERKIlSrS MAKSH. [Chap. IX. Palestine, arrived here three or four days since qtiite unexpect- edly to us, and we are not without hopes that he may be per- manently established here. There are few places where such a man can be more' useful, and few men who can be so useful any where. " I am exceedingly obliged to yon, dear Col. Estcourt, for the pains you took with the instruments. I have, of course, been able to make little use of them hitherto, but, with the ex- ception of the thermometers (which do not agree in their indi- cations of temperature) and some trifling oversights in some of the others, they appear to me very fine, and are just what I wanted. We had intended to revisit Egypt this winter, and make our way to the Oasis of Ammon, or to go to Damascus, and thence to cross the Desert of the Euphrates, or at least go as far as Palmyra, returning by way of Aleppo and Asia Minor, but Mrs. Marsh's strength will not permit us to encounter the wildorn,ess again at present, and we propose to remain in Therapia till spring. " Turkey is in a deplorable condition, and needs apparently but a single blow to collapse altogether. I am persuaded this foolish and iniquitous government can subsist but a little longer, and when the fragments are scattered, I hope you will get your share of them. Candia and Egypt would make a pretty addi- tion to your colonial possessions, and I heartily wish you had all the rest. We are great civilizers in our way, but Turkey is rather out of our beat, and I don't see quite how we can under- take her. You, I think, might find your account in it. But this discourse is petty treason at the least, in regard that I am diplomatically, and my country is politically, interested in main- taining ' the integrity of the Turkish Empire,' which European quidnuncs hold to be so essential an element in keeping even the ' balance of power.' Eeautif ully balanced Europe is now, isn't it, with Eussia giving law to almost the entire continent, and nothing to neutralize her influence there but crazy France! " I am much delighted with Col. Chesney's book, and hope 1851-1852.] LETTER TO PROEESSOE BAIRD. 255 lie will find encouragement enough to induce him to publish the narrative part. "What an immense amount of labor and re- search it has cost him ! It is certainly a most valuable addition to our knowledge of those strange countries, and must long be a standard authority upon their history and geography. Col. Estcourt's drawings, of course, interested us especially. "We find the two views of "Urfah very fine, and that of Moorad Pacha very like what we have seen on the Nile, while Beles (with the exception of the ruins) might pass for a portrait of parts of "Wadee el Araba ; and Membij is altogether like other parts of the same great valley. Damascus and Palmyra are truly beautiful. I hope we shall some day be able to testify that they are faithful also." From the preceding letter, as well as the following, it will be seen that Mr. Marsh was still occupied with the dream of further Oriental journeys. Like all enthusiasts, he remembered former untoward experiences only to believe that similar ones might be easily avoided by using proper precautions, and it re- quired a stronger motive than the perils of the way to prevent him from undertaking another Eastern adventure. . " Mt Deae Baled : " Thy keg of spirits came to hand some weeks since, and thy five empty kegs three days ago, and there lie in pickle sundry fish and other things, awaiting shipment. Yesterday brought thy brief (why write such short epistles ?) note of Oct. 3rd. I feared for the Egyptian fish and creeping things in regard that they, some of them that is, had undergone but a short pre-piekling, Vor-Pokelung (I made these words, myself, both English and German), before final stowage in that old beer cask ; also because I found by cross questioning my servant, to whom I was enforced to commit the packing, that he had griev- ously misunderstood my most plain directions, and sinfully erred in consequence. Zum Beyspiel, there were certain bottles of 256 GEORGE PERKIIirS MARSH. [Chap. IX. plants, as namely the first flower and leaf of the Osher, Apple of Sodom, Asclepias procera, which in Nubia groweth to a great tree and shooteth ont long branches and the fowls of the air lodge under the shadow of it ; also there was a curious plant, peradventure an Euphorbia, which grows by the salt ponds, and the gazelles eat thereof, and others, cunningly preserved in spirits. These did that wicked servant ntterly destroy as he confessed (under torture) by striving to extract them out of the bottles. Moreover -were many bottles of scarabsei, scorpions, two heads of cerastes, which I commanded him to put into the cask as they were ; some he brake, and scattered the contents ; I fear they are all gone to Tartarus. All the contents of the cask were from the Eiver Nilus, or, as Homer calls it, JEgyptus, saving the snakes, and two of the three large lizards. The long black lizard is the waran and was taken on the rocks in the first cataract. The other two, large also, but thicker, are land lizards from the mountain behind Cairo. The great snake's head — a cobra — is from the same place. It is the sacred Asp. He was brought to me alive by certain Psylli but I knew I could not not keep him whole, so I sent the head of him only. " When I left Cairo for the wilderness, I was minded to hire an extra camel and man therewith, to carry such stones and the like as I should gather, but I did not know whether the S. I. would think my collection worth the $50 they would cost and so I forbore. In the desert I saw almost no birds, and of quadrupeds the gazelle and the ieden (mountain goat) hedge- hogs and hares only. But the tracks of the hyena, yea and the voice of him, were frequent. Twice the leopards were about our camp, and uttered the fearfullest roar I ever heard. Their tracks showed them to be of very great size, not much, if anything, smaller than the Bengal tiger. I forgot the jackal, which is common. One got into our hen coop in the night and killed 45 hens with the blood of which he was so puffed up that he couldn't get out, and we found him in the morning. 1851-1852.] LETTEK TO PKOFESSOE BAIED. 257 I ordered him killed and prepared for j'ou, but he escaped, treacherously let off no doubt by the Arabs, who are very re- luctant to kill any animals, except for food. Many people told me the Bedouins had seen the greyhound figured in the Egyp- tian sculptures with very long legs and fox tail, but I saw no such. The common Bedouin dog is apparently the fox-wolf- dog known as the wild dog of Cairo and Constantinople. This animal is very well characterized and if I can I'll get you one dozen. I could have got you a hundred skeletons of camels in the Desert between Cairo and Suez, if I could have transported them, but we seldom see the camel here. Nevertheless I will try. I have a very few shell fish from the Eed Sea and the Jordan, and some other trifles, which will go by the first ship, and perhaps some seeds for Mr. Breckenridge. " I enjoyed Egypt immensely, Arabia still more. I would have given half my kingdom to have had you with me at the head of the Gulf of Akaba. Such corallines, sea-plants, and above all such gorgeous fish. Truly the world is not worthy of them. They belong properly to Dreamland ; but are they not written, yea figured by Ehrenberg & Hemfrich ? The box of books is come and contents distributed. Send the Smith. Trans, also to the Society of Jerusalem. . . . " Green sent me two travelling barometers. I beg you have them sent, with two portable thermometers also, forth- with, forthwith. " More last words. ""We were sorely sick — Mrs. M. and I — and the Doctor thought we should not recover. I didn't believe them as to myself, but my poor wife has had several narrow escapes, the narrowest of all since our return. She is now about as well as usual, which is not saying much. Why don't you send me the last Kept, of the Smith. Inst. ? Am I not worthy ? What is gone of Jewett ? I hear nothing from him. How do you get on with ? Garrigue is a sorry varlet. I wrote him for books twice, a year and a half since, and he takes no notice of " 17 258 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH, [Chap. IX. me. Does he think I sha'n't pay him ? Why do you brag of your travels to me ? " "What is Otsego to Mlus, Mount Washington to Sinai and Horeb, or Cambridge to Petra ? Faugh, how I contemn the untravelled ; next spring I'll shame all adventurers. I'll go to the centre of Bokhara, yea to the borders of Cathay. There- fore hasten the barometers. I will measure mountains. My love doth await you and Mary and Lucy ; also my wife's. Let Mary write. She oweth a letter to thine and her ancient friend, " G. P. Mabsh." The illness of his wife, already mentioned, told severely on Mr. Marsh's health, and he had scarcely recovered from its effects when news of fresh pecuniary losses of a very vexatious character reached him from America. This news annoyed him the more as he saw that, with his very limited salary, it must put an end to any further indulgence in Oriental travel, even if all other circumstances were favorable. Much painful corre- spondence became necessary in consequence of these losses, and the fear that others, as well as himself, might suffer from the mismanagement of business agents so preyed upon his mind that a very alarming illness followed — first, erysipelas in the head and face, and then a form of jaundice, which gave his physician the greatest anxiety. It was not till toward the spring of 1852 that his health was fully re-established. Sickness and business cares, however, by no means con- sumed the winter. The same force of will and sense of the value of time which had enabled him to do so much in the face of so many untoward circumstances was still carrying him for- ward. When too ill to work or think, he made no one uncom- fortable by complaints about loss of time, but bore the enforced idleness patiently-, even cheerfully. No sooner, however, did a certain degree of physical strength return than his mind seemed quickened to redoubled activity. It found food for 1851-1852.] LETTER TO LIEUTENANT GILLISS. 259 assimilation everywhere, and could forget disappointment and bodily pain in tlie enjoyment of gathering for itself, or of com- municating to others. Speaking of this winter, Mr. Homes says : " I lived next door to Mr. Marsh from Sept. '51 to April '53, and during the winter and spring of '51-52 spent almost every evening at his house. A part of the time was always given to reading, and, as neither Mr. nor Mrs. Marsh could then read by artificial light, they listened to me while I read portions of Lord Berner's Froissart, or Tennyson's In Memoriam, or Mrs. Browning's Casa Guidi (just then out) or some other classic English work. . . And here I will venture to observe regarding Mr. Marsh, that his memory of whatever he read, or heard read, was extraordinary. He had been an omnivorous reader, and his memory seemed to retain a more exact recollec- tion of facts than any man's with whom I have ever been ac- quainted. Such a memory, combined with such native insight into the relations of things, could not fail to make him exceed- ingly effective in discussing any theme in which his mind had become interested." The letters from which the following extracts are taken were written during this winter. To his friend, Lieutenant Gilliss, then in South America : "... Your letters interest me exceedingly, and I wish I could return you something of equal value in exchange for them, but on my journey through Egypt I took few mathe- matical instruments with me, knowing these countries to be so familiar to geographers, and after we decided to visit Arabia Petrsea, I could find nothing at Cairo of any sort to aid in sci- entific observation. In Egypt, where we spent four months (from January to May) I noticed some interesting atmospheric phenomena, such as the immensely increased apparent magni- tude of small objects near tlie horizon, when the atmosphere 260 GEOBGE PEKKINS MARSH. [Chap. IX. was hazy, or filled with fine sand, the mirage in great perfec- tion, lightning flashes distinctly niarked in this form entirely new to me, etc. Once at Cairo, ahout the first of May, the transparency of the atmosphere was so great that we all saw two of the satellites of Jupiter, with the naked eye, very clearly, and some of the company made out the third, though none of us could distinguish the fourth. Another phe- nomenon new to me was observed in Arabia, on the Eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez. A long narrow straight cloud was seen at 1 P. M. due west of us, at an altitude of from 45° to 50°, exhibiting distinctly, through its whole length, the pris- matic colors, the red uppermost, no other cloud or haze being visible. The zodiacal light was always visible, except when the light of the moon interfered, even as late as June. On the Nile we, of course, formed a familiar acquaintance with Cano- pus and the Southern Cross. Until May, the temperature of the water of the river was never above 63° Fahr. nor the air above 93°. . . . Georgie* is now about the age Jack was when he first used to come to us to talk philosophy. I trust I shall see them both before the one is a man and the other a very large boy. The daguerreotype was most acceptable and shows the most beautiful child's face I ever saw — I cannot even except those of your other children. . . ." The following, of about the same date, is to Colonel Bliss ; " . . . I find my residence here agreeable, but I am dis- gusted with the diplomatic intrigues, which, though I have no occasion to take part in them, I am compelled to witness, or at * This child, who was named for Mr. Marsh, and whose early promise excited the highest hopes of his parents, died at the age of five years. The " Jack " spoken of lived to distinguish himself as a scientific engineer, and to render his country impor- tant services during the rebellion, but died in early manhood. 1851-1852.] LETTEK TO COLONEL BLISS. 261 least to hear of, and I am afraid European diplomacy is very nearly as corrupt as it was in the good old times when bribery and espionage were a part of the regular system of operations. " The peace of Turkey, and of course of Europe, is just now threatened by the refusal of the Porte to secure to the Catholics the exclusive control and possession of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, which the French claim as protectors of Catholic Christianity in the Levant, under a treaty concluded two hun- dred years ago. The emperor of Russia has addressed to the Sultan an energetic and, as it is said, menacing autograph pro- test against the French claim, and many think that Nicholas and Napoleon will come to blows on the question. This how- ever seems to me scarcely probable. It is thought England will sustain France in the quarrel, and in that case I do not be- lieve the Czar will carry matters to extremity. " Success in this negotiation is a point of no small interest to the Prince-President, as if it did not conciliate it would in some measure disarm the hostility of the ultra-Catholic party. I should be sorry to see England leagued with the obscurantists on any, especially on such, a question, but a general European war, with whatever of present evil attended, could hardly fail to result in good to humanity, and I see little hope of the estab- ment of a liberal government anywhere on the Continent until the power of Russia is broken — which it hardly can be except by a collision with England. . . . " I miss my library sadly, but with the thousand volumes I have brought with me I can very well fortify myself against ennui, and besides, I have as yet by no means exhausted Con- stantinople. . . ." " Constantinople, March 3, 1853. "Mt Dbab Spencee: " Thy letter, and Mary's, of Jan'y 20th, have been received, welcomed, and cried and laughed over, as much as was good. I grieve at the exiguity of thy salary, but more at the loss of thy time. "What a pity, that Mr. Henry, Mr. Jewett and thou 262 GEOEGE PEBKINS MAESH. [Chap. IX (I do observe order of rank and precedence in namiug you) all men especially calculated to increase in your respective ways the sum of human knowledge, should have all 'shot madly from your spheres ' (I quote from Father Eitchie. Qu. Isn't that old fool dead yet ?) and insanely devoted yourselves to the answering of foolish letters, directing of packages to literaiy societies, reading of proof-sheets, and other mechanical opera- tions pertaining unto the diffusion of knowledge : when I am Emperor, I'll turn you all out, put clerky, thick-headed men in your places, and set you at work at your old vocations again. " There hath been Lord Arthur Hay, a young militaire re- turning from India, where he served several years, and as mad about Natural History as you or Agassiz. His talk is of snakes, crocodiles, camels' humps single and double, birds' gizzards, deers' horns and salamanders. Apropos of salamanders. I do conceive that in a brook at a place called Hunkiat Skeleosi, I discovered a new one, and my argument is this. In Vermont be many salamanders (the boys call 'em ivets), and of divers sorts. All these have I seen, but not any such as that in the brookling aforesaid, Argal it is new, and I do name it Salaman- drosuB Maribus, which is as good Latin as a poor naturalist can afford to use, and is moreover recommendable on insinuating a prettyish compliment to thy wife as who should say Mary's salamander. In collections I have done little, partly because, soon after Mrs. Marsh's illness, I had myself a very severe at- tack of some biliary bedevilment and was confined, with some suffering and much peril for nearly two months, and am even yet not well, and, further, because in winter all manner of rep- tiles do hide and conceal themselves, an observation which I believe to be original. Nevertheless some cold-weather fish and the like I have. In Alexandria, a city founded by Alex- ander the Great near the river Nilus in the year b.c. (when was it?) Mrs. M. hath a living ostrich 6 feet and more high, what'll yon give for him ? "When your spirit-cask was tapped, it was found, that is the spirit, to have shrunk grievously, cask 1851-1852.] LETTER TO PKOEESSOE BAIED. 263 not half full, nor near it. Qu., was it owing to cold weather, and will it expand so as to fill the cask when the thermometer rises to 80°, or was there some other cause of defalcation ? I don't quarrel about the printing of my letter. I am oblivious of its contents, for I wrote it currente calamo, but after I sent it off, I remembered, that I had forgotten to remember to speak of two common and remarkable atmospheric phenomena, viz., the great increase of the apparent size of small objects near the horizon in the valley of the Nile, and the mirage. Truly my letter was the play of Hamlet, with the part of the Prince omitted. I shall write to Mr. Henry, and speak of these things, which I observed often. It is odd that we saw the mi- rage very often between Cairo and Suez, but never in the Ara- bian Peninsula, and scarcely in the great Wadee el Araba. " I will remember Mr. Haldemann. Of Coleopteras there be more here, as the Spanish Minister, a renowned entomolo- gist, saith, than any where else in the same limits. Of Mantis and certain most incredible grasshoppers, I have seen several. Fowls there be few. Of game birds we have pheasants (the true), partridges, quails and ducks. Bremer shall have enough for an omelet. Of water fowl scarcely any but ducks, gulls, terns, ames damnees and cormorants, of which latter I have seen a hundred at a time perched on the roof of a palace. Camels are not bred, and seldom seen here. I may get a skull elsewhere. You want me to write a book. I will be advised on that subject. I thank you for your attention about the barometers, but have not heard from Mr. Green. Our love at- tends you both, and our sovereign lady shall write unto your spouse. Let us be remembered to Gen. and Mrs. C- and the brothers. " Yours truly, " G. P. Maksh." " Warmest winter ever known here. Minimum thus far 26°. Only thrice below 32° at sunrise, from 40° to 44° gener- 264 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. IX. ally, and rises 10 degrees or so, sometimes 15°, in course of " March 14. This letter was truly written when it bears date, but accidentally left behind. The author of the Discourse of Deserts and Camels happens to be here, and I think he will send a dozen sheets thereof to the N. Y. Times by this mail. Criticise it hard, and I will faithfully report your strictures to him. We are now having winter in earnest." Mr. Marsh's instructions from the State Department, dated in June, 1860, directed him, if practicable, to negotiate a com- mercial treaty with Persia through the representative of that power at Constantinople. Conferences were at once opened with the Persian Charg6 d'affaires, and after much labor a treaty was concluded, duly executed, and transmitted to Wash- ington, in December, 1851. Both the Persian Charg^ and Mr. Marsh being strongly apprehensive that the ratification of the treaty by the Shah of Persia would be prevented by European intrigues, if it was publicly known, either at Constantinople or Teheran, that such a treaty had been negotjjited, great pains were taken to conceal the fact from all persons at the Turkish capital, except those interested in the framing and successful conclusion of the treaty ; and Mr. Marsh, in his despatches to the State Depart- ment, suggested the importance of similar caution. The first intelligence he had of the reception of the treaty, at Washington, was through the columns of a New Y^ork jpa/per. It was, of course, at once known everywhere that such a treaty had been negotiated, and measures were immediately taken to prevent its ratification by the Persian monarch. Mr. Marsh stated frankly to his Government, on the refusal of the Shah to ratify the treaty, that he had reason to believe its rejec- tion was due entirely to the artifices of one of the continental powers. The failure of this treaty, which he believed would secure 1851-1853.] PEIKCIPESSA CEISTINA. 265 some important commercial advantages to his country, was no small disappointment to the Minister. The departure of Mr. Kossuth and his companions by no means relieved the Legation of its responsibilities toward the victims of the abortive revolutions of 1848. Among the most distinguished and heroic of those, still in Turkey was the Prin- cipessa Gristina Trivulzio di Belgioso* She had applied to the new Minister, on his first arrival at Stamboul, for his good offices with the Porte in her favor, and he had been fortunate enough to aid her in obtaining from the Turkish Government a grant of land in Asia Minor where she proposed to form an Italian colony, which should support itself without further assistance from the Porte. This plan she car- ried out with great energy and good judgment, though the per- sonal sacrifices she made for it can be understood only by those who are fully aware of the countless privations and the worse * When the Five Days' Revolution broke out in Milan, the Princess was in Paris, where she had been living for several years, and where she received, in her elegant hdtel in the Rue d'Anjou, the most distinguished men of that period so fruitful in illustrious personalities. The Italian refugees, above all, were sure to find in her house, not only courteous hospitality, but, if their circumstances required it, the most generous aid. The Princess had herself experienced trying political vicissi- tudes, having fallen under the suspicion of Austria during the agitation of 1830, and been compelled to abandon Italy. She loved her country with a passion that made her always ready to consecrate to it her substance, her strength, and her vigorous intellect. Consequently, on hearing of the insurrection of May 20th, 1848, she flew to Milan, where she spent a short time, and then hastened on to Naples. From Naples she soon returned with a body of Neapolitan troops, raised and equipped at her own expense, and intended to be incorporated with the Lombard volunteers. At this time she established the journal La Crociata. When the Austrians repossessed them- selves of Lombardy, the Princess escaped to Rome, where Garibaldi and his friends were sustaining a desperate siege. There she gave herself to the care of the wounded until the city surrendered. Then, worn out by fatigue, and cruelly wounded by this last disappointment, she embarked for Constantinople. It was here that Mr. Marsh saw this remarkable woman for the first time. She was now no longer young, but her ardent patriotism, her indomitable courage, her extraordinary intellectual power, and her superior culture readily explained to him the influence she had so long ex- erted in the highest European circles ; and her then distressing position, with her most motherly efforts to spare her young daughter all participation in its annoyance, soon secured for her his profound sympathy. What became of the colony in Asia Minor does not appear — probably the war with Russia, that soon followed, broke it up. At any rate, the Princess had the happiness of passing the last years of her life in a free and united Italy, 266 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [ChAP. IX. than utter solitude to which it condemned her. In a letter of warm thanks for books lent and other services rendered her by Mr. Marsh, she writes, in the autumn of 1851 : "... I have been in poverty before, but without be- ing in the least ashamed of it, for I never had occasion to ask for any thing but worlc even of my friends. Here in Turkey, my pride has suffered, for I have been obliged to ask and accept favors from one upon whom I had no other claim than his proved readiness to help the homeless exile. . . . " My situation here is as good as it can be. I have had some troubles but nothing of consequence, and I am convinced that much can be done in this country with a little money and a great deal, of patience. . . . Do you remember how cold and unencouraging the Sultan's Ministers seemed the first time we talked with them about this settlement of mine? "Well, since I am here I find myself under a powerful and never sleep- ing protection on their part which surprises me. My labors go on slowly but well, and I hope to have next year a fine property yielding handsomely. I should be greatly pleased if, in your peregrinations, you would one day visit Ciag Mag Yiglow. You would see a fine country and find a warm greeting. ... I have still several of your books — Du Guescelin, Becquerel, Cal- deron and the Persian books — and I will return them by the Marquis Antinori. "Will you be so good as to let me have others then ? I am indebted to you for the pleasantest hours I have passed in Asia Minor. Good bye, dear Sir, believe me forever your most obliged, " Geistina Teivtjlzio di Belgioso." About the same time the unfortunate Pole, General Vay, wrote to Mr. Marsh as follows : " . . . Accept, Sir, for all the kindness you have shown me and my unhappy countrymen the most heartfelt thanks. Unable to requite you the smallest part of all the gentleness 1851-1853.] LETTER FROM THE POLISH LEGION. 267 used to us, I never felt more the helplessness of my position ; and the thought alone, that for men of your character the only possible reward is the consciousness of the good done to suffer- ing fellow-creatures, gives me some relief. Be assured of my everlasting gratitude, and permit me to tell you further that I am, Sir, " Your most faithful servant, " Count Ladislaus Vay." The following is a letter from the Polish Legion, which served in the war of the Hungarian insurrection of 1848 : " To His Excellency, " GrEOBGE P. MarSH,' MiNISTEE OP THE U. S. "at the Sublime Poete. " Exoellenct : " The unhappy issue of the war for the Independence of Hungary having compelled the Polish Legion in that country to take refuge on the soil of the Ottoman Empire, we found there, not only a hospitable asylum, but also a generous and en- ergetic protection against the fury of the enemies of our country. But in consequence of a fatal concurrence of circumstances, our political adversaries succeeded in imposing upon us a kind of guardianship, and, taking advantage of the long continued un- certainty of our lot, and of our want of communication with Europe and with the Capital of the Turkish Empire, they en- deavored to mislead us ; to dispose of us according to their own wishes; and when the temporary uncertainty of our position had ceased, when we were at last free to decide our own destiny for ourselves — either to remain in Turkey or to quit her fron- tiers — we found ourselves reduced to one third of our primitive numbers. " This last remnant of the Polish Legion, however, was composed of active young men of pronounced political opinions, ]/ eager for knowledge and for political experience, and deter- 268 GEOBGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. IX. mined to spend all their strength in the service of their conn- try. " We acknowledge the value of the services rendered us by the Sublime Porte, and would do justice to the great benefits we have received from it. Nevertheless we have decided to leave the territory of the Ottoman Empire, because, though wishing to earn our livelihood by our own labor, we, at the same time, desire to profit by the material and intellectual resources of civ- ilized and free States. " "We understood, however, that our departure from Turkey would meet with much opposition in various forms. To over- come these, we needed the aid and protection of the representa- tives of foreign powers at the Sublime Porte. " Republicans and democrats, as soon as we were free to raise our voices, to whom were we first to address ourselves if not to you, a member and representative of that great and pow- erful Republic of the U. S. of America in the foundation of which our ancestors, Pulawski and Kosciuszko assisted ! You have listened to our call and comprehended its import. Your incessant and unwearied efforts with the Sublime Porte and with the British Ambassador have powerfully contributed to the success of our wishes. You have done more than we dared to ask. You have sought to secure for us a favorable recep- tion both in England and America. Penetrated with profound gratitude we now address to you our sincere thanks. We know that every exile has a claim on the compassion of your generous heart, but the strong influence yon have so kindly exerted in the furtherance of our desires we prefer to attribute to motives still more dear to us — to your sympathy for the cause of the Inde- pendence of Poland." [Here follow one hundred and ninety-five signatures.] The next letter is a proof that the exertions of the American Minister in behalf of the suffering wei-e not confined to political refugees, nor to the limits of the Turkish capital. 1851-1852.] LETTER FKOM DEACON TAMO. 269 " 1, deacon Tamo, am very, very, grateful to yon, Mr. Marsli, Ambassador of America, because you took so much trouble to deliver me from prison. " Koordistan is a dangerous country, where many times we have been subject to great perils. As you have heard, we have heretofore been exposed to plunder, and many of our people have, at various times, been slaughtered. But after we became subject to the Turks our condition was much better. " One day a Turkish soldier became our guest, but that very night he was killed by thieves. This was seized upon by those who did not wish the American missionaries to remain here ; and to the Turks I was accused of being the murderer. I was then seized by Mustapha Pasha, of the army, and was treated cruelly by him. He compelled me, for a time, to work in the mines, in chains. After five days of this toil. Col. Williams, the English commissioner, came, and saved me from this op- pression. May he be greatly prospered for the trouble he took for me, a poor individual. " I am very grateful to you, also. Ambassador of America, that you have had my deliverance so much at heart, and that you took so much care for me whom you had not seen. I have heard of the trouble you took for me from the time I was taken until I was freed. 1 thank you very much for the favor you have shown me. "I am now delivered from prison; and through the grace that has been manifested towards me, am free from all my troubles, and have returned to my home, and have met my re- lations and friends. I have hope, also, that I shall be permit- ted to remain in my house this winter with two of my gentle- men, that is, with Mr. Ehea and Mr. Crane. But for us all it is small ; and it is not sufficiently good for them. But we will pass this winter as we best can. In the spring, we have hope in the Lord (if there is permission from the Turks) that we shall build other houses. And this will be from the trouble you, Ambassador, may take to procure permission from the Sul- 270 GEORGE PEBKINS MAESH. [Chap. IX. tan to this end. We have hope in your grace that this will be secured. "The strength and grace of God be with you. " Gabnab, Oct. 17, year of Christ 1853." "Constantinople, May 24, 1852. " Dear Baied : "I received the barometers a few days since, and shall re- mit to Mr. Green the amount of his bill by next post. I am much obliged to you and Prof. Henry for your trouble with regard to them, and hope to have an opportunity of using them to some purpose. One is a cistern, the other a syphon, barom- eter, and they are both in general, for anything I can see to the contrary, well constructed and well finished in the main. Neither of them, however, is divided with scrupulous accuracy, and the lower vernier of the syphon is more than .015 too short. The error of reading thus occasioned, it is true, is not great, but, as the shortness of the vernier is obvious at a glance, it annoys and embarrasses the observer at every observation, and is moreover a bad indication in regard to the general fidelity of the instrument. The two do not accord very precisely in their indications, the syphon always standing from .025 to .040 above the cistern, and in the former the adhesion of the mer- cury to the tube is so great in the short limb, that when it is rising fast it is often almost impossible to make the surface of the column assume the meniscus form. I have not hitherto used them hypsometrically, because I wished first to compare them carefully, and by a pretty long series of observations . . . in my study, suspended as recommended by Prof. Guyot, and I make a dozen or more observations per day, pur- posely at irregular hours, in order to get at the general mean between them. " Spring has at last set in, though we had fires every day from the last of October till about the 20tli of this month. I am writing some loose babble about the Desert. I don't know what I shall do with it. I am afraid I can never get done with 1851-1852.] LETTEK TO THE ESTCO'UETS. 271 it, for the moment I begin to treat any particular point, it swells up like a bladder, and I am fearful I shall make a volume on a grain of sand. Yerj likely I shall burn the whole affair, but don't speak of it. I am not ambitious of appearing in the Literary Gazette, as a distinguished scholar and diplomat, who is understood to be engaged in preparing his travels in Arabia for the press. "Mrs. M. is in her usual state of weakness and is now suf- fering from the effects of a visit to the principal mosques, which she was allowed to go through in a sedan chair. "I am grieved when I think of you. A young man once said to me, ' Oh ! if you had my talents, or I your learning ! ' Complimentary wasn't it? Well, if I had your knowledge, or you my late opportunities, what a book would come of the cross ! I want to see yon and Mary out here, amazingly. Can't Agassiz get somebody to give you $5,000 and a cask of spirits, and send you out into the wilderness ? "Yours truly, "G. P. Maesh." The following is of about the same date. "My Deae Col. and Mes. Estcotjet: " Your letter of April Kjth (what a funny date !) which was received on the 5th of May, made me faii-ly ashamed. I knew it was a great while since we had written, but did not think it had been so long, and I am glad you have stimulated me to the performance of a duty which I have been going to discharge next week, for several months past. Soon after the date of your last preceding letter, I was attacked with a severe illness which confined me to the house for many weeks. This was preceded by letters from America that gave me much concern and much labor, and will compel us to give up our contemplated Eastern tour. We may possibly make a short excursion to the Crimea, but shall probably spend the summer, as we have the 372 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. IX. winter, at Therapia. There is a general breaking up of the diplomatic corps at the Porte, the representatives of Kussia, Austria, France, Spain, Portugal, Prussia, Sardinia and Hol- land having all recently left, or being on the point of leaving Constantinople, and we are now to add to the list our excellent friends the Cannings, who sail for England very soon. After Sir Stratford's departure, there will be but two diplomats here of higher rank than a Charge, the new Prussian minister and myself. So, you see, I shall be a distinguished personage un- til the return of the greater luminaries to their perihelions shall extinguish my lesser light. "I am not surprised at Col. Estcourt's withdrawal from Parliament. It is a satisfaction to me to know that I did not engage in political life early enough to have that stimulus be- come a necessary one for me. " I make it a rule not to criticize European politics very sharply, partly because I know little of them, and partly be- cause I know a good deal of our own, but I really wish Lord Malmesbury was not on quite so good terms with Count Buel Schanenstein. What other earthly hope has European hu- manity than in the attachment of England to sound principles of civil and political liberty ? — " I congratulate you. Col. Estcourt, on your professional advancement, and hope it is attended with some solid advan- tages, though I don't know enough of your military organiza- tion to understand whether it is of any importance. " When I wrote about the instruments I got at Paris I had forgotten the makers' names. The rogues were Secretan and Lerebours, but if I can rely at all on what my American scien- tific friends say, they are as honest as their brethren elsewhere. I have often been assured by them tliat since instrument mak- ing has become a manufacture instead of an art, an unhnown person cannot order an instrument from any shop in Europe, relying upon the maker to select it for him, without the cer- tainty of being cheated. Indeed the ordinary instruments for 1851-1852.] LOED STKATFOKD DE EEDCLIFFE. 273 scientific purposes made in the United States are, in point of accuracy and fidelity of execution, decidedly superior to those manufactured in Europe, because with us the business is still an art, not a trade. I am very glad, however, to be able to say that, with unimportant exceptions in the cheaper instru- ments, those so kindly procured for me by you are entirely satisfactory, though the state of my eyes does not enable me to make much use of them. My son, about whom you are good enough to enquire, is studying the classics under a very sorry old pedagogue, videlicet, your humble servant. Music and drawing he pursues, with some other studies, under better teachers. For music he has a taste, less for drawing, but as his industry is now commendable I hope he will make some progress. I hope Lady Canning will bring you acquainted with that good man, John Bowen. It grieves me to think that I can do nothing to repay him for his great and disinter- ested kindness to me and mine, but as I know he looked to no reward from us, so I am sure he will receive one from a far purer and higher source. Both he and you will thank the friend who introduces you to each other, and I hope we may ere long meet in England all those dear English friends who have done so much for us in the new world and the old. " Affectionately yours, " Geo. p. Maijsh." In the early summer of 1852, Sir Stratford Canning was raised to the peerage as Viscount Stratford de Eedcliffe, and relieved temporarily from his duties as ambassador at the Porte. The relations between the British Embassy and the Ameri- can Legation have already been alluded to as very cordial, but the last few months had greatly deepened the mutual friend- ship and esteem between the two families, as will appear from the following letters, exchanged at the time of Lord Stratford's leaving for England. 18 274 GEOKGE PERKINS MAESH. [CHAP. IX. " Theeapia, June 16, 1852. " My Deae Loed Steatfobd : "I cannot consent to part with you, without something more than the formal expi'ession of the sentiments of regret naturally prompted by the interruption of our official and social relations, under circumstances which render their future re- newal so doubtful. " Apart from the professions of friendship and esteem which my respect for your private virtues, and the obligations your personal kindness has laid me under, would dictate, I cannot refrain from testifying my admiration of the pre-eminent ability with which you have discharged your public duties at Constan- tinople, and my deep sense of your claims to the gratitude of the friends of human progress for your great and disinterested services in the cause of civilization and truly catholic Christian- ity, and especially to tlie thanks of my countrymen for that generous countenance and powerful protection without which the labors of those of them who are engaged in promoting the social, moral, and religious regeneration of the East could scarcely have failed to prove unfruitful. "I will not affect to believe that you have not, through your whole diplomatic career, kept steadily in view the special in- terest of your own country, as the first of your official duties, but happily for your fame and for the glory of England, the larger interests of our common humanity have been felt by you to be (and that by no accidental and temporary coincidence) iden- tical with those which you have been more particularly charged to sustain, and I know not what higher compliment I can pay to your country and yourself than to remind you, that, though often in a position to dictate to Turkey, England has not demanded, nor have you sought to obtain, rights or privileges not at the same time accorded to all Christian nations, and that you have chosen and been permitted to be the representative of Christendom at the Ottoman court, and not the mere advocate of any supposed exclusive political or commercial interests of Great Britain. 1851-1852.] LETTEE TO LORD STRATFORD. 275 " It is most deeply to be regretted that your wise and dis- interested counsels, whose partial acceptance has been produc- tive of so much good, have not met a readier and more general adoption in a country where they might have been so eminently useful, and no impartial observer who knows the Ottoman empire can doubt, that Turkey will be forced to confess, that in the withdrawal of Sir Stratford Canning from the diplomatic corps at Constantinople, she has lost her most generous friend and her wisest counsellor. " I cannot suppress my fears that your Lordship's departure will be followed by the practical abandonment of the more liberal and enlightened principles of government, the recog- nition of which by the Ottoman Porte is in no small degree to be ascribed to your efforts, and I must be permitted to ex- press the hope, that, if it does not suit your inclination to re- sume your post as the leader of the diplomatic body at this court, you may still find an opportunity to exert the same beneficial influence in that higher charge which would seem to be the appropriate sphere of action for the acknowledged chief of European diplomacy, in that country which by common consent is placed at the head of the European political system. " In that case, I shall hope that, in spite of present unfavor- able appearances, the future history of Turkey may still show the fruits of the good seed you have sown, and with reference to the wider and more threatening questions of European inter- national policy, I shall not fear, well as I know your solicitude for the repose of Europe, that for the sake of peace you will sacrifice all that makes peace worthy and honorable. "I should not do justice to ray feelings towards Lady Strat- ford, if I did not take this as well as all other proper occasions to express my most sincere gratitude for her continued and most acceptable friendly civilities to myself, and for her affec- tionate and inexhaustible kindness to my suffering wife, as well as my admiration of that active and ever thoughtful benevo- lence which has mitigated so many sorrows and lightened so 276 GEOEGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. IX. many burdens in the wide circle of the objects of her charities, and of those refined social qualities and accomplishments which have shed such grace and lustre upon the hospitalities of the British Embassy. " It has been my fortune to be specially indebted to the kindness of English friends, both in my own country and in every other where I have happened to need aid, counsel and sympathy. " Of the obligations thus contracted, most remain quite un- paid, but I shall ever be ready to acknowledge them, and there are none which I more deeply feel, or should be more happy to return, than those I owe to yourself and Lady Stratford. " I need not add that Mrs. Marsh heartily joins me in the expression of these sentiments, and we beg you to accept for yourself. Lady Stratford and your family the assurance of our high esteem and onr sincere friendship. " With the warmest wishes for the health, prosperity and happiness of you all, " I am, my Lord, " Your Lordship's friend and servant, " G. P. Maesh." Lord Stratford's reply is dated June 18, 1852. " My Deae Sib : " The inconvenience of having been detained a few days longer than I expected is more than overbalanced by the oppor- tunity afforded of receiving and acknowledging your very kind and flattering letter. It is always more or less gratifying to receive expressions of approval from those who are worthy of our esteem and entitled to our friendship. That pleasnre is greatly enhanced to me on this occasion by the value which I attach to your testhnony, and by the additional means your letter affords me of knowing and appreciating your character. I am delighted to find that our sympathies extend into a far 1851-1853.] REPLY OF LORD STEATFOED. 277 wider field than that of mere literature or of the most friendly social intercourse, and if improvement of any kind were not too ambitious a thought at my time of life, 1 should hope to catch a warmer glow and a higher spirit of virtuous enterprise fi-om your indulgent and most generous encouragement. " I cannot in honesty accept a hundredth part of the merit which your liberality assigns to my efforts in a good cause ; but, alas ! I have no abatement to make on the score of regret and apprehension — regret that my success has been so dispro- portionate to my wishes — apprehension, that, without reference to myself, the administrative embarrassments of this Empire, and the vices of its population in the higher regions, will eventually bring on disasters fatal to the hopes of its sincerest friends. I have lingered on, and redoubled my exertions dur- ing the last two or three weeks, in order to make a wholesome impression on those who are blessed with the divine power of doing good. I will not presume to conjecture what results may follow; but seeing how much-depends upon the rare qualities of firmness in resisting evil, and of courageous alacrity in carry- ing out good principles, I am more inclined, in spite of myself, to look to the pressure of civilizing forces from without, than to the expansion of active measures from within. " But to use the language of Scripture : ' Such matters are too high for me ; ' and all that a poor half-reasoning biped (not featherless, though, with a pen in his hand) can do, is to sow patiently, wherever occasion permits, and to leave the increase to Providence. "I would willingly pursue a theme which, besides the in- terest it naturally possesses, affords me an excuse for prolonging a correspondence which I so sincerely value ; but the few hours which now precede my departure are fast running out, and I must hurry to a conclusion. " It is needless for me to add that you have crowned your numerous claims upon my grateful remembrance by expressing vourself at once so kindly and so handsomely with respect to 278 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. IX. Lady Stratford. She has derived great pleasure and advantage from cultivating Mrs. Marsh's acquaintance and enjoying your conversation, and we both cordially unite in regretting the sep- aration which is now so near at hand, and in hoping that fort- une may at some future day bring us again into social inter- course with each other. " Ever, my dear Sir, "Tour faithful and obliged friend and servant, " Stbatfokd de Kedcliitb." CHAPTER X. 1852. Receives Instructions to go to Athena — Embarks for Greece — Difficulty of the Nego- tiation with which he is charged — Case of Rev. Dr. King — Letter to Professor Baird — ^Letter to Ms Mother — Decides to finish his Reports at the Springs of Gleiohenberg — Embarks for Trieste — Extracts from Letters to his Mother — Journey from Trieste to Gleiohenberg — His Account, to his Brother, of the Cave of Adelsberg — Letter to the Little Son of Mr. Homes — Extracts from Letters containing Observations on the Country between Adelsberg and Laibach; be- tween Laibach and Gratz; between Gratz and Gleiohenberg — Letters to his Brother from Gleiohenberg — Journey from Gleiohenberg to Vienna — ^Remarks to his Brother about the Austrian Capital — ^Letter to Professor Baird. EAKLY in July, 1852, Mr. Marsh received instructions from the Government at Washington, directing him to repair to Athens, to examine and report upon questions then pending be- tween the Greek Government and the Eev. Dr. Jonas King. In a private letter, accompanying these instructions, Mr. Webster informed Mr. Marsh that the Department would authorize him to draw on the United States Treasury for such personal ex- penses as the performance of this duty should impose upon him, but that the action of Congress would be necessary before the ordinary compensation for such extra services could be paid to him. Hasty preparations were made, to be ready to embark as soon as the " San Jacinto," which had been ordered to take him to the Greek capital, should arrive, and about the middle of July Mr. Marsh and his family landed at the Piraeus. Speaking of this voyage, in a letter to his brother Charles, he " We were constantly in sight of islands, and of either the mainland of Asia Minor or of Europe. The islands and the 280 GEOKGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. X. continent are alike steep, bare, and rocky bills and mountains, and tliere is scarcely any vegetation except on tbe low grounds or in the valleys, and, for some distance only, on tbe slopes of tbe bills wbere tbe ground bas been terraced vpitb infinite cost and labor. Most of tbese terraces are tbe work of a mucb ear- lier and more prosperous period, and in many places tbey bave fallen into decay and been abandoned. Tbe proportion of sur- face wbicb is covered with vegetation at tbis season is so small as hardly to be noticed, except upon a near approach ; but after a little familiarity with tbis scenery one finds that verdure is not a necessary element of landscape beauty. Tbe mountains are characterized by ruggedness and abruptness of outline. Their colors change from blue to brown, rose and purple, ac- cording to the variations of the sunlight at different hours of the day, and whenever tbey are absolutely bare of shrubs and earth, tbey are often (being composed of marble or other lime- stone) of a snowy whiteness." The weather was already very hot when Mr. Marsh began bis task in Greece — a task that proved difiicult far beyond any- thing be had anticipated. Tbe subjoined statement of facts in reference to tbe case of Dr. King, and Mr. Marsh's action in tbe matter, was drawn up by Dr. S. G. Brown, after careful examination, at Washington, of tbe diplomatic correspondence on tbe subject. " In 1852 Mr. Marsh was sent to Athens, where, at tbe time, the United States bad no diplomatic agent, on a mission of great delicacy and considerable importance. He was charged espe- cially to investigate the case of tbe Eev. Dr. Jonas King. The following is a brief statement of the facts. Dr. King was for some years a missionary in Palestine in tbe employment of tbe American Board, a society having its bead quarters in Boston. In 182Y be returned to America, and subsequently went to Greece, not , in connection with tbe Board but as one of the 1852.] CASE OF DE. KING. 281 Philhellene agents to distribute the contribution of Ameri- cans, in relief of the famine and distress of the Greeks resulting from their war of independence. He was intrusted with funds and supplies to a large amount, and devoted himself to the dis- tribution of them, and to the general duties of his agency with a zeal, assiduity, intelligence and disinterestedness, which not only gave entire satisfaction to his employers, but according to testimonials from the highest sources, entitled him to the re- spect and lasting gratitude of the people and government of Greece. He married a Greek lady in 1829, renewed his con- nection with the American Board, and took up his residence in Athens very soon after its abandonment by the Turks. En- couraged by the Greek authorities in common with other for- eigners, he purchased a piece of, ground then of little value. When the city became the capital of the new kingdom, and consequently began to grow, this land proved to be one of the most desirable portions of the city, and of course greatly in- creased in value. Finally a considerable portion of it was ac- cording to one plan laid out for a new street and public square. According to another plan the whole of his land was to be taken for a national church. In either case Dr. King was prohibited from either building upon, or selling any part of the property. The Greek constitution declares that ' no man shall be deprived of his property except for public necessity suitably shown, when, and as the law directs. But under all circumstances the in- demnification must be paid beforehand.' Notwithstanding this plain declaration, Dr. King had not only received no indemnifi- cation, but, though making repeated efforts, had not been able to come to any understanding with the government on the sub- ject. Twenty years had passed away, and still excuses were never wanting for procrastination or refusal. " In the meantime another difficulty had arisen, perhaps even less easy of solution. As a missionary of the American Board, Dr. King had held religious services in his own house, and expounded the Scriptures to those of his own family and a 282 GEOEGE PEKKINS MAESH. [Chap. X. few others who from time to time M'ere drawn to these private meetings. He was a man of learning, of strong convictions and of active and vigorous character. It was natural that his clear expositions should have produced an impression on those who heard them, but he was careful to keep within the limits of the law and constitution, which guaranteed religious liberty to all. Through the efforts of evil minded persons Dr. King was at length accused of malevolently attacking the doctrines of the Greek Church, and of expressing opinions and sentiments re- pugnant in general to the grounds of religion and morals. Evi- dence the most absurd was introduced, and the court by which the case was tried, in contradiction of all law and justice, held that the naked expression of opinions adverse to those of the Greek dogmas constituted the offence of ' attacking by malevo- lent expressions the dogmas of the Oriental Church.' Accord- ing to this intolerant decision, it was perfectly evident that no denomination, Catholic, Episcopalian, Baptist or any other, could publicly express its faith without being subjected to an odious charge. It was also in this case only too clearly evident that a conviction was predetermined. The result surprised no one, least of all Dr. King himself, who was condemned to im- prisonment, and at the end of the term to banishment from the country. " It was to investigate this case in both its aspects that Mr. Marsh was commissioned by our Government to proceed to Athens. The weather was oppressively hot and the labor which he undertook very exhausting. He was obliged to study the constitution and laws of the country, to read an immense quantity of documentary evidence written in the modern Greek manuscript character, to study the exact relation of the munici- pal corporation to the State, and the legal responsibility of each, and to extract the truth from the great body of conflicting testimony ' in a country where few have the courage to dis- close facts, or to express opinions adverse to the known inter- ests and wishes of their rulers ; where the laws and ordinances 1852.] CASE OF DK. KING. 283 of the government are publicly promulgated, or kept in the se- crecy of bureaus, at the pleasure of those who frame them ; where every public functionary is directly or indirectly depend- ent upon the pleasure of the crown, and therefore practically the instrument of its will.' So earnestly did he devote him- self to this case, that he hardly gave himself a moment for rec- reation even to see, much less to study, the monuments of art which are still the glory of the city. He continued the inquiry for several weeks. JSTotwithstanding the professions of willing- ness to help on the part of the Greek ministry, the conviction of their insincerity was foi'ced upon him, and he could not help the feeling that their methods of dealing were neither just nor manly. The result of his inquiry was entirely in favor of Dr. King. 1^0 one could receive a more complete vindication, or one entitled to greater respect. ' It is, in my judgment,' he writes to Mr. Webster, then Secretary of State, ' past all doubt, that the government of Greece has treated Dr. King with flagrant injustice and bad faith with regard to his claim for a compensation for his lands, and that in the criminal pros- ecution against him the legal tribunals of Greece . . . have been guilty of an abuse of the principle of justice, and a perversion of the rules of law, as flagitious as any that ever dis- graced the records of the Star Chamber.' " From the severe labor of this investigation, of which he afterwai'd said, that in no part of his life had the strain been so great upon body and mind as during the anxieties of these weeks, under the exhausting heat of an unusually trying sum- mer, he retreated to the baths of Gleichenberg in Styria, both for Mrs. Marsh's health and that he might at leisure prepare his report for his own Government, and wait for further instructions. This report he made with the fulness and tlioroughness which characterized all his important papers, in two despatches to Mr. Webster, one of sixty folio pages and the other, on another branch of the subject, of two hun- dred and twelve pages. The statements and arguments were 284 GEOBGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. X. SO complete and exhaustive that his conclusions seem to have been accepted without hesitation. The death of Mr. Webster, however, prevented any immediate reply, and he spent the months of the autumn and winter in Austria and Italy. As early as possible after receiving instructions from the new Secretary of State, Mr. Everett, he sailed from Naples for Athens in the spring of 1853, reaching that city on the 29th of April. In the meantime General Pierce had entered upon his office of President, with Mr. Marcy in the Depart- ment of State. No change, however, was made in the action of the Government. The action of the Greek Government was thought to be marked by intolerable delays and evasions and Mr. Marsh felt constrained to use language of decision and severity, though in no respect beyond what was warranted by truth and justice. 