The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics / Various

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Title: The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866
       A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics

Author: Various

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

_A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics._


VOL. XVIII.--DECEMBER, 1866.--NO. CX.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by TICKNOR
AND FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the
District of Massachusetts.

[Transcriber's note: Minor typos corrected and footnotes moved to end of
article.]

       *       *       *       *       *

JOHN PIERPONT.


Most men of "fourscore and upwards," like Lear, and who, like Lear, have
been "mightily abused" in their day, are found, upon diligent inquiry,
to have long outlived themselves, like the Archbishop of Granada; but
here is a man, or was but the other day, in his eighty-second year, with
the temper and edge and "bright blue rippling glitter" of a Damascus
blade up to the very last; or rather, considering how he was last
employed, with the temper of that strange tool, found among the ruins of
Thebes, with which they used to smooth and polish their huge monoliths
of granite, until they murmured a song of joy, whenever the morning
sunshine fell upon them.

This remarkable man--remarkable under many aspects--died at Medford,
Massachusetts, on Monday morning, August 27th; and it is now said of
heart-disease,--that other name for a mysterious and sudden death,
happen how it may, and when it may. He had been perfectly well the day
before, attended church, and called on some of his neighbors; he retired
to rest as usual, and nothing more was heard of him till Monday morning,
when he was found asleep in Jesus, prepared, as we humbly trust, to hear
the greeting of "Well done, thou good and faithful servant!" Says a
friend, in a letter now lying before me, of August 27th: "On Saturday
afternoon, day before yesterday, your friend and my friend, Rev. John
Pierpont, called upon me, and we had a very interesting interview of
about an hour. I never saw him look better or appear happier. Although
eighty-one years of age the 6th of last April, he seemed to have the
elasticity of youth, and he was perfectly erect. I gave him what he
wanted very much,--a copy of his trial before an ecclesiastical council
in this city, several years ago. He gave me his photograph, and, taking
his gold pen, wrote underneath, in a beautiful hand, 'John Pierpont,
aged 81.' He said he was doing some work at Washington, which he hoped
to live long enough to complete.... When I published my last book, I
sent him a copy. He acknowledged the receipt of it in a letter of eight
or ten pages, which is now a treasure to me. His name on the photograph
was probably the last time he ever wrote it,"--another treasure, which
my friend would not now be likely to part with for any consideration.

My acquaintance with Mr. Pierpont began in the fall or winter of 1814,
just when the war had assumed such proportions, that men's hearts were
failing them for fear, and prodigies and portents were of daily
occurrence. New England too--finding herself defenceless and left to the
mercy of our foe--began to think, not of setting up for herself, not of
withdrawing from the copartnership, without the consent of the whole
sisterhood, but of coming together for conference and proposing to the
general government, not to become neutral after the fashion of Kentucky,
in our late misunderstanding, not of playing the part of umpire between
the belligerents, like that heroic embodiment of Southern chivalry, nor
of holding the balance of power, but, on being allowed her just
proportion of the public revenues, to undertake for herself, and agree
to give a good account of the enemy, if he should throw himself upon her
bulwarks, whether along the seaboard, or upon her great northern
frontier.

He had just escaped from Newburyport, after writing the "Portrait," a
severe and truthful picture of the times, which went far to give him a
national reputation--for the day; and opened a law office at 103 Court
Street, Boston, where he found nothing to do, and spent much of his time
in cutting his name on little ivory seals, and engraving
ciphers--"J.P."--so beautiful in their character, and so graceful, that
one I have now before me, an impression taken by him in wax, with a
vermilion bed,--for in all such matters he was very particular,--were
enough to establish any man's reputation as a seal engraver. It bears
about the same relationship to what are _called_ ciphers, that Benvenuto
Cellini's flower-cups bore to the clumsy goblets of his day.

