MONDAY

I thynke for to touche alsoThe worlde whiche neweth everie daie,So as I can, so as I maie. - GOWER.

The hye sheryfe of Notynghame,Ilym holde in your mynde. - Robin Hood Ballads .

His shoote it was but loosely shott,Yet flewe not the arrowe in vaine,

For it mett one of the sheriffe's men,And William a Trent was slaine.

Robin flood Ballads .

Gazed on the Heavens for what be missed on Earth .Britannia's Pastorals .

WHEN the first light dawned on the earth, and thebirds awoke, and the brave river was heard ripplingconfidently seaward, and the nimble early rising windrustled the oak leaves about our tent, all men, havingreinforced their bodies and their souls with sleep, andcast aside doubt and fear, were invited to unattemptedadventures .

"All courageous knichtisAgains the day dichtisThe breest-plate that bricht is,

To feght with their foue .

The stoned steed stampisThrow enrage and crampis,Syne on the land lampis ;

The night is neir gone ."

A WEEK

One of us took the boat over to the opposite shore,which was flat and accessible, a quarter of a mile dis-ta?zt, to empty it of water and wash wit the clay, \vbile6c other kindled a fire and got breal;fasl: ready . At anearly hour we were again on our way, rowing throughthe fog as before, the river already awake, and a millioncrisped waves come forth to meet the sun when he shouldshow himself . The countrymen, recruited by their dayof rest, were already stirringl, and had begun to cross theferry on the lousiness of llv, week. This ferry was as busy,is :! beaver <I ¬tnc, and all the world seemed anxious to getacross the ',\Ierriniack lliver at this particular point,waiting to get set over, - children with their two centsdone up in paper, jail-birds broke loose and constablewith warrant, travelers from dist~mt lands to distantlands, men and women to whom the 'Ierrimack Riverwas a bar . There stands a gig in the gray morning, inthe mist, the impatient traveler pacing the wet shorewith whiff in hand, and shouting through the fog afterthe regardless Charon and his retreating arl:, as if liemiglst throw that passenger overboard and returnforthwith for himself ; he will compensate him . IIeis to break iris fast at some unseen place on the oppo-site Side . It may, be Ledyrrd or the Wandering Jew .Whence, pray, slid he come out of the foggy night? andwhithor lbrough the sunny clay will he go? V6'e observeonly lii " ; tr in , .i? ; importaiA to us, forgotten by him,transiting, al! ,I<~y . 'There .~c~c two of them . 'Alayhcthey are Vi .,il and 1>ante,

But when they crossed theStyx, none were seen bound up or down the stream, thatI remember . It is only a trun.Jeehcs, a transitory voyage,

MONDAY 123

like life itself, none but the long-lived gods bound up ordown the stream . Many of these Monday men areministers, no doubt, resecking their parishes with hiredhorses, with sermons in their valises all read and gutted,the day after never with them. They cross each other'sroutes all the country over like woof and warp, makinga garment of loose texture ; vacation now for six days .They stop to pick nuts and berries, and gather apples,by the wayside at their leisure . Good religious men,with the love of men in their hearts, and the means topay their toll in their pockets . We got over this ferrychain without scraping, rowing athwart the tide of travel,- no toll for us that day .The fog dispersed, and we rowed leisurely along

through Tyngsborough, with a clear sky and a mildatmosphere, leaving the habitations of men behind,and penetrating yet farther into the territory of ancientDunstable . It was from Dunstable, then a frontierdown, that the famous Captain Lovewell, with his com-pany, marched in quest of the Indians on the 18th ofApril, 1725. IIe was the son of "an ensign in the armyof Oliver Cromwell, who came to this country, and set-tled at Dunstable, where he died at the great age of onehundred and twenty years ." In the words of the oldnursery tale, sung about a hundred years ago, -

"He and his valiant soldiers did range the woods full wide,And hardships they endured to quell the Indian's pride ."

In the shaggy pine forest of Pequawket they met the"rebel Indians," and prevailed, after a bloody fight, anda remnant returned home to enjoy the fame of theirvictory . A township called Lovewell's Town, but now,

124

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for some reason, or perhaps without reason, Pembroke,was granted them by the State.

"Of all our valiant English, there were but thirty-four,And of the rebel Indians, there were about four-score ;And sixteen of our English did safely home return,The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must mourn.

"Our worthy Capt . Lovewell among them there did die,They killed .Lieut . Robbins, and wounded good young Frye,Who was our English Chaplin ; be many Indians slew,And some of them he scalped while bullets round him flew ."

Our brave forefathers have exterminated all the In-dians, and their degenerate children no longer dwell ingarrisoned houses nor hear any war-whoop in their path .It would be well, perchance, if many an "English Chap-lin " in these days could exhibit as unquestionable tro-phies of his valor as did " good young Frye." We haveneed to be as sturdy pioneers still as Miles Standish, orChurch, or Lovewell . We are to follow on another trail,it is true, but one as convenient for ambushes . Whatif the Indians are exterminated, are not savages as grimprowling about the clearings to-day ?

"And braving many dangers and hardships in the way,They safe arrived at Dunstable the thirteenth (?) day of May."

But they (lid not all " safe arrive in Dunstable thethirteenth," or the fifteenth, or the thirtieth "day ofMay." Flearer Davis and Josiah Jones, both of Con-cord, -for our native town had seven men in this fight,-Lieutenant Farwell, of Dunstable, and Jonathan Frye,of Andover, who were all wounded, were left behind,creeping toward the settlements. "After traveling sev-

MONDAY 125

eral miles, Frye was left and lost," though a more recentpoet has assigned him company in his last hours .

"A man he was of comely form,Polished and brave, well learned and kind ;

Old Harvard's learned halls he leftFar in the wilds a grave to find .

"Ah! now his blood-red arm he lifts ;His closing lids he tries to raise ;

And speak once more before he dies,In supplication and in praise.

"IIe prays kind Heaven to grant success,Brave Lovewell's men to guide and bless,

And when they've shed their heart-blood true,To raise them all to happiness .

"Lieutenant Farwell took his hand,His arm around his neck he threw,

And said, `Brave Chaplain, I could wishThat Heaven had made me (lie for you ."

Farwell held out eleven days .

"A tradition says,"as we learn from the History of Concord, "that arrivingat a pond with Lieut . Farwell, Davis pulled off one ofhis moccasins, cut it in strings, on which he fastened ahook, caught some fish, fried and ate them . They re-freshed him, but were injurious to Farwell, who diedsoon after." Davis had a ball lodged in his body, andhis right hand shot off ; but on the whole, he seems tohave been less damaged than his companions . He cameinto Berwick after being out fourteen days . Jones alsohad a-ball lodged in his body, but he likewise got intoSaco after fourteen days, though not in the best condi-

126 A WEEK

tion imaginable . "IIe had subsisted," says an cold jour-nil, "on the spontaneous vegetables of the forest ; andcra.nberrics which he had eaten came out of wounds hehad received in his body." This was also the case withDavis . The last two reached home at length, safe if notsound, and lived many years in a crippled state to enjoytheir pension .But alas! of the crippled Indians, and their advcn-

tures in the woods,-"For as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell,Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well," -

how many balls lodged with them, how fared their cran-berries, what Bcrwick or Saco they got into, and finallywhat pension or township was granted them, there is nojournal to tell .

It is stated in the History of Dunstable that just be-fore his last march, Lovewell was warned to beware ofthe ambuscades of the enemy, but "he replied, `thathe did not care for them,' and bending down a smallelcn beside which he was standing into a bow, declared, that lie would treat the Indians in the same way.' Thiselm is still standing [in Nashua], a venerable and mag-nificent tree."

llcarrwhilc, having grassed the Horseshoe Intervalin Tvrrgshm-mrgh, where the river makes a sudden bendto the nordme,,t, -- for our reflections have anticipatedour progress soinewlrat, - we were advancing fartherinto the conntrv sind into the dav, which last proved al-most as golden .is tlrc preceding, though the slight bustleand activity of the A'londav seemed to penetrate even

MONDAY 127to this scenery . Now and then we had to muster all ourenergy to get round a point, where the river broke rip-pling over rocks, and the maples trailed their branchesin the stream, but there was generally a backwater oreddy on the side, of which we took advantage. Theriver was here about forty rods wide and fifteen feetdeep. Occasionally one ran along the shore, examin-ing the country, and visiting the nearest farmhouses,while the other followed the windings of the streamalone, to meet his companion at some distant point,and hear the report of his adventures ; how the farmerpraised the coolness of his well, and his wife offered thestranger a draught of milk, or the children quarreledfor the only transparency in the window that they mightget sight of the man at the well . For though the countryseemed so new, and no house was observed bv us, shutin between the banks that sunny clay, we did not haveto travel far to find where men inhabited, like wild bees,and had sunk wells in the loose sand and loam of theMerrimack . There dwelt the subject of the Hebrewscriptures, and the Esprit des Lois, where a thin, vapor-ous smoke curled up through the noon . All that is toldof mankind, of the inhabitants of the Upper Nile, andthe Sundcrbunds, and Timbuctoo, and the Orinoko,was experience here . Every race and class of men wasrepresented . According to Belknap, the historian ofNew Hampshire, who wrote sixty years ago, here too,perchance, dwelt "new lights" and free-thinkine, meneven then . "The people in general throughout theState," it is written, "are professors of the Christian re-ligion in some form or other . There is, hoNvevcr, a sort

A WEEK

of wise men who pretend to reject it ; but they have notyet been able to substitute a better in its place."The other voyageur, perhaps, would in the mean

while have seen a brown hawk, or a woodchuck, or amusquash creeping under the alders .We occasionally rested in the shade of a maple or a

willow, and drew forth a melon for our refreshment,while we contemplated at our leisure the lapse of theriver and of human life ; and as that current, with itsfloating twigs and leaves, so did all things pass in re-view before us, while far away in cities and marts onthis very stream, the old routine was proceeding still .There is, indeed, a tide in the affairs of men, as the poetsays, and yet as things flow they circulate, and the ebbalways balances the flow . All streams are but tributaryto tire ocean, which itself does not stream, and the shoresare unchanged, but in longer periods than man canmeasure . Go where we will, we discover infinite changein particulars only, not in generals . When I go into amuseum and see the mummies wrapped in their linenbandages, I sec that the lives of men began to need re-form as long ago as when they walked the earth . I comeout into the streets, and meet men who declare that thetime is near at hand for the redemption of the race . Butas men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable to-day . "Time drinketh up the essence of every great andnoble action which ought to be performed, and is de-layed in the execution ." So says Veeshnoo Sarma ; andwe perceive that the schemers return again and againto common sense and labor . Such is the evidence ofhistory .

MONDAY

"Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the Suns."