'Enough has already been said,' he wrote to the Greek Minister, Mr. Paicos, ' to show that the convic- tion of Dr. King was iinjust and illegal, the facts found by the court being unsustained by the evidence, and its legal conclu- sion unwarranted by the law and the facts found ; but it is the duty of the undersigned further to represent to his Excellency the Minister of Foreign Affairs, that it is in proof that the Synod had been permitted to rouse the worst passions of the multitude against Dr. King, by denouncing and anathematizing him and his opinions in terms but ill befitting gentlemen or Christian teachers ; that measures were taken by his persecutors to excite popular indignation against him, by posting up and circulating inflammatory and abusive placards, and by other means, with the view of gathering at the trial a hostile crowd to influence the court and obstruct the defence ; that, accord- ingly, a large and infuriated mob, led by Greek priests and some of the witnesses for the prosecution, was collected at the trial; that the presiding judge allowed these disorderly persons to insult the respondent and his counsel, to browbeat and over- awe the witnesses for the defence, and to cheer and applaud the witnesses for the prosecution ; and that his pretended ef- 1853.] CASE OF DE. KINC. 285 forts to preserve order and decorum were of so feeble a char- acter as apparently rather to stimulate and encourage than to intimidate and restrain the rioters ; that he allowed the Attor- ney General to devote a large part of the time consumed in his argument to reading and commenting npon certain works of religious instruction, published, in part, in foreign countries in the name of Dr. King, but neither offered as evidence upon the trial, regularly proved to have been published or circulated by him, nor in any other manner properly brought before the court ; that he rebuked the counsel for the defence for object- ing to this irregularity ; that he did not allow the respondent and his counsel full liberty to speak in his defence ; and that he throughout manifested an evident determination to sustain the prosecution, and to embarrass the defence.' . . . ' The undersigned, then, is instructed to convey to the government of Greece the opinion of the President of the United States, that though, in the trial of Dr. King, the forms of the law may have been in general observed, yet that the same was conducted in many respects unfairly and illegally, and in the main with a gross departure from the spirit of the law ; that it is quite plain that he was not brought to trial for any offence clearly defined by the laws of Greece ; that the constitution and laws of Greece guarantee a full toleration of all religious opinions, and that there is no proof that Dr. King has exceeded the just limits of the liberty of speech implied in such toleration ; that circum- stances warrant the conclusion that no belief was really enter- tained, on the part of the court, that Dr. King was guilty of the high crime laid to his charge; in a word, that the whole course of the proceedings is such as to place the character of the Greek tribunals in an unfavorable light; and that either the sound and safe maxims of criminal jurisprudence which prevail elsewhere are unknown to the jurisprudence of Greece, or her tribunals were presided over by persons who entertained very false notions of the judicial character, or there are prejudices against Dr. King, which, in his case at least, corrupted the fountains of justice.' 286 GEORGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. X. " It is only necessary to add that although Mr. Marsh was recalled by the new administration before this case was finally settled, yet the decree of the court was never executed against Dr. King, and ultimately he received, not indeed the fair value for his land, but an amount with which he chose to be satisfied rather than to wait, perhaps in vain, for anything more nearly approaching to justice." It should be said here that his successor, Mr. Spence, having expressed to Mr. Marsh much embarrassment at the necessity of conducting this affair to a conclusion, the latter furnished him with a written account (eight folio pages) of the actual state of the negotiation, carefully enumerating all the points taken by him in his discussion of the case with the Greek Min- ister, together with the replies of the latter. After clearly in- dicating the course he had himself intended to pursue, had it devolved upon him to terminate the business, he concludes : " Upon the whole, I am confident that a firm position will en- sure an immediate and satisfactory adjustment of both ques- tions, and I hope you will have the honor of commencing your diplomatic career with the settlement of this intricate and deli- cate controversy." One circumstance may be mentioned in this connection, as a suggestion to any Minister who may be called upon to perform a similar service under similar conditions. In accordance with Mr. Webster's directions, Mr. Marsh sent to the Department of State an account of his personal expenses while actually engaged in this duty. In this account he merely included his own personal hotel-bills — which he took care should not be extravagant — and the expenses of a single servant. This last indulgence he had regarded as demanded by considerations of health, under the strain of climate and severe labor in which he was placed, as well as by due respect for the position he held under his Government. This item was struck out at "Washington as an unnecessary luxury. It is but just to say 1853.] LETTER TO PROFESSOK BAIED. 287 that this account did not reach the State Department until after Mr. Webster's death. Laborious and engrossing as were Mr. Marsh's duties at the Greek capital, the following is evidence that even then he was not unmindful of other interests. " Athens, August 4, 1852. " Deae Baied : " We arrived here in the San Jacinto steam frigate on Sun- day, — of July, after a very pleasant trip, and after remaining here a few days longer shall probably sail in the same vessel foi- Trieste where the ship is to repair her broken engine, and shall then return here to spend a longer time. We have seen nothing of Athens, partly because our reminiscences of Syrian fever at this season last year deter us from exposing ourselves to the sun of Attica at this most unhealthy period of the year, and partly because I have been almost constantly occupied with business. I have collected some things for you — not many — which Mr. will send you. It is odd I cannot get salaman- ders, though I see hundreds of them. I can't catch them, and money won't hire the natives to do it. I have tried boys, Croats, Bulgarians, my own servant, but in vain. I hope Mr. will do better. As to eggs, there is but one bird's nest in my neighbourhood, a stork's, and I should certainly get a bullet through me in spite of diplomatic privileges were I to climb the chimney to rob it. There is a bird at Stamboul called by the Turks Jeb, by the Greeks , by the Chinese, if I remember right, X • Its English name will never be known until your book on ornithological synonyms shall appear. Well, this bird had nested in the garden of the English palace, and I sent my niece to plunder it, but the boys had anticipated her. However I don't care much about it ; you wanted eggs for Mas- ter Haldemann to hatch. Now I saw in some book, that Hal- demann said, that the Germans pronounce glauben as if it were spelled ylanben, which is not true. Argal, Haldemann is a false 288 GEOKGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. X man, and according to a proverb I often heard when I was travelling in Cathay, a false man is not to be trusted with an egg-shell." To his mother he says : " "We have all been presented to the Queen, (the King being absent) and treated with great courtesy, though under the cir- cumstances I cannot be a very welcome guest. I have had the honor of dining with her Majesty as a matter of course and was seated at her right hand. She is a woman of thirty three or four, very pleasing in person and manners, and she converses extremely well. At my presentation she spoke French, but at the dinner German altogether, and there was little more of stiffness or ceremony than at any dinner in fashionable society. The Queen is a capital horsewoman, and is often ten, twelve, or more, hours in the saddle. In fact few men can keep pace with her in her journeys, which are always performed on horse- back, there being no carriage roads in Greece except for very short distances about Athens. " The Court dress for gentlemen is the Albanian, which I think the most beautiful and graceful ever invented. It con- sists of a short jacket profusely embroidered with gold or silver, drawers, and buskins or long stockings, an embroidered vest and the fustanella, which is a kilt or short petticoat of white cotton or linen material, made so full that from twenty to forty yards are required for a single kilt. The cap is of red woollen stuff, without brim, hanging over on one side and with a very long large gold, silver or silk tassel. The jacket and stockings may be of any color, but red is perhaps the most common. The dress of the women is much the same, except that the jacket fits close and is buttoned up to the throat, and instead of the fustanella a long skirt is worn." A medical adviser at Athens, having strongly recommended ^853.] LETTER TO HIS MOTHER. 289 a stay of some weeks at the springs of Gleichenberg, in Styria, Mr. Marsh decided to go thither as soon as the negotiation with the Greek Government should be sufficiently advanced to be clearly reported upon to the State Department at Washing- ton. Accordingly on the 21st of August he embarked, with his family, on board the " San Jacinto" for Trieste, at which port the steamer was to remain some time for repairs. It therefore seemed possible that fresh instructions would arrive in time to make it desirable for the Minister to return to Athens in the same ship. It turned out quite otherwise, however, for rea- sons that will appear later. From Trieste he writes to his mother : " Sept. 1st. , . . "We sailed from Athens ten days ago, hoping to arrive here before the end of the week, but were driven by bad weather into a little harbor east of Cape Mata- pan, and were afterwards obliged to run into Corfu for coal. This island is extremely beautiful and highly cultivated, and the contrast its verdure presents to the desolation of Turkey and Greece can only be adequately felt by those who like us have passed some time in lands of barrenness and waste. We were treated with every possible attention by the Lord High Commissioner, Sir Henry Ward, and his family, and I have s,eldom spent two more agreeable days. " The Ionian islands have been much improved since 1815, and most excellent roads are constructed all over them, but the inhabitants are by no means contented with Bi'itish rule. Zante, one of these islands, is famous for its small seedless grapes known as Zante currants. This grape scarcely grows except in Zante and in the Morea. The annual produce in Zante is about thirty-three millions of pounds, and twice that quantity is produced in the Morea. I think it, when fresh, among the finest grapes I have ever tasted. ". . . We left the San Jacinto with regret. Her ac- commodations indeed were not for ladies, but the captain and 19 290 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. X. officers * did everything in their power to make the trip a pleas- ant one. " Trieste has a tolerable harbor, but is without docks or quays, and cargoes are landed and discharged by lighters. It is secure from all winds except the north east, called here the Ijora, which blows with the most terrific violence. Incredible stories are told of its fury. " The town is defended by two water batteries and com- manded by a castle built on a lofty eminence, overlooking, or rather overhanging, the whole of it. Around the town and harbor runs a range of lofty hills, intersected by a few rapidly ascending valleys. . . . " We shall leave for Gleichenberg to-morrow, and it will be some weeks before I can expect further instructions from Washington. ... I received a letter from Mrs. Hickok at Athens informing me of Susan's marriage. I remember Ed- munds very well, and thought him highly intelligent and every way promising. I trust it will prove a happy connection." From the time of Mr. Marsh's leaving Trieste, at the begin- ning of September, to his return to Greece, the next spring, his letters to family friends in America are exceedingly full. In looking over these letters one is surprised to observe how many things, entirely new to a traveller of that day, are now con- stantly seen in the United States, and have become so familiar that few remember their first introduction — such is the change that immigration, general travel, and the great increase of wealth have brought about within thirty-five years. Much detail of this kind has been omitted, and only such portions of these * Captain Lewis Goldsborongh (afterward Admiral Goldsborough, whose char- acter and distinguished services to his country are too well known to require mention here) was at this time in command of the ''San Jacinto," and his ofi&cers were, almost without exception, men of whom any navy in the world might be proud. Lieuten- ant Henry Wise, the son-in-law of Mr. Everett, made himself mo.st useful to Mr. Marsh in Athens, by acting, with rare tact and judgment, as bearer to the Greek Foreign Office of communications which could not be made directly by Mr. Marsh, much less transmitted by an ordinary messenger. 1852.] TEIESTE TO GLEICHENBEEG. 291 letters are selected as serve to continue the narrative in bis own words, or to exemplify his peculiar habits of observation. His correspondence contains almost nothing of such incidents of travel as could have only a transient interest for him. He never speaks of wretched nights at poor, untidy country inns ; little, indeed, of any passing discomforts, so completely was he absorbed in gathering facts and impressions of a more agreea- ble and enduring character. His letters to his brother Charles, who was at this time engaged in extensive farming operations in Vermont, are very voluminous, and contain much agricultural and other matter not usually found in books of travel. Some selections have been made from these, because they bring strongly into relief the practical side of a mind which was at the same time aglow with ever fresh inspirations from nature and from art. The route from Trieste to Gleichenberg lay across Istria and Carniola into the heart of Styria, the principal places of interest on the way being Adelsberg, Laibach, and Gratz. There was at that time no railway between Trieste and Lai- bach, and this part of the journey was performed by carriage. The first halt was made at Adelsberg, some six or seven hours from Trieste. Mr. Marsh gives his brother a minute descrip- tion of the road thus far, of the topography of the country tlirough which it passed, of the vast quantities of merchandise transported over it, of the construction of the wagons used for that purpose, the peculiar modes of harnessing the horses and oxen that drew them, etc., but the geographical feature wliich particularly interested him was the constant succession of hollows in the limestone rock. Speaking of these, he says : " Everywhere over this plain are scattered circular crater- like depressions, sunk in the rocky strata, generally from two to ten rods in diameter, and from ten to thirty feet deep. Some however are irregular in form, and of considerably greater dimensions. The slope of these craters is sometimes 292 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. X. turfed over, bnt more generally rocky, with a few shrubs and trees growing in the clefts, and there is almost always a small grass plot at the bottom. In only one did I observe standing water, although there was a heavy rain at the time. They oc- cupy one third, perhaps half, of the entire surface of the plain." Of the famous Grotto of Adelsberg, he says : " It is a lime-stone cavern of great extent, the most remote point being four or five miles from the entrance. The most interesting part is within a mile or two of the mouth, and so far we went. The grotto consists of a series of apartments, the largest being 300 ft. long and 100 ft. high. These are connected by passages, generally of convenient width and height. The walls and roof are everywhere covered with stal- actites which assume the most varied, fantastic and beautiful forms. . . . The general effect is that of the richest and most florid style of Gothic architecture, executed in white mar- ble, but of course the details are quite different. Many col- umns stand free, others are more or less connected with the walls, some reach to the roof, others only a few feet or inches from the floor. They are of all sizes, and their surfaces are always very irregular. Some of them at a little distance look as if they were carved all over with roses and other flowers. In many places there are recesses with openings in front (the stalactite matter at the floor and the ceiling not having yet united) resembling stage boxes, orchestras, etc. The most re- markable of these represent curtains, water-falls, etc., and in one instance a tomb overhung with weeping willows. The curtain folds sometimes appear plain; sometimes with long fringes. . . . They show the light of a candle through them quite plainly, and the grace, freedom, fulness and ap- parent lightness and flexibility of the folds is fully equal to that of silk or any other tissue. " But the most beautiful object in the cave is one of the so- 1852.] TO THE SON OF ME. HOMES. 293 called stone waterfalls. You seem to see a cascade, ten or fif- teen feet high, and eight or ten wide, pouring over a ledge and tumbling in foam over broken rocks at the bottom. The illu- sion is perfect. Just below the entrance a river broader than the Queechee poiu-s into the cavern through a natural arch. It is twice crossed by natural bridges, and once by an artificial one, 160 ft. long, and finally disappears in the unknown depths below. . . ." The following, referring to the same cavern, and written from Gleichenberg to the five-year-old son of his friend, Mr. Homes, was carefully printed with a pen, in characters of ex- quisite neatness, and is still preserved by the recipient, now a lawyer of New York City, and the worthy son of a learned and high-minded father. " My Deab Boy : " You know I said I would print you a letter, with a pen, a great while ago, but I have had to write so much that I have not had time till now. " When we were coming from Trieste here, we went into a hole in the ground called the cave of Adelsberg, and we went under the ground as far as from Therapia to Hunkiar Skelassii. It was quite dark, but we carried a great many candles and could see very well. In the cave is a great river, wider than my house and Mr. Loukaki's and the next one, and there are bridges over the river. There are many such caves in Carni- ola, and in some of them is found a creature called a proteus. He looks a little like a lizard, but he has gills something like a fish, and can breathe in water and on land. All creatures that can live in the water and on land are called amphibious, which is a Greek word that your father will explain to you. Mrs. Marsh and Miss Paine and Miss Buell all send you their love. " Your old friend that you used to shut up in prison, and tie to his chair, and send out of the room, when he was naughty, "Geokge p. Maksh." 294 GEOBGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. X. The country between Adelsberg and Laibach, a distance of six Lours by carriage, afforded Mr. Marsh equal opportunity for fresh observations. The ever-recurring limestone craters (to avoid which the road was constantly winding, now to the riglit, now to the left), the character and extent of the forests, the dress of the peasantry, their harvests and methods of secur- ing them, the construction of their cottages, their boats, their mills, and their agricultural implements — some of these last being roughly sketched while the carriage was in motion — all these furnished subjects for a long letter to his brother. Of Laibach itself, he says : " It is a town of 17,000 inhabitants, situated in the midst of a vast plain bounded by high lime-stone mountains. In the centre is a high rock on which stands a castle commanding an extensive and striking prospect. It is celebrated for the polit- ical congress held there in 1820-21. Marshal Eadetzky, who commanded the Austrian troops in the Italian campaigns of 1848-9, has a residence here. . . . " Incredible quantities of buckwheat are raised in this neighborhood, so that I saw five thousand acres of this grain at one view from the above named castle. It is now in full bloom, and the effect of the long narrow rosy fields, with now and then a green strip intermingled, is one of the most unique I have witnessed. I suppose the buckwheat follows a white crop^at any rate they had excellent wheat, for the bread ia without exception the finest I have ever eaten." At Laibach the travellers met the railway, which was nine hours in taking them to Gratz, a distance of only a hundred and forty-three miles. The first part of the line lay through the valley of the Save, a boatable river fed by streams from the limestone caverns. Here the scenery was bold and strik- ing, but the features of this day's journey which perhaps most impressed Mr. Marsh were the vast plains, known as the Pet- 1852.] GEATZ TO GLEICHENBEEG. 295 taner Feld and the Leibnitzer Feld, containing together some two hundred thousand acres, lying almost on a dead level. Of Gratz, he says : "This is a well-built town of 60,000 inhabitants. The castle rock is 500 or 600 ft. in height, and commands a very wide, beautiful and diversified view. The most noticeable thing I saw in the town itself, is the double row of booths or wooden stalls, filled with every variety of merchandise, which runs down through the middle of the widest streets." At Gratz a carriage was again required, and another nine hours brought the party to Gleichenberg. In a letter to his brother, dated the following day (September 8th), Mr. Marsh says : " The country between Gratz and Gleichenberg reminds me strongly of Yerraont in its natural features, but the care be- stowed upon the forests presents a marked contrast to our neg- lect of them. The buildings and the people of course differ widely enough. ... In Carniola the language is a Sla- vonic dialect, here in Styria it is a corrupt German. . . . In both provinces one sees everywhere crucifixes of life size, images of the Yirgin, etc., and every high, solitary peak, except among the loftiest mountains, is crowned by a castle, a church or a chapel — sometimes by all three." On the 4:th of October he again writes to his brother, from Gleichenberg : " I rise vei-y early every morning, and begin my labors as soon as I can see to read and write, and work steadily at my report on the Greek difficulty till our half past one dinner. After this, we (C excepted of course) take long walks or drives into the country with our very agreeable and accom- plished friends who have joined us here, Mrs. and Miss Wyse, of 296 GEORGE PEKKINS MAESH. [Ohap. X. the family of the English minister at Athens, and in the even- ing we meet again in our rooms or theirs, where we make tea — our own, for the precious gift of Confucius is utterly unknown in these parts — and chat till bed-time. ... As the Wyses are the first English and we the first Americans who have ever visited these springs, we are naturally objects of no small curi- osity, and every facility is afforded us for becoming acquainted ■with the country and people. ... I have seen most of the interesting localities within three or four hours' drive of this village, and a good deal of the life and habits of the Styrians. "Although the hillsides, in general, are moderately steep, and both slopes and tops are covered with trees as with us, yet one often sees abrupt, rocky elevations, composed (as are indeed most of the hills) of basalt or other igneous rock, rising sud- denly out of a plain or a valley, to the height of from 250 to 500 feet, and frequently inaccessible, or nearly so, on two or three sides. On these rocks there stood, in the Middle Ages, the rude castles of the barons and other chieftains vfIio possessed and ruled the country, and these were the retreats to which the people fled for security, when threatened by the Hungarians, or by the Turks, which latter people continued occasionally to overrun Styria until within less than 200 years. The old castles have now all, or nearly all, disappeared, and their places are oc- cupied by much more extensive structures, erected generally in the 17tli century. Some of these last are still inhabited, but many of them have been suffered to fall into decay within ten or twelve years. They are not for the most part of great mili- tary strength, but would have held out some time against snch means of attack as the Turks brought with them. The plan of them all, as well as of all the larger residences of the nobility of still later date, is the same — a qxiadrangle from 150 to 300 feet square, of two, rarely three, stories, with walls of great thickness, a single tier of rooms running round each story, and an open square in the centre surrounded by galleries, facing the square, upon which all the rooms open. In the square is a 1852.] LETTER FROM GLEICHENBERG. 297 well or cistern, and in the basement are a chapel, storage-rooms, etc. They are all provided with prison-rooms, fetters, and some- times instruments of torture. It is not long since the nobility exercised almost unlimited civil and criminal jurisdiction over their tenantry. These residences are sometimes built upon the plain, as the castle of Hainf eld where the celebrated Orientalist, Baron von Hammer, * is now living, and Brunnsee, now occu- pied by the Duchess of Berri, mother of the Count of Cham- bord who claims to be Henry V. of France. . . . The cas- tle of Riegersburg, about three hours from Gleichenberg, is the most interesting one I have visited. The rock, 400 feet in height, on which it is built, is very precipitous on three sides, and the accessible fourth is defended by numerous walls, ditches and outworks. We passed through seven gates before reaching the castle itself. The view from it is most extensive and beau- tiful, embracing not only a great part of Styria, but portions of Hungary, the border of which is within six or eight miles, and other Austrian provinces. " The Kittersaal at Riegersburg is 50 feet long by 25 broad, and 18 or 20 feet high. The floor and ceiling are inlaid with woods of different colors, and the latter is decorated with gilt ornaments. The walls are rough (having once been hung with tapestry or gilt leather) and the principal interest of the room is in the three great doors. These are of dark wood profusely carved and inlaid, with rich entablatures similarly decorated and reaching to the ceiling. The hinges are very large and both these and the locks are most beautifully finished and con- structed with curious intricacy. ... In former days these * Baron Joseph von Hammer Pargstall, whose acquaintance Mr. Marsh made at this time, and with whom he had some very interesting correspondence afterward, was then nearly eighty years old, but still vigorous in mind and body. He had held many important offices under the Austrian Government, and was one of the most learned Orientalists of his day, though the great impulse given to study in that direction left him, even before his own death, somewhat behind younger rivals. He was a man of most courtly manners, overflowing in historico-social anecdote, and when Mr. Marsh and his family were in Vienna his frequent visits did much toward making their stay in that city agreeable. 298 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. X. castles were full of old family and other pictures, and there was always an armory full of curious old weapons and armour, but all the best specimens of these, and the antique carved cabi- nets, chests, chairs, etc., have been carried off to decorate the present more modern palaces of their proprietors elsewhere, or to figure in museums or in other collections of antiquities in all parts of the civilized world." In another letter to the same, dated five days later, he says : " I finished this morning my second Report on the business I went to Greece to enquire into. As I am now through my labors for the present, and as C. derives no benefit from the waters, we have decided to leave Gleichenberg * on Monday the 11th. Our physician here is very desirous we should con- sult some eminent medical men at Vienna, and as the eye-sur- geons there are reported to be the most skilful in the world, we have decided to go to Vienna. The journey is made mostly by rail, and we expect to reach the Austrian capital on Wednes- day." The most direct way to Vienna took Mr. Marsh once more through Gratz, which gave him a second opportunity to study that part of the country. Between Gratz and Gloggnitz there were at this time sixty miles of rail and twenty of carriage- road, but from the latter place the railway was complete to Vienna, which was reached on the 15th of October. "Writ- * A day or two before Mr. Marsh left Gleichenberg, considerable interest was ex- cited among the medical staff at the springs by the arrival of a Hungarian nobleman whose carriage was drawn by oxen.' The explanation was that this gentleman was thrown into strong convolsions by the odor from the bodies of horses, and that he had come to this watering-place in the hope of being cured of this strange affection. It was further said that he had fled, after one of the lost battles of his people, in 1848, on a swift horse, but being hotly pursued, he had urged his animal to its utmost speed nntU it sunk under its rider. When found, the former was dead and the latter lay in a violent convulsion. From that time forth, as the story went, the unfortunate man fell into similar spasms whenever a horse was near him. In 1886 there ap- peared in the European and American journals a notice of the death of this noble- man, at an advanced age, in which mention was made of the extraordinary malady from which he had suffered, and from which, it would seem, he never recovered. 1853.] AT VIENNA. 299 ing to his brother, from Vienna, on the 28th of October, Mr. Marsh gives a most detailed account of this journey also, not- ing many things on the already-travelled road which he had not mentioned before — such as the universal use of lightning- rods of a peculiar construction, the various methods of tiling and thatching, the household furniture of the poor, their food, etc. But he dwells especially on the face of the country be- tween Gratz and the capital, its agricultural condition and capacities, etc. ; and the skill shown in the engineering of the carriage-road over that portion of the Styrian Alps known as the Semmering, and of the railway, then in process of con- struction, excited his high admiration. This railroad was at that time universally admitted to be the boldest attempt of the kind yet made, though to-day it is far from holding such a rank. Speaking of Vienna itself in this letter, Mr. Marsh says : " There are few buildings remarkable for their antiquity or their external architecture, but the great church of St. Stephen is the finest Gothic building I have yet seen, and one of the finest of any style. It dates from the 15th century, is built of sandstone, originally light-colored but now quite black with age, is 350 feet long, and the great tower is from 450 to 460 feet high. The anterior is a single vast hall, broken only by the rich- ly decorated, clustered columns that support the vaulted roof and the exterior is as rich as sculpture can make it. It is both grand and beautiful in the highest degree, and if anything could justify an apostasy to Popery, it would be the opportunity of worshipping in so glorious a temple as this. . . . " The people of Vienna are a cheerful lively race, remark- able for devotion and profanity, as well as for some other virt- ues and vices. The use they make of objects which their own religion teaches them to reverence is strongly repulsive. Shops, and even wine shops, are often named after the Trinity, the Resurrection, the Twelve Apostles, various Saints and even the Holy Spirit. . . ." 300 GEOKGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. X. The following, to Mr. Baird, bears the same date as the extracts preceding. "Land. N. L. 48° 10' B. L. 16° 12' October 28, 1852. "My Son: " Your pop-gnn and Mary's six-pounder came to hand with- in twenty-four hours last past and I hasten to reply. After remaining three weeks at Athens where I worked in the hot- test weather I ever knew, almost, until I had put out my eyes with modern Greek laws and records, and nearly brought on a brain fever, I fled to Gleichenberg, a newly-become-famous watering-place in Styria, to give Mrs. M. the benefit of the waters, and myself time to write my reports. One was finished and despatched in a fortnight after I reached G., and the other went off on the 16th of October from this place. They make over 100 pages of Report, and nearly 300 of translation, in closely written foolscap. The translations I had either to make, or to revise with almost as great labour as to make, and as the modern Greek manuscript character is totally illegible, and decipherable only inspiration-wise, I am sure that I performed as great an amount of work as any govei-nment employe ever did in the same time. Let me be praised therefor. Also let great Daniel allow me time to rest my old blind eyes and shat- tered brain, and give me no instructions before Feb. 1. " I came hither because our Gleichenberg physician said the doctors in this Eesidenz could and would cure my wife, eyes and all, and patch me up, so that I should run a spell longer. They have seen us, and though they won't promise to re-invigorate an old stump like me, they engage great things for my poor old woman, if Mr. W. will let us alone a couple of months, or longer. On the way from Trieste to Gleichenberg, I visited the famous cave of Adelsberg, which is a cave indeed. Also upon the persuasion of Madam, who said that rather than Baird should not have it, she would carry it in her hand till she saw him again, I bought you a Proteus, the which abounds in those parts, pickled him incontinently, and he now lieth safely. 1852.] LETTER TO PROFESSOR BAIRD. 301 The Lisknitza Sea I did not visit, tliongli within two hours, because it rained continually, and the lake, being full, was like any other. Carniola is the strangest country under heaven. Undernuned all over. All the rivers run into or out of caves, and there are other things I can't take time to tell of. Here, I went to the Thiergarten yesterday. ITo great rarities, saving two real Auerochs, which disappointed me in size, not being bigger than our ordinary Bos, (they look like Bisons lacking the hump) and four Bactrian camels, a male and three females, one of the latter born in the menagerie. The male is black, the females dun yellow, and one of them is quite . They are lower than the Arabian and Syrian camel, and more heavily built. The humps are very thin longitudinally, so much so, in fact, and the supporting spinal processes are so short, that they hang over on one side, and have nothing of the solid substan- tial appearance of the dromedary hump. There is an elephant here, which, they say, has been in this menagerie 37 years, and they show a venerable parrot which, as they assert, was a pet of Maria Theresa. " The Am. Consul-Genl. at Alexandria told me he had got an essay, full and complete, on the camel from Lenant Bey, who Imows the African and Arabian animal better than any man ever did before, because he has had the experience of an Arab, and has studied the beast with the intelligence of a Chris- tian. The Consnl G. said he should communicate it to the gov't and I think he has. Ask Markoe. If so, that will answer vour purpose far better than mine. One thing is certain, the desert camel will never do. A Northern breed will alone an- swer. As to your using mine, you may use my facts freely — my words very sparingly — on one condition namely, that what you print is to appear distinctly, fully and palpably, as your own work and not that of any commissioner's clerk, board or committee. Ton may have the benefit and credit of my obser- vations—nobody else shall. 1 dread being turned out and go- in'' home, where nothing but poverty and mortification await 302 GEORGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. X. me, but I shall be very glad to see yon and Mary and my other good friends at Washington, none of whom, so far as I know, have lost money by me. I have been cruelly used, since I left the U. S. by some I had a right to expect fairness from at least, and there are some singular, and to me inexplicable, cir- cumstances in the conduct of some people about raising the sal- ary. I don't dare to tell you who defeated it. " I am afraid you are killing yourself with hard work. That I wouldn't mind, if you were wearing out to good purpose. What, are you good for nothing but directing and recording ex- changes ! Leave such rubbish, I pray you, and remember that the ten pounds you had were not given you to be expended in twine and cartridge paper. Why don't I ever get anything from the Smithsonian ? I am. ashamed to confess to inquirers that I don't know anything about it. Write soon about those confounded camels. My love, and which is better, my wife's, to you both, " Yours truly, " G. P. Makbh." " P. S. The articles I sent were but a beginning. I had prepared completely another, entitled ' The Caravan,' a descrip- tion of the equipage and mode of travel with the camel, and have very copious notes, and detached descriptive sketches, of the physical geography of the Desert, and of the peculiarities of its human inhabitants, but I shall be very likely to burn the whole, someday. " As to the barometers, I continued to observe with them after I wrote you, and the average difference between them was about .040. The vernier of the cistern barometer has no ad- justing screw, and it takes so long to set it, that the heat of the body affects the height of the column, and the form of the ivory pointer is irregular. . . . There is a want of scru- pulous accuracy in all the workmanship of both, there is no in- dication as to how far the screw should be turned in the cistern barometer, when reversed for moving, the lower, edges of the 1852.] LETTER TO PEOEESSOE BAIED. 303 sigJds are left bright, and the reflection of the light from them is confounded with the light seen beyond. In short, they are both of the ' good enough,' ' made to sell,' kind, and if they were not turned off by some ' prentice,' but are the work of Martin Green himself, a certificate from all the ' scientific men ' under Heaven wouldn't convince me, contrary to the tes- timony of my own eyes, that he is a man who has any higher standard of accuracy than a pretty good guess. His thermom- eters are better, though carelessly graduated. I don't say all this to bother the poor man (I have sent orders to have him paid) but to let you know that he is not an exact, precise work- man, and do you believe me till you see (not hear) the con- trary. " It is asked of me that I recommend one Buchel, Joseph Buchel (Buchel & Waldstein of New York), optician, and I do recommend him, believing that there is good cause. Try him. " Tours truly, "G. P. Maesh." CHAPTER XI. 1852-1853. Journey through a Part of Austria and Germany — Portions of Letters from Prague ; from Dresden ; from Nuremberg ; from Munich ; from Innsbruck ; from Salz- burg ; from Gmunden — Return to Vienna, and Departure for Italy — First Visit to Venice— Extract from Letters to his Mother from Padua and Verona — ^Letter from Milan to Professor Baird — Journey from Milan to Genoa and Florence — Extracts from Letters to his Brother referring to this Journey — Letter from Florence to Professor Baird — Death of Mr. Marsh's Mother — First Acqriaintance with the Brownings — Arrival of Fresh Instructions — Goes to Naples — Letter to Professor Baird — ^Embarks on the Corvette " Levant " for Athens — ^Further Ne- gotiations with the Greek Minister — Asks for Final Instructions, and returns to Constantinople — ^Farewell Letter from Sir Thomas Wyse. THE medical authorities having decided that a rest of some weeks at Yienna was a necessity for his wife, Mr. Marsh was persuaded to avail himself of that time to make a short tour through a part of Austria and Germany. The route fixed upon was, first, into Bohemia to Prague ; thence, still north- ward, to Dresden in Saxony ; from Dresden, southward, to Munich in Bavaria, Nuremberg being the great attraction on that line ; from Munich, passing through Augsburg, Ndrd- lingen, Erlangen, to Innsbruck in the Austrian Tyrol ; from Innsbruck to Salzburg in Upper Bavaria ; from Salzburg, by way of Ischl, Lake Traun, and Gmunden, to Linz on the Danube ; and thence by steamer back to Yienna. This itiner- ary was followed to the letter, and after a journey of five weeks, very rich in new sights and experiences, Mr. Marsh returned to the Austrian capital, to take his reunited family at once to Yenice. His letters on this journey are marked by the closest ob- servations of nature in the countries through which he passed, 1852-1853.] EXTRACTS FEOM LETTERS. 305 as well as of the inhabitants, and also of the artistic wealth which was brought under his eje. The extracts that can be given here, however, must be for the most part of a very gen- eral character. From Prague he writes, on the 2d of November : " . . . The route from Vienna to this city, 254 miles, passes over a fertile and highly cultivated country, generally quite level, but it is traversed by two or three ridges of low, rocky hills, between and through which the road has been con- structed at great labor and expense. . . . The only town of importance we passed through was Briinn in Moravia, which is better known just now as the site of the fortress of Spiel- berg, where Silvio Pellico and other Italian martyrs were so long confined, than for anything else. "The peasantry live principally in very small cabins, thickly crowded together in large villages, and the loss of time in going to and from their distant fields must be very great. . . . Upon the Danube, as we crossed it, and indeed upon almost every other river, we saw numerous floating current- mills. These appear to have no great power, but they are simple in construction, and so cheap compared with power obtained by dams and canals, that I should think they might be advanta- geously used with us for many purposes. . . . " Prague, the ancient capital of Bohemia, lies on both sides the river Moldau, and is most picturesquely and beautifully situ- ated. It is overhung with steep and lofty hills, crowned by for- tresses, by the palaces of the old Bohemian kings, and by a rich old Gothic cathedral, which, though much dilapidated, is one of the finest churches we have seen. ... A very large propor- tion of the inhabitants speak Bohemian, a Slavonic dialect, and there is still a tendency to Protestantism among them. , . . There is a large library here, a good collection of specimens of natural history, an extraordinarily fine mineralogical museum, and an interesting collection of antiquities. , . ." 30 306 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XI. His next date is Dresden, November 9th. " . . . We left Prague on the 3rd and soon struck into the valley of the Elbe which the railroad follows to Dresden. On the confines of Bohemia and Saxony the Elbe forces its way through a chain of limestone mountains of no great elevation, but of singularly abrupt and precipitous formation. The group is full of detached needle-like perpendicular peaks, and the course of the railway between them is extremely crooked. One of these peaks on the Saxon side of the frontier, is a huge, abrupt rock called Konigstein. It is more than YOO ft. high, is still occupied as a fortress, and is perhaps as strong a place as any in Europe. The region in which it lies is called the Saxon Switzerland, and is described as most picturesque. . . . Dres- den is a very plain and quiet town, without a single building of striking architecture, or any appearance of active business, nor is there anything attractive in its situation or environs, but its artistical collections are, as you know, among the finest and most extensive in the world." [Here follow his impressions from a visit to the Royal Picture Gallery, to the vast collection of Japanese, Chinese, and European porcelain, to the splendid ar- mory, with its other objects of historical and artistic interest, the great Library, the magnificent engravings, etc.] Speaking of the " Green Yault," he says : " It consists of a sei-ies of large apartments completely filled with the most exquisite gems and jewels, fine work in gold, silver and bronze, beautiful cups and vases of crystal, agate, onyx, and other semi-precious stones, and admirable carvings in ivory, wood and almost every other known material capable of being wrought by art. There is no collection in the world approaching this in value of material or skill in workmanship, and the study of years would be required to appreciate its treasures. . . . The diamonds are very numerous, large, and of almost every color. . . . One of the rooms is filled with silver-gilt vessels, two of which hold, I suppose, very nearly a barrel each, and many others are of 1852-1853.] EXTEACTS FROM LETTERS. 307 very large dimensions. ... I omitted to mention the bust of a princess, which we saw in the porcelain museum. Ovei- the head is thrown a veil, also of porcelain, as delicate as lace. It is done in this way : a lace yeU. is dipped in a very thin mixt- ure of porcelain clay and water, the threads of the veil being thus incrusted with the clay. This veil is then thrown over the clay bust, and, if it hangs freely and gracefully, the bust and veil are baked together. In this process the threads are consumed, and only the porcelain crust remains. . . ," The quaint old town of Nuremberg, if not the most inter- esting feature to Mr. Marsh in all this journey, certainly af- forded him a rare opportunity to increase his knowledge of mediaeval art — a subject that greatly attracted him — and the pleasure he derived from the architecture of the public and private buildings, from the rich sculpture without and within the churches, the curious old German pictures, the delicate wood-carvings, the finished bronzes, the specimens of perfect workmanship in gold, silver, etc., may be inferred from the warmly appreciative accounts of them contained in his letters. These are mostly omitted, as the treasures of this unique town have been made so familiar by the visits of countless travellers since. A few extracts only are given. " Nuremberg, Friday, Nov. 12th, 1852. "... We left Dresden very early Wednesday morn- ing, and after nineteen liours of slow railway travel, arrived here late in the night. The country between the two towns is the tamest, least fertile and most uninteresting I have seen in Europe. . . . " The roofs of the houses we observed in passing are ex- tremely steep, and rise so high as to be divided into several stories. These are lighted by very small windows, never more than one pane high, though two or three long. In Saxony the pent-house over these windows is curved, so that they almost 308 GE0K6E PEKKINS MAESH. [Chap. XL exactly resemble the human eye. In Bavaria the pent-house is straight, and differs from the rest of the roof only in its pitch. I observed yesterday one roof so steep and high that it had six tiers of these small windows which lighted as many garrets one over the other. . . . " Nuremberg is in some respects the most remarkable city of Europe. It retains, in a greater degree than any other, the peculiarities which distinguished it in the Middle Ages, and its general appearance has not changed much for 300 years. . . . There are two large and extremely fine old Gothic churches in very good condition, adorned inside and out with exquisite sculptures and bronze castings, and lighted by the most beautiful stained-glass windows imaginable. The people of Nuremberg adopted, almost unanimously, the Protes- tant faith early in the Reformation, and they worship still in these magnificent old churches, where they have had the liber- ality and taste to destroy nothing and remove nothing. . . ." After giving a critical description of two very remarkable works in these churches — one a bronze receptacle for the shrine of St. Sebaldus, by Peter Vischer ; the other a so-called taber- nacle, sixty feet in height, to contain the holy wafers, by Adam Krafft— he says, of the former : " It is undoubtedly oi\e of the finest works of art of any period in modern times," and of the other : " It is wrought with a freedom and boldness of which there is no other known example. The sandstone in which it is carved must be of very extraordinary tenacity even to bear its own weight when so boldly and finely cut, to say nothing of the difficulty of executing such slender and projecting orna- ments in so brittle a material." The old cemeteries of Nuremberg were objects of touching, as well as artistic, interest to him. He thus concludes his ac- count of them : " In this simple way lie buried Albert Diirer and most of the other renowned men who have made this little town so famous ; but there are a few more conspicuous monu- 1852-1853.] EXTEACTS FEOM LETTERS. 309 ments. One of these, erected about 1508 to the founder of a benevolent chavit}-, is most beautiful, and the burial chapel of the Holzschuher family is very interesting." The following is from a letter to his brother, dated at Mu- nich, November 18th. " . . . The country between Nuremberg and Munich is flat and totally uninteresting. The only towns of importance on the route are Augsburg, famous, as you remember, for the Protestant confession there promulgated; Nordlingen, where the Swedes and their Protestant allies were defeated in the Thirty Tears' War, and Erlangen, the seat of a Protestant university. "We had very little time to give to these places. . . . I had an opportunity of noticing, on this journey, some new things connected with the farming industry of the country. One often sees a single ox drawing a load, some- times harnessed with a horse or a cow." [Here follows a description of several newly observed methods of harnessing, which concludes thus : J "I have no doubt that harnessing oxen hy the head is the best of all modes. The oxen walk about as fast as a horse, and I saw a single yoke drawing a load of sixty bushels of sand with little apparent effort and at a quick pace. "... Dogs are less used here as beasts of draught than farther north ; still I have seen a woman in harness with one. Yesterday I saw a man and three women drawing an ordinary load of wood. For splitting wood and felling trees, the axes are of a different form from ours, those for the former purpose being much like our common wedge, and for the latter, a broad thin blade is employed, of less than half the weight of ours. . I noticed often, in the fields between Nuremberg and this place, a small house on wheels, light enough to be drawn by a single man. In this the shepherd sleeps by his flock which is folded every night, the folds being changed from place to place as convenient. 310 GEOEGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XL " Munich is principally modern, and is remarkable for the fine architecture of the public buildings, which are chiefly the work of the late King Louis. The galleries of painting and sculpture contain recent productions of very high reputation. We have been much occupied in studying the works of the great modern German painters, Kaulbach especially. They cannot be landerstood at a glance, and I have not become suffi- ciently familiar with them to speak as a critic, but they inter- est me profoundly. . . . The private houses here are, at least a large proportion of them, new, and they present a strik- ing contrast to those of Nuremberg, having almost nothing in common but the practice of placing a looking-glass on the out- side wall over the door at such an angle as to reflect into a family room the image of every person who calls at the door ! " Innsbruck, Nov. 22d. After spending five days at Munich we left for Innsbruck. For twenty miles the road is tame but it then enters the mountains, where the scenery becomes fine. In the course of the second day we passed Achensee, a lake six miles long and half a mile broad. It is surrounded by very precipitous, rocky mountains, 1,000 ft. high, which come quite to the water's edge and much of the road is cut into the face of the precipice. . . . Upon entering the mountains the cul- tivation of grain begins to diminish, and about thirty miles from Munich disappears altogether. Then nothing is seen but meadows, pastures and wooded hills of great steepness. Im- mense quantities of wood are cut on the northern slopes of the Bavarian and Tyrolese Alps. Every where there are wood- slides — rude troughs formed of the trunks of trees — down which the wood is precipitated from the hills to the banks of the streams. Vast quantities are sent down to the bed of the river which drains the Achensee, and here and there are booms and gratings for collecting it. Incredible expense has been in- curred to prevent this river from encroaching upon the narrow meadows on its banks. . . . For miles together wing-dams of stone are built out into the stream at intervals of a few rods, 1852-1853.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 311 and sea-walls, and numerous other contrivances, are resorted to, to diminish the rapidity of the current and secure the banks. . . . " Innsbruck itself, a town of 13,000 inhabitants, lies on the Inn, in a basin surrounded by bare mountains rising abruptly four or five thousand feet above the plain it stands on, and it would be difficult to imagine anything more grand and beauti- ful than the environs. This town was the scene of one of the most obstinate struggles between the Tyrolese, under Hofer and Spechbacher, and the Bavarians and French, in 1809. . . . Its most important artistic monument is that of Maximil- ian I., executed by eminent artists of the 16th century. It con- sists of a large sarcophagus in the centre of the church with a bronze figure of the emperor kneeling upon it. Along the pil- lars at the sides of the nave are twenty-eight bronze statues of distinguished persons, mostly contemporaries of Maximilian, of more than life size. They are all in the costume of his time, and most skilfully wrought. But the principal merit of the tomb is in the bas-reliefs in marble on the sides of the sar- cophagus, by Colin of Mechlin. These are upon slabs about twenty-eight by twenty inches. The figures are some five inches high, and carved with the very greatest possible skill. The likeness of Maximilian is every where preserved, and the features of even the diminished figures in the background, as well as all the details of costume, the carvings and the paint- ings of the buildings introduced, the devices on the flags, the anatomy and the expression of the figures, the trappings of the horses and even the nails of their shoes, are faithfully repre- sented and clearly visible. It is doubtless the most extraordi- nary work of its kind in existence. . . ." His next date is Salzburg, November 26th. "... I wrote you last week from Innsbruck, and begin another letter to-day, to correct and finish my observations upon 312 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XI. the Tyrol while my recollection is fresh. . . . The moun- tains, though inferior in height to those of the Swiss Alps, are even more abrupt, bare and precipitous, and the scenery, though a smaller proportion of the mountains are covered with per- petual snow and ice, is thought by many travellers equal in grandeur to that of Switzerland. We have indeed seen veiy little of this remarkable country, our visit having only extended to the valley of the Inn and the passage across to the valley of the Salza where we now are, but even this little embraces the most magnificent scenery I have yet beheld, except that of Arabia. . . . The road from Innsbruck to Salzburg is good, though there are some hills as steep as the steepest, and as long as the longest, in Vermont. The scenery was fine all the way, and through the two passes of Strub and Stein truly sublime. At every descent of the road steep enough to allow a waggon or carriage to run down by its own weight, the break or shoe is required by law to be applied, and a post is placed at the top of every hill with a proper notice to secure obedience to the law. . . . " The number of religious pictures and statues we saw on this journey is almost incredible. Every house, every turn in the road, every conspicuous spot, is decorated or disfigured with them, and they are of all styles and degrees of merit, from re- spectable ability in art down to shocking and profane carica- tures. Every where, besides the immense number of crucifixes, painted and carved life-size Madonnas, etc., etc., one sees small tablets, erected on posts containing a painted representation of some accident by which life was lost — as the overturning of a carriage, the breaking of ice, a fall from a precipice, etc. — ac- companied by a view of the flames of purgatory with souls in torment, and a request that the passer will pray for the souls of those who perished by the accident depicted. Of these we counted ten in an hour, and saw not less than fifty every day. . . . "One is constantly surprised to see the height at which for- 185^-1853.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 313 est trees, especially the spruce-fir, grow in the Tyrol, and the excessive steepness of the declivities on which they thrive. I noticed the latter on the Unterberg, a mountain of 6,000 feet, (just the height of Mount Washington) within less than 1,000 feet of the summit, and with stems apparently 40 high. It clings to slopes where no tree could stand with us. These mountains are principally limestone, and it is the decomposi- tion of this rock which furnishes a soil better adapted to nour- ish trees, and more numerous clefts and irregularities for them to cling to, than our primitive hills. . . " One word more about the houses of the peasantry. The gable generally, and often the whole upper story, is boarded inside the frame, .the object being to show the carpentry, which is tastefully planned and often handsomely carved or otherwise ornamented. ... In speaking of the use. of shingles I should have said, that not only the roof is sometimes covered with them, but the sides of the houses also. In the latter case they are nailed and sometimes in the former, but for roofing they are generally laid without nails and secured by poles, laid upon them at the distance of a shingle's length and heavily loaded with stones. Large and good houses are often shingled in this miserable way. It should be added that the shingles are often rounded at the lower end, and those used for the sides of the house are often so small as to produce a pleasing effect as of scale or shell work. . . . " The women are constantly seen at work with the men by day, hoeing, harvesting, raking, threshing, etc., after which they attend to the indoor work, particularly the spinning of flax. I saw seven spinning wheels in one house. " Salzburg has the reputation of excelling every town in Germany in point of position, and indeed I can conceive of nothing finer. It lies on the Salza, a tributary of the Inn. A short distance from the river runs a high rocky ledge, terminat- ing abruptly near the water at both ends, and leaving just room for the city plot. The ridge is extremely narrow and precipi- 314 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. XI. tous, rising at the end where the castle is built to the height of 1,000 feet, as is said, though I think this estimate too great by at least 300 feet. For a considerable distance on the town side, the face of the rock is literally perpendicular, and I do not think it less than 500 feet high. In the 17th century, a portion of this precipice fell down, and killed 200 or 300 peo- ple, but houses are now built against the rock under the very spot. The government watches the decay of the stone very closely, and we saw men suspended by ropes at work in removing insecure portions. Upon the road from Innsbruck, yon enter the town by a tunnel, pierced through the rock, about 500 feet in length. The rock is equally steep in some places on the out- side, and has been to a considerable extent made so for mili- tary purposes. The view from the castle is truly magnificent, and embraces not only a vast extent of plain country, but many more curved, jagged peaks, of from 4,000 to 9,000 feet in height. . . . " On the opposite side of the river, is another mountain equally steep on one side, and nearly so on another, which rises to almost double the height of the former, and commands a yet wider and more diversified view. " The main portion of the Castle was built, about the year 1500, by the then archbishop — who was also the civil ruler of the principality — and the torture chamber and some of the im- plements remain unchanged. The government is now restoring some of the principal rooms in their original style, and noth- ing can be more gorgeous, though not in the best taste. The ceilings are mostly blue with gilt bosses, the walls covered half way down with blue and gold tapestry, or ornamented with gold knobs and a fringe of blue and gold, and below this is gilt leather. The doors are decorated with carvings in wood, of branches, vines, leaves, etc., richly gilded. . . . The whole effect is most brilliant, and gives one an excellent idea of the barbarous magnificence of the times. . . . " Today we made an excursion to the remarkable lake of 1853-1853.] EXTEACT8 FROM LETTEE8. 