He was never a great reader, not being able to read more than fifty
pages of law and miscellany in a day, though he managed, for once, while
a tutor in Colonel Alston's family at Charleston, South Carolina,
beginning by daylight and continuing as long as he could see, in
midsummer, to get through with one hundred pages of Blackstone; but the
"grind" was too much for him,--he never tried it again. He read Gibbon,
and Chateaubriand's "Genius of Christianity," and St. Pierre, and Jeremy
Bentham's "Theory of Rewards and Punishments," but never to my knowledge
a novel, a romance, or a magazine article, except an occasional review;
but Joanna Baillie,--that female Shakespeare of a later age,--and
Beattie, and Campbell, and the British poets, and dramatic writers, were
always at hand, when he had nothing better to do, with no seals to cut,
no ciphers, no razor-strops, no stoves, and no clients. Over that field
of enchantment and illusion he wandered with lifted wings, month after
month, and year after year.

At this time he was in his thirtieth year, and I in my twenty-second. No
two persons were ever more unlike; and yet we grew to be intimate
friends after a while; and at the time of his death our friendship had
lasted more than fifty years, with a single interruption of a
twelvemonth or so while I was abroad, which was put an end to by our
letters of reconciliation crossing each other almost on the same day.

With a young family on his hands, precarious health and a feeble
constitution, as we then believed, which drove him to Saratoga every two
or three years, and no property, what had he to look forward to, unless
he could manage to go through a course of starvation at half-price, or
diet with the chameleons?--though great things were expected of him by
those who knew him best, and the late Mr. Justice Story could not bear
to think of his abandoning the profession, so long as there was a decent
chance of living through such a course of preparation.

After all that he has done as a poet, as a preacher, as a reformer, and
as a lecturer, I must say that I think he was made for a lawyer.
Vigorous and acute, clear-sighted, self-possessed, and logical to a
fault, if he had not married so early, or if a respectable inheritance
had fallen to him, after he had learned to do without help or patronage,
as Dr. Samuel Johnson did, while undergoing Lord Chesterfield, he might
have been at the head of the Massachusetts bar,--a proud position, to be
sure, at any time within the last fifty years,--or, at any rate, in the
foremost rank, long before his death.

He had, withal, a great fondness for mechanics, and one at least of his
inventions, the "Pierpont or Doric Stove," was a bit of concrete
philosophy,--a miniature temple glowing with perpetual fire,--a
cast-iron syllogism of itself, so classically just in its proportions,
and so eminently characteristic, as to be a type of the author. He had
been led through a long course of experiment in the structure of grates
and stoves, and in the consumption of fuel, with the hope of superseding
Saratoga, for himself at least, by making our terrible winters and our
east winds a little more endurable. No man ever suffered more from what
people sometimes call, without meaning to be naughty, _damp cold
weather_.

In addition to the "Portrait," he had written a New-Year's Address or
two, and a fine lyric, which was said or sung--I forget which--at the
celebration of Napoleon's retreat from Moscow; so that after he went off
to Baltimore, and the "Airs of Palestine" appeared in 1816, those who
knew him best, instead of being astonished like the rest of the world,
regarded it as nothing more than the fulfilment of a promise, and went
about saying, or looking as if they wanted to say, "Didn't we tell you
so?"

And yet, with the exception of two or three outbreaks and flashes, there
was really nothing in his earlier manifestations to prefigure the
"unrolling glory" of the "Airs," or to justify the extravagant
expectations people had entertained from the first, if you would believe
them.

Robert Treat Paine having disappeared from the stage, there was nobody
left but Lucius Manlius Sargent and John Pierpont for celebrations and
sudden emergencies. But Sargent never tried the heroic, and was
generally satisfied with imitations of Walter Scott, and others, who
were given to oddities and quaintness. For example, "I thought," says
he, in the longest poem he ever wrote, which appeared in quarto,--

    "I thought, than as a feather fair
    More light is filmy gossamer,
    So woman's heart is lighter far
    Than lightest breath of summer air,
    Which is so light it scarce can bear
    The filmiest thread of gossamer," etc., etc., etc.

