Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848

"I know what it is," said Julia, with a slight shudder.

"Well, they saves all the women, out o' respect for the weaker sex. Now, Miss Julia."

"Why, John!"

"But I know it's so, 'cause Dick Halyard told me all about it; now you see if you'll only let me take one of your dresses – I wont hurt it none; and then your father can take another, and we'll get clear of the bloody villains – wont it be great?"

Julia could not repress a laugh even in the midst of the melancholy thoughts which involuntarily arose in her mind during the elucidation of John's plan of escape; she could not, however, explain the difficulties in the way of its successful issue to the self-satisfied expounder, and finding no other more convenient way of closing the conversation, she told him he should have a woman's dress, with all the necessary accompaniments.

John was delighted.

"You'll tell your father, Miss Julia, wont you? O, Lud! we'll cheat the bloody fellows yet; I'll go and curl my hair."

Julia returned to her father's side, and silently watched the strange sail, which was evidently drawing nearer, as her dark hull had shown itself above the waters.

"We have but one chance of escape left," exclaimed Captain Horton; "if we can elude them during the night, all will be well; if to-morrow's sun find us in sight, we shall inevitably fall into their hands."

Night gradually settled over the deep, and when the twilight had passed, and all was dark, the lights of the pirate brig were some five miles to leeward. Her blood-red flag had been run up to the fore-peak, as if in mockery of the prey the pirates felt sure could not escape them – and the booming noise of a heavy gun had reached the ears of the fugitives, as if to signal their predestined doom. Yet the calm, round moon looked down upon the gloomy waters with the same serene countenance that had gazed into their bosom for thousands of years, and trod upward on her starry pathway with the same queenly pace; yet, perchance, in her own domains contention and strife, animosity and bloodshed were rife; perchance the sound of tumultuous war, even then, was echoing among her mountains, and staining her streams with gore.

[To be continued.

THE SOUL'S DREAM

BY GEORGE H. BOKERLike an army with its banners, onward marched the mighty sun,To his home in triumph hastening, when the hard-fought field was won;While the thronging clouds hung proudly o'er the victor's bright array,Gold and red and purple pennons, welcoming the host of day.Gazing on the glowing pageant, slowly fading from the air,Closed my mind its heavy eyelids, nodding o'er the world of care;And the soaring thoughts came fluttering downward to their tranquil nest,Folded up their wearied pinions, sinking one by one to rest.Till a deep, o'ermastering slumber seemed to wrap my very soul,And a gracious dream from Heaven, treading lightly, to me stole:Downward from its plumes ethereal, on my thirsting bosom flowedDews which to the land of spirits all their mystic virtue owed.And when touched that potent essence, Time divided as a cloud,From the Past, the Present, Future rolled aside oblivion's shroud;And Life's hills and vales far-stretching full before my vision lay,Seeming but an isle of shadow in Eternity's broad day.On the Past I bent my glances, saw the gentle, guileless childFace to face with God conversing, and the awful Presence smiled —Smiled a glory on the forehead of the simple-hearted one,And the radiance, back reflected, cast a splendor round the throne.Saw the boy, by Heaven instructed through earth's mute, symbolic forms,Drinking wisdom with his senses, which the higher nature warms;Saw that purer knowledge mingled with the worldling's base alloy,And the passions' foul impression stamped upon his face of joy.O, I cried to God in anguish, is this boasted wisdom vain,For which I, by night and sunshine, tax my overwearied brain;Till, alas! grown too familiar with the thoughts that knock at Heaven,I would further pierce the mystery than to mortal eye is given?Is the learning of our childhood, is the pure and easy loreSpeaking in a heart unsullied, better than the vaunted storeHeaped, like ice, to chill and harden every faculty save mind,By the hand of haughty Science, sometimes wandering, sometimes blind?But no answer reached my senses; for my feeble voice was lost,When the Future came in darkness, like a rushing arméd host;Shouting cries of fear and danger, shouting words of hope and cheer,Racking me with threat and promise, ever coming, never here.Then my spirit stretched its vision, prying in the doubtful gloom,Half a glimpse to me was given o'er Time's boundary-stone – the tomb.With a shriek, like that which rises from a sinking, night-wrecked bark,Burst my soul the bounds of slumber, and the world and I were dark!While the dull and leaden Present on my palsied spirit pressed,Till the soaring thoughts rose upward, bounding from their earthly rest;Shaking down the golden dew-drops from their pinions proud and strong,And the cares of life fell from me, fading in the realm of Song.