315 Konigssee in the Bavarian mountains, about 18 miles from here. This lake is about five miles long by half a mile broad. It is completely encompassed by mountains rising, almost precipi- tously, from the water's edge to the height of from 2,000 to 5,000 feet. The summits of these are now covered with snow, and we saw three avalanches in the course of our sail up and down the lake. Our attention was attracted by a roar, and on looking in the direction whence the sound came, we saw what appeared to be a cascade leaping over a precipice 200 feet high, in an unbroken sheet. In a few seconds, another started from a different point of the same cliff, and they continued to flow for a minute or two, when they gradually ceased. On our re- turn we saw another, beginning in the same way, on a precipice of perhaps greater height, but in this instance the snow made a second leap over a lower cliff, and then tumbled swiftly down the face of the mountain in tlie form of a dense cloud. " Half a mile above Konigssee is another lake, called the Obersee. This lies in a basin formed by almost perpendicular mountain- walls from 3,000 to 4,000 feet high. Steep as are these walls the chamois hunters contrive to climb them. . . . These lakes lack the picturesqueness of Lake George, which owes so much to its little islands, but their scenery is far grander and more imposing. . . . Our boat was rowed through these lakes by three women and two men, and the former pulled no less vigorously than the latter." On the 30th of November he writes from Gmunden : " We have just arrived here by way of Ischl and Lake Gmun- den, or Traun, a beautiful sheet of water ten miles long, through which we passed in a small boat. . . . The scenery the whole way, and especially about Ischl and the lake, is extremely fine, the latter, most magnificent. This lake is encompassed by inoimtains in many places as precipitous and almost as high as those which surround the Konigssee, and as it has more variety 316 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XL its scenery is more beautiful and scarcely less grand. . . . We have nothing in the United States, unless in New Mexico or the Rocky Mountains, that can at all compare with these landscapes, or even give one an idea of their majesty and beauty. . . . " There are copper and silver mines, once rich and produc- tive but now less so, scattered throughout the whole district we have passed since leaving Innsbruck, but the salt springs fur- nish its chief mineral wealth." [Here follows a full account of the mining industries of the region, and more particularly of the salt springs, the processes by which the salt is prepared for market, etc.] " It is said, though I cannot answer for my au- thority, that government realizes a net profit, on every barrel of salt, of about four dollars, which is equal to double the cost of the same in Vermont. . . . " The river Traun which passes through Lake Gmunden is a rapid stream, but made navigable by sluices of a simple con- struction. . . . Boats go down with great rapidity, and are drawn up by horses. The tow-path is often in the bed of the river, and the horses walk for hours in water sometimes above their knees. We saw boats go down shoots of four feet high, and noticed some of forty feet, but no boat was then pass- ing. . . . " In the country between Innsbruck and Gmunden no breeching is used either for oxen or horses, and in the winter they check the sleds and sleighs by throwing out iron grap- pling-hooks." " Vienna, Dec. 8th. . . . We left Gmunden soon after I wrote you last for Linz on the Danube. Our journey was partly by rail and partly by carriage, through a country of no great interest. The distance from Linz to Vienna is 127 miles, and this, owing to the swiftness of the current, we ac- complished by steamer in eight hours. The scenery on this part of the Danube is fine only where the river winds its way between lofty and steep banks. . . . We shall leave here 1853-1853.] EXTRACTS FEOM LETTERS. 317 in a day or two for Yenice by the most direct route, but on C 's account must travel slowly." Venice was reached about the middle of December. Though Mr. Marsh's letters from this place contain much of the writer's individuality, they are altogether omitted here, as treating of things now familiar to almost every reader, and as not being necessary to the narrative. It will be readily be- lieved, however, that a first visit to this most enchanting and pathetic of cities must make a profound impression on a man of Mr. Marsh's temperament. The glorious architecture of Venice, her divine paintings, and, perhaps above all, her unique choice to seat herself upon the waters which alone could cast over her such an atmosphere of indescribably tender beauty, drew him toward her with such power that he never after- ward missed an opportunity of placing himself under the re- newed influence of her spell. On leaving Venice he made a short visit to Padua, of which he writes to his mother : " We were of course obliged to limit ourselves to a sight of a very few of the countless objects of interest in that, probably the oldest, town of Northern Italy, and after a hurried survey of the place and the general features of its interesting ecclesias- tical and other architecture, the marvellous frescoes of Giotto and Mantegna and a few other pictures absorbed us almost completely. " . . . Nothing, however, in the way of a curiosity struck me more than a so-called Fall of the Rebd Angels, exe- cuted in a single block of marble, and containing about seventy figures each ten inches or more in height. The whole group composes a mass of a sugar loaf form, about five feet in height, and nearly one and a half in diameter at the base. The figures are in every possible posture of falling, are executed with great skill, and so completely free and detached, that it is frequently 318 GEORGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Chap. XL some time before you can see how one is supported at all. Some- times it is connected with the rest merely by the hair, at other times by a limb, and in all cases the points of contact are so small, and so ingeniously concealed, that as you look at the group the figures appear to be actually unsupported, and really tumbling through the air." And again to the same, from Verona : " We came from Padua hither, where we have passed three most agreeable days. We are much struck with the magnifi- cent position of this city and the enormous strength of its de- fences, but scarcely less so by its pitiably ruinous condition under Austrian domination. . . ." lie then describes the old Koman amphitheatre, the tombs of the Scaligers, and many other objects of extreme interest to him — all with a degree of critical detail very surprising, when it is remembered how limited was his time for observation, and how wretchedly meagre were the then existing guide-books for Northern Italy. From Yerona the party proceeded to Milan, where they passed a week, the occupations of which Mr. Marsh relates to his mother minutely and with the liveliest satisfaction. From this city he writes to Professor Baird also, on the 4th of Janu- ary, 1853 : " , . . The Museo Civico at Milan, whereof Cav. G is the Director, is a respectable institution devoted to the culti- vation of science, and has a small library and a good and well- arranged collection of specimens in all branches of Natural History, especially I should say in entomology, with duplicates for exchange. They would like to be put in communication with the Smith. Inst. Why not enter into correspondence with them and send them your books, etc. . , . 1852-1853.] LETTER TO PEOFESSOE BAIED. 319 " Speaking of Museums, I have seen none which struck me as more remarkable than that at Prague (I didn't visit the Vi- enna one). In mineralogy it is certainly extraordinary, and there are odd fowl in the ornithological department, which how- ever is not in so good order as one might wish. " I think you may get an aueroch's skeleton from the Em- peror of Eussia. He has above 1,000 run in one forest, and I dare say you can manage in time to secure a Bactrian camel from Yienna. There are four living ones in the Thiergarten at Schonbrunn, and I have no doubt from the look and feel of the humps that the skeleton will be found to differ essentially in the spinal arrangements from that of the African. Apropos of camels, why don't you let me know what became of that sorry article ? I wrote you from Vienna, praying you to rescue it, if not too late. Write forthwith, and say if you get it out of the devil's clutches. " Since I wrote the above, Mr. Emilio Cornalia, Assistant Director of the Museo Civico, and another officer have called and expressed an earnest desire that the S. I. would send them its publications, and though poor they will do what they can in return, and also by way of exchange in objects in Nat. Hist. By means of the U. S. store ships, which make frequent voy- ages to Spezzia and Genoa, things can be sent to and fro with- out cost, and no doubt the U. S. Consul at Genoa would take charge of them. " I am in daily expectation of instructions to return to Athens or Constantinople, and suppose that about April next I may look for instructions of a different sort. Well, well, I've had my day, and must give place to my betters. One of my Constantinople English friends is very much afraid I shall be succeeded by a snob. There are so few decent people at Stam- boul, that one makes a difference. I am very glad Gilliss has got home safe, and have no doubt his observations will do him and the Gov't credit. " My poor wife, who was promised greart things by the Vi- 320 GEOEGE PERKINS MABSH. [Chap. XI. enna Doctors, has been thus far sadly disappointed, but I have a good deal of confidence in their predictions still. I expect instructions daily, but whether I shall go to Athens or Const. I have no idea. "To return to the Smithsonian. It is a great error to print so few reports. I have met many scientific men who had never heard of it, and who when its character was explained to' them, expressed a strong desire to know more of it and to be in correspondence with it. A brief history of it, embracing a ; summary of its reports, might be printed at small cost, and widely distributed with good effect. There are many minor literary and scientific associations in Europe, which occasionally issue publications of great value. Among others a Bohemian Lit. Soc, which has published a'most valuable Osakish diction- ary in 4: vols. 4to and other things. Does Mr. Jewett know of it?" From Milan to Genoa the journey was made by vetturino, and though the roads at this season were far from being in their summer perfection, it was found very enjoyable. The first letter to his brother after reaching Genoa abounds in care- ful observations made during this journey from Milan to the Ligurian coast, but as he has himself introduced many of these into " The Earth as Modified by Human Action," and others into articles on the Po, etc., only such extracts are here given as may have a certain historic interest for those who now pass through Northern Italy by rail. " - . . Railways are now rapidly extending. That from Venice to Verona (70 miles) is already in operation, that from Verona to Treviglio is far advanced, that from Turin to Genoa is completed within 25 miles of the latter city. The difficulties in the construction of these roads were very great, and they have been met with astonishing boldness, skill and liberal- ity. . . . 1852-185S.] EXTRACT FEOM LETTER. 321 " I don't know but yon are tired of my accounts of horses, waggons, oxen, etc., but as the transportation of freight by these means must soon cease, details of this sort may not lack interest later. Freight of every kind is conveyed over common roads the greater part of the distance from Yenice to Genoa by horse carts and ox waggons. The carts are as long as an old Boston dray, with wheels over six feet in diameter with narrow fellies and a tire an inch thick. Behind the cart hangs a rod by a link-joint which prevents it from tipping back ; and in front a wheel, six or eight inches in diameter, at the foot of a stan- chion running down within five or six inches of the ground, prevents the thills from coming down. A stout horse is har- nessed in the thills, and he is preceded by six, eight or ten more, harnessed in single file, or sometimes by a regular suc- cession of horses, mules, and donkeys, the smaller and weaker animal always taking the lead. In a few instances I saw mules used as pack-horses, and these animals are in all cases shod with a shoe an inch larger than the hoof all round, in order to pre- vent the foot from sinking into the ground. " The ox-waggons are provided with a pole crooking up- wards at the end like a sled runner, but with a larger crook. This pole is strapped to the yoke about four feet below the end, and from the end strong leather straps pass to and around the roots of the horns. This contrivance answers the purpose of a hold-back, and sometimes other straps pass from the horns to the yoke, so that the oxen both draw and hold back by the horns ; at other times the yoke rests on the neck and shoulders as with us, though the bow is never so arranged as to bear any part of the draught. Instead of a body these carts have usu- ally a platform sometimes quite flat, sometimes depressed in the middle, and raised entirely above the wheels. The oxen have, almost uniformly, a blanket or canvas extending the whole length of the back, and secured with a girth or crupper. The horses wear, under the head-stall, a light leather cap with holes for the ears, as a protection for the head." 31 322 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [CHAP. XI. At Genoa Mr. Marsh confidently expected to find a com- munication from Washington, acknowledging his reports and giving further instructions, but the death of Mr. Webster had no doubt caused some delays in the business of the State De- partment, and no despatches had yet been forwarded. It was therefore settled, after a delightful week at Genoa, to go on to Florence, as the city in which the remaining days of waiting might be more profitably spent. The faithful vetturino was again employed. Speaking of this mode of travel, Mr. Marsh says : " Travelling by vetturino is certainly not very economi- cal, but that and the diligence — a shocking vehicle which goes by night and by day — are the only alternatives from which to choose, unless one has his own carriage." The journey, though many times interrupted by furious torrents swelled by the win- ter floods, was still a most prosperous and happy one, and Mr. Marsh's account of it to his mother is as enthusiastic as would have been expected from such a lover of nature, who has just passed over a route so surpassingly beautiful. The Riviera, however, has been too often and too well described to call for any extracts from this letter. It need only be said that, pene- trated as he was by the loveliness of the scenery, he missed nothing that could add to his practical knowledge of the conn- try and its people. The slate-quarries of Lavagna interested him not a little, as did also many other industries which he had an opportunity of looking into on the way. From Florence, February 5, 1853, Mr. Marsh wrote to Mr. Baird : "... Son Spencer, thou art little better than one of the wicked. Why dost thou not answer mine epistles ? Wilt thou write to all manner of formal, official, pragmatical, conven- tional, philistering corresponding-secretaries, and other hum- drum men of straw, and not unto me, thine ancient gossip, who do monthly enrich thy pericranium with good matter ? Truly thou doest naughtily in this, and I will have amends of thee. 1853-1853.] LETTER TO PROFESSOR BAIRD. 323 " After my last communication, which was from Milan, as I think, we came to Genoa, where we remained a week, and then by land to Lucca and Pisa, and thence to Florence. "We have been here a fortnight, and shall stay some eight, or, by'r Lady, fifteen days longer, after which we propose to go to Naples by water and if not anticipated by government orders to the con- trary, to Messina, where, or in the vicinity whereof, we mean to stay till sent elsewhere. Luckily the San Jacinto is broken down and can't get repaired before about the 15th of March, so I hope for two or three weeks about Etna, before she can come on to take us Eastward. Aren't you rabid with envy at the thought of my wanderings ? Don't deny it, I know you are. You hate me, just as I hated Peter Force, good man, when he bought Purchas's Pilgrims out of Monroe's or Madison's Li- brary for fifteen dollars ; (I had afterward to pay $135 for my copy). Only think now, what you would have made of my travels. Wasn't I born with a gold spoon in my mouth, and haven't I thrown it away shamefully ? Seriously it is a shame, that I have not the knowledge of nature that every traveller, who goes a Sabbath day's journey from home, ought to have. I see strange stones, plants, animals, geographical formations, and gaze vacantly at them, but what availeth it ? "Well I'll write a book some day, and show that one ignoramus is as good a traveller as any body. " Yesterday I went to the Museum of Nat. Hist, and saw a great many things, and among others a camel's skeleton, which reminded me that the Grand Duke has 150 camels down here at Pisa. Now camels be mortal like other cattle, and when they die, they leave skeletons behind them. Therefore let your next Sendung of Smithsonianisms to Tuscany be accompanied with a Supplica for one of those skeletons to be forwarded from Leghorn to New York, and it shall be done. " My poor old woman has been very poorly ever since we left Milan. Two weeks in Florence, and not once to the gal- leries ! Well, it is hard, and had she not patience, she would 324 GEOEGB PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. XI. die of it. Her eyes have been worse for two or three months than for years before, but she will manage to dictate a letter to Mary soon. The 4th of March and my recall are not far off. I dread returning to America, for reasons you wot of, but must put the best face on it I can. Two counsels I give thee. Don't work yourself to death, and don't work yourself to death in nothings. 'Tis as good nefavre rien asfaire des riens, and the labels on box covers and addresses of envelopes are des riens. Fare you well." The few weeks spent in Florence during the winter of 1853 afforded Mr. Marsh every source of pleasure of which his higher nature was capable — art in all its most perfect forms, antiquity with its endless lessons and its infinite suggestiveness, nature in rare perfection, and, not least of all, the society of some of the most gifted of his generation. But, as often happens in the midst of exceptional happi- ness, a great sorrow came upon Mr. Marsh before the close of his stay in Florence. The news of the death of his mother, though her infirmities had long held him in a measure pre- pared for it, was a great shock and a greater grief. In her af- fection for her children Mrs. Marsh was much more demon- strative than were most New England mothers of her day, and she was deeply and tenderly loved by them all, certainly not least by her son George. For some time after the sad intelli- gence reached him he seemed totally indifferent to what had lately so much interested him. Then he turned to his old com- forter, Nature, took long walks and drives into the country about Florence, and by degrees taught himself to think more of his mother's blessed release from weakness and pain than of his own loss. It was at this time that he made the personal acquaintance of the Brownings, whose writings he had for years ranked as foremost among the poetic utterances of the age. They were at this time living in the Casa Guidi, and, though Mrs. Brown- 1853-1853.] ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE BROWNINGS. 325 ing was confiaed to the liouse by ill-health, their salon was open to a few friends every evening. Here Mr. Marsh went, first with his old friend, Mr. Powers, and afterward with some member of his own family, as often as he thought so brief an acquaintance would justify. When asked what impression he had received on his first visit, he said : " I saw very little of Mr. Browning, who was occupied as general host, but with Mrs. Browning I had a good deal of conversation and still more opportunity to hear her talk with others. The point about her which struck me most, was her intense earnestness. The way in which she puts a question would, I should think, compel the sincerest and carefullest answer even from an habitual trifler. I could not help applying to her that line in Wordsworth's sonnet to Milton : ^* * His BOul was like a star and dwelt apart.* " Before the Marshes left Florence it was settled that the Brownings were to pass May and June with them at Therapia, in case the Greek business was finished in time and Mr. Marsh's recall was postponed so long. This pleasant dream was dis- pelled by the delay of instructions from the State Department, which kept Mr. Marsh in Greece until the time fixed for the visit had expired ; and the certainty of a recall prevented a re- newal of the invitation. Toward the end of March the long-waited-for despatches arrived, being brought by a private messenger, who delivered them with an air of much mystery, and who had no doubt trav- elled at a rate that suited his ovra convenience. They contained simply the Government's approval of what had already been done, and directions to return to Athens for the continuance of the negotiation. Immediately on receiving these instructions Mr. Marsh repaired to JSTaples to await the United States ship " Cumberland," which had been ordered to take him to the Greek capital. Learning, however, that the ship could not be at Naples as soon as he had expected, he hoped to get over to 326 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. XI. Sicily in the meantime, but was disappointed, as the following letter will show. "Naples, April 13, 1853. " Deae Baied : " At 10 this morning, I despatched to the P. O. a letter from my wife to thine, at 12 M. we received hers and yours of Mch. 5th, 8th, and 9th, and now at one P. M., having nothing else to do, I sit down to reply. This eoraeth of idleness, which is the mother of punctuality. Yours of January was never received, and very likely is pigeon-holed in the State Depart- ment. Send always your missives to G. Miller, U. S. Dispatch Ag't, London, and they will be forwarded. I rejoice with you in your ' expeditions,' but I don't see who is to describe the non-descripts, or where the skin and bones of them are to be stored. You refused the collections of the exploring Exp., for want of room, and yet you employ a legion of collectors. I have some things for you at Constantinople, if not thrown away in my absence, which I fear, but 'tis odd that I can't get yon a lizard or a salamander. Money wont hire man or boy to catch them. I have bid as high as three piasters (12J cents) a head, but in vain. My Croat gardener, I verily believe, would butcher any of my neighbours, if he thought it would do me a pleasure, but neither he nor any of his brethren will catch a newt, well knowing that I shall pickle them. "We waited or- ders at Florence 7 weeks, and got them just as we were starting for Sienna and Volterra. We then concluded to come hither for a week and get a shy at Sicily before we were overtaken by the ship which takes ua to Athens, but we have now been here more than two weeks imable to get to Sicily for want of a decent boat. We expect the Cumberland every hour, and shall lose Trinacria altogether. Vesuvius is quiet, but en revanche we are having daily and nightly earthquakelings, and the priests are saying masses and ather things, in the hope of getting up an ernption and letting ofE the steam by that safety valve. The earth quakes as gently as a sucking dove, and I haven't been 1853-1853.] LETTER TO PKOFESSOE BAIRD. 327 able to feel it, but some of our friends blessed with more sensi- tive organizations have been shaken into a tolerably comfortable state of panic. My quaking is of another sort. I tremble at Presidents and such like, Secretaries of State and influential' Democrats, and am as uncomfortable as Damocles with the sword suspended over him. " Tell the President, that my wife turned Democrat two years ago because the custom house people at Boston charged duty on some gewgaws she sent home from Egypt. She has been a sav- age free-trader ever since, and if he turns me out, he ought to let her stay. I will be secretary of legation, attache, anything he pleases. " The Tuscan camels are one humped, not Bactrian, and there would be I imagine, not the smallest difficulty iu getting a liv- ing one from the G. D., through any scientific society in Tus- cany you exchange with. I examined a skeleton the other day, and was surprised to see that the spinal processes are not longer than in other quadrupeds. They are even shorter than iu the antelope, and the only difference is, that the longest ones are farther hack than those of the antelope. I have seen many hundreds of skeletons in the Desert, and it seems to me that these processes were much longer in them, but perhaps I have forgotten. I am ashamed to speak of my camel article again, but I should be very glad to save it, having no copy of a con- siderable part of it. " Your piinted account of the doings of the S. Inst, shows great activity. I had never heard of anything later than the 2nd. vol. of transactions, and knew nothing of the other pub- lications, the titles of some of which interest me much. A friend of mine, a Dane, at Constantinople, a very excellent mathematician and astronomer, is engaged in preparing a work more wanted than any other I know, and the Smith. Inst, ought to publish it, or one like it. Its German title will be Handhuch fur reisende Qeogrwphen. It will contain advice about portable instruments of all sorts, and their use viithfor- 328 GEORGE PEBKIN8 MAESH. [Chap. XI. Tnvla tcthles &e in compressed and convenient form. I know of no such thing, and I have never been a day in Turkey without feeling the want of it. Ask Mr. Henry if he will encourage it. The author is Peters, a brother of the astronomer and traveller. He is very highly esteemed by Humboldt, Littrow and other German savants, and in geodesies, practical astronomy, in the theory and practice of scientific observations in short, is very learned. " Mary knows I love her without being told of it. " Thine, " G. P. Mahsh." The " Cumberland " * sailed for Athens, with the Minister and his family on board, about the middle of April, and Mr. Marsh was soon afterward engaged in a fresh exchange of com- munications with Mr. Paicos. The result of this negotiation, f which was protracted with the most extraordinary ingenuity on the part of the acute and unscrupulous Greek Minister, was communicated to the State Department at Washington at the end of June, with a request for final instructions, and immedi- ately after making his report Mr. Marsh returned to Constan- tinople in the corvette " Levant," as directed. On his leaving Greece, the testimony to the courtesy, as well as ability and firmness, with which he had conducted the nego- tiation was universal. Nor was his perfect loyalty to truth, even when its bearing seemed detrimental to the very cause he was so earnestly advocating, as well as in the most trivial mat- ter relating to ordinary social intercourse, less generally ac- knowledged. Referring to this latter point, the Queen said to one of his family: "Mr. Marsh promised me, last year, the * Commodore Stringfaam was then in command of the Mediterranean Squadron, and as this was the flag-ship he was himself on board, though Captain Turner was acting commander. Nothing was omitted on the part of these officers and their sub- alterns to make the voyage an agreeable one, and to insure for it very grateful recol- lections. t The actual position in which the question in dispute was left by Mr. Marsh is given in his letter to Mr. Spence. See p. 286. 1852-1853.] LETTEE FKOM SIR THOMAS WTSE. 329 seeds of some rare plants — this year be actually brought them ! This is the only instance I remember of the keeping of such a promise on the part of one of my guests." The few Americans then resident at Athens, some of whom were not personally on good terms with Dr. King, all united in respect and admiration, both for the course and the character of the negotiator ; and he, in his turn, did not fail to appreciate fully the great services which Dr. John H. Hill and his family, and others, were rendering to the cause of education and relig- ion at Athens. The following farewell letter, from Sir Thomas "Wyse, then British Minister to Greece, will show in what estimation he was held by that distinguished scholar and diplomat. "Mt Dbae Sie: " I am very truly obliged by your kind letter of the 30th ultimo and the token of regard and remembrance you have been so good as to send us on the eve of your departure. All has arrived quite safe, but the ladies have not yet returned, to join me in enjoying your present, and sending you our united thanks. I must do it for them, in their absence, and say how we shall always value doubly every one of your volumes, as re- calling, wherever we may be, the most agreeable and instruc- tive hours we have had since we left England, and these as brief compensation given us for intellectual and other privations we have experienced here. To me, in particular, your retreat from our diplomatic circle here, will be a great loss. English ministers are so little accustomed, in such Courts as this, to any sympathy with their feelings or opinions, or to any comprehen- sion of their conduct, that I need not say the presence of one who, like yourself, could so amply assure both, was to me the greatest consolation and encouragement. I cannot yet give up the hope that your Government, consulting their own advan- tage, will require yon to complete your negociation at Athens, and though no one is more sensible of the sacrifices and annoy- 330 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XI. ances it imposes, I confess I am selfish enough (and the ladies with me) to desire, even with the negociator you will have to meet, your prompt return and long stay in this capital amongst us. Should this wish not be realized, we must only live in the expectation, that in this age of railroads and steamers we shall be brought, not once, but many times together. Wherever it may be I shall be quite satisfied, if we can only have a recur- rence of the hours we have spent with each other. " Pray present my best wishes to Mrs. Marsh, and earnest hope for her health and happiness, as well as to your niece, and hoping from time to time to hear from you and of you, with as good accounts of your prosperity as I sincerely desire for you all, I beg you, my dear Sir, to believe me always " Very truly yours, "Thomas Wyse." CHAPTER XII. 1 8^3- 1 8 J4. Important BnsineBs awaits Mr. Marsh at Constantinople^Arrest of Martin Eoszta by the Austrian Authorities — Consequent Complications — Course of Mr. J. P. Brown — His Advice to Captain Ingraham — Prompt Action of Captain Ingraham — Grounds taken by Mr. Marsh in sustaining the Official Action of the Charge d'Aflfaires and of the American Naval Commander — Settlement of the Difficulty on Terms thankfully accepted by Koszta — Objections raised afterward — Notifica- tion of Successor — War Prospects — ^Lord Stratford's Return as Ambassador — Fleets in the Bosphorus — New and Agreeable English Acquaintances made — Letters to Professor Baird— Short Excursion into Asia Minor — Extract from Let- ter to Mrs. Marsh — Letters to Professor Baird — Flans for the Winter — Unex- pected Russian Attack on Sinope — Embarks for Malta — Correspondence between Mr. Marsh and American Missionaries — ^Extracts from Communication of an American Resident at Constantinople — General Regret at Mr. Marsh's Depart- ure — Stay in Malta — Proceeds to Sicily — Letter to Professor Baird from Messina — Journey through Sicily — Embarks for Civita Vecchia — Meeting with General Estcourt — Two Months in Rome — Mrs. and Miss Estconrt — The Brownings^ Letters to Professor Baird^-Last Weeks in Rome — Journey over the Alps — Let- ter to Professor Baird from Berne — Brief Stay in England. ON Mr. Marsh's arrival at Stambonl, on the 5th of July, 1853, an affair of grave importance was awaiting his im- mediate action. A Hungarian, named Martin Koszta, a cap- tain in the so-called patriot army, had retired to Turkey with his military associates after the collapse of the Hungarian revo- lution, and was of course included in the demand of Austria for the surrender of those refugees, and in the refusal of the Porte to give them up. After some time, Koszta had an opportunity of getting to England, from whence he proceeded to America. Here he declared, in due form, his intention of becoming a citizen of the United States, but after two years returned to Turkey. At Smyrna he obtained, through the American Con- sulate, a teskereh—s. Turkish travelling passport — to go to Con- 332 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XII. Btantinople, and another, throngh the American Legation, to return to Smyrna. In both these he was described as an Am- erican citizen, or ^rotegd, according to Turkish usage, which invests foreigners with the nationality of the Legation that asks the passport. Tliis man, having excited the suspicions of the Austrian Government, was, by order of the Austrian Consul-General, forcibly taken by a gang of Greek desperadoes and carried on board an Austrian man-of-war. This act was of course a na- tional outrage against Turkey, to say nothing of its other as- pects. The American Consul at Smyrna, learning the facts of the arrest, and supposing Koszta to be provided with a regular American passport, went on board the Austrian vessel to de- mand the release of the prisoner, but finding he was not dejure an American citizen, decided that the American authorities could not interfere in his behalf. The circumstances being made known at Constantinople, Mr. J. P. Brown, then acting Charge d' Affaires, came to a contrary conclusion, and decided that such claim as Koszta had to American protection was at least sufficient to justify the demand that the person thus ille- gally and barbarously arrested should be so far released as to give opportunity for a fair examination of the case. He there- fore advised Captain Ingraham, who was then at Smyrna, in command of the corvette " St. Louis," to demand the surrender of the prisoner, and in case of refusal to take him, if necessary, by force from the Austrian man-of-war. The gallant captain was not slow to follow this suggestion — he demanded the prisoner in courteous terms, and, on receiving a negative answer, in- formed the Austrian Commander that he was acting under or- ders from the American Legation, and that unless Koszta was delivered to him, or handed over to some neutral authority, within an hour's time, he should joroceed to clear his deck for action. This very peremptory summons arose, no doubt, from a suspicion that the Austrian captain intended to carry out his 1853-1854.] CASE OF MAETIN KOSZTA. 333 threat, " that he would sooner hang the prisoner, without trial, at his own yard-arm, than give him up." Very soon after this notification, Koszta was transferred from the Austrian vessel to confinement at the French Consulate. It was -at this stage of affairs that Mr. Marsh arrived at Constantinople, and he was naturally met at once with an ener- getic protest on the part of the Austrian internuncio, Mr. De Bruck. It will be seen that Mr. Marsh's task was to justify an irregular, or at least unusual, act on the part of the American Legation, by alleging the monstrous violation of international law on the part of Austria. How far the Government at Washington would approve the course taken by Mr. Brown was not at this time certain ; but that Koszta's life was in peril for a political offence there could be no doubt, and both Mr. Marsh's sympathy for the unhappy man, and his sense of jus- tice to Mr. Brown and to the brave officer who had assumed so serious a responsibility, compelled him to sustain the action that had been taken. In the discussions that followed, Mr. Marsh dwelt much more on the weakness of the Austrian cause, which everyone allowed, than on the strength of Koszta's, which very many disputed. He insisted on the utter illegality of the arrest, maintained that it could have no official character whatever, but rather that of mere private violence, in which case an in- choate or otherwise imperfect right (Turkey refusing to inter- fere) would justify the interposition of Captain Ingraham. He preferred to let his defence rest on recognized and established principles, rather than resort to questionable doctrines which might involve unforeseen consequences. Many oral as well as written communications passed be- tween the two ministers, and it was not till the 14th of Sep- tember that conditions for the return of Koszta to the United States were agreed upon. These conditions had been previ- ously submitted to Koszta, who wrote to the American Minis- ter, through the Consul, as follows : 334 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XII. " All I ask is to be allowed to go back to the United States, and there need be no fear that I shall ever return here again." In another letter, the Consul, Mr. Offley, says ; " I have read to Koszta your despatch and he begged me to state that he fully consents to the proposal you have thought proper to make to Mr. De Bruck for his release, which he con- siders very satisfactory. He also begged me to express his sincere thanks for the interest and trouble you have taken on his behalf." The question then being apparently settled satisfactorily to all parties, Mr. Brown was sent to Smyrna to see Koszta safely embarked for the United States ; for, according to reports from the Consul at Smyrna, there was a plot on foot to recapture him and deliver him again to the Austrian authorities. But, to the utter astonishment of all parties, Koszta now refused to be re- leased on the terms to which he had so grateful!}' assented. It appears he had been told that the Government at Washington had approved the conduct of the Legation in protecting him, and presuming upon this, and forgetting alike his fear and his gratitude, he now insisted on a release, the terms of which should allow him all the privileges of a native-born American citizen who had committed no offence against a foreign power — namely, that he should be free to visit Austria itself, if he saw fit. It was not without difficulty, and with much indig- nant protest on his part, that the magnanimous Magyar was induced to secure his own safety by a return to America. Mr. Marcy, speaking afterward, to a friend of Mr. Marsh, of this embarrassing aflFair, said : " I shall be accused of stealing Marsh's thunder, but I had no other weapon." Mr. Marsh's notification of a successor did not arrive till October, and in the meantime the heavy war-clouds, that had so long been anxiously watched in the distance, were now near enough to threaten a discharge at any moment. Lord Strat- 1853-1854] FLEETS IN THE BOSPHOEUS. 335 ford de Redcliffe had been sent back to Turkey, as the man most capable of meeting such an emergency. Three great fleets were lying in the Bosphorus just opposite Therapia — the Eng- lish, the French, and the Egyptian. A few Turkish men-of- war were stationed near them, though the main body of the Turkish fleet was at anchor in the Golden Horn. It was a glorious though saddening sight, when all this vast naval force, every mast and spar covered with flags, and every yard and bul- wark manned, received the visit of the sovereign in whose de- fence it was assembled, with a salute outflashing from a thou- sand cannon-mouths, whose roar was echoed and re-echoed back from Asia to Europe and Europe to Asia. The crisis had brought many interesting visitors to Con- stantinople during the summer and autumn, such as the brothers Eawlinson, Lord Carlisle, Sir Harry Verney, Admiral Dundas, etc. ; and as most of these took rooms in the only comforta- ble hotel at Therapia, where Mr. Marsh was also staying, these casual acquaintances were always very agreeable, and in some instances resulted in an enduring friendship. The English Ambassador made it a point to invite his dis- tinguished countrymen to dine with him very frequently, and so far did the host and hostess exert themselves to persuade Mr. Marsh that he was rather conferring a favor than incurring an obligation by joining the circle, that he could seldom decline to do so without actual discourtesy. This, however, did not relieve him from a feeling of mortification at his own inability to return any such attentions. During these weeks his opportunities were excellent for studying the characters of some of his new English acquaint- ances, in many of whom he saw much to admire. He was particularly struck by the manner in which Lord Carlisle and Sir Harry Yerney spent a great part of the brief holiday they were giving themselves. The former, learning that there was some dangerous epidemic prevailing in the village of Therapia, took with him the ever ready Dr. Sandwith, and went from 336 GEOKGE PEBKINS MAESH. [Chap. XII, house to house to visit the sick, -who had been abandoned hj the native doctors. The disease proved to be small-pox ; but the two men, nothing daunted, followed up their work of mercy for days, taking great care, however, not to expose others to the risks to which they were exposing themselves. Lord Car- lisle did not escape the infection, but was himself dangerously ill for some time. Sir Harry Yerney was not less unselfish in his way. He gave much of his time to the work of the mis- sionaries, English and American, in which he was profoundly interested, and he did everything in his power to strengthen the hands and the hearts of those self-denying men. Most of the officers of the English fleet were also men worthy of sincere respect, and on the whole this was not the least agreeable por- tion of Mr. Marsh's residence in Turkey. Under date of Constantinople, September 25, 1853, he writes to Professor Baird : "... I put Sept. 25th, which is post-day, at the head of this, in order to give you an opportunity of bragging of 'fresh dates from the Levant,' but in fact I write today, namely Saturday, so as not to break the Sabbath. Yours of July 2nd was received in due time, and I hear a box has just arrived, which I conjecture to be from the Smithsonian. The contents will be duly distributed. The Herald brings me news of my decease, but the official bow string, as we say out here in Turkey, has not yet been applied. I kiss the firman and put it to my forehead. 'Tis the will of our Lord the Padishah. The Democracy is great. Whether I shall return to Greece to fin- ish what 1 there begun, or quit forthwith altogether, is known to Allah and Secretary Marcy, but not to me. " I am glad you have got through your ' tons of packages' for this year ; I wish for all coming ones. Truly I think your cere- bral cavity will come to assume the shape of a packing box, and the contents will be chiefly book-binders' cuttings. Why don't you be a diplomat like me, travel abroad and see wild cattle. 1853-1854] LETTER TO PKOFESSOK BAIED. 337 " I am afraid I have not written you since I left Athens, •where I spent two months, May and June. Greece, known to ancient geographers by the name of Grsecia mendax, is a poor coimtry on the north shore of the Mediterranean formerly in- habited by GrcBouli esurientes, now by vermin and Bulgarians. "We came from there in a corvetta whose Captain, Goldsborough, goes to take charge of the Naval School at Annapolis. 1 have spoken to him, and you will like him. On our passage, we saw and heard things new to me, as namely first whales, at the Northern outlet of the Doro passage, a beast which I thought had not been seen in the Mediterranean since Jonah's time in spite of Homer's /ojto?, but which I hear is not uncommon. Secondly on the 28th (I believe) of June, being then 90 sea miles from Beshika bay, Captain Goldsborough heard the morning guns from the fleets stationed there. At noon, we were 78 sea miles distant, and a salute fired in honour of the Queen's birthday or some other anniversary by the British Ad- miral was plainly heard, and the guns could be easily count- ed at sunset, when, not much nearer, we heard the evening guns. Thirdly, at the Dardanelles, we encountered the cloud of locusts which have done so much damage this year in Asia Minor. They are exactly like some of our common grasshop- pers, not above an inch and a quarter, or at the most an inch and a half long, and of a red color. They flew very high in crossing the Dardanelles, and I took them at first for thistle, or some other winged seeds, but afterwards many fell on deck. Two more facts, and I think I shall have given you as much Natural History &c. as is good for one dose. A few days since a friend saw a seal in the Bosphorus at Kundilli point five or six miles from Constantinople, and I learn that several have been seen at the same place. Further, the statement in some books, that the sword fish is no longer caught in this strait, is a fable. I have eaten many a collop of them, seen them jump out of the water, and certain days since beheld seven — all ugly looking customers — in one caique. There have been divers 23 338 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. XII. alarms here of massacres &c., but we have slept quietly, though some of our neighbours have been sadly frightened, and many dream continually of yataghans and the like. One of my ca- vasses shot a Christian last Sunday, but this being a mere pri- vate affair, it is not thought worth noticing. " 1 hope sincerely that government will establish a National Museum. I don't see how the Smithsonian can take care of all the collections it is making without government aid. I think it would be better to give the money, and put the whole in charge of the Smithsonian, than to get up a separately or- ganized establishment. " I am glad you have so much money in your hands, and I advise you to run away with it, and travel eastward. You'll do more for science in that way than by packing of boxes, and writing ' 1060 letters in six months, and fifteen that evening.' Even Zwith my surprising abilities, can't write 1060 good let- ters in six months, and if so, what drivelling must yours he. Dr. Peters, in whose behalf I write Dr. Bache by this mail, tells me, that his brother who travelled in Eastern Africa, and is now publishing his travels, describes not less than twenty new quadrupeds. Think of that and burst with envy. If you would come out here, perhaps you would find the Terpar/mvoirpo- aa-n-a, whose skins a Scythian tribe dealt in, if we may believe Herodotus. How 'twould sound, Tetragonoprosopon Bairdibus, or if that be too hard, Quadratocaput Spencerorum ! My friend Dr. Sandwith has discovered the existence (and proved it by the horns now hung on a peg in the British Museum) of an enor- mous stag, which, to judge by his antlers, is the largest of all deer. He dwelleth in the mountains west of Lake Yan. Also he positively avers that there is a partridge in the Kurdish moun- tains as large as a turkey. The Turks call it Our-kaklik, where- in notice the resemblance to the German Auer — (Ur) Hahn ; also get Miss Fox to ask the ghost of Webster's Dictionary whether kaklik be not allied to cackle, cock a doodle doo, and kikeriki ? Mary is a precious vessel. I rejoice in her. She 1853-1854.] LETTER TO PROFESSOR BAIRD. 339 wields a golden pen. If I could command her she should write 2120 letters in six months. I thank you in behalf of the Museo Civico people at Milan. Truly the hearts of them will be lifted up. " Thine truly, "G. P. Mabsh." And again : " CoNSTANTiNOPi-E, October 17, 1853. " Deae Baird : " I am glad to learn by your book on snakes, that the Het- erodon (what's that, odd toothed ?) hisses violently. I know that in a learned newspaper discussion I read (perhaps you took a part in it) Scripture was referred to to prove that serpents hiss, and the fact being denied on the other side, I thereiipon determined to reject the Bible and turn Turk, which I publicly did in Santa Sophia, about three months since. Nathless my conscience troubled me, and finding by your immortal work, that some serpents do hiss, I have returned to Christianity, and shall propose to the Universalist University, Norwich, Vermont, to make you and Girard jointly D.D. for your noble and trium- phant defence of Scripture truth against the infidel sneers of modern sciolists. I am happy to add that this important doc- trine is sustained by the tegtimony of Dr. Sandwith and Mrs. Marsh who have heard snakes hiss more than a hundred times apiece, which I, being perhaps too much inclined to the sin of skepticism, never did. " Since writing the above, I find upon consulting Cruden that Scripture does not say they hiss, but on the contrary, by its silence on this point rather gives currency to the supposi- tion, that they are silent also, and I am now minded to relapse into Islamism again. I wish by the way, you would discuss the question whether porpoises really pvff- They pass under my window every day. I have watched them by the hour and never heard a breath from the lips of one of them. I hope that remarkable old saying ' to puff like a porpus ' isn't founded on a vulgar error. Pray enlighten me. You can't 340 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XII. imagine how refreshing these scientific revelations are to blind, ignorant doubters like me. I have perused Darwin's Occulta- tions for 1853 with unfeigned satisfaction. There is a touch- ing beauty in the gracefully irregular alternations ofj)lus and minus in some of the columns, and an imposing regularity in the column headed Log. cos. D. In short I see nothing to criticise in this highly imaginative work unless it be the versi- fication, in which the same rhyme appears to be too often re- peated. Virginis for example often occurs five or six times in uninterrupted succession. The like is true of Gemini, and Capricorn. , " These' are brave words no doubt, but I submit to Mr. Dar- win, that there may be too much even of a good thing. " You know I wrote you some story about the shrinkage of your spirits of wine. Well, I believe the sailors drank up half of it (yon didn't put tartar emetic in it) and if I didn't suppose you'd make me pay for it, I would own that I believed my servants swallowed half of the other half. But there is some left after all. Now I brought from the Ked Sea, and the Dead Sea, and Jordan, and the four rivers of Paradise, and the foun- tain of Elisha, and the rivers of Lethe and Acheron, and Cocy- tus, and Phlegethon and Paropamisus and a great many other places out here — the very names of which are unknown to you, but that I am just as familiar with as you with Eock Creek or even Columbian Tiber, — several bottles of vermin, and I have had many more caught here, enough to fill a keg, or may be two. I know you are vain of your reptiles, and that you often boast yourself, ' there is no nastiness like the nastiness of my snakery ! ' But when you shall have handled these creepers, you will confess they are the devilishest lot you ever clawed over. They'll go one of these days, and I will write you by what ship. Also a small box of shells and other rubbish such as seeds &c. " Your pretence that a sponge dipped in ether will kill coleoptera and so forth is a hoax. It won't kill a gnat. They 1853-1854.] LETTER TO MRS. MARSH. 341 only go to sleep, and wake up the hungiier. I had a good many insects, but they got eaten up during my absence. I sup- pose you kiss Mary sometimes. If not you may do it now for me, and so farewell. "Thine, "G. P. Maesh." In November, Mr. Marsh made a short excursion into Asia Minor, during which the following letter, dated at Broussa, was written to his wife : " . . . I wrote you a hurried note on board the steamer, to say that we arrived at Mondamia at 12 o'clock. This, how- ever, was fabulous, I having been deceived by the steward. The real time was 1.20 P. M. and we, after much squabbling, scolding, begging, and bestowing of hachsheesh, got under way for Broussa at 2, old Mustapha playing his part heroically. I believe the old janissary awoke in him, at the sight of Miss P.'s ' real Arabs ' whom we found on board and on shore. The weather was most delightful all day, the road every where safe, and, though ' deep in spots,' and causewayed in others, generally good. Being the huyukest man of the party, they give me the hutchuhest horse, by rule of contraries, but Mus- tapha pronounced him, though '■piccolo, moltoforte^ and I be- strode him, nothing doubting. For an hour, he ' wabbled ' un- der me, as if he thought his burden greater than his forces, but seeing how his brother quadrupeds, palfreys and sumpters alike, did their devoir, he waxed ambitious and plodded on with the best of them. An easier beast I never rode, and I did not know I was tired until I began to climb the stairs of the Hotel d'Olympe, where we dismounted at 7. This is a large, newly built house, and, so far as a man may judge .on a twelve hours' experience, well kept, divers good things being present, and special nuisances of all sorts being absent. " The country between Mondamia and Broussa is fertile. 342 GEOKGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Chap. XII. and most of it under tolerable cultivation, tlie olive groves of Mondamia, as well as the mulberry grounds, being extensive. I find the situation of Broussa highly beautiful and picturesque, and the well-planted grounds around it (only that the Lombardy poplars are sadly numerous, far more so than the cypresses) contrast finely with the desolation of the environs of Constan- tinople. The minarets of the mosques are generally stumpy, and a good many of them have lost their cones, but I hope I shall find the rest of their architecture in better condition. L proves a better companion than I expected. He has powers of narration and mimicry, and on the whole does very well. "It impossible, not probable, that, after staying here three days, we may go to I^icomedia by way of Nicsea, Godfrey's first important conquest, as Tasso sings ; ' B Nioea per assalto, e la potente Antiocbia con arte avea gik presa ; E Tortosa espngnata ; indi alia rea Staglou dife loco, e '1 novo anno attendea.' In this case we may be at home a day or two earlier or later than we at first intended, but you may be sure I shall not take that route if it is attended with any risks. Write me, ad- dressing both to Broussa and to Nicomedia. Mr. D wight will know when the steamers leave, and to whose care letters should be sent. But I must break off for breakfast and sightseeing. The sky is bright and full of fiddles. Good bye. . . ." The following was also written during this excursion. "November 19, 1853. " Dear Baied : " On the foot of the Mysian Olympus, Keshish Dagh, if you like the Turkish name better, where I am writing you this 19th of Nov. 1853, there ariseth a spring with a temperature of 1853-1854.] LETTERS TO PEOFESSOB BAIED. 343 187° F. conceived of some to flow out of Tartarus, and to be a branch of Phlegethon, a supposition I am not inclined to dis- pute. I linow that in the rivulet, that flowed from the spring, were found shell-fish, and I desired an attendant who spoke more or less Italian, to show me where the conchigli were found. He consulted with the keeper of certain baths, who brought me calcareous concretions as the true conchiglie. I told him I wanted conchiglie viventi, whereupon he went back into some hole and returned in triumph with a cockroach, which was very lively indeed. Thereupon, I resolved to seek for my- self, and went paddling about the brook in search of Melanop- sis. I began too low, where the water stood at 80° and found none, however I bagged three brown frogs (the green ones were too quick for me, my servant, and two sucking Turks, who phi- lanthropically aided my endeavors) and sundry land snails of dif- ferent species. Going higher up, where the temperature of the brook was from 90° to 97° I found some two dozen of the Me- lanopsis and they, with the frogs and snails, well pickled, now ornament the table on which I write. 'Tis too late to climb Olympus, which is not much matter, seeing it is not the true one, and I shall go back to Stamboul in a matter of a week, and hope to send you a cask of treasure by an American ship soon to sail for Boston." On December 12, 1853, he writes again to Professor Baird. " Thou art a naughty varlet, seeing how thou of a long time writest nothing about and this week I propose to sail for Malta, Sicily and Civita Yecchia whence I propose to go to Eome and there abide long enough to hear from you. Thy fish and reptiles, (alas too few,) are packed in a keg which goes by barque called the Huma, Captain Merritt, sailing to-morrow or next day for New York. Write to some friend to get it for yon when the ship arrives. At the bottom of the box is let. an olive bottle with a chameleon I caught at Petra. He lived 344 GEORGE PEEKINS MARSH. [Chap. XII. to see Stamboul, and finally degenerated into the long string you see, and so he died. There are also in the same bottle snails of the shores of the Bosphorus and sea weeds from the Black Sea with small shell fish thereto adhering. Besides I think there is a blind-worm or some such vile creeper with the rest. 2nd. A bottle containing a Proteus from a cave in Cami- ola. 3rd. Bottle contains melanopsis frogs from . 4th. Is a square bottle in the bottom of which are shell fish and crabs from the Gulf of Akabah — I have forgotten where I got the Scarab. There are small shell fish from Jordan, and in a gauze net at the top are shells and Ashlings from the Fountain of Elisha at Jericho. If there is any thing else in the bottle it must have come from the Bed Sea. On further reflection I remember that the Jordan shells are like melanopsis and like those in the net, but all the others I picked out of the Gulf of Akabah and a fine place it is. Well, fare thee well. "G. P. Mabsh." To the same. " CoHSTANTiNOPi,E, Dec. 16, 1853. "Tours of the 14th November, which has just arrived, is a humbug, in regard that the second and third pages are blank. I'm glad you stopped writing those foolish letters, and spent three months in running about and gathering vermin. I hope all your gigantic plans will succeed, and seriously I think the project of a National Museum a very good one. I take it for granted you'll be at the head of the Nat. Hist. Dep't, and then you shall spend your time catching and describing, leaving 'prentice naturalists the work of disembowelling, skinning, stuffing and pickling. As to the Smithsonian, I have never had but one opinion, and though I have no wish to disturb the compromise, if it could be fairly carried out, yet I believe the plan now in operation a bad one. Think what $30,000 per annum would have done in collections of all sorts. The ex- change system I like very well, but the work is that of drudges. 