The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863

Here are the booths with rosaries, crucifixes, Virgin Mary's holy-water holders, medals of Pio Nono, or jewelry; gold crescent earrings, spadine (long silver hair pins); silver hearts, legs, arms, for votive offerings, and crosses without number.

Caper entered the church; it was filled, and stifling with heat and frankincense, and contadini, and wax lights burning before the shrine, on which the sun shone. There were beautiful faces among the pajine (people in fine raiment), showing what can be made from the contadine (people in coarse clothes) by not overworking them.

Once more our artist was in the pure air, and, walking up the main street, came to a house with a beautifully carved stone window, half Byzantine, half Gothic, while a house on the opposite side of the street boasted of two other windows finely carved. While looking at them, Caper was hailed by name, and a stout, fresh-colored English artist, named Wardor, whom he had known in Rome, came over and welcomed him to Genazzano. Wardor, it turned out, was spending the summer there, as he had done the year before; consequently, there was not a nook or corner in the old town he did not know; and if he had not been so lazy, he could have filled his sketch book with a hundred picturesque studies. But no; with the keenest appreciation of every bit of color, every graceful pose of a human figure, every beautiful face, every fine effect of light or shadow—he made no sign. His legitimate function was friendly guide to the stranger, and in this office he carried Caper all over the old castle, out to the long shady walk on the esplanade behind it, pointed out beautiful views over the valley; finally, showing Caper his studio, which, as it was a large room, and his padrona could impose on his good nature, was fairly glittering with copper pans, hung on the walls when not in use in the kitchen. On an easel was a painting, to be called The King of the Campagna; all that was apparent was the head and horns of the king. Wardor had thus actually spent three mouths painting on a space not so large as your fist, while the canvas was at least three feet by two feet and a half. But the king, a buffalo, would be a regal figure, for the head was life itself.

Caper proposed finishing a bottle of wine with Wardor, in honor of the day; so the latter piloted him up street and then down a flight of steps to a quiet wine-shop, where, sitting on a shady terrace, they could calmly enjoy the lovely landscape spread below them, and look over the town, over the valley, to far-away Segni high up in the Volscians. The landlord's wife, a buxom, comely woman, in full holiday costume, brought them a flask of cool wine and glasses, presenting them at the same time with a couple of very large sweet apples, the largest of which was thirteen inches in circumference by actual measurement. So you see they have apples as well as oranges in Italy; only, apples are practical, so they are generally omitted in the poetical descriptions of the blue-skyed land.

Caper and Wardor dined together in a very crowded inn, where the maccaroni must have been cooked by the ton, to judge of the sized dish the two artists were presented with—and which they finished! Chickens, lamb chops, salad, and two flasks of wine at last satisfied them. When they left the table, Wardor proposed their calling on a Roman family, who were spending the summer in the town. They found the house they occupied crowded with guests, who, having finished dinner, were busily employed dancing to the music of two guitars and a flute; that is, the younger part of them, while the elders applauded vociferously, entering into the amusement with a reckless spirit of fun and good nature, which people who have to keep shady nine tenths of the year for fear of their rulers, are very apt to indulge in the remaining tenth.

Elisa, the daughter of the Roman family, received Caper with hearty welcome, chiding him for having been all summer at Segni, and yet not coming near them, and entreating him to come to Genazzano and make them a long visit. She introduced him at once to her affianced husband, a handsome young doctor of the town, a man of sterling ability and sound common sense, who very soon made Caper at home, insisted on his dancing the Tarantella and Saltarella Napolitana with a lively, lithe young lady, who cut our artist's heart to fiddlestrings before they had danced five minutes together a polka—for let the truth be told, Caper never could dance the Tarantella.

Wardor, in the meantime, had been led off in triumph to a side-table, and was making a very hearty second dinner; he not having force of mind enough to do like Caper and refuse a good offer! Caper had to drink a few tumblers (not wine-glasses) of wine, and found it beneficial in dancing. It may be as well to repeat here, in order to calm all apprehensions of our artist being a hard drinker, that all these wines around Rome, with few exceptions, are little stronger than mild sweet cider, and that satiety will generally arrive before inebriety. Ask any sober and rigorously correct traveller, who has ever been there, if this is not so. If he speaks from experience, he will say: 'Certainly!' 'Of course!' 'To be sure!' And again: 'Why not?'