THE MAID OF BOGOTA

A TALE FROM COLOMBIAN HISTORYBY W. GILMORE SIMMS

Whenever the several nations of the earth which have achieved their deliverance from misrule and tyranny shall point, as they each may, to the fair women who have taken active part in the cause of liberty, and by their smiles and services have contributed in no measured degree to the great objects of national defence and deliverance, it will be with a becoming and just pride only that the Colombians shall point to their virgin martyr, commonly known among them as La Pola, the Maid of Bogota. With the history of their struggle for freedom her story will always be intimately associated; her tragical fate, due solely to the cause of her country, being linked with all the touching interest of the most romantic adventure. Her spirit seemed to be woven of the finest materials. She was gentle, exquisitively sensitive, and capable of the most true and tender attachments. Her mind was one of rarest endowments, touched to the finest issues of eloquence, and gifted with all the powers of the improvisatrice, while her courage and patriotism seem to have been cast in those heroic moulds of antiquity from which came the Cornelias and Deborahs of famous memory. Well had it been for her country had the glorious model which she bestowed upon her people been held in becoming homage by the race with which her destiny was cast – a race masculine only in exterior, and wanting wholly in that necessary strength of soul which, rising to the due appreciation of the blessings of national freedom, is equally prepared to make, for its attainment, every necessary sacrifice of self; and yet our heroine was but a child in years – a lovely, tender, feeble creature, scarcely fifteen years of age. But the soul grows rapidly to maturity in some countries, and in the case of women, it is always great in its youth, if greatness is ever destined to be its possession.

Doña Apolenaria Zalabariata – better known by the name of La Pola – was a young girl, the daughter of a good family of Bogota, who was distinguished at an early period, as well for her great gifts of beauty as of intellect. She was but a child when Bolivar first commenced his struggles with the Spanish authorities, with the ostensible object of freeing his country from their oppressive tyrannies. It is not within our province to discuss the merits of his pretensions as a deliverer, or of his courage and military skill as a hero. The judgment of the world and of time has fairly set at rest those specious and hypocritical claims, which, for a season, presumed to place him on the pedestal with our Washington. We now know that he was not only a very selfish, but a very ordinary man – not ordinary, perhaps, in the sense of intellect, for that would be impossible in the case of one who was so long able to maintain his eminent position, and to succeed in his capricious progresses, in spite of inferior means, and a singular deficiency of the heroic faculty. But his ambition was the vulgar ambition, and, if possible, something still inferior. It contemplated his personal wants alone; it lacked all the elevation of purpose which is the great essential of patriotism, and was wholly wanting in that magnanimity of soul which delights in the sacrifice of self, whenever such sacrifice promises the safety of the single great purpose which it professes to desire. But we are not now to consider Bolivar, the deliverer, as one whose place in the pantheon has already been determined by the unerring judgment of posterity. We are to behold him only with those eyes in which he was seen by the devoted followers to whom he brought, or appeared to bring, the deliverance for which they yearned. It is with the eyes of the passionate young girl, La Pola, the beautiful and gifted child, whose dream of country perpetually craved the republican condition of ancient Rome, in the days of its simplicity and virtue; it is with her fancy and admiration that we are to crown the ideal Bolivar, till we acknowledge him, as he appears to her, the Washington of the Colombians, eager only to emulate the patriotism, and to achieve like success with his great model of the northern confederacy. Her feelings and opinions, with regard to the Liberator, were those of her family. Her father was a resident of Bogota, a man of large possessions and considerable intellectual acquirements. He gradually passed from a secret admiration of Bolivar to a warm sympathy with his progress, and an active support – so far as he dared, living in a city under immediate and despotic Spanish rule – of all his objects. He followed with eager eyes the fortunes of the chief, as they fluctuated between defeat and victory in other provinces, waiting anxiously the moment when the success and policy of the struggle should bring deliverance, in turn, to the gates of Bogota. Without taking up arms himself, he contributed secretly from his own resources to supplying the coffers of Bolivar with treasure, even when his operations were remote – and his daughter was the agent through whose unsuspected ministry the money was conveyed to the several emissaries who were commissioned to receive it. The duty was equally delicate and dangerous, requiring great prudence and circumspection; and the skill, address and courage with which the child succeeded in the execution of her trusts, would furnish a frequent lesson for older heads and the sterner and the bolder sex.