There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods,of more importance than all the rest, which the historiancan never know.There are many skillful apprentices, but few master

workmen . On every hand we observe a truly wise prac-tice, in education, in morals, and in the arts of life, theembodied wisdom of many an ancient philosopher . Whodoes not see that heresies have some time prevailed,that reforms have already taken place ? All this worldlywisdom might be regarded as the once unamiable heresyof some wise man. Some interests have got a footing onthe earth which we have not made sufficient allowancefor. Even they who first built these barns and clearedthe land thus, had some valor . The abrupt epochs andchasms are smoothed down in history as the inequalitiesof the plain are concealed by distance .

But unless wedo more than simply learn the trade of our time, weare but apprentices, and not yet masters of the art oflife .Now that we are casting away these melon seeds,

how can we help feeling reproach? He who eats thefruit should at least plant the seed, ay, if possible, abetter seed than that whose fruit lie has enjoyed . Seeds,there are seeds enough which need only be stirred inwith the soil where they lie, by an inspired voice or pen,to bear fruit of a divine flavor . O thou spendthrift!Defray thy debt to the world ; eat not the seed of in-stitutions, as the luxurious do, but plant it rather, whilethou devourest the pulp and tuber for thy subsistence ;

1..30 WEEK

that so, perchaircc, one variety may at last be found

worthy of preservation .There are moments when all anxiety a,nd stated toil

arc becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of na-

ture . All laborers must have their noosing, and at this

season of the (lay, we are all, more or less, Asiatics, and

give over all work and reform . While lying thus on our

oars by the side of the stream, in the heat of the day,

our boat held by an osier put through the staple in

its prow, and slicing the melons, which are a fruit of

the East, our thoughts reverted to Arabia, Persia, and

Ilindostan, the lands of contemplation and dwelling-

places of the ruminant nations . In the experience of

this noontide we could find some apology even for

the ifi",til)ct of the opium, betel, and tobacco chewers .

:Mount Saber, according to the French traveler and

naturalist Botta, is celebrated for producing the Kit-

tree, of which " the soft tops of the twigs and tender

leaves are eaten," says his reviewer . "and produce an

~Igreeable soothing excitement, restoring from fatigue,

banishing steel), and disposin,ir to the enjoyment of con-

versaticra . - 1Ve thonght that we might lead a dignifiedOriental life along this stream as well, and the maple

and alder . cvoutd be ouT KQit-trees .It is

-,rczO plcir,nrc 1o a .scs :pv ";onietimes from the

~csttc" : (1<j :- »F Ileforrners . "4'hal if these grievancesexist w So do %- .) ¬ ) a)-id I . Think you that sitting hens are

troubled witti ~~o)urli tl ;e .~e I ¬ jnr ; s)ammcr days, sitting on

and oil in the crcricc of a hav-loft, without active em-

ployment" 13y the t'aint ca-ldiw, in distant barns, I judge

that F)atm- N'atiii -c e< inlerc :,t ¬"¬ I

1111 to know how rnanv

MONDAYeggs her hens lay . The Universal Soul, as it is called,has an interest in the stacking of hay, the foddering ofcattle, and the draining of peat-meadows . Away inScythia, away in India, it makes butter and cheese .Suppose that all farms are run out, and we youths mustbuy old land and bring it to, still everywhere the re-lentless opponents of reform bear a strange resemblanceto ourselves ; or, perchance, they are a few old maidsand bachelors, who sit round the kitchen hearth andlisten to the singing of the kettle . "The oracles oftengive victory to our choice, and not to the order alone ofthe mundane periods . As, for instance, when they saythat our voluntary sorrows germinate in us as the growthof the particular life we lead." The reform which youtalk about can be undertaken any morning before rm-barring our doors . We need not call any convention .When two neighbors begin to eat corn bread, who be-fore ate wheat, then the gods smile from ear to ear, forit is very pleasant to them .

Why do you not try it ?Don't let me hinder you .There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all

the world over, living on anticipation . Wolff, travelingin the deserts of Bokhara, says, " Another party ofderveeshes came to me and observed, `The time willcome when there shall be no difference between richand poor, between high and low, when property will bein common, even wives and children."'

But forever Iask of such, `'that then .' The derveeshes in the desertsof Bokhara and the reformers in Marlboro' Chapelsing the same song . "There's a good bane coming,boys," but, asked one of the audience, in good faith,

"Can you fix the (late"" Said I, "Will you help it

along ? "The nonchalance and dolce-far-nienle air of nature

and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of

mankind . The States have leisure to laugh from Maine

to Texas at some newspaper joke, and New England

shakes at the double-entendres of Australianwhile the poor reformer cannot get a hearing .

Alen do not fail commonly for want of knowledge,

but for want of prudence to give wisdom the preference .

What we need to know in any case is very simple . It

is but too easy to establish another durable and har-

monious routine . Immediately all parts of nature con-

seiit to it . Only make something to take the place of

something, and men will behave as if it was the very

thing they wanted . They must behave, at any rate, and

will work up any material . There is always a present

and extant life, be it better or worse, which all combine

to uphold . We should be slow to mend, my friends, as

slow to require mending, " Not hurling, according to the

oracle, a transcendent foot towards piety." The lan-

guage of excitement is at best picturesque merely. You

must be calm before you can tatter oracles . What was

the excitement of the Delphic priestess compared with

the calm wisdom of Socrates, - or whoever it was that

was wise? hntliusiasm is a supernatural serenity .

"ltlen haul that a<-tion is another thin ;;"l'han what thc~ iu discoursing papers read ;

The world's affairs require in managingMore arts than those wherein you clerks proceed ."

circles,

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover

MONDAY 133

the causes of all past change in the present invariableorder of society. The greatest appreciable physicalrevolutions are the work of the light-footed air, thestealthy-paced water, and the subterranean fire . Aris-totle said, " As time never fails, and the universe is eter-nal, neither the Tanais nor the Nile can have flowedforever ." We are independent of the change we detect .The longer the lever, the less perceptible its motion .It is the slowest pulsation which is the most vital . Thehero then will know how to wait, as well as to makehaste . All good abides with him who waiteth avisely ;we shall sooner overtake the. dawn by remaining herethan by hurrying over the hills of the west . lie assuredthat every man's success is in proportion to his averageability. The meadow flowers spring and bloom wherethe waters annually deposit their slime, not where theyreach in some freshet only . A man is not his hope, norhis despair, nor yet his past deed . We know not yet whatwe have done, still less what we are doing . Wait tillevening, and other parts of our day's work will shinethan we had thought at noon, and we shall discover thereal purport of our toil . As when the farmer bas reachedthe end of the furrow and looks back, he can tell bestwhere the pressed earth shines most.

To one who habitually endeavors to contemplatethe true state of things, the political state can hardlybe said to have any existence whatever . It is unreal,incredible, and insignificant to him, and for him toendeavor to extract the truth from such lean materialis like making sugar from linen rags, when sugar-cane

134 ~fEEIi

may b( " had . Generally speaking, the political news,whether domestic or foreign, might be written to-dayfor the next ten years with sufficient accuracy . Mostrevolutions in society have not power to interest, still lessalarm us ; but tell me that our rivers are drying up, orthe genus pine dying out in the country, and I mightattend . Most events recorded in history are more re-markable than important, like eclipses of the sun andmoon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects noone takes the trouble to calculate .

But will the government never be so well adminis-tered, inquired one, that we private men shall hearnothing about it :` - The king answered : At all events,I require a prudent and able man, who is capable ofmanaging the state affairs of my kingdom . The ex-minister said : The criterion, O Sire! of a wise andcompetent man is, that he will not meddle with suchlike matters ." Alas that the ex-minister should havebeen so nearly right!In my short experience of human life, the outward

obstacles, if there were any such, have not been livingmen, but the institutions of the (lead . It is grateful tomake one's way through this latest generation as throughdewy grass . lilen are as innocent as the morning to theunsuspicious .

"And round about good morrows fly,As if day taught humanity ."

Not being

of this Shire, -"The early pilgrim blythe he hailed,That. o er the kills did stray,And many an early lansbaandinan,That be 11)(1 oil tile, wav

MONDAY 135

thieves and robbers all, nevertheless . I have not sosurely foreseen that any Cossack or Chippeway wouldcome to disturb the honest and simple commonwealth,as that some monster institution would at length (, in-brace and crush its free members in its scaly folds ; forit is not to be forgotten, that while the law holds fast thethief and murderer, it lets itself go loose . When I havenot paid the tax which the State demanded for thatprotection which I did not want, itself has robbed me;when I have asserted the liberty it presumed to declare,itself has imprisoned me. Poor creature! if it knowsno better I will not blame it . If it cannot live but by thesemeans, I can . I do not wish, it happens,to be associatedwith Massachusetts, either in holding slaves or in con-quering Mexico . I ain a little better than herself in theserespects . As for Massachusetts, that huge she, Briare us,Amus, and Colchian Dragon conjoined, set to watch theHeifer of the Constitution an(] the Ciolden Fleece, wewould not warrant our respect for her, like some com-positions, to preserve its qualities through all weathers .Thus it has happened, that not the Arch Fiend himselfhas been in my way, but these toils which tradition sayswere originally spun to obstruct him . They are cob-webs and trifling obstacles in an earnest man's path,it is true, and at length one even becomes attached tohis unswept and undusted garret . I love man -- kind,but I hate the institutions of the dead unkind . 11Ien exe-cute nothing so faithfully as the wills of tlic (lead, to thelast codicil and letter. They rule this world, and the liv-ing are but their executors . Such foundation too haveour lectures and our sermons, commonly . They are all

136 'Ehae'

Dudleian; and piety derives its origin still from thatexploit of phis <Facas, who bore his father, Anchises,on his shoulders from the ruins of Troy. Or, rather,like some Indian tribes, we bear about with us themouldering relics of our ancestors on our shoulders .If, for instance, a man asserts the value of individualliberty over the merely political commonweal, his neigh-bor still tolerates him, that is, he who is living near him,sometimes even sustains him, but never the State . Itsofficer, as a living than, may have human virtues and athought in his brain, but as the tool of an institution, ajailer or constable it tnay be, lie is not a whit superiorto his prison key c»r his staff . Herein is the tragedy :that men doing outrage to their proper natures, eventhose called wise and good, lend themselves to performthe office of inferior and brutal ones . Hence come warand slavery in ; and what else may not come in by thisopening ? But, certainly there are modes by which aman may put bread into his mouth which will not pre-

him as a companion and neighbor .judice"Now turn again, turn again, said the pinder,

For a wrong way you have gone,For you have forsaken the king's highway,And made a path over the corn ."

Undoubtedly, countless reforms are called for be-cause society is not animated, or instinct enough withlife, but in the condition of some snakes which I haveseen in early spring, with alternate portions of theirbodies torpid and flexible, so that they could wriggleneither way. All inen are partially buried in the graveof custom, and of some we see only the crown of the

MONDAY 137

head above ground . Better are the physically dead, forthey more lively rot . Even virtue is no longer such if itbe stagnant . A man's life should be constantly as freshas this river. It should be the same channel, but a newwater every instant .

"Virtues as rivers pass,But still remains that virtuous man there was ."

