The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864

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The ermine is an animal of such spotless purity it will tolerate no
stain on its fur, and by this symbolic name we designate the judge, who
should be stainless, unbiassed, and incorruptible.

The highest art of the florist is put forth to procure change of color.
Self tulips are valueless beside sports, and to induce this breaking
various methods are put in requisition, as there is no sporting of
colors from natural causes among flowers. A green rose, a blue verbena,
are hailed as triumphs, and secure the propagator an enviable name
either as an amateur or professional florist.

Perhaps the most curious thing connected with color is that some stars
give colored light; and in one instance, in a northern constellation, a
_double_ star gives forth blue rays from one and red from the other. How
our fancy might be permitted to soar away beyond the stars themselves in
wondering fancies as to the meaning of this--truth and love united in a
star, not as a compound color, but each retaining its own hue of blue
and red! What a happy abode of truthful, loving spirits we can imagine
this the dwelling place! And may there not here be a symbol of such a
union?

The art of color is yet in its infancy, and although Tyrian purple was
magnificent and famous, and the highly prized Turkey red unfading, yet
modern chemical discovery has opened a wide variety of hues unknown to
the ancients.

Colors obtained from vegetable substances have been the most numerous,
those from the animal kingdom the most brilliant, and from the mineral
the greatest variety from the same substance. A buff, a blue, and a
black, and again a red, a blue, a purple, and a violet, are produced
from the same metal.

The recent discovery of aniline colors, to be extracted from coal
refuse, has given art new, beautiful, and durable shades of red, blue,
purple, and violet. We know but by description what the lauded Tyrian
purple was, for monopoly caused the art to be lost; but for softness,
richness, and beauty of purple we have none to approach that extracted
from this refuse. Nature means nothing to be lost, and waste arises from
ignorance. She is a royal mistress when royally represented.

To the mineral kingdom we are indebted for most of the mordants which
fix the hues derived from other sources. That in union is strength is
taught by the most common art.

Much is yet to be learned in regard to color. Men have understood its
correspondence sufficiently to associate red and cruelty as its lowest
expression, so that the men of the bloody French Revolution received an
undying name from the red cap of the Carmagnole costume--and yellow with
shame, for a ruff of this color on the neck of a woman hanged drove this
fashion out of England--and white with purity, as the ermine of the
judge shows; although, thousands of years ago, the men of Tartary and
Thibet prized the wool of the Crimean sheep stained of a peculiar gray
by its feeding upon the _centarina myriocephala_, and although modern
gardeners deepen the hues of plants by feeding them judiciously, yet few
attach the requisite importance to color as history. Writers for the
most part pass silently by this great aid to a correct understanding of
past events. Color in costume is no less essential to a true description
or representation than form; in some instances it is more so.

The _color_ of the silken sails of Cleopatra's vessel, as she sailed
down the Cydnus, proclaimed her royalty as no other could have done.

A fairy could not be depicted without her green robe, or young Aurora
unless tinted with the hues of morn.

Here lies the great fault of all sun pictures. The distinctive hues of
complexion, hair, and eyes are not preserved. The flaxen, the auburn,
the brown hair alike take black. Light eyes and dark are
undistinguishable; the clearest complexion becomes muddy and full of
lines if the color of the dress is such as to throw the shade upon it.

A mixture of colors in dress in which either two of the primitives
predominate, is a token of barbarism, even if occurring among so-called
enlightened people.

Color is an exponent of the degree of civilization.

RED finds its fitness among savage races, and with undeveloped
natures.

YELLOW indicates transition from barbarism to civilization.

GREEN, advanced civilization.

PURPLE, monarchical enlightenment, which is will individualized
in but one.

Modification and harmony are only with people free to follow taste and
select for themselves. Among the most enlightened nations these five
states are all found. The highest type, shown by culture, discovery,
art, literature, science, equity, and government, exists with but a few.
The mass are civilized, and continue 'the mass.' It is the natural
tendency of enlightenment to individualize. In proportion to genius,
culture, and _perseverance_, is one set apart, becomes a leader of the
masses, and should be a teacher of the harmony and correspondence of
color, both by precept and example.

