The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862

2. The British government were not averse to disunion from the outset, and seized every pretext of tariff, or of inaction respecting the rebellion, that it might quibble with the United States authority.

3. The tone of the press, ministry and people was early heard, and echoed by Mr. Dallas to our government. Mr. Seward therefore, at the outset, knew his position, and most opportunely and dignifiedly maintained a bearing all the more noble because it proceeded from a government which had taken arms against a sea of troubles.

4. The British government waited only so long as international decency technically warranted before proclaiming an acknowledgment of civil war in the United States, and accepting the government of Mr. Davis as an equal belligerent with that of Mr. Lincoln. This was a matured step, and a strong link in a chain of ultimate recognition.

5. The Crown ministers early sought and obtained an understanding with France for mutual action: an understanding palpably hostile to the United States and tantalizingly acknowledged by open diplomacy.

6. The British ministry construed strictly as against the Washington government, but liberally as toward that of Jeff Davis, in regard to all arising complications.

7. The British government palpably permitted purchases and shipments of contraband articles by Southern emissaries, but exercised the utmost vigilance when the United States agents entered the market for similar purposes.

8. The action of Lord Russell respecting the proposition to abolish privateering was covertly insulting. It asked to interpolate a new condition as between France and England of the one part and the United States of the other; and a condition conceived in a spirit of liberality toward Jeff Davisdom, and promulgated in a meddlesome mood toward the United States government.

9. The tone of Lord Lyons was a more permissible manifestation of British spleen than the higher functionaries at home displayed, yet none the more acrid. This appears in all his letters and dispatches respecting blockade, privateering, the arrest of spies, and the detention of British subjects, or the seizure of prizes. It is especially offensive in the letter to Mr. Seward which drew forth a diplomatic rebuke upon a dictation by English law authority regarding constitutional construction.

10. The correspondence of the State Department was conducted by Mr. Seward (as was well said by the N.Y. Evening Post, Dec. 21) with great skill and adroitness. It was also firm in the defence of our national honor and rights. His rhetoric was always measured by the dignified, tasteful, and cautious rules of international intercourse. Its entire tone in correspondence was earnest but restrained, and in style fully equaling his best, and most ornate efforts.

What are Mr. Seward's views in the 'Past' respecting England and the emergency of a war with her, is a question now much mooted. It can be readily answered by reference to a speech made at a St. Patrick's Day dinner whilst he was Governor. 'Gentlemen, the English are in many respects a wise as they are a great and powerful nation. They have obtained an empire and ascendancy such as Rome once enjoyed. As the Tiber once bore, the Thames now bears the tribute of many nations, and the English name is now feared and respected as once the Roman was in every part of the world. England has been alike ambitious and successful. England too is prosperous, and her people are contented and loyal. But contentment and loyalty have not been universal in the provinces and dependencies of the English government. The desolation which has followed English conquest in the East Indies has been lamented throughout the civilized world. Ireland has been deprived of her independence without being admitted to an equality with her sister-island, and discontent has marked the history of her people ever since the conquest. England has not the magnanimity and generosity of the Romans. She derives wealth from her dependencies, but lavishes it upon objects unworthy of herself. She achieves victories with their aid, but appropriates the spoils and trophies exclusively to herself. For centuries she refused to commit trusts to Irishmen, or confer privileges upon them, unless they would abjure the religion of their ancestors.'

Ten years later, in the United States Senate, during the debate upon the Fisheries dispute, Mr. Seward said, after discussing England's financial and commercial position: 'England can not wisely desire nor safely dare a war with the United States. She would find that there would come over us again that dream of conquest of those colonies which broke upon us even in the dawn of the Revolution, when we tendered them an invitation to join their fortunes with ours, and followed it with the sword—that dream which returned again in 1812, when we attempted to subjugate them by force; and that now, when we have matured the strength to take them, we should find the provinces willingly consenting to captivity. A war about these fisheries would be a war which would result either in the independence of the British Provinces, or in their annexation to the United States. I devoutly pray God that that consummation may come; the sooner the better: but I do not desire it at the cost of war or of injustice. I am content to wait for the ripened fruit which must fall. I know the wisdom of England too well to believe that she would hazard shaking that fruit into our hands.'

