Southern Literature From 1579-1895 Part 32

was revealed to our longing eyes. Like a great white dove, with out-spread wings, resting upon the calm waters, appeared the distant city. Ah! long shall I remember the delight of that first look upon lovely Cadiz! The day was exquisite; the air fresh and balmy, and the sea like a smooth inland lake. Gentle spirits seemed hovering around to welcome us, while a warm glowing pleasure filled our hearts.

Nearer and nearer we approached, domes, spires, and turrets gradually rising to view, until the entire outline of the city, with its snow-white houses and green alamedas, was before us. . . . . . .

Cadiz is a very ancient city. It was founded by the Phoenicians, hundreds of years before the building of Rome. Upon the coat-of-arms of the city is the figure of Hercules, by whom the inhabitants say it was built. Then came the dominion of the Moors, and afterwards the Spaniards. When America was discovered, a golden prosperity beamed upon Cadiz, which was lost as soon as the Spanish Possessions in the New World proclaimed themselves free. It is strictly a commercial place, and has now only a population of sixty thousand. The city is upon a rocky point of land, joined to the peninsula by a narrow isthmus. The sea surrounds it on three sides, beating against the walls, and often throwing the spray over the ramparts. On the fourth side it is protected by a strong wall and bridges over the wide ditch.

At night, they are drawn up, thus isolating the town completely. . .

Leaving the bay, we plunged into the long rolling billows of the Atlantic, and bade

"Adieu! fair Cadiz, a long adieu!"

then turning the cape, upon which was once the Phoenician light-house called "the Rock of the Sun," we came to St. Lucar. There Magellan fitted out the fleet which first circ.u.mnavigated the globe. . . . We pa.s.sed the mouth of the Rio Tinto, upon which stands the convent [La Rabida], where Columbus, an outcast and wanderer, received charity from the kind prior, who interceded with Isabella and thus forwarded the plans of the great discoverer.

LOUISA SUSANNAH M'CORD.

~1810=1880.~

MRS. M'CORD, daughter of the distinguished statesman, Langdon Cheves [p.r.o.n'd Cheeves, in one syllable], was born at Columbia, South Carolina. She was educated in Philadelphia; and in 1840 she was married to David James M'Cord, a prominent lawyer of Columbia, at one time law-partner of Wm. C. Preston. They spent much of their time at their plantation, "Langsyne," near Fort Motte on the Congaree.

She was a woman of strong character and of commanding intellect as her writings show. Speaking of her home life, a contemporary says, "Mrs.

M'Cord herself ill.u.s.trates her views of female life by her own daily example. She conducts the hospital on her own large plantation, attends to the personal wants of the negroes, and on one occasion perfectly set a fracture of a broken arm. Thoroughly accomplished in the modern languages of Europe, she employs her leisure in the education of her children." See under _Wm. C. Preston_.

WORKS.

Caius Gracchus: a Tragedy.

"Sophisms of the Protective Policy," from the French.

My Dreams, [poems].

Articles in Magazines.

WOMAN'S DUTY.

(_From Enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of Woman, in "Southern Quarterly Review,"

April, 1852._)

In every error there is its shadow of truth. Error is but truth turned awry, or looked at through a wrong medium. As the straightest rod will, in appearance, curve when one half of it is placed under water, so G.o.d's truths, leaning down to earth, are often distorted to our view. Woman's condition certainly admits of improvement, (but when have the strong forgotten to oppress the weak?) . . . Here, as in all other improvements, the good must be brought about by working with, not against--by seconding, not opposing--Nature's laws. Woman, seeking as a woman, may raise her position,--seeking as a man, we repeat, she but degrades it. . . . . . .

Each can labour, each can strive, lovingly and earnestly, in her own sphere. "Life is real! Life is earnest!" Not less for her than for man. She has no right to bury her talent beneath silks or ribands, frippery or flowers; nor yet has she the right, because she fancies not her task, to grasp at another's, which is, or which she imagines is, easier. This is baby play. "Life is real! Life is earnest!" Let woman so read it--let woman so learn it--and she has no need to make her influence felt by a stump speech, or a vote at the polls; she has no need for the exercise of her intellect (and woman, we grant, may have a great, a longing, a hungering intellect, equal to man's) to be gratified with a seat in Congress, or a scuffle for the ambiguous honour of the Presidency.

Even at her own fire-side, may she find duties enough, cares enough, troubles enough, thought enough, wisdom enough, to fit a martyr for the stake, a philosopher for life, or a saint for heaven.

There are, there have been, and there will be, in every age, great hero-souls in woman's form, as well as man's. It imports little whether history notes them. The hero-soul aims at its certain duty, heroically meeting it, whether glory or shame, wors.h.i.+p or contumely, follow its accomplishment. Laud and merit is due to such performance.

_Fulfill_ thy destiny; _oppose_ it not. Herein lies thy track. Keep it. Nature's sign-posts are within thee, and it were well for thee to learn to read them. . . . .

Many women--even, we grant, the majority of women--throw themselves away upon follies. So, however, do men; and this, perhaps, as a necessary consequence, for woman is the mother of the man. Woman has allowed herself to be, alternately, made the toy and the slave of man; but this rather through her folly than her nature. Not wholly _her_ folly, either. _Her_ folly and _man's_ folly have made the vices and the punishment of both.

