Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 by Various

V >> Various >> Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

No element more fatal to our growth or freedom could Lyon conceive than
this slave autocracy. It sapped the very foundations of republicanism,
and, stealthily advancing to the extreme limits of the law, enjoyed the
confidence of the people, while it plotted their subjugation. All the
varied machinery of the new social system, falsely styled government,
had for its object the extinction of individual rights and the
deification of capital. Church and state united in the unholy effort to
Crush the masses, and intriguing politicians, by dint of dazzling
rhetoric and plausible promises, lured the people on to secure their own
downfall at the polls. The only remedy for this Lyon saw in the
elevation of the masses. 'It is the greatest political revolution yet to
be effected,' he says, 'to bring the laboring man to know that honest
industry is the highest of merits, and should be awarded the highest
honor; and, properly pursued, contributes to his intelligence and
morality, and to the virtues needed for official station.' 'The
calamity,' says an eminent writer from his far Platonean heights, 'is
the masses;' but liberty is a new religion that is to sweep over the
world and regenerate them. And to this end Lyon boldly advocated
emancipation for the sake of the white man. If to-day, when patriotism
is at a premium, men tremble before the acknowledged necessity of this
measure, and are either too cowardly or too indolent to meet the demands
of the times, it required no little boldness in 1860 to advance a theory
so decided, even in a Kansas newspaper. But Lyon knew the inefficiency
of half-way measures, and the moral degradation they inevitably entail
upon the community so weak or so deluded as to adopt them. The hue and
cry of abolitionism did not disturb him; he was not afraid of names.
Conservatism that sat in state at Washington, and pulled the wires all
over the country,--a tremendous power, none the less fearful in that it
was only a galvanized one,--was a dead letter to him, its dignity
departed with the age that had demanded it. Conservatism would have
resented no impositions, established no new landmarks, asserted no
independence; would carry its mails on horseback, creep over the ocean
in schooners, fight by sea in piked brigantines, and by land with spear
and battle-axe; it would have emancipated no slaves in Great Britain and
France, and no serfs in Russia. But if freedom means anything, it means
_Progress_,--liberty to advance, never to retrograde. 'Nothing in the
world will ever go backward,' said the old lizard to Heine. All the
authority of a new Areopagus could never sanction that; and yet this
liberty the South claims, nay, has already acted upon, so that the world
may see the result of the experiment, and against its continuance Lyon
protests. In the long silent years of preparation for the fray he has
nursed strange thoughts on the ultimate destiny of man. He has seen in
dreams, prophetic of a mighty accomplishment, his country growing great,
and vigorous, and powerful, extending to struggling humanity everywhere
the protection of her friendship, building up noble institutions,
encouraging science and the useful arts, and leading the van in the
world's great millennial march; and this not through any miraculous
interposition of Providence, but by means of an exalted intelligence and
the power of thought stimulating to action, and that of the noblest
kind.

But you argue the unfitness of the masses for this destiny. Lyon
answers,--not in any musically-rounded sentences, in phrases nicely
balanced; the man is plain and outspoken,--'This is a truth of
philosophy and political economy, that man rises to a condition
corresponding to the rights, duties and responsibilities devolved upon
him; and therefore the only true way to make a man is to invest him with
the rights, duties and responsibilities of a man, and he generally rises
in intellectual and moral greatness to a position corresponding to these
circumstances.' It is a mistake to suppose the great body of the people
ignorant of their position, or unconscious of their growing importance
and dignity as representatives of a mighty empire. Vice and poverty have
indeed well-nigh quenched humanity in thousands in our great cities,
but these are but a drop in the ocean. Behind lies our vast West, with
its teeming population, sturdy, active and energetic. All our mountain
districts are alive with men who, thanks to the press, are beginning to
feel their power. Every advantage of physical development their hardy
life gives them, and the growing consciousness and comprehension of
freedom, blooming under a munificent free-school dispensation, will do
the rest. Our internal manufacturing and agricultural elements at the
North, already powerful and irrepressible, will soon exercise a
tremendous influence in our government. Shall it be the influence of
ignorance played upon by the sophistry of demagogues and helping to
rebuild the vicious doctrines that have stood firmly for so many years,
or the healthful influence of intelligent industry tending to our
greatness and prosperity? This our war is to decide. No peaceful
solution of the great question could be made. This Lyon foresaw in the
truckling of politicians North to win the unit of Southern political
sympathy: the main end and aim of the South being the appointment of
Southern men to the Presidency, 'as security on the one hand against
unfavorable executive action toward slavery, and on the other against
executive patronage adverse to its interests, the democratic party North
succeeded, by trimming party sails and decking party leaders, in suiting
their fastidious Southern leaders.' The question once at issue, even a
peaceful separation was impossible, though an amendment of the
Constitution should sanction it. War was inevitable. The great bugbear
of slavery would still exist; fugitive slave laws be forever upon the
political carpet; formidable jealousies spring up between two nations
founded upon such diverse principles, yet united by very natural
circumstance of language and climate; internal wrangling would destroy
all unity, conspiracies give the death-blow to all prosperity and all
hope of advancement. All this if there were no great party at the North
to rise upon the vast ground of humanity, claiming for its millions the
privilege of an unfettered life, for its children a fair start in the
future. Only one remedy Lyon knew, and he stood there, the early apostle
of Emancipation, and preached it. His doctrine was not accepted then, it
is not accepted now; but the time must come, when millions shall have
been expended, and blood shall have flowed like water only to delay it,
when we will fly to it for salvation. Let those who still cry 'Peace,
peace,' when there is no peace, learn what is to be its
price--Emancipation. It will be a bitter draught; well, so was the
independence of her colonies to England. And every day makes it more
bitter; the gall in the cup rises to the brim; a few more months and it
will overflow; the people will take the matter into their own hands and
legislate slavery into the swamps of Florida.