While Mr. Pierpont flung himself abroad--like Handel, over the great
organ-keys at Haarlem--as if he never knew before what legs and arms
were good for, after the following fashion:--

    "The misty hall of Odin
      With mirth and music swells,
    Rings with the harps and songs of bards,
      And echoes to their shells.

    "See how amid the cloud-wrapped ghosts
      Great Peter's awful form
        Seems to smile,
        As the while,
      Amid the howling storm,
    He hears his children shout, Hurrah!
      Amid the howling storm," etc., etc.

Few men ever elaborated as he did,--not even Rousseau, when he wrote
over whole pages and chapters of his "Confessions," I forget how many
times. Fine thoughts were never spontaneous with him, never unexpected,
never unwaited for,--never, certainly till long after he had got his
growth. In fact, some of the happiest passages we have seem to be
engraved, letter by letter, instead of being written at once, or
launched away into the stillness, like a red-hot thunderbolt. Well do I
remember a little incident which occurred in Baltimore, soon after the
failure of Pierpont and Lord--and Neal, when we were all dying of sheer
inaction, and almost ready to hang ourselves--in a metaphorical
sense--as the shortest way of scoring off with the world.

We were at breakfast,--it was rather late.

"Where on earth is your good husband?" said I to Mrs. Pierpont.

"In bed, making poetry," said she.

"Indeed!"

"Yes, flat on his back, with his eyes rolled up in his head."

Soon after, the gentleman himself appeared, looking somewhat the worse
for the labor he had gone through with, and all the happier, that the
throes were over, and the offspring ready for exhibition. "Here," said
he, "tell me what you think of these two lines,"--handing me a paper on
which was written, with the clearness and beauty of copperplate,

    "Their reverend beards that sweep their bosoms wet
    With the chill dews of shady Olivet."

"Charming," said I. "And what then? What are you driving at?"

"Well, I was thinking of Olivet, and then I wanted a rhyme for Olivet;
and rhymes are the rudders, you know, according to Hudibras; and then
uprose the picture of the Apostles before me,--their reverend beards all
dripping with the dews of night."

How little did he or I then foresee what soon followed,--soon, that is,
in comparison with all he had ever done before! The "Airs of Palestine,"
like the night-blooming cereus,--the century-plant,--flowering at last,
and all at once and most unexpectedly too, after generations have waited
for it, as for the penumbra of something foretold, until both their
patience and their faith have almost failed. But, from the very first,
there were signs of growth not to be mistaken,--of inward growth,
too,--and oftentimes an appearance of slowly gathered strength, as if it
had been long husbanded, and for a great purpose. For example,--

    "There the gaunt wolf sits on his rock and howls,
    And there, in painted pomp, the savage Indian prowls."

What a picture of brooding desolation! How concentrated and how
unpretending, in its simplicity and strength!

And again, having had visions, and having begun to breathe a new
atmosphere, with Sinai in view, he says,

    "There blasts of unseen trumpets, long and loud,
    Swelled by the breath of whirlwinds, rent the cloud,"--

two of the grandest lines to be found anywhere, out of the Hebrew.

But grandeur and strength were never his characteristics; the natural
tendency of the man was toward the harmonious, the loving, and the
beautiful, as in the following lines from the title-page of his poem,
"By J. Pierpont, _Esquire_":--

    "I love to breathe where Gilead sheds her balm;
    I love to walk on Jordan's banks of palm;
    I love to wet my foot in Hermon's dews;
    I love the promptings of Isaiah's muse;
    In Carmel's paly grots I'll court repose,
    And deck my mossy couch with Sharon's deathless rose."