It is not asserted here that the Romans of the city or surrounding country never get tipsy; but that it is only occasionally they have change enough to do so; consequently, a beautiful state of sobriety is observed by those travellers who—never observe anything.

The moon was shining over the old gate-towers of Genazzano when Caper mounted his horse, and, in company with two Segnians, rode forth from the fifth festa, and over the hills through Cavi, and over the valley past Valmontone, and then up the steep road to his summer home; wondering if in far-away America they were dreaming of a man who was going through a course of weekly Fourth-of-July's, and how long it would be before the world came to an end if such a state of things existed in any country where people had liberty to study geography, and were ruled by politicians instead of priests?

'May I ask your candid opinion of the great moral effect of so many holidays on an uneducated population?' inquired Caper one day of Rocjean, while speaking of the festivals of the Papal States.

'Certainly you may! My opinion is that the head of the state, carrying out the gigantic policy of his predecessors, believes: 'That that government governs best that gives the greatest amount of fiddling to the greatest amount of its children.''

'But,' objected Caper, 'I don't see where the fiddling comes in.'

'In the churches!' sententiously remarked the Sieur de Rocjean.

'Oh,' quoth Caper, 'I was thinking of festivals.'

Reader, do you think likewise, when you are with the Romans.

THOUGHT

Life is but an outer wallRound the realm of thought unseen;Ah! to let the drawbridge fallLeading to that magic hall!Ah! to let creation in.Kings that with the world contended,What remains of all the splendidMisery their hands have wrought?Hushed and silent now the thunderThey have made the world rock under;But the ages bow in wonderTo a thought.Ah! the many tragic partsThat are played by human heartsIn that golden drama, fame.These are minor actors truly,That should not be seen unduly,Letting idle recollectionTrifle with the play's perfection,Letting an unwritten anguishMake the brilliant pageant languish.Alas for every hero's story,That the woes which chiefly make itMust surge from the heart, or break it,And show the stuff that fashions glory.Pyramids and templed wondersAt the best are wise men's blunders;The subtle spell of thought and fancy,It is Nature's necromancy.In that land where all things realBlossom into the ideal,In that realm of hidden powersMoving this gross world of ours,He that would inherit fame,Let him on the magic wallOf some bright, ideal hallWrite his name;He and glory then shall beComrades through eternity.While the deeds of mighty kingsSleep the sleep of meaner things,Thoughts enclosed in words of graniteRevolutionize our planet.And, itself a new creation,Many an enchanted tune,As of nightingale's in June,Comes floating down in long vibration,To the chorus of the hoursLending its harmonial powers,Or through Time's resounding archesPlaying Nature's solemn marches,To whose beat the marshalled nationsPass in steady generations.But deem not the thoughts unspoken,Silent despots of the brain,Build their airy halls in vain,Die and leave behind no token.As the stars upon the etherPlay their golden monody,Flashing on dusk-featured nightThe soft miracle of light;So upon a finer ether,A spiritual emanationFrom the whole mind of creation,Plays the brain incessantly;And each thought is a vibration,Running like a poet's rhymeDown the endless chords of time,And on each responsive brainDropping in a silver rainOf divinest inspiration.When the whirlwind rush of warPasses, and is heard no more,Voices crushed beneath its dinRise and their long reign begin;Thoughts like burning arrows hurledAt the tyrants of the world,Thoughts that rend like battle axesTill wrong's giant hand relaxes,Thoughts that open prison gatesAnd strike the chains of prostrate limb,That turn the current of the fates,Like God's commissioned cherubimWith divine authorityTo proclaim creation free,And plant in human hearts the seedsThat shall grow to noble deeds.Ha! when genius climbs the throneSacred to oppression grown,And from his seat plucks tyranny;When, with thoughts that pierce like flame,Songs, and every word a fame,She crowns imperial Liberty,Then shall the usurper, glory,End his foul and brutal story,And manhood evermore shall beA synonym of liberty.

'IT STILL MOVES.'