It is a lame and blind philanthropy that cries for a respite. 'A little
more sleep, a little more slumber. After us the deluge.' And meanwhile
the damnable lies gain ground, and a new generation is lost to its due
development. Have we yet to learn that we are no longer individuals, but
parts of a mighty nation, and responsible in some sort, every one, women
and men, for its destiny? Poland has learned this lesson. Her eyes are
upon us now. Shall she, still struggling, find that blood and treasure,
and all the thousand dear blessings of peace, have been sacrificed in
vain? If you cry 'War is an evil!' we grant it; but is it reserved for
the nineteenth century to discover a creed for which there shall be no
martyrs? What great gift has the world ever won that was not bought with
blood? When has independence of action or thought been purchased
otherwise than at the cost of persecution,--more revolution? Then let us
not slander revolutions. They are the throes of nature undergoing her
purification; if it is as by fire, oh! let us have courage and stand
beside her in her hour of trial. St. George will not fight forever; the
dragon of oppression is dying.

'Yes, although so slowly, he _is_ dying;
Many thousand years have fled in darkness,
Since the sword first cut his scaly armor,
And the red wound roused him into madness;
But the good knight is of race immortal,
Ever young, and passionate and fearless;
And the strength which oozes from the dragon,
Blooms reviving in the glorious warrior.'

And, after all, the demon of war is not so black as we have painted him.
We do not shudder to-day as we read of the siege of Troy or the downfall
of Carthage, or the Romance of the Cid. The song of Deborah, 'of the
avenging of Israel _when the people willingly offered themselves_,' is
one glorious burst of praise to God and gratitude to the martyrs. There
was war in heaven when ambition was cast out:--what quiet pastoral
appeals to our noblest impulses as Paradise Lost does? Wisely and well
speaks the English clergyman when he says:--

'But the truth is that here, as elsewhere, poetry has reached the truth,
while science and common sense have missed it. It has distinguished--as,
in spite of all mercenary and feeble sophistry, men ever will
distinguish--war from mere bloodshed. It has discerned the higher
feelings which lie beneath its revolting features. Carnage is terrible.
The conversion of producers into destroyers is a calamity. Death, and
insults to women worse than death--and human features obliterated
beneath the hoof of the war-horse--and reeking hospitals, and ruined
commerce, and violated homes, and broken hearts--they are all awful. But
there is something worse than death: cowardice is worse. And the _decay
of enthusiasm and manliness is worse_. And it is worse than death, aye,
worse than one hundred thousand deaths, when a people has gravitated
down into the creed, that the "wealth of nations" consists, not in
generous hearts, "fire in each breast, and freedom on each brow," in
national virtues, and primitive simplicity, and heroic endurance, and
preference of duty to life--not in _men_, but in silk and _cotton_, and
something that they call "capital." Peace is blessed--peace arising out
of charity. But peace springing out of the calculations of selfishness
is not blessed. If the price to be paid for peace is this, that wealth
accumulate and men decay, better far that every street, in every town of
our once noble country, should run blood.'[K]