About this time it was, just before he went off to Baltimore, that we
began to have occasional glimpses of that inward fire shut up in his
bones, that subterranean sunshine, that golden ore, which, smelted as
the constellations were, makes what men have agreed to call
poetry,--which, after all, is but another name for inspiration; although
the very first outbreak I remember happened at the celebration already
referred to, where men saw

    "The Desolator desolate, the Victor overthrown,
    The Arbiter of others' fate a suppliant for his own,"

and began to breathe freely once more; and the shout of "Glory, glory!
Alleluiah!" went up like the roar of many waters from all the cities of
our land, as if they themselves had been delivered from the new
Sennacherib; yet, after a short season of rest, like one of our Western
prairies after having been over-swept with fire, he began to flower
anew, and from his innermost nature, like some great aboriginal plant of
our Northern wilderness suddenly transferred to a tropical region, roots
and all, by some convulsion of nature,--by hurricane, or drift, or
shipwreck. And always thereafter, with a very few brief exceptions,
instead of echoing and re-echoing the musical thunders of a buried
past,--instead of imitating, oftentimes unconsciously (the worst kind of
imitation, by the way, for what can be hoped of a man whose
individuality has been tampered with, and whose own perceptions mislead
him?)--instead of counterfeiting the mighty minstrels he had most
reverenced, and oftentimes ignorantly worshipped, as among the unknown
gods, in his unquestioning, breathless homage, he began to look upward
to the Source of all inspiration, while

    "Princely visions rare
    Went stepping through the air,"

and to walk abroad with all his "singing robes about him," as he had
never done before. Hitherto it had been otherwise. Campbell had opened
the "Pleasures of Hope" with

    "Why to yon mountains turns the musing eye,
    Whose sunbright summits mingle with the sky?"

and _therefore_ Pierpont began his "Portrait" with

    "Why does the eye with greater pleasure rest
    On the proud oak with vernal honors drest?"

But now, instead of diluting Beattie, with all his "pomp of groves and
long resounding shore," and recasting portions of Akenside or Pope, and
rehashing "Ye Mariners of England," for public celebrations, or
converting Moore himself into "Your glass may be purple and mine may be
blue," while urging the claims of what is called Liberal Christianity in
a hymn written for the new Unitarian church of Baltimore, he
would break forth now and then with something which really seemed
unpremeditated,--something he had been surprised into saying in spite of
himself, as where he finishes a picture of Moses on Mount Nebo, after a
fashion both startling and effective in its abruptness, and yet
altogether his own:--

    "His sunny mantle and his hoary locks
    Shone like the robe of Winter on the rocks.
    Where is that mantle? Melted into air.
    Where is the Prophet? God can tell thee where."

And yet in the day of his strength he was sometimes capable of strange
self-forgetfulness, and once wrote, in his reverence for the classic,
what, if it were not blasphemy, would be meaningless:--

    "O thou dread Spirit! being's End and Source!
    O check thy chariot in its fervid course;
    _Bend from thy throne of darkness and of fire_,
    _And with one smile immortalize oar lyre!_"

Think of a Christian poet apostrophizing the Ancient of Days--Jehovah
himself--in the language of idolatrous and pagan Rome!

At another time,--but these are among the last of his transgressions,
and they happened nearly fifty years before his death,--having in view
that epitaph on an infant where a father says of his child,

              "Like a dewdrop on the early morn
    She sparkled, was exhaled, and went to heaven,"

Mr. Pierpont says of the frozen heart, when religion's "mild and genial
ray" falls upon it, with music,

    "The fire is kindled and the flame is bright;
    And that cold mass, with either power assailed,
    _Is warmed, made liquid, and to heaven exhaled_."

And this by a man who talks about "the glow-worm burning _greenly_ on
the wall," and the "_unrolling glory_" of the empyrean, as if he
understood what both meant.

