BOSTON' 135 WASHINGTON STREET,
JULY, 1853.
NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS
PUBLISHED BY
TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS.
THOMAS DE QUINCEY'S WRITINGS.
CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUMI-EATER, AND
SUSPIRIA DE PROFUNDIS. With Portrait. Price 75 cents.
BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAYS. Price 75 cents.
MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. Price 75 cents,
THE CIESARS. Price 75 cents.
LIFE AND MANNERS. Price 75 cents.
LITERARY REMINISCENCES. 2 Vols. Price $1.50.
NARRATIVE AND MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 2 Vols.
Price $1.50.
ESSAYS ON THE POETS, &c. 1 vol. 16mo. 75 cents.
HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL ESSAYS. 2 vols. Price
$1.50.
ALFRED TENNYSON'S WRITINGS.
POETICAL WORKS. With Portrait. 2.vols. Boards. $1.50.
THE PRINCESS. Boards. Price 50 cents.
IN MEMORIAM. Cloth. Price 75 cents.
BARRY CORNWALL'S. WRITINGS.
ENGLISH SONGS AND OTHER, SMALL POEMS. Enlarged Edition. Price $1.00.
ESSAYS AND TALES IN PROSE. 2.Vols. Price $1,50,




2            A LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED
HENRY W. LONGFELLOW'S WRITINGS.
THE GOLDEN LEGEND. A Poem. Just Published.
Price $1.00.
POETICAL WORKS. This edition contains the six Volumes mentioned below. In two volumes. 16mo. Boards. $2.00.
In separate Volumes, each 75 cents.
VOICES OF THE NIGHT.
BALLADS AND OTHER POEMS.
SPANISH STUDENT; A PLAY IN THREE ACTS.
BELFRY OF BRUGES, AND OTHER POEMS.
EVANGELINE; A TALE OF ACADIE.
THE SEASIDE AND THE FIRESIDE.
THE WAIF. A Collection of Poems. Edited by Longfellow.
THE ESTRAY. A Collection of Poems. Edited by Longfellow.
MR. LONGFELLOWVS PROSE WORKS.
HYPERION. A ROMANCE. Price $1.00.
OUTRE-MER. A PILGRIMAGE. Price $1.00.
KAVANAGH. A TALE. Price 75 cents.
Illustrated editions of THE POEMS and HYPERION.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S WRITINGS.
TWICE-TOLD TALES. Two Volumes. Price $1.50.
THE SCARLET LETTER. Price 75 cents.
THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES.  Price $1.00.
THE  SNOW   IMAGE, AND  OTHER  TWICE-TOLD
TALES. Price 75 cents.
THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE. Price 75 cents.
TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY.
With four fine Engravings. Price 5 cents.
A WONDER-BOOK FOR GIRLS AND BOYS. With seven
fine Engravings. Price 75 cents.
TANGLEWOOD  TALES. Another' Wonder-Book.' In
press.




BY TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS.         3
JOHN G. WHITTIER'S WRITINGS.
OLD PORTRAITS AND MOD. SKETCHES. Price 75 cents.
MARGARET SMITH'S JOURNAL. Price 75 cents.
SONGS OF LABOR, AND OTHER POEMS. Boards. 50 cts.
THE CHAPEL OF THE HERMITS. Cloth. 50 cents.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL'S WRITINGS.
COMPLETE POETICAL WORKS. Revised, with Additions.
In two volumes, 16mo. Cloth. Price $1.50.
SIR LAUNFAL. New Edition. Price 25 cents.
THE BIGLOW PAPERS. A New Edition. Price 63 cents'
EDWIN P. WHIPPLE'S WRITINGS.
ESSAYS AND REVIEWS. 2 Vols. Price $2.00.
LECTURES ON SUBJECTS CONNECTED WITH LITERATURE AND LIFE. Price 63 cents.
WASHINGTON AND THE REVOLUTION. Price 20 cts.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES'S WRITINGS.
POETICAL WORKS. With fine Portrait. Boards. $1.00.
ASTR.AEA. Fancy paper. Price 25 cents.
GRACE GREENWOOD'S WRITINGS.
GREENWOOD LEAVES. 1st & 2d Series. $1.25 each.
POETICAL WORKS. With fine Portrait. Price 75 cents.
HISTORY OF MY PETS. With six fine Engravings.
Scarlet cloth. Price 50 cents.
RECOLLECTIONS OF MY CHILDHOOD. With six fine
Engravings. Scarlet cloth. Price 50 cents.




4           A LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED
MRS. JUDSON'S WRITINGS.
ALDERBROOK. By FANNY FORESTER. 2 Vols. Price $1.75.
THE KATHAYAN SLAVE, AND OTHER PAPERS.
1 vol. Price 63 cents.
HENRY GILES'S WRITINGS.
LECTURES, ESSAYS, AND MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 2 Vols. Price $1.50.
DISCOURSES ON LIFE. Price 75 cents.
R. H. STODDARD'S WRITINGS.
POEMS. Cloth. Price 63 cents.
ADVENTURES IN FAIRY LAND. Just out. 75 cents.
WILLIAM  MOTHERWELL'S WRITINGS.
POEMS, NARRATIVE AND LYRICAL. New Ed. $1.25.
TPOSTHUMOUS POEMS. Boards. Price 50 cents..MINSTRELSY, ANC. AND MOD. 2 Vols. Boards. $1.50.
GOETHE'S WRITINGS.'WILHELM MEISTER. Translated by THOMnAS CARLYLE.
2 Vols. Price $2.50.'GOETHE'S FAUST. Translated by HAYWARD. Price 75 cts.
MRS. CROSLAND'S WRITINGS.
LYDIA: A WOMAN'S BOOK. Cloth. 75 cents.
ENGLISH TALES AND SKETCHES, Cloth. $1.00.




BY TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS.              5
MISCELLANEOUS.
ALEXANDER SMITH'S POEMS. 1 vol. 16mo. Cloth.
Price 63 cents.
NOTES FROM LIFE. BY HENRY TAYLOR, author of'Phillip Van Artevelde' 1 vol. 16mo. Cloth. Price 63 cents.
THALATTA: A BOOK FOR THE SEA-SIDE. I vol. 16mo.
Cloth. Price 75 cents.
OUR VILLAGE. By MARY RUSSELL MITFORD. Illustrated.
2 vols. 16mo. Cloth. Price $2.50.
CHARLES MACKAY'S POEMS. 1 Vol. Cloth. Price $1.00.
ROBERT BROWNING'S POETICAL WORKS. 2 Vols. $2.00.
HENRY ALFORD'S POEMS. Just out. Price $1.25.
RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES. POEMS OF MANY YEARS.
Boards. Price 75 cents.
CHARLES SPRAGUE. POETICAL AND PROSE WRITINGS. With
fine Portrait. Boards. Price 75 cents.
BAYARD TAYLOR. POEMS. Cloth. Price 63 cents.
HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. POEMS. Cloth. Price 75 cents.
JOHN G. SAXE. POEMS. With Portrait. Boards, 63 cents.
Cloth, 75 cents.
BOWRING'S MATINS AND VESPERS. Price 50 cents.
REJECTED ADDRESSES. By HORACE and JAMES SMITH.
Boards, Price 50 cents. Cloth, 63 cents.
WARRENIANA. A Companion to the' Rejected Addresses.'
Price 63 cents.
MEMORY AND HOPE. A Boox OF POEMS, REFERRING TO
CHILDHOOD. Cloth. Price $2.00.
JOSEPH  T. BUCKINGHAMI'S  PERSONAL  MEMOIRS
AND RECOLLECTIONS OF EDITORIAL LIFE. With Portrait.
2 vols. 16mo. Price $1.50.




A LIST OF BOOKS PUBLISHED
VILLAGE LIFE IN EGYPT. By the Author of'Adventures in the Lybian Desert.' 2 vols. 16mo. Price $1.25.
PALISSY THE POTTER. By the Author of' How to make
Home Unhealthy.' 2 vols. 16mo. Price $1.50.
WILLIAM MOUNTFORD. THORPE: A QUIET ENGLISH
TOWN, AND HUMAN LIFE THEREIN. 16mo. Price $1.00.
JAMES FREEMAN  CLARKE. ELEVEN WEEKS IN EUROPE,
AND WHAT MAY BE SEEN IN THAT TIME. 16mo. Price $1.00.
MARS. A. C. LOWELL.  THOUGHTS ON THE EDUCATION OF
GIRLS. Price 25 cents.
CHARLES SUMNER.  ORATIONS AND SPEECHES.  2 Vols.
Price.$2.50.
GEORGE S. HILLARD.  THE DANGERS AND DUTIES OF THE
MERCANTILE PROFESSION. Prie 25 cents.
HORACE MANN    A FEw THOUGHTS FOR A YOUNG MAN.
Price 25 cents.
F. W. P. GREENWOOD. SERMONS OF CONSOLATION. $1.00.
HEROINES OF THE MISSIONARY ENTERPRISE. 75 cts.
MEMOIR  OF THE  BUCKMINSTERS, FATHER AND SON.
By Mrs. LEE. Price $1.25.
THE SOLITARY OF JUAN FERNANDEZ. By the Author
of Picciola. Price 50 cents.
THE BOSTON BOOK. Price $1.25.
ANGEL-VOICES. Price 38 cents.
SIR ROGER DE COVERLEY. From the'Spectator.' Price
75 cents.
S. T. WALLIS. SPAIN, HER INSTITUTIONS, POLITICS} AND
PUBLIC MEN. Price $1.00.
RUTH, A New Novel by the Author of'MARY BARTON.'
Cheap Edition. Price 38 cents.
LABOR AND LOVE: A TALE OF ENGLISH LIFE. 50 cents.
EACH OF THE ABOVE POEMS AND PROSE WRITINGS, MAY BE HAD IN
VARIOUS STYLES OFP HANDSOME BINDING.




BY TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELD)                     7
JUVENILE.
GRACE GREENWOOD'S
HISTORY OF MY PETS. A new and beautiful book, with six fine
engravings. Square 16mo. Scarlet cloth, 50 cents.
RECOLLECTIONS OF MY CHILDHOOD. 50 cents.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S
TRUE STORIES FROM HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY. With
engravings. 16mo. Cloth gilt, 75 cents; cloth, gilt edge, $1.00.
WONDER-BOOK FOR GIRLS AND BOYS. With Engravings
1 vol. 16mo. Cloth gilt, 75 cents; cloth, gilt edge, $1.00.
THE DESERT HOME, or, THE ADVENTURES OF A LOST
FAMILY IN THE WILDERNESS. By Capt. Mayne Reid. With fine plates,
$1.00.
THE BOY HUNTERS. By CAPT. REID. With fine
plates. Just published. Price 75 cents.
ADVENTURES IN FAIRY LAND. By R. H. STODDARD. With fine plates. Just out. Price 75 cents.
AUNT EFFIE'S RHYMES. With beautiful Engravings.
Just published. 75 cents.
ELIZA BUCKMINSTER LEE. FLORENCE, THE PARISH
ORPHAN; and A SKETCH OF TIH VILLAGE IN THE LAST CENTURY. 1 vol.
16mo. Cloth, 50 cents; cloth, gilt edge, 63 cents.
MRS. SARAH P. DOUGHTY. THE LITTLE CHILD'S
FRIEND. With illustrations. 1 vol. square 16mo. Cloth, 38 crnts.
MEMOIRS OF A LONDON DOLL. Written by herself.
Edited by Mrs. Fairstair. With engravings. 1 vol. square 16mo. Scarlet
cloth, 50 cents; gilt edge, 63 cents.
TALES FROM CATLAND, FOR LITTLE KITTENS. By
an OLD TABBY. With engravings. 1 vol. square 16mo. Scarlet cloth,
50 cents; gilt edge, 63 cents.
THE STORY OF AN APPLE. Illustrated by JOHN
GILBERT. 1 vol. Square 16mo. Scarlet cloth. Price 50 cents.




8    BOOKS PUBLISHED BY TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS.
THE DOLL AND HER FRIENDS; A Companion to
the' Memoirs of a London Doll' With illustrations. 1 vol. square 16mo.,
50 cents.
JACK HALLIARD. VOYAGES AND ADVENTURES IN THE
ARCTIC OCEAN. With Engravings. ]6mo. Cloth, 38 cents.
S. G. GOODRICH'S
LAMBERT  LILLY'S HISTORY  OF THE NEW-ENGLAND
STATES. With numerous Enigravings. 18mo. Cloth, 38 cts.
LAMBERT LILLY'S HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE STATES.
With numerous Engravings. 18mo. Cloth, 38 cents.
LAMBERT LILLY'S IISTORY OF THE SOUTHERN STATES:
Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. With numerous
Engravings. 18mo. Cloth, 38 cents.
LAMBERT LILLY'S HISTORY OF THE WESTERN STATES.
With numerous Engravings. 18mo. Cloth, 38 cents.
LAMBERT LILLY'S STORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. With numerous Enagavinas. 18mo. Cloth, 38 cents.
THE SAME, in 3 Vols. Red cloth, gilt, $1.88.
PARLEY'S SHORT STORIES FOR LONG NIGHTS. With
eight colored Engravings, 16mo. cloth, 50 cents; uncolored Engravings,
40 cents.
PARLEY'S SMALL PICTURE BOOKS. With colored
Frontispieces, printed covers. 16mo. Eight kinds, assorted. Per gross,
$9.00.
THE DUCKS AND THE FROGS. With Engravings
from Designs by BILLINGS. 13 cents.
THE INDESTRUCTIBLE BOOKS FOR CHILDREN.
Printed on strong Cloth, expressly prepared. Four kinds, viz.: Alphabet - Primer - Spelling Book - Reading Book. Each 25 cents.
THE FOUR PARTS, Bound in one Cloth volume, 90 Pictures, $1.25.
[IJ  Any book published by TICKNOn & Co. will be sent by mail, postage
free, on receipt of the publication price.
TICKNOR & COMPANY'S stock of Miscellaneous Books is very complete, and
they respectfully solicit orders from CITY AND COUNTRY LIBRARIES.




























OLD PORTRAITS
AND
MODERN SKETCHES.
BY
JOHN Gl. WHITTIER.
BOSTON:
TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS.
M DCCC L.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1849, by
TICKNOR, REED, AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
BOSTON:
THURSTON, TORRY, AND COMIPANY,
31 Devonshire Street.




TO  DR. G. BAILE Y
OF THE NATIONAL ERA,
Washington, D. O.
THESE Sketches, many of which originally appeared in
the columns of the paper under his editorial supervision,
are, in their present form, offered as a token of the esteem
and confidence which years of political and literary communion have justified and confirmed, on the part of his
friend and associate,
THE AUTHOR.








CONTENTS.
JOHN BUNYAN.                                    1
THOMAS ELLWOOD.....    33
JAMES NAYLER..                               7i
ANDREW MARVELL..     93
JOIIN ROBERTS...... 115
SAMUEL HOPKINS.,.,  146
RICHARD BAXTER.... 165
WILLIAM LEGGETT..,..            211
NATHANIEL P. ROGERS..... 250
ROBERT DINSMORE..                *              284








OLD PORTRAITS
AND
MODERN SKETCHES.
JOHN BUNYAN.
"' Wouldst see
A man i' the clouds, and hear him speak to thee! "
WHO has not read PILGRIM'S PROGRESS?  Who has
not, in childhood, followed the wandering Christian on
his way to the Celestial City? Who has not laid at
night his young head on the pillow, to paint on the
walls of darkness pictures of the Wicket Gate and the
Archers, the Hill of Difficulty, the Lions and Giants,
Doubting Castle and Vanity Fair, the sunny Delectable
Mountains and the Shepherds, the Black River and the
wonderful glory beyond it; and at last fallen asleep, to
dream over the strange story, to hear the sweet welcomings of the sisters at the House Beautiful, and the
song of birds from the window of that " upper chamber
1




2           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
which opened towards the sunrising? " And who, looking back to the green spots in his childish experiences,
does not bless the good Tinker of Elstow?
And who, that has re-perused the Story of the Pilgrim
at a maturer age, and felt the plummet of its truth
sounding in the deep places of the soul, has not reason
to bless the author for some timely warning or grateful
encouragement? Where is the scholar, the poet, the
man of taste and feeling, who does not, with Cowper,
" Even in transitory life's late day,
Revere the man whose PILGRIM marks the road,
And guides the PROGRESS of the soul to God! "
We have just been reading, with no slight degree
of interest, that simple but wonderful piece of autobiography, entitled " GRACE ABOUNDING TO THE CHIEF
OF SINNERS," from the pen of the author of Pilgrim's
Progress. It is the record of a journey more terrible
than that of the ideal Pilgrim; "truth stranger than
fiction; " the painful upward struggling of a spirit from
the blackness of despair and blasphemy, into the high,
pure air of Hope and Faith. More earnest words were
never written. It is the entire unveiling of a human
heart; the tearing off of the fig-leaf covering of its sin.
The voice which speaks to us from these old pages
seems not so much that of a denizen of the world in




JOHN BUNYAN.                 3
which we live, as of a soul at the last solemn confessional. Shorn of all ornament, simple and direct as
the contrition and prayer of childhood, when for the
first time the Spectre of Sin stands by its bedside, the
style is that of a man dead to self-gratification, careless
of the world's opinion, and only desirous to convey to
others, in all truthfulness and sincerity, the lesson of
his inward trials, temptations, sins, weaknesses, and
dangers; and to give glory to Him who had mercifully
led him through all, and enabled him, like his own
Pilgrim, to leave behind the Valley of the Shadow of
Death, the snares of the Enchanted Ground, and the
terrors of Doubting Castle, and to reach the land of
Beulah, where the air was sweet and pleasant, and the
birds sang and the flowers sprang up around him, and
the Shining Ones walked in the brightness of the not
distant Heaven. In the introductory pages he says:
" I could have dipped into a style higher than this in
which I have discoursed, and could have adorned all
things more than here I have seemed to do; but I
dared not. God did not play in tempting me; neither
did I play when I sunk, as it were, into a bottomless
pit, when the pangs of hell took hold on me; where.
fore, I may not play in relating of them, but be plain
and simple, and lay down the thing as it was."
This book, as well as " Pilgrim's Progress," Was




4           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
written in Bedford prison, and was designed especially
for the comfort and edification of his " children, whom
God had counted him worthy to beget in faith by his
ministry." In his introduction he tells them, that, although taken from them, and tied up, " sticking, as it
were, between the teeth of the lions of the wilderness,"
he once again, as before, from the top of Shemer and
Hermon, so now, from the lion's den and the mountain
of leopards, would look after them with fatherly care
and desires for their everlasting welfare. "If," said
he, " you have sinned against light; if you are tempted
to blaspheme; if you are drowned in despair; if you
think God fights against you; or if Heaven is hidden
from your eyes, remember it was so with your father.
But out of all the Lord delivered me."
He gives no dates; he affords scarcely a clew to his
localities; of the man, as he worked, and ate, and
drank, and lodged, of his neighbors and contemporaries, of all he saw and heard of the world about him,
we have only an occasional glimpse, here and there, in
his narrative. It is the story of his inward life only
that he relates. What had time and place to do with
one who trembled always with the awful consciousness
of an immortal nature, and about whom fell alternately
the shadows of hell and the splendors of heaven? We
gather, indeed, from his record, that he was not an idle




JOHN BUNYAN.                  5
on-looker in the time of England's great struggle for
freedom, but a soldier of the Parliament, in his young
years, among the praying sworders and psalm-singing
pikemen, the Greathearts and Holdfasts whom he has
immortalized in his allegory; but the only allusion
which he makes to this portion of his experience is by
way of illustration of the goodness of God in preserving him on occasions of peril.
He was born at Elstow, in Bedfordshire, in 1628;
and, to use his own words, " his father's house was of
that rank which is the meanest and most despised of
all the families of the land." His father was a tinker,
and the son followed the same calling, which necessa.
rily brought him into association with the lowest and
most depraved classes of English society. The estimation in which the tinker and his occupation were
held, in the seventeenth century, may be learned from
the quaint and humorous description of Sir Thomas
Overbury. "The tinker,s" saith he, "is a movable,
for he hath no abiding in one place; he seems to be
devout, for his life is a continual pilgrimage, and
sometimes, in humility, goes barefoot, therein making
necessity a virtue; he is a gallant, for he carries all
his wealth upon his back; or a philosopher, for he
bears all his substance with him. He is always furnished with a song, to which his hammer, keeping tune,




6           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
proves that he was the first founder of the kettle-drum;
where the best ale is, there stands his music most upon
crotchets. The companion of his travel is some foul,
sun-burnt quean, that, since the terrible statute, has
recanted gipsyism, and is turned pedlaress. So marches
he all over England, with his bag and baggage; his
conversation is irreprovable, for he is always mending.
He observes truly the statutes, and therefore had rather
steal than beg. He is so strong an enemy of idleness,
that in mending one hole he would rather make three
than want work; and when he hath done, he throws
the wallet of his faults behind him. His tongue is very
voluble, which, with canting, proves him a linguist.
He is entertained in every place, yet enters no farther
than the door, to avoid suspicion. To conclude, if he
escape Tyburn and Banbury, he dies a beggar."
Truly, but a poor beginning for a pious life was the
youth of John Bunyan. As might have been expected,
he was a wild, reckless, swearing boy, as his father
doubtless was before him. " It was my delight," says
he, "to be taken captive by the devil. I had few
equals, both for cursing and swearing, lying and blaspheming."  Yet, in his ignorance and darkness, his
powerful imagination early lent terror to the reproaches
of conscience. He was scared, even in childhood,
with dreams of hell and apparitions of devils. Troubled




YOHN BUNYAN.                 7
with fears of eternal fire, and the malignant demons
who fed it in the regions of despair, he says that he
often wished either that there was no hell, or that he
had been born a devil himself, that he might be a
tormentor rather than one of the tormented.
At an early age he appears to have married. His
wife was as poor as himself, for he tells us that they
had not so much as a dish or spoon between them;
but she brought with her two books on religious subjects, the reading of which seems to have had no slight
degree of influence on his mind. He went to church
regularly, adored the priest and all things pertaining to
his office, being, as he says, " overrun with superstition."
On one occasion, a sermon was preached against the
breach of the Sabbath by sports or labor, which struck
him at the moment as especially designed for himself;
but by the time he had finished his dinner, he was
prepared to " shake it out of his mind, and return to
his sports and gaming."
"But the same day," he continues, " as I was in the
midst of a game of cat, and having struck it one blow
from the hole, just as I was about to strike it a second
time, a voice did suddenly dart from Heaven into my
soul, which said,' Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to
heaven, or have thy sins and go to hell?' At this, I
was put to an exceeding maze; wherefore, leaving my




8           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
cat upon the ground, I looked up to Heaven, and it was,
as if I had, with the eyes of my understanding, seen
the Lord Jesus look down upon me, as being very hotly
displeased with me, and as if he did severely threaten
me with some grievous punishment for those and other
ungodly practices.
"I had no sooner thus conceived in my mind, but
suddenly this conclusion fastened on my spirit, (for the
former hint did set my sins again before my face,) that
I had been a great and grievous sinner, and that it was
now too late for me to look after Heaven; for Christ
would not forgive me nor pardon my transgressions.
Then, while I was thinking of it, and fearing lest it
should be so, I felt my heart sink in despair, concluding
it was too late; and therefore I resolved in my mind
to go on in sin; for thought I, if the case be thus, my
state is- surely miserable; miserable if I leave my sins,
and but miserable if I follow them; I can but be
damned; and if I must be so, I had as good be damned
for many sins as be damned for few."
The reader of Pilgrim's Progress cannot fail here to
call to mind the wicked suggestions of the Giant to
Christian, in the dungeon of Doubting Castle.
" I returned," he says, " desperately to my sport
again; and I well remember, that presently this kind of
despair did so possess my soul, that I was persuaded I




JOHN BUNYAN.                  9
could never attain to other comfort than what I should
get in sin; for Heaven was gone already, so that on
that I must not think; wherefore, I found within me
great desire to take my fill of sin, that I might taste
the sweetness of it; and I made as much haste as I
could to fill my belly with its delicates, lest I should
die before I had my desires; for that I feared greatly.
In these things, I protest before God, I lie not, neither
do I frame this sort of speech; these were really,
strongly, and with all my heart, my desires; the good
Lord, whose mercy is unsearchable, forgive my transgressions."
One day, while standing in the street, cursing and
blaspheming, he met with a reproof which startled him.
The woman of the house in front of which the wicked
young tinker was standing, herself, as he remarks, " a
very loose, ungodly wretch," protested that his horrible
profanity made her tremble; that he was the ungodliest
fellow for swearing she had ever heard, and able to
spoil all the youth of the town who came in his company. Struck by this wholly unexpected rebuke, he at
once abandoned the practice of swearing; although
previously he tells us that " he had never known how
to speak, unless he put an oath before and another
behind."
The good name which he gained by this change was




10          PORTRAITS AND SXETCHES.
now a temptation to him. "c My neighbors," he says,
"were amazed at my great conversion from prodigious
profaneness to something like a moral life and sober
man. Now, therefore, they began to praise, to com.
mend, and to speak well of me, both to my face and
behind my back. Now I was, as they said, become
godly; now I was become a right honest man. But
oh! when I understood those were their words and
opinions of me, it pleased me mighty well; for though
as yet I was nothing but a poor painted hypocrite, yet I
loved to be talked of as one that was truly godly. I was
proud of my godliness, and, indeed, I did all I did either
to be seen of or well spoken of by men; and thus I
continued for about a twelvemonth or more."
The tyranny of his imagination at this period is seen
in the following relation of his abandonment of one of
his favorite sports.
" Now you must know, that before this I had taken
much delight in ringing, but my conscience beginning
to be tender, I thought such practice was but vain, and
therefore forced myself to leave it; yet my mind han.
kered; wherefore, I would go to the steeple-house and
look on, though I durst not ring; but I thought this did
not become religion neither; yet I forced myself, and
would look on still. But quickly after, I began to think,' How if one of the bells should fall?' Then I chose




JOHN BUNYAN.  1
to stand under a main beam, that lay overthwart the
steeple, from side to side, thinking here I might stand
sure; but then I thought again, should the bell fall with
a swing, it might first hit the wall, and then, rebounding
upon me, might kill me for all this beam. This made
me stand in the steeple door; and now, thought I, I am
safe enough; for if a bell should then fall, I can slip
out behind these thick walls, and so be preserved notwithstanding.
"So after this I would yet go to see them ring, but
would not go any farther than the steeple door. But
then it came in my head,'How if the steeple itself
should fall?' And this thought (it may, for aught I
know, when I stood and looked on) did continually so
shake my mind, that I durst not stand at the steeple
door any longer, but was forced to flee, for fear the
steeple should fall upon my head."
About this time, while wandering through Bedford in
pursuit of employment, he chanced to see three or four
poor old women sitting at a door, in the evening sun,
and, drawing near them, heard them converse upon
the things of God; of His work in their hearts; of
their natural depravity; of the temptations of the Adversary; and of the joy of believing, and of the peace
of reconciliation. The words of the aged women found
a response in the soul of the listener. "He felt his




12          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
heart shake," to use his own words; he saw that he
lacked the true tokens of a Christian. He now forsook
the company of the profane and licentious, and sought
that of a poor man who had the reputation of piety,
but, to his grief, he found him " a devilish ranter, given
up to all manner of uncleanness; he would laugh at all
exhortations to sobriety, and deny that there was a God,
an angel, or a spirit."
" Neither," he continues, " was this man only a temptation to me, but, my calling lying in the country, I
happened to come into several people's company, who,
though strict in religion formerly, yet were also drawn
away by these ranters. These would also talk with me
of.their ways, and condemn me as illegal and dark;
pretending that they only had attained to perfection,
that could do what they would, and not sin. Oh! these
tempations were suitable to my flesh, I being but a
young man, and my nature in its prime; but God, who
had, as I hope, designed me for better things, kept me
in the fear of his name, and did not suffer me to accept
such cursed principles."
At this time he was sadly troubled to ascertain whether or not he had that faith which the Scriptures spake
of. Travelling one day from Elstow to Bedford, after
a recent rain, which had left pools of water in the path,
he felt a strong desire to settle the question, by com



JOHN BUNYAN.                13
manding the pools to become dry, and the dry places to
become pools. Going under the hedge, to pray for
ability to work the miracle, he was struck with the
thought, that if he failed he should know, indeed, that
he was a castaway, and give himself up to despair.
He dared not attempt the experiment, and went on his
way, to use his own forcible language, " tossed up and
down between the devil and his own ignorance."
Soon after, he had one of those visions which foreshadowed the wonderful dream of his Pilgrim's Progress.
He saw some holy people of Bedford on the sunny side
of an high mountain, refreshing themselves in the pleasant air and sunlight, while he was shivering in cold and
darkness, amidst snows and never-melting ices, like the
victims of the Scandinavian hell. A wall compassed
the mountain, separating him from the blessed, with
one small gap or doorway, through which, with great
pain and effort, he was at last enabled to work his way
into the sunshine, and sit down with the saints, in the
light and warmth thereof.
But now a new trouble assailed him. Like Milton's
metaphysical spirits, who sat apart,
" And reasoned of foreknowledge, will, and fate,"
he grappled with one of those great questions which have
always perplexed and baffled human inquiry, and upon




14          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
which much has been written to little purpose. He
was tortured with anxiety to know whether, according
to the Westminster formula, he was elected to salva.
tion or damnation. His old adversary vexed his soul
with evil suggestions, and even quoted Scripture to
enforce them. "It may be you are not elected," said
the Tempter, and the poor tinker thought the supposition
altogether too probable. "Why, then," said Satan,
" you had as good leave off, and strive no farther; for
if, indeed, you should not be elected and chosen of God,
there is no hope of your being saved; for it is neither
in him that willeth nor in him that runneth, but in God
who showeth mercy." At length when, as he says, he
was about giving up the ghost of all his hopes, this
passage fell with weight upon his spirit: " Look at the
generations of old, and see; did ever any trust in God,
and were confounded? " Comforted by these words,
he opened his Bible to note them, but the most diligent
search and inquiry of his neighbors failed to discover
them. At length, his eye fell upon them in the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus. This, he says, somewhat doubted him at first, as the book was not canonical;
but in the end he took courage and comfort from the
passage. " I bless God," he says, " for that word; it
was good for me. That word doth still oftentimes shine
before my face."




JOHN BUNYAN.                15
A long and weary struggle was now before him. " I
cannot," he says, "express with what longings and
breathings of my soul I cried unto Christ to call me.
Gold! could it have been gotten by gold, what would I
have given for it. Had I a whole world, it had all gone
ten thousand times over for this, that my soul might have
been in a converted state. How lovely now was every
one in my eyes, that I thought to be converted men and
women. They shone, they walked like a people who
carried the broad seal of Heaven with them."
With what force and intensity of language does he
portray in the following passage the reality and earnestness of his agonizing experience:
" While I was thus afflicted with the fears of my own
damnation, there were two things would make me wonder: the one was, when I saw old people hunting after
the things of this life, as if they should live here
always; the other was, when I found professors much
distressed and cast down, when they met with outward
losses; as of husband, wife, or child. Lord, thought I,
what is seeking after carnal things by some, and what
grief in others for the loss of them! If they so much
labor after and shed so many tears for the things of this
present life, how am I to be bemoaned, pitied, and
prayed for! My soul is dying, my soul is damning.
Were my soul but in a good condition, and were I but




16          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
sure of it, ah! how rich should I esteem myself, though
blessed but with bread and water! I should count these
but small afflictions, and should bear them as little burdens.' A wounded spirit who can bear!"'
He looked with envy, as he wandered through the
country, upon the birds in the trees, the hares in the
preserves, and the fishes in the streams. They were
happy in their brief existence, and their death was but
a sleep. He felt himself alienated from God, a discord
in the harmonies of the universe. The very rooks
which fluttered around the old church spire seemed
more worthy of the Creator's love and care than himself. A vision of the infernal fire, like that glimpse of
hell which was afforded to Christian by the Shepherds,
was continually before him, with its " rumbling noise,
and the cry of some tormented, and the scent of brimstone." Whithersoever he went, the glare of it scorched
him, and its dreadful sound was in his ears. His vivid
but disturbed imagination lent new terrors to the awful
figures by which the sacred writers conveyed the idea
of future retribution to the oriental mind. Bunyan's
World of Wo, if it lacked the colossal architecture and
solemn vastness of Milton's Pandemonium, was more
clearly defined; its agonies were within the pale of
human comprehension; its victims were men and
women, with the same keen sense of corporeal suffering




JOHN BUNYAN.                 17
which they possessed in life; and who, to use his own
terrible description, had " all the loathed variety of hell
to grapple with; fire unquenchable, a lake of choking
brimstone, eternal chains, darkness more black than
night, the everlasting gnawing of the worm, the sight of
devils, and the yells and outcries of the damned."
His mind at this period was evidently shaken in some
degree from its balance. He was troubled with strange
wicked thoughts, confused by doubts and blasphemous
suggestions, for which he could only account by sup.
posing himself possessed of the devil. He wanted to
curse and swear, and had to clap his hands on his
mouth to prevent it. In prayer, he felt, as he supposed,
Satan behind him, pulling his clothes, and telling him
to have done, and break off; suggesting that he had
better pray to him, and calling up before his mind's eye
the figures of a bull, a tree, or some other object, instead of the awful idea of God.
He notes here, as cause of thankfulness, that, even
in this dark and clouded state, he was enabled to see
the " vile and abominable things fomented by the Quakers," to be errors. Gradually, the shadow wherein he
had so long
"Walked beneath the day's broad glare,
A darkened man,"
passed from him, and for a season he was afforded an
2




18           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
"evidence of his salvation from  Heaven, with many
golden seals thereon hanging in his sight." But, ere
long, other temptations assailed him. A strange suggestion haunted him, to sell or part with his Saviour.
His own account of this hallucination is too painfully
vivid to awaken any other feeling than that of sympathy
and sadness.
"' I could neither eat my food, stoop for a pin, chop a
stick, or cast mine eye to look on this or that, but still
the temptation would come, Sell Christ for this, or sell
Christ for that; sell him, sell him.
" Sometimes it would run in my thoughts, not so little
as a hundred times together, Sell him, sell him; against
which, I may say, for whole hours together, I have
been forced to stand as continually leaning and forcing
my spirit against it, lest haply, before I were aware,
some wicked thought might arise in my heart, that
might consent thereto; and sometimes the tempter
would make me believe I had consented to it; but then
I should be as tortured upon a rack, for whole days
together.
" This temptation did put me to such scares, lest I
should at sometimes, I say, consent thereto, and be
overcome therewith, that, by the very force of my
mind, my very body would be put into action or
motion, by way of pushing or thrusting with my hands




JOHN BUNYAN.                  19
or elbows; still answering, as fast as the destroyer said,
Sell him, I will not, I will not, I will not; no, not for
thousands, thousands, thousands of worlds; thus reckoning, lest I should set too low a value on him, even until
I scarce well knew where I was, or how to be composed
again.
"But to be brief: one morning, as I did lie in my bed,
I was, as at other times, most fiercely assaulted with this
temptation, to sell and part with Christ; the wicked
suggestion still running in my mind, Sell him, sell him,
sell him, sell him, sell him, as fast as a man could
speak; against which, also, in my mind, as at other
times, I answered, No, no, not for thousands, thousands,
thousands, at least twenty times together; but at last,
after much striving, I felt this thought pass through my
heart, Let him go if he will; and I thought also, that' I
felt my heart freely consent thereto. Oh! the diligence
of Satan! Oh! the desperateness of man's heart!
" Now was the battle won, and down fell I, as a bird
that is shot from the top of a tree, into great guilt, and
fearful despair. Thus getting out of my bed, I went
moping into the field; but God knows, with as heavy a
heart as mortal man, I think, could bear; where, for
the space of two hours, I was like a man bereft of life;
and, as now, past all recovery, and bound over to
eternal punishment.




20           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
" And withal, that Scripture did seize upon my soul:'Or profane person, as Esau, who, for one morsel of
meat, sold his birthright; for ye know, how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he
was rejected; for he found no place for repentance,
though he sought it carefully with tears."'
For two years and a half, as he informs us, that
awful Scripture sounded in his ears like the knell of a
lost soul. He believed that he had committed the unpardonable sin. His mental anguish was united with
bodily illness and suffering. His nervous system be.
came fearfully deranged; his limbs trembled; and he
supposed this visible tremulousness and agitation to be
the mark of Cain. Troubled with pain and distressing
sensations in his chest, he began to fear that his breastbone would split open, and that he should perish like
Judas Iscariot. He feared that the tiles of the houses
would fall upon him as he walked the streets. He was
like his own Man in the Cage at the House of the Interpreter, shut out from the promises, and looking forward to certain judgment. "Methought," he says,
" the very sun that shineth in heaven did grudge to give
me light." And still the dreadfuf words, " He found
no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully
with tears," sounded in the depths of his soul. They
were, he says, like fetters of brass to his legs, and their




JOHN BUNYAN.                  21
continual clanking followed him for months. Regard.
ing himself elected and predestined for damnation, he
thought that all things worked for his damage and
eternal overthrow, while all things wrought for the best,
and to do good to the elect and called of God unto
salvation. God and all His universe had, he thought,
conspired against him; the green earth, the bright
waters, the sky itself, were written over with his irrevo.
cable curse.
4 Well was it said by Bunyan's contemporary, the
excellent Cudworth, in his eloquent sermon before the
Long Parliament, that " we are nowhere commanded to
pry into the secrets of God, but the wholesome advice
given us is this:'To make our calling and election
sure.' We have no warrant from Scripture to peep
into the hidden rolls of eternity, to spell out our names
among the stars." " Must we say that God sometimes,
to exercise His uncontrollable dominion, delights rather
in plunging wretched souls down into infernal night and
everlasting darkness? What, then, shall we make the
God of the whole world? Nothing but a cruel and
dreadful Errinys, with curled fiery snakes about
His head, and firebrands in His hand; thus governing
the world! Surely, this will make us either secretly
think there is no God in the world, if He must needs
be such, or else to wish heartily there were none." It




22           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
was thus at times with Bunyan. He was tempted, in
this season of despair, to believe that there was no
resurrection and no judgment.
One day he tells us a sudden rushing sound, as of
wind or the wings of angels, came to him through the
window, wonderfully sweet and pleasant; and it was as
if a voice spoke to him from heaven words of encouragement and hope, which, to use his language, commanded, for the time, "a silence in his heart to all
those tumultuous thoughts that did use, like masterless
hell-hounds, to roar and bellow and make a hideous
noise within him."  About this time, also, some comforting passages of Scripture were called to mind; but
he remarks, that whenever he strove to apply them to
his case, Satan would thrust the curse of Esau in his
face, and wrest the good word from him. The blessed
promise, " Him that cometh to me, I will in no wise
cast out," was the chief instrumentality in restoring his
lost peace. He says of it: " If ever Satan and I did
strive for any word of God in all my life, it was for
this good word of Christ; he at one end, and I at the
other; oh, what work we made! It was for this in
John, I say, that we did so tug and strive; he pulled,
and I pulled, but, God be praised! I overcame him; I
got sweetness from it. Oh! many a pull hath my heart
had with Satan for this blessed sixth chapter of John! "




JOHN BUNYAN.                 23
Who does not here call to mind the struggle between
Christian and Apollyon in the valley! That was no
fancy sketch; it was the narrative of the author's own
grapple with the Spirit of Evil. Like his ideal Christian,
he " conquered through Him that loved him." Love
wrought the victory: the Scripture of Forgiveness overcame that of Hatred.
He never afterwards relapsed into that state of religious melancholy from which he so hardly escaped.
He speaks of his deliverance, as the waking out of a
troublesome dream. His painful experience was not
lost upon him; for it gave him, ever after, a tender
sympathy for the weak, the sinful, the ignorant, and
desponding. In some measure, he had been " touched
with the feeling of their infirmities." He could feel
for those in the bonds of sin and despair, as bound with
them. Hence his power as a preacher; hence the
wonderful adaptation of his great allegory to all the
variety of spiritual conditions. Like Fearing, he had
lain a month in the Slough of Despond, and had played,
like him, the long melancholy bass of spiritual heaviness. With Feeble-mind, he had fallen into the hands
of Slay-good, of the nature of Man-eaters; and had
limped along his difficult way upon the crutches of
Ready-to-halt. Who better than himself could describe
the condition of Despondency, and his daughter Much



24           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
afraid, in the dungeon of Doubting Castle? Had he
not also fallen among thieves, like Little-faith?
His account of his entering upon the solemn duties
of a preacher of the gospel is at once curious and
instructive. He deals honestly with himself, exposing
all his various moods, weaknesses, doubts, and temptations. "I preached," he says, "what I felt; for the
terrors of the law and the guilt of transgression lay
heavy on my conscience. I have been as one sent to
them from the dead. I went, myself in chains, to
preach to them in chains; and carried that fire in my
conscience which I persuaded them to beware of." At
times, when he stood up to preach, blasphemies and
evil doubts rushed into his mind, and he felt a strong
desire to utter them aloud to his congregation; and at
other seasons, when he was about to apply to the sinner
some searching and fearful text of Scripture, he was
tempted to withhold it, on the ground that it condemned
himself also; but, withstanding the suggestion of the
Tempter, to use his own simile, he bowed himself like
Samson to condemn sin wherever he found it, though
he brought guilt and condemnation upon himself thereby, choosing rather to die with the Philistines than to
deny the truth.
Foreseeing the consequences of exposing himself to
the operation of the penal laws by holding conventicles




JOHN BUNYAN.                 25
and preaching, he was deeply afflicted at the thought
of the suffering and destitution to which his wife and
children might be exposed by his death or imprisonment.
Nothing can be more touching than his simple and
earnest words on this point. They show how warm
and deep were his human affections, and what a tender
and loving heart he laid as a sacrifice on the altar of
duty:
"I found myself a man compassed with infirmities;
the parting with my wife and poor children, hath often
been to me in this place, as the pulling the flesh from
the bones; and also it brought to my mind the many
hardships, miseries, and wants, that my poor family
was like to meet with, should I be taken from them,
especially my poor blind child, who lay nearer my heart
than all beside. Oh! the thoughts of the hardships I
thought my poor blind one might go under, would break
my heart to pieces.
" Poor child! thought I, what sorrow art thou like to
have for thy portion in this world! thou must be beaten,
must beg, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a thou.
sand calamities, though I cannot now endure the wind
should blow upon thee. But yet, thought I, I must
venture you all with God, though it goeth to the quick
to leave you: Oh! I saw I was as a man who was
pulling down his house upon the heads of his wife and




26          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES,
children; yet I thought on those'two milch kine that
were to carry the ark of God into another country, and
to leave their calves behind them.'
" But that which helped me in this temptation was
divers considerations: the first was, the consideration of
those two Scriptures,' Leave thy fatherless children, I
will preserve them alive; and let thy widows trust in
me:' and again,' The Lord said, verily it shall go well
with thy remnant; verily I will cause the enemy to
entreat them well in the time of evil."'
He was arrested in 1660, charged with " devilishly
and perniciously abstaining from church," and of being
a common upholder of conventicles."  At the quarter
sessions, where his trial seems to have been conducted
somewhat like that of Faithful at Vanity Fair, he was
sentenced to perpetual banishment.  This sentence,
however, was never executed, but he was remanded
to Bedford jail, where he lay a prisoner for twelve
years.
Here, shut out from the world, with no other books
than the Bible and Fox's Martyrs, he penned that
great work which has attained a wider and more stable
popularity than any other book in the English tongue.
It is alike the favorite of the nursery and the study.
Many experienced Christians hold it only second to the
Bible; the infidel himself would not willingly let it die.