As we write, every telegram proves the vaunted unity of the South a
sham, a visionary political bugbear, no longer strong or hideous enough
to frighten the most inveterate conservative dough-face. But a few
victories do not end the war; still earnestness and effort and
sacrifice, for the sick man of America will fight even when his 'brains
are out.' Not until we have proved to Breckenridge, the traitor, that we
are not 'fighting for principles that three-fourths of us abhor,' and
that the Union is not only 'a means of preserving the principles of
political liberty,' but that in it is irrevocably bound up every living
principle of all liberty, social, religious and individual; that in its
shelter only we have security against wrong at home and insult from
abroad; not until Emancipation has instituted a new order of things in
society as well as in politics, will the death of the out-spoken patriot
and brave man, Lyon, be avenged, and the Struggle be at an end. 'Genius
is patient,' but patience has had her perfect work, and the days of
Rebellion are numbered. On with the crusade!

* * * * *

MACCARONI AND CANVAS.

II.

The voice of Rome is baritone, always excepting that of the Roman
locomotive,--the donkey,--which is deep bass, and comes tearing and
braying along at times when it might well be spared. In the still night
season, wandering among the moonlit ruins of the Coliseum, while you
pause and gaze upon the rising tiers of crumbling stone above you,
memory retraces all you have read of the old Roman days: the forms of
the world-conquerors once more people the deserted ruin; the clash of
ringing steel; hot, fiery sunlight; thin, trembling veil of dust pierced
by the glaring eyes of dying gladiators; red-spouting blood; screams of
the mangled martyrs torn by Numidian lions; moans of the dying; fierce
shouts of exultation from the living; smiles from gold-banded girls in
flowing robes, with floating hair, flower-crowned, and perfumed; the hum
of thrice thirty thousand voices hushed to a whisper as the combat hangs
on an uplifted sword; the--

Aw-waw-WAUN-ik! WAW-NIK! WAUN-KI-w-a-w-n! comes like blatant fish-horn
over the silent air, and your dream of the Coliseum ends ignominiously
with this nineteenth-century song of a jackass.

At night you will hear the shrill cry of the screech-owl sounding down
the silent streets in the most thickly-populated parts of the city. Or
you will perhaps be aroused from sleep, as Caper often was, by the
long-drawn-out cadences of some countryman singing a _rondinella_ as he
staggers along the street, fresh from a wine-house. Nothing can be more
melancholy than the concluding part of each verse in these rondinellas,
the voice being allowed to drop from one note to another, as a man
falling from the roof of a very high house may catch at some projection,
hold on for a time, grow weak, loose his hold, fall, catch again, hold
on for a minute, and at last fall flat on the pavement, used up, and
down as low as he can reach.

But the street-cries of this city are countless; from the man who brings
round the daily broccoli to the one who has a wild boar for sale, not
one but is determined that you shall hear all about it. Far down a
narrow street you listen to a long-drawn, melancholy howl--the voice as
of one hired to cry in the most mournful tones for whole generations of
old pagan Romans who died unconverted; poor devils who worshiped wine
and women, and knew nothing better in this world. And who is their
mourner? A great, brawny, tawny, steeple-crowned hat, blue-breeched,
two-fisted fish-huckster; and he is trying to sell, by yelling as if his
heart would break, a basket of fish not so long as your finger. If he
cries so over anchovies, what would he do if he had a whale for sale?

Another _primo basso profundo_ trolls off a wheelbarrow and a fearful
cry at the same time; not in unison with his merchandise, for he has
birds--quail, woodcock, and snipe--for sale, besides a string of dead
nightingales, which he says he will 'sell cheap for a nice stew.' Think
of stewed nightingales! One would as soon think of eating a boiled
Cremona violin.

But out of the way! Here comes, blocking up the narrow street, a
_contadino_, a countryman from the Campagna. His square wooden cart is
drawn by a donkey about the size of, and resembling, save ears, a singed
Newfoundland dog; his voice, strong for a vegetarian,--for he sells
onions and broccoli, celery and tomatoes, _finocchio_ and mushrooms,--is
like tearing a firm rag: how long can it last, subjected to such use?

