Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348

“Take her, dear Howard!” said her father, who had followed us unperceived. “She is the best of daughters, and will make as good a wife.”

Louise sank into my arms. An hour later I was on my way homewards.

At last, then, I was irrevocably pledged, and my bachelorship drew near its close. I felt that I had made a judicious choice. Louise was an excellent girl, sensible, prudent, active, and cheerful—uniting, in short, all the qualities desirable in a backwoodsman’s wife. It was strange enough that all this should only have occurred to me within a few hours. I had been living two months under the same roof with her, and yet the idea of her becoming my wife had never entered my head till the preceding night.

It was four in the afternoon when I reached my plantation, which I was very near passing without recognising it, so great was the change that had taken place since my last visit. The rubbish and tree-trunks that had then encumbered the vicinity of the house had disappeared—the garden had been increased in size, and surrounded by a new and elegant fence—a verandah, under which two negro carpenters were at work, ran along the front and sides of the house. As I walked up from the boat, young Ménou came to meet me. I shook him heartily by the hand, and expressed my gratitude for the trouble he had taken, and my wonder at the astonishing progress the improvements of all kinds had made.

“How have you possibly managed to effect all these miracles?” said I.

“Very easily,” replied Ménou. “You sent us fifteen negroes; my father lent me ten of his. With these, and the twenty-five you had before, we were able to make progress. We are now putting the finishing-stroke to your cotton press, which was fearfully out of order.”

I walked with a thankful heart through the garden, and stepped into the verandah. The rooms that looked out upon it were all fitted up in the most comfortable manner. In the principal bedroom, a negro girl was working at the elegant musquitto curtains. Old Sybille, in a calico gown of the most glaring colours, her face shining with contentment, was brushing away some invisible dust from the furniture in the parlour.

“By the by,” said young Ménou, opening a writing-desk, “here are several letters that have come for you within the last few days, and that amidst my various occupations I have quite forgotten to forward.”

I sat down and opened them. Two were from Richards, the earliest in date, inviting me to go and stay with him again. The more recent one renewed the invitation, and expressed the writer’s surprise at my having become on a sudden so domestic a character. In a postscript he added, as a sort of inducement to me to visit him, that he was daily expecting a friend of his wife’s, the beautiful Emily Warren. Not a syllable, however, about the eight thousand dollars, which surprised me not a little; for Richards was by no means a man to remain silent on a subject affecting his worldly interest, and I fully expected he would have felt and expressed some pique or resentment at my sudden withdrawal of my funds. But, on the contrary, the letter I had given to Ménou, in which I requested Richards to pay over the money in question to the Creole, was not even alluded to.

“There are matters in these letters,” said I to young Ménou, “which oblige me to return immediately to your father’s house.”

“Indeed!” cried the young man, much astonished.

“Yes,” replied I. “I hear a steamboat coming down the river—I will be off at once.”

He looked at me in great surprise; Sybille shook her head. But my character is so impatient and impetuous, that when I have resolved on any thing, I can never bear to defer its execution a moment. Besides, there was really nothing to detain me at my plantation. The arrangements and improvements that I had reckoned on finding only half effected were complete; and every moment that now elapsed before I could welcome Louise as mistress of my house and heart, seemed to me worse than wasted. I hurried down to the river and hailed the steamer. It was the same that had brought me home two months previously.

“Mr Howard,” said the captain joyously, as I stepped on board the vessel, “I am right glad to see you on my deck again. Your plantation looks quite another thing. You are really a worker of wonders.”

I hardly knew how to accept this undeserved praise. One of the best points in our American character is the universal respect paid to industry and intellect. The wealthy idler who carries thousands in his pocket-book, may, amongst us, look in vain for the respect and flattery which a tithe of his riches would procure him in many other countries; while the less fortunate man, who makes his way and earns his living by hand and head work, may always reckon on the consideration of his fellow-citizens. On   my return to Louisiana I had been thought nothing of. I was a drone in the hive—with money, but without skill or perseverance. My overseer was more looked up to than myself; but the recent change in the state of my plantation, attributed, however wrongly, to my presence, had caused a revolution in people’s ideas; and I was now met on all sides with open hands and smiling countenances. The change, I must confess, was a gratifying one for me.

The Ménous were at breakfast the next morning, when I arrived, heated by my walk from the river, opposite to the parlour window. I was received with a cry of welcome.

“So soon back! Nothing wrong, I hope?” said Ménou.

“Nothing,” replied I dryly; “I have only forgotten something.”

“And what is that?”