1853-1854.] PLANS FOE THE WINTEB. 345 I was to have been off tomorrow but Abdul Medjid has some question of war or peace or something of that sort pending with Prussia, and is too busy to give me an audience tomorrow morning, so I must wait I don't know how long. "Write me at Home, where I shall stay a while. I'm going first to Malta. Do you want a piece of St. Paul's cave ? And then to Sicily. How would you like a fragment of Etna ? " Mary's letter has met with acceptance. What a blessed girl it is. My wife shall respond. I wish she would mend her orthography. She writes ' how can I help it.' The English here say ' 'ow can I 'elp it,' which I believe is right. If I were to say I was at the end of my paper, I should fib as you did, when you sent me two blank pages cunningly folded inside, but I am at the end of my letter, and so good bye." The now ex-Minister had made arrangements to pass a part of the winter with the Estcourts at Rome, intending to visit Malta and Sicily on the way thither, but it was not until near Christmas that his preparations for leaving Constantinople were completed. In the meantime the Russian fieet on the Black Sea, without any of the formalities which, among civilized na- tions, precede the actual commencement of hostilities, had, on the 30th of November, attacked and destroyed the compara- tively few, and altogether unforewarned, Turkish men-of-war then lying in the harbor of Sinope. This affair naturally caused intense excitement and no small indignation, even among those who had little sympathy with Turkey, and it was in the midst of the agitation and activity which followed that Mr. Marsh embarked on board an Austrian steamer for Malta. The re- gret felt at his departure by the American and English colonies, and by many private friends, was strongly expressed, and the sorrow of his servants was manifested with an Oriental exag- geration very trying to his feelings. The following correspond- ence took place between him and the American missionaries in Turkey. 346 GEOEGE PERKINS MABSH. [Chap. XH. " CONSTANTIUOPLB, Beo. 24, 1853. " To THE Hon. Geoege P. Maesh, " MiNisTEE Resident of the United States of America " AT the Ottoman Poete, etc., etc., etc. " SiE : " The circumstances of the case must be our apology for addressing to you these few lines. You are about to take your departure from this Capital, and also to lay aside the office you have so long filled, — so honorably to yourself, and to our com- mon country, as well as acceptably to your fellow citizens resi- dent here. It is not by way of mere heartless compliment that we say, that we deeply regret the necessity that removes you from us ; and we are well assured that this feeling is partici- pated in by many other foreign residents here, besides Ameri- cans. " We gladly seize upon the present occasion to express to you, Sir, the sense of obligation we feel for all your prompt and efficient services in behalf of ourselves and our fellow mission- aries in this land, whenever the civil rights of any of us have been invaded ; and if, in any such case, complete redress has not been obtained, we are fully satisfied that it has been owing, not to any fault of yours, — but either to the intrinsic difficul- ties of the case, or to the want of the necessary instructions from home. " We cannot refrain from briefly alluding to the interest you have manifested in our educational establishments in this country, and especially, (as we have already more fully acknowl- edged) to your very essential aid in obtaining from the Imperial government &jvrman, securing to our Seminary in Bebek the right to pursue certain branches of manufacture, to aid in the support of tlie scholars ; which, according to the municipal rules of the place, could not have been attempted without such jirman. " And, as citizens of a great and growing Kepublic, it is with conscious pride that we recur to the very satisfactory man- 1853-1854.] CORRESPONDENCE WITH MISSIONARIES. 347 ner in which you have uniformly maintained the dignity and honor of our country, both by the weight and influence of yonr own personal character, and by the whole course of your official acts. Truly do we sorrow that you should now be removed from so useful and honorable a sphere ; but, may we not be permitted to cherish the hope that, if it be the will of Provi- dence, you may one day be restored to iis again, under appoint- ment to a still higher grade of office, and consequently with the means of a still more enlarged usefulness. " Be pleased. Sir, to accept for yourself and Mrs. Marsh, as well as for all the members of jonr respected family, the assur- ance that our best wishes will ever follow you, and we shall never cease to pray that God may bestow upon you the richest blessings of his grace for time and for eternity. " We remain. Sir, " With sentiments of the highest esteem, " Yours, etc., " W. GooDsxL, " N. Benjamin, H. G. O. D WIGHT, C. Hamlin, W. G. SCHAUFFLEE, H. J. VaN LeNNEP, E. ElGGS, J. S. EVEEETT." Mr. Marsh's reply was as follows : " CoNSTANTiNOPLB, Deo. 34th, 1853. " Messes. William Goodell and othees, " Ameeican Missionaeies at Constantinople. " Gentlemen : " From the nature of our personal intercourse during the few years of my residence at Constantinople, you will have an- ticipated that your kind note of this morning could not but be highly grateful and acceptable to me, and you will not doubt my sincerity, when I assure you, that I heartily reciprocate the sentiments of personal esteem and regard, which you have ex- pressed in a manner so flattering and so agreeable to my feel- ings. 348 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XII. " I wish I could feel that I deserve the complimentary ac- knowledgements with which yon honor me, but it would be unjust in me to assume any large share of the credit yon ascribe to the Legation for its success in promoting your objects, on the few occasions when you have appealed to it for protection, aid and countenance. That success has been due, first, to your own discretion in so conducting your operations as to give no just cause for enmity or jealous irritation in any quarter, and, secondly, to the zealous efforts and skilful measures employed by Mr. Brown in securing the allowance of the fair and reason- able demands which alone yoii have presented. " I was, as is known to several of you, trained in a school which, in some measure, prepared me to form a fit estimate of your personal characters, to feel a strong interest in the success of the great objects you are engaged in promoting, and to ap- preciate the nature of your efforts, and the certain present and probable ultimate result of your labors in this great empire. With the unfortunate exception of a single limited branch of trade, our only relations with Turkey and its people are those, not of civility and mutual commercial advantages merely, but, in a higher degree than with almost any other country, those of enlarged philanthropy and Christian benevolence, and I can confidently say that, in these respects, the better portion of our community could not be more effectively and more worthily represented than it is by yourselves and your associates in the Ottoman empire. " It will at all times give me sincere pleasure to testify to your private worth, and to the disinterested zeal and distin- guished wisdom and ability with which your professional opera- tions are conducted,* and I sincerely hope that the present crisis * That Mr. Marsh abundantly redeemed this pledge will be admitted by all who ever heard him, in later years, speak publicly or privately of his residence in Turkey. In a lecture on Constantinople, a considerable time after his return to the United States, he said: " The prettiest village on the Bosphorus, as seen from the water, is that of Bebek, which lies in a sheltered recess on the European shore, a little below Bumeli Hissar. The water which pours through this ravine in winter brings down earth from the grounds above, and thus a level deposit of four or five acres has been 1853-1854.] -WOBDS OF AN AMEEICAN EESIDENT. 349" will enlarge rather than, as it now seems to threaten, narrow your sphere of usefulness. " I include of course in the expression of my esteem and of my best wishes, the ladies associated with you both by family and by professional ties, and those of my own household desire to join me in kind and hopeful regards. " Begging you once more to accept the assurance of my sincere friendship and respect, and of my earnest hopes for your continued prosperity as men and as moral and spiritual teachers, " I am very faithfully yours, " Geoege p. Maesh." The following extracts are from a communication to the late Dr. Brown, by a most highly respected American who re- sided at Constantinople during Mr. Marsh's official life there. " . . . His character was well known as that of a most honorable and upright man and the American residents hailed his coming with peculiar satisfaction. " The first impression he made was that of a man of thought, dignified, reserved, but having admirable conversational powers when called out by any subject of interest. " He had evidently come to see things for himself and to hold himself somewhat in reserve until he should be able to understand more clearly his environment. . . . " His relations with the missionaries were sincere and cor- dial throughout. He of course looked upon their work from a formed at the outlet of the stream. This space is occnpied by a mosque, or kiosk, of the Sultan and its beautifully shaded adjacent grounds, and by other Turkish build- ings, while the ravine in the rear is filled with houses and narrow streets rising one above another like a staircase. The inhabitants of the ravine are almost all nomi- nal Christians, and among them, in this pent-up, secluded spot, reside the greater part of that devoted and self-denying body of men, the American missionaries at Constau- tinople. I take this and all other proper opportunities of testifying, that there are, among my personal acquaintances, no more pious, more faithful, more laborious, and, I am happy to add, more respected and more useful men than these learned and excellent apostles of Christianity and civilization." 350 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XII. view-point different from theirs; and when tliey had occasion to ask for his official or ' officious ' aid, he often reserved his decision for careful consideration. " He was a constant attendant npon divine service on the Sabbath, and the general influence of his life was pure, excel- lent and noble. His domestic life was above all praise. . His devotion to his family was too unremitted not to attract atten- tion, too cheerfully rendered to seem a burden, . . . and the power of his quiet but noble example was felt, if not relished, by all the Legations at Constantinople. "... Mr. Marsh's diplomatic rank as Minister Resi- dent was a low one, but his reputation for learning and charac- ter was such that, in those ways in wliich etiquette can be set aside without violating it, he was often on public occasions treated with special honor by the highest representatives of the Great Powers. " In all his relations with the Sublime Porte he maintained that fidelity to truth and honor which wins at length, even in diplomacy. Having that character himself, he could demand it from others with peculiar force. The Ottoman Porte is quite capable of making promises which it never intends to fulfil ; but it was not found wise to make a direct promise to Mr. Marsh and then attempt to evade it." The regrets expressed at his departure from the Turkish capital, not only by his own countrymen, but by his colleagues, and by the little colonies of every nationality then gathered at Constantinople, could not fail to be gratifying to Mr. Marsh ; nor was he less satisfied with the evidence of a similar feeling on the part of the Sultan's government, though his sense of duty forbade him to accept any substantial marks of its favor, either during his official relations with it or at their close. His ■ brief stay in the attractive island of Malta was the more agreeable for the presence of Sir Harry Verney and his charming family, and for the great courtesy of the English 1853-1854.] STAY IN MALTA. 351 military authorities. A little incident in humble life, which, perhaps, gave him as much satisfaction as anything else, is here recorded as characteristic of Levantine life : A f aithf al Maltese servant, whom he had brought from the United States, here found his mother (whom he had not seen for more than forty years — that is, since the age of fifteen), now far in the nineties and totally blind. The poor old creature was lying in a kind of covered shed, windowless, but with a door, which was kept shut except when her food was taken to her. When her son spoke to her, she exclaimed, " Oh, God ! it is my son's voice ! I told the priest I should not die till I had heard it again." The son then asked her if she had not received money from him, many years before, through the hands of a neighbor. The old woman said, " Oh, no ! he came to me and told me you had been taken prisoner in Greece by the Turks, and that he saw them shoot you. I did not believe him, but what could I do ! " Mr. Marsh, at his servant's request, placed in the hands of the United States Consul at Malta such a proportion of her son's wages as would insure the mother reasonable comfort for her few remaining days. It was a scene not to be forgotten, when the former brought the withered, wasted frame of the latter in his arms to the carriage of his master, that she might thank him for the kindness shown herself and her son. From Malta Mr. Marsh proceeded to Messina, whence he wrote to Professor Baird. " Zancle, in the Isi/And of Trtnacria, "not fab prom the foot op M01JQIBELI.0, January 14, 1S54. " Dear Baled : " Why didst thou foolishly say that the Auerochs was con- fined to the region between the Caspian and the Black Sea ? Lieth Lithuania, I prithee, betwixt the Euxine and the Caspian ? Is the forest of Hercynia perchance on the slopes of Caucasus, or was Schamyl the prince that promulgated those ' severe enact- 352 GEOKGE PEBKINS MAESH. [Chap. XIL ments ' for the protection of the Urus ? Study thy map, read Peter Parley and blush. " I have passed certain days in Melita, seen St. Paul's cave, and come hither to read the letter which the Yirgin Mary wrote to them of Zancle, in reply to their embassy of condo- lence. Also I shall try to recover, if I may, the bones of Em- pedocles, and send them to thee for an'otomy, that thou mayst see whether the Greek philosopher and the American savant be of one species. " We do propose, after visiting Taurominius and other towns in the hither part of Trinacria, to proceed unto the Panormitan city, and perhaps even to Segesta and Drepanum, yea, and if possible to inspect what remaineth of Agrigentum, and then we shall rest a while at Eome, whither thou mayest address thy missives. It shall go hard, but I will get thee or thy spouse a pair of gloves or stockings woven of the beard of the Pinna Marma, wherein thou wilt exceedingly delight, as bearing witness to thy love for the science of natural history. " I send to Mr. Jewett, for his Library, tomes presented to me by the Melitenoian Librarian, by order of Sir William Keid Knight, Governor &c, right famous for his books on storms. I pray they be duly acknowledged, and fitting return made. If thou wilt have some shell-fish or other fish, or lizards, in way of acknowledgement, 'tis but to speak, and if thou sendest good books, good vermin shall be repaid to thee. I shall write thee from time to time, though thou art but an ill correspondent in respect of punctuality. " Truly thine, «G. P. Maksh." In Sicily Mr. Marsh passed several weeks, travelling through nearly the whole of the island, the geography, ge- ology, and unhappy political condition of which profoundly interested him. No letters from him at this period are at hand, but those who were with him remember it as a time of 1853-1854.] TWO MONTHS IN ROME. 353 great enjoyment and great mental activity on his part. The daily evidences of extreme poverty and degradation alone struck him painfully. The acquaintance formed with Dr. Gem- mallaro, of volcanic celebrity, resulted in a permanent corre- spondence. In February, 1854:, an American war-steamer took Mr. Marsh and his family on board at Messina, and after a short passage, made as agreeable as our gallant navy-officers alone understand making such voyages, landed the party at Civita Vecchia. Here Mr. Marsh met his old friend, Colonel, now General, Estcourt, who had been waiting for him some days in Home, but was now on his way back to England. He had been placed, as Adjntant-General, on Lord Eaglan's staff, and ordered to join his chief in England before embarking for the Crimea. This was no small disappointment to Mr. Marsh, who had been looking forward to weeks of his society instead of a few hurried hours ; but to meet him even so was a great pleasure, and a still greater to learn that Mrs. and Miss Estcourt were to remain in Home till the General's return from Eng- land. Notwithstanding an ever-wearing anxiety about business matters at home — an anxiety which would have driven him back to the United States immediately upon leaving Constan- tinople, had not the advanced season of the year made him greatly dread the voyage, and so violent a change of climate, for his family — the two months that followed, in Home, were perhaps as unclouded, and as rich in sesthetic gains, as any in Mr. Marsh's long life. He was free from official responsibil- ity, and he resolutely forbore entering into the life of modern Rome, which allies itself so ill with the Rome of the Republic and of the Csesars. He found abundant social resources among those who shared in his tastes and aims. He and his fam- ily saw everything in the company of Mrs. and Miss Estcourt, whose high culture, artistic talent, and graceful wit gave in- creased zest to every new experience. The friends regularly 23 354 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. Chap. XII. dined together, and almost every evening was spent in review- ing the work of the day and in laying out " fresh fields and past- ures new " for the morrow. The Brownings, too, were spend- ing the winter in Kome, and an occasional hour with them was a delightful and stimulating refreshment. The following were written during these days. "Rome, March 31, 1854. " Deae Bated : "T'rs of 5th ult rec'd and cont's noted. Glad you're well ; per contra, sorry Mary wearied herself with that party. "Wife, she is better. Answer to mine of Jan'y li daily expected, &c, &c. "A week after I wrote yon last, we commenced our tour in Sicily, and excepting three days of snow in the interior of the island had delightful weather and a most agreeable journey. We followed the coast landwise to Catania, then went to Syra- cuse, returned to Catania and spent three glorious days on Etna, and then journeyed to Girgenti, finding everywhere good car- riage roads though unluckily without bridges (N. B. between Messina and Catania are torrents, three and thirty, impassable after rains and some of them one quarter of a mile wide) so that it is only in dry weather that travelling is practicable. I have seen no country which presented so great a variety of scenery, none physically more interesting than Sicily. For ten days, Etna was without a cloud from the sea to its peak, and as few mountains soar so high above their own bases, there are few so grandiose in their aspect. There was too much snow to climb the summit, but we went first to JSTicolosi the highest town on the South side, at the foot of the cone of the great eruption of 1669, and afterwards to Taferena on the Eastern side, just below the outlet of the Yal de Bove. From Taferena my niece and I climbed the peak of Pomiciaro, which directly overhangs the Yal de Bove, and commands a complete bird's eye view of the whole of that most stupendous chasm, and rises 1853-1854.] LETTER TO PROFESSOR BAIRD. 355 to a height of probably 7,000 feet. I have read many descrip- tions of this abyss, but had no idea of its vast extent or its ex- ceeding grandeur, until I looked down into it from above. The eruption of 1852 flowed from a fissure in the cliff, and two cones at its upper extremity, and almost the whole floor of the valley was covered by the lava. The cones and the lava are still hot and smoking. The multitude of the cones of eruption, old and new, on the flanks of the mountain, especially of the south- ern half, is astonishing. They have been generally stated at 100, but Watterhausen counted three times that number, and some of them are apparently 1,000 feet, many of them 500, in height, what is Yesuvius after this ? The multitude of fossil remains in the central portion of the island and on the south- ern coast is great. I saw only shells, but these are abundant, various, large, and in fine condition. The sulphur mines, I am ashamed to say, I did not see, though near them. None of them are in the modern volcanic district. The fauna of the island I suppose is not of special interest, but I believe conchologists find very good picking, especially on the north- ern coast. " As to our exchange agent for Italy, the best person is Mr. Binda, now, and I hope long hereafter, American Consnl at Leo-horn. Mr. Binda is one of the most learned and enlightened men I have met in Europe, and I presume would readily un- dertake the agency, though provision should be made to cover all expenses, and perhaps for some small compensation, but on this latter point I cannot speak. Leghorn is a free port, many vessels sail thither from New York and often with light car- goes. It has a constant communication with Genoa (and of course Turin and Milan) as well as with all the Western coast of Italy, and with Sicily, Corsica and Sardinia. In short, it is the best point of distribution for all Italy except the Eastern coast, but I suppose Yenice is the only point you want to reach on that side, and Yenice is directly accessible from Trieste. Turin is quite too far inland for an agency. Genoa 356 GEOKGE PERKINS MAKSH. [Chap. XII. is the only other good locality, but this is far inferior to Leghorn. A letter to Mr. Binda requesting his co-operation would no doubt receive prompt attention, and he would be a highly respectable and reliable agent, both for distribution and for conducting any inquiries you may want to make about Italy. " We came here the last three days of carnival and mean to stay through Holy Week. We make slow progress in sight- seeing. In fact, a life time would hardly exhaust the wonders of Home. Of scientific interest there is, so far as I know, not much here. Apropos of science, I shocked an English lady sadly by telling her I was potting a few lizards for an American friend who was fond of them. Not that I really am hunting vermin ; 'twas only a white lie invented to frighten the lady. Fine osteological collections in the convents and churches, but the specimens are seldom complete, and the arrangement does not appear to be very philosophical. The most interesting fact established by them is the existence of a bicipitous variety of the human family, (for it does not appear to have been a dis- tinct species) within the historical period. Many of the saints of the calendar belonged to this race and John Baptist is cited as having possessed no less than three heads, all now extant, for the confusion of sceptics, but whether these heads were succes- sive or contemporaneous I cannot ascertain. Upon careful in- quiry, and nmch study of Christian art, however, I am inclined to the opinion, that they were not synchronous, inasmuch as the most authentic sacred images and pictures agree in repre- senting them with a single knowledge-box, differing of course in the different stages of saintly development. My weaker ves- sel is but so so. Nevertheless, she keepeth up a good heart and sees all she can. Mary's praise is on all our lips. Yerily she shall be answered. Let Haldemann have praise for Smith- sonian. 'Tis a good designation and I adopt it, but if the is abolished, shall substitute Owenium. The ship was the Huma. That is plain, isn't it ? Foolish name truly, but 'ow 1853-1854.] LETTERS TO PROFESSOR BAIRD. 357 could I 'elp it ? Love to Mary and that great girl she writes of, now ' going on ' seven years old. " Yours truly, " G. P. Maesh." " Rome, April 10, 1854. " Deae Baied : " The enclosed letter, which as you see is without address, you will please give to Mr. Gilliss privately. It refers to a pict- ure of my poor little namesake for Mrs. Gilliss, the sending of which I do not wish to have known to her abruptly, and for that reason I desire the letter communicating the fact to be handed to Mr. G. when she is not present. I wrote you on the 21st of March, since which no change has occurred in our plans. "We intend to leave in about two weeks for such quar- ters of the globe as the wind shall then set for, most likely the parts of the North, in regard tliat Auster and Afrieus, and other meridional breezes, do most usually blow at that season. A letter from a friend expresses sorrow about some feud be- tween you and Agassiz, whereon I remembered that I did not see how anybody could quarrel with you,. such is my opinion of your meekness. I hope 'tis a fable, and in any case am pre- pared to absolve you and condemn Agassiz, both unheard. So write me no exculpation of yourself or inculpation of j'our enemy. Only let me know whether I am right in suspecting, that a certain person — Gilliss will guess whom I refer to — had a hand in it, for the sake of doing you a mischief. "Well, 'tis a wicked world. The sheep are in small proportion to the goats. If it wasn't for me and you and Gilliss and our wives and two or three more, they'd all be burnt like Sodom and Gomorrah, bad luck to them. Well, well, we can do our duty, and spare some supererogatory virtues for them, poor sinners. Why don't you answer my letter of Jan'y 14:th? Too hard for you, wasn't it ? The fact is I am too learned, I will forget myself, and come down to the common level hereafter. I shall be glad to hear the issue of the Smithsonian investigation, 358 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XII. but I don't think anything will come of it. I liope the crystal palace you speak of will be adopted, and that it will be made large enough for everything. Above all, the plan ought to be such as to admit of indefinite extension. But is the mall healthy ? Won't there be malaria there ? " Yours truly, « G. P. Maesh." The crowning weeks, however, of this stay in Rome were the last two, when General Estcourt, by rejoining his family, made the little circle complete. To the end of his life Mr. Marsh tenderly cherished the memory of these days — the last on earth — of intimate intercourse with this most estimable man. The perils of war and pestilence could not be forgotten, but the fact that his family were to accompany him as far as Constanti- nople, and to remain (which Mr. Marsh had strongly advised), was a great satisfaction. About the middle of April they sailed for the Levant, and, soon after, the Marshes also left Rome, travelling north in the old vetturino fashion, and having for a travelling companion the genial and accomplished General Charles Mercer, . of Vir- ginia. The spring came on very slowly, and the route which circumstances made it desirable to take being over the Stelvio pass, it was not till the 27th of May that it was thought quite safe to attempt it. Even then a blinding snow-storm overtook the party, compelling them to pass the night an hour below the summit, and to cross, the next morning, in sledges, the winter snow being still piled up five or six feet on either hand. From Berne Mr. Marsh wrote Professor Baird as follows : "Primeval Ocean, N. Lat. 46° 56', E. Long. 7° 50', June, 1854. " You will no doubt be surprised to learn that the place I date from has emerged from the waters and become dry land. Trees have grown, shed their leaves and perished, and been succeeded by new forests, and a vegetable soil has been formed, 1853-1854.] LETTERS TO PEOFESSOK BAIRD. 359 aud subdued by tillage, and men have built here a city called Berne, from the bears which once abounded here. All this is recent ; the oldest inhabitants inform me that it is not above fifty million years since the highest part of the town was up- heaved above the sea. I have made other equally curious dis- coveries in these regions, visited a mountain called Blank, where there are glaciers, and came hither through clefts in the mountains called Tete Noire and Gemmi, very gi-and and won- derful to behold. I wrete you from Home in April but have no reply, which is a pity, in regard that punctuality in corre- spondence is a virtue much to be commended in juvenile persons. I perceive the Huma lias arrived, and hope you are happy in your keg of reptiles. I have nothing to add to them but a box of snails of various sorts I gathered on the Alps and Jura, and which I hope to bring home alive, to the end that you may in- troduce them if you think them likely to be useful." "Paris, June 14, 1854. " We came hither certain days since having seen the Mun- ster-Thal in the way of Nature, and the two cathedrals of Freyburg (Breisgau) and Strasburg in that of art, since we left Berne. I found here yours of May 6th and two from Gilliss of May 8th and 23rd. I thank you both for them. I grieve at what you say of Mary, but as Gilliss says she returned from New York improved in health, I hope she is essentially better. I am sorry for the condition of the Smithsonian, but have ex- pected no better. I never liked the compromise, but was will- ing to abide by it, and regret that others have been so reluctant to carry it fairly out. It has been a mistake, and public opin- ion will some day make it right. Jewett will be an irrepara- ble loss, and what is more a troublesome opponent, and I think there will be a general explosion by and by. I am glad I am not in the board, as I know very well that I could be of no use under present circumstances, if indeed under any. I rather congratulate Jewett on his probable release from what must long have been a very disagreeable position. 360 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XH. " As to my future movements, I begin to see a little ahead, and I think we shall go to London next week, and sail for Bos- ton about Aug. 5th. I don't think I shall go to "Washington before October, though I may proceed immediately thither. I go very reluctantly, and there is hardly anything but the meet- ing with your family, Gilliss and one or two other "Washington friends, that I look forward to with any pleasure. Jewett I shall very likely meet in N". England (and why not you too ?) as I presume he has withdrawn before ^ihis. My wife acknowl- edges her shortcomings towards Mary, but writing by amanuen- sis is hard and she has so many correspondents. Let Mary take as much of mine to you as she thinks good to herself, but this that follows is to you. "Waterton (quack isn't he ?) says the water ouzel don't walk on the bottom, contrary to the laws of gravity, &c, &c. "Well, I was at Tegernsee in the Tyrol one day, looking out of the window and watching an ouzel on a log. Pretty soon he jumped into shallow water, walked down into deeper, and when he got fairly under, partly spread his wings and shuffled along the bottom, keeping his wings shivering, for about 20 feet. I think he used the wings to counteract the buoyancy of his body, as a man may his hands and feet to swim down, when he can't dive. Don't steal this, I shall put it into my work on Nat. Hist, along with the bicipitous saints. Fare you well. "Tours truly, " G. P. Maesh." The family did not reach England till the beginning of July, and this left but a few hurried days for the land of their forefathers. Two weeks in London, a few days with Sir Harry Verney, and as many more with the Kev. Mr. Bowen, their invaluable friend in the East, consumed the utmost limit of their time, and many tempting invitations were necessarily de- clined — not the least tempting being a visit to Lord Carlisle at Howard Castle. CHAPTER XIII. 18^4-18^7. Homeward Voyage — State of Affairs at Burlington — Arrangement with Creditors— Extract from Letter to his Wife on the Death of her Mother — Extracts from other Letters — Letters to Professor Baird — Groes to Washington to present Claim for Extra Services — Unexpected Difficulties — Defeat of Claim — Effect of this Disappointment — Letter from Mr. Ticknor to Mr. Marsh — Mr. Marsh's Reply — Letters to Professor Baird — News of the Death of Greneral Sir James Bucknall Estcourt — ^Letters to his Widow and Sister — Invitations to Lecture — Not suc- cessful as a Popular Lecturer — Takes an Active Part in Presidential Campaign of 1856 — ^Letter to the Hon. C. D. Dra.ke — Letter to Professor Baird — Question of Candidacy for the Senate — Letter from the Hon. S. Foot — Occupations dur- ing Winter of 1856-57 — ^Letters to Professor Baird — ^Letter to Lady Estcourt — Letters to Professor Baird — BlnesB of Mr. Marsh's Son — His own subsequent BlneeB and Depression — ^Is appointed Railroad Commissioner for the State of Vermont — Letter to Professor Baird — Visit to New York — Extract from a Letter to Lady Estcourt. AN early day in August was fixed for the homeward voyage, which was safely accomplished, and Mr. Marsh, leaving his family with relatives in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, re- turned without delay to Yermont. Here his worst anticipations were more than realized. Burlington, instead of heing more prosperous for the railroads, was utterly prostrate. Many of its best business men had failed, and many more despaired of holding out another six months. The value of his lands had been almost annihilated by a change in the line of the Central Eailway, which took it diagonally through them, and the com- pensation allowed for damages was utterly insignificant when compared with the injuiy. As soon as he could fairly take in the situation, he called together his creditors, stated his circum- stances precisely as they were, and gave them their choice— whether to take what property he still held, and do the best they could with it for themselves, or to leave it with him, to do 362 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XIIL the best he conld for them. They unanimously decided for the latter course, and, it is believed, had no occasion to regret it. In the meantime, Mrs. Marsh, who had had the happiness of finding both her aged parents (the mother seventy-five, the father eighty-five) in their usual health on her return, was un- expectedly called to part with her mother. The return home of all her nine children in the course of six weeks, from a resi- dence continents and oceans apart, was a joy too great for her, and ten days after her oldest daughter's arrival, she passed from a life of faithful service to its promised reward. On this occasion Mr. Marsh wrote his wife as follows : " . . . The intelligence of your excellent mother's death was by no means unexpected, after the character of your letters during tlie past week. Though the trial must be a very painful one to you and Lucy, it is impossible to feel that your mother's departure was other than a blessing to her. It is certainly re- markable that so many of her children should, after so long and so wide a separation, have been gathered about her at her latter end, and this must have been her chief earthly consolation in the dark passage through death to live again. Your father and brother seem most to need support and comfort, and I beg you to assure them of my deepest sympathy. I quite agree with you in thinking it your duty to remain with them for some days, and heartily wish I could join you, but for a week at least that will not be possible. . . ." As soon as Mr. Marsh had made the above arrangement with his creditors, he gave every thought to the readiest means of meeting all pecuniary obligations as soon as possible. A careful balance of resources and liabilities satisfied him that, with such sales as he could fairly hope to make in the course of a few months, and the payment by Congress of the usual com- pensation for services such as he had performed in Greece, he should once more find himself free from debt— and that, too. 1854-1857.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 363 without the sacrifice of his books. The problem in the mean- time was to find some suitable employment that would supply the daily wants of himself and family. The following extracts, from a letter dated Burlington, October 15, 1854, afford an amusing illustration of a hy no means amusing position, and at the same time indicate the manly and cheerful spirit in which it was borne : " The dentist. Dr. of Washington, has put out a, feeler to find out whether I would undertake to introduce his ' in- vention ' among my friends and gossips, the crowned heads of Europe, and share the profits ! ! To what base uses may we come at last ! ... As to Leonard's book, it is too good to do any good.* Charles asked Edmunds, the other day, how had come out in his Western operations. Ed- munds replied : ' He is supposed to have lost by speculation, but to have more than made it up by peculation.' " ". . . I used to envy folks who had friends at Oshkosh, 'twas such a pleasant sounding place to speak of — but I have just seen a letter from a cousin who lives at Oconomenuck, which is better by three syllables. He has been cheated out of his worldly gear by another cousin, and appears to think the rest of us ought to make it up to him. I fail to see the j ustice of the claim, and at any rate it would be inconvenient for me to contribute at this time." "BtTELiNGTON, September 8, 1851. "Dbae Baird: " The postmaster at Boston says your pretense of writing me there is a fable. Letters saith he (Major) never miscarry and (Minor) no such has been received, argal (conclusion) no such was ever written. I am loth to believe the postmaster, but I must. Syllogisms be conclusive, and as a lawyer, I am * A truly prophetic judgment with regard to a very able and learned work by Dr. Leonard Marsh, pubUahed in 1854, and entitled " The Apocatastasis ; or, Progress Backwards," the object of which was to demonstrate the claims of Modern Spiritism to a very remote antiquity. 364 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XIII. bound to hold for truth whatever is proved. I am grieved you should meet your ancient gossip with a fib, on the threshold of his native land, but 'tis a proof of the degeneracy of manners since my departure. Well, I shall forgive you, if you will write me forthwith at East Greenwich, R. I. (whither I go after my wife), and if not, not. I have, in small quantity, seeds and shells for you, as well as a vivarium of the snails I wrote of, but I think I shall keep them till I go to "Washington, which I think will be about Dec. 1. " The evil tidings we heard of dear Mary were very painful to us, and I am very happy to learn that her health is improved. I trust we shall find her quite well in the autumn. Mrs. Marsh's mother died on Sunday last, having been taken ill a day or two after Mrs. M. reached her ancient home. It was a happy cir- cumstance that the old lady's life was spared until her daughter's return, after so long a separation, and it is remarkable, that of her nine children, two of whom live near her, seven should have returned from California, Turkey, Missouri and Illinois to be present at her death. " I am sorry about the Smithsonian quarrel. I don't know the details, but I do know that the law has been injudiciously and what is worse unfairly administered. The mere question, What is expedient ? may have two sides to it, but that, What is honest ? can have but one. I dare say Jewett is glad to be off. I wish had the moral courage and disinterestedness to ex- pose some people as they deserve, but I am sorry to say (inter nos) that I see no ground for any such expectation. Kindest regards to Mary. " Tours truly, " G. P. Mabsh." To the Same. " BuBLiNGTON, September 18, 1854. " Untoettjnate Youth: " 'Tis melancholy to perceive by the date of your letter that all my warnings have been thrown away, and that your pranks 1854-1857.] LETTER TO PROFESSOE BAIRD. 365 have brought you to tliat bad place at last. You affect in- deed to talk of your visit, and speak of excursions, but I can plainly see that your visit to Sing Sing is no voluntary one, and your very hand writing shows the effect of rigid wristlets. I always prophesied it would come to this. I hope you're not ' in for life.' Is your uniform green and red, as it is in ours, or have you something more fanciful ? Do they give you the iced shower-bath, or the cat, when you are refractory? Have you got through the initiatory stage, or are you still in solitary ? Have you a treadmill ? Is Mary allowed to see you sometimes, and could you get leave to come ont on parole for a day, and meet me on Saturday at New York, at the Irving House ? " Not knowing your whereabouts, I wrote you through Gil- liss lately, refuting your pretences about writing to me at Bos- ton, and hope you have got my letter. I shall go to New York on Thursday or Friday and spend one day only, at the Irving House. I wish I could find time to run up and see dear Mary for an hour, but I don't think it will be possible, as I shall be obliged to attend to getting my effects out of the government store house and forward them to Yermont. My wife is, I sup- pose, at East Greenwich, E. I., whither I go on Saturday even- ing probably, and shall bring her home next week. I cannot well go to "Washington before about the 1st of December, by which time I hope to find you well refreshed, and Mary quite restored. If you don't come to N. Y. on Saturday, let me find a line at the Irving House saying where I shall leave a small packet for you, and if you come after I am gone out, you wUl find at the office a note saying where I am gone, and when I shall be in. My Arabian herbal is the delight of such bota- nists as have seen it. There are several hundred specimens. It goes to Dr. Wislizenus and his friend Dr. Engelmann of St. Louis. I have heard two or three times from Gilliss. What a real jewel of a man he is ! "Well, I wish I deserved such good friends, but I am a miserable sinner in the way of doing as I 366 GEOEGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XHI. am done by. Love to Mary, wherein thyself and thy friends are included. Farewell. " Tnily yours, " G. P. Maesh." Soon after the beginning of the Congressional Session 1854- 55, Mr. Marsh went on to Washington, to lay before Congress his claim for compensation for extra services. Here he foimd two other ex-ministers, Hon. E. C. Schenck and Hon. J. S. Pendleton, waiting to present precisely similar claims for ser- vices performed in South American States independent of those to which they had been accredited. As the justice of such compensation had never been questioned, and as there was no reason to suppose any distinction would be made in these cases, Mr. Marsh at first felt no anxiety on the subject. It was not long, however, before he found that . a certain Levantine, who had held an official position under the United States Government in the East (and of whom he had at first formed a favorable opinion, but whose unscrupulous and even criminal conduct he liad ultimately been obliged to expose to the Government) was, with the help of such daily journals as he could influence, creating a strong prejudice against his claim. For some time, his own self-respect would not allow him to anticipate any serious difficulty from an opposition of such a char- acter, but when he found how much social influence had been acquired at "Washington by the fascinating manners and fine Oriental shawls of his detractor, and how much sympathy had been excited by the tale of religious persecutions suffered at the Minister's hands, the affair assumed another aspect. His friend, Lieutenant Gilliss, with whom he was then staying, and others who, it seems, knew Washington at that time better than Mr. Marsh did, strongly advised him to procure formal testimony from Constantinople with regard to the dis- reputable character of the Levantine, who had already become 1854^1857.] DEFEAT OE CLAIM. 367 a conspicnons figure in the fashionable circles of Washington. This was done. Nothing further need be said here than that a united testi- mony of all who had previously been members of the United States Legation at Constantinople, that of the European lega- tions there, and that of the whole body of the American mis- sionaries in the Levant, to say nothing of Mr. Marsh's personal character, could not outweigh the above-mentioned influence and sympathy. While the claims of the two other gentlemen, resting precisely on the same basis, were voted without oppo- sition, his was rejected, and continued to be rejected or post- poned, session after session, until 1860 ! The inside history of this case, were it given, would afford some instructive lessons to American optimists. The depressing effect of this disappointment was far from being confined to its influence on Mr. Marsh's private affairs. It was a severe blow to his pride in American intelligence, to his faith in the American conscience, and to his high hopes that in the land of his birth, at least, human reason would be for- ever free to "prove all things and hold fast that which is good." The following was written at Washington, while waiting for the action of Congress on the claim : "Fbom mt Cubicultjm at Lieutenant Gilliss's, this 30th of January, N. S., 1855. " Son Spencee : " I prithee, let thy famulus, thy messenger, thy Mercury, bring me that tractate we spoke of upon the nivellement be- tween the Euxine (so called per antiphrasis) and the Caspian, and take back tomes which do cumber me, as Erman, (dost know why this Deutscher writeth his name with one n ?), and certain, not all, volumes of Kitter, on whom be peace ! Thy Patent Eeports are received, with such meed of thankfulness as is due to him who giveth that which he hath stolen, or by other unlawful means obtained. Also, I acquit thee of further 368 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. SXH. responsibility in respect of the * Camel ' in regard that it hath been restored to me, and I wish unto Mary comfort, to thee a good conscience. " So no more at present from thine ancient well-wilier. " G. P. Maesh. " P. S. I do style yoTOij>rofessor, because "other men do the like, yea, and some do clepe you doctor. They be vain gauds both, and I would have you write yourself, and be called of others, plain mister." Early in 1855, Mr. Marsh received from his friend, Mr. George Ticknor, a letter of which the following extracts are the substance : " . . . Perhaps you are not aware that the place of Pro- fessor of History in Harvard College has been for some time vacant and that the Governors of that Institution have foimd it difficult to select a candidate to fill it. Their embarrassment, however, seemed to be got over at once, quite lately, when your name was mentioned. The suggestion did not come from me, but it has not wanted my hearty support whenever I could properly give it : — partly from a persuasion that the College should, if possible, secure your services, and partly from a de- sire that you should live in my neighborhood. So far I confess to selfishness. But I am not without strong hopes that the proposition will be agreeable to yourself ; for I cannot help thinking that the pursuits of a scholar would, after all, be more agreeable to your taste than any other. Certainly you are emi- nently fitted for success in them, thoiigh I do not wish to deny that other positions in life may be more brilliant and exciting. " To come, however, to the point. " I am in no way connected with the Government of the College. But President "Walker called on me today and desired me, as one of your friends, to tell you, from him, how promi- nently your name now stands before the Corporation, consist- 1854-1857.] COKEESPONDENOE WITH MR. TICKNOE. 369 ing of seven persons. No election, he says, will be made un- til it is known whether yon will consent to be a candidate, and, that you may feel no embarrassment in the matter, he wishes to have you understand that the Corporation takes the initia- tive, and will choose you with entire unanimity, if you regard the suggestion with favor. He added that he anticipates no objection to your appointment either in the overseers or else- where, and that the salary attached to the office is two thou- sand dollars a year, with a prospect of some increase ; — a com- mittee having-it now under consideration to raise the salaries of all the professorships that are on the same footing with the one thus proposed to you." The considerations which induced Mr. Marsh to decline an offer that had so many attractions for him will be found in the following draft of his reply to Mr. Ticknor, a verbatim copy of this reply not being accessible : " I received your friendly and gratifying letter of the 5th instant on Thursday, but have postponed replying to it until my arrival [New York] where I could have a little leisure for reflection upon the subject to which it refers. "You are quite right in thinking that the pursuits of a scholar would be more to my tastes than any other. I have always regarded the life of a student as a most desirable voca- tion, though I must confess I am not sure that it is not rather literary dissipation and scientific dilettantism, than scholarly labor, that I have dreamed of as a relief from the uncongenial cares and associations belonging to the life of a country lawyer, augmented as they have been in my own case by other occupa- tions and other connections not less hostile to all higher cult- ure. " The study of history in its picturesque, dramatic, and so- cial, rather than its political and scientific aspects, has been one of my favorite delassemeris, and therefore I should hope 24 370 GEOBGE PERKINS MAE8H. [Chap. XHL that I have become possessed of a thread which might serve as a help in a more systematic and philosophical pursuit of that great branch of knowledge, as well as in its attractive presen- tation to other minds. " At the same time, I fear that the fragmentary and incom- plete character of my knowledge and of my intellectual disci- pline — the almost unavoidable result of the irregular and desul- tory course of study which narrow literary resources, and the engrossing nature of my business occupations and my public life have alone allowed me to pursue — might prove a serious disqualification for duties of a kind so new to me. "Notwithstanding these discouraging considerations, I should probably find the proposed opportunity of devotion to literary pursuits, combined with the attractions of a wide social circle of cultivated persons, an irresistible temptation, were I quite free to choose in the matter. " This however is far from being the case. The state of my private affairs, unhappily complicated and involved in legal controversies by late failures at Burlingtob, will, for some time, require a degree of attention quite inconsistent with the neces- sary preparation for the honorable post proposed to me, and I must add that my duties to my family and to others whose claims upon me are hardly less strong, oblige me, other things being equal, to prefer the occupation which promises the larg- est pecuniary returns. . . . It is not without great reluc- tance that I have arrived at the conclusion that I must decline an offer so flattering, and, in itself as well as in the circum- stances under which it is made, of so agreeable a character, and. 1 assure you that Mrs. Marsh and myself find the sacrifice of an opportunity of connecting ourselves with the exceptional society of Boston and Cambridge one that necessity alone could justify us in making. " I beg you to present to Dr. "Walker (whose personal ac- quaintance I hope soon to have the pleasure of making) my sin- cere thanks for the high compliment he has paid me, as well as 1854-1857.] LETTER TO PROPESSOK BAIRD. 371 to the other gentlemen who have been good enough to think so favorably of me." The two following letters are evidence that Mr. Marsh's severe disappointment at Washington, bitter as that had been, had neither relaxed his industry nor crushed his spirits. "BtTELrlNGTON, March 19, 1855. " Feiend Spencee : "In two days from this 19th of March goeth my Dis- course of Camels, somewhat expanded and more annotated, to Prof. Henry to be printed as an Anhang to the Keport of the Smithsonian. Pray thy devil, I pray thee, to deal gently with me in the matter of misprints. I have suffered grievously of such. Let my hard words, of which, as is reason, there be many, be well and truly rendered in type. They be plainly written now, and the compositor shall be an ass if he err therein. Also send me so many as thou mayest of the report, and if, as is possible, there be Se^paratabdrucke of mine Essay, then more of the same. " My famulus took a package for mine especial good friend Gemmellaro (precious wine of Etna and choice counsels he gave me), at Nicolosi. If it will help it through custom houses, put the stamp of thy office thereon, but when thou writest to the scribe of the , insinuate that the tomes for Gemmellaro of Nicolosi (not being Catania) are a Sendung of mine own, in re- gard that my letter to the worthy Dottore may miscarry. " We arrived here not sooner than Wednesday. My dame was and is but feeble, and seeing that misery loves company, might naturally wish thy spouse like evil conditions, but doth not, nor doth thine old and trusty gossip. " G. P. Maesh. "P. S. This is but private, but I shall accompany my manuscript with a formal official missive to thy principal. " At Page 18 or thereabouts of my lecture on the camel are siccoants of the performances of the dromedary under the sad- 372 GE0K6E PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. xm. die. If not too late, let the above be fitly inserted by way of note, or introduction into the text, (of which I have no copy) as shall seem to yon convenient, observing what Horatius calleth the callida junctiira. N. B. Perhaps it wasn't Horace, but what matters it ? " " BuKLINGTON, Jnly 3, 1855. " Deae Bated : " Yes, I do want some extras of the Camel, and a pack- age of so many as you can spare — say a couple, yea, by'r Lady, some four dozen — may be sent by express. Diabolns hath tra- vailed me sore in the matter of misprints. Think of a Calmuc, with his hand twisted into a lock of camel's hair, in the shed- ding time, ' wrenching ' it off, with grim grimaces ! Did I not vfviie plucJced, I prithee ? Also what is a dressing of the snows of winter ? Well, 'tis my fate. I once translated a poem — a translation wherein I prided myself — and sung of grisly ghosts or goblins or the like. The American Review printed it griz- zly. That had been a natural blunder for a naturalist, who would naturally be thinking of grizzly bears. I perceive Di- abolus inclines both to Euphuism and Euphemism. I wrote girth — printer elevates it to girdle, suggesting images of the cestus of the mother of the loves. So I said plain Jackson. Typo thinks this familiar, infra dig., for an ex-diplomat, and scorning nick names prints Johnson. But these be trifles. I had made a memorandum of questions to ask yon, 'tis mislaid, and I remember only one. Hugh Miller says the old she bird assumes the plumage of the male. Is that so ? I never knew an old hen put on long tail feathers, though I have heard them crow. I remember another. Is it true, as is reported by Eaton, (I use a German translation) that the labourers on the Erie Canal found, 43 feet deep in diluvialschichten, living piM"- jmra, and roasted and ate the same ? " I don't know where I shall be, but if you blow a tin horn about once in half an hour all summer long, I shall probably come within hearing of it, and will go to you. My instruments 1854-1857.] DEATH OF GENEEAL ESTCOUET. 373 (I have two, one of which embraces, I believe, two new appli- cations) are beautiful to look upon, one of them at least, and will sell if but as an ornament. "I discourse at Hartford on the Study of Nature, July 17th, and 18th. You don't know how scientific I am get- ting. ..." In July, 1855, the news of the death of General Estcoiu-t came as a great shock. It had been preceded only two or three days by a letter from Lady Estcourt (her husband had now been knighted), written in part during the attack of June 18th on the Malakoff and Sedan, when shot and shell were hissing and bursting around her, and concluded in the evening, after the General had returned in safety to his tent. The relief afforded by this letter made the tidings which so soon followed as unex- pected as they were distressing. General Estcourt, already suf- fering from alarming symptoms, passed the day after the bat- tle in the trenches, looking after the dead and wounded, and at night was attacked with cholera, which soon terminated his earthly life. Lord Kaglan, already much worn in mind and body, insisted on visiting his dying Adjutant-General. The same malady seized him almost immediately after, with the same fatal result. Soon after learning the death of General Estcourt, Mr. Marsh wrote the following letters to his widow and sister : "BuBLiNGTOM, Ang. 3, 1855. "Deae Lady Estcouet: " Tou will readily believe that it is not the want of sincer- est sympathy with you in your great affliction, nor of a deep sense of our own share in your loss, that has so long prevented us from offering you the expression of our heart-felt participa- tion in your sorrow. " When the intelligence of Gen. Estcourt's death first reached ns through the papers, we learned nothing of the cause or the attendant circumstances, nor was it until we heard directly from 374 GEOEGE PEKKINS MAESH. [Chap. XIII. yourself and Miss Estcourt that we knew you had remained at Sebastopol to afford and to receive the only alleviation and con- solation which such an event permits to the departing and sur- vivors. Your letter of the — July, and Miss Estconrt's of a little later date, have given us the assurance that this favor was not denied you, and that nothing which you felt to be a duty has proved too heavy a burden for your patience and resigna- tion, and we no longer fear that a word from us will seem an intrusion. " I cannot express to you how grateful I am for the unfin- ished letter,* and for your great kindness in so soon making the painful effort of communicating what will always be to me a precious memorial of, I may say, the most cherished of my friendships. You can scarcely know how limited our circle of really intimate friends is, or how large and valued a part of it your husband and yourself have formed, but you cannot have doubted the affectionate interest we have so long felt in you both, and you will not need to be assured that that interest will survive undiminished, and, in a sense, will hereafter be wholly centred in you. " We have little reason to hope that circumstances will ever enable us to renew our direct intercourse with you, or to do anything for your comfort or consolation, but we trust that our correspondence may not be interrupted, and especially we shall feel a strong desire to know that you have been favored in your journey, and supported under the renewed grief and trials which must attend your return to England. " Knowing, as we do, the strength and tenderness of your mutual affection, we are fully aware, dear Lady Estcourt, that yours is no common or fleeting sorrow, but we hope this great atfliction has been rendered less overwhelming by some special mercies, and aggravated by the fewest of such particular circum- stances as give the sharpest poignancy to grief. Some such * A letter to Mr. Marsh, begun by General Estcourt the night before the assault on the forts, and terminating with the words, " The Russians " 1854-18B7.] LETTERS TO THE ESTC0UET8. 