The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865

V >> Various >> The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865

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They meant that for a damper!
Square it off with an eighty shell
And a fifteen-second fuse,
(With all the latest news!)--
Pretty well done, boys, pretty well!
Guess that'll be apt to tell
'Em all about where it came from,
And where it's a-going to,
What it took its name from,
And all it's a-knowing to!
See 'em scamper!

The Conestoga, the Tyler,
And the Lexington, you know,
Are in line a half a mile, or
A little less, below,--
Just this side of the Panther
(Little woody island),
They've their orders----Oh,
But, after all, how _can_ their
Wooden-heads keep silent?
Wonder 'f it don't make 'em feel bad,
Even if they ain't all _steel_-clad,
At being slighted so!

'Tisn't so bad a day,
Although it's a little cloudy,--
Or rather, as one might say,
_Smoky_, perhaps,--
A little hazy, a little dubious,
A little too sulphury to be salubrious.
D' ye mind those thunder-claps?
Do you feel now and then the least little bit
Of an incipient earthquake fit,
Accompanied with awful raps?
But give 'em gowdy, give 'em gowdy,
And it'll soon clear away!

Old Boss ain't to be balked.--
All this, you know,
Was only the way (or nearly so)
The boys talked,
And felt and thought,
(And acted, too,)
The harder they fought
And the hotter it grew.--

But there was a Hand at the reel
That nobody saw,--
Old Hickory there at every keel,
In every timber, from stem to stern,--
A _something_ in every crank and wheel,
That made 'em answer their turn;
And everywhere,
On earth and water, in fire and air,
As it were to see it all well done,
The Wraith of the murdered Law,--
Old John Brown at every gun!

But the Fort was all in a roar:
No use to talk, they had the range,--
Which wasn't strange,
Guess they'd tried it before,--
And the pounding was not soft,
But might well appall
The boldest heart.
Cool and calm,
Trumpet in hand,
Up in the cock-loft,
Where 't was the hottest of all,
Our brave old Commodore
Took his stand,
And played his part,
Humming over some old psalm!

Tut! did ye hear the hiss and scream
Of that hot steam?
It's the Essex that's struck,--
She never had any luck:
Ah, 'twas a wicked shot,
And, whether they know it or not,
It doesn't give us joy!

Thorough an open port it flew,
As with some special permit to destroy;
And first, for sport,
Struck the soul from that beautiful boy;
Then through the bulkhead lunged,
And into the boiler plunged,
Scalding the whole crew!

We know that the brave must fall,--
But that was a sight to see:
Twenty-three,
All in an instant scalded and scathed,
All at once in the white shroud swathed!
A low moan came from the deck
Of the drifting wreck,--
And that was all.

How the traitors'll boast,
As soon as they come to see her
All adrift and aghast!--
Hark! d' ye hear? d' ye hear?
D' ye hear 'em shout?
They see it already, no doubt.
We shall have to count her out,--
That white breath was her last,--
She has given up the ghost!

What does the old Boss think?
Will he shrink?
Will he waver or falter now?--
A little shadow flits over his brow,
For the sharp pang in his heart,--
Flits over--and is gone,--
And a light looms up in his old gray eye,
Whether you see it or not,
That is like a sudden dawn
In a stormy sky!

What does he _think_?
What will he _do_?--
Well! he don't say!
But I'll tell you what,
You can bet your life,
As you would your knife,
And your wife, too,
He'll do
(And put 'em up at once!)--
He'll run these boats right up to their guns,
And take that Fort, or sink!

But, oh--oh, it was hot!
So thick and fast the solid shot
Upon our iron armor played,
It kept, like thunder, a kind of time--
Devil's tattoo or gallopade--
That, like an awful, awful rhyme,
Rang in the ear;
And they sent us cheer after cheer.

But the boys had been to _school_,
And _their_ guns were not cool;
For they knew what Cause they served,
And not a man of 'em swerved!
But on, right on, they swept,
And from every grim bow-port
Their nutmegs and shell-barks leaped
Into the jaws of the Fort!
And (to give her, perhaps, a chance to breathe)
Knocked out some of her big, black teeth!
And (to raise a better crop, no doubt,
Than was ever raised there before)
Ploughed her up into awful creases,
Inside and out!--
For now they were up and doing the chore
At only four hundred yards,
And the death-dealing shreds and shards
Of our shell were tearing 'em all to pieces!