Another question, now asked,—'Will Mr. Seward exhaust negotiation?'—may be in like manner answered by himself. In a succeeding debate on the same 'fisheries' controversy, commenting upon negotiation, he said: 'Sir, it is the business of the Secretary of State, and of the government, always to be ready, in my humble judgment, to negotiate under all circumstances, whether there be threats or no threats, whether there be force or no force: but the manner and the spirit and the terms of the negotiation will be varied by the position that the opposing party may occupy.'

It can not be denied that more cordial relations exist between the President and the Secretary of State than ever any previous administration disclosed: so that when Mr. Seward acts, the government will prove a powerful unit. Indeed, in this connection, history will hereafter write precisely what Mr. Seward, in his speech on the 'Clayton-Bulwer treaty,' said respecting the Taylor administration:—'Sir, whatever else may have been the errors or misfortunes of that administration, want of mutual confidence between the Secretary of State and his distinguished chief was not one of them. They stood together firmly, undivided, and inseparable to the last. Storms of faction from within their own party and from without beset them, and combinations and coalitions in and out of Congress assailed them with a degree of violence that no other administration has ever encountered. But they never yielded.'

We can not better conclude this paper, while the volumes of Mr. Seward's works are open on the table, than by quoting still again, and asking the reader to apply his own remarks on Secretary of State Webster in the fisheries-war speech, before alluded to: 'I shall enter into no encomium on the Secretary of State; he needs none. I should be incompetent to grasp so great a theme, if it were needed. The Secretary of State! There he is! Behold him, and judge for yourselves. There is his history; there are his ideas; his thoughts spread over every page of your annals for near half a century. There are his ideas, his thoughts impressed upon and inseparable from the mind of his country and the spirit of the age. The past is at least secure. The past is enough of itself to guarantee a future of fame unapproachable and inextinguishable.'

TO ENGLAND

The Yankee chain you'd gladly split,And yet begin by heating it!But when the iron is all aglow,'Twill closer blend at every blow.Learn wisdom from a warning word,Beat not the chain into a sword.

THE HEIR OF ROSETON

CHAPTER 1

Qui curios simulant, et Bacchanalia vivunt. JUVOdi Persicos apparatus. HORIndulge Genio: carpamus dulcia. PERS

Roseton awoke. A silver clock upon the mantle, so constructed as to represent Guido's 'Hours,' had just struck the hour of eight, accompanying the signal with the festal la ci darem of Don Giovanni. This was Roseton's invariable hour of waking, no matter what might be the season, or what might have been his time of retiring. Slightly stirring upon the couch, the night drapery became relaxed, and from his sleeve of Mechlin lace appeared a hand and wrist of unspeakable delicacy, yet of iron strength. Another slight movement, and one saw the upper portions of the form of the late slumberer; 'a graceful composition in one of Nature's happiest moments.' It was indeed difficult properly to estimate either the beauty of his proportions or their amazing strength. The most celebrated sculptors of Europe had made pilgrimages across the sea to refresh their perceptions by gazing upon a figure which, even in the unclassic habiliments of modern dress, caused the Apollo to resemble a plowboy; and the athletes of both hemispheres had, singly, and in pairs, and even in triplets, measured their powers vainly against his unaided arms. To keep ten fifty-sixes in the air for an hour at a time was to him the merest trifle; but the ennui of such diversions had long since crept upon him, and only on occasions of the extremest urgency did he exercise any other faculties than those of the will. In compliance with an effort of the latter nature, his favorite servant now entered the apartment. The Rev. Geo. Langford had but a moment before been deeply engaged in solving the problem of the fourth satellite of Jupiter, when a sharp, tingling sensation in the rear of his brain convinced him that a master will desired his attendance. The scholar, who thus rose to be the servant of Roseton,—a position that even the President of a Western college might envy, such were its dignities and emoluments,—stood for a moment at the foot of Roseton's couch, and in silence received the silent orders of the day. No words passed, but in an incredibly short space of time Roseton's commands had flashed into the mind of his attendant, and the latter withdrew to reduce them to writing for the benefit of the four masters of the four departments of the House. They in turn methodized them for their forty-eight deputies, and one hundred and ninety-two servants—in addition to the female who came to the house to receive the weekly wash—performed their daily task intelligently and harmoniously.