Strong contrasts are admissible in what is designed to illustrate
particular things, and especially if to be viewed from a distance. To me
no sight is ever more beautiful than the American flag, red, white, and
blue, as the breeze opens every fold and waves it abroad for the gaze of
men; the blue signifying a league and covenant against oppression, to be
maintained in truth, by valor and purity; the very color proclaiming to
despots and tyrannized man that in one land on the broad face of the
earth liberty of conscience prevails, and freedom of speech exists. We
shall not want to change it when this war is over. It is the symbol of
an idea which has never yet found its full utterance. When Liberty and
Union become one and indivisible, it will be the harmonious exponent of
those grand ideas rooted, budded, blossomed, and bearing fruit
forevermore.

BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS.

Oh, how our pulses leaped and thrilled, when, at the dead of night,
We saw our legions mustering, and marching forth to fight!
Line after line comes surging on with martial pomp and pride,
And all the pageantries that gild the battle's crimson tide.
A forest of bright bayonets, like stars at midnight, gleam;
A hundred glittering standards flash above the silver stream.
We plunged into the Wilderness, and morning's early dawn
Disclosed our gallant army in line of battle drawn.
An early zephyr fresh and sweet breathed through the forest shade;
A thousand happy warblers, too, a pleasant music made;
And modest blossoms bathed in dew the morning light revealed:
Oh, who could deem those pleasant shades a savage foe concealed?
With lagging pace the morning hours dragged heavily away,
And yet we wait the coming strife, in battle's stern array.
A solemn stillness reigns around--but hark! a savage yell,
As if ten thousand angry fiends had burst the gates of hell,
Now thrills upon our startled ears. By heaven! the traitors come!
We see their gleaming banners, we hear the throbbing drum.
In solid ranks, their countless hordes from the dense woods emerge,
And roll upon our serried lines like ocean's angry surge.
Our ranks are silent--on each face the light of battle glows:
'Ready!' At once our polished tubes are levelled on our foes.
Now leaps a livid lightning up--from rank to rank it flies--
A fearful diapason rends the arches of the skies.
The wooded hills seem reeling before that fierce recoil;
With fire and smoke the valleys like Etna's craters boil:
From red volcanoes bursting, hissing, hurtling in the sky,
A thousand death-winged messengers like fiery meteors fly:
Within that seething vortex their shattered cohorts reel.
'Fix bayonets!' At once our lines bristle with burnished steel.
'Charge!' And our gallant regiments burst through the _feu d'enfer_.
Before their furious onset the rebel hosts give way;
And, surging backward, hide again within the forest's shade,
Whose mazes dark and intricate our charging columns stayed.

Now sinks the fiery orb of day, half hidden from our sight
Amid the sulphurous clouds of war dyed red in lurid light;
And soon the smoking Wilderness with gloom and darkness fills;
The dense, damp foliage on the sod a bloody dew distils.
Sleepless we rest upon our arms. Dim lights flit through the shade:
We hear the groans of dying men, the rattle of the spade.
And when the morning dawns at last, resounding from afar
We hear the crash of musketry, the rising din of war.
O comrades, comrades, rally round, close up your ranks again;
Weep not our brethren fallen upon the crimson plain;
For unborn ages shall their tombs with freshest laurels twine;
Their names in characters of light on history's page shall shine:
We all must die; but few may win a deathless prize of life--
Close up your ranks--again the foe renews the bloody strife.
Two days we struggled fiercely against our stubborn foes--
Two days from out the Wilderness the din of conflict rose.
But when the third aurora bathed the eastern sky in gold,
And to our soldiers' anxious gaze the field of death unrolled,
Lo! all was silent in our front. The rebel hosts had fled,
Abandoning in hasty flight their wounded and their dead.

Come, friends of freedom, gather round, loud shouts of triumph give:
The field of blood is won at last--let the republic live!
Our country, O our country, our hearts throb wild and high;
Your cause has triumphed. God be praised! Freedom shall never die.
Our eagle proudly soars to-day, his talons bathed in gore,
For treason's hydra head is crushed--its reign of terror o'er.
Wake, wake your shouts of triumph all through our mighty land,
From California's golden hills to proud Potomac's strand.
Atlantic's waves exulting Pacific's billows call,
And great Niagara's cataracts in louder thunders fall.
We've stayed the tempest black as night that on our country lowers,
And backward dashed its waves of blood. The victory is ours!