Most men have no inclination, no rapids, no cascades,but marshes, and alligators, and miasma instead . Weread that wben, in the expedition of Alexander, Onesi-critus was sent forward to meet certain of the Indiansect of Gymnosophists, and he had told them of thosenew philosophers of the West, Pythagoras, Socrates,and Diogenes, and their doctrines, one of them, namedDandamis, answered that " they appeared to him tohave been men of genius, but to have lived with toopassive a regard for the laws." The philosophers of theWest are liable to this rebuke still . "They say thatLieou-hia-hoei and Chao-lien did not sustain to theend their resolutions, and that they dishonored theircharacter . Their language was in harmony with reasonand justice ; while their acts were in harmony with thesentiments of men."

Chatcaubriand said : "There are two things whichgrow stronger in the breast of man, in proportion as headvances in years, - the love of country and religion .Let them be never so much forgotten in youth, theysooner or later present themselves to us arrayed in alltheir charms, and excite in the recesses of our hearts anattachment justly due to their beauty ." It may be so .But even this infirmity of noble minds marks the gradual

decay of youtliful hope and faith . It is the allowed in-fid"lily of age . There is a saying of the Wolofs, "Ilewho was born first has the greatest number of oldclothes;', consequently x11 . Chatcauln-1 .111d has moreold clothes than I have . It is connpareriivcly a faint andreflected beauty that is admired, not air essential andintrinsic one . It is because the cld are weak, feel theirmortality, and think that they have measured thestrength of man . They will not boast ; they will befrank and humble . NAIC11, let them have the few poorcomforts they can keep . humility is still a very humanvirtue . They look back on life, and so see not into thefuture . The prospect of the young is forward and un-bounded, mingling the hiture Nvitlr the present . In thedeclining day the thoughts make haste to rest in dark-rcess, and hardly look forward to the ensuu~'<; morning .The thoughts of the old prepare for night and slumber .The same hopes and prospects are not for lrnn whostands upon tyre rosv mountain-tops of life, andwho expects the setting of his earthly clay .

I must conclude that Conscience, if that beof it, was not given us for no purpose, or for a hindrance .hov;ever flattering order and expediency may look, itis bui the" repose of a lethargy, and we will choose ratherto be awake, though it be stormy, and maintain our-selves oin this earth, and in this life, as we may, withoutsigni`,i,g our death-warrant . Let us see if we cannot stayhere, wlwre I le has put us, on his own conditicms . Doesnot his law reach as far as his light? The expedientsof the nation» clash with one another : only the abso-lutely right is expedient for all.

him

the name

MONDAY 139

There are some passages in the Antigone of Soplrocles,well known to scholars, of which I am reminded in thisconnection . Antigone has resolved to sprinkle sand onthe dead body of tier brother Polynices, notwitlistand-ing the edict of King Creon condemning to death thatone who should perform this service, which the Greeksdeemed so important, for the enemy of his country ; butIsmene, who is of a less resolute and noble spirit, de-clines taking part with her sister in this work, and says,-

" 1, therefore, asking those under the earth to con-sider me, that I am compelled to do thus, will obeythose who are placed in office ; for to do extreme thingsis not wise."

Antigone .

" I would not ask you, nor would you, ifyou still wished, do it joyfully with me. Be such asseems good to you . But I will bury him . It is gloriousfor me doing this to (lie . I beloved will lie with him be-loved, having, like a criminal, done what is holy ; sincethe time is longer which it is necessary for me to pleasethose below, than those here, for there I shall alwayslie . But if it seems good to you, hold in dishonor thingswhich are honored by the gods."

Ismene . "I indeed do not hold them in dishonor ;but to act in opposition to the citizens 1 am by natureunable."Antigone being at length brought before King Creon,

he asks, -" Did you then dare to transgress these laws ." "Antigone . "For it was not Zeus who proclaimed these

to me, nor Justice who dwells with the gods below ; itwas not they who established these laws among men.

140 A WEEK

Nor did I think that your proclamations were so strong,as, being a mortal, to be able to transcend the unwrittenand immovable laws of the gods . For not somethingnow and yesterday, but forever these live, and no oneknows from what time they appeared . I was not aboutto pay the penalty of violating these to the gods, fearingthe presumption of any man. For I well knew that Ishould (lie, and why not? even if you had not pro-claimed it ."

This was concerning the burial of a dead body .

The wisest conservatism is that of the Hindoos ." Immemorial custom is transcendent law," says Menu .That is, it was the custom of the gods before men usedit . The fault of our New England custom is that it ismemorial . What is morality but immemorial custom ?Conscience is the chief of conservatives . "Performthe settled functions," says Kreeshna in the Bhagvat-Geeta ; "action is preferable to inaction . The journeyof thy mortal frame may not succeed from inaction.""A man's own calling, with all its faults, ought not to beforsaken . Every undertaking is involved in its faultsas the fire in its smoke." " The man who is acquaintedwith the whole should not drive those from their workswho are slow of comprehension, and less experiencedthan himself ." "Wherefore, O Arjoon, resolve tofight," is the advice of the god to the irresolute soldierwho fears to sla,v his best friends . It is a sublime con-servatism-, as wide as the world, and as unwearied astime ; preserving the universe with Asiatic anxietv, inthat state in which it appeared to their minds. These

MONDAY 141

philosophers dwell on the inevitability and unchange-ableness of laws, on the power of temperament and con-stitution, the three goon, or qualities, and the circum-stances, or birth and affinity . The end is an immenseconsolation ; eternal absorption in Brahma . Theirspeculations never venture beyond their own table-lands, though they are high and vast as they . Buoy-ancy, freedom, flexibility, variety, possibility, whichalso are qualities of the Unnamed, they deal not with .The undeserved reward is to be earned by an everlastingmoral drudgery ; the incalculable promise of the mor-row is, as it were, weighed . And who will say that theirconservatism has not been effectual ?

"Assuredly,"says a French translator, speaking of the antiquityand durability of the Chinese and Indian nations, andof the wisdom of their legislators, "there are some ves-tiges of the eternal laws which govern the world."

Christianity, on the other hand, is humane, prac-tical, and, in a large sense, radical . So many years andages of the gods those Eastern sages sat contemplatingBrahm, uttering in silence the mystic " Om," beingabsorbed into the essence of the Supreme Being, nevergoing out of themselves, but subsiding farther anddeeper within ; so infinitely wise, yet infinitely stag-nant ; until, at last, in that same Asia, but in the west-ern part of it, appeared a youth, wholly unforetold bythem, -- not being absorbed into Brahm, but bringingBrahm down to earth and to mankind ; in whom Brahmhad awaked from his long sleep, and exerted himself,and the day began, - a new avatar . The Brahmanhad never thought to be a brother of mankind as well

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as a child of God. Christ is the prince of Reformersand Radicals . Alany expressions in the New Testa-ment come naturally to the lips of all Protestants, andit furnishes the most pregnant and practical texts .There is no harmless dreaming, no wise speculation init, but everywhere a substratum of good sense . It neverreflects, but it repents . There is no poetry in it, we maysay, nothing regarded in the light of beauty merely, butmoral truth is its object . All mortals are convictedby its conscience .The New Testament is remarkable for its pure

morality ; the best of the Hindoo Scripture, for its pureintellectuality . The reader is nowhere raised into andsustained in a higher, purer, or rarer region of thoughtthan in the l3ha.gvat-Gecta . Warren Hastings, in hissensible letter recommending the translation of thisbook to the Chairman of the East India Company, de-clares the original to be " of a sublimity of conception,reasoning, and diction almost unequaled," and thatthe writings of the Indian philosophers "will survivewhen the I$ritish dominion in India shall have longceased to exist, and when the sources which it onceyielded of weaJtla and poNvcr sire lost to remembrance .'It is iniquestionably one of the noblest and most sacredscriptures ~vlii(h have come down to us . Books are tobe diAinguislicd by the grandeur of their topics evenmore tl:an ¬zv the manner in which they are treated,The (3r°icnt ;d philosophy approaches easily loftierthemes tlian flit !,iodern aspires to, and no wonder ifit sometimes p-attle about them . It only assigns theirdue rank respcclivcly to Action and Contemplation, or

MONDAY 14.3rather does full justice to the latter. Western philoso-phers have not conceived of the significance of Con-templation in their sense . Speaking of the spiritualdiscipline to which the Brahmans subjected themselves,and the wonderful power of abstraction to which theyattained, instances of which bad come under his no-tice, Hastings says : -"To those who have never been accustomed to the

separation of the mind from the notices of the senses,it may not be easy to conceive by what means such apower is to be attained ; since even the most studiousmen of our hemisphere will find it difficult so to re-strain their attention, but that it will wander to someobject of present sense or recollection ; and even thebuzzing of a fly will sometimes have the power todisturb it . But if we are told that there have beenmen who were successively, for ages past, in the dailyhabit of abstracted contemplation, begun in the earliestperiod of youth, and continued in many to the matu-rity of age, each adding some portion of knowledgeto the store accumulated by his predecessors ; it is notassuming too much to conclude, that as the mind evergathers strength, like the body, by exercise, so in suchan exercise it may in each have acquired the faculty towhich they aspired, and that their collective studiesmay have led them to the discovery of new tracts andcombinations of sentiment, totally different from thedoctrines with which the learned of other nations areacquainted ; doctrines which, however speculative andsubtle, still as they possess the advantage of being de-rivcd fl-cmn a source so free from cverv adventitious

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mixture, may be equally founded in truth with the mostsimple of our own .""The forsaking of works" was taught by Kreeshna

to the most ancient of men, and handed down fromage to age, "until at length, in the course of time, themighty art was lost.""In wisdom is to be found every work without ex-

ception," says Kreeshna ."Although thou Overt the greatest of all offenders,

thou shalt be able to cross the gulf of sin with thebark of wisdom.""There is not anything in this world to be compared

with wisdom for purity.""The action stands at a distance inferior to the ap-

plication of wisdom .'The wisdom of a Moonce "is confirined,when, like

the tortoise, he can draw in all his members, and re-strain them from their wonted purposes."

" Children only, and not the learned, speak of thespeculative and the practical doctrines as two. Theyare but one . For both obtain the selfsame end, andthe place which is gained by the followers of the oneis gained by the followers of the other.""The man cnjoyeth not freedom from action, from

the non-commencement of that which he hath to do ;nor loth he obtain happiness from a total inactivity .No one ever resteth a moment inactive . Every man isinvoluntarily targed to act by those principles whichare inherent in his nature . The man who restraineth hisactive facultie ~, and sitteth down with his mind atten-tive to the objects of his senses, is called one of an

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astrayed soul, and the practicar of deceit . So the manis praised, who, having subdued all his passions, per-formeth with his active faculties all the functions oflife, unconcerned about the event."

" Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event.Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of re-ward . Let not thy life be spent in inaction."