La Pola was but fourteen years old when she obtained her first glimpse of the great man in whose cause she had already been employed, and of whose deeds and distinctions she had heard so much. By the language of the Spanish tyranny, which swayed with iron authority over her native city, she heard him denounced and execrated as a rebel and marauder, for whom an ignominious death was already decreed by the despotic viceroy. This language, from such lips, was of itself calculated to raise its object favorably in her enthusiastic sight. By the patriots, whom she had been accustomed to love and venerate, she heard the same name breathed always in whispers of hope and affection, and fondly commended, with tearful blessings, to the watchful care of Heaven. She was now to behold with her own eyes this individual thus equally distinguished by hate and homage in her hearing. Bolivar apprised his friends in Bogota that he should visit them in secret. That province, ruled with a fearfully strong hand by Zamano, the viceroy, had not yet ventured to declare itself for the republic. It was necessary to operate with caution; and it was no small peril which Bolivar necessarily incurred in penetrating to its capital, and laying his snares, and fomenting insurrection beneath the very hearth-stones of the tyrant. It was to La Pola's hands that the messenger of the Liberator confided the missives that communicated this important intelligence to her father. She little knew the contents of the billet which she carried him in safety, nor did he confide them to the child. He himself did not dream the precocious extent of that enthusiasm which she felt almost equally in the common cause, and in the person of its great advocate and champion. Her father simply praised her care and diligence, rewarded her with his fondest caresses, and then proceeded with all quiet despatch to make his preparations for the secret reception of the deliverer. It was at midnight, and while a thunder-storm was raging, that he entered the city, making his way, agreeably to previous arrangement, and under select guidance, into the inner apartments of the house of Zalabariata. A meeting of the conspirators – for such they were – of head men among the patriots of Bogota, had been contemplated for his reception. Several of them were accordingly in attendance when he came. These were persons whose sentiments were well known to be friendly to the cause of liberty, who had suffered by the hands, or were pursued by the suspicions of Zamano, and who, it was naturally supposed, would be eagerly alive to every opportunity of shaking off the rule of the oppressor. But patriotism, as a philosophic sentiment, to be indulged after a good dinner, and discussed phlegmatically, if not classically, over sherry and cigars, is a very different sort of thing from patriotism as a principle of action, to be prosecuted as a duty, at every peril, instantly and always, to the death, if need be. Our patriots at Bogota were but too frequently of the contemplative, the philosophical order. Patriotism with them was rather a subject for eloquence than use. They could recall those Utopian histories of Greece and Rome which furnish us with ideals rather than facts, and sigh for names like those of Cato, and Brutus, and Aristides. But more than this did not seem to enter their imaginations as at all necessary to assert the character which it pleased them to profess, or maintain the reputation which they had prospectively acquired for the very commendable virtue which constituted their ordinary theme. Bolivar found them cold. Accustomed to overthrow and usurpation, they were now slow to venture property and life upon the predictions and promises of one who, however perfect in their estimation as a patriot, had yet suffered from most capricious fortunes. His past history, indeed, except for its patriotism, offered but very doubtful guarantees in favor of the enterprise to which they were invoked. Bolivar was artful and ingenious. He had considerable powers of eloquence – was specious and persuasive; had an oily and bewitching tongue, like Balial; and if not altogether capable of making the worse appear the better cause, could at least so shape the aspects of evil fortune, that, to the unsuspicious nature, they would seem to be the very results aimed at by the most deliberate arrangement and resolve. But Bolivar, on this occasion, was something more than ingenious and persuasive, he was warmly earnest, and passionately eloquent. In truth, he was excited much beyond his wont. He was stung to indignation by a sense of disappointment. He had calculated largely on this meeting, and it promised now to be a failure. He had anticipated the eager enthusiasm of a host of brave and noble spirits ready to fling out the banner of freedom to the winds, and cast the scabbard from the sword forever. Instead of this, he found but a little knot of cold, irresolute men, thinking only of the perils of life which they should incur, and the forfeiture and loss of property which might accrue from any hazardous experiments. Bolivar spoke to them in language less artificial and much more impassioned than was his wont. He was a man of impulse rather than of thought or principle, and, once aroused, the intense fire of a southern sun seemed to burn fiercely in all his words and actions. His speech was heard by other ears than those to which it was addressed. The shrewd mind of La Pola readily conjectured that the meeting at her father's house, at midnight, and under peculiar circumstances, contemplated some extraordinary object. She was aware that a tall, mysterious stranger had passed through the court, under the immediate conduct of her father himself. Her instinct divined in this stranger the person of the deliverer, and her heart would not suffer her to lose the words, or if possible to obtain, to forego the sight of the great object of its patriotic worship. Beside, she had a right to know and to see. She was of the party, and had done them service. She was yet to do them more. Concealed in an adjoining apartment – a sort of oratory, connected by a gallery with the chamber in which the conspirators were assembled – she was able to hear the earnest arguments and passionate remonstrances of the Liberator. They confirmed all her previous admiration of his genius and character. She felt with indignation the humiliating position which the men of Bogota held in his eyes. She heard their pleas and scruples, and listened with a bitter scorn to the thousand suggestions of prudence, the thousand calculations of doubt and caution with which timidity seeks to avoid precipitating a crisis. She could listen and endure no longer. The spirit of the improvisatrice was upon her. Was it also that of fate and a higher Providence? She seized the guitar, of which she was the perfect mistress, and sung even as her soul counseled and the exigency of the event demanded. Our translation of her lyrical overflow is necessarily a cold and feeble one.