A light shines from the Wilderness--far up time's pathway streams--
Through death, and blood, and agony, on Calvary's cross it gleams;
It lights with radiance divine Mount Vernon's humble tomb,
And sparkles on Harmodius' sword bright flashing through the gloom.
Ho! slaves of yesterday, arise, now will your chains be riven.
Ho! tyrants, tremble, for behold a day of vengeance given.
Gaze on our banners stained with blood--think of your brethren slain;
Say, has not freedom, crushed to earth, sprung forth to life again?
Freedom, high freedom, friend of man, sheath not thy crimson steel;
Still let thy cannon thunder loud, still let thy trumpet peal;
Stay not the justice of thy wrath, stay not thy vengeful hand,
Till slavery and treason have been blotted from our land.

TARDY TRUTHS.

Under the heading of 'Tardy Truths' _The New Nation_, of May 7th,
republished a compendium of matter some time back given to the world by
M. Emile de Girardin, in his paper _La Presse_, and in pamphlet form.
This matter purports to have been written by a so-called _ex-commandant_
in the late Polish insurrection, a certain M. Fouquet, of Marseilles.

Poland has no reason to fear truth. On the contrary, the difficulty has
been to find means to set it forth, avenues to the public intelligence
and sense of justice, whereby those might be reached who forget the
Latin saying: _Audi et alteram partem_. The Poles are willing to hear
reproaches, if such as may be profited by, or if the self-constituted
judges be conscientious and unprejudiced.

But, may we not ask why it is that many of these _so-called_ truths,
professedly founded upon personal acquaintance with Polish localities,
men, and institutions, spring from sources in many respects similar to
that of the recent publication in _La Presse_, from individuals who
never were in Poland beyond a few hours spent in Warsaw--who have seen
nothing of the country, except as passing in a passenger car from Kracow
to Mohilew, a distance of about seven hundred miles, traversed in about
twenty-four hours--who never understood one word of Polish, of Rossian,
or of any of the cognate tongues--who have never conversed freely with
the inhabitants--who may have been entertained during a few hours by
Government employes or by cautious and distrustful patriots--who were in
a hurry to see St. Petersburg and its _elephant_, and who learned Polish
history in the Kremlin, in the saloons of some former prince from the
Altay or the Caucasus, or, at best, in the work of M. Koydanoff?

_La Presse_, in Paris, undertook the charge of saying things which her
franker sisters, _Le Nord_ and _La Nation_, the avowed organs of Rossian
czarism, did not venture to propound. M. de Girardin, whose paper has,
since a certain period, taken a liberalistic, even socialistic,
infection, is a living example of sundry anomalous eccentricities, such
as Alcibiades, Gracchus, Mirabeau, etc., who speak most liberally, and
act in a contrary manner. He seems to have been adopted by Rossian
diplomatists, and those sanguine of Rossian _destiny_, as a most
convenient defender of czarish ambition--the more so that they found in
him a revealer of things never thought of by the czar; as for instance,
liberality and even democracy in Great Rossia, on the plains of Okka and
Petschora.

We might compare M. Fouquet's account of Poland with Neumann's account
of Kosciusko, or Freneau's of Washington, but will content ourselves
with referring the reader to better European sources of knowledge, as
the _Breslau Zeitung_, _Ost Deutsche Zeitung_, _Czas_, _Wiek_, _La
Pologne_, etc.

Indeed, it would not be worth our while to pay any attention to M.
Fouquet's allegations, had not the Paris letter of April 4th appeared in
the above-mentioned paper, and were it not likely to mislead many
ignorant of the facts.

The writer tells us that he has 'experienced a great temptation to tell
what he has seen,' and to 'expose the result of experience acquired at
his own cost, with all attendant risk and danger.' Probably we do not
understand the fear of the author of 'Tardy Truths,' and wish to give no
extended explanation to his conclusion: 'A rare opportunity occurs at
_present_, and he profits by it.' We have been taught that we must
always have courage to speak the truth. Surely no great amount of that
noble quality is required to make accusations in a paper far from the
scene of action, and pronounce a verdict where there can be no adequate
defence, no judges, only the advantage of the fashion of the day, and
the craving for problematical benefits and friendship, to which we must
apply Moore's comparison:

'Like Dead Sea fruits, that tempt the eye,
But turn to ashes on the lips.'

Let us never be deceived: a free nation in the embrace of absolutism
must, sooner or later, fall a prey to the cajoler's hypocrisy and greed.