375 there must be in every bereavement, and no doubt in yours. Into these no stranger, no friend even, can enter, and for them there can come words of consolation but from that one source which has been ah-eady opened to you. " To us the severance of those pleasant relations which have existed so long without a cloud is an irreparable loss, and we are sure that as few of your husband's common friends could have known him better, none of them could have loved and es- teemed him more than we, none of them more deeply felt a blow which has saddened so many hearts on this as well as on your own side of the ocean. Accept once more, dear Lady Est- court, the assurance of our most affectionate sympathy. " Very faithfully yours, " G. P. Maesh." "BnaLiNQTON, Aug. 1855. " Deae Miss Estcotjet : " I am most sincerely grateful to you for your great kind- ness in giving us such early information respecting the last hours of our departed friend, as well as of your own move- ments and purposes. In the position in which he stood, his loss could never have been unexpected, but no calculations of probability, no timid forebodings can ever quite prepare us for the death of one so near. Knowing your brother's great tem- perance and regularity of life and, on the other hand, his un- flinching devotion to duty, I had feared little for him from dis- ease, but much from exposure to the violences of war, and it was therefore to the list of the casualties of battle that I most anx- iously looked in the news which every arrival brought us from the seat of war. " We are rarely satisfied with the circumstances of a pain- ful event, still I cannot but think this bitter trial less severe than it would have been had our friend died in battle. To me at least it is consolation that he was called away, though amidst discomforts and privations, yet by a quiet and peaceful death, 376 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. XIH. and that he did not fall by the hand of a brother man. It is not that I have special prejudices against the military profes- sion, but having known your brother only in civil and domes- tic life, I cannot think of him as a soldier, and I am not sorry that I never saw him in uniform. My most distinct image of him is as we met him, after a long separation, at Civita Vec- chia on our way to Eome. I scanned him narrowly to see what changes time had wrought in those noble and placid feat- ures in whose lineaments one so plainly read the peace of God, and I saw with no little pleasure that while years had aug- mented the expression of calmness and dignity and benevolence, they had detracted nothing from the graces of his earlier man- hood. "The three perhaps most valued friendships of my life were contracted during my Congressional career. Two of tliese friends, one of whom was also a distinguished soldier, died while I was at Constantinople. Tour brother was the last sm*- vivor, and I feel prof oimdly that at my time of life one can no more hope to form so dose relations. " Few strangers have ever made so favorable an impression on the better portion of American society as did General and Lady Estcourt, and this war has assumed a special interest with many because he was known to be a sharer in its hardships and its dangers. His death has called forth a very general expres- sion of regret and sympathy from his American friends, and I hope to be able to send you some evidence of this on another occasion,* " To Mrs. Marsh and myself your brother and sister were more than friends. They exhibited to us the rarest combina- tion of spiritual, moral, intellectual and social excellence, and I * See Appendix (IV. ) for a notice of General Estcourt, written by Mr. Marsh about this time. The Hon. Eobert C. Winthrop also paid a beautiful tribute to his mem- ory. To such friends of General Estcourt as have been greatly disappointed that cir- cumstances have prevented the appearance of a full biography of this noble Christian soldier, it ia some consolation to observe that the " Life of General Chesney," pub- lished in 1885, furnishes overwhelming evidence of General Estcouxt's extraordinary qualities. 1854r-1857.] tNVITATIONS TO LECTUEE. 377 trust the influence of the familiar intercourse we have so long sustained with them has not been wholly lost upon us. " When this distressing news first reached us, we feared the blow would prove an overwhelming one to poor Lady Estcourt, and we are relieved to know, both from you and herself, that she has strength given her to perform the duties which are still incumbent upon her, and to bear without sinking the trials which Providence is imposing upon her. "Nor do we forget, dear Miss Estcourt, how large your share is in this great sorrow, nor how heavy are the responsi- bilities it is imposing upon you, and we hope you will allow us to include you, and all those of your family whom we have the pleasure of knowing, in the assurance of our sympathizing friendship. " We are to remain in Burlington until December, and hope in the mean time to hear that your journey and the return to England have not proved too much for the physical or moral strength of either of you. " Always, dear Miss Estcourt, " Yery faithfully yours, "Geo. p. Maesh." During the summer and antumn of 1855, Mr. Marsh re- ceived many invitations to lecture, the following winter, in vari- ous parts of the country, and of these he accepted a consider- able number. He also filled up every hour he could spare from his private business with such other literary work as promised speedy compensation. It would be misleading to represent him as a popular lecturer, even when his subject was one that might be supposed to excite popular interest. His quiet manner, his rapid utterance, the compact language in which thought fol- lowed thought in quick succession, the absence of all personal adventure and of all such vague adjectives as may excite an emotion but convey no real information — all these were char- acteristics not likely to draw large audiences. The very humor 378 GEOBGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chap. Xni. SO natural to him, and without some touch of which he seldom wrote or spoke, was not of a kind to be appreciated by the pub- lic generally. He was not slow to perceive that in this field he was not likely to be either very useful or very successful ; and after the first year or two he declined all applications to lect- ure, except before such audiences as he could reasonably hope to interest. He entered into the Presidential campaign of 1856 with much feeling, regarding, as he did, the election of Mr. Bu- chanan as endangering the safety of the Republic. He made many political speeches during this summer and autumn, both in and out of his State ; and as his professional and business life had made him thoroughly acquainted with the people, he was much happier in addressing voters than in speaking to au- diences who wanted a superficial semi-intellectual entertain- ment. It was a great pain to him that he was obliged on this occa- sion to separate himself politically from some of liis most val- ued private friends, who, feeling with him that a great national crisis was at hand, had come to a different conclusion as to the best way to meet it. The following letter, to the Hon. C. D. Drake, will show how he regarded the Presidential question of 1856. "... I am much obliged to you for your friendly letter of the which has been forwarded to me from Bhode Isl- and. " Since Mr. Buchanan's flagitious Ostend letter, his accept- ance of a platform in all its parts so repugnant to any political principle I have ever professed, and the avowals he made to Gov. Brown in accepting the nomination, I could under no con- ceivable circumstances support him, even if I were otherwise willing to surrender the future of my country into the hands of , , and , the guardian angels of Mr. Buchanan. " Mr. Fillmore's speech at Albany, and his conduct, when 1854^1857.] LETTER TO ME. DKAKE. 379 Vice President and President, iu stooping to render himself the voluntary tool of a clique headed by Senator Foote of Missis- sippi, as testified to by that gentleman, to say nothing of other decisive objections, render him as unacceptable to me as is Mr. Buchanan, and, were it otherwise, I could not reconcile it to my seuse of duty to sustain a candidate, who in my judgment, is deliberately repeating the course pursued by Van Buren in 1848. " As a matter of principle, therefore, by which I hope to be governed, it would be impossible for me to give my vote for either of those candidates. " Again, by refusing to support the Republican platform which I verily believe is founded on just principles (though certainly sustained by some very unprincipled and dangerous men), which has been accepted by candidates whom I cordially approve, I should forfeit the good opinion of my whole State and feel, through life, that I had committed an unworthy ac- tion. We will agree to disagree on the points under discus- sion, and when we next meet I trust the whole question will have been finally and amicably settled. ' There is a tide in the affairs of men,' etc., and I bring, just now, ill fortune to all who are in any way connected with me, so for your own sake I am glad you and I are no longer of the same political party. " With kindest regards to yourself and Mrs. Drake, " I am very truly yours, "Geobge p. Maesh." "Woodstock, October 13, 1856. "Deae Spekcee: " r am as much ashamed to write to you as the was to see the doctor because he had not been sick for a year. I told you I would write as soon as I got home, and I meant to do so, but the cares of this world sprang up and choked that good purpose. Well, I am glad to hear from you, and particularly to hear that Mary is comfortable. Gilliss by the way, says he 380 GEORGE PEBKINS MAESH. [Chap. XIII. thinks she looks in better health than for a long time. I want to see her to get her just well enough to write letters and stay there a good while. Verily if I could write such epistles as hers, I never would do anything else. Prof. Eafn writes he has sent me me some things through the Smith. I. Please keep them till I come, which will be about the time wild geese go to the South. " I pray you have King Solomon put to the question touch- ing that big book. . . . " I am delivering agric. discourses for a living. I have said two, and have two more to come off, one this and one next week, the latter at Portland. I suppose you must have your hands full of work, and hope you find King Solomon as helpful as ever. " Well, we wish you peace and plenty. Farewell. " Yours truly, « G. P. Maesh." In the midst of the perplexities and anxieties of the summer and autumn of 1856, Mr. Marsh had another important question to decide. A new Senatorial election was to taike place in November, and he was strongly pressed to accept the candidat- ure. It was urged that a very active opposition was organized against the renomination of the Senator whose term was about to expire, that this division in the Whig party seriously threatened the election of a Democratic Senator in his place, and that, if Mr. Marsh would allow his name to be used, the union of the party would be secured past doubt, and his election certain. Though he had no strong taste for political life, yet the painful imcertainty of his present position, the dignity of the proffered office, the fact that its duties would still leave him some time for other work, and, not least of all, the danger that Vermont might send a Democratic Senator to Congress — all these considerations were in favor of an affirmative answer. 1854-1857.] QUESTION OF SENATOKSHIP. 381 On the other hand, however, was the conviction of the injustice of superseding the actual incumbent, who had filled the office in a manner creditable both to himself and his State. Mr. Marsh accordingly set himself to learn, as precisely as possible, the strength of the opposition likely to be made against the Hon. Mr. Foot ; and having satisfied himself that that gen- tleman could be elected in spite of it, he at once informed his own personal friends that his name must not be used. At the same time he wrote to Mr. Foot, who was well aware of the disposition to elect Mr. Marsh, telling him that he should on no account suffer himself to stand in his way. To this com- munication Mr. Foot returned the following answer, dated Washington, August 20, 1856, which needs no comment. " Your obliging favor of the 18th inst. is before me. Your great generosity quite overcomes me. I am largely indebted for the place I hold to the generous support of your friends. This consideration, among others, has led me to express to them my entire and unreserved readiness to withdraw from the canvass in your favor, if you desire it. This obligation on my part extends to no other person. ... I am willing to remain here, and will therefore so far avail myself of your kind action on my behalf as to stand my chances for a re-election. I should, of course, be gratified with the endorsement of my State. In case of re-election, I shall hold myself ready to re- sign my seat in the Senate at any time'you may desire it. At all events, you may always regard this point as open for con- sideration, and I shall govern myself by your advice and wishes in the matter." The winter of 1856-57 was taken up mostly with business cares. These took him long journeys, as will be seen by the following letters, and on these journeys he gave many of the lectures previously promised. 382 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XUL "MusCATiira, Iowa, February 19, 1857. " Deae Bated : "I hear thou hast asked for snlphnrs. "When 1 return home some two weeks hence they shall be sent thee. " Mine especial good friend Charles Anderson, Esq., of Cin- cinnati, not a professed naturalist, doth nevertheless make rat- tlesnakery a specialty. Could Dr. somebody's lecture on that interesting topic be sent him? Also, perhaps he will write thee. Deal with him kindly, for he is my good friend. " I hope Mary continues to improve. I don't think I shall be at "Washington soon. I know nothing about my claim, and presume it will fare as it has before. " I have been ' out yere ' certain days, in continual peril of my soul, as I journeyed along, by reason of floods, broken bridges, railroad chances and the like, but tomorrow I think to turn my face Eastwards, and I shall bid adieu to the jpraries without a sigh. " Not all the gophers in Illinois would tempt me to dwell in this famed West, even were I as desperate a naturalist as you. " . . . My love attends Mary, thyself and thy little one, as also such other as be near and dear to thee. Good bye. "Yours truly, « G. P. Maesh." " BUELINGTON, March 16, 1857. " Deae Baied : "There goeth to thine address by express a box of sul- phurs, whereout thou shalt take some reasonable portion for thine Institution, and the rest thou shalt sell at fabulous, yea fabulous prices. Be not beguiled by any idle talk about bene- fit of science &c. I will have gold, bezants of gold, and thou shalt jew thy customers to the very marrow. These be no vul- gar sulphurs bought in the market for guineas and eagles. No, they were given me in recompense of great services, by the Viceroy of Sicily, King Bomba, or if thou please, Beel- zebub himself; or if thou wilt rather represent them of my 1854-1857.] LETTER TO LADY ESTCOXJRT. 383 own gathering, then I dug for them ten thousand feet deep in the Maccaluba, or I ravished them out of the crater of Etna in the midst of an eruption, orphicked them ont of the very jaws of Tartarus ! I authorize tliee to lie as thou wilt, so that thou extort the last mill of their value from the reluctant purse of the purchaser, or purchasers rather, for they shall bid against each other to the very bottom of their pockets. If thou wilt generously lie thyself into Purgatory for my sake, shall I for- bid thy virtuous self-sacrifice ? No, Heaven forefend. Go on, and send me diamonds for my brimstone. " Are there any gatherings of specimens thou wonldst have made in Woodstock and the parts adjacent ? Then send thy memorandum of desiderata to my brother Charles Marsh and he will fulfil thy desires. I hope Mary continues to improve, and I shall be better satisfied of that, when 1 see what thou knowest I love to look upon, her own sign manual. My wife salutes you both, and therewith, farewell. " Thine truly, " G. P. Maksh. "P. S. I think the longest crystals are below the dia- phragm which must be removed with care by drawing the nails out at the end of the box." " BtTKLiNQTON, March 31st, 1857. " Deak Lady Estcotiet : " I returned from a journey of nearly five thousand miles week before last, and have since been obliged to make two shorter ones, so that I have had no leisure to write for a long time. I travelled under circumstances of great exposure and toil, but have abundant cause for thankfulness in having re- turned without injury or exhaustion, and found Mrs. Marsh in her usual condition of cheerfulness, if not of health and com- fort. I was two days at St. Louis, where I saw Mrs. Wislize- nus and family and the Biewends. Mrs. Wislizenus is pretty well and has two fine children, the elder a boy of five of a pe- 384 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAKSH. [Chat. XIH. culiarly lovely temper and fine promise. Tliey speak German more than English, and Master Fritz read me Btruviwet/peter and der grosse Nicolas very funnily. The Biewends are poor and happy, and as you well know, remember you with great affection and sympathy. Mr. Biewend has been much rejoiced, and his hands strengthened, by the accession of Dr. Seyffarth of Leipsic, one of the most eminent of German orientalists, to the academic staff of his college. I rejoiced with him, but pitied Dr. Seyffarth, who will find no stamped bricks or Egyptian hie- roglyphics in Missouri, and not many who will sympathize in his passion for such hard reading. " The box with the memoirs and the beautiful engraving of our departed friend arrived on Saturday, and I had one framed yesterday morning. Although the photograph (that represent- ing him leaning against the ivy-covered wall) is, bating the care-worn look, more like him as he was when I saw him last, and more distinctly recalls the exceeding beauty of his features and expression as we saw them during those few well-remem- bered days at Rome, yet the engraving is a very fine portrait, and we are extremely glad to have so faithful a representation of him at the period when we first knew him. You have per- haps observed that the effect is improved by framing under glass. I am going to ask you to let us keep two copies, and I will distribute the others, and send you a list, as soon as I re- turn from a short journey I am obliged to take immediately. 1 was two or three times at Chicago during my absence, but Col. Grahame, who resides there, had gone to Virginia to be married, and I did not see him. Col. Grahame has recently been afflicted by the loss of a son, an officer in the Navy, and quite lately had the misfortune to lose his year's pay — about $2,000 — which was stolen from his carriage while he was mak- ing a visit. " I am sorry — I might better say ashamed — of giving you and your friends so much trouble about the ' attorney for the association for catching rogues.' The whole affair is so very 1854-1857.] LETTER TO LADY ESTCOTJET. 385 silly. There has been for a long time a tradition in some branches of our family — not in mine happily — that a great es- tate in England was left to the American Marshes a hundred years ago. My father was often urged to look it up, but al- ways refused to have anything to do with it as the story was absurdly improbable, and moreover not easily reconcilable with the known history of our branch, which has been in New Eng- land at least since 1630. On my return from Europe I was as- sailed with letters on the subject to which I gave discouraging replies. It happened oddly that in November 1854, this Mr. Braddon advertised in the Times for heirs of some Marsh, who had died at Manchester in the last century, and this naturally stirred up my foolish cousins to fresh zeal on the subject. They have made a good deal of inquiry in England and found out that — incredible as it seems to me from my knowledge of the family— there have been Marshes who not only AaJ money, but actually kept it till they died, and there appear to be some cases where they left no known heirs in England. Thus encouraged, they have renewed their persecutions of me, and threatened to call a meeting of the family, to take measures to recover the wealth that perfidious Albion has so long withheld from its rightful owners. To prevent this, which would throw such ridicule on the whole of us, I promised to inquire who Mr. Braddon was, in the full belief that he would turn out a rogue, and the hope that I could thus pour a bucket of cold water on the clan. ' On Saturday last, I received a letter from one of my swampy namesakes in Canada saying that he had received addi- tional evidence from England, and was determined to call a meeting. I strongly suspect the whole thing to be a plot be- tween an American, well known as a finder of lost ' estates ' and the worthy attorney to the association for protecting Queen Victoria against the profanation of her august image by stamp- inor the same on base coin, but I am afraid I cannot keep the Marshes from emerging out of their present happy obscurity into the full blaze of a ridiculous notoriety. 25 386 GEOEGB PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XIII. " Your letter of March 12th came last night. We are glad you are going to pass some time in the magnificent scenery of Switzerland. Chamounix, the Gemmi, the Via Mala, the Lake of Wallenstadt, all the mountain regions indeed, are full of lessons whose fruits will not be exhausted in this mortal life by those who are able to comprehend them. "We are rejoiced at Sandwith's preferment, which seems an acceptable one to him. Please assure Mr. & Mrs. Hall, as well as Miss Estcourt and your family friends, of our continued interest in their happiness and prosperity. Miss Bnell joins us in kind remembrances. " Yery truly 3'ours, " Geo. p. Marsh." " BuKi,iNQTON, April 8, 1857. " Dear Baied : " Tell the party that wrote that letter, that the party who owned the sulphurs don't intend to deal any more with the party that wrote the letter, also, that though the party that owned the sulphurs don't know how to pack sulphurs, he does know English enough not to call parties any persons except parties that call other people parties, and herewith the party that owns the sulphurs gives the party that wrote the letter his blessing. " If you'll copy the above, and send it to the party in strict anon., I will requite you. " Well, I am sorry they are broken, and I bequeath them all to you. I think there will be sharp corners enough to show the crystalline forms at least. Let me know what you paid the ex- press, and I will remit. " I am grievously tormented of Satan incarnate in the s. I don't ask to have them rewarded according to their works. Less than that will answer my turn, but I pray speedily a meas- ure of justice, lest I utterly faint by the way. Mrs. M. joins me in love to you both. " Tours truly, « G. P. Marsh." 1854-1857.] LETTERS TO PKOFESSOE BAIRD. 387 " Burlington, April 20, 1857. " Dear Baird : " We want in our university a fit person to profess Chemi istry and Natural Philosophy, to which he might add any fancy naturalistics he pleases. We are hetter oif in funds than for- merly and can give him, all told, $1,000 per annum, and can also put the departments in tolerable condition with respect to ap- paratus. We have about 100 or 120 students, and there is a small medical class besides. " Is Dr. E , a fit man for our purpose, and would he accept, if he is ? We want the very best man, at the very low- est rate. He must be not a mere chemist, statist and such like, but a man of liberal sympathies, with all knowledge, and scho- lastic enough in his tastes to be willing to become one of the Faculty in matters of discipline as well as instruction. We would have him also a man of right moral views and impulses, and if not religions, at least not anti-religious in his feelings and opinions. " These are but moderate requirements you perceive, but I fear we shall not compass them for $1,000 per annum. If Dr. E. can't or won't be Professor, or is not fit for the station, who can, should, and will ? " I hope you and Mary will come North this summer, and that we may meet you somehow and somewhere. Don't forget to let me pay you the freight on tlie brimstone. I expect more this summer, and you shall have the first pick. " Yours truly, "G. P. Marsh." " BuKLiNGTON, May, 3857. "Son Spencee: " Herewith I return thee certain letters, which thou didst kindly send for my divertisement in my solitary hours with my books. Well, I thank thee for this rich treat, but thought it fit to resist the temptation to break the seal of the unopened 388 GEOEGE PEBKINS MAESH. [Chap. XIH. envelope, to the end that Master L might enjoy the first perusal thereof. May be he will send it to me himself, when he shall have perused it. " Winter may be said to be well nigh over, as it no longer freezes even o' nights, and some of om- peason are up. We look now for a whole month of strawing weather, and hope not to be constrained to put up our double windows again till a fortnight after the solstice. " We worry on as we can, grievously buffeted nevertheless. " I hope Mary is well, better, best, and I give her my bless- ing. " Thine truly, " G. P. Maesh." In the summer of 1857, Mr. Marsh's only son, George, who had been engaged in the study of law since his return from Eu- rope, the year before, left the Law School in Cambridge, to pass the vacation with his father in Burlington, but stopped on his way thither to pay a visit to his Uncle Charles at the old Wood- stock homestead. Here he was attacked with typhoid fever, and his father hastened to him on the first notice. The disease soon showed very alarming symptoms, and for some days the life of the patient was despaired of. Judge James Barrett, of the Supreme Court of Vermont, an intimate friend of the Marsh family in Woodstock, and one who devoted himself un- reservedly to the sufferer at this time, speaking of this illness, says : " I never saw more touching or stronger manifestations of a father's affection than Mr. Marsh gave throughout that sickness. In the crisis, when life seemed almost extinct, his agony was indescribable." He adds : " The son was very delir- ious for a considerable time. In his delirium, all that was said between father and son was in some foreign language," and he goes on to speak of the younger Marsh's rare gifts in certain directions, which he does not exaggerate. This illness told very heavily upon the father, but the se- 1854-1857.] ILLNESS OF MB. MAKSH's SON. 389 verest part of the trial was still to come. As soon as the con- valescent patient could he safely moved, he was taken to Bur- lington. Not many days after, Mr. Marsh received a few lines from the medical attendants of his son, urging strongly that the latter ' should remain through the winter in the quiet of his own home,' and giving as a reason the danger that, in the present still weak and irritated condition of the brain, certain delirious fancies, that had taken strong hold upon his imagination during his illness, might return with the excitements of town and stu- dent life, and his mental equilibrium become permanently dis- turbed. As may be well supposed, this suggestion, while it gave the distressed father the greatest pain, led him to use his utmost influence to detain his son in the country. Argument and persuasion, however, proved alike unavailing. The natural ambition of a brilliant young man, who felt that he had already lost time in the race for distinction in his profession, overcame every other consideration and he returned to Boston. It may as well be said here, that the fears of the physicians proved only too well grounded, and though the delusions which returned were for a long time easUy removed by a few minutes' quiet conversation, yet in the end they became settled convic- tions that could not be eradicated. That Mr. Marsh never lost the hope that his son, so clear-headed and brilliant in conversa- tion on all ordinary subjects, would finally see everything in its true light, was the secret of his bearing up at all under this most heart-rending of all his trials. Soon after the return of his son to the Law School, Mr. Marsh himself became seriously ill, and was confined to his room for two months. That this was a period of great mental de- pression, also, will not seem unnatural. He saw himself cut off from work on which he and his family were depending for their modest support, to say nothing of further efforts to effect sales, etc., in order to meet the just expectation of his creditors. It was under these circumstances that an appeal for help was made to him by an invalid teacher of French, the father of a large 390 GEOKGE PEEKINS MAKSII. [Chap. XIII. young family, then in the deepest poverty. When remonstrated with for what he proposed to do for the applicant, he said : " Among my many obligations, there is none so strong at this moment as the debt I owe this honest hard-working man. He once lived in a house of mine, and without giving myself the trouble to know his real circnmstances, I took from him full rent when he could not pay it without letting his family suffer." The desired relief was sent, and the following is an extract from the reply, which wduld not appear to come from a man who had been hardly dealt with : " According to your wish and the feel- ings of my heart, I gratefully acknowledge the receipt of your letter, and the enclosed in bank notes. Such benevolence as yours is not easy to find in this hard time. May God bless you and your family for this and all yoiir former kindness to your unhappy protege, who, to the last beating of his heart shall pray for your happiness." In the midst of these dark days came the very unexpected intelligence that the Legislature of Yermont had appointed him Eailroad Commissioner for the State, with a salary which, though small, would supply his immediate wants and was, there- fore, very acceptable. The following was written during this illness : "BuKLiNGTOir, November 6, 1857. " Dbak Baied : " Gilliss wrote me on the 30th of Sept. that he had been quite ill and Mrs. G. indisposed. I inferred that neither of them was quite recovered, and hearing nothing further from them, I wrote to G. on the 21st of October, saying that we were anxious about them, and hoped soon to hear that they were quite well. I have received no reply, and as Mr. G. is extremely prompt in his correspondence, I very much fear some of them are seriously ill. You know how strongly, and with what good reason, Mrs. Marsh and I are attached to them all, and that we cannot but be much distressed at the thought of 1854-1857.] VISIT TO NEW YORK. 391 any serious calamity befalling them. I beg therefore that you will drop me a word, to let me know how they are, by an early mail. "Among my many blanks I have drawn one small prize — or rather I ought to be reasonable enough to call it a large one — it is the appointment of K'd Eoad Commr. for this state, with a salary of $1,000 and expenses paid by state. Nothing could come in better time, and I am by no means disposed to look this gift horse in the mouth. " Is Toussenel a writer of authority, and what are his books ? Also, has Quatrefages written only for journals, or published independent works, and in which of bis works would his de- scription of the marine products of the coast of Sicily be found ? " One more question. Has Desor published anything on the Phys. Geography of America, and if so, what is the title of his book ? " Yours truly, " G. P. Mar rtt." His medical friend. Dr. Marsh, who well understood that the physical and moral strain of his son's illness, united to busi- ness anxieties, was the real cause of his present feeble condition, insisted on change of place as soon as he could travel, and upon entire abstinence from work of every kind. Accordingly, as soon as he was able, he made his son a short visit in Boston, then went to a relative in Providence for some days, and after- ward to New York, where he passed a few weeks with Mr. and Mrs. John Paine — the latter, his life-long fi-iend, having lately married her cousin. Here he regained strength, and even spirits, rapidly. Mrs. Marsh wrote at this time to Lady Estcourt (correspond- ence with whom had for many months been interrupted), giv- ing an account of the illnesses through which they had passed, as an explanation of the long silence. 392 GEORGE PEEKIWS MARSH. [Chap. XIH. " - . . But through all our sorrows and all our silences we both think of you with the same old friendship and affec- tion. . . . " We are passing a few weeks in this busy, restless city — a great change from our quiet, country life, and a necessary one no doubt, for though we are happy and contented in our com- parative solitude, yet every one will grow narrow and dull with- out some social friction now and then. With the fashionable circle here par excellence we have almost no relations, for rea- sons you will understand, but we have made many agreeable acquaintances in addition to the friends we already had here, and the time is passing most pleasantly. We dined with the Bancrofts yesterday and they inquired for the latest news from you with much interest. " You see I date at the very beginning of the year, and yet I have not used the accustomed formula between friends on this anniversary. I know, dear friend, it is no longer the phrase for you. But I may, and do with all my heart, wish you a year of calm peace and patient waiting. " Jan. 3d. Mr. Marsh has returned, and to my great pleas- ure has brought with him yours of . We are doubly glad to hear from you again, because we were not deserving it. What a comfort to think of you in that quiet, little home, all your own, with so many loving friends about you. It is a blessed thing to have learned, as you have, to thank God for what He leaves us, even though so much has been taken. We are glad also to hear of your occupation, though no doubt it is best for you that you should be often interrupted in it. You should not live altogether in the past, but I hope no shyness about iooh-mdking will deter you from going on with what you have begun. " The same steamer which brought your last, brought us also a letter from our dear friend. Bishop Bowen of Sierra Leone — you will not have forgotten the Kev. Mr. Bowen who came to us when we were so ill in Syria, and whose services were 1854-1857.] LETTER TO LADY ESTCOUKT. 393 BO invaluable to ns. He was married about the time of his con- secration as Bishop, and he took with him to Africa his young wife, who was a daughter of Dean Butler. He now writes to tell us of her death in less than a year after her arrival in that land of pestilence. The tone of his letter is deeply sad, but manly and Christian. We tremble for his own life in that deadly climate, but if he survives he wUl do a great work among the wretched population that he will manage to reach, for his energy is without limit, and his tact in influencing and controlling uncivilized tribes is no less remarkable. — We were gratified to hear of Sir Harry Yerney's marriage. If the Miss Nightingale he has chosen has the head and the heart of her sister, she will indeed be a blessing to that family, but to sup- ply the place of the late Lady Vemey will be no light task for any woman. . . ." CHAPTER XIV. i8^8-i86i. Consequences of Visit to New York — Engages to lecture on the English Language before Fost-Graduateaof Coliuubia College — Letter to Colonel Peter Force — Let- ters to Professor Baird — Extracts from Letters to Mrs. Marsh — Begins Course of Lectures in New York — Their Reception — Letter to Colonel Force — Social Ad- vantages in New York — Letter to Professor Baird — Letter to Lady Estcourt — Letters to Professor Baird — War between Austria and Italy — ^Letter to Dr. Lieber — Letter to Lady Estcourt — Letter to Dr. Lieber — Publication of First Series of Lectures on the English Language — Impression produced by them — Inducements to go to New York— The proposed Establishment of The World — Correspondence on that and other Subjects between Mr. Marsh and Dr. Lieber — Final Passage of Claim through both Houses, and consequent Release from Pe- cuniary Obligations^Disappointment in the Course of The World — Letter re- ferring to it — Letter to Mr. C. B. Norton — Undertakes to edit "Wedgwood's Etymology" — Invitation to lecture before the Lowell Institute — Portion of Win- ter of 1860-61 spent in Boston — Death of his Nephew, Benjamin Swan Marsh — Letter on the Political Situation, dated Burlington, February 5, 1861 — Proposal of a Mission Abroad — Appointment as Minister to Italy — Extract from Letter to Hon. C. D. Drake. THIS visit to New York liad an important bearing upon Mr. Marsh's after-life. Since leaving college, his association with literary men had been only at rare intervals, and he was best known to them, generally, in his professional and public character. It was therefore not without surprise that his ex- traordinary attainments were recognized by such men in that city, and very friendly offers were made to induce hira to take up his residence there. These offers were very gratifying to him, depressed as he was in mind and body. But the same considerations that had deterred him from going to Cambridge compelled him to decline these offers also. There was, how- ever, one proposal which he readily accepted, as not likely to interfere seriously with other duties. This was, that he should 1858-1861.] LETTER TO COLONEL FORCE. 395 deliver, the following winter, a course of lectures on the English language before the post-graduates of Columbia Col- lege. Mr. Marsh returned to Burlington very early in the spring of 1858, but his duties as llailroad Commissioner compelled him to make many short journeys through his own State, and this, and other work previously promised, prevented him from giv- ing any immediate thought to these lectures. The following letter, to Colonel Peter Force, of Washington, is evidence that he did not confine himself at this time to com- position in his own language. " BuKLiNQTON, March 2d, 1858. " Deae See : " I have undertaken to prepare a brief account of certain observations I made at Petra, for publication in a foreign Jour- nal. One of these is of some architectural interest, and I sup- pose it to be original, but I have not Laborde to refer to, nor does the Astor Library contain the work. I think you have it, and I should be much obliged to you if you will consult the volume and let me know whether the point in question is there noticed. It is "this: In the centre of the pedi- ments, or rather the second story, of the two temples, the Khasne and the Deir, are large quadrangu- lar recesses for receiving cylinders .f^ ( urtK 1 FRONT \ - / PEDIMENT V V A Fig. 1. _/V- \/ \/ 1 Fig. 2. ,Q surmounted by urns or vases. Now if the sides of the recesses were parallel, as in Fig. 1, to a spectator ^'>s- 3. at A they would, from the laws of perspective, appear to con- verge as they recede, as in Fig. 2. To obviate this, the archi- 396 GEORGE PERKIKS MARSH. [Chap. XIV. tect has made them dwerge, as in Fig. 3, and the result is that, from the proper point of view, they appear parallel. " A reply when convenient will oblige, " Yours truly, " Geo; p. Maesh." To Professor JBaird, June, 1858. " I have made a partial arrangement to lecture next winter in N. Y. on the English language, and need some of my old books at the Smithsonian. Will you send me by express, those on the enclosed list. Cronica de Don Alfonso el Sabio (Spanish) 1 vol. folio. Azurara, Guine (Portuguese) 1 vol. folio, unbound, splendid copy. Beuter, Cronica (Catalan) 1 vol. folio. Fernam Lopez (Portuguese) 1 vol. folio. Geo. P. Marsh. Pamon Muntaner (Catalan) 1 vol. folio. Sanchez, Poesise Antiguas (Spanish) 4 vol. 8vo. Collezione di Poemi, 54 vol. 18mo (two collections, I think 26 and 28 vol. respectively, poems in Italian dialects, the two collections of different sizes, all unbound). Tasso, toscano e calabrese (Italian) 1 small folio. Petit Jehan de Saintre 1, 8vo. Eaoul Le Fevre (French) 1 small fol. "Wolfram von Eschenbach (German) 1, 8vo. Des Knaben Wnnderhorn (German) 3, 8vo. Ilauff's Werke (German) 10. 6, 8vo. Oberon (German) 1, 8vo. Olaus Magnus (Latin) 1 folio. Bjorner, Kampadater (Icelandic) 1 folio. Harpestreng Danske Lagebog (Old Danish) 1, 8vo. Chron. Cid, Sou they 1, ito. Also those missing last summer if found. Spencer 5 vols. Svo. 1858-1861.] LETTEES TO PROFESSOR BAIED. 397 Lilly's Euphues 1 square 12mo. Brande's Antiquities 3 square 18mo. " I am very sorry to give you this shocking trouble, but what can I do ? " " Bdklington, July 13, 1858. " Deab Baied : " I am much obliged to you for the books, which came safely this morning, and sorry to be obliged to trouble you further. The missing ones will no doubt turn up, as I remember seeing them all, or nearly all, with the rest, the last time I was at Washington, but they are not of enough present importance to me to make it worth while to have them sent now, even if found. " As to Boswortli's Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, I want to make an inquiry. I think it has been in the hands of a rogue, and I should be glad to know whom. " The preliminary matter, introduction, history of the lan- guage &c., amounting to near 200 pp. as near as I can recollect, has been stolen out. I find pencil notes on a fly leaf at the end in a hand-writing I don't know. Perhaps you will recognize it, and this may lead to the knowledge of the culprit. I cut out part of the fly-leaf and enclose it herewith. " I suppose the chance of recovering the lost part (which is quite valuable) is about nix, but I should like to know who prigged it, as a matter of scientijiG curiosity* " I am glad for Gilliss, but a little anxious about Payta, which I have a notion is a pesky, pizon, snaky, feverish place. Many thanks for Guyot's Tables. " Tours truly, " G. P. Maesh." * Mr. Marsh had the satisfaction of learning, afterward, who out the 800 pp. oat of this dictionary — ^if it can be called satisfaction to know that a man in a high social position is capable of such an act — ^but he never recovered them. 398 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XIV. "Burlington, Augusts, 1858. " Dbae Baied : " I received yonrs of July 17 (810) and Aug. 8 (932) (932- 810=122, what a multitude) by the same mail, to wit, August 10, and last night came the proofs. I have purged them of original sin, made them immaculate, save the Kussian, (not that I don't Tcnow Kussian, but I don't like it), and return them herewith. I am afraid you have no A,s and a,s in your Latin case, in which case you might substitute the Danish equiv- alent, Aa and aa. " As for the feathered biped who prigged my book, I loathe, yea I scorn, yea I detest him. Let him put that in his pipe, and smoke it ! When I catch him I will lam, thwack and bang him, till his plumage flies, but I am sorry Prof. Henry should have had so much trouble with the tatterdemalion. I have Vol. VIIL of Pac. R. R. Rep. and do marvel greatly at your works. Truly yon are a desperate writer, and I would take your pen away, lest you swamp this hemisphere with your vol- umes. " We have here an aquarium. It is successful, and my wife spends half her time over it, only our pets chaw one another up most catawampously. "... I hope Mary is better again, and I wish we could bring our two halves together, but this can't be. Fare you well. " Yours truly, « G. P. Maesh." " BuKLiNGTON, September 13, 1858. " Deae Baied : "Herewith I return thy proof corrected, as far as I can. P. 8. in some places, jpossjJ^y, it should be Ausberattelsen (the plural), but without inspection of the books, I can't tell whether the title is Report (one for several years) or Reports. But it matters not much. . " I do not see any Bohemian or Hungarian Transactions in 1858-1861.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 399 your list. The pnbs. of the Bohemian Soc. at Gratz (I think it is) are valuable. We shall not be in IST. T. till the end of Octo- ber. " I advise you to have matrices cut for A and a. The Dan- ish aa is an equivalent it is true, but the regular Swedish a looks better. You will want them every year and it is a small mat- ter of cost. "I am glad to have you, I mean you all are, doing well, and my wife joins me in love. " Yours truly, "George P. Maesh." Widely diversified occupations so absorbed Mr. Marsh, dur- ing the spring and summer, that, when autumn was already near, little or nothing for the New York lectures had been written out. He was very anxious about them, but to do more was impossible. The following extracts from letters to Mrs. Marsh, during a short absence on her part, will show some of the diffi- culties under which he labored. " BOELINGTON, Sept. 29, 1858. " . . . After leaving you at the station on Monday, I went home in a very combustions humour, and made a holo- caust of all the old medicines, old papers, old shoes and other rubbish I could find in my dressing-room closet, thereby greatly enriching and diversifying the soap material of the stove, and saving myself all perplexing questions on the part of the house- keeper as to their disposition. " The evening was cloudy and we missed the comet, but the astronomers promise an increase in its brilliancy for some time to come. " The report of a conspiracy to dethrone Abdul Medjid and place Abdul Aziz on the throne is confirmed. How the con- spiracy was discovered is not certain, but it was defeated through the agency of the foreign ministers. The plot seems to have 400 GEORGE PEEKIJSrS MAESH. [Chap. XIV. originated with some officers who had been dismissed for pecu- lation, and not, as was at first supposed, in religious bigotry. " I have received this evening a check for dollars, for two articles, so 1 must mark the day with a white stone, though I don't think such pay as the editors can afford deserves a very large boulder." " Btjbungton, Oct. 4th, 1858. " Tours of Friday found me well, but laboring under a new burden. S has brought me a MS. of more than 600 pp. ' for careful perusal and criticism ! ' I must go over it as well as I can, but, not to speak of my eyes, the time it will cost me is a bitter sacrifice. " Our friend Gilliss is in great trouble. He finds the at- mosphere of Peru so misty that no satisfactory observations can be taken. I wrote him, as soon as I heard of his project, that he would have this difficulty, and referred him to what Humboldt says of the unastronomischer Himmel Penis, but he would not believe me. As a last resort, he is going to pack his instruments on mules and try to get to some point on the Cordilleras above the clouds, but the people of the country give him no encouragement and he writes to me in much anxiety. I am truly sorry for him, but he ought not to have gone, after my warning, until he had made thorough inquiries. "The most remarkable newspaper announcement I have seen lately is, that Lola Monies has just lectured in New York in aid of the fund for rebuilding the church of the Eev. which was lately blown down ! " "BuBMNGTON, Oct. 8th, 1858. "... I have my R. R. Report nearly done, and it would have been quite finished had the R. R. officials been less dilatory in making their returns. " The Report will probably bring a hornet's nest about my ears, but I shall tell the truth at whatever cost. Perhaps; how- ever, it may please everybody — the stockholders, the creditors 1858-1861.] EXTRACTS FROM LETTERS. 401 and the public becanse I call the managers rogues, and the rogues because I don't propose to interfere with their stealings, that being a matter out of my province. " - . . That unlucky MS. is making a sad inroad on my time. It is a worse business for me, just now, than were for the Bishop ' the novelties that disturbed his peace^ but I have rather more than half finished it, and hope soon to have it off my hands. In the meantime, however, I have had to suspend all work on my Lectures. " - . . I dined yesterday at the Pomeroys, very pleas- antly. Martha B. is grown as beautiful as Mary, and so like her that I mistook her for her sister. After dinner I stepped in to see poor Mrs. C. and helped her through a few pages of German. She gets on wonderfully with it, but there is no im- provement in her health. She is entirely confined to her bed or chair. " I have worked very hard since you left, but not at hard work (you see I am getting Fullerized *) for what I am doing just now employs only the faculty of judging according to the sense, and of course is not wearisome to the higher powers." "BnELINQTON, Oct 13, 1858. " - . . I have set myself at work again on my Lectures, but it is making bricks without straw, for the inaccessibility of so many of my own books, and the want of others which I do not possess, compel me to draw almost entirely upon my mem- ory. " Mr. Haggles writes to ask if I can be ready to begin the course of lectures by the 1st of !N'ovember. I have replied in the affirmative, as I think I have enough nearly completed to make it possible to prepare the remainder as I go on. * Mr. Marsh's admiration for the renowned English divine, Dr. Thomas Puller, was very great. He was once heard to conclude an enthusiastic enlogy of his works and character by saying : " If I find, when I go ' over to the many,' that our present social customs are prevailing there, the first man on whom I leave my card will be old Tom Puller." 26 402 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. XIV. " Mrs. B writes that she has refurnished her rooms, got a new cook (and T suppose a new broom) and is all ready to re- ceive us. " Our aquarium is flourishing. The arrow-head lilies have produced a fine quantity of bulbs, real wa(ppatoo. They seem inclined to sprout, and go on straight through the winter, which laudable purpose Mrs. P encourages. The fish, too, are doing well, and the notonectse thriving. " Saturday afternoon I ' struck work,' and took to black- smithing. I got me a piece of iron, heat it (Scripture authority for that; see King James' Bible, 1611, Daniel, chap, about Shadrach, etc.) in the stove, made me a hammer and finished it very carefully. It is one of my best jobs. I wouldn't give it for the whole course of my lectures. " In a table of Contents, in a No. of the Transactions of the (Eng.) Philological Society, I notice : H. Sandwith, on a Zaza Vocabulary. Our gifted friend has chosen a dim subject, it strikes me." The course of lectures began early in November ; and though the audience was small, it was of a most desirable char- acter, and the lecturer could not complain of any want of ap- preciation. The warmth with which the first were received gave him much encouragement, and the later lectures were written mainly in the intervals of delivery, with almost no re- sources except his own powerful memory and the conclusions previously arrived at by quick insight and clear judgment. But lie never asserted anything as a fact where he felt the slightest distrust of his memory. The following extract from a note to Colonel Force indicates his scrupulous caution in this respect : " 22 TTniveesitt Place, City of New Yoke, Nov. 10, 1858. " Dear Sir : " If I mistake not, you once pointed out to me in Phillips's (Milton's nephew) little vocabulary, the fact that ahaM and alcmdon were marked as words going out of use. The fact, if 1858-1861.] LECTURES IK NEW TOKK. 403 it be a fact, is an interesting one, and I want to refer to it in a lecture which I am to give here on "Wednesday, the 17th ir- stant. Will you do me the favor to say whether I am right, and if so, to give me the general title of Phillips's book and the date of the edition. " Yery truly yours, " Geoege p. Maesh." Besides the consciousness that his lectures were giving sat- isfaction, Mr. Marsh derived much pleasure from the soci- ety into which they brought him. It would be needless to say that frequent opportunities of meeting such men as Mr. Bryant, Mr. Bancroft, Dr. Francis Lieber, Dr. Edward Bob- inson, and their families, with many others perhaps equally eminent in their own departments, were much prized by a man who had been obliged to pass the greater part of his life far from his peers. But these advantages were deprived of much of their value and much of their enjoyment by continual anx- iety about his private affairs. Such constant attention did tljese require at this time, that he felt himself obliged to make a hurried visit to Vermont at the beginning of the Christmas holidays. The following was written on his return : "22 Univbksitt Place, January 3, 1859. "Deab Bated: " We do wish you a jolly New Tear and many of them, less labor and more play, fewer proofs to read and more pence to pocket, and, specially, thousands of letters less to write. 'Tis the pestilentest, most soul-distracting occupation on earth, that is, when you have anything to write about. But to scribble about nothing, as we used to do before we came to be a couple of such sapless dry old sticks as time, trouble, and Satan have made us, is good. It prolongeth life, health and youth, driveth away blue devils and red, and comforteth the inward man ex- ceedingly. Ah happy days, whither are ye fled ! " I am newly returned from Vermont where (at St. Johns- 404 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XTV. bury) on Christmas day, after one hour of clear bright sun- shine, I saw the mercury at —20°, and on another day, being two hours or more in the open air, I came home with a case of ice (I do wear a beard) about chin and cheeks. " I have a fortnight more of vacation, and then begin again my prelections, which I wish were done, ended and forgotten. " 1 have read Quatrefages' Souvenirs. I left out the non- sense about natural history, lungs and livers, plucks and giz- zards, and such like rubbish as you delight in. How he de- scribes coast scenery ! Sicily is to me a pearl inestimable. Wife and I cried to go back again. When I am rich, I will have me a yacht, and sail for Trinacria. You shall go too, and catch nasty sea-devils, and make 'otomies of 'em, and Mary and we will laugh at you. " Well I must end this and go to my tread-mill. " In yours of Dec. 21st from Phila. you said you had left certain books to be forwarded. Were they sent ? None have been received. Do you know anything of Timby's or Trimby's or Twombly's or Tourney's very transportable barometers, rec- ommended by Prof. Hackley ? Or be they a piece of quackery ? "I hope Mary is well. What a diabolical outrage the treatment of Gilliss is ! Things will never come right, till we get the power. Goodbye to both of yon. " Yours truly, " G. P. Maesh." The memoranda mentioned in the following refer to the life of General Estcourt : " 22 Univeksitt Place, New York, Januaxy 9th, 1859. " Deab Lady Estcouet : " We came here about the last of Oct. and intend to remain imtil about the 4th of March. I have undertaken to deliver a course of lectures on the English language, and am now half through with it. My time for preparation was short, and, what with other duties and bad eyes, I have been obliged to confine 1858-1861.] PEEPAEIIifG LECTUEES FOE PEESS. 405 my sight and pen to this one object whenever I could make use of them. But you may be sure I should look upon the suspen- sion of our correspondence as a serious evil, and, if it happened through my fault, as a great wrong, and I hope that a year of fewer cares and perplexities will allow me to write of tener than I did in 1858. I have taken up from time to time, as I could, the interesting memoranda you have sent me, but there are so many questions constantly arising which must be referred to you, that I feel nothing of consequence can be done by me un- till we can confer together. The prospects of this, I am afraid, are growing smaller and smaller, but still if you can suggest any way in which I can aid you in what you are doing, I shall take the greatest pleasure in giving you every help in my power. " We have lately had letters from Sandwith, and are sorry he does not find his island of Barataria a cheap place enough to live in upon his salary. I hope he may soon have a post where the per contra Cr. will be the heaviest side of the ac- count. Lord Napier's recall took everybody by surprise. He was extremely popular with the South, and personally liked by Northern people, though they scold about his pro-slavery sym- pathies. I hope we shall see both him and Lady Napier be- fore they saO. " Kind remembrances to Miss Estcourt and your other friends whom we know. " Tours very truly, "Geo. p. Maesh." Mr. Marsh returned to Vermont at the end of March, and by the encouraging advice of his auditors he gave what time he could command, during the spring and following summer, to the preparation of his course of lectures for the press. But there was always the same necessity for immediately paying work, which could not be put aside, and this preparation pro- ceeded slowly. In the meantime his friends proved to him that they were 406 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. XIV. not unmindful of liis embarrassments, even if they could not suggest anything to relieve them. The following is a reply to a proposal made through Mr. Eaird : " BuKLiNGTON, April 35, 1859. " Deae Baied : " I am as unfit to succeed Dr. V as I should be to follow you. What can I say more ? I hate boys, hate tuition, hate forms, and possess only one qualification for the place, namely poverty, and this, I grieve to say, is shared in as high a degree by some others I know. I am extremely obliged to you and others for the trouble you have taken, but the objections (I won't take up your time by detailing them) are infinite, and I have written to Pennington that I must positively decline. " Answer me in the fewest words (I quake when I see the Ifo. of your letters) ^ra^. How many more volumes (I have nine) will there be of the Pacific R. K. Report? Secondly, Has Dr. Bachmann or somebody else repeated Daines Barring- ton's experiments and found out that birds have a natural tune, and don't adopt the song of the nurse after all, the said Dainea having humbugged himself and his readers in maintaining that it was all a matter of imitation ? " Please present my regards and thanks to Mr. Henry for the good word I hear he spoke in my behalf. " We do jointly salute you jointly, " Yours truly, " G. P. Maesh." About this time he writes again to Lady Estcourt : "... I wrote you last on the and soon after re- ceived yours of , and the last preceding letter. We have read as much of the volumes as we have found time to read to- gether, but as neither of us can just now command our own em- ployments, it often happens that we find but little opportimity for joint occupation, which we used to manage so well, and we 1858-1861.] LETTER TO LADY ESTCOTTKT. 407 have therefore not gone through them all. We have however picked out of them all that relates to those personally known to us, and I need not say that we have found much to interest us, and to awaken recollections both pleasant and painful. " I think you need not doubt that the materials in your pos- session, and your own personal recollections, would enable you to prepare a memoir of General Estcourt in no respect less interesting than the life of Col. Mountain, and I wish it were possible for us to be near enough to you to aid you in compiling and preparing it, but that, for the present at least, Pi-ovidence puts out of our power. " ' Heaven ' is by a mercantile friend of ours in Boston, a man of deep religious feeling and cultivated taste. His book has been well received by the Christian public generally, and he will be gratified to learn that it was not unacceptable to you. " We remember Mrs. Clive with interest personally, but are not acquainted with her works. . . . " Lord Napier, by the way, has rather surprised our leading anti-slavery statesmen, by sympathizing, as is alleged, with the pro-slavery tendencies of our present corrupt government. " We have heard nothing directly from Sandwith for some time. I have been afraid he might be drawn into that shock-, ing Indian vortex, but hope he will be content with civil pre- ferment. " You have probably, before this, heard of the death of our excellent friend, Mr. Biewend, who died on the 10th of April, after a very short illness. Mr. Wyneken gave me the sad in- telligence very soon after, and we learn from our sister, Mrs. Wislizenus, that poor Mrs. Biewend is almost overwhelmed by this sore calamity. It is a consolation to know that a competent provision has been made for her, and for the maintenance and education of the children, by the Synod, and her sorrow, there- fore, will not be aggravated by want, though the care of so large a family of young children mnst be a very heavy burden to one already bowed down by so grievous an affiction. , . ." 