It still goes on. The driving rainMay chill, but light will gleam again,It still goes on. Truth's enemyWins a defeat with victory.It still goes on. Cold winter's snowComes that the grass may greener grow;And Freedom's sun, whate'er befall,Shines warm and bright behind it all.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE REBELLION

Among all the subjects of human cognizance, the least understood, and therefore the most difficult of anticipation, are those which concern the acts of men, as individuals or in society. Presumptuous, indeed, would be that man who should undertake to foretell the exact results of pending political or military operations, complicated as they must be by innumerable unknown and undiscoverable contingencies, which lie hidden in the circumstances of the actual situation. The difficulty of this investigation does not arise, however, from the absence of fixed laws controlling such events, but solely from our ignorance of those laws, and the extreme complexity of the conditions in which they act. The issue of existing causes is as certain as this moment, as it will be after it shall have become unalterable in history. No accident can disturb or thwart it; for, in truth, there can be no such thing as accident, except in our imaginations, and by reason of our incapacity to trace the continuous thread of inevitable sequence, or causation, which connects together all events whatever, in their inception, through their continuance, and to their end. All enlightened thinkers of the present age have recognized this great truth; and yet none have been able to apply to social and political affairs the sole admitted test of genuine philosophy, the prediction of future results from known antecedents. Indeed, the wisest and most competent of political observers have always been the most cautious in their indulgence of the prophetic spirit, and the most ready to acknowledge their ignorance of what the future will bring forth in the great field of political and social affairs. Gasparin, in his late admirable book, 'America before Europe' (according to his American translator), has this very modest passage on this subject:

'Not feeling any vocation for the character of prophet, I shall take care not to recount here, in advance, events that are about to happen. I marvel at people who are so sure of their facts. The future has not the least obscurity for them; it has much for me. I confine myself to protesting against the positive assertions which have contributed but too greatly to mislead the opinion of Europe. My humbles theory is this: the defeat of the South is probable; the return of the conquered South to the Union is possible.'

But while 'political or military vaticination' is proverbially unsafe, and therefore to be carefully avoided by all judicious inquirers, and especially by practical statesmen, it must at the same time be admitted that some of the general laws controlling such events are well understood; and whenever all the facts of a case are known and appreciated, and the laws applicable fully comprehended, then it is possible to anticipate the results of that particular combination with absolute certainty. Other causes may interfere, and modify these results—may accelerate of postpone them, or entirely absorb and conceal them in the general issue of complicated affairs. Yet the particular results themselves are not, and cannot be defeated or annulled. They are merely transformed by a sort of 'composition and resolution' of social and political causes, exactly similar to that which takes place in mechanics, when two or more forces not concurrent in direction, impel a body in a line altogether different from that in which either of the forces may have acted. Every physical impulse, it is said, which is initiated anywhere on the earth, is felt to the extremities of our solar system—every motion of the smallest particle of matter communicating its effect, however inappreciable, to the most distant planet, and as far beyond as the power of gravitation may extend. It is precisely so with all social events, even those of the most insignificant character. Every one of them has its appropriate influence, which is indestructible; and they all combine to make up the great whole of human action, the results of which at any specific period are only the necessary and inevitable consequences of all antecedent facts.

It was the opinion of that most accomplished political philosopher, Burke, that 'politics ought to be adjusted not to human reasonings, but to human nature, of which reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part,'—the meaning of which is, simply, that the reasonings do not comprehend, as premises, all the complicated facts which enter into any important political problem, and hence the conclusion in such cases cannot be absolutely certain, and ought not to be implicitly received. It would be extremely difficult to explain how politics could be adjusted to human nature without the exercise of reason, which alone can regulate the process of adjustment. But we may certainly claim that, in the lapse of nearly a century since Burke wrote, the reason has been considerably enlightened, and something more has been learned of human nature itself, its apparently capricious and irregular phenomena having been ascertained to be the subjects of systematic order, as complete as that which prevails in all other departments of nature. The laws of social existence and development have been to some extent discovered, and recognized as being uniform in their operation, so that the natural and necessary course of human events may be anticipated, though as yet in a dim and imperfect way. The present age is fruitful of many wonders; but the greatest of them all is this important truth, which has just begun fairly to dawn upon mankind. It is already so firmly established, that no intelligent man who is fully up with the knowledge of his epoch, can admit the least doubt that all events, however complicated, whether social, political, military, or of any other kind, are controlled by general laws, as uniform and certain in their operation as the laws of astronomy, of physics, or of chemistry. The complexity of conditions under which they operate, makes these laws extremely difficult of discovery and of application. But the infinite combinations of influences which press on minds of individual members of society, and make the acts of each one of them apparently uncertain and arbitrary, exhibit a truly wonderful degree of uniformity, when considered in their operation on the whole mass of a nation. It is by the investigation of these wide and general effects, that the great laws of human action and development are ascertained. Their actual existence is absolutely certain. But after all, in the present state of our knowledge, with all the light afforded by such history as we have of the past, and with all the experience of the present generation, the sum and substance of what we can claim is no more than this: that some influences of a social and political nature may be traced to their certain results, though, from the intricacy of all social facts, their vast extent in a great nation, and especially when international interests are concerned, and from our necessarily imperfect acquaintance with all these varied, multiplex, and powerful conditions, we cannot always foresee what conflicting causes will intervene to counteract, modify, and control the actual issue. It is therefore only in the most general way that anything can be said with reference to the future in social or political affairs.