It is in the game and meat market, near the Pantheon, that you can more
fully become acquainted with the street cries of Rome; but the Piazza
Navona excels even this. Passing along there one morning, Caper heard
such an extraordinary piece of vocalization, sounding like a Sioux
war-whoop with its back broken, that he stopped to see what it was all
about. There stood a butcher who had exposed for sale seven small stuck
pigs, all one litter; and if they had been his own children, and died
heretics, he could not have howled over them in a more heart-rending
manner.

About sunrise, and even before it,--for the Romans are early
risers,--you will hear in spring-time a sharp ringing voice under your
window, '_Acqua chetosa! Acqua, chetosa!_' an abridgment of _acque
accetosa_, or water from the fountain of Accetosa, considered a good
aperient, and which is drank before breakfast. Also a voice crying out,
'_Acqua-vi-ta!_' or spirits, drank by the workmen and others at an
expense of a baioccho or two the table-spoonful, for that is all the
small glasses hold. In the early morning, too, you hear the chattering
jackdaws on the roofs; and then, more distinctly than later in the day,
the clocks striking their odd way. The Roman clocks ring from one to six
strokes four times during the twenty-four hours, and not from one to
twelve strokes, as with us. Sunset is twenty-four o'clock, and is noted
by six strokes; an hour after sunset is one o'clock, and is noted by one
stroke; and so on until six hours after, when it begins striking one
again. As the quarter hours are also rung by the clocks, if you happen
to be near one you will have a fine chance to get in a muddle trying to
separate quarters from hours, and Roman time from your own. Another
noise comes from the game of _morra_. Caper was looking out of his
window one morning, pipe in mouth, when he saw two men suddenly face
each other, one of them bringing his arm down very quickly, when the
other yelled as if kicked, '_Due!_' (two), and the first shouted at the
top of his lungs, '_Tre!_' (three). Then they both went at it, pumping
their hands up and down and spreading their fingers with a quickness
which was astonishing, while all the time they kept screaming, 'One!'
'Four!' 'Three!' 'Two!' 'Five!' etc., etc. 'Ha!' said Caper, 'this is
something like; 'tis an arithmetical, mathematical, etcetrical school in
the open air. The dirtiest one is very quick; he will learn to count
five in no time. But I don't see the necessity of saying "three" when
the other brings down four fingers, or saying "five" when he shows two.
But I suppose it is all right; he hasn't learned to give the right names
yet.' He learned later that they were gambling.

While these men were shouting, there came along an ugly old woman with a
tambourine and a one-legged man with a guitar, and seeing prey in the
shape of Caper at his window, they pounced on him, as it were, and
poured forth the most ear-rending discord; the old lady singing, the old
gentleman backing up against a wall and scratching at an accompaniment
on a jangling old guitar. The old lady had a bandana handkerchief tied
over her head, and whilst she watched Caper she cast glances up and down
the street, to see if some rich stranger, or _milordo_, was not coming
to throw her a piece of silver.

'What are you howling about?' shouted Caper down to her.

'A new Neapolitan canzonetta, signore; all about a young man who grieves
for his sweetheart, because he thinks she is not true to him, and what
he says to her in a serenade.' And here she screechingly sung,--

But do not rage, I beg, my dear;
I want you for my wife,
And morning, noon, and night likewise,
I'll love you like my life.

CHORUS.

I only want to get a word,
My charming girl, from thee.
You know, Ninella, I can't breathe,
Unless your heart's for me!

'Well,' said Caper, 'if this is Italian music, I don't _see_ it.'

The one-legged old gentleman clawed away at the strings of the guitar.

'I say,'_llustrissimo_,' shouted Caper down to him, 'what kind of
strings are those on your instrument?'

'_Excellenza_, catgut,' he shouted, in answer.

'_Benissimo!_ I prefer cats in the original packages. There's a _paolo_:
travel!'

Caper had the misfortune to make the acquaintance of a professor of the
mandolin, a wire-strung instrument, resembling a long-necked squash cut
in two, to be played on with a quill, and which, with a guitar and
violin, makes a concert that thrills you to the bones and cuts the
nerves away.