It was a dream of freedom —A mocking dream, though bright —That showed the men of BogotaAll arming for the fight;All eager for the hour that wakesThe thunders of redeeming war,And rushing forth with glittering steel,To join the bands of Bolivar.My soul, I said, it cannot beThat Bogota shall be deniedHer Arismendi, too – her chiefTo pluck her honor up, and pride;The wild Llanero boasts his bravesThat, stung with patriot wrath and shame,Rushed redly to the realm of graves,And rose, through blood and death, to fame.How glads mine ear with other sounds,Of freemen worthy these, that tell!Ribas, who felt Caraccas' wounds,And for her hope and triumph fell;And that young hero, well beloved,Giraldat, still a name for song;Piar, Marino, dying soon,But, for the future, living long.Oh! could we stir with other names,The cold, deaf hearts that hear us now,How would it bring a thousand shames,In fire, to each Bogotian's brow!How clap in pride Grenada's hands;How glows Venezuela's heart;And how, through Cartagena's lands,A thousand chiefs and hero's start.Paez, Sodeno, lo! they rush,Each with his wild and Cossack rout;A moment feels the fearful hush,A moment hears the fearful shout!They heed no lack of arts and arms,But all their country's perils feel,And sworn for freedom, bravely break,The glitering legions of Castile.I see the gallant Roxas graspThe towering banner of her sway;And Monagas, with fearful clasp,Plucks down the chief that stops the way;The reckless Urdaneta rides,Where rives the earth the iron hail;Nor long the Spanish foeman bides,The stroke of old Zaraza's flail.Oh, generous heroes! how ye rise!How glow your states with equal fires!'Tis there Valencia's banner flies,And there Cumana's soul aspires;There, on each hand, from east to west,From Oronook to Panama,Each province bares its noble breast,Each hero – save in Bogota!

At the first sudden gush of the music from within, the father of the damsel started to his feet, and with confusion in his countenance, was about to leave the apartment. But Bolivar arrested his footsteps, and in a whisper, commanded him to be silent and remain. The conspirators, startled, if not alarmed, were compelled to listen. Bolivar did so with a pleased attention. He was passionately fond of music, and this was of a sort at once to appeal to his objects and his tastes. His eye kindled as the song proceeded. His heart rose with an exulting sentiment. The moment, indeed, embodied one of his greatest triumphs – the tribute of a pure, unsophisticated soul, inspired by Heaven with the happiest and highest endowments, and by earth with the noblest sentiments of pride and country. When the music ceased, Zalabariata was about to apologize, and to explain, but Bolivar again gently and affectionately arrested his utterance.

"Fear nothing," said he. "Indeed, why should you fear? I am in the greater danger here, if there be danger for any; and I would as soon place my life in the keeping of that noble damsel, as in the arms of my mother. Let her remain, my friend; let her hear and see all; and above all, do not attempt to apologize for her. She is my ally. Would that she could make these men of Bogota feel with herself – feel as she makes even me to feel."

