sight of which made my blood run cold. He saw me, and hastened to the verge of the chasm. He squatted on his hind legs, and assumed the attitude of one preparing to leap. My consternation was excited afresh by these appearances. It seemed at first as if the rift was too wide for any power of muscles to carry him in safety over; but I knew the unparalleled agility of this animal, and that his experience had made him a better judge of the practicability of this exploit than I was. Still there was hope that he would relinquish this design as desperate. This hope was quickly at an end. He sprung, and his fore-legs touched the verge of the 5 rock on which I stood. In spite of vehement exertions, however, the surface was too smooth and too hard to allow him to make good his hold. He fell, and a piercing cry uttered below, showed that notho ing had obstructed his descent to the bottom. From Edgar Huntly, 1801. WILLIAM WIRT (1772-1834) American literature before Irving was sporadic. There was no literary center and no centralizing force. Freneau was a New Yorker. Tyler a Bostonian, Brown a Philadelphian, Dwight a New Englander not connected with Boston, William Wirt was a southerner, a native to Maryland and long a resident in Virginia, of which state he rose to be chancellor in 1801. After his prosecution of Aaron Burr in 1807 he became a national figure and during the last years of his life was rated among the foremost orators of America. In 1826 he delivered before Congress his famous eulogy on Adams and Jefferson. His first literary production, Letters of the British Spy, ten papers originally contributed in 1803 to the Argus newspaper of Richmond, Virginia, as documents purporting to have been left accidentally in a Virginia inn by a traveling member of the British Parliament, passed through many editions and became perhaps the most popular book of the period before Irving. Wirt followed it in 1810 with the Old Bachelor, a periodical of the Spectator type, and in 1817 with the Life of Patrick Henry, a famous book in its day. In it appears for the first time what purports to be Henry's oration before the Virginia Assembly Give me liberty or give me death,' a masterpiece that was almost entirely the invention of Wirt. THE BLIND PREACHER RICHMOND, Oct. 10. 5 I have been, my dear S, on an excursion through the countries which lie along the eastern side of the Blue Ridge. A general description of that country and its inhabitants may form the subject of a future letter. For the present, I must entertain you with an account of a most to singular and interesting adventure, which I met with, in the course of the tour. It was one Sunday, as I travelled through the county of Orange, that my eye was caught by a cluster of horses tied 15 near a ruinous, old, wooden house, in the forest, not far from the road side. Having frequently seen such objects before, in travelling through these states, I had no difficulty in understanding that this was a 20 place of religious worship. Devotion alone should have stopped me, to join in the duties of the congregation: but I must confess, that curiosity, to hear the preacher of such a wilderness, was 25 not the least of my motives. On entering, I was struck with his preternatural appearance: he was a tall and very spare old man; his head, which was covered with a white linen cap, his shrivelled hands, and 30 his voice, were all shaking under the influence of a palsy; and a few moments ascertained to me that he was perfectly blind. The first emotions which touched my breast, were those of mingled pity and veneration. But ah! sacred God! how soon were all my feelings changed! The lips of Plato were never more worthy of a prognostic swarm of bees, than were the lips of this holy man! It was a day of the administration of the sacrament; and his subject, of course, was the passion of our Saviour. I had heard the subject handled a thousand times: I had thought it exhausted long ago. Little did I suppose, that in the wild woods of America, I was to meet with a man whose eloquence would give to this topic a new and more sublime pathos, than I had ever before witnessed. As he descended from the pulpit, to distribute the mystic symbols, there was a peculiar, a more than human solemnity in his air and manner which made my blood run cold, and my whole frame shiver. He then drew a picture of the sufferings of our Saviour; his trial before Pilate: his ascent up Calvary; his crucifixion, and his death. I knew the whole history; but never, until then, had I heard the circumstances so selected, so arranged, so coloured! It was all new: and I seemed to have heard it for the first time in my life. His enunciation was so deliberate, that his voice trembled on every syllable: and every heart in the assembly trembled in unison. His peculiar phrases had that force of description that the original scene appeared to be, at that moment, acting before our eyes. We saw the very faces of the Jews: the staring, frightful distortions of malice and rage. We saw the buffet; my soul kindled with a flame of indignation; and my hands were involuntarily and convulsively clinched. 