Nevertheless, and notwithstanding these aberrations, my friend--the
truest friend I ever had in my life, on some accounts, for he was not
afraid to tell me of my faults when he saw them, and the man after all,
to whom I am under greater obligations than to any other, living or
dead, for bringing me acquainted with myself--held on his upward course
for the last thirty years of his life without faltering, and without any
visible perturbation, like the planets, if not like the stars, along
their appointed path, never so as to astonish perhaps, but almost always
so as to convince, whatever might be the manner of his approach, and
whether in prose or poetry.

But we are anticipating. At the time of our first acquaintance, he
certainly entertained very different views upon the subjects which have
made him so conspicuous within the last twenty-five years.

Instead of being an Abolitionist, or a Garrisonian, and insisting upon
immediate, universal, and unconditional emancipation, he was a
colonizationist, rather tolerant of the evil, as it existed in the
South, and very patient under the wrongs of our black brethren; and so
was I.

Instead of being a teetotaler, he was hardly what the temperance men of
our day would call a temperance man; for he had wine upon his table when
he gave dinners, and never shrank from the interchange of courtesies,
nor refused a pledge,--though I did, even then. Yet more, as brandy had
been prescribed for Mrs. Pierpont by the family physician, Dr. Randall,
her husband used to take his brandy and water with her sometimes, just
before dinner, by way of a "whet."

Again: he had been brought up, like St. Paul, at the very feet of
Gamaliel. He was born Orthodox,--he lived Orthodox,--he sat for years
under the preaching of Dr. Lyman Beecher, whom he looked upon as a
"giant among pygmies,"--and well he might, as a metaphysician and as a
controversialist, if not as a theologian,--and was, I have lately been
told, a member of Dr. Spring's Orthodox church at Newburyport, before
his removal to Boston. But once there, in that overcharged atmosphere,
he took a pew in the Brattle Street Unitarian church,--without being
then a Unitarian, or dreaming of the great change that was to follow
within two or three years,--and was a regular attendant under the
preaching of Mr. Everett up to the last. On his removal to Baltimore, he
swung round again toward Orthodoxy,--that Orthodoxy which has been so
wittily defined as _my_ doxy, while heterodoxy is _your_ doxy,--and sat
for three years under the preaching of Dr. Ingals, the highly gifted
gentleman to whom he dedicated his poem--_in blank_--when it first
appeared, being perhaps a little afraid of committing himself in
advance; and then, at the very first gathering of the Baltimore
Unitarians in a large auction-room, which led to the organization of a
church within a few months, the erection of a beautiful building, and to
the settlement of our friend, the late Dr. Jared Sparks, he came out
fair and square upon the great question, and led, or helped lead, the
exercises. The result of which was, that in due time, after his failure
in business, he became a student of theology at Cambridge, and within a
year was called to the ministry of reconciliation over Hollis Street
Church, as a successor to Mr. Holly, at that time a most captivating
preacher, with a congregation and church eminently fastidious and
exacting, and not easily satisfied; yet Mr. Pierpont labored with them
and for them over twenty-five years, with an earnestness, a
comprehensiveness, and a faithfulness, for which some of them have not
forgiven him to this day. He entered upon the ministry there in April,
1819, and resigned in 1845; when he became the first pastor of a
Unitarian church in Troy, remained there four years, and then took
charge of a church in Medford; where he was living when the Rebellion
broke out, and he entered the army as chaplain, under an express
stipulation that the regiment was _not to go round Baltimore_.

But I am fully justified in saying that, when I first knew him in
Boston, he did not know himself. He had entirely mistaken his vocation,
and was about the last man in the world to enter into trade, though
pre-eminently fitted for business, if he had been properly
encouraged,--the business of law certainly, and the business of
statesmanship. He saw nothing of what was before him,--nothing of the
field he was to occupy till the Master came,--nothing of the influence,
nothing of the authority, he was to exercise over the minds and hearts
of men,--and nothing of that huge oriflamme which was coming up slowly,
to be sure, but certainly, over the distant verge of an ever-widening
horizon. He was utterly discouraged as a lawyer; he knew nothing of
business; he had no capital; and what on earth was he good for? Whither
should he go? What undertake?