JOHN BUNYAN.                  27
Men of all sects read it with delight, as in the main a
truthful representation of the Christian pilgrimage, without indeed assenting to all the doctrines which the
author puts in the mouth of his fighting sermonizer,
Greatheart, or which may be deduced from some other
portions of his allegory. A recollection of his fearful
sufferings, from misapprehension of a single text in the
Scriptures, relative to the question of election, we may
suppose gave a milder tone to the theology of his Pilgrim than was altogether consistent with the Calvinism
of the seventeenth century. " Religion," says Macaulay,
" has scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing
as in Bunyan's allegory." In composing it, he seems
never to have altogether lost sight of the fact, that, in
his life and death struggle with Satan for the blessed
promise recorded by the Apostle of Love, the adversary
was generally found on the Genevan side of the argument. 
Little did the short-sighted persecutors of Bunyan
dream, when they closed upon him the door of Bedford
jail, that God would overrule their poor spite and
envy, to his own glory and the world-wide renown of
their victim. In the solitude of his prison, the ideal
forms of beauty and sublimity, which had long flitted
before him vaguely, like the vision of the Temanite,
took shape and coloring; and he was endowed with




28           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
power to reduce them to order, and arrange them in
harmonious groupings. His powerful imagination, no
longer self-tormenting, but under the direction of reason
and grace, expanded his narrow cell into a vast theatre,
lighted up for the display of its wonders. To this
creative faculty of his mind might have been aptly
applied the language which George Wither, a contem.
porary prisoner, addressed to his Muse:
"The dull loneness, the black shade
Which these hanging vaults have made,
The rude portals that give light
More to terror than delight;
This my chamber of neglect,
Walled about with disrespect,
From all these, and this dull air,
A fit object for despair,
She hath taught me by her might,
To draw comfort and delight."
That stony cell of his was to him like the rock of
Padan-aram to the wandering Patriarch. He saw angels
ascending and descending. The House Beautiful rose
up before him, and its holy sisterhood welcomed him.
He looked, with his Pilgrim, from the Chamber of
Peace. The Valley of Humiliation lay stretched out
beneath his eye, and he heard "the curious melodious
note of the country birds, who sing all the day long in




JOHN BUNYAN.                  29'
the spring time, when the flowers appear, and the sun
shines warm, and make the woods and groves and
solitary places glad." Side by side with the good
Christiana and the loving Mercy, he walked through
the green and lowly valley, " fruitful as any the crow
flies over," through " meadows beautiful with lilies;"
the song of the poor but fresh-faced shepherd boy, who
lived a merry life, and wore the herb heart's-ease in his
bosom, sounded through his cell:
" He that is down need fear no fall;
He that is low no pride."
The broad and pleasant " river of the Water of Life"
glided peacefully before him, fringed " on either side
with green trees, with all manner of fruit," and leaves
of healing, with " meadows beautified with lilies, and
green all the year long; " he saw the Delectable Mountains, glorious with sunshine, overhung with gardens
and orchards and vineyards; and beyond all, the Land
of Beulah, with its eternal sunshine, its song of birds,
its music of fountains, its purple clustered vines, and
groves through which walked the Shining Ones, silverwinged and beautiful.
What were bars and bolts and prison walls to him,
whose eyes were anointed to see, and whose ears
opened to hear, the glory and the rejoicing of the City




30           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
of God, when the pilgrims were conducted to its golden
gates, from the black and bitter river, with the sounding
trumpeters, the transfigured harpers with their crowns
of gold, the sweet voices of angels, the welcoming peal
of bells in the holy city, and the songs of the redeemed
ones? In reading the concluding pages of the first
part of Pilgrim's Progress, we feel as if the mysterious
glory of the Beatific Vision was unveiled before us.
We are dazzled with the excess of light. We are
entranced with the mighty melody; overwhelmed by
the great anthem of rejoicing spirits. It can only be
adequately described in the language of Milton in respect to the Apocalypse, as " a seven-fold chorus of
hallelujahs and harping symphonies."
Few who read Bunyan now-a-days think of him as
one of the brave old English confessors, whose steady
and firm endurance of persecution baffled, and in the
end overcame the tyranny of the established church in
the reign of Charles II. What Milton and Penn and
Locke wrote in defence of Liberty, Bunyan lived out
and acted. He made no concessions to wordly rank.
Dissolute lords and proud bishops he counted less than
the humblest and poorest of his disciples at Bedford.
When first arrested and thrown into prison, he supposed
he should be called to suffer death for his faithful testimony to the truth; and his great fear was, that he




JOHN BUNYAN.                  31
should not meet his fate with the requisite firmness, and
so dishonor the cause of his Master. And when dark
clouds came over him, and he sought in vain for a
sufficient evidence that in the event of his death it
would be well with him, he girded up his soul with the
reflection, that, as he suffered for the word and way of
God, he was engaged not to shrink one hair's breadth
from it. " I will leap," he says, " off the ladder blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come
hell. Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do; if not, I
will venture in thy name! "
The English revolution of the seventeenth century,
while it humbled the false and oppressive aristocracy of
rank and title, was prodigal in the development of the
real nobility of the mind and heart. Its history is bright
with the footprints of men whose very names still stir
the hearts of freemen, the world over, like a trumpet
peal. Say what we may of its fanaticism, laugh as we
may at its extravagant enjoyment of newly acquired
religious and civil liberty, who shall now venture to
deny that it was the golden age of England? Who
that regards freedom above slavery, will now sympathize with the outcry and lamentation of those interested
in the continuance of the old order of things, against the
prevalence of sects and schism, but who, at the same
time, as Milton shrewdly intimates,, dreaded more the




32           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
rending of their pontifical sleeves than the rending of
the church? Who shall now sneer at Puritanism, with
the " Defence of Unlicensed Printing" before him?
Who scoff at Quakerism over the Journal of George
Fox? Who shall join with debauched lordlings and
fat-witted prelates in ridicule of Anabaptist levellers
and dippers, after rising from the perusal of Pilgrim's
Progress?  "There were giants in those days."  And
foremost amidst that band of liberty-loving and Godfearing men,
" The slandered Calvinists of Charles's time,
Who fought, and won it, Freedom's holy fight,"
stands the subject of our sketch, the Tinker of Elstow.
Of his high merit as an author there is no longer any
question. The Edinburgh Review expressed the common sentiment of the literary world, when it declared
that the two great creative minds of the seventeenth
century were those which produced PARADISE LOST
and the PILGRIM'S PROGRESS.




THOMAS ELLWOOD.
COMMEND us to autobiographies! Give us the veritable notchings of Robinson Crusoe on his stick, the
indubitable records of a life long since swallowed up in
the blackness of darkness, traced by a hand the very
dust of which has become undistinguishable. The
foolishest egotist who ever chronicled his daily experiences, his hopes and fears, poor plans and vain
reachings after happiness, speaking to us out of the
Past, and thereby giving us to understand that it was
quite as real as our Present, is in no mean sort our
benefactor, and commands our attention, in spite of his
folly. We are thankful for the very vanity which
prompted him to bottle up his poor records, and cast
them into the great sea of Time, for future voyagers
to pick up. We note, with the deepest interest, that in
him too was enacted that miracle of a conscious existence, the reproduction of which in ourselves awes and
3




34           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
perplexes us. He, too, had a mother; he hated and
loved; the light from old-quenched hearths shone over
him; he walked in the sunshine over the dust of those
who had gone before him, just as we are now walking
over his. These records of him remain, the footmarks
of a long-extinct life, not of mere animal organism,
but of a being like ourselves, enabling us, by studying
their hieroglyphic significance, to decipher and see
clearly into the mystery of existence centuries ago.
The dead generations live again in these old selfbiographies. Incidentally, unintentionally, yet in the
simplest and most natural manner, they make us
familiar with all the phenomena of life in the by-gone
ages. We are brought in contact with actual flesh-andblood men and women, not the ghostly outline figures
which pass for such, in what is called History. The
horn lantern of the biographer, by the aid of which,
with painful minuteness, he chronicled, from day to
day, his own outgoings and incomings, making visible
to us his pitiful wants, labors, trials and tribulations,
of the stomach tnd of the conscience, sheds, at times,
a strong clear light upon contemporaneous activities;
what seemed before half fabulous, rises up in distinct
and full proportions; we look at statesmen, philosophers, and poets, with the eyes of those who lived
perchance their next door neighbors, and sold them




THOMAS- ELLWOOD.              35
beer, and mutton, and household stuffs, had access to
their kitchens, and took note of the fashion of their
wigs and the color of their breeches. Without some
such light, all history would be just about as unintelli.
gible and unreal as a dimly remembered dream.
The journals of the early Friends or Quakers are in
this respect invaluable. Little, it is true, can be said,
as a general thing, of their literary merits. Their
authors were plain, earnest men and women, chiefly
intent upon the substance of things, and having withal
a strong testimony to bear against carnal wit and outside show and ornament. Yet, even the scholar may
well admire the power of certain portions of George
Fox's Journal, where a strong spirit clothes its utterance
in simple, downright Saxon words; the quiet and beautiful enthusiasm of Pennington; the torrent energy of
Edward Burrough; the serene wisdom of Penn; the
logical acuteness of Barclay; the honest truthfulness of
Sewell; the wit and humor of John Roberts, (for even
Quakerism had its apostolic jokers and drab-coated
Robert Halls;) and last, not least, the simple beauty of
Woolman's Journal, the modest record of a life of good
works and love.
Let us look at the "LIFE OF THOMAS ELLWOOD."
The book before us is a hardly-used Philadelphia reprint, bearing date of 1775. The original was published




36           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
some sixty years before. It is not a book to be found in
fashionable libraries, or noticed in fashionable reviews,
but it is none the less deserving of attention.
Ellwood was born in 1639, in the little town of
Crowell, in Oxfordshire. Old Walter, his father, was
of " gentlemanly lineage," and held a commission of
the peace under Charles I. One of his most intimate
friends was Isaac Pennington, a gentleman of estate
and good reputation, whose wife, the widow of Sir John
Springette, was a lady of superior endowments. Her
only daughter, Gulielma, was the playmate and companion of Thomas. On making this family a visit, in
1658, in company with his father, he was surprised to
find that they had united with the Quakers, a sect then
little known, and every where spoken against. Passing
through the vista of nearly two centuries, let us cross
the threshold, and look with the eyes of young Ellwood
upon this Quaker family. It will doubtless give us a
good idea of the earnest and solemn spirit of that age
of religious awakening.
" So great a change from a free, debonair, and
courtly sort of behavior, which we had formerly found
there, into so strict a gravity as they now received us
with, did not a little amuse us, and disappointed our
expectations of such a pleasant visit as we had promised
ourselves.




THOMAS ELLWOOD.               37
" For my part, I sought, and at length found, means
to cast myself into the company of the daughter, whom
I found gathering flowers in the garden, attended by
her maid, also a Quaker. But when I addressed her
after my accustomed manner, with intention to engage
her in discourse, on the foot of our former acquaintance,
though she treated me with a courteous mien, yet, as
young as she was, the gravity of her looks and behavior
struck such an awe upon me, that I found myself not
so much master of myself as to pursue any further
converse with her.
" We staid dinner, which was very handsome, and
lacked nothing to recommend it to me but the want of
mirth and pleasant discourse, which we could neither
have with them, nor, by reason of them, with one
another; the weightiness which was upon their spirits
and countenances keeping down the lightness that would
have been up in ours."
Not long after, they made a second visit to their
sober friends, spending several days, during which they
attended a meeting, in a neighboring farm-house, where
we are introduced by Ellwood to two remarkable personages, EDWARD BURROUGH, the friend and fearless
reprover of Cromwell, and by far the most eloquent
preacher of his sect; and JAMES NAYLER, whose melan.
choly after-history of fanaticism, cruel sufferings, and




38          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
beautiful repentance, is so well known to the readers
of English history under the Protectorate. Under the
preaching of these men, and the influence of the Pennington family, young Ellwood was brought into fellowship with the Quakers. Of the old Justice's sorrow
and indignation at this sudden blasting of his hopes
and wishes in respect to his son, and of the trials and
difficulties of the latter in his new vocation, it is now
scarcely worth while to speak. Let us step forward a
few years, to 1662, considering meantime how matters,
political and spiritual, are changed in that brief period.
Cromwell, the Maccabeus of Puritanism, is no longer
among men; Charles the Second sits in his place;
profane and licentious cavaliers have thrust aside the
sleek-haired, painful-faced Independents, who used to
groan approval to the scriptural illustrations of Harrison
and Fleetwood; men easy of virtue, without sincerity,
either in religion or politics, occupying the places made
honorable by the Miltons, Whitlocks, and Vanes of the
Commonwealth. Having this change in view, the light
which the farthing candle of Ellwood sheds upon one
of these illustrious names will not be unwelcome. In
his intercourse with Penn, and other learned Quakers,
he had reason to lament his own deficiencies in scholarship, and his friend Pennington undertook to put him in
a way of remedying the defect.




THOMAS ELLWOOD.              39
" He had," says Ellwood, " an intimate acquaintance
with Dr. Paget, a physician of note in London, and he
with John Milton, a gentleman of great note for learn.
ing throughout the learned world, for the accurate
pieces he had written on various subjects and occasions.
" This person, having filled a public station in the
former times, lived a private and retired life in London,
and, having lost his sight, kept always a man to read
for him, which usually was the son of some gentleman
of his acquaintance, whom, in kindness, he took to im.
prove in his learning.
"Thus, by the mediation of my friend Isaac Pen.
nington with Dr. Paget, and through him with John
Milton, was I admitted to come to him, not as a servant
to him, nor to be in the house with him, but only to
have the liberty of coming to his house at certain hours
when I would, and read to him what books he should
appoint, which was all the favor I desired.
"He received me courteously, as well for the sake
of Dr. Paget, who introduced me, as of Isaac Pennington, who recommended me, to both of whom he bore a
good respect. And, having inquired divers things of
me, with respect to my former progression in learning,
he dismissed me, to provide myself with such accommodations as might be most suitable to my studies.




40          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
"I went, therefore, and took lodgings as near to his
house (which was then in Jewen street) as I conveniently dould, and from thenceforward went every day in
the afternoon, except on the first day of the week, and,
sitting by him in his dining-room, read to him such
books in the Latin tongue as he pleased to have me
read.
" He perceiving with what earnest desire I had pursued learning, gave me not only all the encouragement,
but all the help he could. For, having a curious ear,
he understood by my tone when I understood what I
read and when I did not, and accordingly would stop
me, examine me, and open the most difficult passages
to me."
Thanks, worthy Thomas, for this glimpse into John
Milton's dining-room!
He had been with " Master Milton," as he calls him,
only a few weeks, when, being one "' first day morning,"
at the Bull and Mouth meeting, Aldersgate, the trainbands of the city, "with great noise and clamor,"
headed by Major Rosewell, fell upon him and his
friends. The immediate cause of this onslaught upon
quiet worshippers was the famous plot of the Fifth
Monarchy men, grim old fanatics, who (like the Millerites of the present day) had been waiting long for the
personal reign of Christ and the saints upon earth, and




THOMAS ELLWOOD.               41
in their zeal to hasten such a consummation, had sallied
into London streets with drawn swords and loaded
matchlocks. The government took strong measures for
suppressing dissenters' meetings or "conventicles;" and
the poor Quakers, although not at all implicated in the
disturbance, suffered more severely than any others.
Let us look at the " freedom of conscience and worship "
in England under that irreverent Defender of the Faith,
Charles II. Ellwood says: " He that commanded the
party gave us first a general charge to come out of the
room. But we, who came thither at God's requiring to
worship Him, (like that good man of old, who said,
we ought to obey God rather than man,) stirred not,
but kept our places. Whereupon, he sent some of his
soldiers among us, with command to drag or drive us
out, which they did roughly enough." Think of it:
grave men and women, and modest maidens, sitting
there with calm, impassive countenances, motionless as
death, the pikes of the soldiery closing about them in a
circle of bristling steel! Brave and true ones! Not
in vain did ye thus oppose God's silence to the Devil's
uproar; Christian endurance and calm persistence in
the exercise of your rights as Englishmen and men to
the hot fury of impatient tyranny! From your day
down to this, the world has been the better fQr your
faithfulness.




42           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
Ellwood and some thirty of his friends were marched
off to prison in Old Bridewell, which, as well as nearly
all the other prisons, was already crowded with Quaker
prisoners. One of the rooms of the prison was used
as a torture chamber. " I was almost affrighted," says
Ellwood, " by the dismalness of the place; for, besides
that the walls were all laid over with black, from top
to bottom, there stood in the middle a great whippingpost.
" The manner of whipping there is, to strip the party
to the skin, from the waist upward, and, having fastened
him to the whipping-post, (so that he can neither resist
nor shun the strokes,) to lash his naked body with long,
slender twigs of holly, which will bend almost like thongs
around the body; and these, having little knots upon
them, tear the skin and flesh, and give extreme pain."
To this terrible punishment aged men and delicately
nurtured young females were often subjected, during
this season of hot persecution.
From the Bridewell, Ellwood was at length removed
to Newgate, and thrust in, with other " Friends," amidst
the common felons. He speaks of this prison, with its
thieves, murderers, and prostitutes, its over-crowded
apartments, and loathsome cells, as " a hell upon earth."
In a closet, adjoining the room where he was lodged,
lay for several days the quartered bodies of Phillips,




THOMAS ELLWOOD.              43
Tongue, and Gibbs, the leaders of the Fifth Monarchy
rising, frightful and loathsome, as they came from the
bloody hand of the executioners! These ghastly remains were at length obtained by the friends of the
dead, and buried. The heads were ordered to be prepared for setting up in different parts of the city. Read
this grim passage of description:
"I saw the heads when they were brought to be
boiled. The hangman fetched them in a dirty basket,
out of some by-place, and setting them down among the
felons, he and they made sport of them. They took
them by the hair, flouting, jeering, and laughing at
them; and then giving them some ill names, boxed
them on their ears and cheeks; which done, the hangman put them into his kettle, and parboiled them with
bay salt and cummin seed: that to keep them from
putrefaction, and this to keep off the fowls from seizing
upon them. The whole sight, as well that of the
bloody quarters first, as this of the heads afterwards,
was both frightful and loathsome, and begat an abhorrence in my nature."
At the next session of the municipal court at the Old
Bailey, Ellwood obtained his discharge. After paying
a visit to "my Master Milton," he made his way to
Chalfont, the home of his friends the Penningtons,
where he was soon after engaged as a Latin teacher.




44           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
Here he seems to have had his trials and temptations.
Gulielma Springette, the daughter of Pennington's wife,
his old playmate, had now grown to be " a fair woman
of marriageable age," and, as he informs us, " very
desirable, whether regard was had to her outward person, which wanted nothing to make her completely
comely, or to the endowments of her mind, which were
every way extraordinary, or to her outward fortune,
which was fair." From all which, we are not surprised
to learn that " she was secretly and openly sought for
by many of almost every rank and condition." " To
whom," continues Thomas, " in their respective turns,
(till he at length came for whom she was reserved,)
she carried herself with so much evenness of temper,
such courteous freedom, guarded by the strictest modesty, that as it gave encouragement or ground of hope
to none, so neither did it administer any matter of
offence or just cause of complaint to any."
Beautiful and noble maiden! How the imagination
fills up this outline limning by her friend, and, if truth
must be told, admirer! Serene, courteous, healthful;
a ray of tenderest and blandest light, shining steadily
in the sober gloom of that old household! Confirmed
Quaker as she is, shrinking from none of the responsi.
bilities and dangers of her profession, and therefore
liable at any time to the penalties of prison and whip



THOMAS ELLWOOD.               45
ping-post, under that plain garb and in spite of that " certain gravity of look and behavior," which, as we have
seen, on one occasion awed young Ellwood into silence,
youth, beauty, and refinement assert their prerogatives;
love knows no creed; the gay, and titled, and wealthy
crowd around her, suing in vain for her favor.
" Followed, like the tided moon,
She moves as calmly on,"
" Until he at length comes for whom she was reserved,"
and her name is united with that of one worthy even of
her, the world-renowned William Penn.
Meantime, one cannot but feel a good degree of
sympathy with young Ellwood, her old schoolmate and
playmate, placed, as he was, in the same family with
her, enjoying her familiar conversation and unreserved
confidence; and, as he says, the " advantageous opportunities of riding and walking abroad with her, by night
as well as by day, without any other company than her
maid; for, so great, indeed, was the confidence that
her mother had in me, that she thought her daughter
safe, if I was with her, even from the plots and designs
of others upon her." So near, and yet, alas! in truth,
so distant! The serene and gentle light which shone
upon him, in the sweet solitudes of Chalfont, was that of
a star, itself unapproachable. As he himself meekly




46           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
intimates, she was reserved for another. He seems to
have fully understood his own position in respect to
her; although, to use his own words, " others measuring
him by the propensity of their own inclinations, concluded he would steal her, run away with her and
marry her." Little did these jealous surmisers know
of the true and really heroic spirit of the young
Latin master. His own apology and defence of his
conduct, under circumstances of temptation which St.
Anthony himself could have scarcely better resisted,
will not be amiss:
" I was not ignorant of the various fears which filled
the jealous heads of some concerning me, neither was
I so stupid nor so divested of all humanity as not to be
sensible of the real and innate worth and virtue which
adorned that excellent dame, and attracted the eyes and
hearts of so many, with the greatest importunity, to
seek and solicit her; nor was I so devoid of natural
heat as not to feel some sparklings of desire, as well as
others; but the force of truth and sense of honor suppressed whatever would have risen beyond the bounds
of fair and virtuous friendship. For I easily foresaw,
that, if I should have attempted any thing in a dishonorable way, by fraud or force, upon her, I should have
thereby brought a wound upon mine own soul, a foul
scandal upon my religious profession, and an infamous




THOMAS ELLWOOD.               47
stain upon mine honor, which was far more dear unto
me than my life. Wherefore, having observed how
some others had befooled themselves, by misconstruing
her common kindness (expressed in an innocent, open,
free, and familiar conversation, springing from the
abundant affability, courtesy, and sweetness of her
natural temper) to be the effect of a singular regard
and peculiar affection to them, I resolved to shun the
rock whereon they split; and, remembering the saying
of the poet-'Felix quem faciunt aliena Pericula cantum,'
I governed myself in a free yet respectful carriage
towards her, thereby preserving a fair reputation with
my friends, and enjoying as much of her favor and
kindness, in a virtuous and firm friendship, as was fit
for her to show or for me to seek."
Well and worthily said, poor Thomas! Whatever
might be said of others, thou, at least, wast no coxcomb.
Thy distant and involuntary admiration of " the fair
Guli" needs, however, no excuse. Poor human nature,
guard it as one may, with strictest discipline and painfully cramping environment, will sometimes act out
itself; and, in thy case, not even George Fox himself,
knowing thy beautiful young friend, (and doubtless
admiring her too, for he was one of the first to appre



48           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
ciate and honor the worth and dignity of woman,) could
have found it in his heart to censure thee!
At this period, as was indeed most natural, our young
teacher solaced himself with occasional appeals to what
he calls "the Muses."  There is reason to believe,
however, that the Pagan sisterhood whom he ventured
to invoke seldom graced his study with their personal
attendance. In these rhyming efforts, scattered up and
down his Journal, there are occasional sparkles of genuine wit, and passages of keen sarcasm, tersely and
fitly expressed. Others breathe a warm, devotional
feeling; in the following brief prayer, for instance, the
wants of the humble Christian are condensed in a manner worthy of Quarles or Herbert:
"Oh! that mine eye might closed be
To what concerns me not to see;
That deafness might possess mine ear
To what concerns me not to hear;
That Truth my tongue might always tie
From ever speaking foolishly;
That no vain thought might ever rest
Or be conceived in my breast;
That by each word and deed and thought,
Glory may to my God be brought!
But what are wishes! Lord, mine eye
On Thee is fixed, to Thee I cry:




THOMAS ELLWOOD.                  49
Wash, Lord, and purify my heart,
And make it clean in every part;
And when't is clean, Lord, keep it too,
For that is more than I can do."
The thought in the following extracts from a poem,
written on the death of his friend Pennington's son, is
trite, but not inaptly or inelegantly expressed:
" What ground, alas, has any man
To set his heart on things below,
Which, when they seem most like to stand,
Fly like the arrow from the bow!
Who's now atop ere long shall feel
The circling motion of the wheel!
"The world cannot afford a thing
Which to a well-composed mind
Can any lasting pleasure bring,
But in itself its grave will find.
All things unto their centre tend -
What had beginning must have end!
" No disappointment can befall
Us, having Him who's ALL IN ALL!
What can of pleasure him prevent
WVho hath the Fountain of Content  "
In the year 1663 a severe law was enacted against the
"sect called Quakers," prohibiting their meetings, with
the penalty of banishment for the third offence! The
4




50          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
burden of the prosecution which followed fell upon the
Quakers of the metropolis, large numbers of whom
were heavily fined, imprisoned, and sentenced to be
banished from their native land. Yet, in time, our
worthy friend Ellwood came in for his own share of
trouble, in consequence of attending the funeral of one
of his friends. An evil-disposed justice of the county
obtained information of the Quaker gathering; and,
while the body of the dead was " borne on Friends'
shoulders through the street, in order to be carried to
the burying-ground, which was at the town's end," says
Ellwood, "he rushed out upon us with the constables
and a rabble of rude fellows whom he had gathered
together, and having his drawn sword in his hand,
struck one of the foremost of the bearers with it, commanding them to set down the coffin. But the Friend,
who was so stricken, being more concerned for the
safety of the dead body than for his own, lest it should
fall, and any indecency thereupon follow, held the coffin
fast; which the justice observing, and being enraged
that his word was not forthwith obeyed, set his hand to
the coffin, and with a forcible thrust threw it off from
the bearers' shoulders, so that it fell to the ground in
the middle of the street, and there we were forced to
leave it; for the constables and rabble fell upon us, and
drew some and drove others into the inn. Of those




THOMAS ELLWOOD.                 51
thus taken," continues Ellwood, " I was one. They
picked out ten of us, and sent us to Aylesbury jail.
" They caused the body to lie in the open street and
cartway, so that all trayellers that passed, whether
horsemen, coaches, carts, or wagons, were fain to break
out of the way to go by it, until it was almost night.
And then, having caused a grave to be made in the
unconsecrated part of what is called the Churchyard,
they forcibly took the body from the widow, and buried
it there."
He remained a prisoner only about two months,
during which period he comforted himself by such
verse-making as follows, reminding us of similar enigmas in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress:
"Lo! a Riddle for the wise,
In the which a Mystery lies.
RIDDLE.
Some men are free whilst they in prison lie;
Others who ne'er saw prison, captives die.j
CAUTION.
He that can receive it may,
He that cannot, let him stay,
Not be hasty, but suspend
Judgment till he sees the end.
SOLUTION.
He's only free indeed, who's free from sin,
And he is fastest bound, that's bound therein."




52          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
In the mean time, where is our " Master Milton?"
We left him deprived of his young companion and
reader, sitting lonely in his small dining-room, in Jewen
street. It is now the year 1665; is not the pestilence
in London? A sinful and godless city, with its bloated
bishops, fawning around the Nell Gwyns of a licentious
and profane Defender of the Faith; its swaggering
and drunken cavaliers; its ribald jesters; its obscene
ballad-singers; its loathsome prisons, crowded with
God-fearing men and women; is not the measure of its
iniquity already filled up? Three years only have
passed since the terrible prayer of Vane went upward
from the scaffold on Tower Hill: " When my blood is
shed upon the block, let it, oh God, have a voice afterward! "  Audible to thy ear, oh bosom friend of the
martyr! has that blood cried from earth; and now,
how fearfully is it answered! Like the ashes which
the Seer of the Hebrews cast towards Heaven, it has
returned in boils and blains upon the proud and oppressive city. John Milton, sitting blind in Jewen street,
has heard the toll of the death bells, and the night-long
rumble of the burial-carts, and the terrible summons,
"BRING OUT YOUR DEAD! "  The Angel of the Plague,
in yellow mantle, purple-spotted, walks the streets.
Why should he tarry in a doomed city, forsaken of
God! Is not the command,' even to him," Arise! and




THOMAS ELLWOOD.              53
flee for thy life." In some green nook of the quiet
country, he may finish the great work which his hands
have found to do. He bethinks him of his old friends,
the Penningtons, and his young Quaker companion, the
patient and gentle Ellwood. " Wherefore," says the
latter, "some little time before I went to Aylesbury
jail, I was desired by my quondam Master Milton to
take an house for him in the neighborhood where I
dwelt, that he might go out of the city for the safety of
himself and his family, the pestilence then growing hot
in London. I took a pretty box for him in Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice, and
intended to have waited on him and seen him well
settled, but was prevented by that imprisonment. But
now being released and returned home, I soon made a
visit to him, to welcome him into the country. After
some common discourse had passed between us, he
called for a manuscript of his, which having brought,
he delivered to me, bidding me take it home with me
and read it at my leisure, and when I had so done,
return it to him with my judgment thereupon."
Now, what does the reader think young Ellwood
carried in his gray coat pocket across the dikes and
hedges and through the green lanes of Giles Chalfont
that autumn day?  Let us look farther: "When I
came home, and had set myself to read it, I found it




54          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
was that excellent poem which he entitled PARADISE
LOST. After I had, with the best attention, read it
through, I made him another visit; and, returning his
book with due acknowledgment of the favor he had
done me in communicating it to me, he asked me how
I liked it, and what I thought of it, which I modestly
but freely told him; and, after some farther discourse
about it, I pleasantly said to him,' Thou hast said much
here of Paradise Lost; what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?' He made me no answer, but sat some
time in a muse, then brake off that discourse, and fell
upon another subject."
" I modestly but freely told him what I thought" of
Paradise Lost! What he told him remains a mystery.
One would like to know more precisely what the first
critical reader of that song " of Man's first disobedience"
thought of it. Fancy the young Quaker and blind
Milton setting some pleasant afternoon of the autumn
of that old year, in " the pretty box" at Chalfont, the
soft wind through the open window lifting the thin hair
of the glorious old Poet! Backslidden England, plaguesmitten, and accursed with her faithless Church and
libertine King, knows little of poor " Master Milton,"
and takes small note of his puritanic verse making.
Alone, with his humble friend, he sits there, conning
over that poem which, he fondly hoped, the world,




THOMAS ELLWOOD.              55
which had grown all dark and strange to the author,
"would not willingly let die."  The suggestion in
respect to Paradise Found, to which, as we have seen,
" he made no answer, but sat some time in a muse,"
seems not to have been lost; for, " after the sickness
was over," continues Ellwood, " and the city well
cleansed, and become safely habitable again, he returned thither; and when afterwards I waited on him there,
which I seldom failed of doing whenever my occasions
drew me to London, he showed me his second poem,
called PARADISE GAINED; and, in a pleasant tone, said
to me,' This is owing to you, for you put it into my
head by the question you put to me at Chalfont, which
before I had not thought of."'
Golden days were these for the young Latin reader,
even if it be true, as we suspect, that he was himself
very far from appreciating the glorious privilege which
he enjoyed, of the familiar friendship and confidence
of Milton. But they could not last. His amiable host,
Isaac Pennington, a blameless and quiet country gentleman, was dragged from his house by a military force,
and lodged in Aylesbury jail; his wife and family
forcibly ejected from their pleasant home, which was
seized upon by the government as security for the fines
imposed upon its owner. The plague was in the village
of Aylesbury, and in the very prison itself; but the




56          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
noble-hearted Mary Pennington followed her husband,
sharing with him the dark peril. Poor Ellwood, while
attending a monthly meeting at Hedgerly, with six
others, (among them one Morgan Watkins, a poor old
Welshman, who, painfully endeavoring to utter his testimony in his own dialect, was suspected by the Dogberry
of a justice of being a Jesuit trolling over his Latin,) was
arrested, and committed to Wiccomb House of Correction.
This was a time of severe trial for the sect with
which Ellwood had connected himself. In the very
midst of the pestilence, when thousands perished weekly in London, fifty-four Quakers were marched through
the almost deserted streets, and placed on board a
ship, for the purpose of being conveyed, according to
their sentence of banishment, to the West Indies.
The ship lay for a long time, with many others similarly
situated, a helpless prey to the pestilence. Through
that terrible autumn, the prisoners sat waiting for the
summons of the ghastly Destroyer; and, from their
floating dungeon,
" Heard the groan
Of agonizing ships from shore to shore;
Heard nightly plunged beneath the sullen wave
The frequent corse."
When the vessel at length set sail, of the fifty-four
who went on board, twenty-seven only were living.




THOMAS ELLWOOD.               57
A Dutch privateer captured her, when two days out,
and carried the prisoners to North Holland, where
they were set at liberty. The condition of the jails
in the city, where were large numbers of Quakers, was
dreadful in the extreme. Ill ventilated, crowded, and
loathsome with the accumulated filth of centuries, they
invited the disease which daily decimated their cells.
" Go on!" says Pennington, writing to the King and
Bishops from his plague-infected cell in the Aylesbury
prison, " try it out with the Spirit of the Lord, come
forth with your laws, and prisons, and spoiling of goods,
and banishment and death, if the Lord please, and see
if ye can carry it! Whom the Lord loveth, He can
save at His pleasure. Hath He begun to break our
bonds and deliver us, and shall we now distrust Him?
Are we in a worse condition than Israel was when the
sea was before them, the mountains on either side, and
the Egyptians behind pursuing them? "
Brave men and faithful! It is not necessary that the
present generation, now quietly reaping the fruit of
your heroic endurance, should see eye to eye with you
in respect to all your testimonies and beliefs, in order
to recognize your claim to gratitude and admiration.
For, in an age of hypocritical hollowness and mean
self-seeking, when, with noble exceptions, the very
Puritans of Cromwell's Reign of the Saints were taking




58          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
profane lessons from their old enemies, and putting on
an outside show of conformity, for the sake of place or
pardon, ye maintained the austere dignity of virtue,
and, with King and Church and Parliament arrayed
against you, vindicated the Rights of Conscience, at
the cost of home, fortune, and life. English liberty
owes more to your unyielding firmness than to the
blows stricken for her at Worcester and Naseby.
In 1667, we find the Latin teacher in attendance at
a great meeting of Friends, in London, convened at the
suggestion of George Fox, for the purpose of settling a
little difficulty which had arisen among the Friends, even
under the pressure of the severest persecution, relative
to the very important matter of "wearing the hat."
George Fox, in his love of truth and sincerity, in word
and action, had discountenanced the fashionable doffing
of the hat, and other flattering obeisances towards men
holding stations in Church or State, as savoring of man.
worship, giving to the creature the reverence only due
to the Creator, as undignified and wanting in due selfrespect, and tending to support unnatural and oppressive
distinctions among those equal in the sight of God.
But some of his disciples evidently made much more
of this " hat testimony" than their teacher. One John
Perrott, who had just returned from an unsuccessful
attempt to convert the Pope, at Rome, (where that dig



THOMAS ELLWOOD.               59
nitary, after listening to his exhortations, and finding
him in no condition to be benefited by the spiritual
physicians of the Inquisition, had quietly turned him
over to the temporal ones of the Insane Hospital,) had
broached the doctrine that, in public or private worship,
the hat was not to be taken off, without an immediate
revelation or call to do so! Ellwood himself seems to
have been on the point of yielding to this notion, which
appears to have been the occasion of a good deal of
dissension and scandal. Under these circumstances, to
save truth from reproach, and an important testimony
to the essential equality of mankind from running into
sheer fanaticism, Fox summoned his tried and faithful
friends together, from all parts of the United Kingdom,
and, as it appears, with the happiest result. Hat.
revelations were discountenanced, good order and harmony re-established, and John Perrott's beaver, and
the crazy head under it, were from thenceforth powerless for evil. Let those who are disposed to laugh at
this notable Ecumenical Council of the Hat, consider
that ecclesiastical history has brought down to us the
records of many larger and more imposing convocations,
wherein grave bishops and learned fathers took each
other by the beard upon matters of far less practical
importance.
In 1669, we find Ellwood engaged in escorting his




V6C        PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
fair friend, Gulielma, to her uncle's residence in Sussex.
Passing through London, and taking the Tunbridge
road, they stopped at Seven Oak to dine. The Duke
of York was on the road, with his guards and hangerson, and the inn was filled with a rude company.
" Hastening," says Ellwood," from a place where we
found nothing but rudeness, the roysterers who swarmed
there, besides the damning oaths they belched out
against each other, looked very sourly upon us, as if
they grudged us the horses which we rode and the
clothes we wore." They had proceeded but a little
distance, when they were overtaken by some half dozen
drunken rough-riding cavaliers, of the Wildrake stamp,
in full pursuit after the beautiful Quakeress. One of
them impudently attempted to pull her upon his horse
before him, but was held at bay by Ellwood, who
seems, on this occasion, to have relied somewhat upon
his " stick," in defending his fair charge. Calling up
Gulielma's servant, he bade him ride on one side of his
mistress, while he guarded her on the other. "But
he," says Ellwood, "not thinking it perhaps decent to
ride so near his mistress, left room enough for another
to ride between." In dashed the drunken retainer, and
Gulielma was once more in peril. It was clearly no
time for exhortations and expostulations, "so," says
Ellwood, " I chopped in upon him, by a nimble turn,




THOMAS ELLWOOD.              61
and kept him at bay. I told him I had hitherto spared
him, but wished him not to provoke me further.  This
I spoke in such a tone as bespoke an high resentment
of the abuse put upon us, and withal, pressed him so
hard with my horse, that I suffered him not to come up
again to Guli." By this time, it became evident to the
companions of the ruffianly assailant that the young
Quaker was in earnest, and they hastened to interfere.
"' For they," says Ellwood, "seeing the contest rise so
high, and probably fearing it would rise higher, not
knowing where it might stop, came in to part us; which
they did, by taking him away."
Escaping from these sons of Belial, Ellwood and his
fair companion rode on through Tunbridge Wells, " the
street thronged with men, who looked very earnestly at
them, but offered them no affront," and arrived, late at
night, in a driving rain, at the mansion house of Herbert
Springette. The fiery old gentleman was so indignant
at the insult offered to his niece, that he was with
difficulty dissuaded from demanding satisfaction at the
hands of the Duke of York,
This seems to have been his last ride with Gulielma.
She was soon after married to William Penn, and took
up her abode at Worminghurst, in Sussex. How blessed
and beautiful was that union may be understood from
the following paragraph of a letter, written by her




62          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
husband, on the eve of his departure for America to
lay the foundations of a Christian colony.
" My dear Wife! remember thou wast the love of
my youth, and much the joy of my life, the most
beloved, as well as the most worthy of all my earthly
comforts; and the reason of that love was more thy
inward than thy outward excellences, which yet were
many. God knows, and thou knowest it, I can say it
was a match of Providence's making; and God's image
in us both was the first thing and the most amiable and
engaging ornament in our eyes."
About this time, our friend Thomas, seeing that his
old playmate at Chalfont was destined for another,
turned his attention towards a "young Friend, named
Mary Ellis." He had been for several years acquainted
with her, but now he " found his heart secretly drawn
and inclining towards her."  "At length," he tells us,
" as I was sitting all alone, waiting upon the Lord for
counsel and guidance in this, in itself and to me,
important affair, I felt a word sweetly arise in me, as if
I had heard a Voice which said, Go, and prevail! and
Faith springing in my heart at the word, I immediately
rose and went, nothing doubting." On arriving at her
residence, he states that he " solemnly opened his mind
to her, which was a great surprisal to her, for she had
taken in an apprehension, as others had also done," that




THOMAS ELLWOOD.               63
his eye had been fixed elsewhere and nearer home.
" I used not many words to her," he continues, "but I
felt a Divine Power went along with the words, and
fixed the matter expressed by them so fast in her
breast, that, as she afterwards acknowledged to me, she
could not shut it out."
"I continued,"- he says, "my visits to my bestbeloved Friend until we married, which was on the
28th day of the eighth month, 1669. We took each
other in a select meeting of the ancient and grave
Friends of that country. A very solemn meeting it
was, and in a weighty frame of spirit we were." His
wife seems to have had some estate; and Ellwood,
with that nice sense of justice which marked all his
actions, immediately made his will, securing to her, in
case of his decease, all her own goods and moneys, as
well as all that he had himself acquired before marriage.
"' Which," he tells, " was indeed but little, yet, by all
that little, more than I had ever given her ground to
expect with me." His father, who was yet unreconciled to the son's religious views, found fault with his
marriage, on the ground that it was unlawful and
unsanctioned by priest or liturgy; and consequently,
refused to render him any pecuniary assistance. Yet,
in spite of this and other trials, he seems to have preserved his serenity of spirit. After an unpleasant inter.