“My Louise,” was my answer, as I seated myself beside the blushing girl. “On arriving at my wilderness,” I continued, “I found it converted into so blooming a paradise, that I should really be heartbroken if it were to remain any longer without its Eve. To-morrow, please God, we will start for New Orleans, to put in requisition the service of Père Antoine and the worthy rector.”

There was a cry of consternation from the papa and mamma.

“There is nothing ready—point de trousseau—nothing in the world. Do not be so unreasonable, dear Howard.”

“Our Yankee damsels,” replied I, laughing, “if they have only got a pair of shoes and a gown and a half, consider themselves perfectly ready to be married.”

“Well, let him have his way,” said Ménou. “We can manage, I daresay, to equip the bride a little better than that.”

“Apropos,” said I to Ménou, while the ladies were consulting together, and recovering from the flurry into which my precipitation had thrown them—“the eight thousand dollars? Richards says nothing about them.”

“It was only an experiment I tried with you,” replied my future father-in-law, smiling. “I wished to see if you have sufficient firmness of character to ensure your own happiness. Had you not come victoriously out of the little ordeal, Louise should never have been wife of yours, if all the plantations on the Mississippi had called you master. As to the money, I advanced what was wanted. You can settle with Mr Richards in the way most agreeable to yourself.”

The next morning we set off for New Orleans—Ménou and Louise, Julie, who was to act as bridesmaid, and myself. Madame Ménou remained at home. I could have wished to have had young Ménou as my bridesman; but his presence was necessary at the plantation, and we were obliged to content ourselves with receiving his good wishes as we passed. After a twenty hours’ voyage we reached the capital, and took up our quarters in the house of a sister of Ménou’s.

I was hurrying to find Father Antoine, when, in turning the corner of the cathedral, I ran bolt up against Richards. After the first greeting, and without giving him time to ask me questions—

“Wait for me at the Merchant’s Coffeehouse,” said I; “in a quarter of an hour I will meet you there.”

And I left him in considerable astonishment at my desperate haste. I found Father Antoine and the rector, and then hurried off to keep my appointment.

“Do you know,” said I to Richards, as I dragged him through the streets, “that I am thinking seriously of becoming a Benedict?”

“Well,” said he, “you must come home with me then. Emily Warren is arrived. She is a charming girl, and a great friend of my wife’s. You will be sure of Clara’s good word, and I really think Emily will exactly suit you.”

“I am afraid not,” replied I, as I turned into the church.

Richards opened his eyes in amazement when he saw Louise, with her aunt, sister, and the whole of the bridal party, walking up the aisle, and Father Antoine standing at the altar in his robes.

“What does this mean?” said he.

I made no answer, but let matters explain themselves. Ten minutes after, Louise Ménou was my wife.

GREECE UNDER THE ROMANS. 5

What is called Philosophical History we believe to be yet in its infancy. It is the profound remark of Mr Finlay—profound as we ourselves understand it, i.e., in relation to this philosophical treatment, “That history will ever remain inexhaustible.” How inexhaustible? Are the facts of history inexhaustible? In regard to the ancient division of history with which he is there dealing, this would be in no sense true; and in any case it would be a lifeless truth. So entirely have the mere facts of Pagan history been disinterred, ransacked, sifted, that except by means of some chance medal that may be unearthed in the illiterate East, (as of late towards Bokhara,) or by means of some mysterious inscription, such as those which still mock the learned traveller in Persia, northwards near Hamadan, (Ecbatana,) and southwards at Persepolis, or those which distract him amongst the shadowy ruins of Yucatan (Uxmal, suppose, and Palenque,)—once for all, barring these pure godsends, it is hardly “in the dice” that any downright novelty of fact should remain in reversion for this 19th century. The merest possibility exists, that in Armenia, or in a Græco-Russian monastery on Mount Athos, or in Pompeii, &c., some authors hitherto ανεκδοτοι may yet be concealed; and by a channel in that degree improbable, it is possible that certain new facts of history may still reach us. But else, and failing these cryptical or subterraneous currents of communication, for us the record is closed. History in that sense is come to an end, and sealed up as by the angel in the Apocalypse. What then? The facts so understood are but the dry bones of the mighty past. And the question arises here also, not less than in that sublimest of prophetic visions, “Can these dry bones live?” Not only they can live, but by an infinite variety of life. The same historic facts, viewed in different lights, or brought into connexion with other facts, according to endless diversities of permutation and combination, furnish grounds for such eternal successions of new speculations as make the facts themselves virtually new. The same Hebrew words are read by different sets of vowel points, and the same hieroglyphics are deciphered by keys everlastingly varied.