408 GEOEGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XIV. " BuKLlNGTON, July 6, 1859. " Dear Baird : " I am glad to hear yoxi are coming to the North, and hope to see a good deal of you and Mary. I expect to start for In". Y. on Monday if Mrs. M. is able to move. I shall take her to Massachusetts, where she will spend a month or so, at a broth- er's, with her sister Lucy, who is now in New England. At any rate, she will return in time to hold much talk with Mary. She says that she can satisfy Mary that Dr. can do her no good, and I am afraid it is so. " Here is a young lady, a nice promising, earnest girl, who is quite an entomologist. She wants inseoi pins. Where can 1 find such in New York ? N. B. Ether won't kill 'em, proba- tum est. "What will ? I expect to be at the Astor House on Tuesday, could you write a line to me there to say where I shall find the pins ? Much obliged to you for the pamphlet. " I shall return home about the 20th more or less. Let me know your movements as well as you can. " I suppose the printers will begin on my lectures next week. I don't expect much from them of either coin or credit. What made Gilliss write me such a foolish letter about the Italians ? I'll pay him off by abusing the Chilians. Also, I'll write to Lucas and stop his expedition. I trust there's virtue enough in the Italians to hang the Pope and a dozen of red-legged cardi- nals, not to speak of priests and Jesuits. Love to Mary. "Yours truly, « G. P. Maesh." "BuKLiNGTON, AnguBt 26, 1859. " Dear B. : " Just got your letter, and should have answered it a week ago, if I had known where to direct. I said to myself, ' If I write to Westport, they'll be at Elizabethtown, and the contrary, so I'll wait,' which I did, and now see that the night you were here, I, contrary to my principles and practice, being that my 1858-1861.] LETTEB TO DK. LIEBEK. 409 wife was absent, went out among the women, and tarried till too late. Well if you come here at the time you speak of, you will find me in the south-west corner of the little parlor we have, over a table, a writing and a writing, with all my might, for fear the printer's devil, now full 300 pp. behind me, will emporte me, as the Frenchmen say. Here is Dr. Marsh wants to see you very badly about something. I think he wants you to tell him whether the talk about our ' red brethren ' and our ' black sisters ' is all bosh or not ; also whether Abdul Hamid really did see niggers with tails, also, having heard that you were studying oology, how to tell a good egg from an addled one, and, in short, if there is anything that you know and he don't, he wants to be told of it. " Mrs. Marsh did honestly intend to come home by Sept. 1, but can't, and will not be here before the 10th, and I fear even a week later. I am extremely sorry for this, both on her ac- count and on Mary's, whom she is very desirous to see. How- ever, I shall be just as glad to see you both, and perhaps even more so, for I don't have a chance to exchange a reasonable word with anybody once in a month, and whereas I used to be a con- versible, and I say it boldly, a witty person, I am grown the dull- est old owl in Christendom. " Write me a letter. Love to Mary. " Tours truly, "G. P. Maesh. " P. S. Dr. Marsh has just come in and says he shall go over to Elizabethtown on Monday." In addition to the many other public and private pre-occupa- tions of the summer of 1859, not only his feelings, but his best hopes for humanity, were strongly enlisted in the war between Austria and Italy. On this subject he wrote to Dr. Lieber: " I am almost afraid to tell you how excited I am about the war. I never felt half the interest in any foreign political ques- 410 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XIV. tion that I do in the liberazione delV Italia dm Goti. Ee- meinber I am a Goth as well as you, but don't for Heaven's sake let Germany and England join Austria in her crusade against human liberty in the Peninsula. " I have written two letters to-day to persons of position in England, denouncing their government, in its a/pparent tenden- cies, as a hostis humani generis, and if England really draws the sword in support of the infernal tyrannies of Italy, I shall cast my vote at the next election for the candidate that holds ont the strongest hopes of a war between us and Great Britain. In short, my red republicanism, which is always hard to keep down, is at present more rampant than Mrs. Marsh makes my Cal- vinism. " I wish I was thirty years younger, and hugelfest and had a Heckeihaler. I would do fine things for liberty ; but old, poor and, above all, not shot-proof — really I can't afford it." "BUBLiNGTON, Jvme 3, 1859. " Dbae Lady Estcouet : " Your letter of Feb. (I believe) reached us before we left N. York, and, as we loitered on the way, we did not return to Burlington until nearly the end of March. Two months later would have been early enough, for our Vermont spring hardly begins before the dog-days. " My book will, I think, appear in the autumn. "What book ! Why, my Lectures on the English Language, delivered in New York last winter. It is a rash thing for a Yankee man to attempt to teach English, but we are a bold people, and I am resolved to venture it. You shall have a copy of what I say in due time. I have made many fine observations about Italian liberty, and so forth, but am afraid they will be superannuated before the book comes out. . . . " Seriously, we are much excited about the war, and most devoutly hope there is no truth in the mouth of those evil prophets who say that England will combine with the Teutons 1S38-1861.J PUBLICATION OF LEOTTJEES. 411 to crush once more unhappy Italy. The establishment of Aus- trian domination in Lombardy, in 1815, is the great political crime of our century (saying nothing about some iniquities of our own) and the interference of England in support of that sad wrong would produce, among the better class of our citizens, an alienation of feeling towards Great Britain, which could not but be highly prejudicial to the best common interests of both nations. " . . . You will be interested to know that our niece. Miss Buell, your young friend of Roman memories, is soon to be married to Mr. Hungerford, a Professor of Geology in our little University. He is a man of scholarly tastes and refined manners, and the engagement is a very satisfactory one to the friends of both parties. " With our affectionate greetings for Miss Estcourt as well as for yourself, " I am most truly yours, "Geo. P. Maesh." The printing of the " Lectures on the English Language " was finished early in October, but, for commercial reasons probably, the first edition was not actually published until some time in January, 1860. This delay was a great disappointment to Mr. Marsh, as he was fully aware how important an element time was in the effect the lectures were likely to produce. He thus writes to Dr. Lieber, on January 4, 1860 : " The Lectures have been printed a long time, but the pub- lication has been postponed for some time to come. I dare say the publisher is right commercially, but this loss of time de- feats one of the principal motives I had in publishing (not ex- pecting pecuniary profit) and if I were to hear to-morrow that the plates of my volume were destroyed, I should be rather glad than sorry, except so far as the publisher's interests are concerned." 412 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [CHAP. XIV. In another part of the same letter he says : " Our Southern friends seem to be madder than ever. I have nev^r believed the Union in much immediate danger, but appearances are now of a more threatening character than I have ever thought them before, and I do not look upon a civil war as by any means a remotely probable event. The next President, if a Kepublican, will need more courage and wisdom than have ever before been required in that post, and I know no man in the party, who has yet given evidence of the heroic character which now seems an indispensable qualification." This last extract was in reply to the following paragraph in a letter lately received from Dr. Lieber, who was writing of the severe illness of one of his sons : " . . . When a man has left his native country, and his adopted country seems about to vanish from under his feet — have you read that threatening letter and proclamation of the Mississippi planters and merchants? — his wife and children almost constitute his whole country." When the lectures finally appeared, their reception was cer- tainly of a character to make the writer forget the vexation caused by delay. The notices in the leading journals and peri- odicals of the time were highly complimentary, but more grati- fying still were the private letters of congratulatory and enthu- siastic praise from the best scholars of his own country and England, with many of whom he had had no previous relations. The publication of these lectures was followed almost im-y mediately by a very courteous request from the English Philo- logical Society that the author would co-operate in their work. This request led to a pleasant correspondence of many years with Mr. F. J. Furnivall and others, but Mr. Marsh could never command the time necessary to make himself useful to that learned society. 1858-1861.] IMPRESSION MADE BX LECTUKES. 413 It may be said here, that the favor with which this work was at first received lias been fully justified by later judgment. In a review of a book by Mr. Marsh on a very different sub- ject, nearly twenty years later, a distinguished English critic, referring to this and the subsequent series of lectures, says : " Mr. Marsh is already well known to us as the author of two of the most scholarly works yet published on the English lan- guage." To estimate fairly the impression made by these lectures on their first publication, it must be remembered how fresh was then the subject which they discussed, and how comparatively few, even among English-speaking scholars, a quarter of a cen- tury since, had really devoted themselves to the systematic study of English. It is true that the London Philological So- ciety had already begun its labors, but these had not as yet ex- cited any very general interest either at home or in this country. It must also be remembered that Mr. Marsh's method of treat- ment was such as to commend the work, not merely to linguists, but to all well-educated persons using the English language. He had chosen his subject from a true love of it, and from a deep sense of its importance in the general culture of his coun- trymen, and no temptation to a display of learning or other ac- complishments could turn him aside for a moment from his main object, which was to arouse a curiosity and kindle an en- thusiasm among all intelligent classes for the study of their mother tongue. He avoided philological technicalities as far as possible, touched very lightly on general questions concerning the origin of speech, and not at great length on the origin of the English language itself; but he dwelt much on the value of etymology, and especially on the importance of tracing the indi- vidual history of words in their actual use, from their first rec- ognized appearance to their present employment or their final disappearance. He regarded such historical etymology as alone thoroughly trustworthy. He pointed out what he considered the best helps in the study of English, treated very fully of its 414 GEORGE PEEKINS MAESH. [CHAP. XIV. vocabulary, of its grammar, of lost words, of new words, of the abuse of words, of their gradual degradation, of the changes wrought in the language by the art of printing, of its later and progressive corruptions, of its proper use as a medium of trans- lation, and especially of its remarkable power, purity, and beauty, as shown in the English Bible. None of these subjects could fail to be of some interest to most intelligent persons, and they were presented with a modest composure and self-restraint of style which, while it showed to the insight of every scholar that immense reserved power and learning lay behind it, could not fail to be agreeable to the general reader. That he had committed himself to no preconceived theory, but had formed his opinions on original investigation, was apparent on every page, and it was equally apparent that the author was prepared to accept any new light that might be thrown upon his subject. All these merits met with the most generous recognition, and this literary success was no doubt a healthful intellectual and moral stimulus to one so heavily weighted with pecuniary em- barrassments and other anxieties as was Mr. Marsh at this time. The inducements previously offered to persuade Mr. Marsh to take up his residence in New York were from time to time renewed. Dr. Lieber wrote, on the 10th of April, 1860 : "... I had lately a long conversation with . * Can we not,' said he, ' get Marsh firmly established here ? ' . . . I stirred as ever blacksmith stirred and blew his fire. . . ." Then followed a proposal, to which Mr. Marsh replied : " I cannot conscientiously leave Burlington unless under cir- cumstances that would make my time worth more to my cred- itors elsewhere — which it would not be at New York in the post proposed. . . ." 1858-1861.] ESTABLISHMENT OP THE "WOELD. 415 It was about this time that the establishment of a news- paper, to be called The World, was projected, and very liberal offers were made to Mr. Marsh to write editorials for the pro- posed paper. This he engaged to do, provided the principles advocated by it were in harmony with his own. He was also requested to invite contributions from such friends as he thought would give weight and influence to the new enterprise. Having ascertained, as he supposed, from the most authorita- tive sources, what its character was to be, he readily accepted these proposals, and wrote to Dr. Lieber, among others, to ask his co-operation. Considerable correspondence passed between them on the subject, from which a few extracts are subjoined. In reply to Mr. Marsh's first letter, mentioning the half- formed plan in a general way. Dr. Lieber says : "Instead of a reply to your most excellent letter — pray write them by the dozen — I intend simply to ask you some questions which I know you can answer. . . . Who is ? "What is the World to be ? Why invest so much ? For profit ? Or is it to be a pro- or anti- or neither-the-one-nor- the-other slavery paper ? What has done ? Is he clever ? Is he a truthful man, and has he character ? Does anything individualize him, or is he simply ' a hand' in the work of the day? " I have often thought that a good paper might be pub- lished on the plan of giving little and being small. It would require far more labor than our big sheets. Many must have felt what I feel — that papers are too large and types too small." To this, Mr. Marsh answers : "... I know somewhat personally, but I have formed my opinion of him more at second hand than from act- ual intercourse. He is considered to be a thoroughly truthful and sincere man. . . . He has been, perhaps is still, a lit- tle frightened by some ultra- Republican demonstrations, and 416 GEOEGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. XIV. the paper may not 'start quite fair' on this great question o£ the age, but I trust it will, from the outset, take a stand which will make its influence just what it ought to be on this and all other topics. ... I have frequently seen the name of a gentleman in New York which bears an odd resemblance to your own — a Dr. Leiber * — who, if, as I suspect, he is asked to write for the paper, can exert a great influence over it on this very point. Couldn't you look him up and 'labor' with him, as we Puritans say ? I am sure you and he can be of great use in this enterprise. As to the proprietors, I know but one of them, but from what I have heard, I do not think the affair by any means a mere speculation. I have promised to write for the paper, and have injpetto divers articles which will be written out and given to an expectant public, aufur et a mesure as they are wanted — and paid for. " I have not seen Humboldt's correspondence, and were it lying before me now, I couldn't. I read nothing but my own works, present and prospective, something after the fashion of Jean Paul's Schulmeisterlein. " Have you seen Sophocles's Glossary of Byzantine Greek? I am hugely delighted with it, because one must perforce read some of the Lower Empire. How entertaining Priscns's ac- couni of that odd embassy to the camp of Attila ! " Well, I can't stay here ^lauder-ing all day. I must go to my work, and so I recommend myself, etc." And in a letter a day or two later he says : " I don't know personally any of the managers of the "World except slightly, and as I wrote last, but I have writ- ten to them today, suggesting the expediency of entering forth- with into communication with Dr. Leiborough — I think that is the name — of New York, a gentleman not wholly unknown in the world of letters. . . . Now that's a hard name. More's * Dr. Lieber had humorouely alluded, in a late letter, to the orthographic distor- tions of Mb name by some of his American correspondents. 1858-1861.] CORRESPONDENCE WITH DR, LIEBER. 417 the pity. Why didn't the father of him give him a better ? I suppose it was because he hadn't a better one himself. " I have a friend with a hard name too, . I believe it to be Bohemian, which he resentfully denies. Why should he ? I wouldn't mind being a countryman and follower of Huss and Jerome and Ziska myself, though it would cost me my Yan- keedom. I hate the Kussians, and set little store by the Poles, but your Bohemian — well. " I've half a mind to tell you what makes me jocose today — I will tell you. I have this day concluded an arrangement with my creditors, surrendered all the property I have in the world (except my library which they won't take) and now, at the age of fifty-nine, I begin the world with a debt of ten thou- sand dollars in good new notes, and not a shilling to pay it with.* But I have time allowed me, and have not had so good courage at any time for ten years. ... I am not so sure that I shall live to pay all, but I shall take great pleasure in trying to do so. This is svJ> rosaP Dr. Lieber, after saying that, if applied to by the managers of the new paper, he should be glad to write for it, adds ; " Your letter made me very sad. That passage which begins, ' !N"ow, when I am fifty-nine years old, etc.,' stung me to the heart, . . . and the stinging point is that poverty now- a-days does not make a man independent, as it did in some periods of antiquity. . . . And 7" am now sixty years old, with a perfect debacle around me. My youth was a period of hope. Now a demoralization of the most cankerous kind is be- fore us. Look at Albany ! . . . And the Atlantic does not bound this demoralization. Judas has become the patron saint — but let me talk of something else. Apropos of an in- * It is a satiaf action to bo able to say that, a few days after the above was written, the justice of the long-contested " claim " was admitted by Congress, and a bill passed to that effect. The appropriation was suffioient to relieve Mr. Marsh almost entirely from debt. 37 418 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [OhAP. XIT. come — I have an idea similar to that which you once sublimely formulated with lapidary naivety ; ' I want small work and big pay ! ' O wonderful five monosyllables ! Give me simply $ and I'll work like a buffalo, and trouble no one any more. I always work hardest when I have least to do. . . . Oh that you were here ! I want yon, and I know we might Beaumont and Fletcher it. I think it hard that at a period when everything, large and small, seems to go crosswise, I can- not live near you to talk and croak, if the last must be." The totally unexpected course of The World booh compelled both Dr. Lieber and Mr. Marsh to withdraw from all connec- tion with it, but the latter did not do so without some plain words to those by whose representations he had been led to write for it. After clearly stating the pledges given him at the time he consented to write and ask others to write for it, and pointing out the gross violation of those pledges, he says, in relation to the excuses offered him for this violation : " Now I must say to you plainly, but in all friendship, that I do not think the ' urgent solicitations of ' or even ' an agreement to send over the country two hundred thousand copies of the paper ' are sufficient to justify a journal in depart- ing from the principles by which it professes to be governed, and placing invited contributors in the position in which you have placed us. " The World will be exposed to still more urgent solicita- tions and still stronger pecuniary inducements will be held out in greater matters, but I hope its future course is not to be de- termined by such considerations. " I can only regret that the line of conduct thus far pursued has compelled me to say unpleasant truths, and has tended to shake a confidence which I hope will be justified hereafter by the independence, moral courage and rectitude of the new jour- nal." 1868-1861.] LETTER TO MR. CHARLES E.NORTON. 419 Mr. Marsh had already given a great deal of time to the preparation of articles for The World before he became satisfied that farther relations with it were impossible,. The majority of these articles were of course never published, and even those printed were never paid for except in part. In his circum- stances the pecuniary disappointment was light only in com- parison with the pain inflicted by such an instance of moral weakness and obliquity in leading men at so critical a period of their country's history. The popularity, among scholars, of his recently published volume on the English language, now led him to contemplate a further pursuance of the same subject, as appears from the following letter, written about this time, to Mr. Charles E. Norton : " I beg you to accept my sincere thanks for your valuable and interesting volume on Italy, as well as for the flattering note which accompanied it. " My Lectures were written with little special preparation, and with very incomplete literary apparatus, to say nothing of other circumstances unfavorable to the satisfactory execution of such a task. The success of the volume has been a surprise to me, and I cannot but ascribe it quite as much to the great in- terest of the subjects, as to the manner in which I have been able to discuss them. I propose to follow up this volume with a series of essays or discourses of a more specifically philologi- cal character, which I hope to bring out within a year. " I have not yet found time for a leisurely perusal of your ' Travel and Study in Italy,' but I have read a large part of it. The subject of Art which you so satisfactorily discuss in many aspects, has occupied a large portion of the comparatively few hours which material cares have left at my disposal ; but of late years I have almost forgotten the art and the antiquities of Italy in the profound interest with which I regard the great struggle between obscurantist despotism and civil and religions 420 GEOEGE PEEKINS MAESH. [Chap. XIV. liberty, now, and for more than ten years past, agitating the peninsula. The question of the national unity and national in- dependence of Italy appears to me the most important one which has arisen in my time, except that of the extension of Muscovite despotism over the Mediterranean basin, and I be- lieve the emancipation of Italy would do more for the political regeneration of the Continent than any other revolution that seems possible. " The cold indifference with which this question is regarded by so many American statesmen — I fear I must say the ill-dis- guised sympathy of too many of them with the cause of Aus- tria and Home — is an evil omen for the interests of freedom among ourselves, and it is a strange paradox that many of the most clamorous advocates for the rights of the American ne- gro are discouraging all expression of zeal for the rights of the white Italian. " I am glad to perceive that you entertain and freely ex- press so just views upon the relations of the Romish Church, and especially of the pontificate, to the great interests of hu- manity, and I trust your volume will meet with a wide circula- tion." As soon as the immediate pressure of debt was removed, the exuberance of Mr. Marsh's intellectual life manifested it- self in every direction. New thoughts seemed to pour in upon him on every subject, and the following playful extracts from letters to Professor Baird, May 10th and 21st, show that the idea of the work afterward entitled " The Earth as Modified by Hnman Action " was already floating in his mind. " BuKLiNQTON, May 10, 1860. " Dbae Bated ; " I am ashamed of the offence I am going to commit, and I ask your pardon in advance. I know you have things enough to do without being pestered by a wild man up in Yermont, but what shall I do ? I am writing seven books, each in seven 1858-1861.] LETTEES TO PEOFESSOE BAIED. 421 quarto volumes, all to be finished in seven weeks from this date, and I want to steal all I can to fill up with, for which purpose I want all my books at the Smithsonian, together with certain packages, which Gilliss will send you from his house. I believe you wrote me they were boxed. I am glad if that job is over, but if there is anything unpacked let the parcels be as few as may be, in regard that express men charge by the piece, and their consciences are like paxwax. (I don't suppose you know the etymology of paxwax. No more do I, but it resembles Spanish pescoso, and may be it is the same word.) I think you told me once there was some cheaper way, half express and half not. Well, send them any good route that won't take forever. Also let me know cost of boxes, nails, broken ham- mers, waste paper, torn book-binders' cuttings, hay, straw and stubble used in packing, and cartage, and everything else. Yerily I will ^epay the same. " I am very glad the war folks have adopted the General's [Churchill's] book. I am visitor at "West Point this year, which gives me the title of Marshal, I think it is, and of course I outrank the general. " Tours truly, "G. P. Maesh." " BuEi-iNGTON, May ]6, 1860. " Dear Bated : " I am glad you've got the books. 1 began another one this morning, and wrote 11 pages. " I won't tell you what the book is to be about, because you'll call me names, but it isn't zoology, nor astronomy, nor ehsmisi/ry, nor mathematics, nor the millennium. " I think my damsel knows genera and species, and all that sort of nonsense, but there are some things in those articles on bugology, which will interest her, and moreover the gift of the book will stimulate her, which is the great thing. " Now, the purpose of this epistle is to say, that whereas 422 GEOKGE PERKINS MAESH. [Ohap. XIV. the Smithsonian sent me a circular, and no doubt a Ee- port for 1858, I never got the book. Eeason, why ? Why because both circular and book were sent to New York, and though the letter was forwarded, the book wasn't, and it is as impossible to get a document out of the N. Y. Post-office as it is to get a sinner out of purgatory without the Pope's leave. "Not that I want the book for myself. Pve got it now, from a Congressman. But that is neither here nor there. I want it for a little girl there is here. She hath expectations, but is wise enough to think it better to know something than not to know anything. So for years she has diligently, pa- tiently and perseveringly, studied entomology, and made good progress therein. " So I want the Report for her." '? May 21. . . . Well, I will tell you about the book, and I should before, only I know that you and Gilliss were jealous of my superior attainments and growing reputation, and if you were informed what I was doing, you and he, and Rosa Bonheur and Mr. Burchmann, and Count Cavour and Agassiz, and the King of Naples, and George Sand, and Louis Napoleon, would do nothing, for a month to come, but run about and try to prejudice folks against me and my works. But Gilliss is gone, and without him, I don't think you and your other confederates can do much, and so I'll tell you. Well, it's a little volume showing that whereas Eitter and Guyot think that the earth made man, man in fact made the earth. Now, don't roll up the white of your eyes, and quote that foolish old saw about the cobbler and his last. I am not going into the scientific, but the historical, in which I am as good as any of you. What I put in of scientific speculations, I shall steal, pretty much, but I do know some things myself. For instance my father had a piece of thick woodland where the ground was always damp. Wild turnips grew there and 1858-1861.] LETTEKS TO PROFESSOR BAIliD. 423 ginseng, and wild pepper sometimes. Well, sir, he cleared up that lot, and drained and cultivated it, and it became a good deal drier, and he raised good corn and grain on it. Now I am going to state this as ^faat and I defy all you speculators about cause and effect to deny it. " I'm glad you've sent the books. . . ." " BuBLiNSTON, June 16, 1860. " Deak Baied : " It would be wrong in me to accept Mr. Henry's too gener- ous offer, but I'll make you another. At Mr. John Paine's, 140 Fifth Avenue, N. Y., are two large boxes of sulphurs from Sicily. A skilful mineralogist appraises them at per $350 to $400 ; but he is my friend, and may be he values them too high. The Smithsonian may have them, sending me, from time to time, any duplicates they may get in European phi- lology, or on Physical Geography, to such an amount as Mr. Henry thinks reasonable. " Write to some friend at N. Y., to call for \h&ra. forihwith, as Mr. P. is going away, and I am afraid they will be injured in moving. They are now in perfectly good condition and very large, various and fine. The fossil wood was found in lime stone near Girgenti 300 feet below the surface. " The Helmholtz I saw at the S. I. was not so well bound as mine, but a large paper copy. It was, I think, in a case in the N. E. corner of the library. " Your agent at IN". Y. must open the boxes (they are in Mr. P.'s coach-house), and repack the minerals before sending them, as they are not now packed for moving. " I am very glad to learn the passage of my bill. The amount will just about pay what I owe, and leave me penniless and contented. "Yours truly, «G. P. Mabsh. "N. B. Sulphurs be fragile, and delays dangerous." 424 GEOKGE PEEKIlirS MAKSH. [Chap. XIV. In the meantime he had been asked to edit a new edition of "Wedgwood's Etymology,"* a taslc which he undertook with pleasure. A still more agreeable invitation, falling in, as it did, with the work he had first laid out for himself, was also received this summer — namely, to deliver, the next winter, befoi'e the Low- ell Institute, Boston, a second course of lectures on the English language. In these lectures he decided to confine himself to the Origin and History of the language as his' special subject, thongh he was well aware that the course must be less interest- ing to any considerable audience than was that of a more gen- eral character given in New York. He had, however, no reason to complain of the reception of these lectures, though they were of necessity rapidly pre- pared, and without many of the helps which seemed absolutely indispensable. The portion of the. winter of 1860-61 spent in Boston, during their delivery, in free and friendly intercourse with the men of Boston and Cambridge who, at that time, were the glory of New England, and some of whom still live to do her honor, was for him a season of rare enjoyment, clouded only by the now almost certain approach of a mortal combat between States and States. Speaking once of a dinner of the Atlantic Club, he said : " These dinners make me most keenly sensible of what I have lost intellectually by the want of more frequent opportunities of meeting with persons of high culture. Nothing stimulates thought like an opportunity of uttering it where it is understood, and a man's wit and humor brighten under every responsive spark." Soon after Mi-. Marsh's return to Yermont another severe afiiiction fell on the Marsh family, in the death of Benjamin Swan, the only son and child of Mr. Lyndon Marsh, at the age of thirty. This young man had manifested the rarest gifts early in * Some portion of the last days, it might almost be said last hours, of Mr. Marsh's life were given to making additional manuscript notes to his edition of Wedgwood, and his copy of that work contains hundreds of these notes of much etymological siguificaxLce^ 1858-1861.] LETTER ON THE POLITICAL SITTTATION. 425 life, but almost constant ill-healtli from boyhood had prevented him from any exercise of his talents and acquirements beyond the small circle who knew him well. In that circle his loss was deeply felt, and to his family it was irreparable. Early in February, 1861, the political agitation in the State had become considerable. Southern threats had thoroughly alarmed a few of the most decided conservatists, and the Gov- ernor had been induced to appoint commissioners, etc. The fol- lowing letter, the address of which is not certain, though it was probably to the Rev. Dr. John Wheeler, of Burlington, will show Mr. Marsh's views on the situation : " BnELiNGTON, Feb. 5th, 1861. " I received yours of Feb. 3d this morning and hasten to reply. I do not know the considerations which moved Gov. Fairbanks to the appointment of commissioners, but my own present judgment is against the measure, both because I do not see the slightest reason to expect any good from the Conven- tion, and because it is extremely doubtful whether the Governor ought to take such a responsibility without the sanction of the legislature, or at least without some evidence that the people of Vermont are inclined to be represented in a Convention called under such auspices as that now proposed. " I take it to be quite certain that the Cotton States will ac- cept no terms which the people of the North can or ought to propose — nothing, in fact, short of such unconditional surren- der as will secure to them in all coming time the virtual control of the National Government. 1 suppose it to be nearly eqnally well settled that the principal border Slave States, if not all of them, will, in any event, ultimately go with the extreme South, right or wrong, and if so, any proposals of concession on our part will only put us in a humiliating position without any prospect of advantage to us from our voluntary self-degrada- tion. " But if the Border Slave States can be retained in a con- 426 GEORGE PERKINS MARSH. [Chap. XIV. federacy with us, it will be only oa condition that we agree to recognize slaves as property by constitutional provision, that we establish the right of transit, (which in fact the acknowledg- ment of the right of property in slaves involves,) and that we consent to the protection of slave property in the territories. I believe the freemen of Vermont, I hope those of the other free States, will never yield a single one of these points, or, in fact, any point in dispute beyond the single repeal of such provi- sions of the personal liberty bills as shall be thought, upon ad- visement, to conflict with the provisions of the Constitution of the United States. " For my own part, I have no hope of the peaceable adjust- ment of this controversy, no desire for a temporary arrange- ment which would stimulate the filibustering propensities of the South, and involve us in a new predatory war, to be fol- lowed by a new secession as soon as a sufficient extent of addi- tional slave territory is secured. " I do not believe that a division of the Union is feasible. The States are a geographical, and must be a political, unit, and if a treaty of separation were negotiated, collisions would im- mediately arise and hostilities be excited which would be ended only by the conquest of one section by the other. " The only course for the Republican party, I think, is to propose nothing, to promise nothing, but to say, simply, when the South states its grievances and demands in an authorized tangible form, and is prepared to furnish proper guarantees in case we accede to them, we will consider the question in a spirit of justice and liberality. In the mean time the legally constituted authorities of the Union shall go on in the discharge of their lawful duties, threatening nothing, yielding nothing. The project of a new constitutional Convention I think should not be entertained for a moment. "If the organic law is to be changed, let it be done by the regular constitutional forms ; any other course would be in the highest degree dangerous to the political rights of the North- 1858-1861.] PROPOSAL OP A MISSION ABROAD. 427 Eastern States, and any surrender of those rights would in the end be fatal to their independence and prosperity. " I am glad that no one of our Congressional delegation has yet nttered a craven word, and I trust that Vermont will be the last State to abandon the principles from which she has never swerved." Before Mr. Marsh's course of lectures in Boston was finished, some of his Vermont friends had written to him that if he would like an appointment abroad, under the incoming Presi- dent, the leading men of his State would be ready unanimously to urge his claims. Mr. Marsh was certainly no less surprised than pleased at so general an expression of good-will toward him ; * and as his affairs were now in a condition to make the acceptance of such an appointment possible, he took the matter at once into serious consideration. His experience at Constan- tinople had shown him how utterly inadequate to the efficient performance of their duties were the salaries of United States ministers at foreign courts ; but during his first European resi- dence he had found the expenses in Italy so much more moder- ate than elsewhere that it seemed to him possible to live there respectably on the appropriation for that mission, and he thought that, if he were offered that post, he might accept it with the reasonable expectation of being able to lay aside, for the future years of himself and family, the fruits of such pri- vate labors as he might find time for, beyond the performance of his public duties.f He therefore informed his friends that the mission to Italy was the only one which his circumstances would allow him to accept, and he was well aware that, as this mission would be the most sought after, his chances of receiving the * A friend " behind the ecenes " afterward said that the secret of the great zeal of the principal railroad managers in Mr. Marsh's behalf, on this occasion, was to secure themselves against the danger of his being appointed by the Legislature to make an- other Railroad Report. t How this expectation was fulfilled wiU appear hereafter. 428 GEOKGE PERKINS MAESH. [Chap. XIV. appointment were very small. At this juncture he was in- formed that this mission, was understood to be intended for Mr. Bryant. As soon as he heard this, he told his friends that there could be no fitter man for the place than Mr. Bryant ; and that his own name must be withdrawn at once, if Mr. Bryant were dis- posed to accept the position. Mr. Bryant, on being consulted, declared that he could not accept the post if offered, and that such influence as he had would be warmly given to promote the nomination of Mr. Marsh. The critical relations of the United States with foreign powers at that moment, and the fact that nearly all the min- isters then in its service abroad were appointees of Mr. Bu- chanan, and consequently favorable to the Kebellion, made an immediate change imperative on the administration of President Lincoln. Other appointments followed rapidly upon that of Mr. Charles F. Adams to England, and among them, on March 29th, that of Mr. Marsh to Italy. Even at that date the pros- pect of a civil war had become almost a certainty ; but before the newly appointed Minister could possibly make his hurried preparations for sailing. Fort Sumter had been fired upon by the rebels and the country was in a blaze. It may be imagined with what feelings so zealous a patriot, and so firm a believer in the value of democratic institutions, left his native land at such a moment. But he knew that if he remained he could be but a looker-on, and that he might perhaps do better service abroad in a public position than at home in a private one. Besides, he was much worn with the long-continued strain of business troubles and the constant use of his pen for the previous two years. On April 1, 1861, he wrote to his friend, C. D. Drake, Esq.: " I cannot forbear to thank you for your kind letter to Mrs. Marsh, and to say that we appreciate your congratulations and your friendship. 1858-1861.] EXTRACT FROM LETTER TO MR. DRAKE. 429 " I had many doubts about accepting the mission, but the certainty I feel, that I could not survive two years more of such work as 1 have done for the two past years, and must do for the two next if 1 remain here, has decided me to go, though at the risk of leaving, undone something of what it seemed my voca- tion to do. . . ." It was thus with some hesitation and regret, but under a strong and loyal sense of duty, that Mr. Marsh assumed a ser- vice in which he was to spend twenty-one fruitful years. END OF VOLUME I. APPENDIX I. HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. A DlSOOtTRSE DEIiTVBEED BEPOBE THE MASSACHUSETTS AiPHA OP THE PhI Beta Kappa SociETy, at Cambeidgb, August 26, 1847. In a youthful people, encamped like ours upon a soil as yet but half ■wrested from the dominion of unsubdued nature, the necessities of its position demand and reward the unremitted exercise of moral energy and physical force, and forbid the wide diffusion of high and refined intel- lectual culture. The age, too, is remarkable as one, ■when the progress of a nation to- ■wards the great ends of national existence is popularly measured by the rapidity of its advancement in the elements of material greatness, and its prosperity is computed by the returns of its custom house, and the profits of its ■workshops. In such a country and such an age, there is no appropriate place, no recognized use, for a purely literary class, and the mere scholar feels that here and now he hath no vocation. We have not yet amassed the necessary wealth for the endowment of literary bene- fices, or the collection of ample libraries for public use, and few inherit estates which warrant their possessors in devoting themselves to a life of learned leisure. The best years of every educated American are nec- essarily spent in striving to acquire a competence, which comes at last too late, when long and painful toils and weary age have dulled his sen- sibilities, and blunted his taste for those refined intellectual pleasures, to ■which his youth looked forward as the best reward of years of patient and self-denying labor. With few exceptions, therefore, the literati of America are men who have commenced in youth the study of the liberal arts, as a general preparation for the duties of professional or commercial life, and have continued to pursue it, as an agreeable and graceful relaxation for their riper years, in the brief intervals of repose which could be borrowed from the pressure of graver cares. With us, the pursuit of knowledge is the task of youth, or the recreation of maturity and age, rather than the stated occupation of a class, and it is in general only the more practical 432 APPENDIX I. aspects of science, that are thouglit worthy of public patronage and lib- eral endowment. When, then, we speak of the American scholar, we mean, not a recluse devoted to quiet literary research, but one who lives and acts in the busy whirl of the great world, shares the anxieties and the hazards of commerce, the toils and the rivalries of the learned pro- fessions, or the fierce strife of contending political factions, or who is engaged perhaps in some industrial pursuit, and is oftener stunned with the clang of the forge and the hum of machinery, than refreshed by the voice of the Muses. Such are they who testify their abiding interest in the cause of good letters, by assembling on festivals like this, fresh from the senate, the forum and the market, warm with their yet unfinished labors, and still covered with the dust of the arena. In the scholastic lives of such, there are three occasions of peculiar interest ; the one, when the youthful student, having finished his gen- eral collegiate course, and received the well-earned token of academical approbation, is emancipated from the discipline of the cloisters, and per- mitted to enter upon the more special studies of preparation for the busi- ness of active life ; another, when that probation terminates, and the disciple is dismissed to embark under his own ipilotage on the troubled waters of his professional career ; the last, when after years of toilsome labor, sobered views, fulfilled promise or disappointed hopes, he returns to his Alma Mater to indulge a propensity of ripened manhood and ad- vancing age, in reviving the memories of the past, and sharing with his ancient associates the sweet and bitter fruits of experimental life. Upon an occasion which resembles the representatives of the three periods I have indicated, it may not be amiss to address them as all once more disciples — not, indeed, of the speaker — but as self-taught pupils in that good discipline, for whose promotion these venerable halls were reared, and to propound a theme connected with the cause of learning, but which neither offers to soothe with pleasant recollections, nor prom- ises to cheer with biilliant hope. Men of action habitually permit the cares and the pleasures of the present to outweigh the remembrance of the past and the solemn inter- ests of the future, but in their speculative inquiries they are prone rather to reason upon the things that have been, and to dream of those that shall be, than to aim at a philosophical appreciation of those which are. But in a course of rapid acquisition, whether of things material or of intellectual treasures, like that which distinguishes this age, it is good sometimes to review our gains, and instead of contenting ourselves with a vainglorious enumeration of our jewels, to set ourselves seriously to inquire what is their trae character and their intrinsic worth. Let us, then, withdraw for an hour from the contemplation of that well-worn topic, so flattering to our pride and so encouraging to the hopes of hu- manity, " The Progress of the Age," forget our laboratories and our com- HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 483 merce, the extension of our territory, and our national crimes and glo- ries, and accompany some hopeful youth, in his first sanguine views, and his final conclusions in. respect to the extent and the essence of the science of our times. The vast and rapidly widening extension of the field of human knowl- edge is the most important among the many circumstances that charac- terize and condition the intellectual life of the modern scholar. For many centuries, every successive generation has added new and labori- ous branches of study to the catalogue of things which man aspires to know, and the liberal arts have been multiplied and divided in the scheme of modem learning, as recent analysis has increased ia nuuxber, and distinguished in essence, the primitive elements of chemical combi- nation. An instinctive impulse inspires the true votary of learning with a feeling that knowledge is in itself a sufficient good, and in spite of his reason, which declares that it is but a means to an ultimate end, and therefore should be pursued with constant reference to its higher uses, he yields to the promptings of an unregulated appetite, and seeks to satisfy the undistinguishing curiosity of youth, by fathoming the mys- teries of all science, and becoming free of the guild of every art. What, then, are the knowledges, of which our ardent student pro- poses to write himself master ? First, an acquaintance with the numer- ous languages, in which European genius in all past and present time has given voice to its inspirations, for he knows that language, no dead assemblage of arbitrary symbols, but a creation instinct with organic life, though itself informed with the thought it expresses, yet gives color to the sentiment of which it is the necessary vehicle, and both, thus interfused, become one essence, as indivisible as the living soul that springs from the coorganism of the body and the spirit. "With him, therefore, the translation of a genial work into a strange speech is as impossible as the doctrine of the metempsychosis, and he believes that none can understand the poet, save those who commune with him in the accents of his mother tongue. If, then, he would appreciate the wisdom of Plato, the eloquence of Demosthenes and Cicero, the terrors of the tragic .^schylus, the comic philosophy of Aristophanes, the pol- ished urbanity of the courtly Horace, he must give his days and nights to the study of the rich and fluent and flexible Greek, and the bald pov- erty and rigid forms of the vague and inartificial Latin. The modem literature of Western continental Europe next attracts his attention, and the languages of Germany and France, and the Spanish Peninsula, Italy, and our cognate North, demand each its tribute of studious hours and midnight vigils. Nor even here do his linguistic labors end, for while he is busied with these rudimental and preparatory studies, new competitors, from regions which geography has yet but half explored, prefer their claims to a niche in the temple of knowledge. The wide 28 434 APPENDIX r. and Tmknown East, which is just beginning to recognize its relationship to the families of civilized Europe, is found to possess a multifarious literature, and historical records of the ancient and modern fortunes of two-thirds of the human race. The dialects of barbarous America are discovered to abound in curious philological interest. The new intel- lectual development, the growing commercial importance, and the threatening political position of the Sclavonic tribes, conspire to render their history and their literature worthy objects of enlightened and not unanxious curiosity. But the dead, too, are awakening from long obliv- ion. Forgotten languages are revived. The monumental inscriptions of Egypt and Persepolis, and the sculptured rocks of Arabia, have been deciphered, and unburied Nineveh waits for an interpreter. Teutonic scholars tell us, that he who would know the principal European tongues in their sources, must study them in the remains of the sacred San- scrit ; and Greece, redeemed from the barbarian, rejects the modei-n corruptions that slavery had engrafted upon her noble language, re- stores the ancient inflections, and tempts the scholar, by addressing him again in the dialect of the Muses. But we wiU suppose our student to have exhausted the utmost range of possible philological attainment, to have acquired the tongues in which the oracles of all wisdom have been uttered, and by thus possess- ing himself of the signet of Solomon, that shall unlock the hidden treas- ures of ancient and modern lore, evoke, at his summons, the spirits of the mighty dead, and make him coeval with all historical time and pres- ent in all earthly space, to be at length prepared to commence his tri- umphal progress over the wide realms of knowledge and fancy and art, that the ambition of man has subdued to his dominion. He is now to master the necessary and absolute truths of mathematical science, in- volving the relations of abstract number and magnitude ; the general dynamic laws that govern the action of those forces of inorganic nature, whose operation pervades all space, binding together the separate mem- bers of the material universe, and, as their corollary, the science of the stars, which no longer, with vaia imposture, essays to predict the vicis- siindes of the microcosm, but assumes to disclose how The gorgeous Earth is whirled for aye, In swift, sublime, mysterious flight, And alternates elysiau Day With deep, chaotic, shuddering Night, — bow the force that causes, and the law that regulates, the fall of an acorn, arrests, at its utmost point of departure, the centrifugal flight of a comet, and how the planets are confined to their orbits by ever-vary- ing, yet always balanced opposing forces ; the subtle art of analytical chemistry, which has brought us one step nearer the secret laboratory HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 435 of nainre, by decomposing the very semina rerum, the primordial germs, of ancient physics, and revealed to us how this hard and ponderous earth, with all its garniture of rock and forest and flower and sea and cloud, is bnilt up out of ethereal elements, now fixed and solidified by strange forces of elective attraction, and now again set free by mysteri- ous repulsion ; the startling speculations of geologists and cosmogo- nists, with whom man is but a new-bom ephemeron, a stranger of to-day, upon the shattered crust of this old globe, that is half composed of the exuviae of microscopic animalculae, the bones of extinct monsters more portentous in form than the fearful shapes that peopled the nightmare dreams of the ancient mythologies, and the remains of a flora as anoma- lous as the winged creatures that darkened the heavy air above it, or the creeping things that wallowed in the slime wherein it grew ; the display of Almighty creative energy in the production of successive or contemporaneous tribes of bird and beast and fish and tree and grass and flower ; the story of savage life and civilization and social progress, the triumphs of peace and the devastations of war, the slow building up and the gradual decay or sudden overthrow of great cities, and the revo- lutions of empire, as set forth in the recorded history of a hundred nations, each exhibiting a distinct phase of our many-sided humanity ; the history of fine and industrial art, from its first essays in the fashion- ing of rude implements for humble uses, through the purely imitative and economic, to the ideal and decorative stages, and of natural science, in its progress from blindly tentative experiment to its development in the general expression of physical law ; political and municipal law, or the cunning contrivances which the ingenuity of man has substituted for physical force in protecting himself against the rapacity and the in- justice of his fellow man ; the poetry and eloquence and criticism and metaphysics and religious dogma of sixty centuries, and finally, the attributes of the great First Cause, sensuously displayed in his material works, and revealed to our moral and intellectual perceptions, both in the direct apprehensions of our conscious being, and more plainly in his written Word. What an appalling array of life-long labors! What an amount of slow and painful acquisition, to be added to the inteUectual training required by ancient discipline ! If the philosophers and statesmen of Greece and Home, whose attainments in the exact sciences compre- hended only the elements of geometry, and whose idea of general schol- arship was satisfied with a knowledge of the brief history, and the com- paratively scanty philosophical and imaginative literature, of their own countries, found life too short to compass aU art, what hope can the most diligent and persevering scholar now entertain of appropriating to his own intellectual uses the ever-enlarging circle of modem knowledge? And how, with all this overtasking of the memory, this exhausting mul- 436 APPENDIX I. titnde and this distracting variety of studies, how, with the dissipation of the iiower of concentrated thought, inevitable in an age of action and novelty and excitement and perpetual change, shall the disciple find leisure or heart, and where a teacher, for the exalted themes of divine philosophy, the pursuit of which ancient sages, and some wise men of modern times, have thoiight the noblest aim and occupation of man? We live in a day of expedients, of short-hand processes and labor- saving contrivances. Studies, which were once pursued for the very sake of the methods, have fallen into disrepute, and we are solicitous only for results. We estimate our knowledge by tale, and are careless of the weight. In our zeal to elevate and gild the pinnacles of our Babel, we quite forget to secure its foundations, and we value a fool, who can recite a score of facts, above ten men that can render a reason. It is therefore quite natural, that the multiplication of facts and formulae necessary to be known should have stimulated the invention of new methods, by which simple acquisition has been much facilitated. Koyal roads to learning have been found to be by no means impracticable, and many branches of knowledge have been so moulded and systematized, with utter disregard of every principle of philosophical arrangement, that they deserve rather to be classed among the successful applications of the art of mnemonics, than to be elevated to the dignity of liberal sciences. It is a popular error to suppose, that when a particular class of facts has been disposed in a convenient artificial arrangement, and provided with a nomenclature of easy etymology and expressive termi- nations, it becomes at once a science, and this error has greatly increased the apparent number of the sciences, without much lightening the labor of their acquisition. All science is founded in absolute and permanent truth, and as no such truths can be newly existent, so neither can there be in strictness any new science. Scientific novelty, therefore, is con- fined to the bare discovery and arrangement of such truths and the facts by which they are illustrated and made intelligible. It is fair, however, to admit that modern philosophical arrangement and exposition have made more comprehensible to well-disciplined minds, as well as facil- itated to mere rote-learners, much previously obscure knowledge, and that many studies, which were formerly but assemblages of independent and unrelated facts, have been found to be susceptible of the applica- tion of organic law, and have consequently assumed the form and dig- nity of scientific ijursuits. If I were required to illustrate my meaning by examples, I should instance philology and comparative anatomy, which only in late years have begun to be investigated with any refer- ence to certain principle. Language is now regarded as neither neces- sarily a miraculous gift, nor a human arbitrary invention or conventional arrangement, but as a natural product, whose forms are as much subject to the relation of cause and effect, as those of any other organization. HUMAW KNOWLEDGE. 