Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Part 26

Still his dauntless conduct on the field of battle shows him to have been a man of fearless spirit; and he was universally allowed to be an accomplished disciplinarian. His melancholy end, too, disarms censure of its asperity. Whatever may have been his faults and errors, he in a manner expiated them by the hardest lot that can befall a brave soldier, ambitious of renown--an unhonored grave in a strange land: a memory clouded by misfortune, and a name for ever coupled with defeat.

=_185._= BARON STEUBEN IN THE REVOLUTIONARY ARMY.

The committee having made their report, the baron's proffered services were accepted with a vote of thanks for his disinterestedness, and he was ordered to join the army of Valley Forge. That army, in its ragged condition and squalid quarters, presented a sorry aspect to a strict disciplinarian from Germany, accustomed to the order and appointments of European camps; and the baron often declared, that under such circ.u.mstances no army in Europe could be kept together for a single month. The liberal mind of Steuben, however, made every allowance; and Was.h.i.+ngton soon found in him a consummate soldier, free from pedantry or pretension.

For a time, there was nothing but drills throughout the camp, then gradually came evolutions of every kind. The officers were schooled as well as the men. The troops, says a person who was present in the camp, were paraded in a single line with shouldered arms; every officer in his place. The baron pa.s.sed in front, then took the musket of each soldier in hand, to see whether it was clean and well polished, and examined whether the men's accoutrements were in good order.

He was sadly worried for a time with the militia; especially when any manoeuvre was to be performed. The men blundered in their exercise; the baron blundered in his English; his French and German were of no avail; he lost his temper, which was rather warm; swore in all three languages at once, which made the matter worse, and at length called his aide to his a.s.sistance, to help him curse the blockheads as it was pretended--but no doubt to explain the manoeuvre.

Still the grand marshal of the court of Hohenzollern mingled with the veteran soldier of Frederick, and tempered his occasional bursts of impatience; and he had a kind generous heart, that soon made him a favorite with the men. His discipline extended to their comforts. He inquired into their treatment by the officers. He examined into the doctor's reports; visited the sick; and saw that they were well lodged and attended.

He was an example, too, of the regularity and system he exacted. One of the most alert and indefatigable men in the camp; up at day-break if not before, whenever there were to be any important manoeuvres, he took his cup of coffee and smoked his pipe while his servant dressed his hair, and by sunrise he was in the saddle, equipped at all points, with the star of his order of knighthood glittering on his breast, and was off to the parade, alone, if his suite were not ready to attend him.

The strong good sense of the baron was evinced in the manner in which he adapted his tactics to the nature of the army and the situation of the country, instead of adhering with bigotry to the systems of Europe. His instructions were appreciated by all. The officers received them gladly and conformed to them. The men soon became active and adroit. The army gradually acquired a proper organization, and began to operate, like a great machine; and Was.h.i.+ngton found in the baron an intelligent, disinterested, truthful coadjutor, well worthy of the badge he wore of the Order of _Fidelity_.

=_Richard Henry Wilde, 1789-1847._= (Manual, pp. 501, 521.)

From "Conjectures concerning Torquato Ta.s.so."

=_186._= INTEREST OF Ta.s.sO'S LIFE.

There is scarcely any poet whose life excites a more profound and melancholy interest than that of Torquato Ta.s.so.

His short and brilliant career of glory captivates the imagination, while the heart is deeply affected by his subsequent misfortunes.

Greater fame and greater misery have seldom been the lot of man, and a few brief years sufficed for each extreme.

An exile even in his boyhood, the proscription and confiscation suffered by his father deprived him of home and patrimony. Honor and love, and the favor of princes, and enthusiastic praise, dazzled his youth. Envy, malice, and treachery, tedious imprisonment and imputed madness, insult, poverty, and persecution, clouded his manhood. The evening of his days was saddened by a troubled spirit, want, sickness, bitter memories, and deluded hopes; and when at length a transient gleam of suns.h.i.+ne fell upon his prospects, death subst.i.tuted the immortal for the laurel crown.

Mystery adds its fascination to his story. The causes of his imprisonment are hidden in obscurity; it is still disputed whether he was insane or not.