And yet he bore up manfully through all this discouragement, and no word
of complaint or murmuring ever escaped his lips. On the whole, he was
one of the most truly conscientious men I ever knew,--and why not one
of the most truly religious, notwithstanding his obnoxious faith?--so
even-tempered that I never saw him disturbed more than once or twice in
all my life, and so patient under wrong that one could hardly believe in
his withering sarcasm, and scorching indignation when he took the field
as a reformer, "in golden panoply complete."

Let me now describe his personal appearance, for the help of those who
have only heard of the man. He was tall, straight, and spare,--six feet,
I should say, and rather ungraceful in fact, though called by the women
of his parish, not only the most graceful, but the most finished of
gentlemen. That he was dignified, courteous, and prepossessing, very
pleasant in conversation, a capital story-teller, and a tolerable--no,
intolerable--punster, exceedingly impressive both in the pulpit and
elsewhere, when much in earnest, and in after life a great lecturer and
platform speaker, I am ready to acknowledge; but he wanted ease of
manner--the readiness and quiet self-possession of a high-bred man, who
cannot be taken by surprise, and is neither afraid of being
misunderstood nor afraid of letting himself down--till after he had
passed the age of threescore.

The first impression he made on me was that of a country schoolmaster,
or of a professor, on his good behavior, who had got his notions of the
polite world from Chesterfield; though, when I knew him better, and
learned that he had been a tutor in the Alston family of South Carolina,
I detected the original type of his perpendicularity, serious composure,
and stateliness,--the archetype. I was constantly reminded of John C.
Calhoun, a fellow-student with him at Yale, and a man he always
mentioned, with a strange mixture of admiration and awe, as if he
thought him an offshoot from the Archfiend himself, "skilled to make the
worse appear the better reason." His tall figure, his erect, positive
bearing, and somewhat uncompromising, severe expression of countenance,
when much in earnest, with black, heavy eyebrows, clear blue eyes which
passed for black, and stiff black hair, were all of that Huguenot
Southern type, which, like the signs of the Scotch Covenanter or of the
old English Puritan, are as unlikely to die out as the Canada thistle,
where they who sow the wind are content to reap the whirlwind. In their
steadfast pertinacity, whether right or wrong, in their adamantine
logic, as unyielding as death, and calm, serious energy of action, and
in a part of their transcendental theories, they were alike; and alike,
too, in their tried honesty. The great Nullifier and the great Reformer
were both Titanic, in the vastness and comprehensiveness of their views,
in their unrelenting self-assertion, in their metaphysics, and in their
theories of government. If the dark Southron made open war upon his
country till it grew to be unsafe, the dark Northerner would tear the
Constitution of that country to tatters, and trample it under foot, as
he did upon one occasion, without remorse or compunction, because it was
held by others to give property in man, though for himself he denied
that it did so, or that it sanctioned slavery in any shape,--as he did,
I say, though I was not an eyewitness of the outrage, and have only the
report from others who were. If it was only a flourish, like that of
Edmund Burke, when he suddenly lugged out the dagger before the upturned
smiling eyes of his patient compeers, and Sheridan--or was it
Fox?--begged the gentleman to tell him where the _fork_ was to be had
which belonged to the knife, why, even that were not only unworthy of
the man, but so utterly unlike him, for he never indulged in rhetoric or
rhodomontade or claptrap, that one would be inclined to think he was
beside himself, or had been dining out, like Daniel Webster when he
proposed, in the Senate Chamber, to plant our starry banner on the
outermost verge, the Ultima Thule, of our disputed territory, heedless
of consequences. Both Pierpont and Calhoun certainly forgot the
injunction to be "temperate in all things"; and allow me to add, that,
in my judgment, it mattered little who was with, or who against them,
after they had once set the lance in rest, with a windmill in
view,--they only spurred the harder for opposition, and lashed out all
the more vehemently for being cheered, even by the lowliest.
Encouragement and opposition were alike to both, after the rowels were
set, and their beavers closed.