To us we repeat that oftentimes it seems as though the science of history were yet scarcely founded. There will be such a science, if at present there is not; and in one feature of its capacities it will resemble chemistry. What is so familiar to the perceptions of man as the common chemical agents of water, air, and the soil on which we tread? Yet each one of these elements is a mystery to this day; handled, used, tried, searched experimentally, in ten thousand ways—it is still unknown; fathomed by recent science down to a certain depth, it is still probably by its destiny unfathomable. Even to the end of days, it is pretty certain that the minutest particle of earth—that a dewdrop, scarcely distinguishable as a separate object—that the slenderest filament of a plant will include within itself secrets inaccessible to man. And yet, compared with the mystery of man himself, these physical worlds of mystery are but as a radix of infinity. Chemistry is in this view mysterious and spinosistically sublime—that it is the science of the latent in all things, of all things as lurking in all. Within the lifeless flint, within the silent pyrites, slumbers an agony of potential combustion. Iron is imprisoned in blood. With cold water (as every child is now-a-days aware) you may lash a fluid into angry ebullitions of heat; with hot water, as with the rod of Amram’s son, you may freeze a fluid down to the temperature of the Sarsar wind, provided only that you regulate   the pressure of the air. The sultry and dissolving fluid shall bake into a solid, the petrific fluid shall melt into a liquid. Heat shall freeze, frost shall thaw; and wherefore? Simply because old things are brought together in new modes of combination. And in endless instances beside we see the same Panlike latency of forms and powers, which gives to the external world a capacity of self-transformation, and of polymorphosis absolutely inexhaustible.

But the same capacity belongs to the facts of history. And we do not mean merely that, from subjective differences in the minds reviewing them, such facts assume endless varieties of interpretation and estimate, but that objectively, from lights still increasing in the science of government and of social philosophy, all the primary facts of history become liable continually to new theories, to new combinations, and to new valuations of their moral relations. We have seen some kinds of marble, where the veinings happened to be unusually multiplied, in which human faces, figures, processions, or fragments of natural scenery seemed absolutely illimitable, under the endless variations or inversions of the order, according to which they might be combined and grouped. Something analogous takes effect in reviewing the remote parts of history. Rome, for instance, has been the object of historic pens for twenty centuries (dating from Polybius); and yet hardly so much as twenty years have elapsed since Niebuhr opened upon us almost a new revelation, by recombining the same eternal facts, according to a different set of principles. The same thing may be said, though not with the same degree of emphasis, upon the Grecian researches of the late Ottfried Mueller. Egyptian history again, even at this moment, is seen stealing upon us through the dusky twilight in its first distinct lineaments. Before Young, Champollion, and the others who have followed on their traces in this field of history, all was outer darkness; and whatsoever we do know or shall know of Egyptian Thebes will now be recovered as if from the unswathing of a mummy. Not until a flight of three thousand years has left Thebes the Hekatompy̆los a dusky speck in the far distance, have we even begun to read her annals, or to understand her revolutions.

Another instance we have now before us of this new historic faculty for resuscitating the buried, and for calling back the breath to the frozen features of death, in Mr Finlay’s work upon the Greeks as related to the Roman empire. He presents us with old facts, but under the purpose of clothing them with a new life. He rehearses ancient stories, not with the humble ambition of better adorning them, of more perspicuously narrating, or even of more forcibly pointing their moral, but of extracting from them some new meaning, and thus forcing them to arrange themselves, under some latent connexion, with other phenomena now first detected, as illustrations of some great principle or agency now first revealing its importance. Mr Finlay’s style of intellect is appropriate to such a task; for it is subtle and Machiavelian. But there is this difficulty in doing justice to the novelty, and at times we may say with truth to the profundity of his views, that they are by necessity thrown out in continued successions of details, are insulated, and in one word sporadic. This follows from the very nature of his work; for it is a perpetual commentary on the incidents of Grecian history, from the era of the Roman conquest to the commencement of what Mr Finlay, in a peculiar sense, calls the Byzantine empire. These incidents have nowhere been systematically or continuously recorded; they come forward by casual flashes in the annals, perhaps, of some church historian, as they happen to connect themselves with his momentary theme; or they betray themselves in the embarrassments of the central government, whether at Rome or at Constantinople, when arguing at one time a pestilence, at another an insurrection, or an inroad of barbarians. It is not the fault of Mr Finlay, but his great disadvantage, that the affairs of Greece have been thus discontinuously exhibited, and that its internal changes of condition have been never treated except obliquely, and by men aliud agentibus. The Grecian race had a primary importance on our   planet; but the Grecian name, represented by Greece considered as a territory, or as the original seat of the Hellenic people, ceased to have much importance, in the eyes of historians, from the time when it became a conquered province; and it declined into absolute insignificance after the conquest of so many other provinces had degraded Hellas into an arithmetical unit, standing amongst a total amount of figures, so vast and so much more dazzling to the ordinary mind. Hence it was that in ancient times no complete history of Greece, through all her phases and stages, was ever attempted. The greatness of her later revolutions, simply as changes, would have attracted the historian; but, as changes associated with calamity and loss of power, they repelled his curiosity, and alienated his interest. It is the very necessity, therefore, of Mr Finlay’s position, when coming into such an inheritance, that he must splinter his philosophy into separate individual notices; for the records of history furnish no grounds for more. Spartam, quam nactus est, ornavit. But this does not remedy the difficulty for ourselves, in attempting to give a representative view of his philosophy. General abstractions he had no opportunity for presenting; consequently we have no opportunity for valuing; and, on the other hand, single cases selected from a succession of hundreds would not justify any representative criticism, more than the single brick, in the anecdote of Hierocles, would serve representatively to describe or to appraise the house.