64           PORTRAITS AND. SKETCHES.
view with his father, on one occasion, he wrote, at his
lodgings in an inn, in London, what he calls " A Song
of Praise." An extract from it will serve to show the
spirit of the good man in affliction:
"Unto the Glory of Thy Holy Name,
Eternal God! whom I both love and fear,
I hereby do declare, I never came
Before Thy throne, and found Thee loth to hear,
But always ready with an open ear,
And, though sometimes Thou seem'st Thy face to hide,
As one that had withdrawn his love from me,'T is that my Faith may to the full be tried,
And that I thereby may the better see
How weak I am when not upheld by Thee!"
The next year, 1670, an act of Parliament, in relation to " Conventicles,"' provided that any person who
should be present at any meeting, under color or pre.
tence of any exercise of religion, in other manner than
according to the liturgy and practice of the Church of
England, i" should be liable to fines of from five to ten
shillings; and any person preaching at or giving his
house for the meeting, to a fine of twenty pounds; one
third of the fines being received by the informer or
informers." As a natural consequence of such a law,
the vilest scoundrels in the land set up the trade of
informers and heresy-hunters. Wherever a dissenting




THOMAS ELLWOOD.               65
meeting or burial took place, there was sure to be a
mercenary spy, ready to bring a complaint against all
in attendance. The Independents and Baptists ceased,
in a great measure, to hold public meetings, yet even
they did not escape prosecution. Bunyan, for instance,
in these days, was dreaming, like another Jacob, of
angels ascending and descending, in Bedford prison.
But upon the poor Quakers fell, as usual, the great
force of the unjust enactment. Some of these spies or
informers, men of sharp wit, close countenances, pliant
tempers, and skill in dissimulation, took the guise of
Quakers, Independents, or Baptists, as occasion required, thrusting themselves into the meetings of the
proscribed sects, ascertaining the number who attended,
their rank and condition, and then informing against
them. Ellwood, in his journal for 1670, describes
several of these emissaries of evil. One of them came
to a Friend's house, in Bucks, professing to be a brother
in the faith, but, overdoing his counterfeit Quakerism,
was detected and dismissed by his host. Betaking
himself to the inn, he appeared in his true character,
drank and swore roundly, and confessed over his cups
that he had been sent forth on his mission by the Rev.
Dr. Mew, Vice Chancellor of Oxford. Finding little
success in counterfeiting Quakerism, he turned to the
Baptists, where, for a time, he met with better success.
5




66           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
Ellwood, at this time, rendered good service to his
friends, by exposing the true character of these wretches, and bringing them to justice for theft, perjury, and
other misdemeanors.
While this storm of persecution lasted, (a period of
two or three years,) the different dissenting sects felt,
in some measure, a common sympathy, and, while
guarding themselves against their common foe, had
little leisure for controversy with each other; but, as
was natural, the abatement of their mutual suffering
and danger, was the signal for renewing their suspended
quarrels. The Baptists fell upon the Quakers, with
pamphlet and sermon; the latter replied in the same
way. One of the most conspicuous of the Baptist
disputants was the famous JEREMY IVES, with whom
our friend Ellwood seems to have had a good deal of
trouble. " His name," says Ellwood, " was up for a
topping Disputant. He was well read in the fallacies
of logic, and was ready in framing syllogisms. His
chief art lay in tickling the humor of rude, unlearned,
and injudicious hearers."
The following piece of Ellwood's, entitled " An
Epitaph for Jeremy Ives," will serve to show that
wit and drollery were sometimes found even among
the proverbially sober Quakers of the seventeenth
century:




THOMAS ELLWOOD.                   67
"Beneath this stone, depressed doth lie
The Mirror of Hypocrisy -
Ives, whose mercenary tongue
Like a Weathercock was hung,
And did this or that way play,
As Advantage led the way.
If well hired, he would dispute,
Otherwise he would be mute.
But, he'd bawl for half a day,
If he knew and liked his pay.'For his person, let it pass;
Only note his face was brass.
His heart was like a pumice stone,
And for Conscience he had none.
Of Earth and Air he was composed,
With Water round about enclosed.
Earth in him had greatest share,
Questionless, his life lay there;
Thence his cankered Envy sprung,
Poisoning both his heart and tongue.
"Air made him frothy, light, and vain,
And puffed him with a proud disdain.
Into the Water oft he went,
And through the Water many sent,
That was, ye know his element!
The greatest odds that did appear
Was this, for aught that I can hear,
That he in cold did others dip,
But did himself hot water sip.




68            PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
" And his cause he'd never doubt,
If well soak'd o'er night in Stout;
But, meanwhile, he must not lack,
Brandy, and a draught of Sack.
One dispute would shrink a bottle
Of three pints, if not a pottle.
One would think he fetched from thence
All his dreamy eloquence.
"Let us now bring back the Sot
To his Aqua Vita pot,
And observe, with some content,
How he framed his argument.
That his whistle he might wet,
The bottle to his mouth he set,
And, being Master of that Art,
Thence he drew the Major part,
But left the Minor still behind;
Good reason why, he wanted wind;
If his breath would have held out,
He had Conclusion drawn, no doubt."
The residue of Ellwood's life seems to have glided
on in serenity and peace. He wrote, at intervals, many
pamphlets in defence of his Society, and in favor of
Liberty of Conscience. At his hospitable residence,
the leading spirits of the sect were warmly welcomed.
George Fox and William Penn seem to have been
frequent guests. We find that, in 1683, he was arrested




THOMAS ELLWOOD.               69
for seditious publications, when on the eve of hastening
to his early friend, Gulielma, who, in the absence of
her husband, Governor Penn, had fallen dangerously
ill. On coming before the judge, " I told him," says
Ellwood, " that I had that morning received an express
out of Sussex, that William Penn's wife (with whom I
had an intimate acquaintance and strict friendship,
ab ipsis fere incunabilis, at least, a teneris unguiculis)
lay now ill, not without great danger, and that she had
expressed her desire that I would cohne to her as soon
as I could." The judge said, " He was very sorry for
Madam Penn's illness," of whose virtues he spoke very
highly, but not more than was her due. Then he told
me, " that, for her sake, he would do what he could to
further my visit to her." Escaping from the hands of
the law, he visited his friend, who was by this time in a
way of recovery, and, on his return, learned that the
prosecution had been abandoned.
At about this date his narrative ceases. We learn,
from other sources, that he continued to write and print
in defence of his religious views up to the year of his
death, which took place in 1713. One of his productions, a poetical version of the Life of David, may be
still met with, in the old Quaker libraries. On the
score of poetical merit, it is about on a level with
Michael Drayton's verses on the same subject. As




70          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
the history of one of the firm confessors of the old
struggle for religious freedom, of a genial-hearted and
pleasant scholar, the friend of Penn and Milton, and
the suggester of PARADISE REGAINED, we trust our
hurried sketch has not been altogether without interest;
and that, whatever may be the religious views of our
readers, they have not failed to recognise a good and
true man in THOMAS ELLWOOD.




JAMES NAYLER.
" You will here read the true story of that much injured, ridiculed
man, James Nayler; what dreadful sufferings, with what patience
he endured, even to the boring of the tongue with hot irons, without
a murmur; and with what strength of mind, when the delusion he
had fallen into, which they stigmatized as blasphemy, had given
place to clearer thoughts, he could renounce his error in a strain of
the beautifullest humility." - Essays of Elia.
"' WOULD that Carlyle could now try his hand at the
English revolution!" was our exclamation, on laying
down the last volume of his remarkable " History of
the French Revolution," with its brilliant and startling
word-pictures still flashing before us. To some extent
this wish has been realized in the " Letters and Speeches
of Oliver Cromwell." Yet we confess that the perusal
of these volumes has disappointed us. Instead of giving
himself free scope, as in his French Revolution, and
transferring to his canvass all the wild and ludicrous,
the terrible and beautiful phases of that moral phe



72           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
nomenon; he has here concentrated all his artistic skill
upon a single figure, whom he seems to have regarded
as the embodiment and hero of the great event. All
else on his canvass is subordinated to the grim image of
the colossal Puritan. Intent upon presenting him as
the fitting object of that " Hero-Worship," which, in its
blind admiration and adoration of mere abstract Power,
seems to us at times nothing less than Devil-Worship,
he dwarfs, casts into the shadow, nay, in some instances,
caricatures and distorts the figures which surround him.
To excuse Cromwell in his usurpation, Henry Vane,
one of those exalted and noble characters, upon whose
features the lights held by historical friends or foes
detect no blemish, is dismissed with a sneer, and an
utterly unfounded imputation of dishonesty. To reconcile, in some degree, the discrepancy between
the declarations of Cromwell, in behalf of freedom
of conscience, and that mean and cruel persecution
which the Quakers suffered under the Protectorate,
the generally harmless fanaticism of a few individuals,
bearing that name, is gravely urged. Nay, the fact
that some weak-brained enthusiasts undertook to bring
about the Millennium, by associating together, cultivate
ing the earth, and "' dibbling beans" for the New.
Jerusalem market, is regarded by our author as the
"germ of Quakerism;" and furnishes an occasion for




JAMES NAYLER.                73
sneering at " my poor friend Dry-as-dust, lamentably
tearing his hair over the intolerance of that old time to
Quakerism and such like."
The readers of this (with all its faults) powerfully
written Biography, cannot fail to have been impressed
with the intensely graphic description (Part I., vol. II.,
pages 184, 185,) of the entry of the poor fanatic, James
Nayler, and his forlorn and draggled companions into
Bristol. Sadly ludicrous is it; affecting us like the
actual sight of tragic insanity enacting its involuntary
comedy, and making us smile through our tears.
In another portion of the work, a brief account is
given of the trial and sentence of Nayler, also in the
serio-comic view; and the poor man is dismissed with
the simple intimation, that after his punishment, he
"repented, and confessed himself mad."  It was no
part of the author's business, we are well aware, to
waste time and words upon the history of such a man
as Nayler; he was of no importance to him, otherwise
than as one of the disturbing influences in the government of the Lord Protector. But in our mind the story
of James Nayler has always been one of interest; and
in the belief that it will prove so to others, who, like
Charles Lamb, can appreciate the beautiful humility of
a forgiven spirit, we have taken some pains to collect
and embody the facts of it.




74           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
James Nayler was born in the parish of Ardesley, in
Yorkshire, 1616. His father was a substantial farmer,
of good repute and competent estate; and he, in consequence, received a good education. At the age of
twenty-two, he married and removed to Wakefield
parish, which has since been made classic ground by
the pen of Goldsmith. Here, an honest, God-fearing
farmer, he tilled his soil, and alternated between
cattle-markets and Independent conventicles. In 1641,
he obeyed the summons of "my Lord Fairfax" and
the Parliament, and joined a troop of horse composed
of sturdy Independents, doing such signal service against
" the man of Belial, Charles Stuart," that he was promoted to the rank of quarter-master, in which capacity
he served under General Lambert, in his Scottish campaign. Disabled at length by sickness, he was honorably dismissed from the service, and returned to his
family in 1649.
For three or four years, he continued to attend the
meetings of the Independents, as a zealous and devout
member. But it so fell out, that in the winter of 1651,
George Fox, who had just been released from a cruel
imprisonment in Derby jail, felt a call to set his face
towards Yorkshire. " So travelling," says Fox, in his
journal, "through the countries, to several places,
preaching Repentance and the Word of Life, I came




JAMES NAYLER.               75
into the parts about Wakefield, where James Nayler
lived." The worn and weary soldier, covered with the
scars of outward battle, received, as he believed, in the
cause of God and his people, against Anti-christ and
oppression, welcomed with thankfulness the veteran of
another warfare; who, in conflict with " principalities
and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places,"
had made his name a familiar one in every English
hamlet.  "He and Thomas Goodyear," says Fox,
"came to me, and were both convinced, and received
the truth." He soon after joined the Society of Friends.
In the spring of the next year, he was in his field following his plough, and meditating, as he was wont, on the
great questions of life and duty, when he seemed to hear
a voice bidding him go out from his kindred and his
father's house, with an assurance that the Lordwould
be with him, while laboring in his service. Deeply
impressed, he left his employment, and, returning to
his house, made immediate preparations for a journey.
But hesitation and doubt followed; he became sick from
anxiety of mind, and his recovery, for a time, was ex.
ceedingly doubtful. On his restoration to bodily health,
he obeyed what he regarded as a clear intimation of
duty, and went forth a preacher of the doctrines he had
embraced. The Independent minister of the society to
which he had formerly belonged sent after him the




76          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
story, that he was the victim of sorcery; that George
Fox carried with him a bottle, out of which he made
people drink; and that the draught had the power to
change a Presbyterian or Independent into a Quaker at
once; that in short, the Arch-Quaker, Fox, was a
wizard, and could be seen at the same moment of
time riding on the same black horse, in two places
widely separated!  He had scarcely commenced his
exhortations, before the mob, excited by such stories,
assailed him. In the early summer of the year we
hear of him in Appleby jail. On his release, he fell
in company with George Fox. At Walney Island, he
was furiously assaulted, and beaten with clubs and
stones; the poor priest-led fishermen being fully persuaded that they were dealing with a wizard. The
spirit of the man, under these circumstances, may be
seen in the following extract from a letter to his friends,
dated at " Killet, in Lancashire, the 30th of 8th Month,
1652."
"' Dear friends! Dwell in patience, and wait upon
the Lord, who will do his own work. Look not at man
who is in the work, nor at any man opposing it; but rest
in the will of the Lord, that so ye may be furnished with
patience, both to do and to suffer what ye shall be called
unto, that your end in all things may be His praise.
Meet often together; take heed of what exalteth itself




JAMES NAYLER.                77
above its brother; but keep low, and serve one another
in love."
Laboring thus, interrupted only by persecution, stripes
and imprisonment, he finally came to London, and
spoke with great power and eloquence in the meetings
of Friends in that city. Here, he for the first time
found himself surrounded by admiring and sympathizing friends. He saw, and rejoiced in the fruits of his
ministry.  Profane and drunken cavaliers, intolerant
Presbyters, and blind Papists, owned the truths which
he uttered, and counted themselves his disciples.
Women, too, in their deep trustfulness, and admiring
reverence, sat at the feet of the eloquent stranger.
Devout believers in the doctrine of the inward light
and manifestation of God in the heart of man, these
latter, at length, thought they saw such unmistakable
evidences of the true life in James Nayler, that they
felt constrained to declare that Christ was, in an especial manner, within him, and to call upon all to recognize in reverent adoration this new incarnation of the
divine and heavenly. The wild enthusiasm of his
disciples had its effect on the teacher. Weak in body,
worn with sickness, fasting, stripes, and prison-penance,
and naturally credulous and imaginative, is it strange
that in some measure he yielded to this miserable delusion?  Let those who would harshly judge him, or




78           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
ascribe his fall to the peculiar doctrines of his sect,
think of Luther, engaged in personal combat with the
devil, or conversing with him on points of theology
in his bed-chamber, or of Bunyan at actual fisticuffs
with the adversary; or of Fleetwood and Vane and
Harrison millennium-mad, and making preparations
for an earthly reign of King Jesus. It was an age of
intense religious excitement. Fanaticism had become
epidemic. Cromwell swayed his parliaments by "revelations" and Scripture phrases in the painted chamber; stout generals and sea-captains exterminated the
Irish, and swept Dutch navies from the ocean, with old
Jewish war-cries, and hymns of Deborah and Miriam;
country justices charged juries in Hebraisms, and cited
the laws of Palestine oftener than those of England.
Poor Nayler found himself in the very midst of this
seething and confused moral Maelstroom. He struggled against it for a time, but human nature was weak;
he became, to use his own words, "bewildered and
darkened," and the floods went over him.
Leaving London with some of his more zealous
followers, not without solemn admonition and rebuke
from Francis Howgill and Edward Burrough, who at
that period were regarded as the most eminent and gifted of the Society's ministers, he bent his steps towards
Exeter. Here, in consequence of the extravagance of




JAMES NAYLER.                19
his language and that of his disciples, he was arrested
and thrown into prison.  Several infatuated women,
surrounded the jail, declaring that "Christ was in
prison," and on being admitted to see him, knelt down
and kissed his feet, exclaiming, "Thy name shall be
no more called James Nayler, but Jesus!" Let us
pity him and them. They, full of grateful and extravagant affection for the man whose voice had called
them away from worldly vanities, to what they regarded
as eternal realities, whose hand they imagined had for
them swung back the pearl gates of the celestial city,
and flooded their atmosphere with light from heaven:
he, receiving their homage, (not as offered to a poor,
weak, sinful Yorkshire trooper, but rather to the hidden
man of the heart, the " Christ within" him,) with that
self-deceiving humility which is but another name for
spiritual pride. Mournful, yet natural; such as is still
in greater or less degree manifested between the Catholic enthusiast and her confessor; such as the careful
observer may at times take note of in our Protestant
revivals and camp meetings.
How Nayler was released from Exeter jail does not
appear, but the next we hear of him, is at Bristol, in
the fall of the year. His entrance into that city shows
the progress which he and his followers had made in
the interval. Let us look at Carlyle's description of it.




80          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
" A  procession of eight persons —one, a man on
horseback riding single, the others, men and women
partly riding double, partly on foot, in the muddiest
highway in the wettest weather; singing, all but the
single rider, at whose bridle walk and splash two
women,' Hosannah! Holy, holy! Lord God of Sabaoth,' and other things,' in a buzzing tone,' which the
impartial hearer could not make out. The single rider
is a raw-boned male figure,' with lank hair reaching
below his cheeks,' hat drawn close over his brows,'nose rising slightly in the middle,' of abstruse' down
look,' and large dangerous jaws strictly closed: he sings
not, sits there covered, and is sung to by the others bare.
Amid pouring deluges and mud knee-deep,'so that the
rain ran in at their necks and vented it at their hose
and breeches:' a spectacle to the West of England and
posterity! Singing as above; answering no question
except in song. From Bedminster to Ratcliffgate, along
the streets to the High Cross of Bristol: at the High
Cross they are laid hold of by the authorities: turn out
to be James Nayler and Company."
Truly, a more pitiful example of "hero-worship" is
not well to be conceived of. Instead of taking the
rational view of it, however, and mercifully shutting up
the actors in a mad-house, the authorities of that day,
conceiving it to be a stupendous blasphemy, and them.




JAMES NAYLER.                81
selves God's avengers in the matter, sent Nayler under
strong guard up to London, to be examined before the'Parliament. After long and tedious examinations and
cross-questionings, and still more tedious debates, some
portion of which, not uninstructive to the reader, may
still be found in " Burton's Diary," the following horrible resolution was agreed upon: —
" That James Nayler be set in the pillory, with his
head in the pillory in the Palace Yard, Westminster;
during the space of two hours on Thursday next; and
be whipped by the hangman through the streets from
Westminster to the Old Exchange, and there, likewise,
be set in the pillory, with his head in the pillory for the
space of two hours, between eleven and one, on Saturday next, in each place wearing a paper containing a
description of his crimes; and that at the Old Exchange
his tongue be bored through with a hot iron, and that he
be there stigmatized on the forehead with the letter' B';
and that he be afterwards sent to Bristol to be conveyed
into and through the said city on horseback with his
face backward, and there, also, publicly whipped the
next market day after he -comes thither; that from
thence he be committed to prison in Bridewell, London,
and there restrained from the society of all people, and
there to labor hard until he shall be released by Parliament; and during that time be debarred the use of pen,
6




82          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
ink, and paper; and have no relief except what he
earns by his daily labor."
Such, neither more nor less, was, in the opinion of
Parliament, required on their part to appease the Divine
vengeance. The sentence was pronounced on the
17th of the Twelfth Month; the entire time of the
Parliament for the two months previous having been
occupied with the case. The Presbyterians in that
body were ready enough to make the most of an offence committed by one who had been an Independent;
the Independents, to escape the stigma of extenuating
the crimes of one of their quondam brethren, vied with
their antagonists in shrieking over the atrocity of Nayler's blasphemy, and in urging its severe punishment.
Here and there among both classes were men disposed
to leniency; and more than one earnest plea was made
for merciful dealing with a man, whose reason wasevidently unsettled, and who was, therefore, a fitting
object of compassion; whose crime, if it could indeed be called one, was- evidently the result of a
clouded intellect, and not of wilful intention of evil.
On the other hand, many were in favor of putting him
to death as a sort of peace-offering to the clergy, who,
as a matter of course, were greatly scandalized by
Nayler's blasphemy, and still more by the refusal of
his sect to pay tithes, or recognize their divine commission.




JAMES NAYLER.                83
Nayler was called into the Parliament-house to
receive his sentence. "I do not know mine offence,"
he said mildly. "You shall know it," said Sir Thomas
Widrington, " by your sentence."  When the sentence
was read, he attempted to speak, but was silenced. " I
pray God," said Nayler, "that he may not lay this to
your charge."
The next day, the 18th of the Twelfth Month, he
stood in the pillory two hours, in the chill winter air,
and was then stripped and scourged by the hangman
at the tail of a cart through the streets. Three hundred
and ten stripes were inflicted; his back and arms were
horribly cut and mangled, and his feet crushed and
bruised by the feet of horses treading on him in the
crowd. IHe bore all with uncomplaining patience;, but
was so far exhausted by his sufferings, that it was found
necessary to postpone the execution of the residue of
the sentence for one week. The terrible severity of
his sentence, and his meek endurance of it, had in the
mean time powerfully affected many of the humane and
generous of all classes in the city; and a petition for
the remission of the remaining part of the penalty was
numerously signed and presented to Parliament. A
debate ensued upon it, but its prayer was rejected.
Application was then made to Cromwell, who addressed
a letter to the speaker of the house, inquiring into the




84          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
affair, protesting an "abhorrence and detestation of
giving or occasioning the least countenance to such
opinions and practices," as were imputed to Nayler;
"yet, we being entrusted in the present government on
behalf of the people of these nations, and not knowing
how far such proceeding entered into wholly without us
may extend in the consequence of it, do hereby desire
the house may let us- know the grounds and reasons
whereon they have proceeded." From this, it is not
unlikely that the Protector might have been disposed
to clemency, and to look with a degree of charity upon
the weakness and errors of one of his old and tried
soldiers who had striven like a brave man, as he was,
for the rights and liberties of Englishmen; but the
clergy here interposed, and vehemently, in the name
of God and His Church, demanded that the executioner
should finish his work. Five of the most eminent of
them, names well known in the Protectorate, Caryl,
Manton, Nye, Griffith and Reynolds, were deputed by
Parliament to visit the mangled prisoner. A reasonable
request was made, that some impartial person might be
present, that justice might be done Nayler in the report
of his answers. This was refused. It was, however,
agreed that the conversation should be written down
and a copy of it left with the jailer. He was asked if
he was sorry for his blasphemies. He said he did not




JAMES NAYLER.               85
know to what blasphemies they alluded; that he did
believe in Jesus Christ; that He had taken up His
dwelling in his own heart, and for the testimony of him
he now suffered. "I believe," said one of the ministers, " in a Christ who was never in any man's heart."
" I know no such Christ," rejoined the prisoner, " the
Christ I witness to, fills Heaven and Earth, and dwells
in the hearts of all true believers."  On being asked,
why he allowed the women to adore and worship him1
he said, he "denied bowing to the creature; but if
they beheld the power of Christ, wherever it was, and
bowed to it, he could not resist it, or say aught against
it."
After some further parley, the reverend visitors grew
angry, threw the written record of the conversation in
the fire, and left the prison, to report the prisoner
incorrigible.
On the 27th of the month, he was again led out of
his cell and placed upon the pillory. Thousands of
citizens were gathered around, many of them earnestly
protesting against the extreme cruelty of his punish-:
ment.  Robert Rich,. an influential and honorable6
merchant, followed him up to the pillory, with expressions of great sympathy, and held him by the handwhile the red-hot iron was pressed through his tongue,
and the brand was placed on his forehead. He was




86          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
next sent to Bristol, and publicly whipped through the
principal, streets of that city; and again brought back
to the Bridewell prison, where he remained about two
years, shut out from all intercourse with his fellowbeings. At the expiration of this period, he was
released by order of Parliament. In the solitude of
his cell, he said the angel of patience had been with
him. Through the cloud which. had so long rested over
him, the clear light of truth shone in upon his spirit;
the weltering.chaos of, a disordered intellect, settled into
the calm peace of a reconciliation with God and man.
His first act on leaving prison was to visit Bristol, the
scene of his melancholy fall. There he publicly con.
fessed his errors, in the eloquent earnestness of a
contrite spirit, humbled in view of the past, yet full of
thanksgiving and praise for the great boon of forgiveness. A writer who was present says, the " assembly
was tendered, and broken into tears; there were few
dry eyes, and many were bowed in their minds."
In a paper, which he published soon after, he
acknowledges his lamentable delusion. "Condemned
for ever," he says, "be all those false worships with
which any have idolized my person iyt that Night of
my Temptation, when the Power of Darkness was
above me; all, that did in anyway tend.to dishonor
the Lord, or draw the minds of any. from the measure




JAMES NAYLER.               87
of Christ Jesus in themselves, to look at flesh, which is
as grass, or to ascribe that to the visible which belongs
to Him."  "Darkness came over me through want of
watchfulness and obedience to the pure Eye of God.
I was taken captive from the true light; I was walking
in the Night, as a wandering bird fit for a prey. And
if the Lord of all my mercies had not rescued me, I
had perished; for I was as one appointed to death and
destruction, and there was none to deliver me."  "It
is in my heart to confess to God, and before men, my
folly and offence in that day: yet there were many
things formed against me in that day, to take away my
life, and bring scandal upon the truth, of which I was
not guilty at all."  " The provocation of that Time of
Temptation was exceeding great against the Lord; yet
He left me not; for when Darkness was above, and the
Adversary so prevailed, that all things were turned and
perverted against my right seeing, hearing, or understanding; only a secret hope and faith I had in my
God, whom I had served, that he would bring me
through it, and to the end of it, and that I should again
see the day of my redemption from under it all; this
quieted my soul in its greatest tribulation." He con.
cludes his confession with these words: " He who
hath saved my soul from death, who hath lifted my
feet up out of the pit, even to Him be glory for ever;




'88         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
and let every troubled soul trust in Him, for his mercy:endureth for ever!"
Among his papers, written soon after his release, is a.remarkable prayer, or rather thanksgiving. The limit
I have prescribed to myself will only allow me to copy
an extract.
"It is in my heart to praise Thee, 0 my God! let
Ine never forget Thee, what Thou hast been to me in
the night, by Thy presence in my hour of trial, when I
vwas beset in darkness, when I was cast out as a wan-dering bird; when I was assaulted with strong temptations, then Thy presence, in secret, did preserve me;
and in a low state I felt Thee near me: when my way
was through the sea, when I passed under the mount
tains, there wast Thou present with me; when the:weight of:the hills was upon me, Thou upheldest me.
Thou didst fight, on my part, when I wrestled with
death; when darkness would have shut me up, Thy
light shone about me; when my work was in the
furnace, and I passed through the fire, by Thee I was
not consumed. When I beheld the dreadful visions,
and was among the fiery spirits, Thy faith staid me,
else through fear I had fallen. I saw Thee, and believed, so that the enemy could not prevail." After
speaking of his humiliation and sufferings, which Divine
Mercy had overruled for his spiritual good, he thus




YAMES NAYLER.               89
concludes: "Thou didst lift me out from the pit, and
set me forth in the sight of my enemies; Thou proclaimedst liberty to the captive; Thou calledst my
acquaintances near me; they to whom I had been a
wonder, looked upon me; and in Thy love I obtained
favor with those who had deserted me. Then did
gladness swallow up sorrow, and I forsook my troubles;
and I said, How good is it that man be proved in the
night, that he may know his folly, that every mouth
may become silent, until Thou makest man known unto
himself, and hast slain the boaster, and shown him the
vanity which vexeth Thy spirit."
All honor to the Quakers of that day, that at the risk
of misrepresentation and calumny, they received back
to their communion, their greatly erring, but deeply
repentant, brother. His life, ever after, was one of
self.denial and jealous watchfulness over himself,blameless and beautiful in its humility and lowly
charity.
Thomas Ellwood, in his autobiography for the year
1659, mentions Nayler, whom he met in company with
Edward Burrough at the house of Milton's friend, Pennington. Ellwood's father held a discourse with the
two Quakers on their doctrine of free and universal
grace. " James Nailer," says Ellwood, " handled the
subject with so much perspicuity and clear demonstra



90          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
tion, that his reasoning seemed to be irresistible. As
for Edward Burrough, he was a brisk young Man, of
a ready Tongue, and might have been for aught I then
knew a Scholar, which made me less admire his Way
of Reasoning. But what dropt from James Nailer had
the greater Force upon me, because he lookt like a
simple Countryman, having the appearance of an Husbandman or Shepherd."
In the latter part of the Eighth Month, 1660, he left
London, on foot, to visit his wife and children in Wakefield. As he journeyed on, the sense of a solemn
change about to take place, seemed with him; the
shadow of the eternal world fell over him. As he
passed through Huntingdon, a friend who saw him
describes him as " in an awful and weighty frame of
mind, as if he had been redeemed from earth, and a
stranger on it, seeking a better home and inheritance."
A few miles beyond the town, he was found, in the
dusk of the evening, very ill, and was taken to the
house of a friend, who lived not far distant. He died
shortly after, expressing his gratitude for the kindness
of his attendants, and invoking blessings upon them.
About two hours before his death, he spoke..to the
friend at his bedside these remarkable words, solemn
as eternity, and beautiful as the love which fills it:
" There is a spirit which I feel which delights to do




JAMES NAYLER.                91
no evil, nor to avenge any wrong; but delights to
endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end;
its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to
weary out all exultation and cruelty, or whatever is of
a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all
temptations;'as it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives
none in thought to any other: if it be betrayed, it bears
it, for its ground and spring is the mercy and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness; its life is
everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with
entreaty, and not with contention, and keeps it by low.
liness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though
none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived
in sorrow, and brought forth with none to pity it; nor
doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never
rejoiceth but through sufferings, for with the world's
joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken.
I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens
and desolate places of the earth, who through death
obtained resurrection and eternal Holy Life."
So died James Nayler. He was buried in " Thomas
Parnell's burying-ground, at King's Rippon," in a green
nook of rural England. Wrong and violence, and
temptation and sorrow, and evil-speaking, could reach
him no more. And in taking leave of him, let us say




9,2         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
with old Joseph Wyeth, where he touches upon this
case in his Anguis Flagellatus: "' Let none insult, but
take heed lest they also, in the hour of their temptation,
do fall away."




ANDREW MARVELL.' They who with a good conscience and an upright heart do their
civil duties in the sight of God, and in their several places, to resist
tyranny and the violence of superstition banded both against them;
will never seek to be forgiven that which may justly be attributed to
their immortal praise." -Answer to Eikon Basilike.
AMIONG the great names which adorned the Protectorate,-that period of intense mental activity, when
political and religious rights and duties were thoroughly
discussed by strong and earnest statesmen and theologians,- that of Andrew Marvell, the friend of Milton,
and Latin Secretary of Cromwell, deserves honorable
mention. The magnificent prose of Milton, long neglected, is now perhaps as frequently read as his great
epic i but the writings of his friend and fellow secretary;
devoted like his own to the cause of freedom and the
rights of the people, are scarcely known to the present
generation. It is true that Marvell's political pamphlets
were less elaborate and profound than those of the




94          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
author of the glorious Defence of Unlicensed Printing.
He was light, playful, witty, and sarcastic; he lacked
the stern dignity, the terrible invective, the bitter scorn,
the crushing, annihilating retort, the grand and solemn
eloquence, and the devout appeals, which render immortal the controversial works of Milton. But he, too,
has left his footprints on his age; he, too, has written
for posterity that which they " will not willingly let
die." As one of the inflexible defenders of English
liberty, sowers of the seed, the fruits of which we are
now reaping, he has a higher claim on the kind regards
of this generation thai his merits as a poet, by no
means inconsiderable, would warrant.
Andrew Marvell was born in Kingston-upon-Hull, in
1620. At the age of eighteen he entered Trinity College,
whence he was enticed by the Jesuits, then actively
seeking proselytes. After remaining with them a short
time, his father found him, and brought him back to
his studies. On leaving college, he travelled on the
continent. At Rome he wrote his first satire, a humorous critique upon Richard Flecknoe, an English Jesuit,
and verse writer, whose lines on Silence, Charles Lamb
quotes in one of his Essays. It is supposed that he
made his first acquaintance with Milton in Italy.
At Paris he made the Abbot de Manihan the subject
of another satire. The abbot pretended to skill in the




ANDREW MARVELL.                9a
arts of magic, and used to prognosticate the fortunes of
people from the character of their handwriting. At
what period he returned from his travels, we are not
aware. It is stated, by some of his biographers, that
he was sent as secretary of a Turkish mission. In
1653, he was appointed the tutor of Cromwell's
nephew; and four years after, doubtless through the
instrumentality of his friend Milton, he received the
honorable appointment of Latin Secretary of the Com.
monwealth. In 1658, he was selected by his townsmen
of Hull to represent them in Parliament. In this ser.
vice he continued until 1663, when, notwithstanding
his sturdy republican principles, he was appointed
secretary to the Russian embassy. On his return, in
1665, he was again elected to Parliament, and continued in the public service until the prorogation of
the Parliament of 1675.
The boldness, the uncompromising integrity and
irreproachable consistency of Marvell, as a statesman,
have secured for him the honorable appellation of " the
British Aristides." Unlike too many of his old asso.
ciates under the Protectorate, he did not change with the
times. He was a republican in Cromwell's day, and
neither threats of assassination, nor flatteries, nor proffered bribes, could make him any thing else in that of
Charles II. He advocated the rights of the People, at




96:         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
a time when patriotism was regarded as ridiculous
folly; when a general corruption, spreading downwards from a lewd and abominable Court, had made
legislation a mere scramble for place and emolument.
English history presents no period so disgraceful as
the Restoration. To use the words of Macaulay, it
was " a day of servitude without loyalty, and sensuality
without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the
paradise of cold hearts and narrow minds, the golden
age of the coward, the bigot, and the slave. The principles of liberty were the scoff of every grinning courtier, and the Anathema Maranatha of every fawning
dean." It is the peculiar merit of Milton and Marvell,
that in such an age they held fast their integrity, standing up in glorious contrast with clerical apostates and
traitors to the cause of England's liberty.
In the discharge of his duties as a statesman, Marvell
was as punctual and conscientious as our own venerable
Apostle of Freedom, John Quincy Adams. He cor.
responded every post with his constituents, keeping
them fully apprized of all that transpired at Court or in
Parliament. He spoke but seldom, but his great per,
sonal influence was exerted privately upon the members
of the Commons as well as upon the Peers. His wit,
accomplished manners, and literary eminence, made
him a favorite at the court itself. The voluptuous and




ANDREW MARVELL.                 97
careless monarch laughed over the biting satire of the
republican poet, and heartily enjoyed his lively conversation. It is said that numerous advances were made
to him by the courtiers of Charles II., but he was found
to be incorruptible. The personal compliments of the
King, the encomiums of Rochester, the smiles and
flatteries of the frail but fair and high-born ladies of
the Court; nay, even the golden offers of the King's
treasurer, who, climbing with difficulty to his obscure
retreat on an upper floor of a court in the Strand, laid
a tempting bribe of ~1,000 before him, on the very
day when he had been compelled to borrow a guinea;
were all lost upon the inflexible patriot. He stood up
manfully, in an age of persecution, for religious liberty;
opposed the oppressive excise, and demanded frequent
Parliaments and a fair representation of the People.
In 1672, Marvell engaged in a controversy with the
famous high churchman, Dr. Parker, who had taken
the lead in urging the persecution of nonconformists.
In one of the works of this arrogant divine, he says
that " it is absolutely necessary to the peace and government of the world, that the supreme magistrate should
be vested with power to govern and conduct the consciences of subjects in affairs of religion. Princes may,
with less hazard, give liberty to men's vices and debaucheries, than to their consciences."  And, speaking
7




98          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
of the various sects of nonconformists, he counsels
princes and legislators, that " tenderness and indulgence
to such men is to nourish vipers in their own bowels,
and the most sottish neglect of our quiet and security."
Marvell replied to him in a severely satirical pamphlet,
which provoked a reply from the Doctor. Marvell
rejoined, with a rare combination of wit and argument.
The effect of his sarcasm on the Doctor and his supporters may be inferred from an anonymous note sent
him, in which the writer threatens by the eternal God
to cut his throat, if he uttered any more libels upon
Dr. Parker.  Bishop Burnet remarks, that "Marvell
writ in a burlesque strain, but with so peculiar and so
entertaining a conduct, that from the King down to the
tradesman his books were read with great pleasure, and
not only humbled Parker, but his whole party, for Mar.
vell had all the wits on his side." The Bishop further
remarks, that Marvell's satire " gave occasion to the
only piece of modesty with which Dr. Parker was ever
charged, viz: of withdrawing from town, and not importuning the press for some years, since even a face
of brass must grow red when it is burnt as his has
been." Dean Swift, in commenting upon the usual
fate of controversial pamphlets, which seldom live
beyond their generation, says: "There is indeed an
exception, when a great genius undertakes to expose a




ANDREW MARVELL.                99
foolish piece: so we still read Marvell's answer to
Parker with pleasure, though the book it answers be
sunk long ago."
Perhaps, in the entire compass of our language, there
is not to be found a finer piece of satirical writing than
Marvell's famous parody of the speeches of Charles II.,
in which the private vices and public inconsistencies of
the King, and his gross violations of his pledges on
coming to the throne, are exposed with the keenest
wit and the most laugh-provoking irony.  Charles
himself, although doubtless annoyed by it, could not
refrain from joining in the mirth which it excited at
his expense.
The friendship between Marvell and Milton remained
firm and unbroken to the last. The former exerted
himself to save his illustrious friend from persecution,
and omitted no opportunity to defend him as a politician
and to eulogize him as a poet. In 1654, he presented
to Cromwell Milton's noble tract in Defence of the
People of England, and, in writing to the author, says
of the work, " When I consider how equally it teems
and rises with so many figures, it seems to me a Trajan's column, in whose winding ascent we see embossed
the several monuments of your learned victories." He
was one of the first to appreciate Paradise Lost, and to
commend it in some admirable lines. One couplet is




100          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
exceedingly beautiful, in its reference to the author's
blindness:
"Just Heaven, thee like Tiresias to requite,
Rewards with prophecy thy loss of sight.;"
His poems, written in the "snatched leisure" of an
active political life, bear marks of haste, and are very
unequal. In the midst of passages of pastoral description worthy of Milton himself, feeble lines and hackneyed phrases occur.  His "Nymph lamenting the
Death of her Fawn" is a finished and elaborate piece,
full of grace and tenderness. " Thoughts in a Garden"
will be remembered by the quotations of that exquisite
critic, Charles Lamb. How pleasant is this picture!
" What wondrous life is this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine:
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach:
Stumbling on melons as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.
"Here at this fountain's sliding foot,
Or at the fruit tree's mossy root,
Casting the body's vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide.




ANDREW  MARVELL.                  101
There like a bird it sits and sings,
And whets and claps its silver wings;
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.
"How well the skilful gard'ner drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial true!
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And, as it works, the industrious bee
Computes his time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckoned but with herbs and flowers! "
One of his longer poems, " Appleton House," contains passages of admirable description, and many not
unpleasing conceits. Witness the following:
"Thus I, an easy philosopher,
Among the birds and trees confer,
And little now to make me wants,
Or of the fowl or of the plants.
Give me but wings, as they, and I
Straight floating on the air shall fly;
Or turn me but, and you shall see
I am but an inverted tree.
Already I begin to call
In their most learned original;
And, where I language want, my signs
The bird upon the bough divines.




102          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
No leaf does tremble in the wind,
Which I returning cannot find.
Out of these scattered Sybil's leaves,
Strange prophecies my fancy weaves:
TVhat Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said,
I in this light Afosaic read.
Under this antic cope I move,
Like some great prelate of the grove;
Then, languishing at ease, I toss
On pallets thick with velvet moss;
While the wind, cooling through the boughs,
Flatters with air my panting brows.
Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks!
And unto you, cool zephyrs, thanks!
Who, as my hair, my thoughts too shed,
And winnow from the chaff my head.
How safe, methinks, and strong behind
These trees have I encamped my mind! "
Here is a picture of a piscatorial idler and his trout
stream, worthy of the pencil of Izaak Walton:
" See in what wanton harmless folds
It every where the meadow holds:
Where all things gaze themselves, and doubt
If they be in it or without;
And for this shade, which therein shines
Narcissus-like, the sun too pines.
Oh! what a pleasure't is to hedge
My temples here in heavy sedge;




ANDREW  MARVELL.                  103
Abandoning my lazy side,
Stretched as a bank unto the tide;
Or, to suspend my sliding foot
On the osier's undermining root,
And in its branches tough to hang,
While at my lines the fishes twang."
A  little poem  of Marvell's, which he calls "Eyes
and Tears," has the following passages:
"How wisely Nature did agree
With the same eyes to weep and see!
That having viewed the object vain,
They might be ready to complain.
And, since the self-deluding sight
In a false angle takes each height,
These tears, which better measure all,
Like watery lines and plummets fall."
" Happy are they whom grief doth bless,
That weep the more, and see the less;
And, to preserve their sight more true,
Bathe still their eyes in their own dew;
So Magdalen, in tears more wise,
Dissolved those captivating eyes,
Whose liquid chains could, flowing, meet
To fetter her Redeemer's feet.
The sparkling glance, that shoots desire,
Drenched in those tears, does lose its fire;




104          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
Yea, oft the Thunderer pity takes,
And there His hissing lightning slakes.
The incense is to Heaven dear,
Not as a perfume, but a tear;
And stars shine lovely in the night,
But as they seem the tears of light.
Ope, then, mine eyes, your double sluice,
And practise so your noblest use;
For others, too, can see or sleep,
But only human eyes can weep."
The "' Bermuda Emigrants" has some happy lines,
as the following:
"He hangs in shade the orange bright,
Like golden lamps in a green night."
Or this, which doubtless suggested a couplet in Moore's
Canadian Boat Song:
"And all the way, to guide the chime,
With falling oars they kept the time."
His facetious and  burlesque  poetry  was  much
admired in his day; but a great portion of it referred
to persons and events no longer of general interest.
The satire on Holland is an exception. There is
nothing in its way superior to it in our language.
Many of his best pieces were originally written in




ANDREW MARVELL.                 105
Latin, and afterwards translated by himself. There
is a splendid Ode to Cromwell - a worthy companion
of Milton's glorious sonnet — which is not generally
known, and which we transfer entire to our pages.
Its simple dignity, and the melodious flow of its versification, commend themselves more to our feelings than
its eulogy of war. It is energetic and impassioned,
and probably affords a better idea of the author, as an
actor in the stirring drama of his time, than the " soft
Lydian airs " of the poems that we have quoted:
AN HORATIAN ODE UPON CROMWELL'S RETURN
FROM IRELAND.
The forward youth that would appear,
Must now forsake his Muses dear;
Nor in the, shadows sing
His numbers languishing.'T is time to leave the books in dust,
And oil the unused armor's rust;
Removing from the wall
The corslet of the hall.
So restless Cromwell could not cease
In the inglorious arts of peace,
But through adventurous war
Urged his active star;




106          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
And, like the three-fork'd lightning, first
Breaking the clouds wherein it nurst,
Did thorough his own side
His fiery way divide.
For't is all one to courage high,
The emulous, or enemy;
And with such to enclose
Is more than to oppose.
Then burning through the air he went,
And palaces and temples rent;
And Caesar's head at last
Did through his laurels blast.'Tis madness to resist or blame
Theface of angry Heaven'sflame;
And, if we would speak true,
Much to the man is due,
Who, from his private gardens, where
He lived reserved and austere,
(As if his highest plot
To plant the bergamot,)
Could by industrious valor climb
To ruin the great work of time,
And cast the kingdoms old
Into another mould!