A bath of atar of roses next received the master of the House of Pont-Noir. This was renewed every hour of the day; for Roseton's fancy indulged the frequent and the casual lavation, and his exacting taste demanded the strictest purity. A careless servant once ventured to leave the bath filled without a change of the fluid, after it had been occupied; but the negligence was at once detected by the master of Pont-Noir, and his weekly allowance of cologne-water was summarily reduced. Upon the ceiling, over the bath, were frescoed, in Titianelli's richest style, the most graceful legends of mythology. Here Theseus toyed with Ariadne; here the infant Mercury furtively enticed the Grecian Short-horns; here Triton blew his seaweed-tangled horn, and troops of ocean-nymphs threw the surface of the deep into 'sparkling commotions of splendor;' here Venus allured Anchises, by sweetly calling him to the leafy tops of Ida; here Deucalion surmounted the miraculous floods; and here Pyrrha first instructed wondering men in the knowledge of the existence, beauties and duties of the fairer part of creation. Here, reclining in dreamful ease, and indulging in the perpetual warmth by which the bath confessed the power of unseen caloric agency, Roseton was wont ever to sport with delicious memories, now with rapturous hopes, and at times to compose those elegant sonnets for the New York weekly newspapers, for each one of which a thousand dollars was joyfully given by the delighted proprietors to the poor of the city.

Carefully wiped, and clothed in a morning robe by twelve gentlemanly attendants, each one a scion of the first families of the metropolis, Roseton was borne to the breakfasting apartment. Here, indeed, a scene presented itself, among whose splendors imagination only could safely dwell, and before which the practical and the prosaic mind might well grow comatose or skeptical. Malachite tables of every conceivable shape from the Ural; carpets to whose texture the shawls of Cashmere had become tributary; paintings by all the known, and many of the unknown, old masters; these were only rivaled by chairs of the most undeniable and gorgeous curled maple; and a beaufet of true cherry acknowledged, in common with a Jerome horologe, a Connecticut origin. These incredible adjuncts to luxury were, however, eclipsed by the dazzling glory of a vast pyramid of purest oreide, which at its apex separated into four divisions to the sound of slow music, by forty hidden performers, revealing, as it descended to the floor, an equal number of tables, on which plate, Sévres China, Nankin porcelain, and the emerald glass of New England, rivaled the display of damask, fruits, liqueurs, and delicatest meats. Here smoked a sweetbread, here gleamed a porgy, not yet forty-eight hours caught, and here the strawberry crimsoned the cream that lapped its blushing sides. Here the Arabian berry evolved clouds of perfume; here Curaçoa glistened from behind its strawy shield; and here a decanter of warranted real French brandy, side by side with a bottle of Stoughton's bitters, suggested that a cocktail might not only be desirable, but possible. But Roseton's eyes gazed languidly upon the spectacle, and the walls of the pyramid again ascending, shut the quadruple banquets from the sight.

A moment elapsed, and they fell once more. A fountain of cool, fragrant distillation threw showers of delight into the atmosphere, under the canopy of which again appeared four luxurious tables. Upon one, tea and toast suggested the agreeable and appropriate remedy for an over-night's dissipation; upon another, an array of marmalades, icy tongues reduced by ether to a temperature of minus sixty, Finnane haddock, and oaten meal of rarest bolting, indicated and offered to gratify the erratic taste of a Caledonian. Again, upon another, a Strasburg pie displayed its delicious brown, the members of the emerald songster of the fen lay whitely delicate, and accompanying absinthe revealed the knowledge of Gallic preferences. Upon the fourth, smoking and olent Rio, puddings of Indian, cakes composed of one third butter, one third flour, one third saleratus, and the crisping bean, surmounted by crimped pork, showed that a Providence Yankee might well find an appropriate entertainment. But again the eyes of Roseton looked vacantly on, and again, amid strains of music, the walls of the pyramid ascended.

A short pause, and they sunk again. Now appeared, as a central figure, an odalisque. In each ivory hand she bore a double fan of exquisite workmanship, on each of which again glistened a delicate and fairy banquet. Here were ultimate quintessences—pines reduced to a drop of honeyed delight; bananas whose life lay in points of bewildering sweetness; enormous steamboat puddings compressed within the compass of a thimble, exclusive of the sauce; chocolates, oceans of which lay in mimic lakes, each of which the bill of a humming-bird might expand; tongues of most melodious singing birds—the nightingale, the thrush, and the goldfinch; lambs en suprême, each eliminated of earthly particles, and spiritualized in scarcely tangible results. Over all hovered the memories of exquisite beverages, which became realities when you approached, and stole over the sense with insidious deliciousness.