Few points of literary history, therefore, are more interesting, or more obscure, than the love, the madness, and the imprisonment of Ta.s.so.

=_George Ticknor, 1791-1871._= (Manual, p. 502.)

From "The History of Spanish Literature."

=_187._= DESIGN OF CERVANTES IN WRITING DON QUIXOTE.

His purpose in writing the Don Quixote has sometimes been enlarged by the ingenuity of a refined criticism, until it has been made to embrace the whole of the endless contrast between the poetical and the prosaic in our natures,--between heroism and generosity on one side, as if they were mere illusions, and a cold selfishness on the other, as if it were the truth and reality of life. But this is a metaphysical conclusion drawn from views of the work at once imperfect and exaggerated; a conclusion contrary to the spirit of the age, which was not given to a satire so philosophical and generalizing, and contrary to the character of Cervantes himself, as we follow it from the time when he first became a soldier, through all his trials in Algiers, and down to the moment when his warm and trusting heart dictated the Dedication of "Persiles and Sigismunda" to the Count de Lemos. His whole spirit, indeed, seems rather to have been filled with a cheerful confidence in human virtue, and his whole bearing in life seems to have been a contradiction to that discouraging and saddening scorn for whatever is elevated and generous, which such an interpretation of the Don Quixote necessarily implies.

At the very beginning of the work, he announces it to be his sole purpose to break down the vogue and authority of books of chivalry, and at the end of the whole he declares anew in his own person, that "he had no other desire than to render abhorred of men the false and absurd stories contained in books of chivalry;" exulting in his success as an achievement of no small moment. And such, in fact, it was, for we have abundant proof that the fanaticism for these romances was so great in Spain, during the sixteenth century, as to have become matter of alarm to the more judicious....

To destroy a pa.s.sion that had struck its roots so deeply in the character of all cla.s.ses of men, to break up the only reading which at that time could be considered widely popular and fas.h.i.+onable, was certainly a bold undertaking, and one that marks anything rather than a scornful or broken spirit, or a want of faith in what is most to be valued in our common nature. The great wonder is, that Cervantes succeeded. But that he did there is no question. No book of chivalry was written after the appearance of Don Quixote, in 1605; and from the same date, even those already enjoying the greatest favor ceased, with one or two unimportant exceptions, to be reprinted; so that, from that time to the present, they have been constantly disappearing, until they are now among the rarest of literary curiosities--a solitary instance of the power of genius to destroy, by a single well-timed blow, an entire department, and that, too, a flouris.h.i.+ng and favored one, in the literature of a great and proud nation.

The general plan Cervantes adopted to accomplish this object, without, perhaps, foreseeing its whole course, and still less all its results, was simple as well as original. In 1605 he published the first part of Don Quixote, in which a country gentleman of La Mancha, full of genuine Castilian honor and enthusiasm, gentle and dignified in his character, trusted by his friends, and loved by his dependants--is represented as so completely crazed by long reading the most famous books of chivalry, that he believes them to be true, and feels himself called on to become the impossible knight-errant they describe,--nay, actually goes forth, into the world to defend, the oppressed and avenge the injured, like the heroes of his romances.

=_James Hall, 1793-1868._= (Manual, p. 510.)

From "Statistics of the West."

=_188._= DESCRIPTION OF A PRAIRIE.

Imagine a stream of a mile in width, whose waters are as transparent as those of the mountain spring, flowing over beds of rock or gravel. Fancy the prairie commencing at the water's edge--a natural meadow covered with gra.s.s and flowers, rising, with a gentle slope, for miles, so that in the vast panorama thousands of acres are exposed to the eye. The prospect is bounded by a range of low hills, which sometimes approach the river, and again recede, and whose summits, which are seen gently waving along the horizon, form the level of the adjacent country.... The timber is scattered in groves and strips, the whole country being one vast illimitable prairie, ornamented by small collections of trees....