The eloquence of the Liberator received a new impulse from that of the improvisatrice. He renewed his arguments and entreaties in a different spirit. He denounced, in yet bolder language than before, that wretched pusillanimity which quite as much, he asserted, as the tyranny of the Spaniard, was the cause under which the liberties of the country groaned and suffered.

"And now, I ask," he continued, passionately, "men of Bogota, if ye really purpose to deny yourselves all share in the glory and peril of the effort which is for your own emancipation? Are your brethren of the other provinces to maintain the conflict in your behalf, while, with folded hands, you submit, doing nothing for yourselves? Will you not lift the banner also? Will you not draw sword in your own honor, and the defence of your fire-sides and families. Talk not to me of secret contributions. It is your manhood, not your money, that is needful for success. And can you withhold yourselves while you profess to hunger after that liberty for which other men are free to peril all – manhood, money, life, hope, every thing but honor and the sense of freedom. But why speak of peril in this. Peril is every where. It is the inevitable child of life, natural to all conditions – to repose as well as action, to the obscurity which never goes abroad, as well as to that adventure which forever seeks the field. You incur no more peril in openly braving your tyrant, all together as one man, than you do thus tamely sitting beneath his footstool, and trembling forever lest his capricious will may slay as it enslaves. Be you but true to yourselves – openly true – and the danger disappears as the night-mists that speed from before the rising sun. There is little that deserves the name of peril in the issue which lies before us. We are more than a match, united, and filled with the proper spirit, for all the forces that Spain can send against us. It is in our coldness that she warms – in our want of unity that she finds strength. But even were we not superior to her in numbers – even were the chances all wholly and decidedly against us – I still cannot see how it is that you hesitate to draw the sword in so sacred a strife – a strife which consecrates the effort, and claims Heaven's sanction for success. Are your souls so subdued by servitude; are you so accustomed to bonds and tortures, that these no longer irk and vex your daily consciousness? Are you so wedded to inaction that you cease to feel? Is it the frequency of the punishment that has made you callous to the ignominy and the pain? Certainly your viceroy gives you frequent occasion to grow reconciled to any degree of hurt and degradation. Daily you behold, and I hear, of the exactions of this tyrant – of the cruelties and the murders to which he accustoms you in Bogota. Hundreds of your friends and kinsmen, even now, lie rotting in the common prisons, denied equally your sympathies and every show of justice, perishing, daily, under the most cruel privations. Hundreds have perished by this and other modes of torture, and the gallows and garote seem never to be unoccupied. Was it not the bleaching skeleton of the venerable Hermano, whom I well knew for his wisdom and patriotism, which I beheld, even as I entered, hanging in chains over the gateway of your city? Was he not the victim of his wealth and love of country? Who among you is secure? He dared but to deliver himself as a man, and as he was suffered to stand alone, he was destroyed. Had you, when he spoke, but prepared yourselves to act, flung out the banner of resistance to the winds, and bared the sword for the last noble struggle, Hermano had not perished, nor were the glorious work only now to be begun. But which of you, involved in the same peril with Hermano, will find the friend, in the moment of his need, to take the first step for his rescue? Each of you, in turn, having wealth to tempt the spoiler, will be sure to need such friendship. It seems you do not look for it among one another – where, then, do you propose to find it? Will you seek for it among the Cartagenians – among the other provinces – to Bolivar without? Vain expectation, if you are unwilling to peril any thing for yourselves within! In a tyranny so suspicious and so reckless as is yours, you must momentarily tremble lest ye suffer at the hands of your despot. True manhood rather prefers any peril which puts an end to this state of anxiety and fear. Thus to tremble with apprehension ever, is ever to be dying. It is a life of death only which ye live – and any death or peril that comes quickly at the summons, is to be preferred before it. If, then, ye have hearts to feel, or hopes to warm ye – a pride to suffer consciousness of shame, or an ambition that longs for better things – affections for which to covet life, or the courage with which to assert and to defend your affections, ye cannot, ye will not hesitate to determine, with souls of freemen, upon what is needful to be done. Ye have but one choice as men; and the question which is left for ye to resolve, is that which determines, not your possessions, not even your lives, but simply your rank and stature in the world of humanity and man."