In two former articles contributed to The Continental, we have endeavored to point out 'the causes of the rebellion,' finding them in events and conditions contemporaneous with the birth of our institutions, and in the necessary antagonism of social and political principles naturally developed in the progress of our country, and embodied in appropriate but conflicting forms. If we have been successful in designating the real causes, and tracing their operation through successive stages, down to the tremendous and calamitous events of the present day, we may hope to follow these causes, to some extent, in their further development, and in their necessary action on the destiny of the nation. We can at least mark the direction of the stream of affairs as it rolls grandly before us; and while we may not know precisely through what regions it will take its course, or by what rapids and over what cataracts it will be hurried and precipitated with furious and destructive force, we can nevertheless pronounce with confidence that it will finally make its way, in spite of all obstructions, to the broad and peaceful ocean of amelioration, into which all the currents of human action, however turbid, and filled with wrecks of human work and genius, eventually pour their inevitable tribute. We can even look through the mists of time which limit mortal vision, and catch some glimpses of the bloody current, observing where it disappears in gloom and shadow, only to come forth again in the distance as a shining river, glistening in the sunlight of peace and prosperity, and bearing on its bosom the full-freighted ark of a mighty nation, resting from war, reunited, and reawakened to the animating sense of a glorious destiny. Though the present generation should be compelled to struggle and labor, through its whole term of existence, with immense sacrifice and suffering, such are the elements involved in the contest, that nothing but good to the nation, which is surely destined to survive, can come out of it in the end.

The whole history of our country, its origin, the peculiar organization of our institutions, and their gradual growth and development down to the present day, seem to have been arranged and ordered for the very purpose of engendering this contest between slavery and freedom. If this statement be too strong, we may at least assert that no better conditions for that purpose could have been devised, by human wisdom at all events, than those which existed at every stage of our progress, from the beginning of our existence as a people, to the culmination of this long-smouldering strife. The germs of freedom and slavery, which we know were planted in the infancy of our republic, found in the circumstances surrounding them the most favorable conditions for their respective growth and expansion. Each found ample opportunity to flourish according to its nature and necessities, modified, it may be, but not destroyed, by the unfavorable institutions which coexisted with it. The organization of separate colonies, and afterward of separate States, measurably independent, afforded these two irreconcilable systems full opportunity for complete development, and rendered it possible for them to maintain, each, a distinct existence in different localities, and to unfold their respective natures and tendencies, with comparatively little interference of the one with the other. Thus slavery soon became extinct in Massachusetts, and died out rather more slowly in the other Free States of the original thirteen. It flourished in Maryland and Virginia, and later, from peculiar circumstances, it grew rank, with unexampled fecundity, in the Carolinas and Georgia. Had the Government of the United States been consolidated, the conditions of slavery and free labor would have been wholly different; and it is reasonable to infer that the course of development of the respective systems would have been materially modified, if not altogether changed. We may pronounce with certainty that the institution would not have become extinct in the whole country as soon as it did in Massachusetts, or, indeed, in any one of the present Free States; but we cannot assert that the converse of this proposition would have been true, and that the Government, as a centralized power, would have abolished slavery more certainly, and sooner, than the most backward of the separate States may now be expected to do, under the complex forms of our present Constitution. In a consolidated government, the power of the majority would have been competent to effect fundamental and universal changes, even to the extent of abolishing slavery; but without the existence of separate States, with their independent local legislation and administrations, the gradual undermining and destruction of the old system would have been a process of extreme procrastination and difficulty. It would have been a gigantic undertaking, convulsing the whole nation whenever attempted, and yet demanding the exercise of its united authority for its accomplishment. We should not have had the effective antagonism of the Free against the Slave States, nor the demonstration which results from the striking contrasts between the two systems in their effects on civilization, in all its forms of intelligence, enterprise, wealth, and improvement. Contiguous States, with separate jurisdictions, admitted a divergence of customs, laws, and institutions, remarkable in its character, and fraught with momentous consequences to the whole sisterhood. Nothing like this could have occurred under the consolidated form. It is true, according to the principles we have heretofore enounced as having been established by universal history and experience, slavery must have disappeared eventually, alike in a consolidated or a federal form of government; for it is now well understood by all enlightened thinkers, that different forms of polity may either facilitate or embarrass the natural development of society, but cannot actually create or altogether destroy the tendency to improvement. This tendency is innate in man, and independent of all forms of government, though not wholly unaffected by them. But in our vast country, under a centralized system, however democratic, it would have been far more difficult to initiate the work of emancipation, on account of the magnitude and unity of the power to be moved, and for want of those points d'appui afforded by the local organization and independent authority of the states in a confederacy. Our own experience, and the recent example of Russia, may serve to convince us that a consolidated representative republic would probably have been less favorable to the abolition of slavery than an imperial and despotic government. The serf-owners of Russia, had the question been submitted to them, would have been as little disposed to vote for the destruction of their system, as the slave-holders of America have shown themselves inclined to submit to the voice of the majority under our republican institutions.