437 The knowledge of animal and vegetable strnotnre has nndergone even a greater revolution, and comparative anatomy has enabled Cnvier and his followers to surpass the miracles of Eastern magic, by creating anew from scattered fragments an extinct world of organic life. But in spite of all new facilities, whether empirical or truly philo- sophical in character, the patrimony of knowledge has now become so wide, that none can hope to possess it in its full extent, and no future Crichton shall be able to dispute, in twelve languages, in omni scibili, et de quolibet ente. He, therefore, who aspires to be initiated into the mys- teries of science must elect his faculty, and choose ignorance of some things well worthy to be understood, to the end that he may the more perfectly know and appropriate those truths, for the investigation of which he hath a special vocation. There is another circumstance connected with the interests of knowl- edge proper to be noticed here, both because it has a most important bearing on the character and direction of the learning of our time, and because it usually, consciously or unconsciously, influences the student in the choice of his literary calling. Knowledge has come to be a mar- ketable commodity, and, like modem political virtue, has its price. It maybe "quoted," like other wares, and like them must accommodate itself to the state of the market. So purely and eminently has it become a matter of traffic, that they who vend its records are styled kot i^oxriv, " the trade," to the great scandal and disparagement of the dealers in humbler merchandises. The economic principles of " supply and de- mand " are found to be applicable to the products of the brain, as well as to those of the loom. "Enterprising publishers" have discovered that letters, like cottons, realize the best returns, by the system of "large sales and small profits," and the work of which ten thousand copies can be sold, is a "better book" than that of which yon can sell but one. The author, therefore, instead of seeking a "fit audience," endeavors to make his work level to the capacity of the largest number of readers, and rates the "discernment" of the public by the number of his volumes it buys. There is this difference, however, between the products of mechanical and those of literary industry. The sales of mechanical wares, the price being equal, bear some proportion to the care and labor and skill bestowed upon the fabrication of the article, while in anthorship the race is to the swiftest chirographer, and the works that cost both reader and writer the least expenditure of thought, the least labor of research, are the most likely to win the prize of popu- lar favor. A thoughtful poem, a profound and learned history, a philo- sophical exposition and defence of some great truth, shall lie uncalled-for, and moulder on the publisher's shelves, while a sketchy volume, hastily scribbled in the idle intervals between the laborious diversions of a fash- ionable watering-place, a " mere compound of brain-dribble and printer's 438 APPENDIX I. ink," shall yield a profit that will enable its author to buy a German principality or a seat in parliament, or to build a cotton factory or a mile of railroad. The poHoy of securing to authors an interest in the pecu- niary profits accruing from the sale of their works has doubtless exerted a baneful influence upon the character of recent literature, and debased its standard, in proportion as it has swollen its mass. The hope of gain is almost as constant a motive for literary eflbrt as for the most mechani- cal labors. Men proportion the means they use to the end they purpose to accomplish, and a literature, whose highest stimulus is the prospect of pecuniary reward, infallibly becomes superficial, self-seeking, mer- cenary, — veers with the caprices of popular taste, and humbly follows the public opinion, which it is its proper office to guide. But, on the other hand, a similar policy has been found highly beneficial in the en- couragement of mechanical invention, and in promoting the advance- ment of many branches of natural knowledge. These are independent of opinion, and therefore neither truckle to popular prejudice, nor are liable to be debased by -the corruption of public taste. Even here, how- ever, natural science has assumed somewhat of the mountebank charac- ter of the other liberal arts, and is fain to commend itself to public favor by the legerdemain of the lecture-room, vulgarizing the principles it essays to popularize. But the American man of letters, who receives a pecuniary remuneration for his labors, is by no means without excuse. The general poverty of our learned men, the paucity of the means of in- tellectual improvement in a country without public libraries or galleries of art, and where every student must purchase from his own earnings the collections necessary for his literary, scientific, and artistical researches, these in some measure justify him, who has gratified his passion for more liberal studies, by sacrificing the arts of bread, in asking the lit- eral redemption of the metaphorical pledge, which promises golden fruit to him who plants and waters the tree of knowledge. But let us return to our disciple, whom we left doubting at the ves- tibule of the temple of science, when he thought already to have pene- trated even to the adytum. When now he is so far advanced, that he can discern somewhat of his own ignorance, and perceive both how lit- tle he understands and how much remains to be known, he must set himself earnestly to consider to which of the divinities he shall award the golden apple ; to what goddess he shall devote his homage ; whether he shall worship the idea of beauty as imaged in the creations of poetic genius, realized in formative art, and developed in the canons of sastheti- oal criticism ; whether he shall strive to unveil the arcana of material Nature, and detect the mysterious cunning with which she fashions visi- ble forms, in endless variety of individual feature paradoxically com- bined with constant observance of generic and specific type, or whether he shall devoutly consecrate himself to that higher wisdom, which de- HUMAK KNOWLEDGE. 439 lights in the contemplation of abstract and necessary truth, and soars even to the comprehension of Divine Law. In order to determine his choice aright, he first proceeds to inquire, what is the character of existing knowledge, and what are its highest aims and its ultimate uses. In surveying the- results of human intel- lectual effort, he is amazed to find that our most accurate and certain knowledge of external things concerns objects which, because they are incorporeal in their nature, remote and inaccessible in position, or cog- nizable by the fewest senses, seem most completely beyond our reach. An intimate acquaintance with the things by which we are surrounded, and with which we are in perpetual contact, eludes us. To be clearly discerned by the natural eye, objects must be removed to a certain dis- tance from its pupil, and the mental organ, too, has its nearest limit of distinct vision. The laws of nature, which we have established, and concerning which we reason with the closest precision and the most un- donbting confidence, are those which govern the movements of bodies so distant from the earth's orbit, and apparently so void of all relation to the things of which we are cognizant, that but a single sense assures us of their existence. We predict the result of a chemical experiment, that we have repeated a hundred times, with less certainty than we fore- tell the conjunction of planets. The astronomer can compute with un- erring precision the courses of the stars in all past and all coming time, but no seer can tell whether favorable or adverse breezes will impel the ship that this day ventures forth upon the uncertain deep. We know at what angle the rays of the sun will strike a given point of the earth's surface, an hour, a month, or a century hence, but we cannot foresee whether those rays will be intercepted by a cloud evaporated from the watei-s of the lake at our feet. The astronomers sent forth to the ends of the earth by the governments of Europe, to observe the transit of Venus in 1769, departed for their distant posts, with entire certainty that the phenomenon would happen at the time indicated by their cal- culations ; but what were their anxieties lest terrestrial vapors, whose path no man knoweth, should obscure the disks of the heavenly bodies, whose movements were a subject of such intense scientific interest ! We know the place, the dimensions, the specific gravity, the evening and the morning, the seed-time and the harvest, of the remotest planets of our system ; we can compute the perturbation of their motion, and argue from them the character, the place, and the intensity of newly- suspected disturbing causes, whose very existence is betrayed to us only by their action on bodies invisible to the unarmed eye ; but the obser- vations of six thousand years have added nothing to our knowledge of the irregularities of oui own seasons. Science has dispelled the fears of a concussion between planets, and taught us that even the erratic and threatening comet, so long an object of terror and dismay, is a harmless 440 APPENDIX I. visitant ; bnt it argues on nncertain probabilities, when it assures 118, that the ground on which we build with fancied security, because it has lain undisturbed for a thousand years, shall not to-morrow be convulsed and rent by an earthquake, or overwhelmed by fiery ashes and molten rock ejected from a new-born volcano. But it is not alone our acquaintance with the spontaneous action of nature, that is subject to the anomalous law I have stated. The history of our own times, the motives of the actors in the busy scenes in which we have ourselves participated, the sudden revolutions in public opin- ion, are riddles inexplicable to near observers ; but Ohampollion has written the lives of Pharaohs who were forgotten before the age of He- rodotus, and a Niebuhr can refute the narratives of a Livy, and evolve true history out of a mass of shapeless fictions, twenty centuries af- ter every contemporaneous witness had perished. But we — we who, in spite of the obscurity of our sensuous perceptions, have investigated all space, and described the invisible and intangible things that lie upon its utmost borders, in spite of our feeble physical organization, have gained dominion over the stronger and swifter creatures that inhabit the air, the earth, and the sea, and even subdued the elemental forces to do our bidding ; in spite of the brief space of our life, which extends not to a single year of Uranus, have written the physical history of hun- dreds of ages when as yet man was not, — we are to ourselves the most mysterious of enigmas. While we analyze inorganic matter, determine the mathematical proportions of its ingredients, decompose it into its elementary parts, and resolve these into invisible gases, our acutest re- searches have failed to detect the principle of material life, the vital al- chemy which controls the ordinary laws of chemical action in our own frames, and the thousand organic forms around us. The delicate sensi- bility of the skin gives vague assurance of atmospheric changes, which the nicest instruments of the meteorologist fail to detect, and in the living chemistry of the palate, nameless savors distinguish substances, between which scientific analysis is unable to discriminate. We cannot even retrace the half of our voluntary, and therefore necessarily con- scious, processes. Each of the ten thousand movements of the flying fingers, that execute upon a keyed instrument a rapid and complicated piece of music, obeys an independent exertion of the will ; but what mind can bring into distinct consciousness the successive steps of this swift series of multiplied volitions ? Who can understand the mysteri- ous sympathy, by whose operation the blind arm of the practised slinger hurls the stone, or the well-skilled archer speeds the arrow, to the mark on which his eye is fixed ? What do we know of the laws of physical health and disease ? Who can explain the action, or disclose the cause of epidemic and contagious pestilence, or expound the rationale of those neuralgic maladies that have lately become so rife, now racking HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 441 the frame with strange and sndden pain, now clonding and now preter- naturally sharpening the tortured vision; now deadening the sensibility of the auditory nerve, and now exciting it, so that the lightest footfall, or the faintest whisper, shall rend the tympanum like the loudest thun- der ? "Who can tell us how much of truth is wrapped up in the poor charlatanry of animal magnetism ; who make plain the relations be- tween a sane mind and a healthy body ; and who shall solve for us those other problems of yet darker obscurity and more hopeless attainment, the beginning and the end of our mortal existence, the constitution of our moral and intellectual being, and our true relations to that creative Spirit, which, though elevated infinitely above our conceptions, is yet not tax from every one of us ? The anxious inquirer is doomed to sit down in desponding ignorance of all which is present to him in time or space. He shall forever grope, with straining eyeballs fixed on lights twinkling in the distance, blind meanwhile to the rocks that topple over his head and the pitfalls which threaten his footsteps. He shall forever advance in a moving cloud, enveloping in thick obscurity all that is near, and tantalizing his optica by revealing glimpses of all that is unattainably remote. He is familiar with the republics of Greece and Eome, ignorant of his own ; at home among the stars, a stranger upon earth ; unable precisely to measure a yard, yet computing the distance of Saturn ; to weigh a scruple, yet calculating the specific gravity of Hersohel ; knowing not the ingre- dients which enter into his own nourishment, yet decomposing the sun- beam. Our knowledge seems to be in the inverse ratio of our means of direct apprehension ; and, as the blind man is compensated for the loss of sight by the increased susceptibility of the other senses, so, in our scientific investigations, the intellectual faculties, with far greater ad- vantage, supply the defect of sensuous organs. Sensuous impressions are indeed the means through whose ministry, not by whose direct revelations, the philosopher and the devotee of creative art attain to the knowledge of the laws of nature and of all external things ; but it is by the spiritual sense, which generalizes the gross perceptions of the material eye, that the one deduces constant dynamic law from variable phenomena, and the other acquires the idea of the possible perfection of organic form from the contemplation of objects themselves imperfect, and dissimilar in development. The heavenly bodies exhibited the same visible aspect to the ancient fantas- tic speculator, who conjectured them to be the light of the empyreal fires shining through orifices in the firmament; to the thoughtful Chaldean shepherd, who watched their courses through the dark blue sky of Mesopotamia, and grouped them into arbitrary and fanciful con- stellations ; and to the wise Pythagoras, who, though unarmed with any 442 APPENDIX I. of the modem optical aids, with marvellous sagacity divined the system of the universe. To the natural eye, the planets slowly glide through the maze of fixed stars, backwards and forwards, at constant distances from the spectator, in paths projected on the concave vault of the heavens ; the enlightened vision of the astronomer resolves these ad- vancing and retreating lines into swift motion in elliptical orbits, at ever-varying distances both from the earth and their great centre, the sun. The geometer sees in ten diflferent right-angled triangles, not the natural measure or area or base or hypothenuse, or arc subtended by either acute angle, but the common law of proportion which is equally true of them all. The musician, in a well-arranged composition, hears less the absolute quality and pitch of the successive notes than the rules of melodious sequence and harmonic relation. The naturalist finds, in a hundred specimens, the constant generic and specific characters which alone enter into scientific description, abstracted from the acci- dental peculiarities of the individual ; and Apelles employed numerous models, not that he might compose a new form out of the separate per- fections of each, but that he might detect and represent the specific beauties which were common to them all. Physical law is everywhere conditioned in its practical application. All organized things, indeed, owe their existence, and specific character, each to its one own law ; but disturbing causes, infinite in number, and various in operation, themselves also controlled by other laws, conspire to modify within certain narrow limits, and individualize every organiza- tion. Nature, therefore, never generalizes, never repeats herself, in her outward manifestations ; all her works are particular, and every one of her productions, though possessed of constant generic and specific char- acters, is yet aberrant from the type, and each is distinguishable from all others. When, then, we seek a nearer acquaintance with her works, we are embarrassed and confounded with variety, where our previous concep- tions had led us to expect uniformity. We cannot attain to a knowledge of the infinitely various characteristics of the individual, still less can we comprehend and reconcile the apparently conflicting operation of the disturbing causes which have produced the particular discrepancies. We must, therefore, rise above Nature, and, by the spibituamzation op THE SENSES, do that which she finds impossible. We must generalize namely, and the expression of a law including all generic and specific cha.racteristics, and excluding all others, is the nearest approach we can make to the scientiflo enunciation of a particular fact. But the knowl- edge of nature does not consist in the generalization of all ascertainable facts relating to a particular phenomenon ; for such a method of induc- tion would often lead to false conclusions by embracing facts resulting from disturbing causes, so frequent in their occurrence as to be sup- posed constant. It is eminently the characteristic of a mind well trained HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 443 in scientific discipline, to be able to deduce a probable theory from a few leading facts ; to proceed to its establishment on a priori grounds ; and by the aid of the theory, now independent of the errors of observa- tion, and therefore entitled to rank as a law, to divine all other facts necessarily resulting from it. Hence we have arrived at the completest certainty, and made the surest and most extensive progress in those sciences where nature is embarrassed by the fewest conditions ; abso- lute certainty, only in pure mathematics, which are independent of all the supposed properties of matter, except extension, (itself but a syno- nym for incorporeal space,) and the higher metaphysics; where we are abstracted from every sensuous conception ; approximate certainty, in astronomy and mechanical philosophy, where chemical action is ex- cluded, and all bodies are treated as homogeneous masses ; the investi- gations concerning light, magnetism, and other supposed fluids, rank next, and to chemistry itself, the law of definite proportions, and the introduction of mathematical formulse, have given whatever it possesses of the absolute character of science. From our obtuse sensuous perceptions we derive no direct knowledge of the inherent qualities of quiescent matter, and we infer them only from the reciprocal infiuence of bodies acting upon each other. The independent normal condition of the molecules of the atomic theory, the material essence of being, eludes our most refined analysis. Ultimate de- composition leaves no residuum, and the chemist has not yet found the sensuous substratum, to which the incorporeal forces attach. The dy- namic philosophy, therefore, whether abstractly true or not, is the only form in which natural knowledge can be true for us, the only form in which it can claim to be considered a proper science, and the limit of our possible attainment in physics is an appreciation, not of the ultimate elements, the essence, but of the relations of material things, as they are determined by the laws of nature. Whether, then, we regard things material or immaterial, noumena or phenomena, it is only in abstraction from all actual sensuous appearances that absolute truth can be found ; pure law is all that is truly knowable, and a knowledge of law brings us to the ultimate possible as well as the highest and sublimest limit of human attainment. In allowing that the ministry of the senses is a necessary means of amving at the knowledge of the higher truths of natural science, we do not admit that facts of observation are therefore the evidence by which the certainty of those truths is made manifest. Theory is suggested by phenomena, not dependent on them. In ascending from the particular to the general, we evolve law, in proportion as we eliminate uncertain quantities, and law comes at last to be estabUshed by proofs indepen- dent of obsei-vation. So long as law is proved by experiment alone, it is but an approximation, its mathematical expression is conjectural, and it 444 APPENDIX I. becomes capable of exact enunciation only when it is subject to rigor- ous demonstration. The theoretical law of gravitation was doubtless suggested by the observed accelerated velocity of falling bodies on this earth, but it was not and cannot be proved by such observation, and we compute, not the law from the observed times, but the times from the known law. The errors of observation are ratified by the calculations of theory, and if the sun does not pass the meridian at the expected moment, if Orion lingers behind his time, or the morning star emerges not at his wonted hour from the darkness of the east, the conclusion is not that the law is false, or that the machinery of the heavens is dis- jointed, but that the chronometer is deranged. There are certain arts, of great economic value, which, by an absurd solecism, imputable partly to the poverty of language, and partly to habitual looseness of expression, are popularly called the "practical sciences." Absurdly so styled, we say, because science is but the ex- pression of incorporeal law, and there is but One, even the Creator, who energizes law, and manifests it in productive action. It is a grievous error to suppose these mere mechanical or chemical industrial processes ; a still greater to imagine that the more refined arts are independent of the results of abstract speculation. The circumstance which has ex- erted the most powerful influence on modem economics, one may almost say, on modern civilization, is the general substitution of machinery for the muscular labor of man and beast. Now, the power of machinery depends on, or rather consists in, the subjection of the inorganic forces to human control, and every great revolution in the application of me- chanical contrivance has been preceded by the speculative discovery of some previously unknown physical law, or some further development of the relations of law already ascertained. Archimedes, the great geom- eter, was also the ablest mechanician of ancient times ; and the theoret- ical methods of Bacon, however indifferently exemplified by himself, have been the basis on which all the physical knowledge of modern times has been founded. Art is everywhere stationary, or even retro- grade, so long as knowledge is merely empirical. And the decrepitude of China, where art has been carried to as high a pitch as it ever can be without theoretical science, is doubtless in a great measure to be as- cribed to the want of a philosophy as advanced as her civilization. There is a distinction between empirical knowledge and pure science not often adverted to, but important nevertheless to be noticed. In the one, the student begins with results, and enjoys from the commence- ment the collected fruits of the observations of all his predecessors ; in the other, all men in all time set out from one and the same com- mon starting-point ; and each, from a few fundamental and self-evident truths, must elaborate for himself his own conclusions, deriving no aid from others, except as to logical processes and methods of investigation. HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 445 In the one, the teacher observes for the pnpil ; in the other, the pupil thinks for himself. The one ia progressive by mere accumulation, the other by development and the further pursuit of chains of reasoning already begun. The one perpetually stimulates our curiosity by new revelations of material beauty or curious adaptation, and flatters our vanity by the apparent splendor and the boasted utility of om- cheap triumphs ; the other repels by abstruse formulae, oflfers no brilliant prob- lems for chance solution by tentative methods, tempts no invader with the promise of easy victory. Man is naturally disposed to accumulate that which he has once be- gan to gather, whether it be material gains or intellectual treasures. Education begins with facts, and childhood and youth, absorbed with the collection of these, have no distinct apprehension of the principles by which they are themselves unconsciously actuated. Early habit, therefore, the natural tendency to, accumulate, the ignorance and preju- dice of those to whom elementary instruction is usually committed, the great facility with which facts are stored up as compared with the severer labor of deducing principle, and the popular appreciation of the value of this species of acquirement, all these tempt us, almost irresistibly, to strive to swell our showy heaps of piebald and heterogeneous acquisi- tion, at the cost of that knowledge which is only to be attained by a more self-denying process, and which, when attained, has less of mar- ketable value, though far more of intrinsic worth. " Why read a book you cannot quote ? " inquired, with characteristic narrowness of spirit, the autocrat of British literature in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Why weary yourself with abstract speculations, which have no practical application ? The frequency of such questions as these, the perpetual reference to the meaner uses of knowledge, as its highest end and object, indicate a prevailing ignorance of the true character and pui'- poses of scientific attainment, a low aypreciation of intellectual culture, a sympathy with that degrading philosophy, which sees nothing in the living works of the Creator above organization, nothing in the reason above the judgments of the understanding, nothing in morals beyond a shifting expediency, a contingent balance of profit and loss. The mass of actual human knowledge, as taught in "scientific treatises," is but a barren catalogue, and the modem invention of scien- tific nomenclature, valuable indeed, as an index, is but an imposture when it assumes to be the expression of true knowledge. Mere descrip- tive learning, as, for example, the Linnsean system detached from the consideration of natural affinities and the philosophy of germination and growth, superficial geography irrespective of geological and cosmogoni- cal formation, or anatomy divorced from physiology, though it may have its uses as a technical memory, is in itself of no inherent worth, and for all purposes of sound intellectual training is as valueless as a " scientiflo 446 APPENDIX I. essay " on the game of draughts. It is a mistaie to suppose that all mental acquisition implies mental culture. Facts ■without end may be learned, familiarized, forgotten again, and leave the mind at last more inept than they found it There are also minds, which, by a perverse alchemy, convert gold into stubble, conceive of law and principle only as facts of a wider range, and are as unconscious of the real significance of the truths they utter, as a singing bird is of the mathematical value of musical intervals. Such minds, though not reseiT-oirs of science, may be its conduits, and many a teacher imbues his wiser pupil with knowl- edge, whose esoteric import has never been revealed to himself. It was said of one of the greatest of lawyers, with not less of philo- sophical truth than of rhetorical beauty, that " his learning had passed out of his memory into his judgment." Decided cases, the resolutions of eminent jurists upon particular states of fact, had vanished from his recollection, but the principles of the science of law had become a part of his legal discretion, and conclusions at which others arrived by a painful comparison of recorded authorities were to him matter of in- tuitive perception. We may indeed admit, that the knowledge of a pregnant fact, the appreciation of its relations to past and future phe- nomena, though we are limited to the comprehension of its proximate causes, or rather occasions, and its immediate consequences, and are therefore unable to refer it to its proper law, is not without some bene- ficial effect upon our mental constitution. But the effects of this con- fined knowledge influence only the healthy action of the mind, not its organization, while the recognition and apprehension of a principle is to the mind what the assimilation of aliment is to the bodily frame. It not only upholds and sustains it, but contributes to its growth and de- velopment, energizes it, informs it with itself, enters into its essence, and becomes connatural with it. Such are the conclusions of our scholar, concerning the character and essence of human knowledge. It is fit that he should inquire, also, what are the special tendencies of the learning of our own times. Pre- cisely to determine the spirit, the essential character, and the ultimate influence of the total intellectual activity of any age, is a problem too complicated, and involving too many elements of uncertain value, to ad- mit of contemporaneous solution. The mind fails to grasp a whole so vast, so multifarious, and no human sagacity can compute the result of the hundred forces acting with such unequal intensity, and in so vari- ous directions. Time must first do its work, and consign to merited ob- livion nine-tenths of the recorded products of mental labor in any given period, before the philosopher can venture to pronounce upon the actual significance and effect of the remaining tithe, which has survived be- cause it was animated by some ethereal spark of vital truth. The bet- ter influences, appealing to the reason rather than the understanding. HtrMAN KNOWLEDGE. 447 the conscience rather than the passions, are at all times comparatively few in number, and slow in making their way to the commanding posi- tions which they are destined finally to attain. For the hour their effect appears to be null, they are neutralized by short-lived opposing forces of greater immediate intensity, and the age seems given over to the dominion of false philosophy and self-seeking passion. For this reason, the wise and good man is commonly lavdator iemporis acti, wont to exalt past times, and disparage his own. He is perplexed with the thousand problems that are propounded to-day, and forgotten, unsolved, to-morrow ; startled by new discoveries, which threaten to shake his faith in old realities, stunned by the clamors of fools wrangling over their baubles, and shocked by the levity with which bold reformers ap- ply the axe to time-honored institutions and reverend usages. He com- pai'es the abiding good which remains to us from former times with the predominant and overshadowing evils of his own, forgetting that antiquity, too, had its phantoms and its delusions, its selfish philoso- phy and its false prophecy, and despairing of the good harvest, which, though parched with drought and mixed with tares, shall yet be reaped from the seed himself and other like-minded teachers have sown. The authors and the actors in every age, who occupy themselves with things of permanent interest, and whose influence is the most lasting and the widest, are always the fewest, and their full power is never felt, " until some time be passed over." "We are apt to imagine that great thinkers, whether expressing themselves in authorship or in action, have been as conspicuous in their own day as in ours, and because we read but a dozen authors of a former century, that their contem.porarie3 read no more. But if we consult the private memoirs of the scholars of the six- teenth and seventeenth centuries, we shall find that they complained as loudly as we of the multitude and worthlessness of new books. The shelves of the old libraries collected during that period are crowded with books, doubtless popular and influential in their time, but now as completely forgotten as the literature of Carthage, and as valueless as the trash that makes the fortunes of the publishers of to-day. But what was the contemporaneous reputation of the great writers of that great- est age of English literature, the seventeenth century? By how many writers of that century is Shakspeare quoted or even noticed ? What was Milton's critical appreciation of Shakspeare, and what was Milton's own fame before he was " written up " by Addison ? Doubtless the lit- erary activity of this day is greater, and the number of books annually produced larger, than at any former period. The mass of worthless books is, therefore, also greater, but it would be a hasty, and probably an unjust conclusion, to infer that the proportion of such is increased. In those departments of literature which most strikingly characterize and most powerfully influence an age, the average standard of merit 448 APPENDIX I. has, on the contrary, beyond all question, been vastly elevated since the beginning of this century, and the romantic, the historical, the meta- physical, and the theological literature of the last fifty years may well sustain a comparison with the proudest monuments that human intellect has reared since the revival of letters. The experience of the past au- thorizes us to hope, that when the literature of our own time shall have undergone its final ordeal, the influence of its unsound portion will be found as insignificant as its merits, as impotent for evil as it is power- less for good, and that an enlightened posterity will regard our great contemporaries with the same affectionate reverence which we yield as a willing tribute to the memories and the lessons of the wise and good of former ages. In the literature of America we seem to see abundant promise of rich contributions to the elucidation of the highest themes which can occupy the faculties of mortal man. The American intellect combines the speculative propensities of the German, -with the practi- cal tendencies of the English mind. Public opinion, and the unre- stricted liberty of the press, permit the freest discussion of all the topics of greatest interest to humanity, and among the great number of our original and independent thinkers who are devoted to the solution of the most important finite problems, some cannot fail to strike out " Truths that wake to perish never." The supposed materialistic tendency of modem literature and science, is a frequent theme of apprehension and complaint among scholars addicted to speculative pursuits. It may well be questioned, whether the danger from this quarter is not somewhat exaggerated. The rapid advancement of natural knowledge, and the consequent im- mense extensionof the field of human material, action, and entei-prise, have given a current value, and an apparent preponderance to studies which promise so speedy and so honorable reward to those who success- fully pursue them ; but this evil finds a compensation in the better philosophy which is now beginning to pervade them, and no permanent evil is likely to result from the temporary prevalence of false theories, which the progress of science must, in the end, infallibly refute. "What- ever may be the metaphysical or religious errors of modem chemists or astronomers, no sane man can doubt that the cause of sound philosophy has been promoted by the substitution of the analysis of Berzelius and Liebig for the alchemy of the adepts, and he who prefers the pious as- trology of Lilly and Eamsey to the astronomy of the infidel Lalande, is rather the slave of his prejudices than a lover of truth. We said at the outset, that knowledge, being a means to an end, ought to be pursued with reference to its higher uses. What, then, are those uses ? Do they consist in the cultivation or the gratification of an elegant taste? Is the most exalted knowledge the recreation of a spirit wearied with the cares, the strifes, and the follies of the world, and seek- HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 449 ing inglorious ease, or asking an hour's repose, that it may recover strength, to enter again -with new heart, upon the same idle round of toils and jealousies and struggles for the empty honors of what its bet- ter instincts tell it is but the paradise of fools ? Or does the famous Baconian aphorism truly express at once the essential character and the noblest aim of science ? — Ejiowledge is Power. But what is the true signification of this proposition ? We have endeavored to explain our conception of knowledge ; but what is Power ? According to the vul- gar interpretation, power is here a force exerted objectively ; it is the authority or control of one being over others, over the brute creation, or the forces of inanimate nature, man's dominion over man, the beasts of the field, or the mighty elements. If knowledge be pursued with a reference to particular objects, the attainments of the student will be imbued with the character of his ends. If it be sought as a means of the acquisition of wealth, through its application to the humbler uses of life or the drudgery of professional labor, it becomes grovelling, earthy, venal ; if as a means of personal aggrandizement, popular influ- ence, or brief authority, it is but the study of the evil passions and the degrading weaknesses of man. It is debased by famOiarity with vice and folly, and the student ends by becoming as depraved as those whose meannesses he has learned to flatter. He that seeks knowledge, that he may thereby erect himself above his fellow man, or subdue things organized or inorganic to his own private raaterial uses, shall never find it. He may learn much of the springs of depraved human action, much of the arts that enable the weak to conti-ol the strong, the few to profit by the slavery of the many — much of the adaptation of external means to selfish ends ; but he shall never attain to the lofty goal of the genu- ine scholar, the possession of the power, which is alone the true expres- sion of the highest human knowledge— the power, namely, to reign supreme over himself, to resist evil impulses from within and base temptations from without, to subdue his passions to his will, his wiU to his reason and his conscience. In the philosophical tongue of Greece, and even in the gross and in- expressive Latin, the verb which denotes the possession of power is al- lied to, or rather involves, the substantive verb, and therefore signifies a state, not an energy, a condition of inward being, not a manifestation of outward action. This, then, is the true conception of that power, which is the proper exponent of knowledge, the power of being that which it is man's highest duty and his highest interest to become. But though that knowledge, which is power, consists not in action, yet it by no means excludes it. On the contrary, it is the fruitfnlest source, the most indispensable condition, of aU right action. He who knoweth all things is likewise the creator of all things. The carefully elaborated thought of wise men has been the motive-power of humanity in aU its 29 450 APPENDIX I. great and beneficent revolutions, and it has been observed that men con- tend more resolutely for their principles, their rational convictions, than for their instincts or even their interests. Great masses of men are not roused to the value of their interests, until they assume the abstract form of a general proposition, and the principle on which they depend is enunciated as a logical conclusion, or a self-evident truth. The promise of future happiness is not the strongest of religious motives, nor the hope of posthumous renown the most powerful incen- tive, that impels the soldier to oSei up his life upon the field of battle. Beneath these obvious springs of action lie other and mightier im- pulses, the truths, namely, that the one worships and the other defends. General truths alone, truth in morals, truth in religion, truth in art, are the sources of all enthusiasm, for the Divine Being is the essence of all truth ; and enthusiasm, rightly interpreted, signifies the divinity opera- tive within us. If there be any one study fitted above all others to excite in us en- thusiastic hopes of a brilliant earthly destiny for man, of rapid and end- less advancement in the knowledge of nature, of splendid achievement in art, of the final solution of the obscurest problems in the theory of so- cial organization and government, it is especially the pursuit of science considered as the knowledge of causative law. For we know liothing truly, except as we know it in its causes, the laws by virtue of which it is what it is. And herein ai'e we most conscious of our likeness to the image of that Being with whom power is but knowledge in action ; herein are we assured of the fulfilment of that birth-day pledge, which promises to man universal dominion, not only over fish and fowl and beast and reptile, but over the great earth itself, over the organic cre- ation and the inorganic world. It is the office of sound philosophy to reconcile and harmonize metaphysical and natural science, by referring all known effects alike to immaterial causes, and this is the method which at once secures to the spiritual its just superiority above mere nature, inspires us with the noblest views of the dignity of science, promises the sublimest revelations to its votaries, and encourages us to hope for man a perpetually accelerating progress in power and in wis- dom. Knowledge, then, pursued in the right path and for the right ends, is to its possessor both the highest subjective good, and the most pow- erful means of promoting the best interests of his fellow-man, the sum- mum bonum of heathen philosophy and selfish instinct, and the noblest instrument of generous Christian duty. It commends itself to the hopes of sanguine, strong, and healthy youth, as an enlivening, energizing, and actuating principle ; to the repose of age, as the most soothing, at- tractive, and inexhaustible of contemplative recreations. The action to which it stimulates does not necessarily reveal itself in the parade of HUMAN KNOWLEDGE. 451 authorship, or in bustling participation in the affairs of men. Its mode of operation is often like that of the obscurer physical forces ; it works in unseen channels, and its effects betray it, but we cannot always trace the path, or even discover the source, of its influences. Many are poets, who have never penned Their inspiration ; and sages whose names find no place in literary history have left their impress on the character of epochs. For this reason, the pursuit of speculative science is an occupation eminently suited to that period, when the man of busy life begins to find in the incipient decay of his physical powers a motive for gradually retiring from the more laborious duties of his calling. At this age, the intellectual faculties are usually in their full vigor. They still demand the stimulating pabulum vphich they have been wont to find in the stirring cares of active life, and if this be withheld, and the relish for speculative inquiry have been lost from disuse, the mind begins to prey upon itself, and strengthens the hostile influences that are undermining its own tenement. But he who has wisely kept alive his interest in letters, or art, or abstract science, finds in them the stimulus which is necessary to maintain the healthful play of the mental organization, to secure the mind from the rust of in- action, and to restore to it the freshness of its early morning, for the love of knowledge is the magic fountain of perpetual youth, and he that is ever learning is ever young. But the age of the wise man has another compensation. It has been wisely ordered that the sense of material beauty, in the myriad forms of spontaneous nature and formative art, is the last developed of all the powers of sensuous perception. It cannot arrive at its full perfection until the abatement of the "natural force" allows to the pure intelli- gence its due superiority over the physical energies, and the sense to which the impressions of visible beauty are addressed has been refined and spiritualized by long, and perhaps unconscious sesthetical cultiva- tion. We say unconscious cultivation, for in this school of life our great teacher often disguises her lessons. Of aU our organs, the eye is the most susceptible of cultui-e, and it is the one for whose involuntary train- ing nature has made the largest provision. Untaught newborn vision dis- tinguishes but outline and color, and it is long observation, alone, that gives the perception of the relief which springs from the distribution of light and shade, the notions of distance and relative position, and the estimate of comparative magnitudes. Thus far unreflecting experience carries her pupU. But the ethereal perception of beauty is a product of the period when strengthening intellect has acquired its full dominion over mortified passion, the superadded fruit of moral culture, and attains 452 APPENDIX I. not its ripeness, save under tlie rays of an autumnal sun. Nature has thus reserved for the sober eye of age the most intelligent appreciation, and the most exquisite enjoyment, of the choicest of her sensuous gifts, and the evening of the scholar who hath made his life a discipline, is cheered with the most ennobling contemplations of the world of intel- lect, and gilded with the most exalted pleasures of the world of sense. APPENDIX II. THE MEXICAN" WAR. Speech demtebed in the House of Eepbesentatives or the United States, Pebbtjaet 10, 1848. The House being in Committee of the Whole on the State of the Union, and having under consideration the bill authorizing a loan not exceeding $18,500,000, Mb. MAESH, of Vermont, said- Ma. Chairman : I propose to avail myself of this occasion to do what I have not yet done in this place — to express, namely, in the fewest possible words, my own opinion, and, as I suppose, that of a large majority of my constitu- ents, respecting the causes, character, objects, and tendencies of the war in which we are engaged, and to assign the reasons which will compel me to vote against all measures designed for the prosecution of hostili- ties professedly commenced for defence, but which have been, and are, waged for purposes of aggression, invasion, and conquest. It is said that it is too late to investigate the causes of the war, and that the only remaining question proper for the consideration of Con- gress is, what measures will tend to bring it to the most speedy termi- nation, and enable us to conclude a peace upon terms most advantageous to ourselves. This would, indeed, be so, if it were true that a state of war, however commenced, absolved us from all duties towards those of our fellow-men who have become our enemies. But there are those, and I profess myself of the number, who can discern no sound distinc- tion between the principles of public and private morality, and who be- lieve that war, like private violence, can lawfully be resorted to only as a necessary means of securing already existing rights, not of creating new and independent claims. It becomes, therefore, material to ascer- tain the origin, causes, and purposes of every war, before it is possible to determine when its lawful ends have been accomplished, and what measure of reparation the victorious party is entitled to exact. In inquiring into the origin of the present war, it is essential to dis- 454 APPENDIX II. tinguish between its primary causes and its proximate occasions. That its first cause was the annexation of Texas, no man disputes ; and there is as little doubt that its immediate occasion was the occupation of the left bank of the Bio Grande by the army of the United States, in obedi- ence to the order of the President. The war is the natural and legiti- mate consequence of annexation ; but, though a natural and legitimate it does not follow that it was a necessary, result of that measure, and therefore this Administration may be chargeable with its guilt, although the original oficnce was committed before the present Executive came into power. If the Administration knowingly omitted any proper means to avert, or voluntarily adopted any measure calculated to precipitate, so dire a calamity, if it refuses to accept the terms which are believed to be now offered by prostrate and suppliant Mexico, it is responsible, before God and man, for all the consequences of its acts or its neglects. I shall not venture to afiBrm that, after the mortal wound which we had inflicted upon the honor and the interests of Mexico, by our rapacious absorption of a territory once indisioutably hers, and to which she still laid claim, it was possible to avoid a war ; but as no effort was ever made in good faith to propitiate that republic — a point most conclusively established by the gentleman from Connecticut (Me. Dison) — ^we are not entitled to presume that she would have turned a deaf ear to honorable proposals of peace ; and inasmuch as Mexico had committed no hostile act, the casus belli cannot be considered as having occurred until the President forcibly occupied a territory not only claimed, but quietly possessed by her — a territory to which, as the gentleman from Indiana (Mb. Thompson) has, in his admirable speech, indisputably proved, Texas had not the shadow of title — a territory which the Senate of the United States had virtually adjudged to be still part and parcel of the Mexican domain. The war, therefore, was not only provoked, but commenced by us ; and though I will not say that the Administration wantonly plunged into it, with a full apprehension of its arduous character, its countless cost of treasure and of blood, yet I have no hesitation in pro- fessing my deliberate conviction that the Executive ordered the army to advance upon the Bio Grande under, not the belief only, but the hope, that this insult would goad Mexico to some hostile demonstration, which might furnish a plausible reason for a great increase of our military estab- lishment, and, consequently, of Executive patronage, and, at the same time, enable the Administration, at the cheap cost of " a small war," to extort from humbled Mexico the cession of her fairest provinces, and thus place Mr. Polk by the side of his predecessor, on that bad eminence which John Tyler now occupies, solitary and alone, as the great en- larger of the "area of freedom." There was, moreover, a special motive for taking steps to secure the acquisition of a part, at least, of Califor- nia. The surrender of our claims to northern Oregon had been prede- THE MEXICAN WAK. 455 termined. It was foreseen that this sacrifice of Western interests, this mortification of Western pride, would excite a feeling of indignation which must be appeased, and nothing seemed more likely to accomplish this end than a war with Mexico, which -would, furnish congenial occu- pation to the restless and adventurous spirits of the Mississippi valley, divert public attention from the unpopular policy of the Administration in respect to Oregon, and atone for the loss of the northern portion of that territory by new acquisitions on its southern border. Entertaining these views upon the origin and purposes of the war, I can consider it in no other light than as a national crime ; but, inde- pendently of this, it is an offence against the moral spirit of our time, a retrograde step in the movement of humanity, a violent wresting of our national energies and national resources to unnatural, inappropriate, and mischievous uses. The creative arts of peace, the arts of production, multiplication, and conversion, are now universally recognized as the objects on which the physical powers of man should be mainly exerted ; they are arts eminently suited to the character and wants of our peonle, and the genius of our institutions, and it is a complete inversion of the principles of true statesmanship in the nineteenth century, as well as a violation of the rules of Christianity, to call upon our countrymen to turn the ploughshare into the sword. We are suited to grow by devel- opment and assimilation, rather than by sudden accretion ; by gradual extension, than by rapid acquisition ; by honorable and well-earned gain, than by rapacious appropriation. The very publicity inseparable from all the operations of our Government is fatal to the successful conduct of aggressive war, which, like most other crimes, must be planned, if not perpetrated, in dai'kness. But it is not, perhaps, surprising that the party which aims to break down the industrial establishments of the country, and smother those peaceful arts which have hitherto so largely contributed to its moral and physical prosperity, should seek to withdraw attention from the pernicious tendencies of its general policy, to gild political demoralization and financial quackery with the splendor of foreign conquest, and to furnish new, though guilty, occupation to hands which are destined no longer to find employment in the quiet pursuits of civil life. A great effort is made to hide from us the enormity of this war, and to reconcile our consciences to its turpitude, by exaggerated pictures of the wrongs we have sustained at the hands of Mexico ; of the glory which the prowess of our troops will reflect on our national character ; of the advantages which we are to reap from a few successful campaigns. The South is told that, by the acquisition of new territory, we shall ob- tain room for that extension of slavery, which is alleged to be essential to the permanence of the system, the continued political ascendency of the South, and the future security of the slaveholder, and shall thereby 456 APPENDIX II. disappoint the delusive hope with which Mr. Walker's famous letter cozened the Democracy of the North into the support of annexation, as a measure favorable to the ultimate extinction of slavery ; the North is encouraged to hope that, by force of the Wilmot proviso, engrafted on some war bill, or treaty of peace, the further spread of slavery will be prevented, and thus the vaunted extension of the area of freedom will at length come to be no longer an impudent mockery ; and they. who have clothed two nations in scarlet and in sackcloth, and kindled the fires of hell in ten times ten thousand hearts, would blind us to all this misery, all this guilt, with the dazzling lustre of the " brightest jewel of the diadem of commerce," the trade of the east, which the balmy gales of the Pacific are to waft to our future commercial marts in the secure havens of California, in galleons more richly freighted than the ■ half-forgotten prizes of Drake and Anson. I am not an apologist for Mexico ; still less an admirer of her polity or her institutions. No man can be better persuaded that she has done us great wrongs — wrongs for which we might lawfully have exacted atonement, had they not been provoked by our injurious treatment of her ; no man can hope less from the future prospects, or the future dis- position, of a country cursed with the two worst possible forms of mis- rule — the tyranny of the soldier and the tyranny of the priest. The people of Mexico are, technically, the enemies of my country. I wish them no triumphs over our diplomacy, no trophies over our arms ; but I have no sympathy with that mistaken spirit of revenge which glories in visiting the errors of rulers on their ignorant and unoffending sub- jects ; none with that infernal passion which gloats upon the corses of the slaughtered Indians — the forced recruits, that constitute so large a proportion of the Mexican armies ; none with that hell-born ambition, with " Bye that scorcheth all it glares upon ; " which scorns the victories of peace, and vouchsafes the chaplet to none but the minister of misery and death. I have no desire that a sin- gle Mexican wife should be made a widow, a single Mexican child an orphan ; and I would rather that my country should sit down in honest shame, than purchase, at the price of rapine and tears and blood, the "unjust glory" of waving her flag over all the wide continent that stretches between the stormy Atlantic and the shores of the Tranquil Sea. " One murder makes a villain, thousands a hero." But the cold-blooded politician, who, safe in his cabinet, provokes hos- tilities for the sake of the patronage that war may give him — the ambi- tious statesman, who wages a war of conquest for the extension of his country's territory, or the glory of his own Administration— the hot» THE MEXICAN "WAR. 457 headed mler, who bathes a continent in blood to avenge a fancied in- sult, or a breach of diplomatic etiquette — these are wholesale manslay- ers, whom no carnage can elevate to heroism. Napoleon, that man of iron and of blood, repented, trembled, wept, when he remembered that he had needlessly anticipated the attack of an outpost, and thus short- ened by a day the lives of a few soldiers, to gratify the curiosity of a woman with the spectacle of a battle. But what compunctions have visited our rulers, for the blood of those who fell in the ranks in the valley of the Eio Grande, at the storming of Monterey, at Buena Vista, at Cerro Gordo, and in those sanguinary conflicts under the walls of Mexico ; for the unoffending and unresisting women and children, who were slaughtered in the bombardment of Vera Cruz, or who have fallen victims to the infuriated passions of an undisciplined, marauding, sol- diery ; for the thousands whom the pestilence of the camp has silently swept into the grave; for the sorrow and desolation of bereavement, whose tokens are so conspicuous even in the highways of this metropo- lis? But while discussing the moral considerations connected with this question, it is fit that we should inquire into the character of the origi- nal caiisa cattsarum, of the war, and all its attendant crimes and miseries, the measure of which they are, as I have ah'eady said, legitimate, if not necessary consequences, and of the means by which that great wrong was effected. I shall not take upon myself to maintain that the bare act of annexa- tion, considered apart from its motives and its means, was clearly a just and sufficient ground for a declaration of war against us by Mexico. The determination of this question would involve an inquiry into the relations between that republic and her revolted province, which is not practicable, until the secret history of the Texan revolution shall be better understood than it is likely to be by this generation. Texas may be said to have established an actual independence, and it is possible, though never yet proved, that her revolt was justified by the misgovern- ment of Mexico, or the inability of that unhappy State to afford a pro- tective government at all. But whatever may have been the right of the question between the metropolis and her colony, it is plain that our conduct must be judged by the motives which guided us, and the in- strumentalities to which we resorted. The avowed motives of the annexation of Texas were to prevent the abolition of slavery in that country, and to secure additional territory for the expansion and growth of the system. It was argued that the accomplishment of these objects was indispensable to the permanence and stability of the institution of slavery ; that they were necessary for the maintenance of a local right, recognized and guaranteed by the Con- stitution, and that therefore the General Government was in good faith 458 APPENDIX II. bound, to aid in effecting them. There were also some timid suggestions concerning the value of Texas as a future market for northern produce and manufactures ; some puerile apprehensions of the establishment of British domination in that republic ; some idle babble about the im- portance of that territory to the military defence of the Union ; some philanthropic humbug in regard to the influence of annexation in hast- ening the final extinction of slavery ; but I pass these over, because, although they might impose on those weak brethren who were simple enough to be deluded by the Kane letter into the belief that Mr. Polk was friendly to the protective policy and the tariff of 1842, yet it is quite notorious that none of them influenced one vote in the American Congress. The twenty-eighth Congress was called upon to decide the naked, undisguised problem, whether annexation should be consum- mated as "a Southern question, a question of slavery," whether the General Government, whose authority to restrict slavery is denied, should be invoked to put forth its power to maintain and defend it. Up to this time it had been strenuously insisted by the advocates of Southern rights that the Federal Government had absolutely no juris- diction of any matter pertaining to the institution of slavery, except the right of recaption of fugitive slaves in the free States, in opposition to the views of the abolitionists, who contended that the influence of the Government ought to be exerted to bring about the ultimate abrogation of the system. But here, in their overheated zeal, the partizans of an- nexation conceded the principle to their opponents ; and the abolition- ists have now the example and the authority of their ablest antagonists for appealing to the General Government for legislative action upon a matter hitherto alleged to lie exclusively within the jurisdiction of the several States. But my colleague, (Mr. Collamer,) has lately so fully and clearly elucidated this point, that it would be quite idle for me to enlarge upon the subject. I have neither time nor desire to enter, at present, into any discus- sion of the moral character of slavery itself, as a christian or an unchris- tian institution. I have