" For the man who doeth that which he hath to do,without affection, obtaineth the Supreme.""He who may behold as it were inaction in action,

and action in inaction, is wise amongst mankind . Heis a perfect performer of all duty.""Wise men call him a Pandeet, whose every under-

taking is free from the idea of desire, and whose actionsare consumed by the fire of wisdom . He abandoneththe desire of a reward of his actions ; he is always con-tented and independent ; and although he may begaged in a work, he as it were doeth nothing."

" Ile is both a Yogee and a Sannyasee who perform-eth that which he hath to do independent of the fruitthereof ; not he who liveth without the sacrificial fireand without action.""He who enjoyeth but the Amreeta which is left of

his offerings obtaineth the eternal spirit of Brahm, theSupreme."What, after all, does the practicalness of life amount

to ? The things immediate to de done are very trivial .I could postpone them all to hear this locust sing . Themost glorious fact in my experience is not anything thatI have done or may hope to do, but a transient thought,or vision, or dream, which I have had . I would give all

en-

i

ll

IIi ,IIIIill

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the wealth of the world, and all the deeds of all theheroes, for one true vision . But how can I communi-cate with the gods, who am a pencil-maker on the earth,and not be insane ?"I am the same to all mankind," says Kreeshna ;

"there is not one who is worthy of my love or hatred."This teaching is not practical in the sense in which

the New Testament is . It is not always sound sense inpractice . The Brahman never proposes courageouslyto assault evil, but patiently to starve it out . His activefaculties are paralyzed by the idea of caste, of impassa-ble limits of destiny and the tyranny of time . Kreeshna'sargument, it must be allowed, is defective . No sufficientreason is given why Arjoon should fight . Arjoon maybe convinced, but the reader is not, for his judgmentis not "formed upon the speculative doctrines of theSankhya Sastra." "Seek an asylum in wisdom alone;"but what is wisdom to a Western mind? The duty ofwhich he speaks is an arbitrary one . When was it es-tablished ? The Brahman's virtue consists in doing, notright . but arbitrary things . What is that which a man" hath to do " ? What is "action " ? What are the " set-tled functions'"? What is "a man's own religion,"which is so much better than another's ? What is "aman's own particular calling'-? What are the dutieswhich are appointed by one's birth ?

It is a defense ofthe institution of castes, of what is called the "naturalduty" of the Kshctrce, or soldier, "to attach himselfto the discipline," "not to flee from the field," and thelike . But they who are unconcerned about the conse-quences of their actions are not therefore unconcernedabout their actions,

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Behold the difference between the Oriental and theOccidental . The former has nothing to do iu this world ;the latter is full of activity . The one looks in the suntill his eyes are put out ; the other follows him prone inhis westward course . There is such a thing as caste,even in the West ; but it is comparatively faint ; it isconservatism here . It says, forsake not your calling,outrage no institution, use no violence, rend no bonds ;the State is thy parent . Its virtue or manhood is whollyfilial . There is a struggle between the Oriental andOccidental in every nation ; some who would be for-ever contemplating the sun, and some who are hasten-ing toward the sunset . The former class says to thelatter, When you have reached the sunset, you will beno nearer to the sun . To which the latter replies, Butwe so prolong the day . The former "walketh but inthat night, when all things go to rest in the night oftime. The contemplative Moonee sleepeth but in theday of time, when all things wake."To conclude these extracts, I can say, in the words

of Sanjay, "As, O mighty Prince! I recollect againand again this holy and wonderful dialogue of Kreeshnaand Arjoon, I continue more and more to rejoice ; andas I recall to my memory the more than miraculousform of Haree, my astonishment is great, and I marveland rejoice again and again! 'Wherever Kreeshna theGod of devotion may be, wherever Arjoon the mightybowman may be, there too, without doubt, are fortune,riches, victory, and good conduct . This is my firm be-lief."

I would say to the readers of Scriptures, if thel wish

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for a good book . read the Bhagva t-( ;recta, an episodeto the A-lahabharat, said to have been written byKreeslma Dwypaven YBias, -known to have beenwritten by , more than four thousand years ago,-it matters not whether three or four, or when, - trans-lated by Charles Wilkins . It deserves to be read withreverence even by Yankees, as a part of the sacredwritings of a devout people ; and the intelligent Hebrewwill rejoice to find in it a moral grandeur and sublimity

akin to those of his own Scriptures .To an American reader, who, by the advantage of

his position, can see over that strip of Atlantic coast toAsia and the Pacific, Nvho, as it were, sees the shoreslope upward over the Alps to 'lie Himmaleh Moun-tains, the comparatively recent literature of Europeoften appears partial and clannish ; and, notwithstand-ing the limited range of his own sympathies and studies,the European writer who presumes that he is speakingfor the world is perceived by him to speak only for thatrorner of it which he inhabits . One of the rarest ofEngland's scholars and critics, in his classification of

the worthies of the world, betravs the narrowness of his

Eurolx"an culture and the exclusiveness of his reading .None of her children has clone justice to the poets andphilosophers of Persia or of India . They have evenbeen 1witcr h :wwn to her merchant scholars than to

her poet wd thinker, by profession . You may look invain throw}-h English poetry for a single memorableverse inspired lw these themes . Nor is Germany tobe excepted ., thou,b her philological industry is indi-rectly serwiu,(~ the '-wise (if philosophy o-ald poetry . Even

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Goethe wanted that universality of genius which couldhave appreciated the philosophy of India, if he hadmore nearly approached it . Ills genius was more prac-tical, dwelling much more in the regions of the under-standing, and was less native to contemplation thanthe genius of those sages . It is remarkable that Homerand a few Hebrews are the most Oriental names whichmodern Europe, whose literature has taken its rise sincethe decline of the Persian, has admitted into her list ofWorthies, and perhaps the worthiest, of mankind, andthe fathers of modern thinking, - for the contempla-tions of those Indian sages have influenced, and stillinfluence, the intellectual development of mankind, -whose works even yet survive in wonderful complete-ness, are, for the most part, not recognized as ever hav-ing existed . If the lions had been the painters, it wouldhave been otherwise. In every one's youthful dreams,philosophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and withsingular truth, associated with the East, nor do afteryears discover its local habitation in the Western world .In comparison with the philosophers of the East, wemay say that modern Europe has yet given birth tonone . Beside the vast and cosmogonal philosophy ofthe Bhagvat-Geeta,, even our Shakespeare seems some-times youthfully green and practical merely . Some ofthese sublime sentences, as the Chaldacan oracles ofZoroaster, still surviving after a thousand revolutionsand translations, alone make us doubt if the poeticform and dress are not transitory, and not essential tothe most effective and enduring exprc5rion of thought .Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for

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the Western world has not yet derived from the Eastall the light which it is destined to receive thence .

It would be worthy of the age to print together thecollected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the severalnations, the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, theHebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind .The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on thelips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture inthis sense . Such a juxtaposition and comparison mighthelp to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work whichTime will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors ofthe printing-press . This would be the Bible, or Bookof Books, which let the missionaries carry to the utter-most parts of the earth .

While engaged in these reflections, thinking ourselvesthe only navigators of these waters, suddenly a canal-boat, with its sail set, glided round a point before us,like some huge river beast, and changed the scene in aninstant ; and then another and another glided into sight,and we found ourselves in the current of commerce oncemore. So we threw our rinds in the water for the fishesto nibble, and added our breath to the life of living men.Little did we think, in the distant garden in which wehad plant(,(] the seed and reared this fruit, where itwould he eaten . Our melons lay at home on the sandybottom of the lilerrimack, and our potatoes in the sunand water at the bottom of the boat looked like a fruitof the country . Soon, however, we were delivered fromthis fleet of junks, and possessed the river in solitude,once more rowing steadily upward through the noon,

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Though all the fates should prove unkind,Leave not your native land behind .The ship, becalmed, at length stands still ;The steed must rest beneath the hill ;But swiftly still our fortunes paceTo find us out in every place.

between the territories of Nashua on the one hand andHudson, once Nottingham, on the other . From timeto time we scared up a kingfisher or a summer duck,the former flying rather by vigorous impulses than bysteady and patient steering with that short rudder ofhis, sounding his rattle along the fluvial street .

Ere long another scow hove in sight, creeping downthe river ; and hailing it, we attached ourselves to itsside, and floated back in company, chatting with theboatmen, and obtaining a draught of cooler water fromtheir jug . They appeared to be green hands from faramong the hills, who had taken this means to get to theseaboard, and see the world ; and would possibly visitthe Falkland Isles, and the China seas, before theyagain saw the waters of the Merrimack, or, perchance,they would not return this way forever . They had al-ready embarked the private interests of the landsmanin the larger venture of the race, and were ready to messwith mankind, reserving only the till of a chest to them-selves . But they too were soon lost behind a point, andwe went croaking on our way alone . `'What grievancehas its root among the New Hampshire bills? weasked ; what is wanting to human life here, that thesemen should make haste to the antipodes? We prayedthat their bright anticipations might not be rudely dis-appointed .

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The vessel, though her masts be firm,Beneath her copper bears a worm ;Around the cape, across the line,Till fields of ice her course confine ;It matters not how smooth the br ;eze,How shallow or how deep the seas,Whether she bears Manilla twine,Or in her hold Madeira wine,Or China teas, or Spanish hides,In port or quarantine she rides ;Far from New England's blustering shore,New England's worm her hulk shall bore,And sink her in the Indian seas,Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas .

passed a small desert here on the cast bank, be-Tyngsborough and Hudson, which was inter-

esting and even refreshing to our eyes in the midst ofthe almost universal greenness . This sand was indeedsomewhat impressive and beautiful to us . A very oldinhabitant, who was at work in a field on the Nashuaside, told us that he remembered when corn and graingrew there, and it was a cultivated field . But at lengththe fishermen -for this was a fishing-place-pulled upthe bushes on the shore, for greater convenience in haul-ing their seines, and when the bank was thus broken,the wind began to blow up the sand from the shore, untilat length it had covered about fifteen acres several feetdeep . We saw near the river, where the sand was blownoff down to some ancient surface, the foundation of anIndian wigwam exposed, a perfect circle of burnt stones,four or five feet in diameter, mingled with fine charcoal,and the bones of small animals which had been pre-served in the sand . The surrounding sand was sprinkled

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MONDAY 153With other burnt stones on which their fires lead beenbuilt, as well as with flakes of arrowhead stone, and wefound one perfect arrowhead . In one place we noticedwhere an Indian had sat to manufacture arrowheadsout of quartz, and the sand was sprinkled with a quartof small glassmike chips about as big as a fourpence,which he had broken off in his work . Here, then, theIndians must have fished before the whites arrived .There was another similar sandy tract about half a mileabove this .

Still the noon prevailed, and we turned the prowaside to bathe, and recline ourselves under some button-woods, by a ledge of rocks, in'a retired pasture sloping tothe water's edge and skirted with pines and hazels, inthe town of Hudson . Still had India, and that old noon-tide philosophy, the better part of our thoughts .