Thus, it was characteristic of our peculiar political forms, that they gave opportunity for the complete trial of each of the two plans of social organization which grew out of the early introduction of African slaves into the colonies. For while it seems to be clear that the federal system was most favorable to the disappearance of slavery from those localities where circumstances made emancipation easy and advantageous, it is equally plain that it afforded full scope to the growth and influence of the system of servile labor, wherever, from climatic conditions, it was peculiarly profitable, and otherwise adapted to the productions of the region, and to the prevailing sentiments of the people. The confederated form of government, therefore, almost of necessity originated the antagonism of Free States against Slave States; while, at the same time, and from the same cause, it enabled the opposite sections to give infinitely greater force and effect to this antagonism, than would have been possible under any other constitutional conditions. Rebellion might possibly have been initiated within the bosom of a consolidated republic, and such a government might well have been broken into two or more fragments; but this would have been far less likely to happen in that case than in existing circumstances. At all events, there would have been no room for the dangerous doctrine of secession, and that plausible pretext would have been wanting to the incipient rebellion; nor would there have been anything equivalent to the State organizations which unfortunately afforded the ready means of immediate and most effective combination. The inestimable advantages of our complex political system in avoiding the necessary despotism of consolidated government, by establishing local legislation and administration in a number of partially independent States, were in some measure counterbalanced by a natural tendency to discord among the parts, and a capacity for independent action in support and perpetuation of dangerous divergencies of opinion and policy. If some States could repudiate slave labor, and gradually build the fabric of their prosperity on the safer basis of universal education, others could, with equal disregard of everything but their own will and fancied interests, cherish and encourage the original system of servile subordination and compulsory ignorance of the laboring class, with which all the States started into their career of independence at the commencement of the Revolution. And, unhappily, both parties to this discordant social action were unrestrained by any constitutional obligation, or by any common authority whatever, in the indulgence, within their respective limits, of mutual hatred and vituperation, with all those numberless and exasperating injuries which no law can either notice or redress. These conflicting capabilities, with their attendant dangers, lurked in the body of our political organization from the very beginning. They were born with it; they grew with its growth, and strengthened with its strength, until the fatal hour when rebellion undertook the wicked work of its destruction. Whatever may be the actual issue of the struggle—whether the attempted dismemberment shall prove a success or a disastrous failure—the effect of the civil war on the character of our institutions must be commensurate with the organic character of the causes out of which it arose. So profound a disturbance of the existing social order, so vast an upheaval of the very foundations of the whole political fabric, must either rend it into fragments, and make necessary a complete reconstruction, or must cause it to settle down upon a basis firmer and more lasting than that on which it has hitherto rested. We think it almost absolutely certain that the latter result will be brought out in the end. It cannot be possible that our system will be utterly destroyed; and if, against all human probabilities, it should be momentarily overthrown, it will rise again hereafter in greater splendor and power, by reason of the very calamity through which it will have passed.