Under this difficulty as to the possible for ourselves, and the just for Mr Finlay, we shall adopt the following course. So far as the Greek people connected themselves in any splendid manner with the Roman empire, they did so with the eastern horn of that empire, and in point of time from the foundation of Constantinople as an eastern Rome in the fourth century, to a period not fully agreed on; but for the moment we will say with Mr Finlay, up to the early part of the eighth century. A reason given by Mr Finlay for this latter state is—that about that time the Grecian blood, so widely diffused in Asia, and even in Africa, became finally detached by the progress of Mahometanism and Mahometan systems of power from all further concurrence or coalition with the views of the Byzantine Cæsar. Constantinople was from that date thrown back more upon its own peculiar heritage and jurisdiction, of which the main resources for war and peace lay in Europe and (speaking by the narrowest terms) in Thrace. Henceforth, therefore, for the city and throne of Constantine, resuming its old Grecian name of Byzantium, there succeeded a theatre less diffusive, a population more concentrated, a character of action more determinate and jealous, a style of courtly ceremonial more elaborate as well as more haughtily repulsive, and universally a system of interests, as much more definite and selfish, as might naturally be looked for in a nation now every where surrounded by new thrones gloomy with malice, and swelling with the consciousness of youthful power. This new and final state of the eastern Rome Mr Finlay denominates the Byzantine empire. Possibly this use of the term may be capable of justification; but more questions would arise in the discussion than Mr Finlay has thought it of importance to notice. And for the present we shall take the word Byzantine in its most ordinary acceptation, as denoting the local empire founded by Constantine in Byzantium early in the fourth century, under the idea of a translation from the old western Rome, and overthrown by the Ottoman Turks in the year 1453. In the fortunes and main stages of this empire, what are the chief arresting phenomena, aspects, or relations, to the greatest of modern interests? We select by preference these.

I. First, this was the earliest among the kingdoms of our planet which connected itself with Christianity. In Armenia, there had been a previous state recognition of Christianity. But that was neither splendid nor distinct. Whereas the Byzantine Rome built avowedly upon Christianity as its own basis, and consecrated its own nativity by the sublime act of founding the first provision ever attempted for   the poor, considered simply as poor, (i.e. as objects of pity, not as instruments of ambition.)

II. Secondly, as the great ægis of western Christendom, nay, the barrier which made it possible that any Christendom should ever exist, this Byzantine empire is entitled to a very different station in the enlightened gratitude of us western Europeans from any which it has yet held. We do not scruple to say—that, by comparison with the services of the Byzantine people to Europe, no nation on record has ever stood in the same relation to any other single nation, much less to a whole family of nations, whether as regards the opportunity and means of conferring benefits, or as regards the astonishing perseverance in supporting the succession of these benefits, or as regards the ultimate event of these benefits. A great wrong has been done for ages; for we have all been accustomed to speak of the Byzantine empire with scorn,6 as chiefly known by its effeminacy; and the greater is the call for a fervent palinode.

III. Thirdly. In a reflex way, as the one great danger which overshadowed Europe for generations, and against which the Byzantine empire proved the capital bulwark, Mahometanism may rank as one of the Byzantine aspects or counterforces. And if there is any popular error applying to the history of that great convulsion, as a political effort for revolutionizing the world, some notice of it will find a natural place in connexion with these present trains of speculation.