ANDREW  MARVELL.                  107
Though justice against fate complain,
And plead the ancient rights in vain -
But those do hold or break,
As men are strong or weak.
Nature, that hateth emptiness,
Allows of penetration less,
And therefore must make room
Where greater spirits come.
What field of all the civil war,
Where his were not the deepest scar?
And Hampton shows what part
He had of wiser art;
Where, twining subtle fears with hope,
He wove a net of such a scope,
That Charles himself might chase
To Carisbrook's narrow case;
That hence the royal actor borne,
The tragic scaffold might adorn,
While round the armed bands
Did clap their bloody hands.
HE nothing common did or mean
Upon that memorable scene,
But with his keener eye
The axe's edge did try:




103           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
NMor called the gods, with vulgar spite,
To vindicate his helpless right!
But bowed his comely head,
Down, as upon a bed.
This was that memorable hour,
Which first assured the forced power;
So when they did design
The Capitol's first line,
A bleeding head, where they begun,
Did fright the architects to run;
And yet in that the state
Foresaw its happy fate.
And now the Irish are ashamed
To see themselves in one year tamed;
So much one man can do,
That does best act and know.
They can affirm his praises best,
And have, though overcome, confest
How good he is, how just,
And fit for highest trust.
Nor yet grown stiffer by command,
But still in the Republic's hand,
How fit he is to sway
That can so well obey.




ANDREW  MARVELL.                   109
He to the Commons' feet presents
A kingdom fJr his first year's rents,
And, what he may,forbears
Hisfame to make it theirs.
And has his sword and spoils ungirt,
To lay them at the public's skirt;
So when the falcon high
Falls heavy from the sky,
She, having killed, no more does search,
But on the next green bough to perch,
Where, when he first does lure,
The falconer has her sure.
What may not, then, our isle presume,
While Victory his crest does plume?
What may not others fear,
If thus he crowns each year?
As Ccesar, he, ere long, to Gaul;
To Italy as Hannibal,
And to all states notfree
Shall climacteric be.
The Pict no shelter now shall find
Within his parti-contour'd mind;
But from his valor sad
Shrink underneath the plaid,




10          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
Happy if in the tufted brake
The English hunter him mistake,
Nor lay his hands a near
The Caledonian deer.
But thou, the war's and fortune's son,
March indefatigably on;
And, for the last effect,
Still keep the sword erect.
Besides the force, it has to fright
The spirits of the shady night:
The same arts that did gain
A power, must it maintain.
Marvell was never married. The modern critic, who
affirms that bachelors have done the most to exalt
woman into a divinity, might have quoted his extravagant panegyric of Maria Fairfax as an apt illustration:
"' IT is she that to these gardens gave
The wondrous beauty which they have,
She straitness on the woods bestows,
To her the meadow sweetness owes,
Nothing could make the river be
So crystal pure but only she -
She, yet more pure, sweet, strait, and fair,
Than gardens, woods, meads, rivers are!




ANDREW  MARVELL.                  111
Therefore, what first she on them spent
They gratefully again present
The meadow carpets where to tread,
The garden flowers to crown her head,
And for a glass the limpid brook
Where she may all her beauties look;
But, since she would not have them seen,
The wood about her draws a screen;
For she, to higher beauty raised,
Disdains to be for lesser praised;
She counts her beauty to converse
In all the languages as her's,
Nor yet in those herself employs,
But for the wisdom, not the noise,
Nor yet that wisdom could affect,
But as'tis Heaven's dialect."
It has been the fashion of a class of shallow Church
and State defenders, to ridicule the great men of the
Commonwealth, the sturdy republicans of England, as
sour-featured, hard-hearted ascetics, enemies of the fine
arts and polite literature. The works of Milton and
Marvell, the prose-poem of Harrington, and the admirable discourses of Algernon Sydney, are a sufficient
answer to this accusation. To none has it less application than to the subject of our sketch. He was a
genial, warm-hearted man, an elegant scholar, a finished
gentleman, at home, and the life of every circle which




112         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
he entered, whether that of the gay court of Charles II.,
amidst such men as Rochester and L'Estrange, or that
of the republican philosophers who assembled at Miles's
Coffee House, where he discussed plans of a free representative government with the author of " Oceana,"
and Cyriack Skinner, that friend of Milton, whom the
bard has immortalized in the sonnet which so pathetically, yet heroically, alludes to his own blindness. Men
of all parties enjoyed his wit and graceful conversation.
His personal appearance was altogether in his favor.
A clear, dark, Spanish complexion, long hair of jetty
blackness falling in graceful wreaths to his shoulders,
dark eyes, full of expression and fire, a finely chiseled
chin, and a mouth whose soft voluptuousness scarcely
gave token of the steady purpose and firm will of the
inflexible statesman; these, added to the prestige of his
genius, and the respect which a lofty, self-sacrificing
patriotism extorts even from those who would fain
corrupt and bribe it, gave him a ready passport to the
fashionable society of the metropolis. He was one of
the few who mingled in that society, and escaped its
contamination, and who,
"Amidst the wavering days of sin,
Kept himself icy chaste and pure."
The tone and temper of his mind may be most fitly
expressed in his own paraphrase of Horace:




ANDREW MARVELL.                 113
" Climb at Court for me that will,
Tottering Favor's pinnacle;
All I seek is to lie still!
Settled in some secret nest,
In calm leisure let me rest;
And, far off the public stage,
Pass away my silent age.
Thus, when, without noise, unknown,
I have lived out all my span,
I shall die without a groan,
An old, honest countryman.
Who, exposed to other's eyes,
Into his own heart ne'er pries,
Death's to him a strange surprise."
He died suddenly in 1678, while in attendance at a
popular meeting of his old constituents at Hull. His
health had previously been remarkably good; and it
was supposed by many that he was poisoned by some
of his political or clerical enemies. His monument,
erected by his grateful constituency, bears the following
inscription:
" Near this place lyeth the body of Andrew Marvell,
Esq., a man so endowed by Nature, so improved by
Education, Study, and Travel, so consummated by
Experience, that, joining the peculiar graces of Wit
and Learning, with a singular penetration and strength
of judgment; and exercising all these in the whole
8




114         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
course of his life, with an unutterable steadiness in the!
ways of Virtue, he became the ornament and example
of his age, beloved by good men, feared by bad, admired by all, though imitated by few; and scarce
paralleled by any. But a Tombstone can neither contain his character, nor is Marble necessary to transmit
it to posterity; it is engraved in the minds of this generation, and will be always legible in his inimitable
writings, nevertheless. He having served twenty years
successively in Parliament, and that with such Wisdom,
Dexterity, and Courage, as becomes a true Patriot, the
town of Kingston-upon-Hull, from whence he was deputed to that Assembly, lamenting in his death the
public loss, have erected this Monument of their Grief
and their Gratitude, 1688."
Thus lived and died Andrew Marvell. His memory
is the inheritance of Americans as well as Englishmen.
His example commends itself in an especial manner to
the legislators of our Republic. Integrity and fidelity
to principle are as greatly needed at this time in our
Halls of Congress, as in the Parliaments of the Restoration; men are required who can feel, with Milton,
that "it is high honor done them from God, and a
special mark of His favor, to have been selected to
stand upright and steadfast in His cause, dignified with
the defence of Truth and public liberty."




JOHN ROBERTS.
THOMAS CARLYLE, in his history of the stout and
sagacious Monk of St. Edmunds, has given us a fine
picture of the actual life of Englishmen in the middle
centuries. The dim cell-lamp of the somewhat apocry.
phal Jocelin of Brakelond, becomes in his hands a huge
Drummond light, shining over the dark ages like the
naphtha-fed cressets over Pandemonium, proving, as he
says in his bwn quaint way, that " England in the year
1200 was no dreamland, but a green, solid place, which
grew corn and several other things; the sun shone on
it; the vicissitudes of seasons and human fortunes were
there; cloth was woven, ditches dug, furrow fields
ploughed, and houses built." And if, as the writer
just quoted insists, it is a matter of no small importance
to make it credible to the present generation, that the




116          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
Past is not a confused dream of thrones and battlefields, creeds and constitutions, but a reality, substantial
as hearth and home, harvest field and smith shop,
merry-making and death, could make it, we shall not
wholly waste our own time and that of our readers, in
inviting them to look with us at the rural life of
England two centuries ago, through the eyes of John
Roberts, and his worthy son, Daniel, yeomen, of Siddington, near Cirencester.
The " Memoirs of John Roberts, alias Haywood, by
his son, Daniel Roberts," (the second edition, printed
verbatim from the original one, with its picturesque
array of italics and capital letters,) is to be found only
in a few of our old Quaker libraries. It opens with
some account of the family. The father of the elder
Roberts " lived reputably, on a little estate of his own,"
and it is mentioned as noteworthy that he married a
sister of a gentleman in the Commission of the Peace.
Coming of age about the beginning of the civil wars,
John and one of his young neighbors enlisted in the
service of Parliament. Hearing that Cirencester had
been taken by the King's forces, they obtained leave of
absence to visit their friends, for whose safety they
naturally felt solicitous. The following account of the
reception they met with from the drunken and ferocious
troopers of Charles I., the " bravos of Alsatia and the




JOHN ROBERTS.              117
pages of Whitehall," throws a ghastly light upon the
horrors of civil war:
"As they were passing by Cirencester, they were
discovered, and pursued by two soldiers of the King's
party, then in possession of the town. Seeing themselves pursued, they quitted their horses, and took to
their heels; but, by reason of their accoutrements,
could make little speed. They came up with my
father first; and, though he begged for quarter, none
they would give him, but laid on him with their swords,
cutting and slashing his hands and arms, which he held
up to save his head; as the marks upon them did long
after testify. At length it pleased the Almighty to put
it into his mind to fall down on his face; which he did.
Hereupon the soldiers, being on horseback, cried to
each other, Alight, and cut his throat! but neither of
them did; yet continued to strike and prick him about
the jaws, till they thought him dead. Then they left
him, and pursued his neighbor, whom they presently
overtook and killed. Soon after they had left my
father, it was said in his heart, Rise, and flee for thy
life! Which call he obeyed; and, starting upon his
feet, his enemies espied him in motion, and pursued
him again. He ran down a steep hill, and through a
river which ran at the bottom of it; though with exceeding difficulty, his boots filling with water, and his




118         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
wounds bleeding very much. They followed him to
the top of the hill; but, seeing he had got over, pursued him no farther."
The surgeon who attended him was a Royalist, and
bluntly told his bleeding patient, that if he had met
him in the street he would have killed him himself, but
now he was willing to cure him. On his recovery,
young Roberts again entered the army, and continued
in it until the overthrow of the Monarchy. On his
return, he married " Lydia Tindall, of the denomina.
tion of Puritans." A majestic figure rises before us,
on reading the statement, that Sir Matthew Hale, after.
wards Lord Chief Justice of England, the irreproachable Jurist and Judicial Saint, was " his wife's kinsman,
and drew her marriage settlement."
No stronger testimony to the high toned morality
and austere virtue of the Puritan yeomanry of England
can be adduced than the fact, that of the fifty thousand
soldiers who were discharged on the accession of
Charles II., and left to shift for themselves, compara.
tively few, if any, became chargeable to their parishes,
although at that very time one out of six of the English
population were unable to support themselves. They
carried into their farm-fields and workshops the strict
habits of Cromwell's discipline; and, in toiling to repair
their wasted fortunes, they manifested the same heroic




JOHN ROBERTS.               119
fortitude and self-denial which in war had made them
such formidable and efficient " Soldiers of the Lord."
With few exceptions, they remained steadfast in their
uncompromising nonconformity, abhorring Prelacy and
Popery, and entertaining no very orthodox notions with
respect to the divine right of Kings. From them the
Quakers drew their most zealous champions; men
who, in renouncing the " carnal weapons " of their old
service, found employment for habitual combativeness
in hot and wordy sectarian warfare. To this day,
the vocabulary of Quakerism abounds in the military
phrases and figures which were in use in the Commonwvealth's time. Their old force and significance are
how in a great measure lost; but one can well imagine
that, in the assemblies of the primitive Quakers, such
stirring battle-cries and warlike tropes, even when employed in enforcing or illustrating the doctrines of
peace, must have made many a stout heart to beat
quicker, under its drab coloring, with recollections of
Naseby and Preston; transporting many a listener
from the benches of his place of worship to the ranks
of Ireton and Lambert, and causing him to hear, in the
place of the solemn and nasal tones of the preacher,
the blast of Rupert's bugles, and the answering shout
of Cromwell's pikemen: "Let God arise, and let his
enemies be scattered!"




120         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
Of this class was John Roberts. He threw off his
knapsack, and went back to his small homestead, contented with the privilege of supporting himself and
family by daily toil, and grumbling in concert with his
old campaign brothers at- the new order of things in
Church and State. To his apprehension, the Golden
Days of England ended with the parade on Blackheath
to receive the restored King. He manifested no reverence for Bishops and Lords, for he felt none. For the
Presbyterians, he had no good will; they had brought
in the King, and they denied the liberty of prophesying.
John Milton has expressed the feeling of the Independents and Anabaptists towards this latter class, in that
famous line in which he defines Presbyter as " old priest
writ large." Roberts was by no means a gloomy fanatic; he had a great deal of shrewdness and humor, loved
a quiet joke; and every gambling priest and Awearing
magistrate in the neighborhood stood in fear of his
sharp wit. It was quite in course for such a man to
fall in with the Quakers, and he appears to have done
so at the first opportunity.
In the year 1665, " it pleased the Lord to send two
women Friends out of the North to Cirencester," who,
inquiring after such as feared God, were directed to the
house of John Roberts. He received them kindly, and,
inviting in some of his neighbors, sat down with them,




JOHN ROBERTS.              121
whereupon "the Friends spake a few words, which
had a good effect." After the meeting was over, he
was induced to visit a 1" Friend" then confined in Ban.
bury jail, whom he found preaching through the grates
of his cell to the people in the street. On seeing
Roberts, he called to mind the story of Zaccheus, and
declared that the word was now to all who were seeking Christ by climbing the tree of knowledge, " Come
down, come down; for that which is to be known of
God is manifested within."  Returning home, he went
soon after to the parish meeting-house, and, entering
with his hat on, the priest noticed him, and, stopping
short in his discourse, declared that he could not go on
while one of the congregation wore his hat. He was
thereupon led out of the house, and a rude fellow,
stealing up behind, struck him on the back with a heavy
stone. "Take that for God's sake," said the ruffian.
"So I do," answered Roberts, without looking back to
see his assailant, who the next day came and asked his
forgiveness for the injury, as he could not sleep in consequence of it.
We next find him attending the Quarter Sessions,
where three "Friends" were arraigned for entering
Cirencester Church with their hats on. Venturing to
utter a word of remonstrance against the summary
proceedings of the Court, Justice Stephens demanded




122         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
his name, and, on being told, exclaimed, in the very
tone and temper of Jeffreys: "I've heard of you.
I'm glad I have you here. You deserve a stone
doublet. There's many an honester man than you
hanged."  " It may be so," said Roberts,'" but what
becomes of such as hang honest men? " The Justice
snatched a ball of wax, and hurled it at the quiet questioner. "I'll send you to prison," said he; "and if
any insurrection or tumult occurs, I'll come and cut
your throat with my own sword." A warrant was
made out, and he was forthwith sent to the jail. In
the evening, Justice Sollis, his uncle, released him, on
condition of his promise to appear at the next Sessions.
He returned to his home, but in the night following he
was impressed with a belief that it was his duty to visit
Justice Stephens. Early in the morning, with a heavy
heart, without eating or drinking, he mounted his horse
and rode towards the residence of his enemy. When
he came in sight of the house, he felt strong misgivings
that his uncle, Justice Sollis, who had so kindly released
him, and his neighbors generally, would condemn him
for voluntarily running into danger, and drawing down
trouble upon himself and family. He alighted from
his horse, and sat on the ground in great doubt and
sorrow, when a voice seemed to speak within him, " Go,
and I will go with thee." The Justice met him at the




JOHN ROBERTS.               123
door. "I am come," said Roberts, "in the fear and
dread of Heaven, to warn thee to repent of thy wickedness with speed, lest the Lord send thee to the pit that
is bottomless!"   This terrible summons awed the
Justice; he made Roberts sit down on his couch beside
him, declaring that he received the message from
God, and asked forgiveness for the wrong he had done
him.
The parish vicar of Siddington at this time was
George Bull, afterwards Bishop of St. David's, whom
Macaulay speaks of as the only rural parish priest who,
during the latter part of the seventeenth century, was
noted as a theologian, or who possessed a respectable
library. Roberts refused to pay the vicar his tithes,
and the vicar sent him to prison. It was the priest's
"Short Method with Dissenters." While the sturdy
Nonconformist lay in prison, he was visited by the
great woman of the neighborhood, Lady Dunch, of
Down Amney. "What do you lie in jail for?" inquired the lady. Roberts replied, that it was because
he could not put bread into the mouth of a hireling
priest. The lady suggested that he might let somebody
else satisfy the demands of the priest; and that she had
a mind to do this herself, as she wished to talk with him
on religious subjects. To this Roberts objected; there
were poor people who needed her charities, which




124         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
would be wasted on such devourers as the priests, who,
like Pharaoh's lean kine, were eating up the fat and the
goodly, without looking a whit the better. But the
lady, who seems to have been pleased and amused by
the obstinate prisoner, paid the tithe and the jail fees,
and set him at liberty, making him fix a day when he
would visit her. At the time appointed, he went to
Down Amney, and was overtaken on the way by the
priest of Cirencester, who had been sent for to meet the
Quaker. They found the lady ill in bed; but she had
them brought to her chamber, being determined not to
lose the amusement of hearing a theological discussion,
to which she at once urged them, declaring that it
would divert her, and do her good. The Parson began
by accusing the Quakers of holding Popish doctrines.
The Quaker retorted, by telling him that if he would
prove the Quakers like the Papists in one thing, by the
help of God, he would prove him like them in ten.
After a brief and sharp dispute, the priest, finding his
adversary's wit too keen for his comfort, hastily took
his leave.
The next we hear of Roberts, he is in Gloucester
Castle, subjected to the brutal usage of a jailer, who
took a malicious satisfaction in thrusting decent and
respectable Dissenters, imprisoned for matters of conscience, among felons and thieves. A poor vagabond




JOHN ROBERTS.              125
tinker was hired to play, at night, on his hautboy, and
prevent their sleeping; but Roberts spoke to him in
such a manner, that the instrument fell from his hand;
and he told the jailer that he would play no more,
though he should hang him up at the door for it.
How he was released from jail does not appear; but
the narrative tells us, that some time after, an apparitor
came to cite him to the Bishop's Court at Gloucester.
When he was brought before the Court, Bishop Nicholson, a kind-hearted and easy-natured prelate, asked him
the number of his children, and how many of them had
been bishoped?
" None, that I know of," said Roberts.
"What reason," asked the Bishop, " do you give for
this? "
"A very good one," said the Quaker; " most of my
children were born in Oliver's days, when Bishops were
out of fashion."
The Bishop and the Court laughed at this sally, and
proceeded to question him touching his views of baptism. Roberts admitted that John had a Divine com.
mission to baptize with water, but that he never heard
of any body else that had. The Bishop reminded him
that Christ's disciples baptized. " What's that to me?"
responded Roberts. "Paul says he was not sent to
baptize, but to preach the Gospel. And if he was not




1'26        PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
sent, who required it at his hands? Perhaps he had as
little thanks for his labor as thou hast for thine; and I
would willingly know who sent thee to baptize?"
The Bishop evaded this home question, and told him
he was there to answer for not coming to church.
Roberts denied the charge; sometimes he went to
church, and sometimes it came to him.  "I don't call
that a church which you do, which is made of wood and
stone."
" What do you call it? " asked the Bishop.
"It might be properly called a mass-house," was the
reply; " for it was built for that purpose." The Bishop
here told him he might go for the present; he would
take another opportunity to convince him of his errors.
The next person called was a Baptist minister, who,
seeing that Roberts refused to put off his hat, kept on
his also. The Bishop sternly reminded him, that he
stood before the King's Court, and the representative of
the majesty of England; and that, while some regard
might be had to the scruples of men who made a conscience of putting off the hat, such contempt could not
be tolerated on the part of one who could put it off to
every mechanic he met. The Baptist pulled off his
hat, and apologized, on the ground of illness.
We find Roberts next following George Fox on a
visit to Bristol.  On his return, reaching his house




JOHN ROBERTS.              127
late in the evening, he saw a man standing in the
moonlight at his door, and knew him to be a bailiff.
" Hast thou any thing against me? " asked Roberts.
" No," said the bailiff, " I've wronged you enough,
God forgive me! Those who lie in wait for you are
my Lord Bishop's bailiffs; they are merciless rogues.
Ever, my master, while you live, please a knave, for
an honest man won't hurt you."
The next morning, having, as he thought, been
warned by a dream to do so, he went to the Bishop's
house at Cleave, near Gloucester. Confronting the
Bishop in his own hall, he told him that he had come
to know why he was hunting after him with his bailiffs,
and why he was his adversary? " The King is your
adversary," said the Bishop; " you have broken the
King's law." Roberts ventured to deny the justice of
the law. "What! " cried the Bishop, " do such men
as you find fault with the laws? "   Yes," replied the
other, stoutly; "and I tell thee plainly to thy face, it
is high time wiser men were chosen, to make better
laws."
The discourse' turning upon the Book of Common
Prayer, Roberts asked the Bishop if the sin of idolatry
did not consist in worshipping the work of men's hands.
The Bishop admitted it, as in the case of Nebuchadnezzar's image.




128         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
"Then," said Roberts, "whose hands made your
Prayer Book? It could not make itself."
"Do you compare our Prayer Book to Nebuchadnezzar's image?" cried the Bishop.
" Yes," returned Roberts, " that was his image; this
is thine. I no more dare bow to thy Common Prayer
Book than the Three Children to Nebuchadnezzar's
image."
" Yours is a strange upstart religion," said the Bishop.
Roberts told him it was older than his by several
hundred years. At this claim of antiquity the Prelate
was greatly amused, and told Roberts that if he would
make out his case, he should speed the better for it.
" Let me ask thee," said Roberts, " where thy religion
was in Oliver's days, when thy Common Prayer Book
was as little regarded as an old Almanac, and your
priests, with a few honest exceptions, turned with the
tide, and if Oliver had put Mass in their mouths, would
have conformed to it for the sake of their bellies."
", What would you have us do? " asked the Bishop.
" Would you have had Oliver cut our throats? "
" No," said Roberts; " but what sort of religion was
that which you were afraid to venture your throats
for?"
The Bishop interrupted him to say, that in Oliver's
days he had never owned any other religion than his




JOHN ROBERTS.              129
own, although he did not dare to openly maintain it as
he then did.
" Well," continued Roberts, " if thou didst not think
thy religion worth venturing thy throat for then, I desire
thee to consider that it is not worth the cutting of other
men's throats now for not conforming to it."
" You are right," responded the frank Bishop. "I
hope we shall have a care how we cut men's throats."
The following colloquy throws some light on the
condition and character of the rural clergy at this
period, and goes far to confirm the statements of
Macaulay, which many have supposed exaggerated.
Baxter's early religious teachers were more exception.
able than even the maudlin mummer whom Roberts
speaks of, one of them being " the excellentest stage.
player in all the country, and a good gamester and
goodfellow, who having received Holy Orders, forged
the like for a neighbor's son, who on the strength of
that title officiated at the desk and altar; and after him
came an attorney's clerk, who had tippled himself into
so great poverty, that he had no other way to live than
to preach:"
J. ROBERTS. I was bred up under a Common Prayer
Priest; and a poor drunken old Man he was: Some.
times he was so drunk he could not say his Prayers,
9




130         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
and at best he could but say them; though I think he
was by far a better Man than he that is Priest there
now.
BISHOP. Who is your Minister now?
J. ROBERTS. My Minister is Christ Jesus, the Minister
of the everlasting Covenant; but the present Priest of
the Parish is George Bull.
BISHOP. Do you say that drunken old Man was bet.
ter than Mr. Bull? I tell you, I account Mr. Bull as
sound, able, and orthodox a Divine as any we have
among us.
J. ROBERTS. I am sorry for that; for if he be one of
the best of you, I believe the Lord will not suffer you
long: For he is a proud, ambitious, ungodly Man; he
hath often sued me at Law, and brought his Servants to
swear against me wrongfully. His Servants themselves
have confessed to my Servants, that I might have their
Ears; for their Master made them drunk, and then
told them they were set down in the List as Witnesses
against me, and they must swear to it: And so they
did, and brought treble Damages. They likewise owned
they took Tithes from my Servants, threshed them out,
and sold them for their Master. They have also several Times took my Cattle out of my Grounds, drove
them to Fairs and Markets, and sold them, without
giving me any Account.




JOHN ROBERTS.               131
BISHOP. I do assure you I will inform Mr. Bull of
what you say.
J. ROBERTS. Very well. And if thou pleasest to
send for me to face him, I shall make much more
appear to his Face than I'11 say behind his Back.
After much more discourse, Roberts told the Bishop
that if it would do him any good to have him in jail, he
would voluntarily go and deliver himself up to the
keeper of Gloucester Castle. The good-natured Prelate relented at this, and said he should not be molested
or injured, and further manifested his good will by
ordering refreshments. One of the Bishop's friends
who was present was highly offended by the freedom
of Roberts with his Lordship, and undertook to rebuke
him, but was so readily answered, that he flew into a
rage. "If all the Quakers in England," said he, " are
not hanged in a month's time, I'11 be hanged for them."
" Prithee, friend," quoth Roberts, "remember and be
as good as thy word! "
Good old Bishop Nicholson, it would seem, really
liked his incorrigible Quaker neighbor, and could enjoy
heartily his wit and humor, even when exercised at the
expense of his own ecclesiastical dignity. He admired
his blunt honesty and courage. Surrounded by flatterers and self-seekers, he found satisfaction in the
company and conversation of one who, setting aside all




132          PORTRAITS AND. SKETCHES.
conventionalisms, saw only in my Lord Bishop a poor
fellow-probationer, and addressed him on terms of conscious equality. The indulgence which he extended to
him, naturally enough, provoked many of the inferior
clergy, who had been sorely annoyed by the sturdy
Dissenter's irreverent witticisms and unsparing ridicule.
Vicar Bull, of Siddington, and Priest Careless, of Cirencester, in particular, urged the Bishop to deal sharply
with him. The former accused him of dealing in the
Black Art, and filled the Bishop's ear with certain
marvellous stories of his preternatural sagacity and
discernment in discovering cattle which were lost.
The Bishop took occasion to inquire into these stories;
and was told by Roberts, that, except in a single instance, the discoveries were the result of his acquaintance with the habits of animals, and his knowledge of
the localities where they were lost. The circumstance
alluded to, as an exception, will be best related in his
own words:
"I had a poor Neighbor, who had a Wife and six
Children, and whom the chief men about us permitted
to keep six or seven Cows upon the Waste, which were
the principal Support of the Family, and preserved
them from becoming chargeable to the Parish. One
very stormy night, the Cattle were left in the Yard as
usual, but could not be found in the morning. The




JOHN ROBERTS.              133
Man and his Sons had sought them to no purpose; and,
after they had been lost four days, his Wife came to
me, and, in a great deal of grief, cried,' O Lord!
Master Hayward, we are undone! My Husband and I
must go a begging in our old age! We have lost all
our Cows. My Husband and the Boys have been round
the country, and can hear nothing of them. I'11 down
on my bare knees, if you'll stand our Friend!' I
desired she would not be in such an agony, and told
her she should not down on her knees to me; but I
would gladly help them in what I could.' I know,'
said she,' you are a good Man, and God will hear your
Prayers.' I desire thee, said I, to be still and quiet in
thy mind; perhaps thy Husband or Sons may hear of
them to-day; if not, let thy Husband get a horse, and
come to me to-morrow morning as soon as he will;
and I think, if it please God, to go with him to seek
them. The Woman seemed- transported with joy, cry.
ing,' Then we shall have our Cows again.' Her Faith
being so strong, brought the greater Exercise on me,
with strong cries to the Lord, that he would be pleased
to make me instrumental in his Hand, for the help of
the poor Family. In the Morning early comes the old
Man. In the Name of God, says he, which Way shall
we go to seek them?  I, being deeply concerned in
my Mind, did not answer him till he had thrice repeated




134         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
it; and then I answered, In the Name of God, I would
go to seek them; and said (before I was well aware)
we will go to Malmsbury, and at the Horse-Fair we
shall find them. When I had spoken the Words, I was
much troubled lest they should not prove true. It was
very early, and the first Man we saw, I asked him if he
had seen any stray Milch Cows thereabouts? What
manner of Cattle are they? said he. And the old
Man describing their Mark and Number, he told us
there were some stood chewing their Cuds in the
Horse-Fair; but, thinking they belonged to some in
the Neighborhood, he did not take particular Notice of
them. When we came to the Place, the old Man found
them to be his; but suffered his Transports of Joy to
rise so high, that I was ashamed of his behaviour; for
he fell a hallooing, and threw up his Montier Cap in
the Air several times, till he raised the Neighbors out
of their Beds to see what was the Matter. O! said he,' I had lost my Cows four or five days ago, and thought
I should never see them again; and this honest Neighbor of mine told me this Morning, by his own Fire's
Side, nine Miles off, that here I should find them, and
here I have them!' Then up goes his Cap again.
I begged of the poor Man to be quiet, and take his
Cows home, and be thankful; as indeed I was, being
reverently bowed in my Spirit before the Lord, in that




JOHN ROBERTS.              135
he was pleased to put the words of Truth into my
mouth. And the Man drove his Cattle home, to the
great Joy of his Family."
Not long after the interview with the Bishop at his
own palace, which has been related, that dignitary, with
the Lord Chancellor, in their coaches, and about twenty
clergymen on horseback, made a call at the humble
dwelling of Roberts, on their way to Tedbury, where
the Bishop was to hold a Visitation. " I could not go
out of the country without seeing you," said the Prelate,
as the farmer came to his coach door and pressed him
to alight.
" John," asked Priest Evans, the Bishop's kinsman,
", is your house free to entertain such men as we
are?"
4' Yes, George," said Roberts; "I entertain honest
men, and sometimes others."
"My Lord," said Evans, turning to the' Bishop,
" John's friends are the honest men, and we are the
others."
The Bishop told Roberts that they could not then
alight, but would gladly drink with him; whereupon,
the good wife brought out her best beer. "I commend
you, John," quoth the Bishop, as he paused from his
hearty draught; " you keep a cup of good beer in your
house. I have not drank any that has pleased me




136         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
better since I left home." The cup passed next to the
Chancellor, and finally came to Priest Bull, who thrust
it aside, declaring that it was full of hops and heresy.
As to Hops, Roberts replied, he could not say, but, as
for Heresy, he bade the priest take note, that the Lord
Bishop had drank of it, and had found no heresy in the
cup.
The Bishop leaned over his coach door and whis.
pered: "John, I advise you to take care you don't
offend against the higher Powers. I have heard great
complaints against you, that you are the Ringleader of
the Quakers in this Country; and that, if you are not
suppressed, all will signify nothing. Therefore, pray,
John, take care for the future, you don't offend any
more."
"I like thy Counsel very well," answered Roberts,
"and intend to take it. But thou knowest God is the
higher Power; and you mortal Men, however advanced
in this World, are but the lower Power; and it is only
because I endeavor to be obedient to the will of the
higher Powers, that the lower Powers are angry with
me. But I hope, with the assistance of God, to take
thy Counsel, and be subject to the higher Powers, let
the lower Powers do with me as it may please God to
suffer them."
The Bishop then said he would like to talk with him




JOHN ROBERTS.,             137
further, and requested him to meet him at Tedbury the
next day. At the time appointed, Roberts went to the
inn where the Bishop lodged, and was invited to dine
with him. After dinner was over, the Prelate told him
that he must go to church, and leave off holding Conventicles at his house, of which great complaint was
made. This he flatly refused to do; and the Bishop,
losing patience, ordered the constable to be sent for.
Roberts told him, that if, after coming to his house
under the guise of friendship, he should betray him and
send him to prison, he, who had hitherto commended
him for his moderation, would put his name in print,
and cause it to stink before all sober people. It was
the priests, he told him, who set him on; but, instead
of hearkening to them, he should commend them to
some honest vocation, and not suffer them to rob their
honest neighbors, and feed on the fruits of other men's
toil, like caterpillars.
" Whom  do you call caterpillars?" cried Priest
Rich, of North Surrey.
" We farmers," said Roberts, " call those so who live
on other men's fields, and by the sweat of other men's
brows; and, if thou dost so, thou mayst be one of
them."
This reply so enraged the Bishop's attendants, that
they could only be appeased by an order for the con



138         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
stable to take him to jail. In fact, there was some
ground for complaint of a lack of courtesy on the part
of the blunt farmer; and the Christian virtue of forbearance, even in Bishops, has its limits.
The constable, obeying the summons, came to the
inn, at the door of which the landlady met him. " What
do you here! " cried the good woman, " when honest
John is going to be sent to prison? Here, come along
with me." The constable, nothing loath, followed her
into a private room, where she concealed him. Word
was sent to the Bishop, that the constable was not to be
found; and the Prelate, telling Roberts he could send
him to jail in the afternoon, dismissed him until evening.
At the hour appointed, the latter waited upon the Bishop,
and found with him only one priest and a lay gentleman.
The priest begged the Bishop to be allowed to discourse
with the prisoner; and, leave being granted, he began
by telling Roberts that the knowledge of the Scriptures
had made him mad, and that it was a great pity he had
ever seen them.
" Thou art an unworthy man," said the Quaker,
"and I'11 not dispute with thee. If the knowledge of
the Scriptures has made me mad, the knowledge of the
sack-pot hath almost made thee mad; and if we two
madmen should dispute about religion, we should make
mad work of it."




JOHN ROBERTS.              139
"An't please you, my Lord," said the scandalized
priest, " he says I'm drunk."
The Bishop asked Roberts to repeat his words; and,
instead of reprimanding him, as the priest expected, was
so much amused that he held up his hands and laughed;
whereupon, the offended inferior took a hasty leave.
The Bishop, who was evidently glad to be rid of him,
now turned to Roberts, and complained that he had
dealt hardly with him, in telling him, before so many
gentlemen, that he had sought to betray him by professions of friendship, in order to send him to prison; and
that, if he had not done as he did, people would have
reported him as an encourager of the Quakers. "But
now, John," said the good Prelate, "I'11 burn the
warrant against you before your face."  " You know,
Mr. Burnet," he continued, addressing his attendant,
" that a Ring of Bells may be made of excellent metal,
but they may be out of tune; so we may say of John;
he is a man of as good metal as I ever met with, but
quite out of tune."
" Thou may'st well say so," quoth Roberts, " for I
can't tune after thy pipe."
The inferior clergy were by no means so lenient as
the Bishop. They regarded Roberts as the Ringleader
of Dissent, an impracticable, obstinate, contumacious
heretic, not only refusing to pay them tithes himself,




140          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
but encouraging others to the same course.  Hence,
they thought it necessary to visit upon him the full rigor
of the law. His crops were taken from his field, and
his cattle from his yard. He was often committed to
the jail, where, on one occasion, he was kept, with many
others, for a long time, through the malice of the jailer,
who refused to put the names of his prisoners in the
Calendar, that they might have a hearing. But the spirit
of the old Commonwealth's man remained steadfast.
When Justice George, at the Ram in Cirencester, told
him he must conform, and go to church, or suffer the
penalty of the law, he replied, that he had heard indeed
that some were formerly whipped out of the Temple,
but he had never heard of any being whipped in. The
Justice, pointing, through the open window of the inn,
at the church tower, asked him what that was. "Thou
may'st call it a daw-house," answered the incorrigible
Quaker. "Dost thou not see how the jackdaws flock
about it?"
Sometimes it happened that the clergyman was also
a magistrate, and united in his own person the authority
of the State and the zeal of the Church. Justice Parsons, of Gloucester, was a functionary of this sort. He
wielded the sword of the spirit on the Sabbath against
Dissenters, and on week days belabored them with the
arm of flesh and the constable's staff. At one time he




JOHN ROBERTS.               141
had between forty and fifty of them locked up in Gloucester Castle, among them Roberts and his sons, on the
charge of attending Conventicles. But the troublesome
prisoners baffled his vigilance, and turned their prison
into a meeting-house, and held their Conventicles in
defiance of him. The Reverend Justice pounced upon
them on one occasion, with his attendants. An old,
gray-haired man, formerly a strolling fencing-master,
was preaching when he came in. The Justice laid hold
of him by his white locks, and strove to pull him down,
but the tall fencing-master stood firm and spoke on; he
then tried to gag him, but failed in that also. He demanded the names of the prisoners, but no one answered
him. A voice (we fancy it was that of our old friend
Roberts) called out: " The Devil must be hard put to
it to have his drudgery done, when the Priests must
leave their pulpits to turn informers against poor prisoners." The Justice obtained a list of the names of
the prisoners, made out on their commitment, and,
taking it for granted that all were still present, issued
warrants for the collection of fines by levies upon their
estates. Among the names was that of a poor widow,
who had been discharged, and was living, at the time
the clerical Magistrate swore she was at the meeting,
twenty miles distant from the prison.
Soon after this event, our old friend fell sick. He




142          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
had been discharged from prison, but his sons were still
confined. The eldest had leave, however, to attend
him in his illness, and he bears his testimony that the
Lord was pleased to favor his father with His living
presence in his last moments. In keeping with the
sturdy Nonconformist's life, he was interred at the foot
of his own orchard, in Siddington, a spot he had selected for a burial-ground long before, where neither
the foot of a priest nor the shadow of a steeple-house
could rest upon his grave.
In closing our notice of this pleasant old narrative,
we may remark that the light it sheds upon the antagonistic religious parties of the time is calculated to
dissipate prejudices, and correct misapprehensions,
common alike to Churchmen and Dissenters. The
genial humor, sound sense, and sterling virtues of the
Quaker farmer, should teach the one class that poor
James Nayler, in his craziness and folly, was not a fair
representative of his sect; while the kind nature, the
hearty appreciation of goodness, and the generosity
and candor, of Bishop Nicholson, should convince the
other class that a prelate is not necessarily, and by
virtue of his mitre, a Laud or a Bonner. The Dissenters of the seventeenth century may well be forgiven
for the asperity of their language; men whose ears
had been cropped because they would not recognise




JOHN ROBERTS.               143
Charles I. as a blessed martyr, and his scandalous son
as the head of the Church, could scarcely be expected
to make discriminations, or suggest palliating circumstances, favorable to any class of their adversaries. To
use the homely but apt simile of McFingal,
" The will's confirmed by treatment horrid,
As hides grow harder when they're curried."
They were wronged, and they told the world of it.
Unlike Shakspeare's cardinal, they did not die without
a sign. They branded, by their fierce epithets, the
foreheads of their persecutors more deeply than the
sheriff's hot iron did their own. If they lost their ears,
they enjoyed the satisfaction of making those of their
oppressors tingle. Knowing their persecutors to be in
the wrong, they did not always inquire whether they
themselves had been entirely right, and had done no
unrequired works of supererogation by the way of
" testimony " against their neighbors' mode of worship.
And so from pillory and whipping-post, from prison
and scaffold, they sent forth their wail and execration,
their miserere and anathema, and the sound thereof
has reached down to our day. May it never wholly
die away until, the world over, the forcing of conscience
is regarded as a crime against humanity, and a usurpation of God's prerogative. But abhorring, as we must,




144          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
persecution under whatever pretext it is employed, we
are not therefore, to conclude, that all persecutors were
bad and unfeeling men. Many of their severities, upon
which we now look back with horror, were, beyond a
question, the result of an intense anxiety for the wellbeing of immortal souls, endangered by the poison
which, in their view, heresy was casting into the waters
of life. Coleridge, in one of the moods of a mind
which traversed in imagination the vast circle of human
experience, reaches this point in his "Table-Talk."
" It would require," says he," stronger arguments than
any I have seen, to convince me that men in authority
have not a right, involved in an imperative duty, to
deter those under their control from teaching or countenancing doctrines which they believe to be damnable,
and even to punish with death those who violate such
prohibition." It would not be very difficult for us
to imagine a tender-hearted Inquisitor of this stamp,
stifling his weak compassion for the shrieking wretch
under bodily torment, by his strong pity for souls in
danger of perdition from the sufferer's heresy. We
all know with what satisfaction the gentle-spirited
Melancthon heard of the burning of Servetus, and with
what zeal he defended it. The truth is, the notion
that an intellectual recognition of certain dogmas is the
essential condition of salvation lies at the bottom of all




JOHN ROBERTS.                145
intolerance in matters of religion. Under this impres.
sion, men are too apt to forget that the great end of
Christianity is Love, and that Charity is its crowning
virtue; they overlook the beautiful significance of the
parable of the heretic Samaritan and the orthodox
Pharisee; and thus, by suffering their speculative
opinions of the next world to make them uncharitable
and cruel in this, they are really the worse for them,
even admitting them to be true.
10




SAMUEL HOPKINS.
THREE quarters of a century ago, the name of
Samuel Hopkins was as familiar as a household word
throughout New England. It was a spell wherewith
to raise at once a storm of theological controversy.
The venerable minister who bore it had his thousands
of ardent young disciples, as well as defenders and
followers of mature age and acknowledged talent; a
hundred pulpits propagated the dogmas which he had
engrafted on the stock of Calvinism. Nor did he lack
numerous and powerful antagonists. The sledge ecclesiastic, with more or less effect, was unceasingly plied
upon the strong-linked chain of argument which he slowly and painfully elaborated in the seclusion of his parish.
The press groaned under large volumes of theological,
metaphysical, and psychological disquisition, the very
thought of which is now " a weariness to the flesh;" in
rapid succession pamphlet encountered pamphlet, horn



SAMUEL HOPKINS.              147
ed, beaked, and sharp of talon, grappling with each other
in mid air, like Milton's angels. That loud controversy,
the sound whereof went over Christendom, awakening
responses from beyond the Atlantic, has now died
away; its watchwords no longer stir the blood of belligerent sermonizers; its very terms and definitions
have well nigh become obsolete and unintelligible.
The hands which wrote and the tongues which spoke
in that day are now all cold and silent; even Emmons,
the brave old intellectual athlete of Franklin, now
sleeps with his fathers; the last of the giants. Their
fame is still in all the churches; effeminate clerical
dandyism still affects to do homage to their memories;
the earnest young theologian, exploring with awe the
mountainous debris of their controversial lore, ponders
over the colossal thoughts entombed therein, as he
would over the gigantic fossils of an early creation, and
endeavors in vain to recall to the skeleton abstractions
before him the warm and vigorous life wherewith they
were once clothed; but Hopkinsianism, as a distinct
and living school of philosophy, theology, and metaphysics, no longer exists. It has no living oracles left; and
its memory survives only in the doctrinal treatises of
the elder and younger Edwards, Hopkins, Bellamy, and
Emmons.
It is no part of our present purpose to discuss the




148         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
merits of the system in question. Indeed, looking at
the great controversy which divided NeT England
Calvinism in the eighteenth century, from a point of
view which secures our impartiality and freedom from
prejudice, we find it exceedingly difficult to get a precise idea of what was actually at issue. To our poor
comprehension, much of the dispute hinges upon names
rather than things; on the manner of reaching conclusions quite as much as upon the conclusions themselves.
Its origin may be traced to the great religious awakening
of the middle of the past century, when the dogmas of
the Calvinistic faith were subjected to the inquiry of
acute and earnest minds, roused up from the incurious
ease and passive indifference of nominal orthodoxy.
Without intending it, it broke down some of the barriers
which separated Arminianism and Calvinism; its pro.
duct, Hopkinsianism, while it pushed the doctrine of the
Genevan reformer on the subject of the Divine decrees
and agency to that extreme point where it well nigh
loses itself in Pantheism, held at the same time that
guilt could not be hereditary; that man, being responsible for his sinful acts, and not for his sinful nature,
can only be justified by a personal holiness, consisting
not so much in legal obedience as in that disinterested
benevolence which prefers the glory of God and the
welfare of universal being above the happiness of self.