At the time I speak of, Mr. Pierpont and his brother-in-law, Mr. Joseph
L. Lord, kept house together on a street running down hill back of the
State-House,--Hancock Street, if I do not mistake. They had always two
or three boarders, and sometimes more, and among them Erastus A. Lord, a
brother of Joseph, and myself. With these, and with the neighbors,--the
whole neighborhood, I might say, and with all their visiting-list,--our
friend Pierpont was an oracle from the first, and in the church and
parish, after he had been set up in the pulpit, an idol. It was thought
presumptuous for anybody to differ with him upon any subject. Whatever
he said, or thought, or did, was never to be questioned,--never! His
opinions were maxims, his utterances apothegms, his lightest word
authority. And the worst of it all, and the hardest thing for me to
stomach, was, that in all our controversies, for a long time, if he was
not always right, and I always wrong, I was quite sure to come out
second best, in the judgment of his friends and worshippers, who had no
sympathy for anybody who ventured to tilt with their champion.
Nevertheless I persisted, and, not standing much in awe of the pedant
and the pedagogue, however much I admired the logician and the poet or
the lawyer, I lost no opportunity of asserting my independence, and
took, I am afraid, a sort of malicious pleasure in showing that I had
views and opinions of my own, and was determined to do my own thinking,
come what might. For a while this operated against me,--if not always
with Mr. Pierpont, certainly with all his immediate personal friends and
family; but in time, I believe, he began to like me the better for my
presumption, or foolhardiness, in battling the watch with him, whenever
he laid down a proposition, with a calm, dictatorial air, which did not
strike me at first either as clearly self-evident, or, after a thorough
investigation, as indisputably true, so that I do on my conscience
believe that I was fast growing, not only unmanageable, but unbearable.

Mr. Pierpont was no judge of painting, though he relished a good
picture, and had no taste for drawing, or rather no talent for drawing,
though he saw readily enough certain errors of exaggeration that
abounded in the engravings of the day; and I well remember his calling
my attention to the preposterously small feet of the female figures for
which Messrs. Draper and Company, the bank-note engravers of that day,
were so famous; and yet his handwriting was very beautiful, and the
ciphers I have mentioned were neither more nor less than exquisite
drawings. Nor had he any ear for music, to borrow the language we hear
at every turn,--as if all persons who are not deaf by nature had not
ears for music, so far as they can hear at all,--or as if he who can
distinguish voices, or learn a language, so far as to be understood when
he talks it, had not necessarily an ear for music, in other words, an
ear for sounds and for the rhythm of speech; but he was deficient in the
organ of tune, phrenologically speaking, though I have heard him
warble a Scotch air on the flute with uncommon sweetness--and
feebleness--without _tonguing_, and play two or three other tunes, which
had been adapted in the choir of his church, upon glass goblets, partly
filled with water and set upon a table before him, as if he enjoyed
every touch and thrill,--his long, thin fingers travelling over the damp
edges of the glass, and bringing forth "Bonnie Doon," or "There's
nothing true but Heaven,"--with his cuffs rolled up as if he were
driving a lathe, and turning off some of the little thin boxes and other
exquisite toys, in wood or ivory, which he was addicted to, about
fifteen years ago, in what he called his workshop. Like Johnson,
however, and Alexander Pope, who, according to Leigh Hunt,

                "Spoiled the ears of the town
    With his cuckoo-song verses, two up and two down,"

he must have had "time" large; for the music of his rhythm was
absolutely faultless,--cloying indeed, so that he introduced the double
rhymes to roughen it, just as he indulged in alliteration, where the
"lordly lion leaves his lonely lair," that he might not be supposed
incapable of running off upon another track, or into another channel.

But I never heard him sing or try to sing, though he had a deep, manly
voice, read as very few are able to read, and his modulation was rich
and varied, and very agreeable, both to the understanding and the ear.