The correspondent reports that the Polish Committee in Paris declined to
give him information or furnish means, and even said that they did not
wish volunteers. All this may readily be explained by the consideration
that a man who thereafter proved to be so bitter an enemy was not
sufficiently diplomatic to deceive even the obtuse perceptions of so
undeserving a body as the author describes said committee. On the other
hand, it would have been more prudent for the writer to have said less
on this topic, as such hesitation in accepting his services might induce
the reader to think that the Poles were not so anxious for external aid
as he seemed to fancy. We also know that not only at present in Poland,
but in former ages, and in our own days, in the happiest of countries,
there can be no revolution, no war, which will not attract a host of men
covetous of rank or fortune. Lately, in Poland, by certain judicious
arrangements, this calamity has been prevented, to the great
dissatisfaction of many.

No one can doubt or deny that the interest of various Governments, and
the sense of justice among nations, gave the Poles a right to expect
foreign aid. The assurances of certain politicians and statesmen even
gave _reasonable expectation_ of such a result. Such aid would of course
neither be rejected nor treated with indifference. But the assertion
that the Poles relied _solely_ on such aid is (in the face of the
manifesto of January 22d and July 31st, 1863) either a proof of ill
will, or of entire ignorance of the resources upon which Poland was
bound to rely, and which could not be intrusted to the discretion of
every volunteer or pretended well-wisher to the Polish nation.

Continuing his imputations, the accuser says he only learned afterward
why seven thousand Parisian workmen, registered at M. d'Harcourt's
committee, 'were not sent forth.' The probable purport of this reproach
is: 'They were not sent for fear of the introduction of liberal
elements--and the _proletariat_--into Poland.' As to the latter, we may
at once confidently answer that, were Poland free to-day, the condition
of the laboring class in Western Europe need not be dreaded for a
hundred years to come. As to the liberal element, does the author indeed
think that Poland has had no Liberalists similar to Voltaire, La
Mennais, Victor Hugo, L. Blanc, Mazzini, or Hertzen? Does he fancy that
Modzewski (in the sixteenth century), Skarga (a Catholic preacher in the
seventeenth), Morsztyn, Jezierski, Andrew Zamoyski, Hugo Kollontay,
Loyko (in the eighteenth), Staszye, Lelewel, Mochnacki, Ostrowski,
Czynski, Mieroslawski, and a host of others, contented with the private
good they did, and forced to shun the jealous watchfulness of suspicious
rulers--does he, we say, fancy that all these needed to be inspired by
the liberality of Parisian workmen, or even that all the aforesaid
workmen would apply themselves to the dissemination of liberal opinions?
It is indeed a great disadvantage to Polish Liberalists, philosophers,
and poets, that they speak and write in a tongue unknown to the noble
philanthropists of the West. A greater amount of knowledge would have
saved hasty tourists, _veracious_ lecturers, and all-knowing
diplomatists many errors in statement and conception, and much aversion
toward a noble people, who, if vanquished, will not be crushed, and will
always reserve the _right_ of _protest_.

At all events, this last conclusion of our correspondent leads us to
suspect that he may perchance never have been in Poland--perhaps never
even in Paris--since this _non-sending_ forth of seven thousand
Parisians was better understood by every _gamin du faubourg_ than
apparently by the _sincere_ narrator of 'Tardy Truths.'

The writer says further, that he expected to find in Kracow 'activity
and infinite means.' Now, the author and the confidence of the Poles
must have been quite strangers to one another, or his imagination must
have misled him farther than was becoming in a man of knowledge and
reflection. He does not mention the date of his journey, but we know
about the period referred to. It is true that at that time Kracow had
not yet been declared in a state of siege by M. Pouilly de Mensdorf,
but, as a personal friend of the Czar, he had then held Galicia and
Kracow during the past year under a more uncertain condition than even
the declaration of a state of siege would have produced. Twenty thousand
chosen officers and soldiers, with discretionary and greatly enlarged
powers, and almost as many policemen and spies, with early fed and
increasing covetousness for rewards, promotions, and orders, kept
constant watch over the ancient capital of Poland, the last remnant of
Polish nationality which had been engulfed in the European peace of
1846.

We may then safely assert that our author has given us sketches from his
whims and fancies, rather than the mature results of his judgment, and
that he has also neglected to direct his researches into the history of
the past. It is doubtless true that he was not desired as a volunteer,
and that he found danger only, and not fortune, which, indeed, we think
his own sagacity might have taught him from the first.

We would be forced to doubt that any one understood the policy of the
Polish Committee in Warsaw who should apply the epithet 'mercenary' to
the Polish soldiers. We would not ask our author how much he gave per
diem to those under his own command: we have no wish to rival the wit of
a Russian proclamation which appeared last winter in Warsaw, in which
the Poles in general, including those who fought at Orsza, Wielikie
Luki, Kirchholm, Chocim, Smolensk, Vienna, Zurich, Hohenlinden,
Samocierros, Pultusk, Grochow, Iganie, Zyzyny, Opatow, etc., etc., were
stigmatized as poltroons and cowards!