SAMUEL HOPKINS.              149
It had the merit, whatever it may be, of reducing the
doctrines of the Reformation to an ingenious and scholastic form of theology; of bringing them boldly to the
test of reason and philosophy. Its leading advocates
were not mere heartless reasoners and closet speculators. They taught that sin was selfishness, and holiness self-denying benevolence, and they endeavored to
practise accordingly. Their lives recommended their
doctrines. They were bold and faithful in the discharge
of what they regarded as duty. In the midst of slaveholders, and in an age of comparative darkness on the
subject of human rights, Hopkins and the younger
Edwards lifted up their voices for the slave.  And
twelve years ago, when Abolitionism was every where
spoken against, and the whole land was convulsed with
mobs to suppress it, the venerable Emmons, burdened
with the weight of ninety years, made a journey to
New York, to attend a meeting of the Anti-Slavery
Society. Let those who condemn the creed of these
men see to it that they do not fall behind them in practical righteousness and faithfulness to the convictions of
duty.
Samuel Hopkins, who gave his name to the religious
system in question, was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, in 1721. In his fifteenth year he was placed
under the care of a neighboring clergyman, preparatory




150         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
for college, which he entered about a year after. In
1740, the celebrated Whitefield visited New Haven,
and awakened there, as elsewhere, serious inquiry on
religious subjects.  He was followed the succeeding
spring by Gilbert Tennent, the New Jersey revivalist,
a stirring and powerful preacher. A great change took
place in the college. All the phenomena which President Edwards has described in his account of the
Northampton awakening were reproduced among the
students. The excellent David Brainard, then a member of the college, visited Hopkins in his apartment,
and, by a few plain and earnest words, convinced him
that he was a stranger to vital Christianity. In his
autobiographical sketch, he describes in simple and
affecting language the dark and desolate state of his
mind at this period, and the particular exercise which
finally afforded him some degree of relief, and which
he afterwards appears to have regarded as his conversion from spiritual death to life. When he first heard
Tennent, regarding him as the greatest as well as the
best of men, he made up his mind to study theology
with him; but just before the commencement at which
he was to take his degree, the elder Edwards preached
at New Haven.  Struck by the power of the great
theologian, he at once resolved to make him his spiritual father. In the winter following, he left his father's




SAMUEL HOPKINS.              151
house on horseback, on a journey of eighty miles, to
Northampton.  Arriving at the house of President
Edwards, he was disappointed by hearing that he was
absent on a preaching tour. But he was kindly received
by the gifted and accomplished lady of the mansion,
and encouraged to remain during the winter.  Still
doubtful in respect to his own spiritual state, he was, he
says, " very gloomy, and retired most of the time in his
chamber." The kind heart of his amiable hostess was
touched by his evident affliction. After some days she
came to his chamber, and, with the gentleness and
delicacy of a true woman, inquired into the cause of
his unhappiness. The young student disclosed to her,
without reserve, the state of his feelings and the extent
of his fears. " She told me," says the Doctor, " that
she had had peculiar exercises respecting me since I
had been in the family; that she trusted I should receive
light and comfort, and doubted not that God intended
yet to do great things by me."
After pursuing his studies for some months with the
Puritan philosopher, young Hopkins commenced preaching, and, in 1743, was ordained at Sheffield, (now Great
Barrington,) in the western part of Massachusetts.
There were at the time only about thirty families in
the town. He says it was a matter of great regret to
him to be obliged to settle so far from his spiritual guide




15g2        PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
and tutor; but seven years after he was relieved and
gratified by the removal of Edwards to Stockbridge, as
the Indian missionary at that station, seven miles only
from his own residence; and for several years the
great metaphysician and his favorite pupil enjoyed the
privilege of familiar intercourse with each other. The
removal of the former in 1758 to Princeton, New Jersey, and his death, which soon followed, are mentioned
in the diary of Hopkins as sore trials and afflictive dispensations.
Obtaining a dismissal from his society in Great
Barrington in 1769, he was installed at Newport the
next year, as minister of the first Congregational church
in that place. Newport, at this period, was, in size,
wealth, and commercial importance, the second town in
New England. It was the great slave mart of the
North. Vessels loaded with stolen men and women
and children, consigned to its merchant princes, lay at
its wharves; immortal beings were sold daily in its
market, like cattle at a fair. The soul of Hopkins was
moved by the appalling spectacle. A strong conviction
of the great wrong of slavery, and of its utter incompatibility with the Christian profession, seized upon his
mind. While at Great Barrington, he had himself
owned a slave, whom he had sold on leaving the place,
without compunction or suspicion in regard to the right.




SAMUEL HOPKINS.              153
fulness of the transaction. He now saw the origin of
the system in its true light; he heard the seamen
engaged in the African trade tell of the horrible scenes
of fire and blood which they had witnessed, and in
which they had been actors; he saw the half suffocated
wretches brought up from their noisome and narrow
prison, their squalid countenances and skeleton forms
bearing fearful evidence of the suffering attendant upon
the transportation from their native homes. The demoralizing effects of slaveholding every where forced
themselves upon his attention, for the evil had struck
its roots deeply in the community, and there were few
families into which it had not penetrated. The right
to deal in slaves, and use them as articles of property,
was questioned by no one; men of all professions,.
clergymen and cbhurch members, consulted only their
interest and convenience as to their purchase or sale.
The magnitude of the evil at first appalled him; he felt
it to be his duty to condemn it, but for a time even his
strong spirit faltered and turned pale in contemplation
of the consequences to be apprehended from an attack
upon it. Slavery and slave trading were at that time
the principal source of wealth to the island; his own
church and congregation were personally interested in
the traffic; all were implicated in its guilt. He stood
alone, as it were, in its condemnation; with here and




154         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
there an exception, all Christendom maintained the
rightfulness of slavery. No movement had yet been
made in England against the slave trade; the decision
of Granville Sharp's Somerset case hadl not yet taken
place.  The Quakers, even, had not at that time
redeemed themselves from the opprobrium. Under
these circumstances, after a thorough examination of
the subject, he resolved, in the strength of the Lord, to
take his stand openly and decidedly on the side of humanity. He prepared a sermon for the purpose, and
for the first time, from a pulpit of New England, was
heard an emphatic testimony against the sin of slavery.
In contrast with the unselfish and disinterested benevolence which formed in his mind the essential element
of Christian holiness, he held up the act of reducing
human beings to the condition of brutes, to minister to
the convenience, the luxury, and lusts of the owner.
He had expected bitter complaint and opposition from
his hearers, but was agreeably surprised to find that in
most cases his sermon only excited astonishment in
their minds that they themselves had never before
looked at the subject in the light in which he presented
it. Steadily and faithfully pursuing the matter, he had
the satisfaction to carry with him his church, and obtain
from it, in the midst of a slave-holding and slave-trading
community, a resolution every way worthy of note in




SAMUEL HOPKINS.              155
this day of cowardly compromise with the evil, on the
part of our leading ecclesiastical bodies:
" Resolved, That the slave trade and the slavery of
the Africans, as it has existed among us, is a gross
violation of the righteousness and benevolence which
are so much inculcated in the Gospel, and therefore we
will not tolerate it in this church."
There are few instances on record of moral heroism
superior to that of Samuel Hopkins, in thus rebuking
slavery in the time and place of its power. Honor to
the true man ever, who takes his life in his hands, and,
at all hazards, speaks the word which is given him to
utter, whether men will hear or forbear, whether the
end thereof is to be praise or censure, gratitude or
hatred. It well may be doubted, whether, on that Sabbath day the angels of God, in their wide survey of His
universe, looked upon a nobler spectacle than that of
the minister of Newport, rising up before his slaveholding congregation, and demanding, in the name of
the Highest, the "deliverance of the captive, and the
opening of prison doors to them that were bound."
Dr. Hopkins did not confine his attention solely to
slaveholding in his own church and congregation. He
entered into correspondence with the early Abolitionists
of Europe, as well as his own country. He labored
with his brethren in the ministry to bring them to his




156         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
own view of the great wrong of holding men as slaves.
In a visit to his early friend, Dr. Bellamy, at Bethlehem,
who was the owner of a slave, he pressed the subject
kindly but earnestly upon his attention. Dr. Bellamy
urged the usual arguments in favor of slavery. Dr.
Hopkins refuted them in the most successful manner,
and called upon his friend to do an act of simple justice,
in giving immediate freedom to his slave. Dr. Bellamy,
thus hardly pressed, said that the slave was a most
judicious and faithful fellow; that, in the management
of his farm, he could trust every thing to his discretion;
that he treated him well, and he was so happy in his
service, that he would refuse his freedom if it were
offered him.
"Will you," said Hopkins, "consent to his liberation, if he really desires it?"
"Yes, certainly," said Dr. Bellamy.
"Then let us try him," said his guest.
The slave was at work in an adjoining field, and at
the call of his master came promptly to receive his
commands.
" Have you a good master? " inquired Hopkins.
"0, yes; massa, he berry good."
" But are you happy in your present condition?"
queried the Doctor.
" 0, yes, massa; berry happy."




SAMUEL HOPKINS.             157
Dr. Bellamy here could scarcely suppress his exultation at what he supposed was a complete triumph over
his anti-slavery brother. But the pertinacious guest
continued his queries.
"Would you not be more happy if you were free  "
" 0, yes, massa," exclaimed the negro, his dark face
glowing with new life; " berry much more happy!"
To the honor of Dr. Bellamy, he did not hesitate.
"You have your wish," he said to his servant.
"From this moment you are free."
Dr. Hopkins was a poor man, but one of his first
acts, after becoming convinced of the wrongfulness of
slavery, was to appropriate the very sum which, in the
days of his ignorance, he had obtained as the price of
his slave, to the benevolent purpose of educating some
pious colored men in the town of Newport, who were
desirous of returning to their native country as missionaries. In one instance he borrowed, on his own
responsibility, the sum requisite to secure the freedom
of a slave in whom he became interested. One of his
theological pupils was Newport Gardner, who, twenty
years after the death of his kind patron, left Boston as
a missionary to Africa. He was a native African, and
was held by Captain Gardner, of Newport, who allowed
him to labor for his own benefit, whenever by extra
diligence he could gain a little time for that purpose.




158         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
The poor fellow was in the habit of laying up his
small earnings on these occasions, in the faint hope of
one day obtaining thereby the freedom of himself and
his family. But time passed on, and the hoard of
purchase money still looked sadly small. He concluded
to try the efficacy of praying. Having gained a day
for himself, by severe labor, and communicating his
plan only to Dr. Hopkins and two or three other Christian friends, he shut himself up in his humble dwelling,
and spent the time in prayer for freedom. Towards
the close of the day, his master sent for him. He was
told that this was his gained time, and that he was
engaged for himself.  "No  matter," returned the
master, " I must see him." Poor Newport reluctantly
abandoned his supplications, and came at his master's
bidding, when, to his astonishment, instead of a reprimand, he received a paper, signed by his master,
declaring him and his family from thenceforth free.
He justly attributed this signal blessing to the all-wise
Disposer, who turns the hearts of men as the rivers of
water are turned; but it cannot be doubted that the
labors and arguments of Dr. Hopkins with his master
were the human instrumentality in effecting it.
In the year 1773, in connection with Dr. Ezra Stiles,
he issued an appeal to the Christian community in behalf of a society which he had been instrumental in




SAMUEL HOPKINS.             159
forming, for the purpose of educating missionaries for
Africa. In the desolate and benighted condition of that
unhappy continent, he had become painfully interested,
by conversing with the slaves brought into Newport.
Another appeal was made on the subject in 1776.
The war of the Revolution interrupted, for a time,
the philanthropic plans of Dr. Hopkins. The beautiful
island on which he lived was at an early period exposed
to the exactions and devastations of the enemy. All
who could do so, left it for the main land. Its wharves
were no longer thronged with merchandise; its princi.
pal dwellings stood empty; the very meeting-houses
were in a great measure abandoned. Dr. Hopkins,
who had taken the precaution, at the commencement of
hostilities, to remove his family to Great Barrington,
remained himself until the year 1776, when the British
took possession of the island. During the period of its
occupation, he was employed in preaching to destitute
congregations. He spent the summer of 1777 at New.
buryport, where his memory is still cherished by the
few of his hearers who survive. In the spring of 1780,
he returned to Newport. Every thing had undergone
a melancholy change. The garden of New England
lay desolate. His once prosperous and wealthy church
and congregation were now poor, dispirited, and, worst
of all, demoralized. His meeting-house had been used




160         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
as a barrack for soldiers; pulpit and pews had been
destroyed; the very bell had been stolen. Refusing,
with his characteristic denial of self, a call to settle in
a more advantageous position, he sat himself down
once more in the midst of his reduced and impoverished
parishioners, and, with no regular salary, dependent
entirely on such free-will offerings as from time to
time were made him, he remained with them until his
death.
In 1776, Dr. Hopkins published his celebrated "Dia.
logue concerning the Slavery of the Africans; showing
it to be the Duty and Interest of the American States
to Emancipate all their Slaves." This he dedicated to
the Continental Congress, the Signers of the Declaration
of Independence. It was republished in 1785, by the
New York Abolition Society, and was widely circulated.
A few years after, on coming unexpectedly into possession of a few hundred dollars, he devoted immediately
one hundred of it to the society for ameliorating the
condition of the Africans.
He continued to preach until he had reached his
eighty-third year. His last sermon was delivered on
the sixteenth of the 10th month, 1803, and his death
took place in the 12th month following. He died
calmly, in the steady faith of one who had long trusted
all things in the hand of God. "The language of my




SAMUEL HOPKINS.              161
heart is," said he, " let God be glorified by all things,
and the best interest of His kingdom promoted, whatever becomes of me or my interest." To a young
friend, who visited him three days before his death, he
said, " I am feeble, and cannot say much. I have said
all I can say. With my last words, I tell you, religion
is the one thing needful." " And now," he continued,
affectionately pressing the hand of his friend, "I am
going to die, and I am glad of it." Many years before,
an agreement had been made between Dr. Hopkins
and his old and tried friend, Dr. Hart, of Connecticut,
that when either was called home, the survivor should
preach the funeral sermon of the deceased. The
venerable Dr. Hart accordingly came, true to his
promise, preaching at the funeral from the words of
Elisha, " My father, my father; the chariots of Israel,
and the horsemen thereof." In the burial-ground adjoining his meeting-house lies all that was mortal of
Saimuel Hopkins.
One of Dr. Hopkins's habitual hearers, and who has
borne grateful testimony to the beauty and holiness of
his life and conversation, was WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING. Widely as he afterwards diverged from the
creed of his early teacher, it contained at least one
doctrine to the influence of which the philanthropic
devotion of his own life to the welfare of man bears
11




162          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
witness. He says himself that there always seemed to
him something very noble in the doctrine of disinterested benevolence, the casting of self aside, and doing
good, irrespective of personal consequences, in this
world or another, upon which Dr. Hopkins so strongly
insisted, as the all-essential condition of holiness.
How widely apart, as mere theologians, stood Hopkins and Channing? Yet how harmonious their lives
and practice! Both could forget the poor interests of
self, in view of eternal right and universal humanity.
Both could appreciate the saving truth, that love to God
and His creation is the fulfilling of the Divine law.
The idea of unselfish benevolence, which they held in
common, clothed with sweetness and beauty the stern
and repulsive features of the theology of Hopkins, and
infused a sublime spirit of self-sacrifice and a glowing
humanity into the indecisive and less robust faith of
Channing. What is the lesson of this, but that Christianity consists rather in the affections than in the intellect; that it is a life, rather than a creed; and that they
who diverge the widest from each other in speculation
upon its doctrines, may, after all, be found working
side by side on the common ground of its practice.
We have chosen to speak of Dr. Hopkins as a philanthropist, rather than as a theologian. Let those who
prefer to contemplate the narrow sectarian, rather than




SAMUEL HOPKINS.              163
the universal man, dwell upon his controversial works,
and extol the ingenuity and logical acumen with which
he defended his own dogmas, and assailed those of
others. We honor him, not as the founder of a new
sect, but as the friend of all mankind; the generous
defender of the poor and oppressed. Great as unquestionably were his powers of argument, his learning,
and skill in the use of the weapons of theologic warfare, these by no means constitute his highest title to
respect and reverence. As the product of an honest
and earnest mind, his doctrinal dissertations have at
least the merit of sincerity. They were put forth in
behalf of what he regarded as truth; and the success
which they met with, while it called into exercise his
profoundest gratitude, only served to deepen the humility and self-abasement of their author. As the
utterance of what a good man believed and felt, as a
part of the history of a life remarkable for its consecration to apprehended duty, these writings cannot be
without interest even to those who dissent from their
arguments, and deny their assumptions. But in the
time, now, we trust, near at hand, when distracted and
divided Christendom shall unite in a new Evangelical
union, in which orthodoxy in life and practice shall be
estimated above orthodoxy in theory, he will be honored
as a good man, rather than as a successful creed



164          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
maker; as a friend of the oppressed, and the fearless
rebuker of popular sin, rather than as the champion of
a protracted sectarian war. Even now his writings, so
popular in their day, are little known. The time may
come when no pilgrim of sectarianism shall visit his
grave. But his memory will live in the hearts of the
good and generous; the emancipated slave shall kneel
over his ashes, and bless God for the gift to humanity
of a life so devoted to its welfare. To him may be
applied the language of one who, on the spot where he
labored and laid down to rest, while rejecting the doetrinal views of the theologian, still cherishes the philanthropic spirit of the man:' Hle is not lost - he hath not passed away -
Clouds, earths, may pass -but stars shine calmly on;
And he who doth the will of God, for aye
Abideth, when the earth and heaven are gone;
" Alas! that such a heart is in the grave!
Thanks for the life that now shall never end!
Weep, and rejoice, thou terror-hunted slave!
That hast both lost and found so great a friend!"




RICHARD BAXTER.
THE picture drawn by a late English historian of
the infamous Jeffreys in his judicial robes, sitting in
judgment upon the venerable Richard Baxter, brought
before him to answer to an indictment, setting forth that
the said " Richardus Baxter, persona seditiosa et factiosa
pravoe mentis, impiae, inquieta, turbulent disposition et
conversation; falso illicte, injuste nequit factiose sedi.
tiose, et irreligiose, fecit, composuit, scripsit quendam
falsum, seditiosum, libellosum, factiosum et irreligiosum
librum," is so remarkable, that the attention of the most
careless reader is at once arrested. Who was that old
man, wasted with disease, and ghastly with the pallor
of imprisonment, upon whom the foul-mouthed buffoon
in ermine exhausted his vocabulary of abuse and ridicule?  Who was Richardus Baxter?
The author of works so elaborate and profound as to
frighten by their very titles and ponderous folios the




166          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
modern ecclesiastical student from their perusal, his
hold upon the present generation is limited to a few
practical treatises, which, from their very nature, can
never become obsolete. The " Call to the Unconverted," and " The Saints' Everlasting Rest," belong to no
time or sect. They speak the universal language of
the wants and desires of the human soul. They take
hold of the awful verities of life and death, righteousness and judgment to come. Through them the suffering and hunted minister of Kidderminster has spoken
in warning, entreaty, and rebuke, or in tones of tenderest love and pity, to the hearts of the generations which
have succeeded him. His controversial works, his
confessions of faith, his learned disputations, and his
profound doctrinal treatises, are no longer read. Their
author himself, towards the close of his life, anticipated
in respect to these favorite productions, the children of
his early zeal, labor, and suffering, the judgment of
posterity. " I perceive," he says, " that most of the
doctrinal controversies among Protestants are far more
about equivocal words than matter. Experience since
the year 1643, to this year, 1675,. hath loudly called
me to repent of my own prejudices, sidings, and censurings of causes and persons not understood, and of
all the miscarriages of my ministry and life which have
been thereby caused; and to make it my chief work to




RICHARD BAXTER.              167
call men that are within my hearing to more peaceable
thoughts, affections, and practices."
Richard Baxter was born at the village of Eton Constantine, in 1615. He received from officiating curates
of the little church such literary instruction as could be
given by men who had left the farmer's flail, the tailor's
thimble, and the service of strolling stage-players, to
perform church drudgery under the Parish incumbent,
who was old and well nigh blind. At the age of six.
teen, he was sent to a school at Wroxeter, where he
spent three years, to little purpose, so far as a scientific
education was concerned. His teacher left him to
himself mainly, and following the bent of his mind,
even at that early period, he abandoned the exact sciences for the perusal of such controversial and metaphysical writings of the schoolmen as his master's
library afforded. The smattering of Latin which he
acquired only served in after years to deform his treatises with barbarous, ill-adapted and erroneous citations.
"As to myself," said he, in his letter written in old age
to Anthony Wood, who had inquired whether he was
an Oxonian graduate, " my faults are no disgrace to a
university, for I was of none; I have but little but what
I had out of books, and inconsiderable help of country
divines. Weakness and pain helped me to study how
to die; that set me a studying how to live; and that on




168          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
studying the doctrine from which I must fetch my
motives and comforts; beginning with necessities, I
proceeded by degrees, and am now going to see that
for which I have lived and studied,"
Of the first essays of the young theologian as a
preacher of the established Church, his early sufferings
from that complicity of diseases with which his whole
life was tormented, of the still keener afflictions of a
mind whose entire outlook upon life and nature was
discolored and darkened by its disordered bodily medium, and of the struggles between his Puritan tem.
perament and his reverence for Episcopal formulas,
much might be profitably said, did the limits we have
assigned ourselves admit. Nor can we do more than
briefly allude to the religious doubts and difficulties
which darkened and troubled his mind at an early
period. He tells us at length in his " Life," how he
struggled with these spiritual infirmities and temptations.
The future life, the immortality of the soul, and the
truth of the Scriptures, were by turns questioned. "I
never," says he in a letter to Dr. More, inserted in the
Sadducisimus Triumphatus, " had so much ado to overcome a temptation as that to the opinion of Averroes,
that, as extinguished candles go all out in an illuminated air, so separated souls go all into one common
anima mundi, and lose their individuation." With these




RICHARD.BAXTER.              169
tnd similar "temptations" Baxter struggled long, earnestly, and in the end triumphantly. His faith, when
once established, remained unshaken to the last; and
although always solemn, reverential, and deeply serious,
he was never the subject of religious melancholy, or of
that mournful depression of soul which arises from
despair of an interest in the mercy and paternal love
of our common Father.
The Great Revolution found him settled as a minister in Kidderminster, under the sanction of a drunken
vicar, who, yielding to the clamor of his more sober
parishioners, and his fear of their appeal to the Long
Parliament, then busy in its task of abating church
nuisances, had agreed to give him sixty pounds per
year, in the place of a poor, tippling curate, notorious
us a common railer and pot-house incumbrance.
As might have been expected, the sharp contrast
which the earnest, devotional spirit and painful strict.
ness of Baxter presented to the irreverent license and
careless good humor of his predecessor, by no means
commended him to the favor of a large class of his
parshioners. Sabbath merry-makers missed the ru'bicund face and maudlin jollity of their old vicar; the
ignorant and vicious disliked the new preacher's rigid
morality; the better informed revolted at his harsh
doctrines, austere life, and grave manner.  Intense




170          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
earnestness characterized all his efforts. Contrasting
human nature with the Infinite Purity and Holiness, he
was oppressed with a sense of the loathsomeness and
deformity of sin, and afflicted by the misery of his
fellow-creatures separated from the Divine harmony.
He tells us that at this period he preached the terrors
of the Law, and the necessity of Repentance, rather
than the joys and consolations of the Gospel, upon
which he so loved to dwell in his last years. He
seems to have felt a necessity laid upon him to startle
men from false hope and security, and to call for holiness of life and conformity to the Divine will as the
only ground of safety. Powerful and impressive as
are the appeals and expostulations contained in his
written works, they probably convey but a faint idea o;
the force and earnestness of those which he poured
forth from his pulpit. As he advanced in years, these
appeals were less frequently addressed to the fears of
his auditors, for he had learned to value a calm ard
consistent life of practical goodness beyond any passionate exhibition of terrors, fervors and transports.
Having witnessed, in an age of remarkable enthusiasm
and spiritual awakening, the ill effects of passional excitements and religious melancholy, he endeavored to
present cheerful views of Christian life and duty, and
made it a special object to repress morbid imaginations




RICHARD BAXTER.              171
and heal diseased consciences. Thus it came to pass,
that no man of his day was more often applied to, for
counsel and relief, by persons laboring under mental
depression than himself. He has left behind him a
very curious and not uninstructive discourse, which he
entitled " The Cure of Melancholy, by Faith and Physick," in which he shows a great degree of skill in his
morbid mental anatomy. He had studied medicine to
some extent for the benefit of the poor of his parish,
and knew something of the intimate relations and sympathy of the body and mind; he therefore did not
hesitate to ascribe many of the spiritual complaints of
his applicants to disordered bodily functions; nor to
prescribe pills and powders in the place of Scripture
texts. More than thirty years after the commencement
of his labors at Kidderminster he thus writes: " I was
troubled this year with multitudes of melancholy persons from several places of the land; some of high
quality, some of low, some exquisitely learned, and
some unlearned. I know not how it came to pass, but
if men fell melancholy I must hear from them or see
them; more than any physician I knew." He cautions
against ascribing melancholy phantasms and passions
to the Holy Spirit, warns the young against licentious
imaginations and excitements, and ends by advising all
to take heed how they make of religion a matter of




172.         PORTRAITS AND SETCHES.'4 fears, tears and scruples."  "True religion," he re.
remarks, "doth principally consist in obedience, love
and joy."
At this early period of his ministry, however, he had
all of Whitefield's intensity and fervor, added to reasoning powers greatly transcending those of the revivalist of
the next century. Young in years, he was even then
old in bodily infirmity and mental experience. Believing
himself the victim of a mortal disease, he lived and
preached in the constant prospect of death.  His
memento mori was in his bed-chamber, and sat by him
at his frugal meal. The glory of the world was stained
to his vision, He was blind to the beauty of all its
" pleasant pictures."  No monk of Mount Athos, or
silent Chartreuse, no anchorite of Indian superstition,
ever more completely mortified the flesh, or turned
his back more decidedly upon the " good things" of
this life. A solemn and funereal atmosphere surrounded
him. He walked in the shadows of the cypress, and
literally "dwelt among the tombs."  Tortured by in.
cessant pain, he wrestled against its attendant languor
and debility, as a sinful wasting of inestimable time;
goaded himself to constant toil and devotional exercise,
and, to use his own words, "stirred up his sluggish
soul to speak to sinners with compassion, as a dying
man to dying men."




RICHARD BAXTER.               1 73
Such entire consecration could not long be without
its effect, even upon the "vicious rabble," as Baxter
calls them. His extraordinary earnestness, self-forgetting concern for the spiritual welfare of others; his
rigid life of denial and sacrifice, if they failed of bringing men to his feet as penitents, could not but awaken
a feeling of reverence and awe. In Kidderminster, as
in most other parishes of the kingdom, there were at
this period pious, sober, prayerful people, diligent readers of the Scriptures, Dvho were derided by their
neighbors as Puritans, precisians, and  hypocrites.
These were naturally drawn towards the new preacher,
and he as naturally recognised them as " honest seekers
of the word and way of God."  Interourse with such
men, and the perusal of the writings of certain emineit
Nonconformists, had the effect to abate, in some degree,
his strong attachment to the Episcopal formula and
polity. He began to doubt the rightfulness of making
the sign of the cross in baptism, and to hesitate about
administering the sacrament to profane swearers and
tipplers,
But while Baxter, in the seclusion of his parish, was
painfully weighing the arguments for and against the
wearing of surplices, the use of marriage rings, and
the prescribed gestures and genuflections of his order,
tything with more or less scruple of conscience, the




174         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
mint and anise and cummin of pulpit ceremonials, the
weightier matters of the law, freedom, justice, and
truth, were claiming the attention of Pym and Hampden, Brook and Vane, in the Parliament House. The
controversy between King and Commons had reached
the point where it could only be decided by the dread
arbitrament of battle. The somewhat equivocal position
of the Kidderminster preacher exposed him to the suspicion of the adherents of the King and Bishops. The
rabble, at that period sympathizing with the party of
license in morals and strictness in ceremonials, insulted and mocked him, and finally drove him from his
parish.
On the memorable 23d of 10th month, 1642, he was
invited to occupy a friend's pulpit at Alcester. While
preaching, a low, dull, jarring roll, as of continuous
thunder, sounded in his ears. It was the cannon-fire of
Edgehill, the prelude to the stern battle-piece of revolution. On the morrow, Baxter hurried to the scene of
action. " I was desirous," he says, " to see the field.
I found the Earl of Essex keeping the ground, and the
King's army facing them on a hill about a mile off.
There were about a thousand dead bodies in the field
between them." Turning from this ghastly survey, the
preacher mingled with the Parliamentary army, when,
finding the surgeons busy with the wounded, he very




RICHARD BAXTER.              175
naturally sought occasion for the exercise of his own
vocation as a spiritual practitioner. He attached himself to the army. So far as we can gather from his
own memoirs, and the testimony of his contemporaries,
he was not influenced to this step by any of the political
motives which actuated the Parliamentary leaders. He
was no Revolutionist. He was as blind and unquestion.
ing in his reverence for the King's person and divine
right, and as hearty in his hatred of religious toleration
and civil equality, as any of his clerical brethren who
officiated in a similar capacity in the ranks of Goring
and Prince Rupert. He seems only to have looked
upon the soldiers as a new set of parishioners, whom
Providence had thrown in his way. The circumstances
of his situation left him little choice in the matter.
" I had," he says, " neither money nor friends. I knew
not who would receive me in a place of safety, nor
had I any thing to satisfy them for diet and entertainment." He accepted an offer to live in the Governor's
house at Coventry, and preach to the soldiers of the
garrison. Here his skill in polemics was called into
requisition, in an encounter with two New England
Antinomians, and a certain Anabaptist tailor who was
making more rents in the garrison's orthodoxy than he
mended in their doublets and breeches. Coventry
seems at this time to have been the rendezvous of a




176         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
large body of clergymen, who, as Baxter says, were
" for King and Parliament," men who, in their desire
for a more spiritual worship, most unwillingly found
themselves classed with the sectaries whom they regarded as troublers and heretics, not to be tolerated;
who thought the King had fallen into the hands of the
Papists, and that Essex and Cromwell were fighting to
restore him; and who followed the Parliamentary
forces to see to it that they were kept sound in faith,
and free from the heresy of which the Court News
Book accused them. Of doing any thing to overturn
the order of Church and State, or of promoting any
radical change in the social and political condition of
the people, they had no intention whatever. They
looked at the events of the time, and upon their duties
in respect to them, not as politicians or reformers, but
simply as ecclesiastics and spiritual teachers, respon.
sible to God for the religious beliefs and practices of
the people, rather than for their temporal welfare and
happiness. They were not the men who struck down
the solemn and imposing Prelacy of England, and vindicated the divine right of men to freedom by tossing
the head of an anointed tyrant from the scaffold at
Westminster. It was the so-called schismatics, ranters,
and levellers, the disputatious corporals and Anabaptist musketeers, the dread and abhorrence alike




RICHARD BAXTER.              177
of Prelate and Presbyter, who, under the lead of
Cromwell,
"Ruined the great work of time,
And cast the kingdoms old
Into another mould."
The Commonwealth was the work of the laity, the
sturdy yeomanry and God-fearing commoners of England.
The news of the fight of Naseby reaching Coventry,
Baxter, who had friends in the Parliamentary forces,
wishing, as he says, to be assured of their safety, passed
over to the stricken field, and spent a night with them.
He was afflicted and confounded by the information
which they gave him, that the victorious army was full
of hot-headed schemers and levellers, who were against
King and Church, prelacy and ritual, and who were for
a free Commonwealth and freedom of religious belief
and worship. He was appalled to find that the heresies
of the Antinomians, Arminians, and Anabaptists, had
made sadder breaches in the ranks of Cromwell than
the pikes of Jacob Astley, or the daggers of the roysterers who followed the mad charge of Rupert.
Hastening back to Coventry, he called together his
clerical brethren, and told them " the sad news of the
corruption of the army." After much painful consideration of the matter, it was deemed best for Baxter to
12




178          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
enter Cromwell's army, nominally as its chaplain, but
really as the special representative of orthodoxy in
politics and religion, against the democratic weavers
and prophesying tailors who troubled it. He joined
Whalley's regiment, and followed it through many a
hot skirmish and siege. Personal fear was by no
means one of Baxter's characteristics, and he bore
himself through all with the coolness of an old cam.
paigner. Intent upon his single object, he sat unmoved
under the hail of cannon shot from the walls of Bristol,
confronted the well-plied culverins of Sherburne,
charged side by side with Harrison upon Goring's
musketeers at Langford, and heard the exulting thanksgiving of that grim enthusiast, when " with a loud voice
he broke forth in praises of God, as one in rapture;"
and marched, Bible in hand, with Cromwell himself, to
the storming of Basing-House, so desperately defended
by the Marquis of Winchester. In truth, these storms
of outward conflict were to him of small moment.  He
was engaged in a sterner battle with spiritual principalities and powers, struggling with Satan himself in
the guise of political levellers and Antinomian sowers
of heresy. No antagonist was too high and none too
low for him. Distrusting Cromwell, he sought to engage him in a discussion of certain points of abstract
theology, wherein his soundness seemed questionable;




RICHARD BAXTE1t.            179
but the wary chief baffled off the young disputant by
tedious, unanswerable discourses about free grace,
which Baxter admits were not unsavory to others, although the speaker himself had little understanding of
the matter. At other times, he repelled his sad-visaged
chaplain with unwelcome jests, and rough, soldierly
merriment; for he had " a vivacity, hilarity, and alacrity, as another man hath, when he hath taken a cup
too much."  Baxter says of him, complainingly," he
would not dispute with me at all." But, in the midst
of such an army, he could not lack abundant opportunity for the exercise of his peculiar powers of argumentation. At Amersham, he had a sort of pitched
battle with the contumacious soldiers. "When the
public talking day came," says he, " I took the reading
pew, and Pitchford's cornet and troopers took the galb
lery. There did the leader of the Chesham men begin,
and afterwards Pitchford's soldiers set in; and I alone
disputed with them from morning until almost night;
for I knew their trick, that if I had gone out first, they
would have prated what boasting words they listed, and
made the people believe that they had baffled me, or
got the best; therefore I staid it out till they first rose
and went away." As usual in such cases, both parties
claimed the victory. Baxter got thanks only from the
King's adherents; " Pitchford's troopers and the leader




180         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
of the Chesham men" retired from their hard day's
work, to enjoy the countenance and favor of Cromwell,
as men after his own heart, faithful to the Houses and
the Word, against Kingcraft and Prelacy.
Laughed at and held at arm's length by Cromwell,
shunned by Harrison and Berry and other chief officers,
opposed on all points by shrewd, earnest men, as ready
for polemic controversy as for battle with the King's
malignants, and who set off against his theological and
metaphysical distinctions their own personal experiences
and spiritual exercises, he had little to encourage him in
his arduous labors. Alone in such a multitude, flushed
with victory and glowing with religious enthusiasm, he
earnestly begged his brother ministers to come to his
aid. " If the army," said he, "had only ministers
enough, who could have done such little as I did, all
their plot might have been broken, and King, Parliament, and Religion, might have been preserved." But
no one volunteered to assist him, and the "plot" of
Revolution went on.
After Worcester fight he returned to Coventry, to
make his report to the ministers assembled there. He
told them of his labors and trials, of the growth of
heresy and levelling principles in the army, and of the
evident design of its leaders to pull down Church, King,
and Ministers. He assured them that the day was at




RICHARD BAXTER.              181
hand when all who were true to the King, Parliament,
and Religion, should come forth to oppose these leaders,
and draw away their soldiers from them. For himself,
he was willing to go back to the army, and labor there
until the crisis of which he spoke had arrived. " Whereupon," says he, " they all voted me to go yet longer."
Fortunately for the cause of civil and religious freedom, the great body of the ministers, who disapproved
of the ultraism of the victorious army, and sympathized
with the defeated King, lacked the courage and devotedness of Baxter. Had they promptly seconded his
efforts, although the restoration of the King might have
been impossible at that late period, the horrors of civil
war must have been greatly protracted. As it was,
they preferred to remain at home, and let Baxter have
the benefit of their prayers and good wishes. He returned to the army with the settled purpose of causing
its defection from Cromwell; but, by one of those
dispensations which the latter used to call " births of
Providence," he was stricken down with severe sick.
ness. Baxter's own comments upon this passage in his
life are not without interest. He says, God prevented
his purposes in his last and chiefest opposition to the
army; that he intended to take off or seduce from their
officers the regiment with which he was connected,
and then to have tried his persuasion upon the others.




182         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
He says he afterwards found that his sickness was a
mercy to himself, " for they were so strong and active,
and I had been likely to have had small success in the
attempt, and to have lost my life among them in their
fury," He was right in this last conjecture; Oliver
Cromwell would have had no scruples in making an
example of a plotting priest; and " Pitchford's soldiers "
might have been called upon to silence, with their mus,
kets, the tough disputant who was proof against their
tongues.
After a long and dubious illness, Baxter was so far
restored, as to be able to go back to his old parish at
Kidderminster. Here, under the Protectorate of Cron.
well, he remained in the full enjoyment of that religious
liberty which he still stoutly condemned in its applica.
tion to others.
He afterwards candidly admits, that, under the
"Usurper," as he styles Cromwell, "he had such
liberty and advantage to preach the Gospel with success, as he could not have under a King, to whom he
had sworn and performed true subjection and obedi.
ence." Yet this did not prevent him from preaching.
and printing, "seasonably and moderately," against
the Protector. " I declared," said he, " Cromwell and
his adherents to be guilty of treason and rebellion,
aggravated by perfidiousness and hypocrisy. But yet




RICHARD BAXTER.             183
I did not think it my duty to rave against him in the
pulpit, or to do this so unseasonably and imprudently
as might irritate him to mischief. And the rather, be.
cause, as he kept up his approbation of a godly life in
general, and of all that was good, except that which the
interest of his sinful cause engaged him to be against.
So I perceived that it was his design to do good in the
main, and to promote the Gospel and the interests of
godliness more than any had done before him."
Cromwell, if he heard of his diatribes against him,
appears to have cared little for them. Lords Warwick
and Broghill, on one occasion, brought him to preach
before the Lord Protector. He seized the occasion to
preach against the sectaries, to condemn all who coun.
tenanced them, and to advocate the unity of the church.
Soon after, he was sent for by Cromwell, who made
" a long and tedious speech" in the presence of three
of his chief men, (one of whom, General Lambert, fell
asleep the while,) asserting that God had owned his
government in a signal manner. Baxter boldly replied
to him, that he and his friends regarded the ancient
monarchy as a blessing, and not an evil, and begged to
know how that blessing was forfeited to England, and
to whom that forfeiture was made. Cromwell, with
some heat, made answer, that it was no forfeiture, but
that God had made the change. They afterwards held




184         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
a long conference with respect to freedom of conscience,
Cromwell defending his liberal policy, and Baxter opposing it. No one can read Baxter's own account of
these interviews, without being deeply impressed with
the generous and magnanimous spirit of the Lord Protector in tolerating the utmost freedom of speech on
the part of one who openly denounced him as a traitor
and usurper. Real greatness of mind could alone have
risen above personal resentment under such circumstances of peculiar aggravation.
In the death of the Protector, the treachery of Monk,
and the restoration of the King, Baxter and his Presby.
terian friends believed that they saw the hand of a
merciful Providence preparing the way for the best
good of England and the Church. Always royalists,
they had acted with the party opposed to the King
from necessity rather than choice. Considering all
that followed, one can scarcely avoid smiling over the
extravagant jubilations of the Presbyterian divines, on
the return of the royal debauchee to Whitehall. They
hurried up to London with congratulations of formida.
ble length, and papers of solemn advice and counsel,
to all which the careless monarch listened, with what
patience he was master of. Baxter was one of the first
to present himself at Court, and it is creditable to his
heart rather than his judgment and discrimination, that he




RICHARD BAXTER.              185
seized the occasion to offer a long address to the King,
expressive of his expectation that his Majesty would
discountenance all sin and promote godliness, support
the true exercise of Church discipline, and cherish
and hold up the hands of the faithful ministers of the
Church. To all which Charles II. " made as gracious
an answer as we could expect," says Baxter, " insomuch
that old Mr. Ash burst out into tears of joy." Who
doubts that the profligate King avenged himself as soon
as the backs of his unwelcome visitors were fairly turned, by coarse jests and ribaldry, directed against a class
of men whom he despised and hated, but towards whom
reasons of policy dictated a show of civility and kind.
ness?
There is reason to believe that Charles II., had he been
able to effect his purpose, would have gone beyond
Cromwell himself in the matter of religious toleration;
in other words, he would have taken, in the outset
of his reign, the very steps which cost his successor
his crown, and procured the toleration of Catholics by
a declaration of universal freedom in religion. But he
was not in a situation to brave the opposition alike of
Prelacy and Presbyterianism, and foiled in a scheme to
which be was prompted by that vague, superstitious
predilection for the Roman Catholic religion, which at
times struggled with his habitual scepticism, his next




186          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
object was to rid himself of the importunities of secta.
ries, and the trouble of religious controversies, by
re-establishing the liturgy, and bribing or enforcing
conformity to it on the part of the Presbyterians. The
history of the successful execution of this purpose is
familiar to all the readers of the plausible pages of
Clarendon on the one side, or the complaining treatises
of Neal and Calamy on the other. Charles and his
advisers triumphed, not so much through their own art,
dissimulation and bad faith, as through the blind bigotry,
divided counsels, and self-seeking of the Nonconform.
ists. Seduction on one hand, and threats on the other,
the bribe of bishoprics, hatred of Independents and
Quakers, and the terror of penal laws, broke the
strength of Presbyterianism.
Baxter's whole conduct, on this occasion, bears testi.
mony to his honesty and sincerity, while it shows him
to have been too intolerant to secure his own religious
freedom at the price of toleration for Catholics, Quak.
ers, and Anabaptists; and too blind in his loyalty to
perceive that pure and undefiled Christianity had nothing to hope for from a scandalous and depraved King,
surrounded by scoffing, licentious courtiers, and a
haughty, revengeful Prelacy. To secure his influence,
the Court offered him the Bishopric of Hereford. Su.
perior to personal considerations, he declined the honor;




RICHARD BAXTER.              187
but somewhat inconsistently, in his zeal for the interests
of his party, he urged the elevation of at least three of
his Presbyterian friends to the Episcopal bench, to
enforce that very liturgy which they condemned. He
was the chief speaker for the Presbyterians at the
famous Savoy Conference, summoned to advise and
consult upon the Book of Common Prayer. His antag.,
onist was Dr. Gunning, ready, fluent, and impassioned.
" They spent," as Gilbert Burnet says, " several days
in logical arguing, to the diversion of the town, who
looked upon them as a couple of fencers, engaged in a
discussion which could not be brought to an end." In
themselves considered, many of the points at issue
seem altogether too trivial for the zeal with which
Baxter contested them - the form of a surplice, the
wording of a prayer, kneeling at sacrament, the sign of
the cross, etc. With him, however, they were of mo.
mnentous interest and importance, as things unlawful in
the worship of God. He struggled desperately, but
unavailingly.  Presbyterianism, in its eagerness for
peace and union, and a due share of State support,
bad already made fatal concessions, and it was too late
to stand upon non-essentials.- Baxter retired from the
conference baffled and defeated, amidst murmurs and
jests. " If you had only been as fat as Dr. Manton,"
said Clarendon to him, " you would have done well."