It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet withcommon sense in very old books, as the Heetopades ofVeeshnoo Sarma ; a playful wisdom which has eyesbehind as well as before, and oversees itself. It assertstheir health and independence of the experience of latertimes . This pledge of sanity cannot be spared in a book,that it sometimes pleasantly reflect upon itself . Thestory and fabulous portion of this book winds looselyfrom sentence to sentence as so many oases in a desert,and is as indistinct as a camel's track between 1Vlourzoukand Darfour . It is a comment on the flow and freshetof modern books. The reader leaps from sentence tosentence, as from one stepping-stone to another, whilethe stream of the story rushes past unregarded . TheBhagvat-Geeta is less sententious and poetic, perhaps,

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but still more wonderfully sustained and developed .Its sanity and sublimity have impressed the minds evenof soldiers and merchants . It is the characteristic ofgreat poems that they will yield of their sense in dueproportion to the hasty and the deliberate reader. To thepractical they will be common sense, and to the wisewisdom ; as either the traveler may wet his lips, or anarmy may fill its water-casks at a full stream .One of the most attractive of those ancient books

that I have met with is the Laws of Menu. Accordingto Sir William Jones, " Vyasa, the son of Parasara, hasdecided that the Veda, with its Angas, or the six com-positions deduced from it, the revealed system of medi-cine, the Puranas or sacred histories, and the code ofMenu, were four works of supreme authority, whichought never to be shaken by arguments merely human."The last is believed by the Hindoos " to have beenpromulged in the beginning of time, by Menu, son orgrandson of Brahma," and " first of created beings ; "and Brahma is said to have "taught his laws to Menu ina hundred thousand verses, which Menu explained tothe primitive world in the very words of the book nowtranslated ." Others affirm that they have undergonesuccessive abridgments for the convenience of mortals," while the gods of the lower heaven and the band ofcelestial musicians are engaged in studying the primarycode." " :k number of glosses or comments on Menuwere composed by the Munis, or old philosophers, whosetreatises, together with that before us, constitute theDherma Sastra, in a collective sense, or Body of Law ."Culluca Bhatta was one of the more modern of these .

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Every sacred book, successively, has been accepted inthe faith that it was to be the final resting-place of thesojourning soul ; but after all, it was but a caravansarywhich supplied refreshment to the traveler, and directedhim farther on his way to Isphahan or Bagdat . ThankGod, no Hindoo tyranny prevailed at the framing ofthe world, but we are freemen of the universe, and notsentenced to any caste .

I know of no book which has come down to us withgrander pretensions than this, and it is so impersonaland sincere that it is never offensive nor ridiculous .Compare the modes in which modern literature is adver-tised with the prospectus of this book, and think what areading public it addresses, what criticism it expects . Itseems to have been uttered from some eastern summit,with a sober morning prescience in the dawn of time,and you cannot read a sentence without being elevatedas upon the table-land of the Ghauts . It has such arhythm as the winds of the desert, such a tide as theGanges, and is as superior to criticism as the HimmalehMountains . Its tone is of such unrelaxed fibre that evenat this late day, unworn by time, it wears the Englishand the Sanskrit dress indifferently ; and its fixed sen-tences keep up their distant fires still, like the stars, bywhose dissipated rays this lower world is illumined . Thewhole book by noble gestures and inclinations rendersmany words unnecessary. English sense has toiled, butHindoo wisdom never perspired . Though the sentencesopen as we read them, unexpensively, and at first almostunmeaningly, as the petals of a flower, they sometimesstartle us with that rare kind of wisdom which could

1,56 A WEEK

only have been learned from the most trivial experience ;but it conies to us as refined as the porcelain earth whichsubsides to the bottom of the ocean . They are clean anddry as fossil truths, which have been exposed to theelements for thousands of years, so impersonally andscientifically true that they are the ornament of theparlor and the cabinet . Any moral philosophy is exceed-ingly rare . This of Mcnu addresses our privacy morethan most . It is a more private and familiar, and at thesame time a more public and universal word, than isspoken in parlor or pulpit nowadays . As our domesticfowls are said to have their original in the wild pheasantof India, so our domestic thoughts have their proto-types in the thoughts of her philosophers . We are dab-bling in the very elements of our present conventionaland actual life ; as if it were the primeval conventicle,where how to cat, and to drink, and to sleep, and main-tain life with adequate dignity and sincerity, were thequestions to be decided . It is later and more intimateNvith us even titan the advice of our nearest friends . Andvet it is true for the widest horizon, and read out of doorshas relation to the dim mountain line, and is native andaboriginal there . PIost books belong to the house andstreet only, and in the fields their leaves feel very thin .They are bare and obvious, and have no halo nor hazeabout them . Nature lies far and fair behind them all .But this, as it proceeds from, so it addresses, what isdeepest and most abiding in earn . It belongs to thenoontide of tlm day, the midsum "ner of the year, andafter the snows hive melted, and the waters evaporatedin the spring, still its truth speaks freshly to our experi-

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once. It helps the sun to shine, and his rays fall on itspage to illustrate it . It spends the mornings and the even-ings, and makes such an impression on us overnightas to awaken us before dawn, and its influence lingersaround us like a fragrance late into the day. It conveysa new gloss to the meadows and the depths of the wood,and its spirit, like a more subtile ether, sweeps alongwith the prevailing winds of a country . The very locustsand crickets of a summer day are but later or earlierglosses on the Dherma Sastra of the IIindoos, a continu-ation of the sacred code . As we have said, there is anorientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthestwest is but the farthest east . While we are reading thesesentences, this fair modern world seems only a reprint ofthe Laws of Menu with the gloss of Culluca . Tried by aNew England eye, or the more practical wisdom of mod-ern times, they are the oracles of a race already in itsdotage ; but held up to the sky, which is the only impar-tial and incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with itsdepth and serenity, and I am assured that they will havea place and significance as long as there is a sky to testthere by .

Give me a sentence which no intelligence can under-stand . There must be a kind of life and palpitation to it,and under its words a kind of blood must circulate for-ever . It is wonderful that this sound should have comedown to us from so far, when the voice of man can beheard so little way, and we are not now within earshot ofany contemporary . The woodcutters have here felled anancient pine forest, and brought to light to these distanthills a fair lake in the southwest ; axed now in an instant

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it is distinctly shown to these woods as if its image hadtraveled hither from eternity . Perhaps these old stuinp;upon the knoll remember when anciently this lakegleamed in the horizon . One wonders if the bare earthitself did not experience emotion at beholding again sofair a prospect . That fair water lies there in the sun thusrevealed, so much the prouder and fairer because itsbeauty needed not to be seen . It seems yet lonely, suffi-cient to itself and superior to observation . So are theseold sentences like serene lakes in the southwest, at lengthrevealed to us, which have so long been reflecting ourown sky in their bosom .The great plain of India lies as in a cup between the

Himmaleh and the ocean on the north and south, andthe Brahmapootra and Indus on the east and west,wherein the primeval race was received . We will notdispute the story . We are pleased to read in the nat-ural history of the country, of the " pine, larch, spruce,and silver fir," which cover the southern face of theHimmaleh range ; of the "gooseberry, raspberry, straw-berry," which from an imminent temperate zone over-look the torrid plains . So did this active modern lifehave even then a foothold and lurking-place in themidst of the stateliness and contemplativeness of thoseEastern plains . In another era the " lily of the valley,cowslip, dandelion " were to work their way down intothe plain, and bloom in a level zone of their own reachinground the earth . Already has the era of the temperatezone arrived, the era of the pine and the oak, for thepalm and the banian do not supply the wants of this age .The lichens on the summits of the rocks will perchancefind their level ere long .

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As for the tenets of the Brahmans, we are not so muchconcerned to know what doctrines they held, as thatthey were held by any . We can tolerate all philosophies,Atomists, Pneumatologists, Atheists, Theists, - Plato,Aristotle, Leucippus, Democritus, Pythagoras, Zoro-aster, and Confucius . It is the attitude of these men,more than any communication which they make, thatattracts us . Between them and their commentators, it istrue, there is an endless dispute . But if it comes to this,that you compare notes, then you are all wrong . As it is,each takes us up into the serene heavens, whither thesmallest bubble rises as surely as the largest, and paintsearth and sky for us . Any sincere thought is irresistible .The very austerity of the Brahmans is tempting to thedevotional soul, as a more refined and nobler luxury .Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied seem like a morerefined pleasure . Their conception of creation is peace-ful as a dream. " When that power awakes, then has thisworld its full expansion ; but when he slumbers with atranquil spirit, then the whole system fades away." Inthe very indistinctness of their theogony a sublime truthis implied . It hardly allows the reader to rest in anysupreme first cause, but directly it hints at a supremerstill which created the last, and the Creator is still be-hind increate .

Nor will we disturb the antiquity of this Scripture,°~ From fire, from air, and from the sun," it was "inilkedout." One might as well investigate the chronology oflight and heat . Let the sun shine . Menu understood thismatter best, when he said, " Those best know the divisionsof days and nights who understand that the day of

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Brahma, which endures to the end of a thousand suchages [infinite ages, nevertheless, according to mortalrechoniug], gives rise to virtuous exertions ; and that hisnight endures as long as his day." Indeed, the Mussul-inan and Tartar dynasties are beyond all dating . Me-thinks I have lived under them myself . In every man'sbrain is the Sanskrit . The Vedas and their Angas arenot so ancient as serene contemplation . Why will we beimposed on by antiquity .!' Is the babe young ? When Ibehold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man ;it is more ancient than Nestor or the Sibyls, and bearsthe wrinkles of father Saturn himself . And do we livebut in the present .' How broad a line is that ." I sit nowon o-a stump whose rings number centuries of growth . IfI look around I see that the soil is composed of theremains of just such stumps, ancestors to this . Theearth is covered with mould. I thrust this stick manyaxons deep into its surface, and with my heel make adeeper furrow than the elements have ploughed here fora thousand years . If I listen, I hear the peep of frogswhich is older than the slime of Egypt, and the distantdrumming of a partridge on a log, as if it were the pulse-beat of the summer air . I raise my fairest and freshestflowers ii) the old mould . Wliv, what we would fain callnew is not shin deep ; the c..aath is not vet stained by it .It is not the fertile ground -,vhich we walk on, but theleaves Nvhicli flutter over our heads . The newest is butthe oldest wade visible to our senses . When we dig upthe soil from a thousand feet below the surface, we callit new, and tire plants which spring from it ; and whenour vision pierces deeper into space, and detects a

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remoter star, we call that new also . The place wherewe sit is called Hudson, - once it was Nottingham, -once -

We should read history as little critically as we con-sider the landscape, and be more interested by theatmospheric tints and various lights and shades whichthe intervening spaces create than by its groundwork andcomposition . It is the morning now turned evening andseen in the west, - the same sun, but a new light andatmosphere . Its beauty is like the sunset ; not a frescopainting on a wall, flat and bounded, but atmosphericand roving or free . In reality, history fluctuates as theface of the landscape from morning to evening . What isof moment is its hue and color. Time hides no treasures ;we want not its then, but its now . We do not complainthat the mountains in the horizon are blue and indis-tinct ; they are the more like the heavens .Of what moment are facts that can be lost, - which

need to be commemorated? The monument of deathwill outlast the memory of the dead . The Pyramids donot tell the tale which was confided to them ; the livingfact commemorates itself . Why look in the dark forlight ? Strictly speaking, the historical societies havenot recovered one fact from oblivion, but are themselves instead of the fact that is lost .