Hurrah for the brave old Flag!
To triumph see her ride!--
Ha, ha! they dodge and duck,--
The Snake's expiring!
Their gunners run and hide,--
By heaven, they've struck!
Down comes the rattlesnake rag
By the run,--
Stop the firing!
The work is done!--

Anyhow, she'll do for batter!--
You see now, Butternuts, you were plucky;
But that ain't "what's the matter,"--
Not by a long shot!
No, no,--no! I'll tell you what--
And you mustn't take it at all amiss--
I'll tell you what the _matter_ is:
'Tain't because you were born unlucky,
(Bear in mind,)
Nor that you've good eyes and we are blind,--
Nothing of the kind,--
But it's something else, if it isn't more:
The reason--pardon!--you had to cotton
Was simply this: Your _Cause_ was rotten,--
Rotten to the very core:
That's what's the matter!

But you ought to 'a' heard our water-dogs yelp!--
Just an hour and fifteen minutes!--
(Twitter away, you English linnets!)
Horizontal and perpendicular,
Fair and square, without any help,--
That is, any in particular,--
The old ferry wash-tubs of the West,
With some new-fashioned _hoops_, for a little test,
And a few old _pounders_ from--Kingdom Come,
And nothing for suds but the "Nawth'n scum,"
Made these "gen'l'men" turn as white
As a head o' hair in a single night!
Cleaned their army completely out,
(We're going to give _that_ another wipe!)
On the double-quick, by the shortest route,--
Wrung their stronghold from their gripe,--
Brought their garrison right to taw,
And made 'em get down to the "higher law"!

So that when Grant and his boys came up,
(There's places enough for a man to die!)
Swearing that we had "spoiled" their "sport,"
With a quiet twinkle in his eye,
Old Boss asked 'em to come in and sup,
And set 'em to _house-keeping_ in the Fort!--
But all the old fellow could say or do,
They'd still keep a-going it: "Bully for _you_!"

"Bully" for Grant and for Foote!--
E'en if the voice must tremble,--
And "bully" for all who helped 'em to do 't!
Bully for Porter and Stemble!
For Paulding and for Walke,--
For Phelps, for Gwin, and for Shirk!--
But what's the use to talk?
They were all of 'em up to the work!
Bully for each brave tub
That bore the Union Blue!
And for every mother's son
Of every gallant crew,
Whatever his color or name,
Who, when it came to the rub,
Shall be found to have been _game_!

* * * * *

Such was the Rhyme of the Master's Mate,
Just as they found it in the locker,
With this at the foot:--
"It's getting late,
And I hear a pretty loud Knock at the knocker!
Captain, if I should chance to fall,
Try to send me home. Good bye!" That's all,--
Excepting the date, the name, and rank:--
"Feb. 12th, '62, ---- ----,
Master's Mate."

All next day a great black Cloud
Hung over the land from coast to coast;
And the next, the Knocking was "pretty loud,"--
With a sudden Eclipse, as it were, of the sun,--
And the earth, all day, quaked--"Donelson!"
But the next was the deadliest day of all,
And the Master's Mate was not at Call!
Yet nobody seemed to wonder why,--
There was something, perhaps, the Master knew
Far better than we, for his Mate to do,--
And the Day went down with a bloody sky!

But when the long, long Night was past,
And our Eagle, sweeping the traitor's crag,
Circled to victory up the dome,
The great Reveille was heard at last!--
They wrapped the Mate in his country's flag,
And sent him in glory home!

THE VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE IN LIBRARIES.

A visible library is a goodly sight. We do not underrate the external
value of books, when we say it is the invisible which forms their chief
charm. Sometimes rather too much is said about "tall copies," and
"large-paper copies," and "first editions," the binding, paper, type,
and all the rest of the outside attraction, or the fancy price, which go
to make up the collector's trade. The books themselves feel a little
degraded, when this sort of conversation is carried on in their
presence: some of them know well enough that occasionally they fall into
hands which think more "of the coat than of the man who is under it." We
must, however, be honest enough to confess that we are ourself a
bibliomaniac, and few possessions are more valued than an old
manuscript, written on vellum some five hundred years ago, of which we
cannot read one word. Nor do we prize less the modern extreme of
external attraction,--volumes exquisitely printed and adorned, bound by
Riviere, in full tree-marbled calf, with delicate tooling on the back,
which looks as if the frost-work from the window-pane on a cold January
morning had been transmuted into gold, and laid on the leather. Ah,
these are sights fit for the gods!