188         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
The Act of Conformity, in which Charles II. and his
counsellors, gave the lie to the liberal declarations of
Breda and Whitehall, drove Baxter from his sorrowing
parishioners of Kidderminster, and added the evils of
poverty and persecution to the painful bodily infirmities
under which he was already bowed down. Yet his cup
was not one of unalloyed bitterness, and loving lips
were prepared to drink it with him.
Among Baxter's old parishioners of Kidderminster,
was a widowed lady of gentle birth, named Charlton,
who, with her daughter Margaret, occupied a house in
his neighborhood. The daughter was a brilliant girl,
of " strangely vivid wit," and " in early youth," he tells
us, "pride, and romances, and company suitable there.
unto, did take her up." But ere long, Baxter, who
acted in the double capacity of spiritual and temporal
physician, was sent for to visit her, on an occasion of
sickness. He ministered to her bodily and mental
sufferings, and thus secured her gratitude and confidence. On her recovery, under the influence of his
warnings and admonitions, the gay young girl became
thoughtful and serious, abandoned her light books and
companions, and devoted herself to the.duties of a
Christian profession. Baxter was her counsellor and
confidant. She disclosed to him all her doubts, trials,
and temptations, and he, in return, wrote her long




RICHARD BAXTER.              189
letters of sympathy, consolation, and encouragement.
He began to feel such an unwonted interest in the
moral and spiritual growth of his young disciple, that,
in his daily walks among his parishioners, he found
himself inevitably drawn towards her mother's dwelling. In her presence, the habitual austerity of his
manner was softened; his cold, close heart, warmed
and expanded. He began to repay her confidence
with his own, disclosing to her all his plans of benevo.
lence, soliciting her services, and waiting, with deference, for her judgment upon them. A change came
over his habits of thought and his literary tastes; the
harsh, rude disputant, the tough, dry logician, found
himself addressing to his young friend epistles in verse
on doctrinal points and matters of casuistry; West.
minster Catechism in rhyme; the Solemn League and
Covenant set to music. A miracle alone could have
made Baxter a poet; the cold, clear light of reason
" paled the ineffectual fires" of his imagination; all
things presented themselves to his vision "with hard
outlines, colorless, and with no surrounding atmosphere." That he did, nevertheless, write verses, so
creditable as to justify a judicious modern critic in
their citation and approval, can perhaps be accounted
for only as one of the phenomena of that subtle and
transforming influence to which even his stern na



190         PORTRAITS AND SEETCHES.
ture was unconsciously yielding.  Baxter was ifr
love.
Never did the blind god try his archery on a more
unpromising subject. Baxter was nearly fifty years of
age, and looked still older. His life had been one long
fast and penance. Even in youth he had never known
a schoolboy's love for cousin or playmate. He had
resolutely closed up his heart against emotions which he
regarded as the allurements of time and sense. He had
made a merit of celibacy, and written and published
against the entanglement of godly ministers in matritnonial engagements and family cares. It is questionable
whether he now understood his own case, or attributed
to its right cause the peculiar interest which he felt in
Margaret Charlton. Left to himself, it is more than
probable that he might never have discovered the true
nature of that interest, or conjectured that any thing
whatever of earthly passion or sublunary emotion had
mingled with his spiritual Platonism. Commissioned
and set apart to preach repentance to dying men, penniless and homeless, worn with bodily pain and mental
toil, and treading as he believed on the very margin of
his grave, what had he to do with love? What power
had he to inspire that tender sentiment, the appropriate
offspring only of youth, and health, and beauty?
" Could any Beatrice see




RICHARD BAXTER.             191
But, in the mean time, a reciprocal feeling was gaining strength in the heart of Margaret. To her grateful
appreciation of the condescension of a great and good
man — grave, learned, and renowned- to her youth
and weakness, and to her enthusiastic admiration of
his intellectual powers, devoted to the highest and holiest objects, succeeded naturally enough the tenderly
suggestive pity of her woman's heart, as she thought of
his lonely home, his unshared sorrows, his lack of those
sympathies and kindnesses which make tolerable the
hard journey of life. Did she not owe to him, under
God, the salvation of body and mind? Was he not
her truest and most faithful friend, entering with lively
interest into all her joys and sorrows? Had she not
seen the cloud of his habitual sadness broken by gleams
of sunny warmth and cheerfulness, as they conversed
together? Could she do better than to devote herself
to the pleasing task of making his life happier, of comforting him in seasons of pain and weariness, encouraging him in his vast labors, and throwing over the
cold and hard austerities of his nature the warmth and
light of domestic affection? Pity, reverence, gratitude,
and womanly tenderness, her fervid imagination and
the sympathies of a deeply religious nature, combined
to influence her decision. Disparity of age and condition rendered it improbable that Baxter would ever




192         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
venture to address her in any other capacity than that
of a friend and teacher; and it was left to herself to
give the first intimation of the possibility of a more intimate relation.
It is easy to imagine with what mixed feelings of
joy, surprise, and perplexity, Baxter must have received
the delicate avowal. There was much in the circum.
stances of the case to justify doubt, misgiving, and
close searchings of heart.  He must have felt the
painful contrast which that fair girl in the bloom of her
youth presented to the worn man of middle years,
whose very breath was suffering, and over whom death
seemed always impending. Keenly conscious of his
infirmities of temper, he must have feared for the
happiness of a loving, gentle being, daily exposed to
their manifestations. From his well known habit of
consulting what he regarded as the Divine Will in every
important step of his life, there can be no doubt that
his decision was the result quite as much of a prayerful
and patient consideration of duty, as of the promptings
of his heart. Richard Baxter was no impassioned
Abelard; his pupil in the school of his severe and
self-denying piety was no Heloise; but what their
union lacked in romantic interest was compensated by
its purity and disinterestedness, and its sanction by all
that can hallow human passion, and harmonize the




RICHARD BAXTER.              193
love of the created with the love and service of the
Creator.
Although summoned by a power which it would
have been folly to resist, the tough theologian did not
surrender at discretion. " From the first thoughts, yet
many changes and stoppages intervened and long de.
lays," he tells us. The terms upon which he finally.capitulated, are perfectly in keeping with his character.
"' She consented," he says, " to three conditions of our
marriage. 1st. That I should have nothing that before
our marriage was hers; that I, who wanted no earthly
supplies, might not seem to marry her from selfishness.
2d. That she would so alter her affairs, that I might be
entangled in no lawsuits. 3d. That she should expect
none of my time which my ministerial work should
require."
As was natural, the wits of the Court had their jokes
upon this singular marriage; and many of his best
friends regretted it, when they called to mind what he
had written in favor of ministerial celibacy, at a time
when, as he says, "he thought to live and die a
bachelor." But Baxter had no reason to regret the
inconsistency of his precept and example. How much
of the happiness of the next twenty years of his life
resulted from his union with a kind and affectionate
woman, he has himself testified, in his simple and
13




194          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
touching "Breviate of the Life of the late Mrs. Baxter." Her affections were so ardent, that her husband
confesses his fear that he was unable to make an
adequate return, and that she must have been disappointed in him in consequence. He extols her pleasant
conversation, her active benevolence, her disposition to
aid him in all his labors, and her noble forgetfulness of
self, in ministering to his comfort in sickness and imprisonment. "She was the meetest helper I could
have had in the world," is his language. " If I spoke
harshly or sharply, it offended her. If I carried it (as
I am apt) with too much negligence of ceremony or
humble compliment to any, she would modestly tell me
of it. If my looks seemed not pleasant, she would
have me amend them, (which my weak, pained state
of body indisposed me to do.)" He admits she had
her failings, but, taken as a whole, the "Breviate" is
an exalted eulogy.
His history from this time is marked by few incidents
of a public character. During that most disgraceful
period in the annals of England, the reign of the second
Charles, his peculiar position exposed him to the persecutions of Prelacy, and the taunts and abuse of the
Sectaries, standing as he did between these extremes,
and pleading for a moderate Episcopacy. He was
between the upper millstone of High Church and the




RICHARD BAXTER.              195
nether one of Dissent. To use his own simile, he was
like one who seeks to fill with his hand a cleft in a log,
and feels both sides close upon him with pain. All
parties and sects had, as they thought, grounds of complaint against him. There was in him an almost childish simplicity of purpose, a headlong earnestness and
eagerness, which did not allow him to consider how far
a present act or opinion harmonized with what he had
already done or written. His greatest admirers admit
his lack of judgment, his inaptitude for the manage.
ment of practical matters. His utter incapacity to
comprehend rightly the public men and measures of
his day, is abundantly apparent; and the inconsistencies of his conduct and his writings are too marked to
need comment. He suffered persecution for not con.
forming to some trifling matters of church usage, while
he advocated the doctrine of passive obedience to the
King or ruling power, and the right of that power to
enforce conformity. He wrote against conformity while
himself conforming; seceded from the Church, and yet
held stated communion with it; begged for the curacy
of Kidderminster, and declined the bishopric of Hereford. His writings were many of them directly calculated to make Dissenters from the Establishment, but
he was invariably offended to find others practically
influenced by them, and quarrelled with his own con



196         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
verts to Dissent. The High Churchmen of Oxford
burned his "Holy Commonwealth" as seditious and
revolutionary; while Harrington and the republican
club of Miles's coffee-house condemned it for its hostility to democracy, and its servile doctrine of obedience
to kings. He made noble pleas for liberty of conscience, and bitterly complained of his own suffering
from Church Courts, yet maintained the necessity of
enforcing conformity, and stoutly opposed the tolerant
doctrines of Penn and Milton. Never did a great and
good man so entangle himself with contradictions and
inconsistencies.  The witty and wicked Sir Roger
L'Estrange compiled from the irreconcilable portions
of his works a laughable " Dialogue between Richard
and Baxter." The Antinomians found him guilty of
Socinianism; and one noted controversialist undertook
to show, not without some degree of plausibility, that
he was by turns a Quaker and a Papist!
Although able to suspend his judgment and carefully
weigh evidence, upon matters which he regarded as
proper subjects of debate and scrutiny, he possessed
the power to shut out and banish at will all doubt and
misgiving in respect to whatever tended to prove, illus.
trate, or enforce his settled opinions and cherished
doctrines. His credulity at times seems boundless.
Hating the Quakers, and prepared to believe all man



RICHARD BAXTER.              197
ner of evil of them, he readily came to the conclusion
that their leaders were disguised Papists. He main.
tained that Lauderdale was a good and pious man, in
spite of atrocities in Scotland which entitle him to a
place with Claverhouse; and indorsed the character of
the infamous Dangerfield, the inventor of the Meal-tub
Plot, as a worthy convert from popish errors. To
prove the existence of devils and spirits, he collected
the most absurd stories and old wives' fables, of soldiers
scared from their posts at night by headless bears, of a
young witch pulling the hooks out of Mr. Emlen's
breeches and swallowing them, of Mr. Beacham's locomotive tobacco-pipe, and the Rev. Mr. Munn's jumping
Bible, and of a drunken man punished for his intemperance by being lifted off his legs by an invisible
hand! Cotton Mather's marvellous account of his
witch experiments in New England delighted him.
He had it republished, declaring that " he must be an
obstinate Sadducee who doubted it."
The married life of Baxter, as might be inferred
from the state of the times, was an unsettled one. He
first took a house at Moorfields, then removed to Acton,
where he enjoyed the conversation of his neighbor, Sir
Matthew Hale; from thence he found refuge in Rickmansworth, and after that in divers other places. " The
women have most of this trouble," he remarks, "but




198         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
my wife easily bore it all." When unable to preach,
his rapid pen was always busy. Huge folios of controversial and doctrinal lore followed each other in
quick succession. He assailed Popery and the Estabblishment, Anabaptists, ultra Calvinists, Antinomians,
Fifth Monarchy men, and Quakers. His hatred of the
latter was only modified by his contempt. He railed
rather than argued against the " miserable creatures,"
as he styled them. They in turn answered him in like
manner. "The Quakers," he says, "in their shops,
when I go along London streets, say,' Alas! poor man,
thou art yet in darkness.' They have oft come to the
congregation, when I had liberty to preach Christ's
gospel, and cried out against me as a deceiver of the
people. They have followed me home, crying out in
the streets,' The day of the Lord is coming, and thou
shalt perish as a deceiver.' They have stood in the
market-place, and under my window, year after year,
crying to the people,' Take heed of your priests, they
deceive your souls;' and if any one wore a lace or
neat clothing, they cried out to me,'These are the
fruits of your ministry.'"
At Rickmansworth, he found himself a neighbor of
William Penn, whom he calls "the captain of the
Quakers." Ever ready for battle, Baxter encountered
him in a public discussion, with such fierceness and




RICHARD BAXTER.              199
bitterness as to force from that mild and amiable
civilian the remark, that he would rather be Socrates
at the final judgment, than Richard Baxter. Both lived
to know each other better, and to entertain sentiments
of mutual esteem. Baxter himself admits that the
Quakers, by their perseverance in holding their re.
ligious meetings in defiance of penal laws, took upon
themselves the burden of persecution which would
otherwise have fallen upon himself and his friends;
and makes special mention of the noble and successful
plea of Penn before the Recorder's Court in London,
based on the fundamental liberties of Englishmen and
the rights of the Great Charter.
The intolerance of Baxter towards the Separatists
was turned against him whenever he appealed to the
King and Parliament against the proscription of himself
and his friends. " They gathered," he complains,
" out of mine and other men's books all that we had
said against liberty for Popery and Quakers railing
against ministers in open congregation, and applied it
as against the toleration of ourselves." It was in vain
that he explained that he was only in favor of a gentle
coercion of dissent, a moderate enforcement of con.
formity. His plan for dealing with Sectaries reminds
one of old Isaak Walton's direction to his piscatorial




200          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
readers, to impale the frog on the hook as gently as if
they loved him.
While at Acton, he was complained of by Dr. Ryves,
the rector, one of the King's chaplains in ordinary,
for holding religious services in his family with more
than five strangers present. He was cast into Clerkenwell jail, whither his faithful wife followed him. On
his discharge, he sought refuge in the hamlet of Totteridge, where he wrote and published that Paraphrase
on the New Testament which was made the ground of
his prosecution and trial before Jeffries.
On the 14th of the 6th month, 1681, he was called
to endure the greatest affliction of his life. His wife
died on that day, after a brief illness. She who had
been his faithful friend, companion, and nurse, for
twenty years, was called away from him in the time of
his greatest need of her ministrations. He found consolation in dwelling on her virtues and excellencies in
the " Breviate " of her life; " a paper monument," he
says, " erected by one who is following her even at the
door in some passion indeed of love and grief." In
the preface to his poetical pieces, he alludes to her in
terms of touching simplicity and tenderness: " As these
pieces were mostly written in various passions, so passion hath now thrust them out into the world. God




RICHARD BAXTER.              20l
having taken away the dear companion of the last
nineteen years of my life, as her sorrows and sufferings
long ago gave being to some of these poems, for reasons which the world is not concerned to know; so my
grief for her removal, and the revival of the sense of
former things, have prevailed upon me to be passionate
in the sight of all."
The circumstances of his trial before the judicial
monster, Jeffries, are too well known to justify their
detail in this sketch. He was sentenced to pay a fine
of five hundred marks. Seventy years of age, and
reduced to poverty by former persecutions, he was
conveyed to the King's Bench prison. Here for two
years he lay a victim to intense bodily suffering. When,
through the influence of his old antagonist, Penn, he
was restored to freedom, he was already a dying man.
But he came forth from prison as he entered it, unsub.
dued in spirit. Urged to sign a declaration of thanks
to James II., his soul put on the athletic habits of youth,
and he stoutly refused to commend an act of toleration
which had given freedom not to himself alone, but to
Papists and Sectaries. Shaking off the dust of the
Court from his feet, he retired to a dwelling in CharterHouse Square, near his friend Sylvester's, and patiently
awaited his deliverance. His death was quiet and
peaceful. " I have pain," he said to his friend Mather;




202          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
" there is no arguing against sense; but I have peace.
I have peace." On being asked how he did, he answered, in memorable words, " Almost well!"
He was buried in Christ Church, where the remains
of his wife and her mother had been placed. An
immense concourse attended his funeral, of all ranks
and parties.  Conformist and Nonconformist forgot
the bitterness of the controversialist, and remembered
only the virtues and the piety of the man. Looking
back on his life of self-denial and faithfulness to
apprehended duty, the men, who had persecuted him
while living, wept over his grave. During the last
few years of his life, the severity of his controversial
tone had been greatly softened; he lamented his former
lack of charity, the circle of his sympathies widened,
his social affections grew stronger with age, and love
for his fellow-men universally, and irrespective of
religious differences, increased within him. In his
" Narrative," written in the long, cool shadows of the
evening of life, he acknowledges with extraordinary
candor this change in his views and feelings. He
confesses his imperfections as a writer and public
teacher. "I wish," he says, " all over sharp passages
were expunged from my writings, and I ask forgiveness
of God and man." He tells us that mankind appear
more equal to him; the good are not so good as he




RICHARD BAXTER.              203
once thought, nor the bad so evil; and that in all there
is more for grace to make advantage of, and more to
testify for God and holiness, than he once believed.
" I less admire," he continues, " gifts of utterance, and
the bare profession of religion, than I once did, and
have now much more charity for those who by want of
gifts do make an obscurer profession."
He laments the effects of his constitutional irritability
and impatience upon his social intercourse and his
domestic relations, and that his bodily infirmities did
not allow him a free expression of the tenderness and
love of his heart. Who does not feel the pathos and
inconsolable regret which dictated the following para.
graph? "When God forgiveth me, I cannot forgive
myself, especially for my rash words and deeds by
which I have seemed injurious and less tender and kind
than I should have been to my near and dear relations,
whose love abundantly obliged me. When such are
dead, though we never differed in point of interest or
any other matter, every sour or cross or provoking
word which I gave them, maketh me almost irreconcilable to myself, and tells me how repentance brought
some of old to pray to the dead whom they had wronged
to forgive them, in the hurry of their passion."
His pride as a logician and skilful disputant abated
in the latter and better portion of his life; he had




204          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
more deference to the judgment of others, and more
distrust of his own. " You admire," said he to a correspondent who had lauded his character, " one you do
not know; knowledge will cure your error." In his
"Narrative" he writes: " I am  much more sensible
than heretofore of the breadth and length and depth of
the radical, universal, odious sin of selfishness, and
therefore have written so much against it; and of
the excellency and necessity of self-denial and of a
public mind, and of loving our neighbors as ourselves."
Against many difficulties and discouragements, both
within himself and in his outward circumstances, he
strove to make his life and conversation an expression
of that Christian love, whose root, as he has said with
equal truth and beauty,
" is set
In humble self-denial, undertrod,
While flower and fruit are growing up to God."*
Of the great mass of his writings, more voluminous
than those of any author of his time, it would ill become
us to speak with confidence. We are familiar only with
some of the best of his practical works, and our estimate of the vast and appalling series of his doctrinal,
* Poetical Fragments, by R. Baxter, p. 16.




RICHARD BAXTER.              205
metaphysical, and controversial publications, would be
entitled to small weight, as the result of very cursory
examination. Many of them relate to obsolete ques.
tions and issues, monumental of controversies long
dead, and of disputatious doctors otherwise forgotten.
Yet, in respect to even these, we feel justified in
assenting to the opinion of one abundantly capable of
appreciating the character of Baxter as a writer.
"What works of Mr. Baxter shall I read?" asked
Boswell of Dr. Johnson. "Read any of them," was
the answer, " for they are all good." He has left upon
all the impress of his genius. Many of them contain
sentiments which happily find favor with few in our
time; philosophical and psychological disquisitions,
which look oddly enough in the light of the intellectual
progress of nearly two centuries; dissertations upon
evil spirits, ghosts, and witches, which provoke smiles
at the good man's credulity; but every where we find
unmistakable evidences of his sincerity and earnest love
of truth. He wrote under a solemn impression of duty,
allowing neither pain nor weakness, nor the claims of
friendship, nor the social enjoyments of domestic affection, to interfere with his sleepless intensity of purpose.
He stipulated with his wife, before marriage, that she
should not expect him to relax, even for her society,
the severity of his labors. He could ill brook interrup



206          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
tion, and disliked the importunity of visitors. "We
are afraid, Sir, we break in upon your time," said some
of his callers to him upon one occasion. " To be sure
you do," was his answer. His seriousness seldom forsook him; there is scarce a gleam of gaiety in all his
one hundred and sixty-eight volumes. He seems to
have relished, however, the wit of others, especially
when directed against what he looked upon as error.
Marvell's inimitable reply to the High Church pretensions of Parker fairly overcame his habitual gravity,
and he several times alludes to it with marked satisfaction; but, for himself, he had no heart for pleasantry.
His writings, like his sermons, were the earnest expostulations of a dying man with dying men. He tells us
of no other amusement or relaxation than the singing
of psalms. "Harmony and melody," said he, "are
the pleasure and elevation of my soul. It was not the
least comfort that I had in the converse of my late dear
wife, that our first act in the morning and last in bed at
night was a psalm of praise."
It has been fashionable to speak of Baxter as a champion of civil and religious freedom. He has little claim
to such a reputation. He was the staunch advocate of
monarchy, and of the right and duty of the State to
enforce conformity to what he regarded as the essentials of religious belief and practice. No one regards




RICHARD BAXTER.               207
the Prelates who went to the Tower, under James II.,
on the ground of conscientious scruples against reading
the King's declaration of toleration to Dissenters, as
martyrs in the cause of universal religious freedom.
Nor can Baxter, although he wrote much against the
coercion and silencing of godly ministers, and suffered
imprisonment himself for the sake of a good conscience,
be looked upon in the light of an intelligent and consistent confessor of liberty.  He did not deny the
abstract right of ecclesiastical coercion, but complained of its exercise upon himself and his friends, as
unwarranted and unjust.
One of the warmest admirers and ablest commentators of Baxter designates the leading and peculiar trait
of his character as unearthliness. In our view, this
was its radical defect. He had too little of humanity,
he felt too little of the attraction of this world, and
lived too exclusively in the spiritual and the unearthly,
for a full and healthful development of his nature as a
man, or of the graces, charities, and loves of the
Christian. He undervalued the common blessings and
joys of life, and closed his eyes and ears against the
beauty and harmony of outward nature. Humanity, in
itself considered, seemed of small moment to him;
" passing away" was written alike on its wrongs and
its rights, its pleasures and its pains; death would soon




208           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
level all distinctions; and the sorrows or the joys, the
poverty or the riches, the slavery or the liberty of the
brief day of its probation seemed of too little consequence to engage his attention and sympathies. Hence,
while he was always ready to minister to temporal
suffering wherever it came to his notice, he made no,efforts to remove its political or social causes. In this
respect he differed widely from some of his illustrious
contemporaries. Penn, while preaching up and down
the land, and writing theological folios and pamphlets,
could yet urge the political rights of Englishmen,
mount the hustings for Algernon Sydney, and plead for
unlimited religious liberty; and Vane, while dreaming
of a coming Millennium and Reign of the Saints, and
busily occupied in defending his Antinomian doctrines,
could at the same time vindicate, with tongue and pen,
the cause of civil and religious freedom. But Baxter
overlooked the evils and oppressions which were around
him, and forgot the necessities and duties of the world
of time and sense in his earnest aspirations towards the
world of spirits. It is by no means an uninstructive
fact, that with the lapse of years his zeal for proselytism, doctrinal disputations, and the preaching of threats
and terrors, visibly declined, while love for his fellowmen and catholic charity greatly increased, and he was
blest with a clearer perception of the truth that God is




RICHARD BAXTER.              209
best served through His suffering children, and that
love and reverence for visible humanity is an indispensable condition of the appropriate worship of the Unseen
God.
But, in taking leave of Richard Baxter, our last
words must not be those of censure. Admiration and
reverence become us rather. He was an honest man.
So far as'we can judge, his motives were the highest
and best which can influence human action. He had
faults and weaknesses, and committed grave errors, but
we are constrained to believe that the prayer with
which he closes his " Saints' Rest," and which we have
chosen as the fitting termination of our article, was
the earnest aspiration of his life.
"' Oh, merciful Father of Spirits! suffer not the soul
of thy unworthy servant to be a stranger to the joys
which he describes to others, but keep me while I
remain on earth in daily breathing after thee, and in a
believing affectionate walking with thee! Let those
who shall read these pages not merely read the fruits
of my studies, but the breathing of my active hope and
love; that if my heart were open to their view, they
might there read thy love most deeply engraven upon
it with a beam from the face of the Son of God; and
not find vanity or lust or pride within where the words
14




210         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
of life appear without, that so these lines may not
witness against me, but proceeding from the heart of
the writer, be effectual through thy grace upon the
heart of the reader, and so be the savor of life to
both."




WILLIAM LEGGETT.
"Oh FREEDOM! thou art not, as poets dream,
A fair young girl, with light and delicate limbs,
And wavy tresses, gushing from the cap
With which the Roman master crowned his slave,
When he took off the gyves. A bearded man,
Armed to the teeth, art thou; one mailed hand
Grasps the broad shield, and one the sword; thy brow,
Glorious in beauty though it be, is scarred
With tokens of old wars; thy massive limbs
Are strong with struggling. Power at thee has launched
His bolts, and with his lightnings smitten thee;
They could not quench the life thou hast from Heaven."
Bryant.
WWHEN the noblest woman in all France stood on the
scaffold, just before her execution, she is said to have
turned towards the statue of Liberty, which strangely
enough had been placed near the guillotine, as its
patron saint, with the exclamation, " Oh, Liberty! what
crimes have been committed in thy name I" It is with




212          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
a feeling akin to that which prompted this memorable
exclamation of Madame Roland, that the sincere lover
of human freedom and progress is often compelled to
regard American Democracy.
For democracy, pure and impartial; the self-government of the whole; equal rights and privileges, irrespective of birth or complexion; the morality of the
Gospel of Christ, applied to legislation; Christianity
reduced to practice, and showering the blessings of its
impartial love and equal protection upon all, like the
rain and dews of heaven- we have the sincerest love
and reverence. So far as our own Government approaches this standard —and, with all its faults, we
believe it does so more nearly than any other - it has
our hearty and steadfast allegiance. We complain of
and protest against it only, where, in its original framework or actual administration, it departs from the democratic principle.  Holding with Novalis, that the
Christian religion is the root of all democracy, and
the highest fact in the rights of man, we regard the
New Testament as the true political text-book; and
believe that, just in proportion as mankind receive its
doctrines and precepts, not merely as matters of faith,
and relating to another state of being, but as practical
rules, designed for the regulation of the present life,
as well as the future, their institutions, social arrange



WILLIAM LEGGETT.             213
ments, and forms of government, will approximate to
the democratic model.  We believe in the ultimate
complete accomplishment of the mission of Him who
came " to preach deliverance to the captive, and the
opening of prison doors to them that are bound." We
look forward to the universal dominion of His benign
humanity; and, turning from the strife and blood, the
slavery, and social and political wrongs of the Past and
Present, anticipate the realization in the distant Future
of that state, when the song of the angels at His advent
shall be no longer a prophecy, but the jubilant expression of a glorious reality - " Glory to God in the highest! Peace on earth, and good will to man!"
For the party in this country which has assumed the
name of Democracy, as a party, we have had, we confess, for some years past, very little respect. It has
advocated many salutary measures, tending to equalize
the advantages of trade, and remove the evils of special
legislation. But, if it has occasionally lopped some of
the branches of the evil tree of oppression, so far from
striking at its root, it has suffered itself to be made the
instrument of nourishing and protecting it. It has allowed itself to be called, by its Southern flatterers,
", THE NATURAL ALLY OF SLAVERY." It has spurned the
petitions of the people, in behalf of freedom, under its
feet, in Congress and State Legislatures. Nominally




214         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
the advocate of universal suffrage, it has wrested from
the colored citizens of Pennsylvania that right of citizenship, which they had enjoyed under a Constitution
framed by Franklin and Rush.  Perhaps the most
shameful exhibition of its spirit was made in the late
Rhode Island struggle, when the free suffrage Convention, solemnly calling heaven and earth to witness its
readiness to encounter all the horrors of civil war, in
defence of the holy principle of equal and universal
suffrage, deliberately excluded colored Rhode Islanders
from  the privilege of voting.  In the Constitutional
Conventions of Michigan and Iowa, the same party
declared all men equal, and then provided an excep.
tion to this rule in the case of the colored inhabitants.
Its course on the question of excluding slavery from
Texas is a matter of history, known and read of
all.
After such exhibitions of its practice, its professions
have lost their power. The cant of democracy upon the
lips of men who are living down its principles, is, to an
earnest mind, well nigh insufferable. Pertinent were
the queries of Eliphaz the Temanite, " Shall a man
utter vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the east
wind? Shall he reason with unprofitable talk or with
speeches, wherewith he can do no good?" Enough of
wearisome talk we have had about "progress," the




WILLIAM LEGGETT.             215
rights of " the masses," the " dignity of labor," and
" extending the area of freedom! "  " Clear your mind
of cant, sir," said Johnson to Boswell; and no better
advice could be now given to a class of our democratic politicians. Work out your democracy; translate
your words into deeds; away with your sentimental
generalizations, and come down to the practical details
of your duty as men and Christians. What avail your
abstract theories, your hopeless virginity of democracy,
sacred from the violence of meanings? A democracy
which professes to hold, as by divine right, the doctrine
of human equality in its special keeping, and which, at
the same time, gives its direct countenance and support
to the vilest system of oppression on which the sun of
heaven looks, has no better title to the name it disgraces
than the apostate Son of the Morning has to his old place
in heaven. We are using strong language, for we feel
-strongly on this subject. Let those whose hypocrisy
we condemn, and whose sins against humanity we
expose, remember that they are the publishers of their
own shame, and that they have gloried in their apostasy.
There is a cutting severity in the answer which Sophocles puts in the mouth of Electra, in justification of her
indignant rebuke of her wicked mother:
"'T is you that say it, not IYou do the unholy deeds which find me words."




216          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
Yet in that party calling itself democratic, we rejoice
to recognise true, generous, and thoroughly sincere
men; lovers of the word of democracy, and doers of it
also, honest and hearty in their worship of Liberty,
who are still hoping that the antagonism which slavery
presents to democracy will be perceived by the people,
in spite of the sophistry and appeals to prejudice by
which interested partizans have hitherto succeeded in
deceiving them. We believe with such that the mass
of the democratic voters of the free States are in reality
friends of freedom, and hate slavery in all its forms;
and that, with a full understanding of the matter, they
could never consent to be sold to Presidential aspir.
ants, by political speculators, in lots to suit purchasers,
and warranted to be useful in putting down free discussion, perpetuating oppression, and strengthening the
hands of modern feudalism. They are beginning already to see that, under the process whereby men of
easy virtue obtain offices from the General Government, as the reward of treachery to free principles, the
strength and vitality of the party are rapidly declining..To them, at least, democracy means something more
than collectorships, consulates, and governmental contracts. For the sake of securing a monopoly of these
to a few selfish and heartless party managers, they are
not prepared to give up the distinctive principles of




WILLIAMI LEGGETT,             217
democracy, and substitute in their place the doctrines
of the Satanic school of politics. I They will not much
longer consent to stand before the world as the Slavery
party of the United States, especially when policy and
expediency, as well as principle, unite in recommend:
ing a position more congenial to the purposes of their
orgarization, the principles of the fathers of their political fLith, the spirit of the age, and the obligations of
Christianity.
Th- death-blow of slavery in this country will be
given by the very power upon which it has hitherto
reliedwith so much confidence. Abused and insulted
Democracy will, ere long, shake off the loathsome
burder. under which it is now staggering. In the language,f the late Theodore Sedgwick, of Massachusetts,
a consitent democrat of the old school, " Slavery, in
all its forms, is anti-democratic - an old poison left in
the vein:, fostering the worst principles of aristocracy,
pride, anl aversion to labor; the natural enemy of the
poor mar, the laboring man, the oppressed man. The
question i,, whether absolute dominion over any creature
in the image of man be a wholesome power in a free
country; whether this is a school in which to train the
young repiblican mind; whether slave blood and free
blood can course healthily together in the same body
politic.  Whatever may be present appearances, and




218          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
by whatever name party may choose to call things, this
question must finally be settled by the democracy of
the country."
This prediction was made eight years ago, at a time
when all the facts in the case seemed against the probability of its truth, and when only here and there the
voice of an indignant freeman protested against the
~exulting claims of the slave power upon the democracy
as its " natural ally." The signs of the times now
warrant the hope of its fulfilment. Over the lills of
the East, and over the broad territory of the Empire
State, a new spirit is moving. Democracy, like Balaam upon Zophim, has felt the divine aflatus,and is
blessing that which it was summoned to curse.
The present hopeful state of things is owirg, in no
slight degree, to the self-sacrificing exertions of a few
faithful and clear-sighted men, foremost amorg whom
was the -late WILLIAM LEGGETT; than whon no one
has labored more perseveringly, or, in the fnd, more
successfully, to bring the practice of Americma democ.
racy into conformity with its professions.
William Leggett! Let our right hand forget its cunning, when that name shall fail to awakei generous
emotions, and aspirations for a higher aid worthier
manhood! True man, and true democnt; faithful
always to liberty, following wherever she ed, whether




WILLIAM LEGGETT.             219
the storm beat in his face or on his back; unhesitatingly counting her enemies his own, whether in the
guise of whig monopoly and selfish expediency, or
democratic servility north of Mason and Dixon's line
towards democratic slaveholding south of it; poor, yet
incorruptible; dependent upon party favor, as a party
editor, yet risking all in condemnation of that party,
when in the wrong; a man of the people, yet never
stooping to flatter the people's prejudices; he is the
politician, of all others, whom we would hold up to the
admiration and imitation of the young men of our
country. What Fletcher of Saltoun is to Scotland, and
the brave spirits of the old Commonwealth time,
" Hands that penned
And tongues that uttered wisdom, better none
The later Sydney, Marvell, Harrington,
Young Vane, and others, who called Milton friend,"
are to England, should Leggett be to America. His
character was formed on these sturdy democratic
models. Had he lived in their day, he would have
scraped with old Andrew Marvell the bare blade-bone of
poverty, or even laid his head on the block with Vane,
rather than forego his independent thought and speech.
Of the early life of William Leggett, we have no
very definite knowledge. Born in moderate circum



220          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
stances, at first a woodsman in the Western wilderness;
then a midshipman in the navy; then a denizen of
New York, exposed to sore hardships and perilous
temptations, he worked his way by the force of his
genius to the honorable position of associate editor of
the Evening Post, the leading democratic journal of our
great commercial metropolis. Here he became early
distinguished for his ultraism in democracy. His whole
soul revolted against oppression. He was for liberty
every where and in all things; in thought, in speech, in
vote, in religion, in government, and in trade; he was
for throwing off all restraints upon the right of suffrage;
regarding all men as brethren, he looked with disappro.
bation upon attempts to exclude foreigners from the
rights of citizenship; he was for entire freedom of
commerce; he denounced a national bank; he took the
lead in opposition to the monopoly of incorporated
banks; he argued in favor of direct taxation, and
advocated a free post-office, or a system by which
letters should be transported, as goods and passengers
now are, by private enterprise. In all this he was
thoroughly in earnest.  That he often erred through
passion and prejudice, cannot be doubted; but in no
instance was he found turning aside from the path
which he believed to be the true one, from merely
selfish considerations. He was honest alike to himself




WILLIAM LEGGETT.             221
and the public. Every question which was thrown up
before him by the waves of political or moral agitation,
he measured by his standard of right and truth, and condemned or advocated it, in utter disregard of prevailing
opinions, of its effect upon his pecuniary interest, or of
his standing with his party. The vehemence of his
passions sometimes betrayed him into violence of language, and injustice to his opponents; but he had that
rare and manly trait which enables its possessor, whenever he becomes convinced of error, to make a prompt
acknowledgment of the conviction.
In the summer of 1834, a series of mobs, directed
against the abolitionists, who had organized a national
society, with the city of New York as its central point,
followed each other in rapid succession. The houses
of the leading men in the society were sacked and pillaged; meeting-houses broken into and defaced; and
the unoffending colored inhabitants of the city treated
with the grossest indignity, and subjected, in some
instances, to shameful personal outrage. It was emphatically a " Reign of Terror."  The press of both
political parties and of the leading religious sects, by
appeals to prejudice and passion, and by studied misrepresentation of the designs and measures of the abolitionists, fanned the flame of excitement, until the fury
of demons possessed the misguided populace.  To




2292         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
advocate emancipation, or defend those who did so, in
New York, at that period, was like preaching democracy in Constantinople, or religious toleration in Paris
on the eve of St. Bartholomew. Law was prostrated
in the dust; to be suspected of abolitionism was to incur
a liability to an indefinite degree of insult and indignity; and the few and hunted friends of the slave, who,
in those nights of terror, laid their heads upon the
pillow, did so with the prayer of the Psalmist on their
lips, " Defend me from them that rise up against me;
save me from bloody men."
At this period the New York Evening Post spoke out
strongly in condemnation of the mob. William Leg.
gett was not then an abolitionist; he had known nothing
of the proscribed class, save through the cruel misrepresentations of their enemies; but, true to his demo.
cratic faith, he maintained the right to discuss the
question of slavery. The infection of cowardly fear,
which at that time sealed the lips of multitudes, who
deplored the excesses of the mob, and sympathized
with its victims, never reached him. Boldly, indignantly, he demanded that the mob should be put down
at once by the civil authorities.  He declared the
abolitionists, even if guilty of all that had been
charged upon them, fully entitled to the privileges and
immunities of American citizens. He sternly repri



WILLIAM LEGGETT.            223
manded the board of aldermen of the city, for rejecting
with contempt the memorial of the abolitionists to that
body, explanatory of their principles, and the measures
by which they had sought to disseminate them. Refer.
ring to the determination expressed by the memorialists
in the rejected document, not to recant or relinquish
any principle which they had adopted, but to live and
die by their faith, he said i "' In this, however mistaken,
however mad, we may consider their opinions in relation to the blacks, what honest, independent mind can
blame them? Where is the man so poor of soul, so
white-livered, so base, that he would do less in relation
to any important doctrine in which he religiously
believed? Where is the man who would have his
tenets drubbed into him by the clubs of ruffians, or
hold his conscience at the dictation of a mob? "-i
In the summer of 1835, a mob of excited citizens
broke open the post-office at Charleston, South Carolina,
and burnt in the street such papers and pamphlets as
they judged to be " incendiary;" in other words, such
as advocated the application of the democratic principle
to the condition of the slaves of the South. These
papers were addressed not to the slave, but to the
master. They contained nothing which had not been
said and written by southern men themselves, the
Pinkneys, Jeffersons, Henrys, and Martins, of Mary



224          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
land and Virginia. The example set at Charleston did
not lack imitators. Every petty postmaster south of
Mason and Dixon's line became ex-officio a censor of
the press. The Postmaster General, writing to his
subordinate at Charleston, after stating that the postoffice department had " no legal right to exclude
newspapers from the mail, or prohibit their carriage or
delivery, on account of their character or tendency,
real or supposed," declared that he would, nevertheless,
give no aid, directly or indirectly, in circulating publications of an incendiary or inflammatory character;
and assured the perjured functionary, who had violated
his oath of office, that, while he could not sanction, he'
would not condemn his conduct. Against this virtual
encouragement of a flagrant infringement of a constitutional right, this licensing of thousands of petty
government officials to sit in their mail offices, to use
the figure of Milton, cross-legged, like so many envious
Junos, in judgment upon the daily offspring of the
press, taking counsel of passion, prejudice, and popular
excitement, as to what was " incendiary " or " inflammatory," the Evening Post spoke in tones of manly
protest.
While almost all the editors of his party throughout
the country, either openly approved of the conduct of
ithe Postmaster General, or silently acquiesced in it,




WILLIAM LEGGETT.             225
William Leggett, who, in the absence of his colleague,
was at that time sole editor of the Post, and who had
every thing to lose, in a worldly point of view, by
assailing a leading functionary of the government, who
was a favorite of the President, and a sharer of his
popularity, did not hesitate as to the course which consistency and duty required at his hands. He took his
stand for unpopular truth, at a time when a different
course on his part could not have failed to secure him
the favor and patronage of his party. In the great
struggle with the Bank of the United States, his services
had not been unappreciated by the President and his
friends. Without directly approving the course of the
Administration on the question of the rights of the abolitionists, by remaining silent in respect to it, he might
have avoided all suspicion of mental and moral inde.
pendence incompatible with party allegiance.  The
impracticable honesty of Leggett, never bending from
the erectness of truth for the sake of that'" thrift which
follows fawning," dictated a most severe and scorching
review of the letter of the Postmaster General. " More
monstrous, more detestable doctrines we have never
heard promulgated," he exclaimed in one of his leading
editorials.'L With what face after this, can the Post.
master General punish a postmaster for any exercise of
the fearfully dangerous power of stopping and destroy.
15




226          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
ing any portion of the mails?"  "The abolitionists
do not deserve to be placed on the same footing with a
foreign enemy, nor their publications as the secret
dispatches of a spy. They are American citizens, in
the exercise of their undoubted right of citizenship, and
however erroneous their views, however fanatic their
conduct, while they act within the limits of the law,
what official functionary, be he merely a subordinate
or the head of the post-office department, shall dare
to abridge them of their rights as citizens, and deny
them those facilities of intercourse which were instituted
for the equal accommodation of all? If the American
people will submit to this, let us expunge all written
codes, and resolve society into its original elements,
where the might of the strong is better than the right
of the weak."
A few days after the publication of this manly rebuke,
he wrote an indignantly sarcastic article upon the mobs
which were at this time every where summoned to " put
down the abolitionists." The next day, the 4th of the 9th
month, 1835, he received a copy of the Address of the
American Anti-Slavery Society to the public, containing a full and explicit avowal of all the principles and
designs of the association. He gave it a candid perusal,
weighed its arguments, compared its doctrines with
those at the foundation of his own political faith, and




WILLIASM LEGGETT.           a22
rose up from its examination an abolitionist. He saw
that he himself, misled by the popular clamor, had
done injustice to benevolent and self-sacrificing men;
and he took the earliest occasion, in an article of great
power and eloquence, to make the amplest atonement.
He declared his entire concurrence with the views of
the American Anti-Slavery Society, with the single
exception of a doubt which rested on his mind as to the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. We
quote from the concluding paragraph of this article:
" We assert without hesitation, that, if we possessed
the right, we should not scruple to exercise it for the
speedy annihilation of servitude and chains. The im.
pression made in boyhood by the glorious exclamation
of Cato,'A day, an hour, of virtuous liberty,
Is worth a whole eternity of bondage!'
has been worn deeper, not effaced, by time; and we
eagerly and ardently trust that the day will yet arrive,
when the clank of the bondman's fetters' will form no
part of the multitudinous sounds which our country
sends up to Heaven, mingling, as it were, into a song
of praise for our national prosperity. We yearn with
strong desire for the day when freedom shall no longer
wave' Her fustian flag in mockery over slaves.'