These, too, faded away amid the disregard of their owner, though the odalisque shed floods of tears of disappointment; and others succeeded, but they tempted Roseton vainly, and a glance at the clock showed that it was now ten o'clock by New Haven time. At this moment the Rev. George Langford experienced another biological sensation; Roseton had conceived a breakfast.

Repairing to a battery in a recess of his laboratory, Langford attentively studied the ebullitions occasioned by an ultimate dilution and aggregation of the chemicals in the formula HP + O^(22). During this time the sensations in his brain successively continued to rack and agonize him; but, faithful to his mission, he remained immersed in thought until his intellect grasped the key of the problem. Issuing then from the recess, he promulgated the results of his investigation to the four masters of the house, These, with the aid of the forty-eight deputies, executed the inchoate idea, and once more—and finally—the pyramid unfolded. But now a single table appeared, bearing upon its snowy mantle a Yarmouth bloater, and a bottle of Dublin stout. Roseton's eyes lighted up with unaccustomed pleasure, and he gave instant commands for the duplication of the salary of his esteemed attendant-in-chief.

In accordance with the custom of the house, the morning journals now appeared; and here the fancy of Roseton had therein a living and distinctive character over each. Youths, of perfect beauty, who had, during the three previous hours, diligently studied the sheets in question, passed before him, one by one, dressed in appropriate costume, and each one delivered to him in mental short-hand the entire contents of the journal which he represented. These were rendered wholly in the Sanscrit tongue, in which Roseton was an adept; with the exception of the Tribune, the language of which, Roseton was accustomed to say, is unique, and incapable of translation. First appeared the representative of the Herald, dressed as a jockey; an irresistible air of assurance accompanied him, and he threw frequent summersaults with inconceivable quickness. Next marched the Tribune;—a youth shrouded in inexplicable garments, and the living centre of a whirlwind of exploding theories. Then stepped the Times in rapid succession; a blooming boy dressed with precision, and delicately balancing himself as he delivered his part. Next appeared the World, habited as a theological student, and sorrow for irreparable loss was indicated by a Weed upon his hat. One looked for the embodiment of the News in vain, but a Wooden figure, wheeled in silence through the apartment, was thought to convey a mysterious lesson. A martial ghost, wearing upon his head a triple crown, like the vision of Macbeth, yet bravely supporting himself under the three-fold encumbrance, seemed the Courier of Wall Street. The pageant passed, but Roseton seemed unsatisfied; and it soon occurred to him that the deep draughts of secession news, which he had been accustomed to receive each morning from the Journal of Commerce, had, on this occasion, failed him. But on further reflection his infallible logic convinced him that the existence of this paper must have ceased at the same time with that of the Southern mails.

It now remained to perform the morning toilet; and a corps of attendants conveyed Roseton to his dressing-room. Here the lavish wealth of the Pont-Noirs found another appropriate field for its display. The floor was of Carrera marble, curiously tesselated, rising in the centre to the support of a fountain, where water-nymphs breathed forth shattered columns of fragrant spray, whose parabolic curves filled a spacious lake below. Vases of diamond, emerald and ruby crowded the mantles, each filled with some unknown perfume—the result of Roseton's miraculous chemistry; for in this science Roseton was supreme. In a single day he exhausted the resources of American laboratories, and a short visit to Europe convinced him that henceforth he must be his own instructor. Savants in vain solicited his formulas. 'Why,' he reasoned, 'should I furnish children in science with tools of which they can not comprehend the use?' Delicate tables, chiseled from the humbler gems, were scattered about the chamber; agate, topaz, lapis-lazuli, amethyst, and a smaragdus of miraculous beauty. Chairs of golden wire completed the furniture of this unequaled apartment.

The hangings of the walls were a freak at once of genius and lavishness. They consisted of the bills of the Valley Bank, extravagantly lapped, and of untold denomination. But the ceiling—how shall I describe it? Did you, indeed, look up inimitably into a Hesperian sky, or was this firmament the creation of the painter's art? Nothing flecked the profound, unsearchable, impassive blue. There brooded the primeval heavens, undimmed by earthly vapors, unfathomed by earthly instruments; forever indescribable by earthly tongues.