Nevertheless, we come back to our starting-point, that what is unseen
forms the real value of the library. The type, the paper, the binding,
the age, are all visible; but the soul that conceived it, the mind that
arranged it, the hand that wrote it, the associations which cling to it,
are the invisible links in a long chain of thought, effort, and history,
which make the book what it is.

In wandering through the great libraries of Europe, how often has this
truth been impressed upon the mind!--such a library as that in the old
city of Nuremberg, housed in what was once a monastery, and looking so
ancient, quaint, and black-lettered, visibly and invisibly, that, if the
old monk in the legend who slipped over a thousand years while the
little bird sang to him in the wood, and was thereby taught, what he
could not understand in the written Word, that a thousand years in
God's sight are but as a day,--if that old monk had walked out of the
Nuremberg monastery and now walked back again, he might almost take up
the selfsame manuscript he had laid down a thousand years ago.

What invisible heads have ached, and hands become weary, over those
vellum volumes, with their bright initial letters! What hearts have
throbbed over the early printed book! How triumphantly was the first
copy, now worm-eaten and forgotten, contemplated by the author! How was
that invisible world which surrounded him to be stirred by that new
book!

We remember looking into one of the cell-like alcoves arranged for
students in a college library at Oxford, and watching a fellow of the
college (a type of scholars, grown old among books, rarely found in our
busy land) crooning over a strange black-letter folio, and laughing to
himself with a sort of invisible chuckle. The unseen in that volume was
revealed to us through that laugh of the old bookworm, and quite unseen
we partook of his amusement. Another alcove was vacant; a crabbed
manuscript, just laid down by the writer, was on the desk. He was
invisible; but the watchful guardian at the head of the room saw us
peering in, and warned us with a loud voice not to enter. Safely might
we have been permitted to do so, for we could hardly have deciphered at
a glance all the wisdom that lurked in the open page; yet that hidden
meaning, invisible to us, was of real value to the unseen writer.

There are many incidents connected with the visible and invisible of
libraries existing in the great houses of England, which could point a
moral in sketches of this subject. One, concerning a pamphlet found at
Woburn Abbey, has a peculiar interest.

Lord William Russell, eldest son of Francis, fourth Earl of Bedford,
after completing his education at Oxford, and travelling abroad for two
years, returned home in the winter of 1634. Young, handsome,
accomplished, and the eldest son of the House of Russell, the
fashionable world of London marked him as a prize in the matrimonial
speculations of the times, and was quite in a flutter to know which of
the reigning beauties, would captivate the young Lord Russell. Lady
Elizabeth Cecil, Lady Dorothy Sidney, Lady Anne Carr were the rival
belles upon whom the eyes of the world were fixed. It was with no small
consternation that the Earl of Bedford soon found that the affections of
his son had been attracted by Lady Anne Carr, the daughter of the Earl
and Countess of Somerset, more widely known as Robert Carr and Lady
Essex. The Earl of Bedford had taken a prominent part in the Countess's
trial, and participated in the general abhorrence of her character. In
vain his son pleaded the innocence of the daughter, who, early separated
from her parents, knew nothing of their history or their crimes. The
Earl of Bedford shrunk with a feeling of all but insurmountable aversion
to such an alliance; and not until the king interceded for the youthful
lovers, did the father yield a reluctant consent, and their marriage was
celebrated. The undisturbed happiness and harmony in which the parties
lived reconciled the Earl to the connection; he became much attached to
his beautiful daughter-in-law; and in the sweetness and domestic purity
of her character he could sometimes forget her parents. Lady Anne's life
passed quietly in the discharge of the duties of a wife and mother, and
of those which devolved upon her when her husband became fifth Earl of
Bedford in 1641. In 1683, their eldest son, Lord William Russell, died
on the scaffold.