But more often we see the single tree, without a companion near, or the little clump, composed of a few dozen oaks or elms; and not unfrequently, hundreds of acres embellished with a kind of open woodland, and exhibiting the appearance of a splendid park, decorated with skill and care by the hand of taste. Here we behold the beautiful lawn enriched with flowers, and studded with trees, which are so dispersed about as not to intercept the prospect, standing singly, so as not to shade the ground, and occasionally collected in cl.u.s.ters, while now and then the shade deepens into the gloom of the forest, or opens into long vistas and s.p.a.cious plains, dest.i.tute of tree or shrub.

When the eye roves off from the green plain, to the groves, or points of timber, these also are found ... robed in the most attractive hues.

The rich undergrowth is in full bloom. The red-bud, the dog-wood, the crab-apple, the wild plum, the cherry, the wild rose, are abundant in all the rich lands; and the grape-vine, though its blossom is unseen, fills the air with fragrance. The variety of the wild fruit and flowering shrubs is so great, and such the profusion of the blossoms with which they are bowed down, that the eye is regaled almost to satiety.

The gayety of the prairie, its embellishments, and the absence of the gloom and savage wildness of the forest, all contribute to dispel the feeling of lonesomeness which usually creeps over the mind of the solitary traveler in the wilderness. Though he may not see a house nor a human being, and is conscious that he is far from the habitations of men, he can scarcely divest himself of the idea that he is traveling through scenes embellished by the hand of art. The flowers so fragile, so delicate, and so ornamental, seem to have been tastefully disposed to adorn the scene. The groves and clumps of trees appear to have been scattered over the lawn to beautify the landscape; and it is not easy to avoid that illusion of the fancy which persuades the beholder, that such scenery has been created to gratify the refined taste of civilized man.

=_Henry R. Schoolcraft, 1793-1864._= (Manual, p. 504.)

From "Oneota."

=_189._= THE CHIPPEWA INDIAN.

Of all the existing branches of the Algonquin stock in America, this extensive and populous tribe appears to have the strongest claims to intellectual distinction, on the score of their traditions, so far at least, as the present state of our inquiries extends. They possess in their curious fict.i.tious legends and lodge-tales, a varied and exhaustless fund of tradition, which is repeated from generation to generation. These legends hold, among the wild men of the north, the relative rank of story-books; and are intended both to amuse and instruct. This people possess also the art of picture writing in a degree which denotes that they have been, either more careful, or more fortunate, in the preservation of this very ancient art of the human race. Warriors, and the bravest of warriors, they are yet an intellectual people.

... They believe that the great Spirit created material matter, and that He made the earth and heavens, by the power of His will.... He made one great and master-spirit of evil, to whom He also gave a.s.similated and subordinate evil spirits having something of his own nature, to execute his will. Two antagonist powers, they believe, were thus placed in the world, who are continually striving for the mastery, and who have power to affect the lives and fortunes of men. This const.i.tutes the ground-work of their religion, sacrifices, and wors.h.i.+p.

They believe that animals were created before men, and that they originally had rule on the earth. By the power of necromancy, some of these animals were transformed to men, who, as soon as they a.s.sumed this new form, began to hunt the animals, and make war against them. It is expected that these animals will resume their human shapes, in a future state, and hence their hunters feign some clumsy excuses for their present policy of killing them. They believe that all animals, and birds, and reptiles, and even insects, possess reasoning faculties, and have souls. It is in these opinions, that we detect the ancient, doctrine of transmigration.

One of the most curious opinions of this people is their belief in the mysterious and sacred character of fire. They obtain sacred fire, for all national and ecclesiastical purposes, from the flint. Their national pipes are lighted with this fire. It is symbolical of purity. Their notions of the boundary between life and death, which is also symbolically the limit of the material verge between this and a future state, are revealed in connection with the exhibition of flames of fire.

They also make sacrifices by fire of some part of the first fruits of the chase. These traits are to be viewed, perhaps, in relation to their ancient wors.h.i.+p of the sun, above noticed, of which the traditions and belief are still generally preserved. The existence of the numerous cla.s.ses of jossakeeds, or mutterers (the word is from the utterance of sounds low on the earth), is a trait that will remind the reader of a similar cla.s.s of men in early ages in the eastern hemisphere. These persons const.i.tute, indeed, the Magi of our western forests.

=_Edward Everett, 1794-1865._= (Manual, pp. 487, 531.)