The researcheris more memorable than the researched . The crowdstood admiring the mist and the dim outlines of the treesseen through it, when one of their number advanced toexplore the phenomenon, and with fresh admiration alleyes were turned on his dimly retreating figure . It is

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astonishing with how little cooperation of the societiesthe past is remembered . Its story has indeed hadanother muse than has been assigned it . There is agood instance of the manner in which all history be-0`11111 inin Alwakidis' Arabian Chronicle : "I was informedby Ahmed Almatin ~lljorhami, who had it from 1Zephaa

Ebn Kais Al6miri, who had it from Saiph Elm d+abalah

Alchatgitarmi, who had it from Thabet Ebn Alkamah,

who said he was present at the action ." These fathersof history were not anxious to preserve, but to learn thefact ; and hence it was not forgotten . Critical acumen isexerted in vain to uncover the past ; the past cannot bepresented; we cannot know what we are not . But oneveil hangs over past, present, and future, and it is theprovince of the historian to find out, not what was, butwhat is . Where a battle has been fought, you will findnothing but the bones of men and beasts ; where a battleis being fought, there are hearts beating . We will sit on amound and muse, and not try to make these skeletonsstand on their legs again . Does Nature remember, thinkyou, that they were men, or not rather that they are

bones ?Ancient history has an air of antiquity . It should be

more modern . It is written as if the spectator should bethinking of the backside of the picture on the wall, oras if the antlior expected that the (lead would be hisreaders, and wished to detail to them their own expe-rience . 3'lcii ,ecm anxious to accomplish an orderlyretreat through the centuries, earnestly rebuilding theworks behind, as they are battered down by the en-croachments of time ; but while they loiter, they and

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their works both fall a prey to the arch enemy . - Historyhas neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the fresh-ness of the modern . It -does as if it would go to the begin-ning of things, which natural history might with reasonassume to do ; but consider the Universal History, andthen tell us, - when did burdock and plantain sprout,first ? It has been so written, for the most part, that thetimes it describes are with remarkable propriety calleddark ages . They are dark, as one has observed, becausewe are so in the dark about them. The sun rarely shinesin history, what with the dust and confusion ; and whenwe meet with any cheering fact which implies the pre-sence of this luminary, we excerpt and modernize it . Aswhen we read in the history of the Saxons that Edwin ofNorthumbria " caused stakes to be fixed in the highwayswhere he had seen a clear spring," and "brazen disheswere chained to them to refresh the weary sojourner,whose fatigues Edwin had himself experienced ." Thisis worth all Arthur's twelve battles .

"Toro' the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day ;Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay."Than fifty years of Europe better one New England ray!

Biography, too, is liable to the same objection ; itshould be autobiography . Let us not, as the Germansadvise, endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels thatwe may be somebody else to explain him . If I am not I,who will be ?But it is fit that the Past should be dark ; though

the darkness is not so much a quality of the past as oftradition . It is not a distance of time, but a distance ofrelation, which makes thus dusky its memorials . What

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is near td' the heart of this generation is fair and brightstill . Greece lies outspread fair and sunshiny in floodsof light, for there is the sun and daylight in her literatureand art . Homer does not allow us to forget that the sunshone, - nor Phidias, nor the Parthenon . Yet no erahas been wholly dark, nor will we too hastily submit tothe historian, and congratulate ourselves on a blaze oflight .

If we could pierce the obscurity of those remoteyears, we should find it light enough ; only there is notour day . Some creatures are made to see in the dark .There has always been the same amount of light in theworld . The new and missing stars, the comets andeclipses, do not affect the general illumination, for onlyour glasses appreciate them . The eyes of the oldestfossil remains, they tell us, indicate that the same lawsof light prevailed then as now. Always the laws of lightare the same, but the modes and degrees of seeing vary .The gods are partial to no era, but steadily shines theirlight in the heavens, while the eye of the beholder isturned to stone . There was but the sun and the eyefrom the first . The ages have not added a new ray to theone, nor altered a fibre of the other .

If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, themythologies . those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecksof poems, so to speak, the world's inheritance, stillreflecting some of their original splendor, like the frag-ments of clomls tinted by the rays of the departed sun;reaching into the latest summer day, and allying thishour to the morning of creation ; as the poet sings : -

"Fragments of the lofty strainFloat down the tide of ,years,

MONDAY 165As buoyant on the stormy mainA parted wreck appears," -

these are the materials and hints for a history of therise and progress of the race ; how, from the conditionof ants, it arrived at the condition of men, and arts weregradually invented . Let a thousand surmises shed some,light on this story. We will not be confined by historical,even geological periods which would allow us to doubtof a progress in human affairs . If we rise above this wis-dom for the day, we shall expect that this morning of therace, in which it has been supplied with the simplestnecessaries, with corn, and wine, and honey, and oil,and fire, and articulate speech, and agricultural andother arts, reared up by degrees from the condition ofants to men, will be succeeded by a day of equally pro-gressive splendor ; that, in the lapse of the divine periods,other divine agents and godlike men will assist to elevatethe race as much above its present condition.But we do not know much about it .

Thus did one voyageur waking dream, while his com-panion slumbered on the bank . Suddenly a boatman'shorn was heard echoing from shore to shore, to givenotice of his approach to the farmer's wife with whomhe was to take his dinner, though in that place onlymuskrats and kingfishers seemed to hear. The currentof our reflections and our slumbers being thus disturbed,we weighed anchor once more .

As we proceeded on our way in the afternoon, thewestern bank became lower, or receded farther from thechannel in some places, leaving a few trees only to fringe

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the water's edge ; while the eastern rose abruptly hereand there into wooded hills fifty or sixty feet high . Thebass (7'ilia .:1-mericaim), also called the lime or linden,which was a new tree to us, overhung the water with itsbroad and rounded leaf, interspersed with clusters ofsmall hard berries now nearly ripe, and made an agree-able shade for us sailors . The inner bark of this genusis the bast, the material of the fisherman's matting, andthe ropes and peasant's shoes of which the Russiansmake so much use, and also of nets and a coarse clothin some places . According to poets, this was oncePhilyra, one of the Oceanidcs . The ancients are said tohave used its bark for the roofs of cottages, for baskets,and for a kind of paper called Philyra . They also madebucklers of its wood, "on account of its flexibility, light-ness, and resiliency." It was once much used for carving,and is still in demand for sounding-boards of piano-fortes and panels of carriages, and for various uses forwhich toughness and flexibility are required . Basketsand cradles are made of the twigs . Its sap affords sugar,and the. honey made from its flowers is said to be pre-ferred to any other . Its leaves are in some countriesgiven to cattle, a kind of chocolate has been made of itsfruit, a medicine has been prepared from an infusion ofits flowers, and finally, the charcoal made of its wood isgreatly valued for gunpowder .The sight of this tree reminded us that we had

reached a, strange land to us . As the sailed under thiscanopy of lei)yes, we saw the sky through its chinks, and,as it were, the meaning and idea of the tree stamped ina thousand hieroglyphics on the heavens . The universe

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is so aptly fitted to our organization that the eye wandersand reposes at the same time . On every side there issomething to soothe and refresh this sense . Look up atthe tree-tops, and see how finely Nature finishes off herwork there . Sec how the pines spire without end higherand higher, and make a graceful fringe to the ea .rtli .And who shall count the finer cobwebs that soar andfloat away from their utmost post, and the myriad insectsthat dodge between them ? Leaves are of more variousforms than the alphabets of all languages put together ;of the oaks alone there are hardly two alike, and eachexpresses its own character.

In all her products, Nature only develops her simplestgerms . One would say that it was no great stretch ofinvention to create birds . The hawk which now takeshis flight over the top of the wood was at first, perchance,only a leaf which fluttered in its aisles . From rustlingleaves she came in the course of ages to the loftier flightand clear carol of the bird .Salmon Brook comes in from the west under the rail-

road, a mile and a half below the village of Nashua .We rowed up far enough into the meadows which borderit to learn its piscatorial history from a haymaker on itsbanks . He told us that the silver eel was formerly abun-dant here, and pointed to some sunken creels at itsmouth . This man's memory and imagination were fer-tile in fishermen's tales of floating isles in bottomlessponds, and of lakes mysteriously stocked with fishes,and would have kept us till nightfall to listen, but wecould not afford to loiter in this roadstead, and so stoodout to our sea again . Though we never trod in those

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meadows, but only touched their margin with ourhands, we still retain a pleasant memory of them.Salmon Brook, whose name is said to be a translation

from the Indian, was a favorite haunt of the aborigines .Here, too, the first white settlers of Nashua planted, andsome dents in the earth where their houses stood and thewrecks of ancient apple trees are still visible . About onemile up this stream stood the house of old John Love-well, who was an ensign in the army of Oliver Cromwell,and the father of " famous Captain Lovewell." He set-tled here before 1690, and died about 1754, at the ageof one hundred and twenty years . He is thought to havebeen engaged in the famous Narragansett swamp fight,which took place in 1675, before he came .here. TheIndians are said to have spared him in succeeding warson account of his kindness to them . Even in 1700 hewas so old and gray-headed that his scalp was worthnothing, since the French governor offered no bounty forsuch . I have stood in the (lent of his cellar on the bankof the brook, and talked there with one whose grandfa-ther had-whose father might have-talked with Love-well . Here also he had a mill in his old age, and kept asmall store . IIe was remembered by some who wererecently living, as a, hale old rnan who drove the boys outof his orchard with his cane . Consider the triumphs ofthe mortal rnan, and what poor trophies it would haveto show, to wit ; He cobbled shoes without glasses at ahundred, and cut a handsome swath at a hundred andfive! Lovewell's house is said to have been the firstwhich Mrs . Dustan reached on her escape from theIndians . Here, probably, the hero of Pequawket was

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born and bred . Close by may be seen the cellar andthe gravestone of Joseph Hassell, who, as is elsewhererecorded, with his wife Anna, and son Benjamin, andMary Marks, "were slain by our Indian enemies onSeptember Q, [1691], in the evening ." As Gookinobserved on a previous occasion, " The Indian rod uponthe English backs had not yet done God's errand."Salmon Brook near its mouth is still a solitary stream,meandering through woods and meadows, while thethen uninhabited mouth of the Nashua now resoundswith the din of a manufacturing town .A stream from Otternic Pond in Hudson comes in just

above Salmon Brook, on the opposite side . There wasa good view of Uncannunuc, the most conspicuousmountain in these parts, from the bank here, seen risingover the west end of the bridge above . We soon afterpassed the village of Nashua, on the river of the samename, where there is a covered bridge over the Merri-mack. The Nashua, which is one of the largest tribu-taries, flows from Wachusett Mountain, through Lan-caster, Groton, and other towns, where it has formedwell-known elm-shaded meadows, but near its mouthit is obstructed by falls and factories, and did not temptus to explore it .Far away from here, in Lancaster, with another

companion, I have crossed the broad valley of theNashua, over which we had so long looked westwardfrom the Concord hills without seeing it to the bluemountains in the horizon . So many streams, so manymeadows and woods and quiet dwellings of men hadlain concealed between us and those Delectable Moun-