"There is a life in the principles of freedom," says the historian of
the House of Russell, "which the axe of the executioner does not, for it
cannot, touch." This great thought must have strengthened the souls of
the parents under so terrible a trial. The mother's health, however,
sunk under the blow, which, in the sympathy of her celebrated
daughter-in-law, the heroic Lady Rachel Russell, she endeavored to
sustain. One day, seeking, perhaps, some book to cheer her thoughts,
Lady Bedford entered the library, and in an anteroom seldom visited
chanced to take a pamphlet from the shelves. She opened its pages, and
read there, for the first time, the record of her mother's guilt. The
visible in that page rent aside the invisible veil which those who loved
Lady Bedford had silently woven over her whole life, as a shield from a
terrible truth. She was found by her attendants senseless, with the
fatal book open in her hand. The revelations of the past, the sorrows of
the present, were too much for her to bear, and she died. Lady Rachel
Russell, writing from Woburn Abbey at the time, states her conviction
that Lady Bedford's reason would not have sustained the shock received
from the contents of the pamphlet, even had her physical powers rallied.

Turning aside one moment from our subject, we stand in awe before the
striking contrast presented by the characters of two women, each so
closely linked with Lady Bedford's life,--the one who heard her first
breath, and the other who received her last sigh. If Lady Somerset
causes us to shrink with horror from the depth of depravity of which
woman's nature is capable, let us thank God that in Lady Rachel Russell
we have a witness of the purity, self-sacrifice, and holiness a true
woman's soul can attain.

In the library at Wilton House, the seat of the Sidneys, we were shown a
lock of Queen Elizabeth's hair, hidden for more than a hundred years in
one of the books. A day came when some member of the family took down an
old volume to see what treasures of wisdom lurked therein. "She builded
better than she knew," for between the leaves lay folded a paper which
contained a faded lock of the once proud Queen Bess. How it came there,
and by whose hand it was placed in the book, is one of the invisible
things of the library, but the writing within the paper authenticated
the relic beyond doubt; and it is now shown as one of the visible
treasures of the library of Wilton House.

Magdalen College, Cambridge, contains the Pepysian Library,--placed
there by the will of Pepys, under stringent conditions, in default of
whose fulfilment the bequest falls to Trinity. One of the fellows of
Magdalen is always obliged to mount guard over visitors to the library.
Such an escort being provided, we ascended the stairs, and found
ourselves in the presence of the bookcases which once adorned Pepys's
house in London, containing the "three thousand bookes" of which he was
so proud. The bookcases are handsome, with small mirrors let into them,
in which, doubtless, Mrs. Pepys often surveyed the effect of those
"newegownes" which pleased her husband's vanity so well, although he
rather reluctantly paid the cost. There, too, is the original manuscript
of that entertaining Diary, wherein Pepys daguerrotyped the age in which
he lived, and himself with all his sense and nonsense. That Diary would
have remained one of the invisible treasures of libraries, for it was
written in a cipher of his own invention, but, by a very curious chance,
the key to that cipher was unintentionally betrayed through comparison
with another paper, and the journal was brought to light, and many
things made visible which the writer dreamed not of confiding to future
ages. Pepys was an indefatigable, and, we cannot but half suspect, an
unscrupulous collector. Volumes of autographs, great scrap-books filled
with prints, tickets, invitations, ballads, let us into the visible and
invisible of the reign of Charles II. A manuscript music-book, elegantly
bound, and labelled, "Songs altered to suit my Voice," carried us back
to the days when, after going to the play in the afternoon, Pepys and
some of his companions "came back to my house and had musique."

Pepys certainly never meant to be one of the invisible things in his own
library, for every book contains an engraving from his own portrait.
Should he ever come back to look after the possessions he so much
valued, he can surely be at no loss to find the likeness of the form he
once wore. If a spirit can retain any human vanity and self-importance,
his must certainly be unpleasantly surprised that the great collection
looks small in these days, and attracts but little attention. To
antiquaries and lovers of the odd and curious it must ever be valuable;
but the obligation of having a fellow of Magdalen at one's elbow much
interferes with that quiet, cozy "mousing" so dear to the soul of a
bibliomaniac. We heartily wished that we could have made an appointment
with the shade of old Pepys, and, returning to the library in the
stillness of midnight, have found him ready to show off his collections.
That would have been, indeed, the visible and the invisible of the
Pepysian Library. The Cambridge men of to-day are too busy about their
own affairs to look much into Pepys's collections, which remain quietly
ensconced under the guardianship of Old Magdalen, one of the visible
links between the seen and unseen in libraries.