Woman has certainly not her true place, and this place she as certainly should seek to gain. We have said that every error has its shadow of truth, and, so far, the [Woman's Rights] conventionists are right. But, alas! how wide astray are they groping from their goal!

Woman has not her true place, because she--because man--has not yet learned the full extent and importance of her mission. These innovators would seek to restore, by driving her entirely from that mission; as though some unlucky pedestrian, shoved from the security of the side-walk, should in his consternation seek to remedy matters, by rus.h.i.+ng into the thickest thoroughfare of hoofs and wheels. Woman will reach the greatest height of which she is capable--the greatest, perhaps, of which humanity is capable--not by becoming man, but by becoming, more than ever, woman. By perfecting herself, she perfects mankind.

JOSEPH G. BALDWIN.

~ca. 1811=1864.~

JOSEPH G. BALDWIN was born in Virginia but early removed to Sumter County, Alabama, and was a jurist and writer of much influence and popularity in that State. He removed later to California, where in 1857 he became judge of the Supreme Court and in 1863 Chief-Justice of the State. His writings are mainly clever and humorous sketches of the bar and of the communities in which he practised. He said the "flush times" of Alabama did not compare in any degree with those of California which he described in an article to the "Southern Literary Messenger." His "Party Leaders" are able papers on Jefferson, Hamilton, Jackson, Clay, and John Randolph.

WORKS.

Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi.

Party Leaders.

Humorous Legal Sketches.

VIRGINIANS IN A NEW COUNTRY.

(_From Flush Times in Alabama and Mississippi, published in "Southern Literary Messenger."_)

The disposition to be proud and vain of one's country, and to boast of it, is a natural feeling; but, with a Virginian, it is a pa.s.sion. It inheres in him even as the flavor of a York river oyster in that bivalve, and no distance of deportation, and no tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of a gracious prosperity, and no pickling in the sharp acids of adversity, can destroy it. It is a part of the Virginia character--just as the flavor is a distinctive part of the oyster--"which cannot, save by annihilating, die." It is no use talking about it--the thing may be right, or wrong;--like Falstaff's victims at Gads.h.i.+ll, it is past praying for: it is a sort of cocoa gra.s.s that has got into the soil, and has so matted over it, and so _fibred_ through it, as to have become a part of it; at least there is no telling which is the gra.s.s and which the soil; and certainly it is useless labor to try to root it out. You may destroy the soil, but you can't root out the gra.s.s.

Patriotism with the Virginian is a noun personal. It is the Virginian himself and something over. He loves Virginia _per se_ and _propter se_: he loves her for herself and for himself--because _she is_ Virginia, and--everything else beside. He loves to talk about her: out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. It makes no odds where he goes, he carries Virginia with him; not in the entirety always--but the little spot he comes from is Virginia--as Swedenborg says the smallest part of the brain is an abridgment of all of it.

"_Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt_," was made for a Virginian. He never gets acclimated elsewhere; he never loses citizens.h.i.+p to the old Home. The right of expatriation is a pure abstraction to him. He may breathe in Alabama, but he lives in Virginia. His treasure is there and his heart also. If he looks at the Delta of the Mississippi, it reminds him of James River "low grounds;"

if he sees the vast prairies of Texas, it is a memorial of the meadows of the Valley. Richmond is the centre of attraction, the _depot_ of all that is grand, great, good, and glorious. "It is the Kentucky of a place," which the preacher described Heaven to be to the Kentucky congregation.

Those who came many years ago from the borough towns, especially from the vicinity of Williamsburg, exceed, in attachment to their birthplace, if possible, the _emigres_ from the metropolis. It is refres.h.i.+ng in these coster monger times, to hear them speak of it;--they remember it when the old burg was the seat of fas.h.i.+on, taste, refinement, hospitality, wealth, wit, and all social graces: when genius threw its spell over the public a.s.semblages and illumined the halls of justice, and when beauty brightened the social hour with her unmatched and matchless brilliancy.

ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS.

~1812=1883.~

ALEXANDER HAMILTON STEPHENS was born near Crawfordville, Georgia, and received an early and excellent education in his father's private school and at the University of Georgia. The cost of his tuition here was advanced by some friends, and he repaid it as soon as he began to earn money. He taught for a year in the family of Dr. Le Conte, father of the distinguished scientists, John and Joseph Le Conte, now of the University of California.

He pursued his law studies alone and pa.s.sed an unusually brilliant examination. He was elected to the State Legislature in 1836, and to Congress in 1843, where he served until 1858. He then retired to country life at his home, "Liberty Hall." But in 1861 he was elected Vice-President of the Confederate States. After the war he was made prisoner and confined for some months at Fort Warren near Boston. He spent several years in literary work and established a newspaper at Atlanta, called the "Sun."

He was of small stature and delicate health, and met with one or two severe accidents. His career is a wonderful ill.u.s.tration of the power of the mind over the body. An amusing incident is told of him in regard to his size. He was attending a political convention in Charleston as one of the chief delegates; and one evening, with several other prominent men, he was on the porch of the hotel lying on a bench, talking with his companions who were standing about him. The hotel-keeper coming out saw the gentlemen standing, and bustling up, said, "Get up, my son, and let these gentlemen be seated." Mr.

Stephens at once arose and his friends burst out laughing; they explained the situation to the hotel-keeper who was profuse in his apologies.