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tains ; -- from yonder hill on the road to Tyngsboroughyou may get a good view of them . There where it seemeduninterrupted forest to our youthful eyes, between twouci,diboring pines in the horizon, lay the valley of theNashua, and this very stream was even then winding atits bottom, a,nd then, as now, it was lien " silently min-t;liug its waters with the Merrimack . The clouds whichfloated over its meadows and were born there, seen farin the west, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, hadadorned a thousand evening skies for its. But a,s it wereby a turf wall this valley was concealed, and in our jour-ney to those hills it was first gradually revealed to us .Summer and winter our eyes had rested on the dimoutline of the mountains, to which distance and indis-tinctness lent a grandeur not their own, so that theyserved to interpret all the allusions of poets and travelers .Standing on the Concord Cliffs, we thus spoke our mindto them : -

With frontier strength ye stand your ground,With grand content ye circle round,Tumultuous silence for all sound,Ye distant nursery of rills,Monadnock and the Peterborough Hills;-Firm argument that never stirs,Ontcirding the philosophers, -Like sonic vast fleet .Sailiug through rain and sleet,Through Mntcr's cold and summer's heat ;

Still bolding on upon your high emprise,Until `-c find a. shore amid the skies ;Not skulking close to land,With cargo contraband,

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For they who sent a venture out by yeHave set the Sun to seeTheir honesty .Ships of the line., each one,Ye westward run,Convoying clouds,Which cluster in your shrouds,Always before the gale,Under a press of sail,With weight of metal all untold, -I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here,Immeasurable depth of hold,And breadth of beam, and length of running gear.

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasureIn your novel Western leisure ;So cool your brows and freshly blue,As Time had naught for ye to do :For ye lie at your length,An unappropriated strength,Unhewn primeval timber,For knees so stiff, for masts so limber ;The stock of which new earths are made,One day to be our Western trade,Fit for the stanchions of a worldWhich through the seas of space is hurled .

While we enjoy a lingering ray,Ye still o'ertop the western day,Reposing yonder on God's croftLike solid stacks of hay ;So bold a line as never was writOn any page by human wit ;The forest glows as ifAn enemy's camp-fires shoneAlong the horizon,Or the day's funeral pyreWere lighted there ;

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Edged with silver and with gold,The clouds hang o'er in damask fold,And with such depth of amber light.The west is (light,Where still a few rays slant,That even (leaven seems extravagant .Watatic HillLies on the horizon's sillLike a child's toy left overnight,And other duds to left. and right,On the earth's edge, mountains and treesStand as they were on air graven,Or as the vessels in a havenAwait the morning breeze .fancy even

Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven ;And yonder still, in spite of history's page,Linger the golden and the silver age ;Upon the laboring galeThe news of future centuries is brought,And of new dynasties of thought,From your remotest vale.

But special I remember thee,Wachusett, who like meStandest alone without society.Thy far blue eye,A remnant of the sky,Seen through the clearing or the gorge,Or from the windows of the forge,Doth leaven all it .passes by .Nothing is trueBut stands 'tween me and you,Thou Western pioneer,Who know'st not shame nor fear,By venturous spirit drivenUnder the eaves of heaven ;And caust expand thee there,

MONDAY 173And breathe enough of air?Even beyond the WestThou migratest,Into unclouded tracts,Without a pilgrim's axe,Cleaving thy road on highWith thy well-tempered brow,And mak'st thyself a clearing in the sky.Upholding heaven, holding down earth,Thy pastime from thy birth ;Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other,May I approve myself thy worthy brother!

At length, like Rasselas and other inhabitants ofhappy valleys, we had resolved to scale the blue wallwhich bounded the western horizon, though not withoutmisgivings that thereafter no visible fairyland wouldexist for us . But it would be long to tell of our adven-tures, and we have no time this afternoon, transportingourselves in imagination up this hazy Nashua valley,to go over again that pilgrimage . We have since mademany similar excursions to the principal mountains ofNew England and New York, and even far in the wil-derness, and have passed a night on the summit of manyof them. And now, when we look again westward fromour native hills, Wachusett and Monadnock have re-treated once more among the blue and fabulous moun-tains in the horizon, though our eyes rest on the veryrocks on both of them where we have pitched our tentfor a night, and boiled our hasty-pudding amid theclouds .

As late as 1724 there was no house on the north sideof the Nashua, but only scattered wigwams and grisly

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forests between this frontier and Canada . In Septemberof that year, two men who were engaged in making tur-pentine on that side-for such were the first enterprisesin the wilderness- were taken captive and carried toCanada by a party of thirty Indians . Ten of the inhab-itants of Dunstable, going to look for them, found thehoops of their barrel cut, and the turpentine spread onthe ground . I have been told by an inhabitant of Tyngs-borough, who had the story from his ancestors, that oneof these captives, when the Indians were about to upsethis barrel of turpentine, seized a. pine knot and, flourish-ing it, swore so resolutely that he would kill the first whotouched it, that they refrained, and when at length hereturned from Canada he found it still standing . Per-haps there was more than one barrel . However this mayhave been, the scouts knew by marks on the trees, madewith coal mixed with grease, that the men were notkilled, but taken prisoners . One of the company, namedFarwell, perceiving that the turpentine had not donespreading, concluded that the Indians had been gonebut a short time, and they accordingly went in instantpursuit . Contrary to the advice of Farwell, followingdirectly on their trail up the Merrimack, they fell into anambuscade near rhornton's Ferr*v, in the present townof T?dcrrirnack, and nine were killed, only one, Farwell,escaping after a vigorous pursuit . The men of Dun-stable went out and picked up their hodics, and carriedthem all down to Dunstable and buried them . It isalmost word for word as in the Robin Hood ballad : --

"They carried these foresters into fair Nottingham,As many there did know,

MONDAY 175They digged them graves in their churchyard,And they buried them all a-row ."

Nottingham is only the other side of the river, and theywere not exactly all a-row. You may read in the church-yard at Dunstable, under the " Memento Mori," and thename of one of them, how they " departed this life," and

"This man with seven more that lies inthis grave was slew all in a day by

the Indians."

The stones of some others of the company stand aroundthe common grave with their separate inscriptions .Eight were buried here, but nine were killed, accordingto the best authorities .

"Gentle river, gentle river,Lo, thy streams are stained with gore,

Many a brave and noble captainFloats along thy willowed shore .

"All beside thy limpid waters,All beside thy sands so bright,

Indian Chiefs and Christian warriorsJoined in fierce and mortal fight ."

It is related in the History of Dunstable that on thereturn of Farwell the Indians were engaged by a freshparty, which they compelled to retreat, and pursued asfar as the Nashua, inhere they fought across the streamat its mouth . After the departure of the Indians, thefigure of an Indian's head was found carved by them ona large tree by the shore, which circumstance has givenits name to this part of the village of Nashville, - the" Indian Head." " It was observed by some judicious,"says Gookin, referring to Philip's War, "that at the

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beginning of the war the English soldiers made anothing of the Indians, and many spake words to thiseffect, that one Englishman was sufficient to chase tenIndians ; many reckoned it was no other but Veni, vidi,viet." But we may conclude that the judicious would bythis time have made a different observation .

Farwell appears to have been the only one who hadstudied his profession, and understood the business ofhunting Indians . 1-Ie lived to fight another day, for thenext year he was Lovewell's lieutenant at Pequawket,but that time, as we have related, he left his bones in thewilderness . His name still reminds us of twilight daysand forest scouts on Indian trails, with an uneasy scalp ;- an indispensable hero to New England . As the morerecent poet of Lovewell's fight has sung, halting a littlebut bravelv still, -

posterity

"Then did the crimson streams that flowedSeem like the waters of the brook,

That brightly shine, that loudly dash,Far down the cliffs of Agiochook ."

These battles sound incredible to us . I think thatwill doubt if such things ever were, -if our

bold ancestors who settled this land were not strugglingrather with the forest shadows, and not with a copper-colored race of men.

Thev were vapors, fever and agueof the unsettled woods .

Now, only a few arrowheadsare turned up by the plow .

In the Pelasgie, the Etrus-can, or the llritisli story, there is nothing so shadowyand unreal .

It is a wild and antiquated looking graveyard, over-

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grown with bushes, on the highroad, about a quarterof a mile from and overlooking the Merrimack, with adeserted mill-stream bounding it on one side, where liethe earthly remains of the ancient inhabitants of Dun-stable . We passed it three or four miles below here . Youmay read there the names of Lovewell, Farwell, andmany others whose families were distinguished in Indianwarfare. We noticed there two large masses of granitemore than a foot thick and rudely squared, lying flat onthe ground over the remains of the first pastor and hiswife .

It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere understones, -

"Strata jacent passim suo quaeque sub" lapide -

corpora, we might say, if the measure allowed . Whenthe stone is a slight one, it does not oppress the spirits ofthe traveler to meditate by it ; but these did seem a littleheathenish to us ; and so are all large monuments overmen's bodies, from the Pyramids down . A monumentshould at least be " star-y-pointing," to indicate whitherthe spirit is gone, and not prostrate, like the body it hasdeserted . There have been some nations who could donothing but construct tombs, and these are the onlytraces which they have left . They are the heathen . Butwhy these stones, so upright and emphatic, like excla-mation-points ?

What was there so remarkable thatlived? Why should the monument be so much moreenduring than the fame which it is designed to perpetu-ate, - a stone to a bone ? " Here lies," - . . Here lies ; "- why do they not sometimes write, There rises ? Is it

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a monument to the body only that is intended ? " Havingreached the term of his natural life;" - would it not betruer to say, having reached the term of his unnatural

life ? The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth . If anycharacter is given, it should be as severely true as thedecision of the three judges below, and not the partialtestimony of friends . Friends and contemporaries shouldsupply only the name and date, and leave it to posterityto write the epitaph .

Here lies an honest man,Rear-Admiral Van .

Faith, then ye haveTwo in one grave,For in his favor,Here too lies the Engraver .