already, on other occasions, expressed myself explicitly enough on that topic, and my opinions are still unchanged, in spite of the theological argument, the proof from Holy Writ, which I have heard advanced on this floor, and with which, as certain indica- tions lead me to conclude, we are again to be favored. But whatever may be the character of that system, whatever its in- fluence for good or evil, it is of great moment to the cause of historical truth that it should never be forgotten — that the true motive which dic- tated the action of all, I repeat it, of all official persons, who aided in the annexation of Texas, was to extend, strengthen, and perpetuate the tottering institution of domestic slavery. But wrong as I hold the motive to have been, I fear that, if the whole THE MEXICAN WAR. 459 tnith were revealed, we should find more of crime in the means and ap- pliances through -which that act was accomplished, than in the end it- self. He who would write the blackest page in American history must ferret out the secret and long-continued intrigues by which the Texan Revolution was fomented ; uncover the hollow duplicity with which our neutral relations with Mexico were violated ; disclose the Machiavellian diplomacy by which opposite and inconsistent arguments were made to influence different sections of this country, and the arts whereby annex- ation was made the policy of the Democratic party, in spite of the de- liberate and solemnly expressed convictions of the entire North ; depict how the hopes of Texan stock-jobbers fell and rose as this or that North- em Democratic member exhibited tokens of rebellion, or meekly gave in his adhesion to the slavish policy of his party ; expose the means by which certain sudden and notorious changes of opinion in these legisla- tive halls were produced ; explain how that contemptible faction, that so long swung here like a pendulum, between the law of conscience and the dictate of party, alternately betraying each, was at length fixed ; and, in fine, tell what votes were extorted by craven fear, and what pur- chased by damnable corruption. I think myself bound in candor to admit that, however selfish may have been the policy of the South in the matter of annexation, the con- duct of the most unscrupulous Southern advocates of that untoward measure is infinitely more excusable than that of their Northern allies, who, by the stand they have taken on the Wilmot Proviso, have pro- nounced upon themselves judgment of irrevocable condemnation. The whole Southern people entertained a fixed opinion, mistaken I think, but unquestionably sincere, that the best interests of the South imperi- ously demanded annexation ; and those brave, good men from the slave- holding States, who stood by their whole country in that dark hour, did verily believe that, in obeying the voice of conscience, they were mak- ing a heroic sacrifice of a local interest to the stronger claims of the gen- eral good. The Northern supporters of annexation have placed upon record a solemn avowal, which time will not expunge, that ihei/ had falsely betrayed the rights and interests of those who sent them hither. The Wilmot Proviso, as it is called after its putative father, or the Brinkerhoff Proviso, as perhaps it should be styled, (for I leave those gentlemen to settle the question of paternity between themselves,) com- ing as it did from a knot of politicians whose whole political action fur- nishes most conclusive proof of their insincerity, is the boldest experi- ment ever tried upon the credulity of the American people ; and now that it has failed to delude those upon whom it was intended to im- pose, that it has effected neither of the two objects it was designed to accomplish, I have no hesitation in predicting, that many of those who were most zealous for its adoption will be the first to listen to tempta- 460 APPENDIX II. tion from high places, and to abandon the principle it embodies. Sir, I embrace not all in this sweeping condemnation. Some there were who were untainted with the original sin of annexation, some whose moral courage had not been stem enough to resist the menaces of party and the blandishments of power, and who, now repentant, took, too late, this only method of testifying their unavailing regret for that most de- plorable and fatal error. But for the mass of those who both promoted annexation and sustained the Wilmot Proviso, I have no such charity. With these, two considerations were operative. Some hoped to pro- pitiate a local feeling at home ; with others, the whole affair was but an ill-concealed stratagem to dispose of an obnoxious Western candidate for the Presidency, by compelling him to commit himself on this tick- lish question by his vote in the Senate, while his great rival was lying perdu at the North, in a position which relieved him from the necessity of taking either horn of the dilemma. That Western gentleman has taken ground against the Proviso ; but in spite of this, if he should chance to be selected as the Democratic candidate for the Executive chair, I wUl confess that I know little of the Democracy, if his noisiest adherents are not found among the very men who dug that pit to entrap liim. The Proviso, it will be remembered, was adopted in the House of Eepresentatives, as an amendment to the " three million bill," on the 15th of February, 1847, by a majority of nine. On the 3d of March, 1847, the Administration defeated the amendment by a majority oifive. Sir, they could just as easily have made that majority ffly. Some solitary Democratic Abdiel, indeed, might have been found faithful enough, " with flame of zeal severe," to maintain "Against revolted multitudes the cause Of Truth." But I am speaking what every member of the 28th Congress knows, when I say that the Northern Democrats generally were prepared to abandon the Proviso, at once and altogether, as soon as it was ascer- tained that it would be defeated in the Senate. But elections were ap- proaching in New Hampshire and Connecticut, there were vacancies in the Congressional delegation from Maine to be filled, and it was thought not safe to shock the people of those States by too sudden a dereliction from a principle which had just been proclaimed with such a fanfaro- nade of Democratic tin trumpets. The Administration preferred the risk of the moral effect in strengthening the abolition cause to the prob- able loss of those three States, and therefore issued a dispensation to the faithful of the North, graciously permitting them, for this once, to ad- here to the abhorred Proviso. I shall not characterize this relaxation of party discipline as a crime ; but, considering the end designed to be effected, it was what the great THE MEXICAN WAK. 461 French intriguer said -was worse — it was a blunder. The people of the North, even the Democracy, have taken their leaders at their word, pledged themselves in-evocably to the great characteristic feature of the ordinance of 1787, and though deserted by their faithless guides, will firmly maintain the new position they have assumed. Mr. Chairman, I do not know the present state of public opinion at the South on this matter of Texan annexation ; but, now that Texas has proved to be not quite the El Dorado it was fabled, that it has been the means of involving us in an unjust predatory war, exciting a lust for ter- ritorial aggrandizement which threatens to become the fatal spring of every crime and eveiy curse that have disgraced the most rapacious States of the old world, of kindling anew the flames of civil discord, and alienating from each other the members of this fair confederacy, I am much mistaken if, after all this, some of the clear-headed and patriotic sons of the South do not begin to entertain doubts of the wisdom, the expediency, the justice of that measure, if there are not even some who ■ would be content to spare the baleful effulgence of that "lone star," if we could thereby secure quiet within our own borders, and an honorable peace with the republic of Mexico. The only remaining lawful motive for the further prosecution of this war is to obtain a just and honorable peace ; for revenge, if so base a passion could be an adequate inducement for a great nation to engage in war with a puny and imbecile people, has long since been satisfied. But what terms of peace would be honorable and just ? No peace can be honorable to us, which is not at the same time honorable to Mexico. It can never be honorable to the stronger to extort by force that which it is dishonorable to the weaker to yield. What, then, are the obliga- tions of Mexico to us ? Does she owe us any thing for exciting an insm-- rection in her most important colony, and giving " aid and comfort " to her revolted subjects ? Any thing for appropriating to ourselves a terri- tory once indisputably hers, and to which she had never sold or surren- dered her claim ? Any thing for invading and ravaging with fire and sword, upon a baseless pretence of title, a disputed region, of which she was, and from the first hour of her national existence had been, in quiet and undisturbed possession ? Any thing for the slaughter of thousands of her people, the storming of Monterey, the inglorious rout of Buena Vista, the reduction of her strongest fortress, the military occupation of her fairest provinces, the conquest of her proud capital, and the destruc- tion of the venerable memorials of her ancient civilization, the humilia- tion, disgrace, and dissolution of her government ? What claim have we but the recognition and payment of her acknowledged liabilities to private American citizens ; and who doubts that she is now ready again to recognize them, and to pay them whenever she has the means ? But, on the other hand, has it not been over and over again admitted by this 462 APPENDIX II. Govemment that Mexico ought to receive an indemnity for the loss of Texas ? Have not distinct intimations been given that the United States would make her a reasonable pecuniary allowance in any arrangement by which she should cede to us her rights to her revolted province ? Who shall estimate the amount of this compensation ? Are we to be judges in our own cause, and to determine that, upon the whole, the balance is upon our side ? Gentlemen who repudiate acquisition of territory by conquest, and who have heretofore admitted that we owed Mexico a com- pensation for the relinquishment of her rights to Texas, still insist that we must coerce the cession of California and other provinces by way of indemnity for the claims of our citizens, and this upon the avowed ground that a balance may be due us which Mexico can pay in no other way. The claims of our citizens are supposed to amount to from three to seven miUions. If Mexico was entitled to an indemnity for the loss of Texas, would any man estimate the value of her claim at less than seven millions ? And had she no such claim, can it be pretended that California, and all the vast territory between that province and Texas, if worth any thing, are worth no more than this ? There is, then, no just, BO honorable ground for prosecuting this war as a means of coercing an indemnity to our citizens, or of the acquisition of territory ; and any compulsory treaty, by which Mexico shall yield us that which she does not owe, will be humiliating to her and doubly shameful to us. But such a peace as the Administration hopes now to conquer, and now to buy, will be attended with as little of profit as of honor. What has this nation to gain by further extension of territory ? The prosperity of a people consists in the aggregate individual prosperity of its citizens, and is not measured by the number of its armies or its fleets, the extent of its territorial jurisdiction, or the splendor of its govei-nment. We are apt to forget that a splendid government is not one of the objects of our institutions, and to confound the power of rulers with the prosperity of their subjects ; but who doubts that the citizens of the little republic of San Marino, and of the duchy of Tuscany, are as happy and as pros- perous as if they were annexed to the kingdom of Sardinia, or even en- joyed the paternal discipline of the gentle Metternich ? Who has for- gotten that Norway, though one of the feeblest powers, is yet the freest state of continental Europe ? The increase of the power of a government by territorial aggrandize- ment is not attended with a corresponding increase of the power of the people to resist its encroachments upon the liberties of the citizen. With enlargement of territory comes increase of standing armies, of navies, and, especially, of that which is more dangerous to liberty than either, of Executive patronage. All these instruments of power are concentrated ; the means of resistance scattered and dispersed. What, in small republics, is the safeguard of their liberties — ^the distribution THE MEXICAN WAE. 463 of power through a multitTide of jurisdictions and departments — ^be- comes in greater commonwealths an engine for their overthrow, when- ever increased and widely diffused patronage enables the Executive to control those jurisdictions. The States have neither fleets nor armies, and though the ordinary militia of a single one of them might set at defiance the whole military force which it has hitherto been our policy to maintain, yet it does not follow that the increased armies and navies which our contemplated ex- pansion will oblige us to keep on foot may not enable an ambitious President to establish a military despotism ; and, as in ancient Eome, the soldiery raised to protect the frontier may supersede your electoral colleges, and impose upon you a Dictator, who shall supersede your Constitution and your laws. Even now tokens of evil augury may be discerned. The legions of Pennsylvania have cast their suffrages in Mexico. The ballot-box has become a part of the furniture of the camp, and the commander, whom military law invests with the power of life and death, issues his orders for the " free " election of the civil magis- tracy of a State, to whose jurisdiction neither he nor his troops are longer amenable. When the soil of an independent country is sufficiently wide, and its climate sufficiently genial, to supply its population with the cardinal necessaries of human life, and reasonable means of exchange with for- eign lands — when its physical power is adequate to its def enca against invasion and aggression, and when its rights to an equal position among civilized communities are recognized, it possesses all the necessary ele- ments of true prosperity, and nothing is gained by further increase of power or extension of territory. This point we reached long since. Indeed, our original limits fulfilled all the necessaiy conditions of na- tional prosperity, and I much doubt whether we should not at this mo- ment have occupied a higher place among the nations of the earth than we now enjoy, if we had been content with the inheritance our wiser fathers devised to us. We had a territory, such, in position and con- figuration, that it was whoUy invulnerable from without, and at the same time so situated as to give us the most enviable facUities for universal commerce, as weU as for maritime power; we enjoyed a boundless variety of soU, climate, and natural productions ; an extent of surface adequate to the sustenance of a larger population than any kingdom of Europe, and yielding the most abundant materials for industrial elabo- ration, the most plentiful means of commercial exchange. What more than this has earth to offer to social man ? I shall not dispute the wis- dom of the acquisition of Florida and eastern Louisiana. The latter seemed necessary, as a means of providing an outlet for the products of the teeming West, especially in the day when canals and railroads had not yet furnished a better means of transport to the ocean than that 464 APPENDIX II. famous river, which is " frozen for three months in the year, and dry the remaining nine ; " or even than that " inland sea," whose snags and sawyers are more formidable to navigators than the Libyan Syrtes, or the rock and whirlpool of old Scylla and Charybdis, but I am not able to see wherein the lot of any American has been, or is likely to be, im- proved by further expansion. I cannot conceive that the value of plan- tations in the old Southern States will be increased by throwing into market the cotton and sugar lands of Texas ; that the price of Genesee flour will be raised by competition with the vast grain-growing region between the Mississippi and the Bocky mountain desert ; or that the commerce of New York, and Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and Charles- ton, will profit by the transfer of the China trade to the Bay of San Francisco, or the mouth of the Columbia. There is at least no present necessity of extension for the accommodation of our growing population, or for any purpose of national trade or national defence ; and it would, therefore, be worse than idle to wage a useless and a guilty war, to con- quer for posterity a territory which it will be quite able to secure for itself by honest means, whenever it may require it. I am sceptical in regard to the exact truth of the glowing descrip- tions we have heard and read of the physical advantages of Oi-egon and California. But if they, indeed, are what they are represented to be, they well may, and no doubt will, one day form a separate confederacy. They are rapidly filling up with American emigrants, and they will soon be strong enough to maintain themselves as an independent people. They will sympathize with our institutions, and adopt our form of gov- ernment, but they can never have a common interest with us, and the mutual good of all parties will demand that all political bonds between them and us should be severed. Why, then, persevere in this unprofit- able struggle, to acquire what cannot long te ours to enjoy ? But what evidence is there that the possession of New Mexico, or California, however permanent, can be attended with any solid advan- tages to the people of this country? They are separated from us by sterile and arid deserts, or chains of lofty and almost impassable moun- tains. They yield no natural products of commercial value which our own soil does not abundantly supply. They axe described by the best informed explorers as being, in the main, unsuited to agriculture, un- able to sustain a dense population, adapted only to the lowest form of semi-civilized life — the pastoral state. And, above all, they are inhab- ited by a mixed population, of habits, opinions, and characters incapable of sympathy or assimilation with our own ; a race, whom the experience of an entire generation has proved to be unfitted for self-government, and unprepared to appreciate, sustain, or enjoy free institutions. But how is the war to be carried on ? Every financial scheme hith- erto proposed is based on the assumption, that the North will be gen- THE MEXICAN WAE. 465 erons enough, or stupid enough, to bear the sole pecuniary burden of a war, commenced and prosecuted with a single eye to the interests of, I will not say the people, but of certain political aspirants of the South. The annexation of Texas, a strictly Southern measure, and the initiatory step towards this war, by giving the anti-tariff party a majority in the Senate, enabled those aspirants to deprive the industry of the North of the protection to which it was justly entitled, and which it had enjoyed, from the organization of the Government to that evil hour when the tariff of 1846 was adopted ; and these same aspirants, and their follow- ers, now propose to tax our pockets, to pay for all the consequences of that disastrous act. The Secretary of the Treasury recommends a duty on tea and coffee ; other prominent Democrats have advised the imposition of duties on the free list, embracing many articles chiefly consumed at the North ; and others, again, stem republican haters, no doubt, of accumulated wealth, and luxury, and superfluity, disinterest- edly propose a tax on bank stock, and all articles of gold and silver. Disguise it as you will, it is plain that all these schemes are both calcu- lated and designed to shift the whole pecuniary burden of the war upon Northern shoulders. How much tea and coffee are consumed by the three or four millions of Southern slaves ? What is the value of the jewelry that decks their persons, and the forks, and spoons, and goblets of plate that adorn their tables ? How many of them consult gold and silver watches, to know their hours of laboi', refreshment, and repose ? The last Democratic House of Representatives resolved, on the motion of a Southern gentleman, "that the people of the United States are too patriotic to refuse any necessary tax in time of war." How happens it that no Southern Democratic financier has ever been ' ' patriotic " enough to move a tax for the support of this war, embracing a certain descrip- tion of property possessed only by the South — "persons," namely, " held in slavery, or involuntary servitude?" And when that persecuted phi- lanthropist, who has "achieved greatness" by coupling his name with the far-famed proviso, moved a tax, apportioned according to the Con- stitution, on the same basis as congressional representation, with what transports of jubilant "patriotism" did the "sweet South" hail the suggestion ! Sir, the Government organ very plainly intimated to him, that Ms " patriotism " was of the sort so energetically anathematized by Dr. Johnson. Mr. Chairman, I warn gentlemen that none of these shallow devices to tax one portion of this Confederacy for the benefit of another will succeed ; and those who desire to protract the war must, in the end, be content to bear their share, at least, of its burdens. It has been af- firmed that no resort to direct taxation will be necessary. I am not of that opinion. We shall not know the cost of the war so long as this Ad- ministration has it in its power to conceal it from the people ; but we 30 APPENDIX II. know enough of it to be certain that it cannot be carried on without an expenditure vastly greater than any previous conflict has occasioned. Mexico has thrice the population of this Confederacy at the outbreak of the American Revolution — a population, though inferior to that of the colonies in the qualities of the soldier, yet not divided in opinion re- specting the justice of their cause, nor half paralyzed by superstitious doubts upon the lawfulness of rebellion, but united as one man in de- fending their soil against the incursions of a foe alien in blood, and strangers in language and religion. If Great Britain, after eight years of warfare, the expenditure of hundreds of millions of money, and the loss of many thousands of lives, was willing to withdraw from the strug- gle with her former colonies, at the sacrifice of every point for which she contended, at what cost of money, with what loss of life, and after how long a war, may we hope to extort from Mexico a peace which shall yield to us all that we choose to ask, and all she has to give ? I have given my reasons for thinking that no increase of our present territory is desirable, and I believe it is now possible, by a union of the good men of all parties, to arrest the evils which must ensue from any further successful attempts at sectional aggrandizement. Let us unite in a solemn legislative declaration that this war shall not be pros- ecuted with a view to the dismemberment of Mexico. Let us refuse all supplies to armies equipped for conquest, and proclaim to our sister Republic that we are now ready to accept precisely the terms we ought to have offered before we commenced this unhappy war. I think my- self entirely safe in saying, that if the honest convictions of a majority of both Houses' do not compel them to sanction, by their votes, proposi- tions like these, the world will be justified in believing that, with American legislators, the voice of patriotism is less heeded than the dictates of party. There is another consideration, which ought to have weight with honest men of all parties, with the people of every section of the Ameri- can Union : it is the certainty that any extension of our territory in a Bouthwestwardly direction involves the renewed agitation, and in a far more fearful shape, of the Missouri controversy. Whenever a treaty shall be presented to the Senate, embracing the cession of Mexican territory, the question will be directly presented. Southern gentlemen affirm that no treaty, attended, directly or indirectly, with a prohibition of slavery south of 36° 30', can be ratified. We of the North demand that none shall be, and are firmly persuaded that none can be, ratified without. Why, then, conquer or buy provinces which will be but an apple of discord, to be quarrelled over, but not enjoyed ? I admired the firmness which some Southern gentlemen, of both parties, displayed during the pendency of the Oregon question, in spite of popular clamor and the denunciations of a venal press. They saved THE MEXICAN WAB. 467 this country from a war, which the folly of the Adminiatration seemed to have rendered inevitable, and compelled the settlement of a diffi- cult and long-pending controversy upon terms of equitable adjustment, which the good sense of the nation has fully approved. It remains for them to prove, what I have hitherto believed, and still trust, that their conduct on that occasion was dictated by no jealousy of Northern ag^ grandisement, to exercise now the magnanimity they then professed, and to refute the charge that they have constrained the Administi-ation to truckle to omnipotent Britain, and aided it to trample on impotent Mexico. There is, so far as I know, no particular anxiety at the North to ex- tend our boundaries in a northwardly direction, but such a feeling will inevitably be excited by further acquisitions in the opposite quaarter, and it is well to understand that a confederacy of States, a Government in- dependent of Great Britain, and even annexation to the United States, have all come to be debatable questions in Canada itself. I do not refer to any contemplated insurrection or violent revolution ; but it is certain that an entire though peaceful change in the administration of those colonies, by which their government shall become, in a great meas- ure, assimilated to our own, and at no distant day allied with, if not merged in it, is both desired and expected by a large proportion of those British subjects in the provinces, who, a very few years since, de- tested nothing more thoroughly than American institutions. The vote on the supply bill of May, 1846, by which the existence of the war with Mexico was recognized, has been much insisted on as a committal of those who voted for the bill to the support of all measures looking to the prosecution of the war. I do not esteem this argument a very ingenuous one, on the part of those who advance it. It is notori- ous that the bill, as originally reported, contained no declaration of war, or recognition of the war as existing ; that the false and offensive pre- amble embracing that declaration was offered as an amendment, after the time for debate had been limited to two hours, dui-ing which no Whig was allowed to obtain the floor ; that the amendment was opposed by almost every Whig member of the House ; that several amendments, simply providing the necessary supplies, were rejected, and that, after the adoption of the preamble, the bill was immediately passed under the previous question. At that time nothing was known of Taylor's victo- ries. The army was thought, by militaiy men in Washington, to be in an eminently critical position ; audit was believed, that though it might sustain itself for a few weeks, yet, unless relieved, it must inevitably soon be cut off by the Mexican forces. The consequences of a defeat would have been, in a high degree, disastrous. We should have lost ovs most reUable troops. A victory by the Mexicans would have stimulated them to desperate effoi-ts to foUow up the advantages they had gained. 468 APPENDIX II. Foreign sympathies would have been enlisted in their favor, and foreign adventurers, by sea and land, would have flocked to their standard. These evils, it was hoped, might be averted by sending immediate suc- cor to our gallant troops, whom the temerity of the Administration had exposed to imminent hazard, and those opposed to the war were appar- ently left to choose between the sacrifice of three thousand brave men and the support of a bill intended to save them, though prefaced by a preamble as false as the provocation of the war was unjustifiable. The fact that war existed was, indeed, unquestionable, and the defence of our country and its troops was clearly a duty. Should we be deterred from the performance of this duty because a majority of this House chose to assert, in spite of our protestations to the contrary, that the war had been begun by the " act of Mexico ? " We thought not. It was plain that a snare was laid for us. The authors of the war desired to compel us to sanction it as just, or to expose us to popular indigna- tion for refusing supplies believed to be necessary to save the army from destruction. We toot what seemed to be the only means of foil- ing this unworthy stratagem. We voted against the amendment, but, when that was forced upon us, we sustained the bill. Perhaps, after all, this was an error. Perhaps we ought to have bet- ter known the valor of our troops, and the skill of their commandei-s, and to have hoped from these a more favorable result than we could dare to expect from the justice of our cause. But if this were so, if we erred in voting supplies which then seemed indispensable for the sal- vation of our army, and which were asked for no other purpose, wo should be still more inexcusable for voting additional means now, when no such necessity exists, and when the iniquitous purpose of dismember- ment, plunder, and conquest is proclaimed, with a shameless profligacy of avowal, and an open contempt of law, human and divine, of which the civilized world has seen no example since the promulgation of the Christian dispensation. Sir, I lack words to express my abhorrence of the heaven-daring insolence with which maxims, that thieves and rob- bers would blush to own, have been appealed to by influential AmericaiS statesmen as the rules by which the foreign policy of this great nation is to be determined. Human language has yet no name for that new crime, whereby a mighty and highly cultivated people is to put itself without the pale of civilization, and declare itself the enemy of law, and right, and humanity ; history records no instance of such a heinous and impudent mockery of every sanction that man reverences and GOD has proclaimed. Besides these general reasons against furnishing supplies for the prosecution of the war, there are other sufficient grounds for refusing to comply with the demand of the President for additional forces. The regular regiments already organized are very far from full in rank and THE MEXICAN 'WAE. 469 file. These the President has power to fill Tip by enlistment, and there is little probability that this can be accomplished within the term of another twelvemonth. Why, then, organize new regiments while the existing ones are, and are destined to remain, mere skeletons? The purpose is plain. The regiments are to be raised, or rather officered, for no other end or aim bnt to increase the patronage of the Executive, to enable it to reward hungry partisans, or purchase new ones, by a prodigal distribution of rank and emoluments. How will these regi- ments be officered ? "Will the higher commands be tendered to gentle- men of military education and experience? "Will faithful service in Florida, or in this Mexican war, be rewarded by fair promotion ? He that would know from what class these officers will be taken needs but consult the records of the War Office for the last two years, and look at the hordes of cormorants that flock hither from the f otu" quarters of the Union, at every rumored augmentation of the army, and are even now trooping at the heels of men in authority, and gaping for pay and ra- tions. I know there are among the applicants brave, honorable, intelli- gent men, men who would do credit to any service, any profession. But what are the mass of these valorous Bobadils ? Idle debauched loafers, who, feeling no vocation for labor, and having experimentally proved their incapacity to do aught better, conceive themselves to be gifted with "military genius," and charged with a mission to destroy and lay waste what creative nature and human industry have produced ; political jack-puddings, whose success in party stratagem has inspired them with lofty notions of their own abilities in military strategy; unkempt, unshaven coxcombs, microscopic martialists, truculent Tom Thumbs, verdant overgrown jnvenals, burly thrasonic Anakim, with an air that reminds one of the giant's chant in the fable — Fee, faw, fum ! I emell the blood of a Hexioan ! Dead or alive, I "will have some ! Truly, Mr. Chairman, I can say, with the poor young prince — My eyes are out, Even with the fierce looks of these bloody men. Of such cheap stuff as this are chiefly made the self -puffed " citizen- soldier," pseudo-heroes of this Mexican war, whom blinded party zeal peiTuits to usurp rank and honors denied to the wiser and better men, whose courage and skill, and heroic self-devotion, have enabled the ad- venturers who have supplanted them to reap a transient harvest of false glory, that as ill becomes the wearers as borrowed plumes the jackdaw. Brute courage, indeed, these doughty paladins may have ; I see no rea- son why they should not. Risking themselves they risk little, and vain- 470 APPENDIX II. ing their own lives at nothing, they estimate them at just what they are worth. I have touched upon a point to which the attention of the American public has been by no means as strongly drawn as its importance de- mands. I refer to the injustice with which the oflBoers of the regular army have been treated. Not only have they been denied the promo- tion to which experience and faithful service had entitled them, but it has been the studied eflfort of the Administration, and the party that sustains it, to deprive them of the credit which justly belongs to them for the brilliant successes that have crowned our military operations in Mexico, by ascribing to the mere animal courage of the volunteers and new raised regiments, results which were in a far greater degree due to the skill and intelligence of the educated gentlemen of the regular army, by whom the most important movements were directed or advised. I am not disposed to question the patriotism or the valor of the volun- teers. The American people have sufficiently exhibited these qualities on other and less equivocal fields, and I have no doubt they will again be displayed in still more heroic forms, whenever a higher motive and a worthier cause shall demand their exercise. But I fear the noble sentiment of patriotism has been too much al- loyed by other impulses besides a sense of duty to our country. What was there, in fact, to call forth any special enthusiasm of patriotic feel- ing ? How had our country's honor been tarnished, save by the acts of her own rulers ? What American hearth had been threatened with desolation, what fields menaced with Mexican invasion ? So far as the rescue of our gallant army from the critical position in which it had been placed, not, as I believe, by any error of judgment in the brave and wise men who led it, but by the express, though unconstitutional order of the Cabinet ; so far as the protection of the country against the serious evils which, both as immediate and indirect consequences, would have resulted from the sacrifice of that army ; bo far as the conduct of the volunteer has been prompted by such considerations, it has been eminently praiseworthy. But beyond this I fear there is little that a Christian or a moralist can approve, little that a wise statesman would desire to cherish. If you subtract from the impulses of those who have 80 eagerly rushed to the field the hope of military fame, and perhaps of political advancement as its consequence, the passion for the romance of danger, the love of daring enterprise, and the expectation of wild ad- venture in those strange and distant climes, which the historians of the infernal exploits of Cortez have made classic ground, you will, in too many instances, have little left but that savage thirst of blood, which eigh- teen centuries of Christian teachings have not yet been able to eradicate from the human breast. But creditable as are our recent victories to the bravery of our troops, THE MEXICAN WAR. 471 they are far more important to our national safety and renown, as fur- nishing to the world evidence that the highest order of strategical tal- ent exists among us, and that our system of military education is able to produce as accomplished a corps of officers as the best regulated Eu- ropean professional schools. The disposition to withhold from the regular officers the praise and the rewards to which they are justly entitled is not an accident, not a mere matter of personal feeling with the members of the present Cabi- net, but it is one among the many evidences of a design, which has been long entertained by a certain party, to demoralize the army, break down its esprit de corps, abolish the military academy, and convert the mili- tary establishment into an engine of political corruption. The army, as formerly organized, is too conservative in its character and influence to' suit the views of the destructive school. Education, subordination, discipline, permanent tenure of office, are formidable obstacles to the "progress " of modem Democracy ; and among other " reforms," which will signalize the triumph of radicalism, will be the suppression of the school at West Point, rotation in office in the military service, and the establishment of the principle that political subserviency is the only route to military preferment. The introduction of similar innovations into the navy is somewhat more difficult, but it is not impracticable even there ; and in case a European war should require an increase of our marine, the oldest commodore may very probably find himself super- seded by a New York pilot, or an amateur captain of a private yacht. I know as little of the grounds on which the Administration has thought proper to take away one-half the effective strength of the army in Mexico, by recalling its accomplished commander, as I do of those on which the Executive chose to give double strength and vigor to the Mexican forces by restoring to them their ablest general ; and therefore, however strong my impressions, I will not pronounce judgment before- hand on the propriety of that act. This much, however, I may safely say, that a Cabinet which has not had the generosity to bestow upon General Scott a single personal compliment for the greatest military achievement of this generation, a single word of praise on the unrivalled genius displayed in the great combinations which alone rendered the prowess of our troops available, and which have commanded the un- bounded admiration of the ablest living captains, exhibits a spirit of illiberality towards a most eminent and deserving fellow- citizen, which well accords with the injustice of its policy towards Mexico. APPENDIX III. ACCOUNT OF MR. MARSH'S ENGRAVmOS* The collection of engravings and works upon the history of art has attracted much interest, not from indiscriminating idlers, but from men of taste, and particularly from artists. This collection, though not the largest in the country, is believed to be the choicest. It was made with the special design of illustrating the progress and resources of the art of engraving in all its branches, from its early masters to the present time. It required an educated eye, a cultivated taste, an earnest study of the history of the art, much diligent search, and the aid of many friends and correspondents, to bring together so many of the most val- uable prints which have ever been executed. The acquisition of this collection has saved to the Institution all expenditure of either time or money, for skill and labor thus bestowed. The collection contains some of the best works of nearly every en- graver of celebrity. There is one portfolio of the works of Albert Diirer, containing twenty engravings on copper and two on iron, by his own hand — and among them most of his best and rarest works ; about sixty-five copies on copper, including the famous seventeen by Marc Antonio ; thirteen difierent portraits of Diirer, and a large number of wood-cuts engraved by him, or under his inspection. Another portfolio contains a large collection of the etchings of Eembrandt, including some of his most beautiful pieces, particularly the " Christ healing the Sick," an early and fine impression. There is a portfolio of two hun- dred engravings and etchings by Claude Lorraine, Hollar, and Bega ; a portfolio of superb portraits by Nanteuil, Wille, Edelink, and others, among them a first impression of the ' ' Louis XIV. in Armor " by Nanteuil; a portfolio of prints from the old Italian masters, comprising many that are extremely rare ; and another from the old German masters, contain- ing about one hundred prints, many of them scarce and of great beauty. There are, beside, five portfolios of sheet engravings, including very * From the Fifth Annual Eeport of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, etc. , etc. Read, March 7, 1851, at a speoial session of the Senate. ACCOUNT OF MR. MAKSIl'S ENGRAVINGS. 473 choice prints ; among them are thirty-one which are valued by Longhi at fifteen hundred dollars. Among the galleries and published collections are the " Musee Koyal," in two volumes folio, proofs before the letter, a superb copy ; Devon's " Monuments des Arts du Dessin," in four volumes folio, of which only two hundred and fifty copies were published ; Baillie's Works, one hundred plates, foHo ; Thorwaldsen's "Works, four volumes folio ; Hogarth's Works, folio, and the German edition in quarto ; The Boydell Gallery, two volumes folio ; Boydell's " Shakspeare Gallery," a remarkably good copy, containing many proofs before the letter, numerous etchings, and several progressive plates ; Claude's " Liber Veritatis," an original copy, three volumes folio ; The Houghton Gal- lery, two volumes folio ; Chamberlain's "Drawings in the Eoyal Collec- tion," one volume folio ; Rembrandt's Drawings, one volume quarto ; Da Vinci's Drawings, one volume quarto; "Gallerie de Florence;" Angerstein's Gallery ; Ancient Sculpture, by the Dilettanti Society ; Penault's " Hommes Hlustres ; " Sadeler's Hermits ; Theuerdank, a iine old copy of the very rare edition of 1519 ; Meyrick's Armour ; Hope's Ancient Costumes, and more than one hundred volumes besides, mostly in folio or quarto, either composed entirely of valuable engrav- ings, or in which the text is published for the sake of the illustration of fine or decorative art. The collection of critical and historical works, in the various departments of the fine arts, comprises about three hun- dred volumes of the best works in the English, French, German, and Italian language, including whatever is most needed by the student of art in all its branches. [From the Eeport of Assistant Secretary Charles 0. Jewett.] APPENDIX lY. THE LATE GENEEAL ESTCOUKT.* The scene of the military operations in which the Ottoman Empire and the three leading powers of the Old World are now engaged is so distant from our own shores, and even from the nsual and familiar the- atres of European warfare, and our political relations and commercial prosperity are so slightly and so indirectly affected by the triumphs and the reverses of the contest, that it by no means excites among us the interest which the magnitude of its issues might rightfully claim, nor adequately awakens the sympathies which the melancholy events of that unhappy struggle are so well fitted to inspire. Besides this, we know, experimentally, less of the evils of war than almost any other civilized people. With the partial and brief exception of the few inroads upon our borders in the war of 1812, and our skirmishes with the Indian tribes, our soil has not for three-score years and ten been trodden by the foot of an enemy, or stained with the blood of a single victim to foreign ag- gression or to organised internal dissension. We are practically ignorant of any national condition but that of security and peace, and we have seen too little of actual war to be able to form a just conception of its miseries and its crimes. When, therefore, we are told that since the commencement of the year 1854 the sword, and the pestilence which follows in its train, have sacrificed five hundred thousand human lives upon European soil and within the compass of a territory not larger than several of the American States, we are wholly unable to comprehend the true character of so terrible a fact ; the imagination fails to measure so vast an amount of human suffering, and to conceive the reality of tidings * This notice of General Estcourt appeared in the National Intelligencer, February 6, 1856, with the following prefatory note: "While Bojourning in Washington and other parts of the country, engaged in duties connected with the running of the Northeastern boundary line, Gteneral Kstcourt (as well as his estimable wife) became known to many of our people; and certainly we may affirm that no visitor from abroad ever inspired a higher or sincerer respect by his noble mien and gentlemanly qualities. We have been favored with the subjoined sketch of his life and character by our distinguished fellow-citizen, the Hon. George P. Marsh, who had the pleasure of knowing General Estcourt, both in this country and in Europe." THE LATE GENERAL ESTCOURT. 475 which have filled ten thousand homes with wretchedness and desolation, and clothed a continent in sorrow. Man's moral constitution is such that his sympathies are little excited by vague and general descriptions of great and distant calamities, and we listen with coolness, if not indifiierence, to the history of a bloody action attended with the mutilation and death of thousands of nameless strangers. A livelier emotion is roused by a vivid narrative of the perils or snfierings of even an unknown individual, and if the name, the rank, the physical traits, the mental or social chai-acter, or the previous his- tory of the subject of the relation are added, he becomes invested with a distinct personality, the imagination gives him a bodily form, a hun- dred threads of association are suggested, and we recognize at once the justice of his appeal to the interests and sympathies of our common hu- manity. But it is only when death comes nearer, and singles out as the victim of war a known, an honored, or a beloved friend, that we in any degree realize the horrors of a campaign or appreciate the awful nature of that political necessity which imposes on Christian men, unstained by crime, the duty of doing to each other violent wrong. Of those whose lives have been sacrificed by the events of the war now waging on the borders of the Black Sea, not many have been known to so wide an American circle as to make their deaths a matter of public concern upon this side of the ocean ; but there is one among them whose admirable personal qualities and whose honorable official and social re- lations to our own people had won for him our highest respect, and now demand a more full expression of sympathy and regret than any of our journals have hitherto given to his memory. We allude to Major-Gen- eral James Bucknall Estcourt, late British Commissioner under the treaty of "Washington, and at the time of his death Adjutant-General of the British Army in the Crimea. General Estcourt was the second son of the late T. G. Bucknall Est- court, Esq., who died at an advanced age in 1853, after having repre- sented successively the Borough of Devizes and the University of Oxford for nearly fifty years in the Parliament of Great Britain. He was bom at the family estate of Estcourt, in Gloucestershire, on the 12th of July, 1802, enjoyed, in addition to the usual English scholastic training, the advantage of some years' study in Germany, and completed his pro- fessional education at the military school of St. Omer, in France. He served for several years in the iSrd regiment, and in 1835, having in the meantime attained the rank of captain, he was ordered to join the expe- dition sent out under Col. Chesney, to ascertain the practicability of es- tablishing a new steam route to India by way of the Euphrates, and con- tinued in that service until its completion. During the insurrection of 1837-38 he accompanied his regiment to the Province of Canada, and on the conclusion of the treaty of Washington in 1842, he was appointed. 476 APPENDIX IV. on the part of the English Government, Commissioner for establishing and marking the north- eastern boundary line between the United States and the British possessions on this continent, and was not relieved from that duty until 1847, when the labors of the joint commission were finally closed. The greater part of the intervening period was of course spent in Canada and the United States, and General Estcourt resided, during most of the years 1845 and 1846, at Washington, where his intelligence and his agreeable social qualities rendered him a highly acceptable guest in the best circles of the American capital. After his return to England he represented Devizes in Parliament, and was there distinguished for his characteristic soundness of judgment and his usual conscientious industry. He was soon promoted to the rank of Colonel, and was subsequently employed in various important duties, among which may be mentioned a commission to visit the schools of military practice on the Continent, and inquire into the expediency of organizing similar institutions in England, for the instruction of British soldiers in the use of improved fire-arms. Having now arrived at the age of something more than fifty years, with a constitution impaired by the effects of a severe accident, he was meditating retirement from further military service, when the approach of hostilities with Russia in the winter of 1853-'54 required him, in obe- dience to his views of duty, to renounce the ease and enjoyments of pri- vate life, and signify his readiness to engage again in the active toils and hazards of his profession. It was at first proposed to attach him to Lord Eaglan's staff in the capacity of Judge Advocate General; but this purpose was soon changed, and he received a flattering proof of the confidence of his military superiors and his government by an appoint- ment to the honorable and responsible office of Adjutant General of the British forces in the East, with the rank of Brigadier General. The post was conferred upon him in preference to a large number of other candidates, and the compliment was the more gratifying because it was unsolicited. That the appointment was entirely satisfactory, both to the army and the British public, there can be no doubt ; and his government soon testified its approbation of his valuable services by promoting him to the rank of Major General. In fact, Gen. Estcourt possessed in an emi- nent degree both the indispensable professional knowledge and the even more essential and rare moral qualities demanded for the faithful and impartial discharge of the difficult duties of his important position. The relations of the Adjutant General with the personnel of an army are numerous and delicate. He is necessarily brought into contact with officers of every rank, and charged with the decision of questions of much private interest as well as public moment. Gen. Estcourt, though inspired with a conscientious and unwavering THE LATE GENEEAL ESTCOUET. 477 regard for dnty, which not only annihilated self— an easy sacrifice for bo generous a spirit— but taught that the personal interest, nay, what under other circumstances might be the personal rights, of others also, must yield to the higher claims of patriotism and national honor, was at the same time conspicuous for a gentleness of natui'e which shrank from in- flicting even merited pain, and a suavity of manner which, even in deny- ing favors and pronouncing unwelcome decisions, knew no language save that of " good-wUl to men." While he feared God alone, he rever- enced all his creatures, and therefore, though deaf to eveiy influence which could tempt him to swerve from the path of strictest duty by granting what could not be properly conceded, yet such was, we will not say his power of suppressing the outward manifestation of unkind passion, but his complete exemption from every unamiable emotion, that in many years of familiar intercourse the writer never knew liiTn to express, by word, or look, or gesture, an uncharitable judgment upon the conduct, or other than a generous and lenient feeling towards the person, of a human being. He was at the same time no professor of that spurious philanthropy which exhales in wordy abstractions, masking its want of hearty sympa- thy with suffering humanity by affected zeal in behalf of great and vi- sionary schemes of social and moral improvement, and wastes the present opportunity of doing good to the bodies or the souls of men for the sake of realizing in some distant and uncertain future a dream of benefits whose fruition is reserved for unborn generations; but he was ever ready, at the sacrifice of his means, and what he valued more, his time, to relieve the wants and soothe the sorrows of those around him by works and words of kindness and consolation. His intellect was strong, because it had been weakened by no idle or vicious indulgences ; clear, because it was dimmed by no clouds of self- ish or unholy passion ; and sound, because it had never been warped by pursuits foreign to the search for truth. His mind was disciplined by scientific attainment, and cultivated and enriched by the study of the best authors. He largely shared the characteristic sympathy with Nat- ure which the English gentleman derives from manly sports and famil- iarity with rural life, and a trained eye and refined taste qualified him to appreciate and enjoy whatever is beautiful in creation or excellent in art. He was a firm believer and a regular and devout worshipper in the established church of his native land, and his whole life was a bright ex- emplification of the practical influence of the Christian religion, when accepted as a divine truth and adopted as the sovereign law of human action. Scrupulously fulfilling the external observances of that relig- ion, and rigid in his adherence to the strictest rules of morality, he did not wear a sad countenance that he might appear unto men to fast, nor 478 APPENDIX IT. did he aflfect that austerity which irritates the bad hy a self-righteous and supercilious condemnation of their vices. He sought to reform men less by formal precept than by example, and, while his manner inspired the readiest confidence and diffused cheerfulness throughout the social circle, he seemed to exert an elevating and refining influence that ban- ished every grossness and purified all around him. With a mind and heart thus tempered, he was able truly to use this world as not abusing it, and to shewHhat there is a method whereby the temperate enjoyment of all the good things of this life may be recon- ciled with the assured hope of the blessings of that which is to come. At home in the usages and elegancies of the most polished circles, he mingled freely in society, entered heartily into its innocent pleasures, and largely contributed, by his urbanity and his accomplishments, to heighten its most refined enjoyments. He sought society, not as the business of life, still less as an idle pastime or a distraction from serious thoughts, but as a relaxation from graver cares, and a means of cultivat- ing the kindly affections and inspiring men with a livelier feeling of their common brotherhood. But, with all the quick sensibilities of his taste, his ready appreciation of what is excellent in the works of man, or fair and grand in the material fabric of nature, the fondness of his affection for his household and his kindred, and the warm attachments of his friendship, there was ever present to his mind the idea of some- thing higher and better than these good gifts of our present being, and he held all earthly pleasures, even life itself, as nothing when weighed against the stillest, smallest whisper of the voice of conscience. Such were the obvious and conspicuous traits of his character, as displayed in his ordinary social and official relations. But those who best knew him valued him most for the beautiful harmonies and graces of his more private and domestic life. Into the intimate cii'cle of his chosen and familiar friendships none entered without feeling that he was treading on ground hallowed by every virtue, and crowned with eveiy blessing for which Christian wisdom teaches men to pray. As a son, as a brother, and as a friend, he was eminently affectionate and ten- derly beloved ; but he found his chiefest earthly happiness in the society of one bound to him by yet more sacred ties, and, as many under whose eye these lines may fall can witness, every way worthy to be the life-long companion of such rare excellence. She never voluntarily separated from him to seek pleasures in which he could not participate, nor did apprehensions of danger or inconvenience or fatigue deter her from ac- companying him wherever the nature of his duties permitted her to bo at his side. Her devotion has received the only remaining reward which Providence could bestow on this side the grave, in the merciful dispen- sation which brought her, with another near female friend, to the heights of Balaklava, to enjoy amidst the thunder of hostile artillery and the THE LATE GENERAL ESTCOTTRT. 479 confusion of a camp, a few last broken hours of conjugal happiness, to ■watch over his dying bed, and to listen to the accents in which he bade farewell to all he loved on earth, and commended his spirit to the mer- cies of his Father in Heaven. The friends of Gen. Estcourt, knowing his self-sacrificing spirit and his unshrinking devotion to the duties of his position, had feared that he would expose himself too unsparingly to both the casualties and the fatigues of war, while his great temperance and regularity of life, and his habitual coolness and freedom from feverish excitement, seemed to promise immunity from the pestilences of the camp. But, though en- gaged and much exposed in many severe conflicts before and during the siege, he did not fall upon the field of battle, nor did human violence mutilate that noble figure, on the calm and placid expression of whose features was so visibly stamped the peace of God. He died, as a gallant brother in the naval service of his country had done before him, of dis- ease aggravated, if not occasioned, by heroic perseverance in the ful- filment of oflBcial duty. He was attacked by cholera about the middle of June, 1855, but shared in the dangers of the great assault upon the fortifications of Sebastopol on the 18th of that month, a day so memo- rable in the history of modem warfare, and even continued, in spite of alarming symptoms and urgent remonstrances, to discharge the usual functions of his post and to perform ofiBces of kindness to wounded comrades for the two days following. The virulence of the disease, augmented by the fatigues and anxieties of the occasion, now prostrated his remaining strength, and on the morning of the 24th of June he ex- pired, as we have already said, in the arms of those most dear to him. Thai one thus deservedly beloved should be long and deeply lamented is but natural, and even amidst the universal gi-ief of England, where every household is mourning its own private son-ow, the death of Gen. Estcourt has been received with more than the usual manifestations of public sympathy and concern. In the eyes of his many American friends his participation in the Eastern Campaign gave that contest a near and peculiar interest, and they cannot but feel that none but the weightiest causes can justify a war which costs the sacrifice of such vic- tims. May it speedily be brought to a close, upon terms which shall ad- vance the cause of progress and the interests of civil and religious lib- erty in the Eastern continent, and thus compensate the suffering and the wrongs it has inflicted upon humanity ! a!aas«i