5 But when he came to touch on the patience, the forgiving meekness of our 10 Saviour; when he drew, to the life, his blessed eyes streaming in tears to heaven; his voice breathing to God, a soft and gentle prayer of pardon on his enemies, Father, forgive them, for they know not 15 what they do the voice of the preacher, which had all along faltered, grew fainter and fainter, until his utterance being entirely obstructed by the force of his feelings, he raised his handkerchief to his eyes, and burst into a loud and irrepressible flood of grief. The effect is inconceivable. The whole house resounded with the mingled groans, and sobs, and shrieks of the congregation. voice of affecting, trembling melody; you are to remember the pitch of passion and enthusiasm to which the congregation were raised; and then, the few moments of portentous, death-like silence which reigned throughout the house; the preacher removing his white handkerchief from his aged face (even yet wet from the recent torrent of his tears), and slowly stretching forth the palsied hand which holds it, begins the sentence, 'Socrates died like a philosopher - then pausing, raising his other hand, pressing them both clasped together, with warmth and energy to his breast, lifting his sightless balls to heaven, and pouring his whole soul into his tremulous voice-but Jesus Christlike a God!' If he had been indeed and in truth an angel of light, the effect could scarcely have been more divine. Whatever I had been able to conceive of the sublimity of Massillon, or the force of Bourdaloue, had fallen far short of the power which I felt from the delivery of 25 this simple sentence. The blood, which just before had rushed in a hurricane upon my brain, and, in the violence and agony of my feelings, had held my whole system in suspense, now ran back into my heart, with a sensation which I cannot describe -a kind of shuddering delicious horror! The paroxysm of blended pity and indignation, to which I had been transported, subsided into the deepest self-abasement,. humility and adoration. I had just been lacerated and dissolved by sympathy, for our Saviour as a fellow creature; but now, with fear and trembling, I adored him as -'a God!' It was some time before the tumult had subsided, so far as to permit him to proceed. Indeed, judging by the usual, but fallacious standard of my own weakness, I began to be very uneasy for the situa- 30 tion of the preacher. For I could not conceive, how he would be able to let his audience down from the height to which he had wound them without impairing the solemnity and dignity of his subject, or 35 perhaps shocking them by the abruptness of the fall. But no; the descent was as beautiful and sublime, as the elevation had been rapid and enthusiastic. The first sentence, with which he broke 40 the awful silence, was a quotation from Rousseau, Socrates died, like a philosopher, but Jesus Christ, like a God!" 45 I despair of giving you any idea of the effect produced by this short sentence, unless you could perfectly conceive the whole manner of the man, as well as the peculiar crisis in the discourse. Never before did I completely understand what Demosthenes meant by laying such stress 50 on delivery. You are to bring before you the venerable figure of the preacher; his blindness, constantly recalling to your recollection old Homer, Ossian and Milton, and associating with his performance, 55 the melancholy grandeur of their geniuses; you are to imagine that you hear his slow, solemn, well-accented enunciation, and his If this description give you the impression, that this incomparable minister had anything of shallow, theatrical trick in his manner, it does him great injustice. I have never seen, in any other orator, such a union of simplicity and majesty. He has not a gesture, an attitude or an accent, to which he does not seem forced, by the sentiment which he is expressing. His mind is too serious, too earnest, too solicitous, and, at the same time, too dignified, to stoop to artifice. Although as far removed from ostentation as a man can be, yet it is clear from the train, the style and substance of his thoughts, that he is not only a very polite scholar, but a man of extensive and profound erudition. I was forcibly struck with a short. yet beautiful character which he drew of our learned and amiable countryman, Sir Robert Boyle: he spoke of him, as if his noble mind had, even before death, divested herself of all influence from his frail tabernacle of flesh;' and called him, 5 in his peculiarly emphatic and impressive manner, a pure intelligence: the link between men and angels.' This man has been before my imagination almost ever since. A thousand times, 10 as I rode along, I dropped the reins of my bridle, stretched forth my hand, and tried to imitate his quotation from Rousseau: a thousand times I abandoned the attempt in despair, and felt persuaded 15 that his peculiar manner and power arose from an energy of soul, which nature could give, but which no human being could justly copy. In short, he seems to be altogether a being of a former age, or 20 a totally different nature from the rest of men. As I recall, at this moment, several of his awfully striking attitudes, the chilling