Fame itself is but an epitaph ; as late, as false, as true .But they only are the true epitaphs which Old Mortalityretouches .A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse

any portion of nature by being buried in it . For themost part, the best man's spirit snakes a fearful sprite tohaunt his grave, and it is therefore much to the creditof Little John, the famous follower of Robin Hood, andreflecting favorably on his character, that his grave was"long celcbrous for the yielding of excellent whetstones."I confess tlutt I have but little love for such collectionsas tlicN" lime al the Catacombs, Pore la Chaise, INIountAuburn, and even this Dunstable graveyard . At anyrate, nothing but great antiquity can make graveyardsinteresting to in(-_ I have no friends there, It may be

MONDAY 179that I am not competent to write the poetry of the grave .The farmer who has skimmed his farm might perchanceleave his body to Nature to be plowed in, and in somemeasure restore its fertility . We should not retard butforward her economies .Soon the village of Nashua was out of sight, and the

woods were gained again, and we rowed slowly on beforesunset, looking for a solitary place in which to spend thenight . A few evening clouds began to be reflected in thewater, and the surface was dimpled only here and thereby a muskrat crossing the stream . We camped at lengthnear Penichook Brook, on the confines of what is nowNashville, by a deep ravine, under the skirts of a pinewood, where the dead pine leaves were our carpet, andtheir tawny boughs stretched overhead . But fire andsmoke soon tamed the scene ; the rocks consented tobe our walls, and the pines our roof . A woodside wasalready the fittest locality for us .The wilderness is near as well as dear to every man.

Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border ofwild wood which surrounds them, more than to thegardens of men. There is something indescribablyinspiriting and beautiful in the aspect of the forestskirting and occasionally jutting into the midst of newtowns, which, like the sand-heaps of fresh fox-burrows,have sprung up in their midst . The very uprightnessof the pines and maples asserts the ancient rectitudeand vigor of nature . Our lives need the relief of such abackground, where the pine flourishes and the jay stillscreams .We had found a safe harbor for our boat, and as the

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sun was setting carried up our furniture, and soonarranged our house upon the bank, and while the kettlesteamed at the tent-door, we chatted of distant friendsand of the sights which we were to behold, and wonderedwhich way the towns lay from us . Our cocoa was soonboiled, and supper set upon our chest, and we lengthenedout this meal, like old voyageurs, with our talk . Mean-while we spread the map on the ground, and read in theGazetteer when the first settlers came here and got atownship granted . Then, when supper was done andwe had written the journal of our voyage, we wrappedour buffaloes about us and lay down with our headspillowed on our arms, listening awhile to the distantbaying of a dog, or the murmurs of the river, or to thewind, which had not gone to rest : -

The western wind came lumbering in,Bearing a faint Pacific din,Our evening mail, swift at the callOf its Postmaster-General ;Laden with news from Californ',Whate'er transpired hath since morn,flow wags the world by brier and brakeFrom hence to Athabasca Lake ; -

or half awake and half asleep, dreaming of a star whichglimmered through our cotton roof . perhaps at mid-night one was awakened by a cricket shrilly singing onhis shoulder, or 1-'y a hunting spider in his eye, and waslulled asleep again by sortie strearrrlet purling its wayalong at the hottcnn of a wooded and rocky ravine in ourneighborhood . It, was pleasant to lie with our heads solow in the grass, and hear what a tinkling, ever-busy

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laboratory it was. A thousand little artisans beat ontheir anvils all night long .Far in the night, as we were falling asleep on the bank

of the Merrimack, we heard some tyro beating a drumincessantly, in preparation for a country muster, as welearned, and we thought of the line, -

" When the drum beat at dead of night ."

We could have assured him that his beat would beanswered, and the forces be mustered . Fear not, thoudrummer of the night ; we too will be there. And stillhe drummed on in the silence and the dark . This straysound from a far-off sphere came to our ears from timeto time, far, sweet, and significant, and we listened withsuch an unprejudiced sense as if for the first time weheard at all . No doubt he was an insignificant drummerenough, but his music afforded us a prime and leisurehour, and we felt that we were in season wholly . Thesesimple sounds related us to the stars . Ay, there was alogic in them so convincing that the combined sense ofmankind could never make me doubt their conclusions .I stop my habitual thinking, as if the plow had sud-denly run deeper in its furrow through the crust of theworld . How can I go on, who have just stepped oversuch a bottomless skylight in the bog of my life? Sud-denly old Time winked at me, - Ah, you know me, yourogue, - and news had come that IT was well . Thatancient universe is in such capital health, I think un-doubtedly it will never die . Heal yourselves, doctors ;by God I live.

Then idle Time ran gadding byAnd left me with Eternity alone;

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1 hear beyond the range of sound,t see beyond the verge of sight, --

I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that everlasting Somethingto which we are allied, at once our maker, our abode,our destiny, our very Selves : the one historic truth, themost remarkable fwt which can bccorne the distinctand uninvited subject of our thought, the actual gloryof the universe ; the only fact which a human being can-not avoid recognizing, or in some way forget or dispense(vith .

It loth expand my privaciesTo all, send leave me single in the crowd .

I have seen how the foundations of the world are laid,and I have not the least doubt that it will stand a goodwhile .

Now chiefly is my natal hour,And only now my prime of life .I will not doubt the love untold,Which not my worth nor want hath bought,Which wooed me young and wooes me old,And to this evening hath me brought .

What are ears ? what is Time ie that this particularseries of sounds called a strain of music, an invisibleand fairy troop which never brushed the dew from anymead, can be wafted down through the centuries fromHomer to tne, and he have been conversant with thatsame aerial <Lnd mysterious charm which now so tinglesmy cars i' What a fine communication from age to age,of the fairest and noblest thoughts, the aspirations ofancient cncrn, ("vcn such as were never communicated byspeech, is music" It is the flower of language, thoughtcolored and curved, fluent and flexible, its crystal form-

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tain tinged with the sun's rays, and its purling ripplesreflecting the grass and the clouds . A strain of musicreminds me of a passage of the Vedas, and I associatewith it the idea of infinite remoteness, as well as of beautyand serenity, for to the senses that is farthest from uswhich addresses the greatest depth within us . It teachesus again and again to trust the remotest and finest as thedivinest instinct, and makes a dream our only real expe-rience . We feel a sad cheer when we hear it, perchancebecause we that hear are not one with that which isheard .

Therefore a torrent of sadness deepThrough the strains of thy triumph is heard to sweep .

The sadness is ours . The Indian poet Calidas says inthe Sacontala : "Perhaps the sadness of men on seeingbeautiful forms and hearing sweet music arises fromsome faint remembrance of past joys, and the traces ofconnections in a former state of existence ." As polishingexpresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, somusic brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere . Thehero is the sole patron of music . That harmony whichexists naturally between the hero's moods and the uni-verse, the soldier would fain imitate with drum andtrumpet . When we are in health, all sounds fife anddrum for us ; we hear the notes of music in the air, orcatch its echoes dying away when we awake in the (lawn .Marching is when the pulse of the hero beats in unisonwith the pulse of Nature, and he steps to the measure ofthe universe ; then there is true courage and invinciblestrength .

Plutarch says that " Plato thinks the gods never gave

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men music, the science of melody and harmony, formere delectation or to tickle the ear ; but that the dis-cordant parts of the circulations and beauteous fabricof the soul, and that of it that roves about the body,and many times, for want of time and air, breaks forthinto many extravagances and excesses, might be sweetlyrecalled and artfully wound up to their former consentand agreement ."Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated .

It is the only assured tone . There are in it such strainsas far surpass any man's faith in the loftiness of hisdestiny . Things are to be learned which it will be worththe while to learn . Formerly I heard these

RUMORS FROM AN YOLIAN HARP

There is a vale which none hath seen,Where foot of man has never been,Such as here lives with toil and strife,An anxious and a sinful life.

There every virtue has its birth,Ere it descends upon the earth,And thither every deed returns,Which in the generous bosom burns .

There love is warm, and youth is young,And poetry is yet unsung,For Virtue still adventures there,And freely breathes her native air .

And ever, if you hearken well,Yon still may hear its vesper bell,And tread of high-souled men go by,Their thoughts conversing with the sky .

According to Jamblichus, "Pythagoras did not pro-

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cure for himself a thing of this kind through instrumentsor the voice, but employing a certain ineffable divinity,and which it is difficult to apprehend, he extended hisears and fixed his intellect in the sublime symphoniesof the world, he alone hearing and understanding, as itappears, the universal harmony and consonance of thespheres, and the stars that are moved through them, andwhich produce a fuller and more intense melody thananything effected by mortal sounds ."

Traveling on foot very early one morning due eastfrom here about twenty miles, from Caleb Harriman'stavern in Hampstead toward Haverhill, when I reachedthe railroad in Plaistow, I heard at some distance a faintmusic in the air like an IEolian harp, which I immedi-ately suspected to proceed from the cord of the telegraphvibrating in the just awakening morning wind, and ap-plying my ear to one of the posts I was convinced thatit was so . It was the telegraph harp singing its messagethrough the country, its message sent not by men, but bygods . Perchance, like the statue of Memnon, it resoundsonly in the morning, when the first rays of the sun fall onit . It was like the first lyre or shell heard on the sea-shore, - that vibrating cord high in the air over theshores of earth . So have all things their higher and theirlower uses . I heard a fairer news than the journals everprint . It told of things worthy to hear, and worthy ofthe electric fluid to carry the news of, not of the priceof cotton and flour, but it hinted at the price of the worlditself and of things which are priceless, of absolute truthand beauty .

Still the drum rolled on, and stirred our blood to fresh

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extravagance that night . The clarion sound and clang;of corselet and buckler were heard from many a hamletof the soul, ~in(] inany a knight was arming for the fightbehind the encamped stars .

"Before each vanPrick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears'fill thickest legions close ; with feats of arsnsFrom either end of heaven the welkin burns ."

Away ! away ! axvav ! away iYe have not kept your secret well,

1 will abide that other clay,Those other lands ye tell.

Has time uo leisure left for these,The acts that ye rehearse?

Is not eternity a leaseFor better deeds than verse?

'T is sweet to hear of heroes dead,To know them still alive,

But sweeter if we earn their bread,And in us they survive.

Our life should feed the springs of fameWith a perennial wave,

As ocean feeds the babbling fountsWhich find in it their grave .

Ye skies, drop gently round my breast,Awl be my corselet blue,

Ye earth, receive my lance in rest,NJ y faithful charger you ;

Ye stars, my spear-heads in the sky,NJy arrow-tips ye are ;

I see the routed focmen fly,My bright. spears fixLd are.

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Give me an angel for a foe,Fix now the place and time,

And straight to meet him I will goAbove the starry chime.

And with our clashing bucklers' clangThe heavenly spheres shall ring,

While bright the northern lights shall hangBeside our Journeying.

And if she lose her champion true,'Fell Heaven not despair,

For I will be her champion new,Her fame I will repair.

There was a high wind this night, which we after-wards learned had been still more violent elsewhere, andhad done much injury to the corn-fields far and near ;but we only heard it sigh from time to time, as if it hadno license to shake the foundations of our tent ; the pinesmurmured, the water rippled, and the tent rocked alittle, but we only laid our ears closer to the ground,while the blast swept on to alarm other men, and longbefore sunrise we were ready to pursue our voyage asusual.