But the crowning glory of all that is ear-rending and peace-destroying,
is carried around by the _Pifferari_ about Christmas time. It is a
hog-skin, filled with wind, having pipes at one end, and a jackass at
the other, and is known in some lands as the bagpipe. The small shrines
to the Virgin, particularly those in the streets where the wealthy
English reside, are played upon assiduously by the _pifferari_, who are
supposed by romantic travelers to come from the far-away Abbruzzi
Mountains, and make a pilgrimage to the Eternal City to fulfil a vow to
certain saints; whereas it is sundry cents they are really after. They
are for the most part artists' models, who at this season of the year
get themselves up _a la pifferari_, or piper, to prey on the romantic
susceptibilities and pockets of the strangers in Rome, and, with a pair
of long-haired goat-skin breeches, a sheepskin coat, brown rags, and
sandals, or _cioccie_, with a shocking bad conical black or brown hat,
in which are stuck peacock's or cock's feathers, they are ready equipped
to attack the shrines and the strangers.

Unfortunately for Caper there was a shrine to the Virgin in the
second-story front of the house next to where he lived; that is,
unfortunately for his musical ear, for the lamp that burned in front of
the shrine every dark night was a shining and pious light to guide him
home, and thus, ordinarily, a very fortunate arrangement. In the
third-story front room of the house of the shrine dwelt a Scotch artist
named MacGuilp, who was a grand amateur of these pipes, and who declared
that no sound in the world was so sweet to his ear as the bagpipes: they
recalled the heather, haggis, and the Lothians, and the mountain dew, ye
ken, and all those sorts of things.

One morning at breakfast in the Cafe Greco he discoursed at length about
the pleasure the pifferari gave him; while Caper, taking an opposite
view, said they had, during the last few days, driven him nearly crazy,
and he wished the squealing hog-skins well out of town.

MacGuilp told him he had a poor ear for music: that there was a charm
about the bagpipes unequalled even by the unique voices of the Sistine
Chapel; and there was nothing he would like better than to have all the
pipers of Rome under his windows.

Caper remembered this last rash speech of Master MacGuilp, and
determined at an early hour to test its truth. It happened, the very
next morning at breakfast, that MacGuilp, in a triumphant manner, told
him that he had received a promise of a visit from the Duchess of ----,
with several other titled English; and said he had not a doubt of
selling several paintings to them. MacGuilp's style was of the
blood-and-thunder school: red dawns, murdered kings, blood-stained
heather, and Scotch plaids, the very kind that should be shown to the
sweet strainings of hog-skin bagpipes.

In conversation Caper found out the hour at which the duchess intended
to make her visit. He made his preparations accordingly. Accompanied by
Rocjean, he visited Gigi, who kept a costume and life school of models,
found out where the pipers drank most wine, and going there and up the
Via Fratina and down the Spanish Steps, managed to find them, and
arranged it so that at the time the duchess was viewing MacGuilp's
paintings, he should have the full benefit of a serenade from all the
pifferari in Rome.

The next morning Caper, pipe in mouth, at his window, saw the carriage
of the duchess drive up, and from it the noble English dismount and
ascend to the artist's studio. The carriage had hardly driven away when
up came two of the pipers, and happening to cast their eyes up they saw
Caper, who hailed them and told them not to begin playing until the
others arrived. In a few moments six of the hog-skin squeezers stood
ready to begin their infernal squawking.

'Go ahead!' shouted Caper, throwing a handful of _baiocchi_ among them;
and as soon as these were gathered up, the pipers gave one awful,
heart-chilling blast, and the concert was fairly commenced. Squealing,
shrieking, grunting, yelling, and humming, the sounds rose higher and
higher. Open flew the windows in every direction.

'_C'est foudroyante!_' said the pretty French _modiste_.

'What the devil's broke loose?' shouted an American.

'_Mein Gott im himmel! was ist das?_' roared the German baron.

'_Casaccio! cosa faceste?_' shrieked the lovely Countess Grimanny.

'_In nomine Domine!_' groaned a fat friar.

'_Caramba! vayase al infierno!_' screamed Don Santiago Gomez.

'_Bassama teremtete!_' swore the Hungarian gentleman.

Louder squealed the bagpipes, their buzz filled the air, their shrieks
went ringing up to MacGuilp like the cries of Dante's condemned. The
duchess found the sound barbarous. MacGuilp opened his window, upon
which the pipers strained their lungs for the Signore Inglese, grand
amateur of the bagpipes. He begged them to go away. 'No, no, signore; we
know you love our music; we won't go away.'

The duchess could stand it no longer, her Servant called the carriage,
the English got in and drove off.

Still rung out the sounds of the six bagpipes. Caper threw them more
_baiocchi_.

Suddenly MacGuilp burst out of the door of his house, maul-stick in
hand, rushing on the pifferari to put them to flight.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20