22&          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
A few days after, in reply to the assaults made upon
him from all quarters, he calmly and firmly reiterated
his determination to maintain the right of free discus-.
sion of the subject of slavery.
"The course we are pursuing," said he, "is one
which we entered upon after mature deliberation, and
we are not to be turned from it by a species of opposix
tion, the inefficacy of which we have seen displayed ina
so many former instances. It is Philip Van Artevelde
who says:'All my life long,
I have beheld with most respect the man
Who knew himself, and knew the ways before him;
And from among them chose considerately,
With a clear foresight, not a blindfold courage;
And, having chosen, with a steadfast mind
Pursued his purpose.'
"This is the sort of character we emulate.  If, to
believe slavery a deplorable evil and curse, in whatever
light it is viewed; if, to yearn for the day which shall
break the fetters of three millions of human beings,
and restore to them their birthright of equal freedom;
if, to be willing, in season and out of season, to do all
in our power to promote so desirable a result, by all
means not inconsistent with higher duty; if these sen.
timents constitute us abolitionists, then are we such,




WILLIAM LEGGETT.             29
and glory in the name."  " The senseless cry oft Abolitionist,' shall never deter us, nor the more senseless
attempt of puny prints to read us out of the democratic
party. The often quoted and beautiful -saying of the
Latin historian, Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum
puto, we apply to the poor slave as well as his master,
and shall endeavor to fulfil towards both the obligations
of an equal humanity."
The generation which, since the period of which we
are speaking, have risen into active life, can have but
a faint conception of the boldness of this movement on
the part of William Leggett. To be an abolitionist
then was to abandon all hope of political preferment or
party favor; to be marked and branded as a social
outlaw, under good society's interdict of food and fire;
to hold property, liberty, and life itself at the mercy of
lawless mobs. All this William Leggett clearly saw.
He knew how rugged and thorny wat the path upon
which, impelled by his love of truth and the obligations
of humanity, he was entering. Prom hunted and pro.
scribed abolitionists and oppressed and spirit.broken
colored men, the Pariahs of American democracy, he
could alone expect sympathy. The whig journals,
with a few honorable exceptions, exulted over what
they regarded as the fall of a formidable opponent;
and after painting his abolitionism in the most hideous




230         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
colors, held him up to their southern allies as a specimen of the radical disorganizers and democratic levellers of the North. His own party, in consequence,
made haste to proscribe him. Government advertising
was promptly withdrawn from his paper. The official
journals of Washington and Albany read him out of
the pale of democracy. Father Ritchie scolded and
threatened. The democratic committee issued its bull
against him from Tammany Hall. The resolutions of
that committee were laid before him when he was
sinking under a severe illness. Rallying his energies,
he dictated from his sick bed an answer marked by all
his accustomed vigor and boldness. Its tone was calm,
manly, self-relying; the language of one who, having
planted his feet hard down on the rock of principle,
stood there like Luther at Worms, because he " could
not otherwise."  Exhausted nature sunk under the
effort. A weary sickness of nearly a year's duration
followed. In this sore affliction, deserted as he was by
most of his old political friends, we have reason to
know that he was cheered by the gratitude of- those in
whose behalf he had well nigh made a martyr's sacrifice; and that from the humble hearths of his poor
colored fellow-citizens fervent prayers went up for his
restoration.
His work was not yet done. Purified by trial, he,




WILLIAMI LEGGETT.             231
was to stand forth once more in vindication of the truths
of freedom. As soon as his health was sufficiently
re-established, he commenced the publication of an
independent political and literary journal, under the
expressive title of THE PLAINDEALER.  In his first
number he stated, that, claiming the right of absolute
freedom of discussion, he should exercise it with no
other limitations than those of his own judgment. A
poor man, he admitted that he established the paper in
the expectation of deriving from it a livelihood, but that
even for that object he could not trim its sails to suit
the varying breeze of popular prejudice. "If," said
he, " a paper which makes the Right and not the Expedient, its cardinal object, will not yield its conductor a
support, there are honest vocations that will, and better
the humblest of them than to be seated at the head of
an influential press, if its influence is not exerted to
promote the cause of truth."  He was true to his
promise. The free soul of a free, strong man spoke
out in his paper. How refreshing was it, after listening
to the inanities, the dull, witless vulgarity, the weari.
some commonplace of journalists, who had no higher
aim than to echo, with parrot-like exactness, current
prejudices and falsehoods, to turn to the great and
generous thoughts, the chaste and vigorous diction of
the Plaindealer! No man ever had a clearer idea of




232         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
the duties and responsibilities of a conductor of the
public press, than William Leggett, and few have ever
combined so many of the qualifications for their perfect
discharge: a nice sense of justice, a warm benevolence, inflexible truth, honesty defying temptation, a
mind stored with learning, and having at command the
treasures of the best thoughts of the best authors. As
was said of Fletcher of Saltoun, he was " a gentleman
steady in his principles; of nice honor, abundance of
learning; bold as a lion, a sure friend, a man who
wrould lose his life to serve his country, and would not
do a base thing to save it." He had his faults; his
positive convictions sometimes took the shape of a
proud and obstinate dogmatism; he who could so well
appeal to the judgment and the reason of his readers,
too often only roused their passions by invective and
vehement declamation. Moderate men were startled
and pained by the fierce energy of his language; and
he not unfrequently made implacable enemies of opponents, whom he might have conciliated and won
over by mild expostulation and patient explanation.
It must be urged in extenuation, that, as the champion of  unpopular truths, he was assailed unfairly
on all sides, and indecently misrepresented and
calumniated to a degree, as his friend Sedgwick
justly remarks, unprecedented even in the annals of




WILLIAM LEGGETT.             233
the American press, and that his errors in this respect
were, in the main, errors of retaliation.
In the Plaindealer, in common with the leading moral
and political subjects of the day, that of Slavery was
freely discussed in all its bearings. It is difficult, in a
single extract, to convey an adequate idea of the character of the editorial columns of a paper, where terse
and concentrated irony and sarcasm alternate with
eloquent appeal and diffuse commentary and labored
argument. We can only offer at random the following
passages from a long review of a speech of John C.
Calhoun, in which that extraordinary man, whose giant
intellect has been shut out of its appropriate field of
exercise by the very slavery of which he is the champion, undertook to maintain, in reply to a Virginia
senator, that chattel slavery was not an evil, but " a
great good."'We have Mr. Calhoun's own warrant for attacking
his position with all the fervor which a high sense of
duty can give, for we do hold, from the bottom of our
soul, that slavery is an evil; a deep, detestable, damnable evil; evil in all its aspects to the blacks, and a
greater evil to the whites; an evil moral, social, and
political; an evil which shows itself in the languishing
condition of agriculture where it exists, in paralyzed
commerce, and in the prostration of the mechanic arts;




234          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
an evil which stares you in the face from uncultivated
fields, and howls in your ears through tangled swamps
and morasses. Slavery is such an evil, that it withers
what it touches. Where it is once securely established,
the land becomes desolate, as the tree inevitably perishes
which the sea-hawk chooses for its nest; while free.
dom, on the contrary, flourishes like the tannen,'on
the loftiest and least sheltered rocks,' and clothes with
its refreshing verdure what, without it, would frown in
naked and incurable sterility.
"If any one desires an illustration of the opposite
influences of slavery and freedom, let him look at the
two sister States of Kentucky and Ohio. Alike in soil
and climate, and divided only by a river, whose translucent waters reveal, through nearly the whole breadth,
the sandy bottom over which they sparkle, how different
are they in all the respects over which man has control!  On the one hand, the air is vocal with the
mingled tumult of a vast and prosperous population.
Every hill side smiles with an abundant harvest, every
valley shelters a thriving village, the click of a busy
mill drowns the prattle of every rivulet, and all the
multitudinous sounds of business denote happy activity
in every branch of social occupation.
"This is the State which, but a few years ago, slept
in the unbroken solitude of nature. The forest spread




WILLIAM LEGGETT.            235
an interminable canopy of shade over the dark soil on
which the fat and useless vegetation rotted at ease, and
through the dusky vistas of the wood only savage beasts
and more savage men prowled in quest of prey. The
whole land now blossoms like a garden. The tall and
interlacing trees have unlocked their hold, and bowed
before the woodman's axe. The soil is disencumbered
of the mossy trunks which had reposed upon it for ages.
The rivers flash in the sunlight, and the fields smile
with waving harvests. This is Ohio, and this is what
freedom has done for it.
"Now, let us turn to Kentucky, and note the opposite
influences of slavery. A narrow and unfrequented
path through the close and sultry canebrake conducts
us to a wretched hovel. It stands in the midst of an
unweeded field, whose dilapidated inclosure scarcely
protects it from the lowing and hungry kine. Children
half clad and squalid, and destitute of the buoyancy
natural to their age, lounge in the sunshine, while their
parent saunters apart, to watch his languid slaves drive
the ill-appointed team afield. This is not a fancy
picture. It is a true copy of one of the features which
make up the aspect of the State, and of every State
where the moral leprosy of slavery covers the people
with its noisome scales; a deadening lethargy benumbs
the limbs of the body politic; a stupor settles on the




236         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
arts of life; agriculture reluctantly drags the plough
and harrow to the field, only when scourged by necessity; the axe drops from  the woodman's nerveless
hand the moment his fire is scantily supplied with fuel;
and the fen, undrained, sends up its noxious exhalations,
to rack with cramps and agues the frame already too,much enervated by a moral epidemic to creep beyond
the sphere of the material miasm."
The Plaindealer was uniformly conducted with emizent ability; but its editor was too far in advance
of his cotemporaries to find general acceptance, or
even toleration.  In addition to pecuniary embarrassments, his health once more failed, and in the autumn
of 1837 he was compelled' to suspend the publication of
his paper. One of the last articles which he wrote for
it, shows the extent to which he was sometimes carried
by the intensity and depth of his abhorrence of oppress
sion, and the fervency of his adoration of liberty.
Speaking of the liability of being called upon to aid
the master in the subjection of revolted slaves, and in
replacing their cast-off fetters, he thus expresses him.
self: " Would we comply with such a requisition? No!
Rather would we see our right arm lopped from our
body, and the mutilated trunk itself gored with mortal
wounds, than raise a finger in opposition to men struggling in the holy cause of freedom. The obligations




WILLIAM LEGGETT.             237
of citizenship are strong, but those of justice, humanity,
and religion, stronger. WVe earnestly trust that the
great contest of opinion, which is now going on in this
country, may terminate in the enfranchisement of the
slaves, without recourse to the strife of blood; but
should the oppressed bondmen, impatient of the tardyprogress of truth, urged only in discussion, attempt to
burst their chains by a more violent and shorter process$
they should never encounter our arm nor hear our
voice in the! ranks of their opponents. We should
stand a sad spectator of the conflict; and, whatever
commiseration we might feel for the discomfiture of
the oppressors, we should pray that the battle might
end in giving freedom to the oppressed."
With the Plaindealer, his connection with the public,
in a great measure, ceased. His steady and intimate
friend, personal as. well as political, Theodore Sedg.
wick, Jun., a gentleman who has, on many occasions,
proved himself worthy of his liberty-loving ancestry,
thus speaks of him in his private life at this period:
"Amid the reverses of fortune, harassed by pecuniary
embarrassments, during the tortures of a disease which
tore away his life piecemeal, he ever maintained the
same manly and unaltered front, the same cheerfulness
of disposition, the same dignity of conduct. No humil.
iating solicitation, no weak complaint, escaped him."




238'        PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
At the election in the fall of 1838, the noble-spirited
democrat was not wholly forgotten.  A  strenuous
effort, which was well nigh successful, was made to
secure his nomination as a candidate for Congress. It
was at this juncture that he wrote to a friend in the
city, from his residence at New Rochelle, one of the
noblest letters ever penned by a candidate for popular
favor. The following extracts will show how a true
man can meet the temptations of political life:
-"What I am  most afraid of is, that some of my
friends, in their too earnest zeal, will place me in a
false position on the subject of slavery.  I am an
abolitionist. I hate slavery in all its forms, degrees,
and influences; and I deem myself bound, by the
highest moral and political obligations, not to let that
sentiment of hate lie dormant and smouldering in my
own breast, but to give it free vent, and let it blaze
forth, that it may kindle equal ardor through the
whole sphere of my influence. I would not have this
fact disguised or mystified for any office the people
have it in their power to give.  Rather, a thousand
times rather, would I again meet the denunciations of
Tammany Hall, and be stigmatized with all the foul
epithets with which the anti-abolition vocabulary abounds,
than recall or deny one tittle of my creed. Abolition
is, in my sense, a necessary and a glorious part of




WILLIAM LEGGETT.              289
democracy; and I hold the right and duty to discuss
the subject of slavery, and to expose its hideous evils in
all their bearings - moral, social, and political - as of
infinitely higher importance than to carry fifty subtreasury bills.  That I should discharge this duty
temperately; that I should not let it come in collision
with other duties; that I should not let my hatred of
slavery transcend the express obligations of the Constitution, or violate its clear spirit, I hope and trust you
think sufficiently well of me to believe. But what I
fear is, (not from you, however,) that some of my
advocates and champions will seek to recommend me
to popular support, by representing me as not an abolitionist, which is false. All that I have written, gives
the lie to it. All I shall write, will give the lie to it.
" And here, let me add, (apart from any consideration already adverted to,) that, as a matter of mere
policy, I would not, if I could, have my name disjoined
from abolitionism. To be an abolitionist now is to be
an incendiary; as three years ago, to be an antimonopolist, was to be a leveller and a Jack Cade. See
what three short years have done in effecting the
anti-monopoly reform; and depend upon it, that the
next three years, or, if not three, say three times
three, if you please, will work a greater revolution on
the slavery question. The stream of public opinion




240         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES,
now sets against us; but it is about to turn, and the
regurgitation will be tremendous. Proud in that day
may well be the man who can float in triumph on the
first refluent wave, swept onward by the deluge which
he himself, in advance of his fellows, has largely shared
in occasioning. Such be my fate; and, living or dead,
it will, in some measure, be mine! I have written my
name in ineffaceable letters on the abolition record;
and whether the reward ultimately come in the shape of
honors to the living man, or a tribute to the memory of
a departed one, I would not forfeit my right to it for as
many offices as    has in his gift, if each, of them
was greater than his own."
After mentioning that he had understood that some
of his friends had endeavored to propitiate popular
prejudice by representing him as no abolitionist, he
says-:
(" Keep them, for God's sake, from committing any
such fooleries for the sake of getting me into Congress.
Let others twist themselves into what shapes they
please, to gratify the present taste of the people; as
for me, I am not formed of such pliant materials, and
choose to retain, undisturbed, the image of my God!
I do not wish to cheat the people of their votes. I
would not get their support, any more than their
money, under false pretences. I am what I am; and,




WILLIAM LEGGETT.              241
if that does not suit them, I am content to stay at
home."
God be praised for affording us, even in these latter
days, the sight of an honest man! Amidst the heartlessness, the double-dealing, the evasions, the prevarications, the shameful treachery and falsehood of political
men of both parties, in respect to the question of slavery, how refreshing is it to listen to words like these!
They renew our failing faith in human nature. They
reprove our weak misgivings. We rise up from their
perusal stronger and healthier.  With something of
the spirit which dictated them, we renew our vows to
freedom, and, with manlier energy, gird up our souls
for the stern struggle before us.
As might have been expected, and as he himself
predicted, the efforts of his friends to procure his nom.
ination failed; but the same generous appreciators of
his rare worth were soon after more successful in their
exertions in his behalf. He received from President
Van Buren the appointment of the mission to Guatemala; an appointment which, in addition to honorable
employment in the service of his country, promised
him the advantages of a sea voyage, and a change
of climate, for the restoration of his health.  The
course of Martin Van Buren on the subject of slavery,
in the District of Columbia, forms, in the estimation
16




24~2        PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
of many of his best friends, by no means the most
creditable portion of his political history; but it certainly argues well for his magnanimity and freedom
from merely personal resentment, that he gave this
appointment to the man who had animadverted upon
that course with the greatest freedom, and whose
rebuke of the veto pledge, severe in its truth and
justice, formed the only discord in the paean of
partisan flattery which greeted his inaugural. But,
however well intended, it came too late. In the midst
of the congratulations of his friends on the brightening
prospect before him, the still hopeful and vigorous
spirit of William Leggett was summoned away bydeath. Universal regret was awakened. Admiration
of his intellectual power, and that generous and full
appreciation of his high moral worth, which had been
in too many instances withheld from the living man by
party policy and prejudice, were now freely accorded
to the dead. The presses of both political parties vied
with each other in expressions of sorrow at the loss of
a great and true man. The Democracy, through all its
organs, hastened to canonize him as one of the saints
of its calendar. The general committee, in New York,
expunged their resolutions of censure. The Democratic Review, at that period the most respectablemouthpiece of the Democratic party, made him the




WILLIAM LEGGETT.               243
subject of exalted eulogy. His early friend and coeditor, WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, laid upon his grave
*the following tribute, alike beautiful and true:
"The earth may ring, from shore to shore,
With echoes of a glorious name,
But he whose loss our tears deplore
Has left behind him more than fame.
" For when the death-frost came to lie
On Leggett's warm and mighty heart,
And quenched his bold and friendly eye,
HIis spirit did not all depart.
" The words of fire that from his pen
He flung upon the lucid page,
Still move. still shake the hearts of men,
Amid a cold and coward age.
"His love of Truth, too warm, too strong,For Hope or Fear to chain or chill,
His hate of tyranny and wrong,
Burnm -in the breasts they kindled still."
So lived and died William Leggett. What a rebuke
of party perfidy, of political meanness, of the common
arts and stratagems of demagogues, comes up from his
grave! How the cheek of mercenary selfishness crim.
sons at the thought of his incorruptible integrity! How




244          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
heartless and hollow pretenders, who offer lip service
to freedom, while they give their hands to whatever
work their slaveholding managers may assign them;
who sit in chains round the crib of governmental patronage, putting on the spaniel, and putting off the man,
and making their whole lives a miserable lie, shrink
back from a contrast with the proud and austere dignity
of his character! What a comment on their own condition is the memory of a man who could calmly
endure the loss of party favor, the reproaches of his
friends, the malignant assaults of his enemies, and the
fretting evils of poverty, in the hope of bequeathing,
like the dying testator of Ford,
"A fame by scandal untouched,
To Memory and Time's old daughter, Truth."
The praises which such men are now constrained to
bestow upon him, are their own condemnation. Every
stone which they pile upon his grave, is written over
with the record of their hypocrisy.
We have written rather for the living than the
dead. As one of that proscribed and hunted band of
abolitionists, whose rights were so bravely defended by
William  Leggett, we should, indeed, be wanting in
ordinary gratitude, not to do honor to his memory; but
we have been actuated at the present time mainly by a




WILLIAM LEGGETT.             245
hope that the character, the lineaments of which we
have so imperfectly sketched, may awaken a generous
emulation in the hearts of the young democracy of our
country. Democracy such as William Leggett believed
and practised, democracy in its full and all-comprehensive significance, is destined to be the settled political
faith of this republic. Because the despotism of slavery
has usurped its name, and offered the strange incense
of human tears and blood on its profaned altars, shall
we, therefore, abandon the only political faith which
coincides with the Gospel of Jesus, and meets the aspirations and wants of humanity? No. The duty of
the present generation in the United States is to reduce
this faith to practice; to make the beautiful ideal a
fact.
"Every American," says Leggett, "who in any
way countenances slavery, is derelict to his duty,
as a Christian, a patriot, a man; and every one does
countenance and authorize it who suffers any opportunity of expressing his deep abhorrence of its
manifold abominations to pass unreproved."  The
whole world has an interest. in this matter. The influence of our democratic despotism is exerted against
the liberties of Europe. Political reformers in the old
world, who have testified to their love of freedom by
serious sacrifices, hold but one language on this point.




O2,46       PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
They tell us that American slavery furnishes kings andaristocracies with their most potent arguments; that it
is a perpetual drag on the wheel of political progress.
We have before us, at this time, a letter from Sieden-.
sticker, one of the leaders of the patriotic movement
in behalf, of German liberty in 1831. It was written
from the prison of Celle, where he had been confined
for eight years.  The writer expresses his indignant
astonishment at the speeches of John C. Calhoun, and.
others in Congress, on the slavery question, and de-.
plores the disastrous influence of our great inconsistency, upon the cause of freedom, throughout the.
world; an influence which paralyzes the hands of the.
patriotic reformer, while it strengthens those of his
oppressor, and deepens around the living martyrs andconfessors of. European democracy -the cold shadow
of their prisons.
Joseph Sturge, of Birmingham, the President of
the British Free Suffrage Union, and whose philanthropy and democracy have been vouched for by
the Democratic Review in this country, has the following passage in an address to the citizens of the
United States: "Although an admirer of the institutions
of your country, and deeply lamenting the evils of my
own government, I find it difficult to reply to those who
are opposed to any extension of the political rights of




WILLIAMI LEGGETT.            247
Englishmen, when they point to America, and say, that
where all have a control over the legislation but those
who are guilty of a dark skin, slavery and the slave,
trade remain, not only unmitigated, but continue to
extend; and that while there is an onward movement
in favor of its extinction, not only in England and
France, but in Cuba and Brazil, American legislators
cling to this enormous evil, without attempting to relax
or mitigate its horrors."
How long shall such appeals, from such sources, be
wasted upon us? Shall our baleful example enslave
the world?  Shall the tree of democracy, which our
fathers intended for " the healing of the nations," be
to them like the fabled Upas, blighting all around it?
The men of the north, the pioneers of the free west,
and the non-slaveholders of the south, must answer
these questions. It is for them to say, whether the
present well nigh intolerable evil shall continue to increase its boundaries, and strengthen its hold upon the
government, the political parties, and the religious
sects of our country. Interest and honor, present possession and future hope, the memory of fathers, the
prospects of children, gratitude, affection, the still call
of the dead, the cry of oppressed nations looking hitherward for the result of all their hopes, the voice of
God in the soul, in revelation, and in his providence,




248         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
all appeal to them for a speedy and righteous decision.
At this moment, on the floor of Congress, Democracy
and Slavery have met in a death-grapple. The South
stands firm; it allows no party division on the slave
question. One of its members has declared that " the
slave States have no traitors." Can the same be said
of the free? Now, as in the time of the fatal Missouri
compromise, there are, it is to be feared, political pedlars among our representatives, whose souls are in the
market, and whose consciences are vendible commodities. Through their means, the slave power may gain
a temporary triumph; but may not the very baseness
of the treachery arouse the Northern heart?  By
driving the free States to the wall, may it not compel
them to turn and take an aggressive attitude, clasp
hands over the altar of their common freedom, and
swear eternal hostility to slavery?
Be the issue of the present contest what it may,
those who are faithful to freedom should allow no temporary reverse to shake their confidence in the ultimate
triumph of the right. The slave will be free. Democracy in America will yet be a glorious reality; and
when the topstone of that temple of freedom which our
fathers left unfinished, shall be brought forth with shoutings and cries of grace unto it; when our now drooping liberty lifts up her head and prospers, happy will




WILLIAM LEGGETT.             249
he be who can say, with John Milton, "'Among those
who have something more than wished her welfare, I
too have my charter and freehold of rejoicing to me
and my heirs."




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.
" And Lamb, the frolic and the gentle,
Has vanished from his kindly hearth."
So, in one of the sweetest and most pathetic of his
poems touching the loss of his literary friends, sang
Wordsworth. We well remember with what freshness
and vividness these simple lines came before us, on
hearing, last autumn, of the death of the warm-hearted
and gifted friend whose name heads this article; for
there was much in his character and genius to remind
us of the gentle author of " Elia." He had the latter's
genial humor and quaintness; his nice and delicate
perception of the beautiful and poetic; his happy, easy
diction, not the result, as in the case of that of the
English essayist, of slow and careful elaboration, but
the natural, spontaneous language in which his conceptions at once embodied themselves, apparently
without any consciousness of effort. As Mark Antony




NATHANIEL- PEABODY ROGERS.       251
talked, he wrote, " right on," telling his readers often
what "they themselves did know," yet imparting
to the simplest commonplaces of life interest and
significance, and throwing a golden haze of poetry over
the rough and thorny pathways of every-day duty.
Like Lamb, he loved his friends without stint or limit.
The "old familiar faces" haunted him. Lamb loved
the streets and lanes of London - the places where he
oftenest came in contact with the warm, genial heart
of humanity - better than the country. Rogers loved
the wild and lonely hills and valleys of New Hampshire none the less that he was fully alive to the
enjoyments of society, and could enter with the
heartiest sympathy into all the joys and sorrows of his
friends and neighbors.
In another point of view, he was not unlike Elia.
He had the same love of home, and home friends, and
familiar objects; the same fondness for common sights
and sounds; the same dread of change; the same
shrinking from the unknown and the dark. Like him,
he clung with a child's love to the living present, and
recoiled from a contemplation of the great change
which awaits us. Like him, he was content with the
goodly green earth, and human countenances, and
would fain set up his tabernacle here. He had less
of what might be termed self-indulgence in this feeling




252         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES,
than Lamb. He had higher views; he loved this
world not only for its own sake, but for the opportunities it afforded of doing good. Like the Persian Seer,
he beheld the legions of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of
Light and Darkness, contending for mastery over
the earth, as the sunshine and shadow of a gusty
half-cloudy day struggled on the green slopes of his
native mountains; and, mingled with the bright host,
he would fain have fought on until its banners waved
in eternal sunshine over the last hiding place of dark.
ness. He entered into the work of reform with the
enthusiasm and chivalry of a knight of the crusades.
He had faith in human progress — in the ultimate
triumph of the good; millennial lights beaconed up
all along his horizon.  In the philanthropic movements of the day; in the efforts to remove the evils of
slavery, war, intemperance, and sanguinary laws; in
the humane and generous spirit of much of our modern
poetry and literature; in the growing demand of the
religious community, of all sects, for the preaching of
the Gospel of Love and Humanity, he heard the low
and tremulous prelude of the great anthem of Universal
Harmony. " The world," said he, in a notice of the
music of the Hutchinson family, " is out of tune now.
But it will be tuned again, and all will become harmony."  In this faith he lived and acted; working,




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.         253
not always, as it seemed to some of his friends, wisely,
but bravely, truthfully, earnestly, cheering on his
fellow-laborers, and imparting to the dullest and most
earthward looking of them something of his own zeal
and loftiness of purpose.
"Who was he?" does the reader ask?  Naturally
enough, too, for his name has never found its way into
fashionable reviews; it has never been associated with
tale or essay or poem, to our knowledge. Our friend
Griswold, who, like another Noah, has launched some
hundreds of American " poets" and prose writers on
the tide of immortality in his two huge arks of rhyme
and reason, has either overlooked his name, or deemed
it unworthy of preservation. Then, too, he was known
mainly as the editor of a proscribed and every-where.
spoken-against anti-slavery paper. It had few readers
of literary taste and discrimination; plain, earnest men
and women, intent only upon the thought itself, and
caring little for the clothing of it, loved the Herald of
Freedom for its honestness and earnestness, and its
bold rebukes of the wrong, its all-surrendering homage
to what its editor believed to be right. But the literary
world of authors and critics saw and heard little or
nothing of him or his writings. " I once had a bit of
scholar-craft," he says of himself on one occasion, " and
had I attempted it in some pitiful sectarian or party or




251         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
literary sheet, I should have stood a chance to get
quoted into the periodicals. Now, who dares quote
from the Herald of Freedom?"  He wrote for humanity, as his biographer justly says, not for fame.
" He wrote because he had something to say, and true
to nature; for to him nature was truth; he spoke right
on, with the artlessness and simplicity of a child."
He was born in Plymouth, New Hampshire, in the
6th month of 1794; a lineal descendant from John
Rogers, of martyr-memory. Educated at Dartmouth
College, he studied law with Hon. Richard Fletcher, of
Salisbury, New Hampshire, now of Boston, and comrn
menced the practice of it in 1819, in his native village.
He was diligent and successful in his profession,
although seldom known as a pleader. About the year
1833, he became interested in the anti-slavery movement. His was one of the few voices of encouragement
and sympathy which greeted the author of this sketch
on the publication of a pamphlet in favor of immediate
emancipation. He gave us a kind word of approval,
and invited us to his mountain home, on the banks of
the Pemigewasset, an invitation which, two years
afterwards, we accepted.  In the early autumn, in
company with George Thompson, (the eloquent Reformer, who has since been elected a member of the
British Parliament from the Tower Hamlets,) we drove




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.        255
up the beautiful valley of the White Mountain tributary
of the Merrimack, and, just as a glorious sunset was
steeping river, valley, and mountain, in its hues of
heaven, were welcomed to the pleasant home and
family circle of our friend Rogers. We spent two
delightful evenings with him.  His cordiality, his
warm-hearted sympathy in our object, his keen wit,
inimitable humor, and child-like and simple mirthfulness, his full appreciation of the beautiful in art and
nature; impressed us with the conviction that we were
the guest of no ordinary man; that we were communing with unmistakable genius; such an one as
might have added to the wit and eloquence of Ben
Jonson's famous club at the Mermaid, or that which
Lamb, and Coleridge, and Southey, frequented at the:
"Salutation and Cat," of Smithfield. "The most brilliant man I have met in America!" said George
Thompson, as we left the hospitable door of our
friend.
In 1838, he gave up his law practice, left his fine
outlook at Plymouth upon the mountains of the North,
Moose Hillock and the Haystacks, and took up his
residence at Concord, for the purpose of editing the
"Herald of Freedom," an anti-slavery paper which
had been started some three or four years before.
John Pierpont, than whom there could not be a more




256         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
competent witness, in his brief and beautiful sketch
of the life and writings of Rogers, does not overestimate the ability with which the Herald was conducted, when he says of its editor: " As a newspaper
writer, we think him unequalled by any living man;
and in the general strength, clearness, and quickness
of his intellect, we think all who knew him well will
agree with us, that he was not excelled by any editor
in the country." He was not a profound reasoner;
his imagination and brilliant fancy played the wildest
tricks with his logic; yet, considering the way by
which he reached them, it is remarkable that his con.
clusions were so often correct. The tendency of his
mind was to extremes. A zealous Calvinistic church
member, he became an equally zealous opponent of
churches and priests; a warm politician, he became an
ultra non-resistant and no-government man. In all
this, his sincerity was manifest. If, in the indulgence
of his remarkable powers of sarcasm, in the free antics
of a humorous fancy, upon whose graceful neck he
had flung loose the reins, he sometimes did injustice
to individuals, and touched, in irreverent sport, the
hem of sacred garments, it had the excuse, at least, of
a generous and honest motive. If he sometimes exaggerated, those who best knew him can testify that he
"set down naught in malice."




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.        257
We have before us a printed collection of his writ.
ings; hasty editorials, flung off without care or revision; the offspring of sudden impulse frequently;
always free, artless, unstudied; the language trans.
parent as air, exactly expressing the thought. He
loved the common, simple dialect of the peoplethe "beautiful strong old Saxon -the talk words."
He had an especial dislike of learned and " dictionary
words."  He used to recommend Cobbett's Works to
"every young man and woman who has been hurt in
his or her talk and writing by going to school."
Our limits will not admit of such extracts from the
"Collection" of his writings as would convey to our
readers an adequate idea of his thought and manner.
His descriptions of natural scenery glow with life.
One can almost % the sunset light flooding the Franconia Notch, and glorifying the peaks of Moose Hillock,
and hear the murmur of the west wind in the pines,
and the light, liquid voice of Pemigewasset sounding
up from its rocky channel, through its green hem of
maples, while reading them.* We give a brief extract
from an editorial account of an autumnal trip to Vermont:
" We have recently journeyed through a portion of
thisfree State; and it is not all imagination in us, that
sees, in its bold scenery, its uninfected inland position,
17




258;PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
its mountainous, but fertile and verdant surface, the
secret of the noble predisposition of its people. They
are located for freedom. Liberty's home is on their
Green  Mountains.  Their farmer republic nowhere
touches the ocean, the highway of the world's crimes,
as well as its nations. It has no seaport for the importation of slavery, or the exportation of its own highland
republicanism. Should slavery ever prevail over this
nation, to its utter subjugation, the last lingering footsteps of retiring liberty will be seen, not, as Daniel
Webster said, in the proud old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, about Bunker Hill and Faneuil Hall; but
she will be found wailing, like Jephthah's daughter,
among the'hollows' and along the sides of the Green
Mountains.' Vermont shows gloriously at this autumn season.
Frost has gently laid hands on her exuberant vegeta-'
tion, tinging her rock-maple woods without abating the
deep verdure of her herbage. Every where along her
peopled hollows and her bold hill slopes and summits,
the earth is alive with green, while her endless hardwood forests are uniformed with all the hues of early
fall, richer than the regimentals of the kings that glittered in the train of Napoleon on the confines of Poland,
when he lingered there, on the last outposts of summer;
before plunging into the snow drifts of the North; more




PNATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.          259
gorgeous than the array of Saladin's life-guard in the
wars of the crusaders, or of' Solomon in all his glory,'
decked in all colors and hues, but still the hues of life.
Vegetation touched, but not dead, or, if killed, not
bereft yet of 6 signs of life.'' Decay's effacing fingers'
had not yet  swept the hills''where beauty lingers.'
All looked fresh as growing foliage. Vermont frosts
don't seem to be' killing frosts.' They only change
aspects of beauty. The mountain pastures, verdant to
the peaks, and over the peaks of the high steep hills
were covered with the amplest feed, and clothed with
countless sheep; the hay fields heavy with second crop,
in some partly cut and abandoned, as if in very weariness and satiety, blooming with honeysuckle, contrasting strangely with the colors on the woods; the fat
cattle and the long-tailed colts and close-built Morgans
wallowing in it up to the eyes, or the cattle down to
rest, with full bellies, by ten in the morning. Fine but
narrow roads wound along among the hills, free almost
entirely of stone, and so smooth as to be safe for the
most rapid driving, made of their rich, dark, powderlooking soil. Beautiful villages or scattered settlements
breaking upon the delighted view, on the meandering
way, making the ride a continued scene of excitement
and animation. The air fresh, free and wholesome;
the road almost dead level for miles and miles, among




260          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
mountains that lay over the land like the great swells of
the sea, and looking in the prospect as though there
could be no passage."
To this autumnal limning, the following Spring picture
may be a fitting accompaniment:
"' At last Spring is here in full flush.   Winter held
on tenaciously and mercilessly, but it has let go. The
great sun is high on his northern journey, and the vegetation, and the bird-singing, and the loud frog-chorus,
the tree budding and blowing are all upon us; and the
glorious grass- superbest of earth's garniture   with
its ever-satisfying green.  The king-birds have come,
and the corn-planter, the scolding bob-a-link.  6 Plant
your corn, plant your corn,' says he, as he scurreys
athwart the ploughed ground, hardly lifting his crank
wings to a level with his back, so self-important is he in
his admonitions. The earlier birds have gone to housekeeping, and have disappeared from the spray.  There
has been brief period for them, this spring, for scarcely
has the deep snow gone, but the dark green grass has
come, and first we shall know, the ground will be
yellow with dandelions.
" I incline to thank Hleaven this glorious morning of
May 16th, for the pleasant home fromn which we can
greet the Spring.  Hitherto we have had to await it
amid a thicket of village houses, low down, close to



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.         261
gether, and awfully white. For a prospect, we had the
hinder part of an ugly meeting-house, which an enterprising neighbor relieved us of, by planting a dwellinghouse right before our eyes, (on his own land, and he
had a right to,) which relieved us also of all prospect
whatever. And the revival spirit of habitation which
has come over Concord, is clapping up a house between
every two in the already crowded town; and the prospect is, it will be soon all buildings. They are constructing, in quite good taste though, small, trim,
cottage-like. But I had rather be where I can breathe
air, and see beyond my own features, than be smothered
among the prettiest houses ever built. We are on the
slope of a hill; it is all sand, be sure, on all four sides
of us, but the air is free, (and the sand, too, at times,)
and our water, there is danger of hard drinking to live
by it. Air and water, the two necessaries of life, and
high, free play-ground for the small ones. There is a
sand precipice hard by, high enough were it only rock
and overlooked the ocean, to be as sublime as any of
the Nahant cliffs. As it is, it is altogether a safer haunt
for daring childhood, which could hardly break its neck
by a descent of some hundreds of feet.
"A  low flat lies between us and the town,'with
its State-house, and body-guard of well proportioned
steeples standing round. It was marshy and wet, but




262         PORTRAITS AND, SKETCHES.
is almost all redeemed by the translation into it of the
high hills of sand. It must have been a terrible place for
frogs, judging from what remains of it. Bits of water
from the springs hard by, lay here and there about the
low ground, which are peopled as full of singers as ever
the gallery of the old North Meeting-house was, and
quite as melodious ones.  Such performers I never
heard, in marsh or pool. They are not the great, stag.
nant, bull paddocks, fat and coarse-noted like Parson
—, but clear water frogs, green, lively, and sweetvoiced. I passed their orchestra going home the other
evening, with a small lad, and they were at it, all parts,
ten thousand peeps, shrill, ear-piercing, and incessanti
coming up from every quarter, accompanied by a
second, from some larger swimmer with his trombone,
and broken in; upon, every now and then, but not discordantly, with the loud quick hallo, that resembles the
cry of the tree-toad.. "There are the Hutchinsons,"
cried the lad. "The Rainers," responded I, glad to
remember enough of my ancient Latin, to know that
Rana, or some such sounding word, stood for frog. But
it was a " band of music," as the Miller friends:say.
Like other singers (all but the Hutchinsons) these are
apt to sing too much, all the time they are awake, constituting really too much of a good thing. I have wondered if the little reptiles were singing in concert, or,




N4THANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.        263
whether every one peeped'on his own hook, their
neighborhood only making it a chorus. I incline to the
opinion that they are performing together, that they
know the tune, and each carries his part, self-selected,
in free meeting, and therefore never discordant. The
hour rule of Congress might be useful, though far less
needed among the frogs, than among the profane
croakers of the fens at Washington."
* Here is a sketch of the mountain scenery of New
Hampshire, as seen from the Holderness Mountain, or
North Hill, during a visit which he made to his native
valley, in the autumn of 1841.
"The earth sphered up all around us, in every quarter of the horizon, like the crater of a vast volcano,
and the great hollow within the mountain circle was as
smoky as Vesuvius or Etna in their recess of eruption.
The little village of Plymouth lay right at our feet,
with its beautiful expanse of intervale opening on the
eye like a lake among the woods and hills, and the
Pemigewasset, bordered along its crooked way with
rows of maples, meandering from upland to upland
through the meadows. Our young footsteps had wandered over these localities. Time had cast it all far
back.  That Pemigewasset, with its meadows and
border trees; that little village whitening in the margin of its intervale; and that'one house which we