Two hundred years before, a Pont-Noir of the Roseton branch accumulated immense wealth from a diamond mine in East Haddam, Connecticut. He was a man of deep and ardent imagination, and uncomprehended by the simple villagers, who irreverently styled him the 'mad Roseton.' He died, and left a singular will. It provided that his estates, money, and jewels, should be realized and invested on interest for the space of two hundred years, by a committee of trustees, consisting of the governors of the six New England States, to be assisted by the fiscal board of Mississippi, whenever such a State should be organized. At the expiration of that time, the avails were to be paid to Roseton, of Pont-Noir, provided but one of that name should exist; if more were living, the estate was to remain in abeyance until such a condition should be reached. Not undiscerningly had he foreseen the probability that his will would be disputed, and a short time before his death he caused a formal attestation of his sanity to be made by the entire body of clergymen comprising the Middlesex Conference. His mode of proof was simple, consisting only of an original manuscript, refuting the Arminian heresy; but it sufficed, and the will was obeyed. Not unwisely, also, had he calculated upon the energies of population; for, during one hundred and fifty years, the Pont-Noirs spread over both continents. Then they paused, and but two of the race—chosen by lot—were allowed to marry. At the expiration of twenty-five years, a single male of the race, also chosen by lot, married, and became the father of the present Roseton. On the day that Roseton was twenty-four years old, his father summoned him to his apartment. 'To-morrow,' said he, 'the mystical two hundred years expire, and an estate of inconceivable magnitude will vest in the single Roseton—if there be but one. My son, my life is of less consequence than yours, since it is farther spent; but it still has sweetness, and it is the only life that I possess. Here are three goblets of wine—one is Scuppernong, the other two are harmless. I will apportion our chances fairly, and will drink two; you shall drink one. The lawyers are at hand to arrange the inquest, and to confer the title-deeds to the estate.' In silence the son consented, and the devoted pair drank off the goblets as proposed, and at once sat down to a banquet prepared for them, and for the legal gentlemen attendant. When the ices came in, the elder Roseton was carried out; and the heir of Pont-Noir, having seen the remains properly bestowed in a place of safety, and a special inquest held, finished the night with the counsellors in the enjoyment of a tempered hilarity, and rose next morning the possessor of wealth so boundless, so unspeakable, that my brain reels as I endeavor to grasp at even its outlying fragments.

In the hope of presenting some of its details to the reader, I procured, at an enormous expense, a Babbage calculating engine, and during three successive weeks worked it without pause upon the illimitable figures. It then became clogged, and the village Vulcan, whose impartial hand corrects at once the time-pieces and the plowshares of the neighborhood, having knocked the machinery to pieces with a sledge, declared himself incompetent to explain and unable to repair. My results therefore are maimed and imperfect, but I trust they will show that I have not exaggerated the difficulty of the process of reduction and estimation.

The fragmentary portions of the estate, then, are: the entire capital stock of thirty-eight of the Banks of New York city (though here a wise policy has suggested the employment of various respectable names as those of shareholders, in order to protect these institutions from the fury of a mob); all that portion of the metropolis lying between the Twelfth and Twenty-second Avenues, from Canal Street to the suburb of Poughkeepsie, comprising of necessity the water rights and quarries; eighteen thousand millions of bullion specially deposited in the State Bank of Mississippi, to the order of the six New England Governors, trustees; the Pont-Noir mansion on Nultiel Street, surrounded by twenty-five acres of land, the very heart of the best New York residences, and variously estimated from six to eight millions of dollars; the remote but tolerably well known villages of Boston and Philadelphia in their entirety; and one undivided tenth of the stock of the Valley Bank. It was upon the last investment that Roseton chiefly drew for his expenses. 'My fancy,' said he, 'inclines me to convert Boston into an observatory, and Philadelphia into a tea-garden, and nothing but an amiable regard for the comfort of a handful of families prevents at once from carrying such plans into effect. My mansion is of necessity unproductive; and the Mississippi bullion is greatly needed where it already is. City property is a dreadful nuisance, the taxes are outrageous and the tenants pay poorly; and although the New York Banks announce dividends, yet when you come to look at their actual condition, hum, hum;—is that door shut?—just put your ear a little this way, so; there, I say nothing; there are Banks and Banks; but a building may have two doors, and what goes out at one may come in again at the other, eh? Mind, I say nothing. So you see, beside the East Haddam diamond mines, which are at present badly worked; and a few South American republics which are chiefly occupied in assassinating their presidents; and a border State or two that usually leave me to provide for their half-yearly coupons;—besides these resources, you see, I have really little else to look to but the Valley Bank.'