tide, with which my blood begins to pour along my arteries, reminds me of 25 the emotions produced by the first sight of Gray's introductory picture of his bard: On a rock, whose haughty brow With haggard eyes the poet stood; (Loose his beard and hoary hair Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air :) And with a poet's hand and prophet's fire, Guess my surprise, when, on my arrival at Richmond, and mentioning the name of this man, I found not one person who had ever before heard of James Waddell!! Is it not strange, that such a genius as this, so accomplished a scholar, so divine an orator, should be permitted to languish and die in obscurity, within eighty miles of the metropolis of Virginia? To me it is a conclusive argument, either that the Virginians have no taste for the highest strains of the most sublime oratory, or that they are destitute of a much more important quality, the love of genuine and exalted religion. (1803) JOHN JAMES AUDUBON (1780-1851) Audubon's father. born of humble parentage near Passy, France, had taken to the sea at twelve and by persistence and ability had become at thirty commander of a merchant fleet and before middle life owner of plantations in San Domingo, Louisiana. and Pennsylvania. In Louisiana he had married a Spanish creole lady, Anne Moynette, and it was at the plantation home which they soon established near New Orleans that there were born to them four children, one of whom was to inherit all the father's restlessness and persistence. The childhood of Audubon was broken and tumultuous: a few years in Louisiana, then a short period in San Domingo where his mother lost her life in a negro uprising, then a boyhood in France where among other studies he pursued art under the famous master, David, then finally a young manhood as manager of the Pennsylvania estate near Perkiomen Creek. Here at last amid the solitudes of the half subdued wilderness the youth found himself. Naturestudy, especially ornithology, laid hold of him until it became a ruling passion. The rest of his life is but the record of his wanderings in the American wilderness from the Mississippi on the west to Labrador on the north and Florida and Texas on the south, varied by trips to Europe in connection with the publication of his books. Barred early from his father's fortune, he passed his whole life in poverty. To continue his bird studies he supported himself as he could by keeping store, teaching drawing and dancing, painting portraits, and shooting game. All save his wife and children for a long time believed him insane, but he kept on. Unable to find a publisher in America, he went to England, and, though utterly unknown, a mere man of the woods,' he was at last able to issue his great book on a scale that satisfied him. Penniless, he nevertheless was able to put through a work that cost almost one fifth of a million of dollars and to market the entire edition at $1.000 a copy. The Birds of America, magnificently illustrated, came out in parts 1827-1838, and in volumes, 1830-1838. His Ornithological Biography was issued 1831-1839, and his The Quadrupeds of America appeared in plates 1845-1848, and in letter-press 1846-1853. Audubon is declared by Coues to be the father of American Ornithology.' He was, moiover, with Wilson, the pioneer popularizer, of nature study. His journals, mostly unpublished as yet, and his graphic studies of bird and animal life in the early American forests, written always with the subject present before his eyes, have real literary power. They are uninfluenced by any other writings. Even at the early period at which they were written they were uniquely American. Moreover, Audubon must share with Irving the distinction of having introduced to England at least one new province of American letters. The best biographies of Audubon are the one edited with copious extracts from the journals by his widow for the American Men of Energy series and the one by John Burroughs in Beacon Biographies. THE COMMON MOCKING-BIRD It is where the great magnolia shoots up its majestic trunk, crowned with evergreen leaves, and decorated with a thousand beautiful flowers, that perfume the air around; where the forests and fields are adorned with blossoms of every hue; where the golden orange ornaments the gardens and groves; where bignonias of 10 various kinds interlace their climbing stems around the white-flowered stuartia, and mounting still higher, cover the summits of the lofty trees around, accompanied with innumerable vines, that here 15 and there festoon the dense foliage of the magnificent woods, lending to the vernal breeze a slight portion of the perfume of their clustered flowers; where a genial warmth seldom forsakes the atmosphere; 5 where berries and fruits of all descriptions are met with at every step:-in a word, kind reader, it is where Nature seems to have paused, as she passed over the earth, and opening her stores, to have strewed with unsparing hand the diversified seeds from which have sprung all the beautiful and splendid forms which I should in vain attempt to describe, that the mocking-bird should have fixed its abode, there only that its wondrous song should be heard. |