264         PORTRAITS AND SKETCItBS.
could distinguish, where the mother, that watched over
and endured our wayward childhood, totters at four.
score!
" To the south stretched a broken, swelling upland
country, but champaign from the top of North Hill,
patched all over with grain fields and green wood lots,
the roofs of the farm-houses shining in the sun. Southwest, the Cardigan Mountain showed its bald forehead
among the smokes of a thousand fires, kindled in the
woods in the long drought. Westward, Moose Hillock
heaved up its long back, black as a whale; and turning
the eye on northward, glancing down the while on the
Baker's River valley, dotted over with human dwellings
like shingle bunches for size, you behold the great
Franconia Range, its' Notch' and its Haystacks, the
Elephant Mountain on the left, and Lafayette (Great
Haystack) on the right, shooting its peak in solemn
loneliness high up into the desert sky, and overtopping
all the neighboring Alps but Mount Washington itself.
The prospect of these is most impressive and satisfactory.  We do'nt believe the earth presents a finer
mountain display.  The Haystacks stand there like
the Pyramids on the wall of mountains. One of them
eminently has this Egyptian shape. It is as accurate
a pyramid to the eye as any in the old valley of the
Nile, and a good deal bigger than any of those hoary




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.        265
monuments of human presumption, of the impious
tyranny of monarchs and priests, and of the appalling
servility of the erecting multitude. Arthur's Seat in
Edinburgh does not more finely resemble a sleeping
lion than the huge mountain on the left of the Notch
does an elephant, with his great, overgrown rump
turned uncivilly toward the gap where the people have
to pass. Following round the panorama, you come to
the Ossipees and the Sandwich Mountains, peaks innumerable aud nameless, and of every variety of fantastic
shape. Down their vast sides are displayed the melancholy looking slides, contrasting with the fathomless
woods.
"But the lakes-you see lakes, as well as woods
and mountains, from the top of North Hill. Newfound
Lake in Hebron, only eight miles distant, you can't see,
it lies too deep among the hills. Ponds show their
small blue mirrors from various quarters of the great
picture.  Worthen's Mill Pond and the Hardhack,
where we used to fish for trout in truant, bare-footed
days, Blair's Mill Pond, White Oak Pond, and Long
Pond, and the Little Squam, a beautiful, dark sheet of
deep, blue water, about two miles long, stretched amid
the green hills and woods, with a charming little beach
at its eastern end, and without an island. And then the
Great Squam, connected with it on the east by a short,




266         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
narrow stream, the very queen of ponds, with its fleet'of islands, surpassing in beauty all the foreign waters
we have seen, in Scotland or elsewhere, - the islands
covered with evergreens, which impart their hue to the
mass of the lake, as it stretches seven miles on east
from its smaller sister, towards the peerless Winnipisockee. Great Squam is as beautiful as water and
island can be. But Winnipisockee, it is the very' Smile
of the Great Spirit.' It looks as if it had a thousand
islands; some of them large enough for little towns,
and others not bigger than a swan or a wild duck,
swimming on its surface of glass."
His wit and sarcasm were generally too good natured
to provoke even their unfortunate objects, playing all
over his editorials like the thunderless lightnings which
quiver along the horizon of a night of summer calmness; but at times his indignation launched them like
bolts from heaven. Take the following as a specimen.
lHe is speaking of the gag rule of Congress, and
commending Southern representatives for their skilful
selection of a proper person to do their work:
"They have a quick eye at the South to the character, or, as they would say, the points of a slave. They
look into him shrewdly, as an old jockey does into a
horse. They will pick him out, at rifle-shot distance,
among a thousand freemen. They have a nice eye to




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGER-S.        267
detect shades of vassalage.  They saw in the aristocratic, popinjay strut of a counterfeit Democrat, an
itching aspiration to play the slaveholder. They beheld it in' the cut of his jib,' and his extreme Northern position made him the very tool for their purpose.
The little creature has struck at the right of petition. A
paltrier hand never struck at a noble right. The Eagle
Right of Petition! so loftily sacred in the eyes of the
Constitution that Congress can't begin to' ABRIDGE'
it, in its pride of place, is hawked at by this crested
jay-bird.  A' mousing owl' would have seen better
at midnoon, than to have done it. It is an idiot blue-,
jay, such as you see fooling about among the shrub
oaks and dwarf pitch pinesi in the winter. What an
ignominious death to the lofty right, were it to die by
such a hand; but it does not die. It is impalpable. to
the' malicious mockery' of such' vain blows.' We
are glad it is done - done by the South - done
proudly, and in slaveholding style, by the hand of a
vassal.  What a man does by another he does by
himself, says the maxim.  But they will disown the
honor of it, and cast it on the despised'free nigger'
North."
Or this description -not very flattering to the "Old.
Commonwealth "- of the treatment of the agent of
Massachusetts in South Carolina:




268         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
"Slavery may perpetrate any thing, and New Eng.
land can't see it. It can horsewhip the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and spit in her governmental
face, and she will not recognise it as an offence. She
sent her agent to Charleston on a State embassy.
Slavery caught him, and sent him ignominiously home.
The solemn great man came back in a hurry. He
returned in a most undignified trot.  He ran; he
scampered — the stately official. The Old Bay State
actually pulled foot, cleared, dug, as they say, like
any scamp with a hue and cry after him. Her grave
old senator, who no more thought of having to break
his stately walk than he had of being flogged at school
for stealing apples, came back from Carolina upon the
full run, out of breath and out of dignity. Well, what's
the result? Why, nothing. She no more thinks of
showing resentment about it than she would if lightning
had struck him. He was sent back' by the visitation
of God;' and if they had lynched him to death, and
stained the streets of Charleston with his blood, a
Boston jury, if they could have held inquest over him,
would have found that he'died by the visitation of
God.' And it would have been' crowner's quest law,'
Slavery's'crowners.' "
Here is a specimen of his graceful blending of irony
and humor. He is expostulating with his neighbor of




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.         269
the New Hampshire Patriot, assuring him that he cannot endure the ponderous weight of his arguments,
begging for a little respite, and, as a means of obtaining
it, urging the editor to travel. He advises him to go
South — to the White Sulphur Springs, and thinks
that, despite of his dark complexion, he would be safe
there from being sold for jail fees, as his pro-slavery
merits would more than counterbalance his colored
liabilities, which, after all, were only prima facie evi.
dence against him.  He suggests Texas, also, as a
place where " patriots" of a certain class " most do
congregate," and continues as follows:
"There is Arkansas, too, all glorious in new-born
liberty, fresh and unsullied, like Venus out of the
ocean - that newly discovered star in the firmament
banner of this Republic.  Sister Arkansas, with her
bowie knife graceful at her side, like the huntress
Diana with her silver bow; oh, it would be refreshing
and recruiting to an exhausted patriot to go and replenish his soul at her fountains. The newly evacuated
lands of the Cherokee, too, a sweet place now for a
lover of his country to visit, to renew his self-complacency by wandering among the quenched hearths of
the expatriated Indians; a land all smoking with the
red man's departing curse; a malediction that went to
the centre. Yes, and Florida - blossoming and leafy




270         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
Florida, yet warm with the life-blood of Osceola and
his warriors, shed gloriously under flag of truce. Why
should a patriot of such a fancy for nature immure
himself in the cells of the city, and forego such an
inviting and so broad a landscape? Ite viator. Go
forth, traveller, and leave this mouldy editing to less
elastic fancies.  We would  respectfully invite our
Colonel to travel. What signifies? Journey - wander - go forth - itinerate - exercise -  perambulate
-roam."
He gives the following ludicrous definition of Congress:
"But what is Congress?  It is the echo of the
country at home -the weathercock, that denotes and
answers the shifting wind — a thing of tail, nearly all
tail, moved by the tail and by the wind, with small
heading, and that corresponding implicitly in movement
with the broad sail-like stern, which widens out behind
to catch the rum-fraught breath of' the Brotherhood.'
As that turns, it turns; when that stops, it stops; and
in calmish weather looks as steadfast andfirm as though
it was riveted to the centre. The wind blows, and the
little popularity-hunting head dodges this way and that,
in endless fluctuation. Such is Congress, or a great
portion of it. It will point to the north-west heavens of
Liberty, whenever the breezes bear down irresistibly




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.        271
upon it, from the regions of political fair weather. It
will abolish slavery at the Capitol, when it has already
been doomed to abolition and death every where else in
the country.' It will be in at the death."'
Replying to the charge, that the abolitionists of the
North were " secret" in their movements and designs;
he says:
"' In secret!' Why, our movements have been as
prominent and open as the housetops from the beginning. We have striven from the outset to write the
whole matter cloud-high in the heavens, that the utmost
South might read it. We have cast an arc upon the,
horizon, like the semicircle of the polar lights, and upon
it have bent our motto,' IMMEDIATE EMANCIPATION,'
glorious as the rainbow. We have engraven it there,:
on the blue table of the cold vault, in letters tall enough
for the reading of the nations. And why has the far
South not read and believed before this? Because a
steam has gone up —a fog —from  New England's
pulpit and her degenerate press, and hidden the beaming revelation from its vision. The Northern hierarchy
and aristocracy have cheated the South."
He spoke at times with severity of slaveholders, but
far oftener of those who, without the excuse of education and habit, and prompted only by a selfish consideration of political or sectarian advantage, apologized




272         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
for the wrong, and discountenanced the anti-slavery
movement. " We have nothing to say," said he, " to
the slave. He is no party to his own enslavement —
he is none to his disenthralment. We have nothing to
say to the South. The real holder of slaves is not there.
He is in the North, the free North. The South alone
has not the power to hold the slave. It is the character
of the nation that binds and holds him. It is the Republic that does it - the efficient force of which is north
of Mason and Dixon's line. By virtue of the majority
of Northern hearts and voices, slavery lives in the
South! "
In 1840, he spent a few weeks in England, Ireland,
and Scotland.  He has left behind a few beautiful
memorials of his tour. His " Ride over the Border,"
" Ride into Edinburgh," " Wincobank Hall," " Ailsea
Crag," gave his paper an interest in the eyes of many
who had no sympathy with his political and religious
views.
Scattered all over his editorials, like gems, are to be
found beautiful images, sweet touches of heartfelt
pathos — thoughts which the reader pauses over with
surprise and delight. We subjoin a few specimens,
taken almost at random from the book before us:
" A thunder storm - what can match it for eloquence
and poetry? That rush from heaven of the big drops,




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.        273
in what multitude and succession, and how they sound
as they strike! How they play on the old home roof
and the thick tree tops! What music to go to sleep
by, to the tired boy, as he lies under the naked roof!
And the great, low bass thunder, as it rolls off over the
hills, and settles down behind them to the very centre,
and you can feel the old earth jar under your feet! "
" There was no oratory in the speech of the Learned
Blacksmith, in the ordinary sense of that word - no
grace of elocution —but mighty thoughts radiating off
from his heated mind, like sparks from the glowing
steel of his own anvil."
"The hard hands of Irish labor, with nothing in
them,- they ring like slabs of marble together, in response to the wild appeals of O'Connell, and the British
stand conquered before them, with shouldered arms.
Ireland is on her feet, with nothing in her hands, impregnable, unassailable, in utter defencelessness — the
first time that ever a nation sprung to its feet unarmed.
The veterans of England behold them, and forbear to
fire. They see no mark. It will not do to fire upon
men; it will do only to fire upon soldiers.  They are
the proper mark of the murderous gun, but men cannot
be shot."
"It is coming to that (abolition of war) the world
over! and when it does come to it, oh! what a long
18




274          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
breath of relief the tired world will draw, as it stretches
itself for the first time out upon earth's' green sward,
and learns the meaning of repose and peaceful sleep! "
" He who vests his labor in the faithful ground is
dealing directly with God; human fraud or weakness
do not intervene between him and his requital. No
mechanic has a set of customers so trustworthy as God
and the elements. No savings bank is so sure as the
old earth."
"Literature is the luxury of words.  It originates
nothing, it does nothing. It talks hard words about the
labor of others, and is reckoned more meritorious for it
than genius and labor for doing what learning can only
descant upon. It trades on the capital of unlettered
minds. It struts in stolen plumage, and it is mere
plumage. A learned man resembles an owl in more
respects than the matter of wisdom. Like that solemn
bird, he is about all feathers."
"' Our Second Advent friends contemplate a grand
conflagration about the first of April next. I should be
willing there should be one, if it could be confined to
the productions of the press with which the earth is
absolutely smothered. Humanity wants precious few
books to read, but the great living, breathing, immortal
volume of Providence. Life - real life - how to live,
how to treat one another, and how to trust God in




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.         275
matters beyond our ken and occasion - these are the
lessons to learn, and you find little of them in libraries."
"That accursed drum  and fife! How they have
maddened mankind! And the deep bass boom of the
cannon, chiming in in the chorus of battle — that
trumpet and wild charging bugle, how they set the
military devil in a man, and make him into a soldier!
Think of the human family falling upon one another at
the inspiration of music! How must God feel at it!
to see those harp strings He meant should be waked to
a love bordering on divine, strung and swept to mortal
hate and butchery!"
"Leave off being Jews," (he is addressing Major
Noah with regard to his appeal to his brethren to return
to Judea,) " and turn mankind. The rocks and sands
of Palestine have been worshipped long enough. Connecticut river or the Merrimac are as good rivers as
any Jordan that ever run into a dead or live sea, and as
holy, for that matter. In Humanity, as in Christ Jesus,
as Paul says,' there is neither Jew nor Greek.' And
there ought to be none. Let Humanity be reverenced
with the tenderest devotion; suffering, discouraged,
down-trodden, hard-handed, haggard-eyed, care-worn
mankind! Let these be regarded a little. Would to
God I could alleviate all their sorrows, and leave them




276         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
a chance to laugh! They are miserable now. They
might be as happy as the blackbird on the spray, and
as full of melody."
"I am sick as death at this miserable struggle among
mankind for a living. Poor devils! were they born to
run such a gauntlet after the means of life? Look
about you, and see your squirming neighbors, writhing
and twisting like so many angle-worms in a fisher's baitbox, or the wriggling animalcule seen in the vinegar
drop held to the sun. How they look, how they feel,
how base it makes them all! ":" Every human being is entitled to the means of
life, as the trout is to his brook, or the lark to the blue
sky. Is it well to put a human'young one' here to
die of hunger, thirst and nakedness, or else be preserved
as a pauper? Is this fair earth but a poor-house by
creation and intent?  Was it made for that? - and
these other round things we see dancing in the firmament to the music of the spheres, are they all great
shining poor-houses?"
" The Divines always admit things after the Age has
adopted them. They are as careful of the Age as the
weathercock is of the wind. You might as well catch
an old experienced weathercock, on some ancient orthodox steeple, standing all day with its tail east in a strong
out wind, as the Divines at odds with the Age."




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.         277
But we must cease quoting. The admirers of Jean
Paul Richter might find much of the charm and variety
of the "Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces," in this
newspaper collection. They may see, perhaps, as we
do, some things which they cannot approve of, the tendency of which, however intended, is very questionable. But, with us, they will pardon something to the
spirit of Liberty - much to that of Love and Humanity
which breathes through all.
Disgusted and heart-sick at the general indifference
of church and clergy to the temporal condition of the
people - at their apologies for and defences of slavery,
war, and capital punishment -Rogers turned Protest.
ant, in the full sense of the term. He spoke of priests
and " pulpit wizards" as freely as John Milton did two
centuries ago, although with far less bitterness and
rasping satire. He could not endure to see Christianity
and Humanity divorced. He longed to see the beautiful life of Jesus - his sweet humanities, his brotherly
love, his abounding sympathies - made the example of
all men. Thoroughly democratic, in his view all men
were equal. Priests, stripped of their sacerdotal tailoring, were in his view but men, after all. He pitied
them, he said, for they were in a wrong position —
above life's comforts and sympathies — " up in the
unnatural cold, they had better come down among




278         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
men, and endure and enjoy with them."  "Mankind,"
said he, "want the healing influences of Humanity.
They must love one another more.  Disinterested
Good will make the world as it should be."
His last visit to his native valley, was in the autumn
of 1845. In a familiar letter to a friend, he thus describes his farewell view of the mountain glories of his
childhood's home:
"I went a jaunt, Thursday last, about twenty miles
north of this valley, into the mountain region, where,
what I beheld, if I could tell it as I saw it, would make
your outlawed sheet sought after wherever our AngloSaxon tongue is spoken in the wide world. I have
been many a time among those Alps, and never
without a kindling of wildest enthusiasm in my woodland blood. But I never saw them till last Thursday.
They never loomed distinctly to my eye before, and
the sun never shone on them from heaven till then.
They were so near me, I could seem to hear the voice
of their cataracts, as I could count their great slides,
streaming adown their lone and desolate sides. Old
slides, some of them, overgrown with young woods,
like half-healed scars on the breast of a giant. The
great rains had clothed the valleys of the upper Pe.
migewasset in the darkest and deepest green.  The
meadows were richer and more glorious, in their thick




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.        279'fall feed,' than' Queen Anne's Garden,' as I saw
it from the windows of Windsor Castle. And the dark
hemlock and hacmatac woods were yet darker after
the wet season, as they lay, in a hundred wildernesses,
in the mighty recesses of the mountains.  But the
Peaks —the eternal, the solitary, the beautiful, the
glorious and dear mountain peaks, my own Moose
Hillock and my native' Haystacks'- these were the
things on which eye and heart gazed and lingered, and
I seemed to see them for the last time. It was on my
way back, that I halted and turned to look at them,
from a high point on the Thornton road. It was about
four in the afternoon. It had rained among the hills
about the'Notch,' and cleared off.  The sun, there
sombered, at that early hour, as towards his setting,
was pouring his most glorious light upon the naked
Peaks, and they casting their mighty shadows far
down among the inaccessible woods that darken the
hollows that stretch between their bases. A cloud was
creeping up to perch and rest awhile on the highest
top of' Great Haystack.' Vulgar folks have called it
Mount Lafayette, since the visit of that brave old
Frenchman, in'25 or 6. If they had asked his opinion,
he would have told them, the names of mountains
couldn't be altered, and especially names like that,
so appropriate, so descriptive and so picturesque. A




280         PORTRAITS AND- SKETCHES.
little, hard white cloud, that looked like a hundred
fleeces of wool rolled into one, was climbing rapidly
along up the north-western ridge, that ascended to the
lonely top of' Great Haystack.' All the others were
bare. Four or five of them — as distinct and shapely
as so many pyramids - some topped out with naked
cliff, on which the sun lay in melancholy glory; others
clothed thick all the way up with the old New Hamp-.shire hemlock, or the daring hacmatac, Pierpont's
Hacmatac.  You could see their shadows stretching
many and many a mile, over' Grant' and'Location,'
away beyond the invading foot of Incorporation; where
the timber.hunter has scarcely explored, and where the
moose- browses now, I suppose, as undisturbed as he
did, before the settlement of the State. I wish our
young friend and genius, Harrison Eastman, had been
with me, to see the sun-light, as it glared on the tops of
those woods, and to see the purple of the mountains.
I looked at it, myself, almost with the eye of a painter.
If a painter looked with mine, though, he never could
look off, upon his canvass, long enough to make a
picture; he would gaze forever at the original.
But I had to leave it, and to say in my heart, farewell! And as I travelled on down, and the sun sunk
lower and lower towards the summit of the: western
ridge, the clouds came up and formed an.Alpine range




NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.        281
in the evening heavens, above it- like other Haystacks and Moose Hillocks- so dark and dense, that
fancy could easily mistake them for a higher Alps.
There were the peaks, and the great passes; the Franconia' Notches' among the cloudy cliffs, and the great
White Mountain' Gap.'"
His health, never robust, had been gradually failing
for some time previous to his death. He needed more
repose and quiet than his duties as an editor left him;
and to this end he purchased a small and pleasant
farm in his loved Pemigewasset valley, in the hope
that he might there recruit his wasted energies. In
the 6th month of the year of his death, in a letter to us,
he spoke of his prospects in language which even
then brought moisture to our eyes:
" I am striving to get me an asylum of a farm. I
have a wife and seven children, every one of them
with a whole spirit. I don't want to be separated from
any of them, only with a view to come together again.
I have a beautiful little retreat in prospect, forty odd
miles north, where I imagaine I can get potatoes and
repose — a sort of haven or port.  I am among the
breakers, and' mad for land.' If I get this home - it is
a mile or two in among the hills from the pretty domicil
once visited by yourself and glorious Thompson - I am
this moment indulging the fancy that I may see you at




2S2          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
it before we die. Why can't I have you come and
see me? You see, dear W., I don't want to send you
any thing short of a full epistle. Let me end as I
begun, with the proffer of my hand in grasp of yours
extended. My heart I do not proffer - it was yours
before - it shall be yours while I am
N. P. RoGERs."
Alas! the haven of a deeper repose than he had
dreamed of was close at hand. He lingered until the
middle of the 10th month, suffering much, yet calm and
sensible to the last. Just before his death, he desired
his children to sing at his bed-side that touching song
of Lover's, "The Angel's Whisper." Turning his
eyes towards the open window, through which the
leafy glory of the season he most loved was visible,
he listened to the sweet melody. In the words of his
friend Pierpont -
" The Angel's whisper stole in song upon his closing ear;
From his own daughter's lips it came, so musical and clear,
That scarcely knew the dying man what melody was there -
The last of earth's or first of heaven's pervading all the air."
He sleeps in the Concord burial-ground, under the
shadow of oaks; the very spot he would have chosen,
for he looked upon trees with something akin to human
affection. " They are," he said, " the beautiful handi



NATHANIEL PEABODY ROGERS.        283
work and architecture of God, on which the eye never
tires. Every one is'a feather in the earth's cap,' a
plume in her bonnet, a tress on her forehead - a comfort, a refreshing, and an ornament to her." Spring
has hung over him her buds, and opened beside him
her violets. Summer has laid her green oaken garland
on his grave, and now the frost-blooms of autumn drop
upon it. Shall man cast a nettle on that mound? He
loved Humanity — shall it be less kind to him than
Nature? Shall the bigotry of Sect, and Creed, and
Profession, drive its condemnatory stake into his grave?
God forbid. The doubts which he sometimes unguardedly expressed, had relation, we are constrained to
believe, to the glosses of commentators and creedmakers, and the inconsistency of professors, rather
than to those facts and precepts of Christianity, to
which he gave the constant assent of his practice. He
sought not his own. His heart yearned with pity and
brotherly affection for all the poor and suffering in the
universe. Of him, the angel of Leigh Hunt's beautiful
allegory might have written, in the golden book of
remembrance, as he did of the good Abou ben Adhem,
" He loved hisfellow-men."




ROBERT DINSMORE.
THE great charm of Scottish poetry consists in its
simplicity, and genuine, unaffected sympathy with the
common joys and sorrows of daily life. It is a hometaught, household melody. It calls to mind the pastoral
bleat on the hill-sides, the kirk-bells of a summer
Sabbath, the song of the lark in the sunrise, the cry of
the quail in the corn-land, the low of cattle, and the
blithe carol of milkmaids " when the kye come hame "
at gloaming. Meetings at fair and market, blushing
betrothments, merry weddings, the joy of young maternity, the lights and shades of domestic life, its bereavements and partings, its chances and changes, its holy
deathbeds, and funerals solemnly beautiful in quiet
kirkyards — these furnish the hints of the immortal
melodies of Burns, the sweet ballads of the Ettrick
Shepherd and Allan Cunningham, and the rustic drama




ROBERT DINSMORE.             285
of Ramsay. It is the poetry of Home, of Nature,
and the Affections. All this is sadly wanting in our
young literature. We have no songs; American domestic life has never been hallowed and beautified by
the sweet and graceful and tender associations of
poetry. We have no Yankee pastorals. Our rivers
and streams turn mills and float rafts, and are otherwise as commendably useful as those of Scotland; but
no quaint ballad, or simple song, reminds us that men
and women have loved, met, and parted on their banks,
or that beneath each roof within their valleys the tragedy and comedy of life has been enacted.  Our
poetry is cold and imitative; it seems more the pro.
duct of over-strained intellects, than the spontaneous
outgushing of hearts warm with love, and strongly
sympathizing with human nature as it actually exists
about us, with the joys and griefs of the men and
women whom we meet daily. Unhappily the opinion
prevails that a poet must be also a philosopher, and
hence it is, that much of our poetry is as indefinable in
its mysticism as an Indian Brahmin's commentary on
his sacred books, or German metaphysics subjected to
homceopathic dilution.  It assumes to be prophetical,
and its utterances are oracular.  It tells of strange,
vague emotions and yearnings, painfully suggestive of
spiritual " groanings which cannot be uttered." If it




286         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
"' babbles o' green fields," and the common sights and
sounds of nature, it is only for the purpose of finding
some vague analogy between them  and its internal
experiences and longings.  It leaves the warm  and
comfortable fireside of actual knowledge and human
comprehension, and goes wailing and gibbering like a
ghost about the impassible doors of mystery;
" It fain would be resolved
How things are done,
And who the tailor is
That works for the man i' the sun."
How shall we account for this marked tendency in the
literature of a shrewd, practical people? Is it that
real life in New England lacks those conditions of
poetry and romance which age, reverence and superstition have gathered about it in the old world? Is it
that
" Ours are not Tempe's nor Arcadia's vales,"
but are more famous for growing Indian corn and
potatoes, and the manufacture of wooden ware and
pedler notions, than for romantic associations and
legendary interest? That our huge, unshapely shingle structures, blistering in the sun and glaring with
windows, were evidently never reared by the spell




ROBERT DINSMORE.              287
of pastoral harmonies, as the walls of Thebes rose
at the sound of the lyre of Amphion?  That the
habits of our people are too cool, cautious, undemonstrative to furnish the warp and woof of song and pastoral, and that their dialect and figures of speech,
however richly significant and expressive in the autobiography of Sam Slick, or the satire of Hosea Bigelow and Ethan Spike, form a very awkward medium
of sentiment and pathos? All this may be true. But
the Yankee, after all, is a man, and as such, his history,
could it be got at, must have more or less of poetic
material in it; moreover, whether conscious of it or not,
he also stands relieved against the background of
Nature's beauty or sublimity. There is a poetical side
to the commonplace of his incomings and outgoings;
study him well, and you may frame an idyl of some
sort from his apparently prosaic existence. Our poets,
we must needs think, are deficient in that shiftiness,
ready adaptation to circumstances and ability of making
the most of things, for which, as a people, we are proverbial. Can they make nothing of our Thanksgiving,
that annual gathering of long-severed friends?   Do
they find nothing to their purpose in our apple-bees,
huskings, berry-pickings, summer pic-nics, and winter
sleigh-rides? Is there nothing available in our peculiarities of climate, scenery, customs, and political




288          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
institutions? Does the Yankee leap into life, shrewd,
hard, and speculating, armed like Pallas, for a struggle with fortune?  Are there not boys and girls,
school loves and friendship, courtings and matchmakings, hope and fear, and all the varied play of
human passions - the keen struggles of gain, the mad
grasping of ambition - sin and remorse, tearful repentance and holy aspirations?  Who shall say that we
have not all the essentials of the poetry of human
life and simple nature, of the hearth and the farmfield? Here, then, is a mine unworked, a harvest
ungathered.  Who shall sink the shaft and thrust in
the sickle?
And here let us say that the mere dilettante and the
amateur ruralist may as well keep their hands off.
The prize is not for them. He who would successfully strive for it, must be himself what he sings —
part and parcel of the rural life of New England; one
who has grown strong amidst its healthful influences,
familiar with all its details, and capable of detecting
whatever of beauty, humor or pathos, pertain to it; one
who has added to his book-lore the large experience
of an active participation in the rugged toil, the hearty
amusements, the trials and the pleasures, he describes.
We have been led to these reflections by an incident
which has called up before us the home-spun figure of




ROBERT DINSMORE.             289
an old friend of our boyhood, who had the good sense
to discover that the poetic element existed in the simple
home life of a country farmer, although himself unable
to give a very creditable expression of it. He had the
" vision" indeed, but the " faculty divine" was wanting, or, if he possessed it in any degree, as Thersites
says of the wit of Ajax, " it would not out, but lay
coldly in him like fire in the flint."
While engaged this morning in looking over a large
exchange list of newspapers, a few stanzas of poetry in
the Scottish dialect attracted our attention. As we read
them, like a wizard's rhyme they seemed to have the
power of bearing us back to the past. They had long
ago graced the columns of that solitary sheet which
once a week diffused happiness over our fireside circle,
making us acquainted, in our lonely nook, with the
goings-on of the great world. The verses, we are now
constrained to admit, are not remarkable in themselves,
truth, and simple nature only; yet how our young
hearts responded to them! Twenty years ago there
were fewer verse-makers than at present; and as our
whole stock of light literature consisted of Ellwood's
Davideis, and the selections of Lindley Murray's
English Reader, it is not improbable that we were in
a condition to over-estimate the contributions to the
19




290           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
poet's corner of our village newspaper. Be that as it
may, we welcome them as we would the face of an old
friend, for they somehow remind us of the scent of
hay-mows, the breath of cattle, the fresh greenery by
the brook side, the moist earth broken by the coulter
and turned up to the sun and winds of May. This
particular piece, which follows, is entitled " The Sparrow," and was occasioned by the crushing of a bird's
nest by the author, while ploughing among his corn.
It has something of the simple tenderness of Burns.
" Poor innocent and hapless Sparrow!
Why should my mould-board gie thee sorrow!
This day thou'11 chirp and mourn the morrow
WVi' anxious breast;
The plough has turned the mould'ring furrow
Deep o'er thy nest!
" Just i' the middle o' the hill
Thy nest was placed wi' curious skill,
There I espied thy little bill
Beneath the shade.
In that sweet bower, secure frae ill,
Thine eggs were laid.
" Five corns o' maze had there been drappit,
An' through the stalks thy head was pappit,




ROBERT DINSMORE.                 291
The drawing nowt could na be stappit
I quickly foun';
Syne frae thy cozie nest thou happit,
Wild fluttering roun'.
The sklentin stane beguiled the sheer,
In vain I tried the plough to steer,
A wee bit stumpie i' the rear
Cam''tween my legs,
An' to the jee-side gart me veer
An' crush thine eggs.
"Alas! alas! my bonnie birdie!
Thy faithful mate flits round to guard thee.
Connubial love! - a pattern worthy
The pious priest!
What savage heart could be sae hardy
As wound thy breast t
Ah me! it was nae fau't o' mine;
It gars me greet to see thee pine.
It may be serves His great design
Who governs all;
Omniscience tents wi' eyes divine
The Sparrow's fall!
"How much like thine are human dools,
Their sweet wee bairns laid i' the mools? 




292           PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
The Sovereign Power who nature rules,
Hath said so be it;
But poor blin' mortals are sic fools
They canna see it.
"Nae doubt that He who first did mate us,
Has fixed our lot as sure as fate is,
An' when He wounds He disna hate us,
But anely this,
He'11 gar the ills which here await us
Yield lastin' bliss."
In the early part of the eighteenth century, a considerable number of Prebyterians of Scotch descent,
from the north of Ireland, emigrated to the New World.
In the spring of 1719, the inhabitants of Haverhill, on
the Merrimack, saw them passing up the river in
several canoes, one of which unfortunately upset in
the rapids above the village. The following fragment
of a ballad celebrating this event, has been handed
down to the present time, and may serve to show the
feelings even then of the old English settlers towards
the Irish emigrants:
"They began to scream and bawl,
As out they tumbled one and all,
And, if the Devil had spread his net,
He could have made a glorious haul! "




ROBERT DINSMIORE.            293
The new comers proceeded up the river, and, landing opposite to the Uncanoonuc Hills, on the present
site of Manchester, proceeded inland to Beaver Pond.
Charmed with the appearance of the country, they
resolved here to terminate their wanderings. Under
a venerable oak on the margin of the little lake, they
knelt down with their minister, Jamie McGregore, and
laid, in prayer and thanksgiving, the foundation of their
settlement.  In a few years they had cleared large
fields, built substantial stone and frame dwellings, and
a large and commodious meeting-house; wealth had
accumulated around them, and they had every where
the reputation of a shrewd and thriving community.
They were the first in New England to cultivate the
potato, which their neighbors for a long time regarded
as a pernicious root, altogether unfit for a Christian
stomach. Every lover of that invaluable esculent has
reason to remember with gratitude the settlers of
Londonderry.
Their moral acclimation in Ireland had not been
without its effect upon their character. Side by side
with a Presbyterianism as austere as that of John Knox,
had grown up something of the wild Milesian humor,
love of convivial excitement and merry-making. Their
long prayers and fierce zeal in behalf of orthodox
tenets, only served, in the eyes of their Puritan neigh.




294          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
bors, to make more glaring still the scandal of their
marked social irregularities.  It became a common
saying in the region round about, that, "the Derry
Presbyterians would never give up a pint of doctrine
or a pint of rum." Their second minister was an old
scarred fighter, who had signalized himself in the stout
defence of Londonderry, when James II. and his Papists
were thundering at its gates. Agreeably to his deathbed directions, his old fellow-soldiers, in their leathern doublets and battered steel caps, bore him to his
grave, firing over him the same rusty muskets which
had swept down rank after rank of the men of Amalek
at the Derry siege.
Ere long the celebrated Derry Fair was established in
imitation of those with which they had been familiar in
Ireland. Thither annually came all manner of horsejockeys and pedlers, gentlemen and beggars, fortunetellers, wrestlers, dancers and fiddlers, gay young
farmers and buxom maidens. Strong drink abounded.
They who had good naturedly wrestled and joked
together in the morning, not unfrequently closed the
day with a fight, until, like the revellers of Donnybrook,
"Their hearts were soft with whiskey,
And their heads were soft with blows."




ROBEnT DINSMORE.             295
A wild, frolicking, drinking, fiddling, courting, horseracing, riotous merry-making —a sort of Protestant
carnival, relaxing the grimness of Puritanism for
leagues around it.
In the midst of such a community, and partaking of
all its influences, Robert Dinsmore, the author of the
poem I have quoted, was born, about the middle of the
last century. His paternal ancestor, John, younger
son of a Laird of Achenmead, who left the banks of
the Tweed for the green fertility of Northern Ireland,
had emigrated to New  England some forty years
before, and, after a rough experience of Indian captivity in the wild woods of Maine, had settled down
among his old neighbors in Londonderry. Until nine
years of age, Robert never saw a school. He was a
short time under the tuition of an old British soldier,
who had strayed into the settlement after the French
war, " at which time," he says in a letter to a friend,
" I learned to repeat the shorter and larger catechisms.
These, with the Scripture proofs annexed to them,
confirmed me in the orthodoxy of my forefathers, and
I hope I shall ever remain an evidence of the truth of
what the wise man said,'Train up a child in the way
he should go, and when he is old he will not depart
from  it."'"  He afterwards took lessons with one
Master McKeen, who used to spend much of his time




296         PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
in hunting squirrels with his pupils. He learned to
read and write; and the old man always insisted that
he should have done well at ciphering also, had he
not fallen in love with Molly Park. At the age of
eighteen he enlisted in the revolutionary army, and was
at the battle of Saratoga. On his return he married
his fair Molly, settled down as a farmer in Windham,
formerly a part of Londonderry, and before he was
thirty years of age became an elder in the church, of
the creed and observances of which he was always a
zealous and resolute defender. From occasional passages in his poems, it is evident that the instructions
which he derived from the pulpit, were not unlike
those which Burns suggested as needful for the unlucky lad whom he was commending to his friend
Hamilton:
" Ye'11 catechize him ilka quirk,
An' shore him weel wi' hell."
In a humorous poem, entitled " Spring's Lament,"
he thus describes the consternation produced in the
meeting-house at sermon time by a dog, who, in search
of his mistress, rattled and scraped at the " west porch
door:"
"The vera priest was scared himsel',
His sermon he could hardly spell,




ROBERT DINSMORE.               297
Auld carlins fancied they could smell,
The brimstone matches;
They thought he was some imp o' hell,
In quest o' wretches."
He lived to a good old age, a home-loving, unpretending farmer, cultivating his acres with his own
horny hands, and cheering the long rainy days and
winter evenings with homely rhyme.  Most of his
pieces were written in the dialect of his ancestors,
which was well understood by his neighbors and
friends, the only audience upon which he could ven.
ture to calculate. He loved all old things, old language, old customs, old theology. In a rhyming letter
to his cousin Silas, he says:
"Though Death our ancestors has cleekit,
An' under clods them closely steekit,
We'11 mark the place their chimneys reekit,
Their native tongue we yet wad speak it,
Wi' accent glib."
He wrote sometimes to amuse his neighbors, often
to soothe their sorrow under domestic calamity, or to
give expression to his own. With little of that delicacy
of taste which results from the attrition of fastidious




298          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
and refined society, and altogether too truthful and
matter-of-fact to call in the aid of imagination, he
describes in the simplest and most direct terms the
circumstances in which he found himself, and the
impressions which these circumstances had made on
his own mind. He calls things by their right names;
no euphemism, or transcendentalism - the plainer and
commoner the better., He tells us of his farm life, its
joys and sorrows, its mirth and care, with no embellishment, with no concealment of repulsive and ungraceful features. Never having seen a nightingale,
he makes no attempt to describe the fowl; but he has
seen the night-hawk, at sunset, cutting the air above
him, and he tells of it. Side by side with his waving
corn-fields and orchard-blooms, we have the barn-yard
and pig-sty.  Nothing which was necessary to the
comfort and happiness of his home and avocation was
to him "common or unclean."  Take, for instance,
the following, from a poem written at the close of
autumn, after the death of his wife:
"No more may I the Spring Brook trace,
No more with sorrow view the place
Where Mary's wash tub stood;
No more may wander there alone,
And lean upon the mossy stone,
Where once she piled her wood.




ROBERT DINSMORE.              299'Twas there she bleached her linen cloth,
By yonder bass-wood tree;
From that sweet stream she made her broth,
Her pudding and her tea.
That stream, whose waters running,
O'er mossy root and stone,
Made ringing and singing,
Her voice could match alone."
We envy not the man who can sneer at this simple
picture. It is honest as nature herself. An old and
lonely man looks back upon the young years of his
wedded life. Can we not look with him?  The sun.
light of a summer morning is weaving itself with the
leafy shadows of the bass-tree, beneath which a fair
and ruddy-cheeked young woman, with her full,
rounded arms bared to the elbow, bends not ungracefully to her task, pausing ever and anon to play with
the bright-eyed child beside her, and mingling her
songs with the pleasant murmurings of gliding water!
Alas! as the old man looks, he hears that voice, which
perpetually sounds to us all from the past - NO MORE!
Let us look at him in his more genial mood. Take
the opening lines of his "Thanksgiving Day."  What
a plain, hearty picture of substantial comfort!
"When corn is in the garret stored,
And sauce in cellar well secured,




300           PORTRAITS AND -SKETCHES.
When good fat beef we can afford,
And things that're dainty,
With good sweet cider on our board,
And pudding plenty.
" When stock, well housed, may chew the cud,
And at my door a pile of wood,
A rousing fire to warm my blood,
Blest sight to see!
It puts my rustic muse in mood
To sing for thee."
If he needs a simile, he takes the nearest at hand.
In a letter to his daughter he says:
" That mine is not a longer letter,
The cause is not the want of matter
Of that there's plenty, worse or better;
But like a mill
Whose stream beats back with surplus water,
The wheel stands still."
Something of the humor of Burns gleams out occasionally from the sober decorum of his verses. In an
epistle to his friend Betton, high sheriff of the county,
who had sent to him for a peck of seed corn, he says;
" Soon plantin' time will come again,
Syne may the heavens gie us rain,




ROBERT DINSMORE.                 301
An' shining heat to bless ilk plain
An' fertile hill,
An' gar the loads o' yellow grain,
Our garrets fill.
"As long as I hae food and clothing,
An' still am hale and fier and breathing,
Ye's get the corn -  and may be aething
Ye'11 do for me;
(Though God forbid)- hang me for naething
An' lose your fee."
And on receiving a copy of some verses written by a
lady, he talks in a sad way for a Presbyterian deacon.
"'Were she some Aborigine squaw,
Wha sings so sweet by nature's law,
I'd meet her in a hazle shaw,
Or some green loany,
And make her tawny phiz and'a
My welcome crony."
The practical philosophy of the stout, jovial rhymer,
was but little affected by the sour-featured asceticism
of the elder. He says:
"We'11 eat and drink, and cheerful take
Our portions for the Donor's sake,




302          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
For thus the Word of Wisdom spakeeMan can't do better;
Nor can we by our labors make
The Lord our debtor."
A quaintly characteristic correspondence in rhyme
between the Deacon and Parson McGregore, evidently
" birds o' ane feather," is still in existence.  The
minister, in acknowledging the epistle of his old friend,
commences his reply as follows:
"Did e'er a cuif tak' up a quill,
Wha ne'er did aught that he did well,
To gar the muses rant and reel,
An' flaunt and swagger,
Nae doubt ye'11 say't is that daft chiel
Old Dite McGregore!"
The reply is in the same strain, and may serve to
give the reader some idea of the old gentleman as a
religious controversialist:
"My reverend friend and kind McGregore,
Although thou ne'er was ca'd a bragger,
Thy muse I'm sure nane e'er was glegger —
Thy Scottish lays
Might gar Socinians fa' or stagger,
E'en in their ways.




ROBERT DINSMORE.              303
"When Unitarian champions dare thee,
Goliah like, and think to scare thee,.Dear Davie, fear not, they'11 ne'er waur thee;
But draw thy sling,
Weel loaded frae the gospel quarry,
An' gie't a fling."
The last time I saw him, he was chaffering in the
market-place of my native village, swapping potatoes
and onions and pumpkins, for tea, coffee, molasses,
and, if the truth be told, New England rum. Threescore years and ten, to use his own words,
"'  — Hung o'er his back,
And bent him like a muckle pack,"
yet he still stood stoutly and sturdily in his thick shoes
of cowhide, like one accustomed to tread independently
the soil of his own acres — his broad, honest face,
seamed by care and darkened by exposure to " all the
airts that blow," and his white hair flowing in patriarchal glory beneath his felt hat. A genial, jovial,
large hearted old man, simple as a child, and betraying,
neither in look nor manner, that he was accustomed to
"Feed on thoughts which voluntary move
Harmonious numbers."




304          PORTRAITS AND SKETCHES.
Peace to him! A score of modern dandies and
sentimentalists could ill supply the place of this one
honest man. In the ancient burial-ground of Windham, by the side of his " beloved Molly," and in view
of the old meeting-house, there is a mound of earth,
where, every spring, green grasses tremble in the
wind, and the warm sunshine calls out the flowers.
There, gathered like one of his own ripe sheaves, the
farmer poet sleeps with his fathers.