Nestled quietly in an old Elizabethan house, among the great trees at
Wotton, is the library of John Evelyn. Belonging to the same age as that
of Pepys, but collected by a man of widely different tastes and
character, there is much outwardly to charm as well as to elevate the
mind in the influences shed around it. Here are tall copies and folios
of grave works, classic and historical, the solid literary food of a man
who kept his soul pure amid a corrupt age, books as harmonious with the
reflective mind of Evelyn as were the grand old woods of Wotton with the
refined tastes of the author of "Sylva." Here is preserved the original
manuscript of Evelyn's Journal, the paper yellow with the mellow tints
of two hundred autumns, yet the thought as fresh as if written
yesterday. Near the manuscript is seen the prayer-book which Charles I.
held in his hand when he mounted the scaffold at Whitehall. There is
much of the visible and invisible in that quaint old library at Wotton.

The internal treasures of Christian faith opened a wide field for the
outward decoration of religious books. "The Hours" (meaning devotional
hours) of kings and queens are magnificent specimens of chirography,
showing also the skill of artists in the earliest centuries. The art of
preparing these volumes was divided into two branches: that of the
_Miniatori_, or illuminators, who furnished the paintings, the borders,
and arabesques, and also laid on the gold; and that of the _Miniatori
calligrafi_, who wrote the whole of the book, and drew the initial
letters of blue and red with their fanciful ornaments. Many of the great
libraries of Europe contain these splendid manuscripts, and although but
one page is open to the passing visitor, which he sees "through a glass
darkly," yet that page is written over and illuminated with associations
and memories. Could a glance reveal thoughts which have looked out of
eyes bending over these pages, when they were held in the hand of their
first owner, what messages from the invisible would be received! Some of
these rare and regal possessions have gone a little astray, and wandered
about in the wilderness of the world, as is confirmed by an anecdote we
recently received from good authority. A magnificent volume, illustrated
by views of French chateaux of the Middle Ages, presented to a princess
of the House of Bourbon, was known to have existed. This manuscript had
disappeared, and for more than a hundred years it could not be traced.
The Duc d'Aumale, son of Louis Philippe, while in Genoa, was informed
(by a person who called upon him for that purpose) that there was for
sale in that city a valuable illuminated manuscript, and, as the Duke
was known to be a collector of rare books, it would be shown to him. He
accordingly followed his informant to an obscure part of the city, and
into an old house, where the manuscript was produced. What was his
astonishment, when he beheld before him the lost Bourbon manuscript, so
long sought for in vain! He immediately became its purchaser; and
whatever secret history belongs to the volume, connected with the time
when it was invisible, it is now one of the most treasured realities in
the magnificent library at Orleans House.

In the illuminated pages of many of these old manuscripts there lurks
much more, doubtless, than meets the eye. Thus, that famous poem of the
Middle Ages, the "Romance of the Rose," has passed for a mere fanciful
allegory, or love-story. Splendidly illuminated copies of this Romance
are well known. The British Museum possesses one, which Dibdin calls
"the cream of the Harleian Collection": it is in folio, and replete with
embellishments. He also mentions another copy, at that time belonging to
Mr. North, the frontispiece of which represents Francis I. surrounded by
his courtiers, receiving a copy from the author. Only the visible of the
illuminated volume was probably opened to the eyes of Francis, or even
of Dibdin. A later student pronounces the Romance to be a complete
specimen of Hermetic Philosophy, concealing great truths under its
allegory,--the Rose being the symbol of philosophic gold.

Such is the view taken of this Romance by our distinguished
fellow-countryman, Major-General Hitchcock, who found time, in the
interval between two wars, to collect and study three hundred volumes of
Hermetic Philosophy, coming forth therefrom as a champion in defence of
a much misunderstood class. This ingenious work, entitled "Alchemy and
the Alchemists," published in 1857, was written to prove that the
alchemists were not foolish seekers for sordid gold, nor vain believers
in the elixir of life, but philosophers of deep thought and high aims,
who, in days when a man dared not say his soul was his own, veiled in
mystic language, perfectly understood by each other, theological and
philosophical truths, theories, and discoveries, which would have
brought them to the stake or the rack, had they been produced openly.
"Man was the subject of alchemy, and the object of the art was the
perfection, or at least the improvement, of man." These were the _real_
Hermetic Philosophers. After them came men who, not knowing the meaning
of the symbolic language which concealed the spiritual truths, took the
written word in a literal sense, and went to work with crucibles and
retorts, seeking the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, not
knowing, indeed, the Scripture, that "the letter killeth, but the spirit
maketh alive."

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