Let us, therefore, have permission to throw together a few remarks on these three subjects—1st, on the remarkable distinction by which the eldest of Christian rulers proclaimed and inaugurated the Christian basis of his empire: 2dly, on the true but forgotten relation of this great empire to our modern Christendom, under which idea we comprehend Europe and the whole continent of America: 3dly, on the false pretensions of Mahometanism, whether advanced by itself or by inconsiderate Christian speculators on its behalf. We shall thus obtain this advantage, that some sort of unity will be given to our own glances at Mr Finlay’s theme; and, at the same time, by gathering under these general heads any dispersed comments of Mr Finlay, whether for confirmation of our own views, or for any purpose of objection to his, we shall give to those comments also that kind of unity, by means of a reference to a common purpose, which we could not have given them by citing each independently for itself.

I. First, then, as to that memorable act by which Constantinople (i.e. the Eastern empire) connected herself for ever with Christianity; viz. the recognition of pauperism as an element in the state entitled to the maternal guardianship of the state. In this new principle, introduced by Christianity, we behold a far-seeing or proleptic wisdom, making provision for evils before they had arisen; for it is certain that great expansions of pauperism did not exist in the ancient world. A pauper population is a disease peculiar to the modern or Christian world. Various causes latent in the social systems of the ancients prevented such developments of surplus people. But does not this argue a superiority in the social arrangements of these ancients? Not at all; they were atrociously worse. They evaded this one morbid affection by means of others far more injurious to the moral advance of man. The case   was then every where as at this day it is in Persia. A Persian ambassador to London or Paris might boast that, in his native Irân no such spectacles existed of hunger-bitten myriads as may be seen every where during seasons of distress in the crowded cities of Christian Europe. “No,” would be the answer, “most certainly not; but why? The reason is, that your accursed form of society and government intercepts such surplus people, does not suffer them to be born. What is the result? You ought, in Persia, to have three hundred millions of people; your vast territory is easily capacious of that number. You have—how many have you? Something less than eight millions.” Think of this, startled reader. But, if that be a good state of things, then any barbarous soldier who makes a wilderness, is entitled to call himself a great philosopher and public benefactor. This is to cure the headache by amputating the head. Now, the same principle of limitation to population à parte ante, though not in the same savage excess as in Mahometan Persia, operated upon Greece and Rome. The whole Pagan world escaped the evils of a redundant population by vicious repressions of it beforehand. But under Christianity a new state of things was destined to take effect. Many protections and excitements to population were laid in the framework of this new religion, which, by its new code of rules and impulses, in so many ways extended the free-agency of human beings. Manufacturing industry was destined first to arise on any great scale under Christianity. Except in Tyre and Alexandria, (see the Emperor Hadrian’s account of this last,) there was no town or district in the ancient world where the populace could be said properly to work. The rural labourers worked a little—not much; and sailors worked a little; nobody else worked at all. Even slaves had little more work distributed amongst each ten than now settles upon one. And in many other ways, by protecting the principle of life, as a mysterious sanctity, Christianity has favoured the development of an excessive population. There it is that Christianity, being answerable for the mischief, is answerable for its redress. Therefore it is that, breeding the disease, Christianity breeds the cure. Extending the vast lines of poverty, Christianity it was that first laid down the principle of a relief for poverty. Constantine, the first Christian potentate, laid the first stone of the mighty overshadowing institution since reared in Christian lands to poverty, disease, orphanage, and mutilation. Christian instincts, moving and speaking through that Cæsar, first carried out that great idea of Christianity. Six years was Christianity in building Constantinople, and in the seventh she rested from her labours, saying, “Henceforward let the poor man have a haven of rest for ever; a rest from his work for one day in seven; a rest from his anxieties by a legal and a fixed relief.” Being legal, it could not be open to disturbances of caprice in the giver; being fixed, it was not open to disturbances of miscalculation in the receiver. Now, first, when first Christianity was installed as a public organ of government, (and first owned a distinct political responsibility,) did it become the duty of a religion which assumed, as it were, the official tutelage of poverty, to proclaim and consecrate that function by some great memorial precedent. And, accordingly, in testimony of that obligation, the first Christian Cæsar, on behalf of Christianity, founded the first system of relief for pauperism. It is true, that largesses from the public treasury, gratuitous coin, or corn sold at diminished rates, not to mention the sportulæ or stated doles of private Roman nobles, had been distributed amongst the indigent citizens of Western Rome for centuries before Constantine; but all these had been the selfish bounties of factious ambition or intrigue.