It is certainly true that the battles of late have not represented a
file of twenty thousand men, but to call them on that account _frontier
demonstrations_, is to add subtle calumny to ungenerous irony; it is a
deviation even from the very 'tardy truths.' It is an assertion not made
in an impartial spirit, but calculated in favor of, and determinately
stated with the intention of sustaining those who are exerting
themselves to prove that Minsk, Grodno, Mohilew, Wolhynia, Podole,
Plock, Augustow, Lithuania, Samogitia, Liefland, etc., were ancient
dependencies of Russia, before she had herself an existence either in
name or fact! If the originator of the term _frontier demonstrations_
would take the trouble to study the map, he would not be able to cherish
the delusion that his intelligent readers could believe that battles
fought near Kowno, Oszmiana, Upita, Poniewiez, Lida, Ihumen, Dubno,
Pinsk, Mscislaw, etc., were really _frontier demonstrations_!

This declaration of the letter from Paris to America would not be of
much service to _The Journal of St. Petersburg_ or _The Invalid_, of
Moscow, or increase their exhilaration over the extermination of the
Polish race, the destruction of Polish principles. There is nothing more
natural than that a rebuke to the _Siecle, Opinion Nationale, Patrie_,
and perhaps even others, should follow such statements--their views
undoubtedly stand in complete opposition to those held by M. de
Girardin, and advocated in _La Presse_.

The assertion that the Polish National Government had no object in view
but to excite and await the intervention of France; that Galicia was the
principal focus of the rebellion, and that the unknown Government had no
actual existence, is, on the one hand, an unskilful attempt to justify
the Governments of Russia and Austria, and, on the other, by the
ignoring of all the reports of the Polish National Government--all its
obvious facts, its printed documents, its acts everywhere known and
seen, its seizures of papers and documents--and to portray it as a
fraud, a myth, a dream of the imagination, a wild hallucination of a
disordered brain, it suggests to us the thought that the _tardy_ and
present truths here given us of Poland may perhaps have the same origin
as that famous description in one of the St. Petersburg papers, of 'the
at last truly discovered leader of the Polish insurrection,' which was
but a portraiture of a certain, not mentioned but easily guessed,
personage in Paris.

We have no reply to make to this reproach (we can only wonder that under
the circumstances they should ever have been made) that the Polish
volunteers were badly armed and illy managed--possibly they might have
been better even in a partisan war. But as to the want of skill in the
officers, including such as Skarzynski, Bosak, Padlewski, we wonder that
the writer or his friend F. could not succeed in making their talents
known and valued, and become at least leaders among the blind. Of course
he had to contend with cross-eyed jealousy. Yet if, as a foreigner, and
a learned one too, he was, as he himself informs us, intimately admitted
into various chateaux, it seems almost impossible he should have had no
opportunity to become major, colonel, or even general, since it is well
known, and every foreigner will bear witness to the fact, that in these
_chateaux_ there has always been too much attention and too great
preference shown to foreigners--a preference, however, in which the
lower classes do not participate.

As to the easy chateau life led in Galicia, as in Russia, we have a
remark to offer. In a country exposed during five or six centuries to
incessant struggle against Asiatic craving for European allurements, or,
to speak more definitely, after ninety-four Mongolian incursions, in
which twenty millions of Polish people were carried off, and thousands
of towns, bourgs, and villages were destroyed; after numberless wars,
plunders, and devastations by Jazygs, Turks, Muscovites, Crusaders,
Wallachians, Transylvanians, Swedes, Brandenburgians, etc., etc.; after
a hundred years of the so-called _paternal_ spoliation of Russia,
Prussia, and Austria--there could have been no opportunity, even under
Graff Pouilly de Mensdorf, to build _comfortable_ chateaux on the
mouldering ruins, or for the accumulation of means for an easy life
under the oppressions of an Austrian tariff, which exacted that goods
manufactured in Lemberg should be sent for inspection to the Vienna
custom house before being exposed to sale. There are, however, a few
very splendid chateaux, like oases in the Desert of Sahara; they can be
counted readily on one's fingers; among them few patriots; no
conspirator, much less an insurgent or crippled invalid, ever called to
ask hospitality.

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