His pronunciation was a marvel for correctness. In all our intercourse I
never knew him to give a word otherwise than "according to Walker," so
long as Walker was the standard with him,--or never but once, when he
said cli-mac'ter-ic, instead of cli-mac-ter'ic; and when I remonstrated
with him, he lugged out Webster, whom he adhered to forever after. So
exceedingly fastidious and sensitive was he, about the time he left
Baltimore for Cambridge, that in his desire to give the pure sound of
_e_, as in _met_, instead of the sound of _u_, which is so common as to
be almost universal where _e_ is followed by _r_ and another consonant,
so that _person_ is pronounced _purson_, he gave a sound which most
people misunderstood for _pairson_, and went away and laughed at, for
pedantry and affectation.

So, too, when I first knew him, and for a long time after, he was
incapable of making a speech. Even a few sentences were too much for
him; and though he argued at least one case to the court, while in
business at Newburyport, I am persuaded, from what I afterward knew of
him, that he must have done what he did by jerks, or have committed the
whole to memory. And this, strange as it may now appear to those who
knew him only as a lecturer and platform-speaker, continued long after
he had entered upon the ministry; but of this more hereafter. Even his
prayers were written out, and learned by heart, years after he took
charge of the Hollis Street Church, though I dare say it was not known
by his people. Perhaps, too, I may as well say here, lest I may forget
to say it hereafter, that, at the time I speak of, he was neither a
phrenologist, nor a spiritualist, nor a conscientious believer in
witchcraft, or rather in the phenomena that used to be called
witchcraft, in the days of Cotton Mather.

Soon after the beginning of our acquaintance, Mr. Joseph L. Lord, the
brother of his first wife,--and he too has just passed away,--seeing
what the prospect was for the brother-in-law he was so proud of,
persuaded him to abandon the law at once, and forever, and go into the
jobbing and retail dry-goods business with him, on the corner of Court
and Marlborough, now Washington Street. He had no capital, to be sure,
but then he wrote a beautiful hand, was very methodical, and had made
himself acquainted with bookkeeping, after the Italian method, from
Rees's Cyclopaedia. I took the chamber which Mr. Pierpont left, and went
into the jobbing business also, with a capital of between two and three
hundred--dollars, and a credit amounting to perhaps five hundred more,
which enterprise terminated after a few months, not in my failure, but
in my taking a trip to New York with a large quantity of smuggled goods,
belonging to Messrs. Pierpont and Lord, where I disposed of them to such
advantage, that, on my return, I was persuaded to go into the retail
haberdashery line, at 103 Court Street, next door to Pierpont and Lord,
and just underneath the chamber, not chambers, which I had occupied at
first with my wholesale establishment. I had for a partner, at first,
Erastus, a brother of "Joe's," whom I had known as a bookbinder in
Portland two or three years before. He was now manufacturing
pocket-books, and appeared to be doing, not only a large and profitable,
but safe business,--selling for cash, running a horse and gig, and
paying the bills of all the "dear five hundred friends" who rode with
him.

Our copartnership did not last long. His brother "Joe," being a shrewd
man of business, of uncommon foresight and comprehensiveness, though
rather adventurous, gave me a hint, and soon provided me with another
partner, a graduate of Cambridge, named Fisher, with whom I was
associated a few months longer. Then came the peace of 1815, which threw
the whole country into a paroxysm of joy, unsettling business
everywhere, at home and abroad, and setting people together by the ears
upon all the great questions of the day.

And here began the new and very brief career of Mr. Pierpont as a man of
business. Wholly unfitted as he was for even the regular course of
trade, he was the last man in the world for the great emergencies of the
hour. The whole business of the country was little better than gambling.
Our largest importing houses were lotteries or faro-banks; and we had no
manufactures worth mentioning. We made no woollen goods, and our few
cottons, if sold at all, were sold for British, and stood no chance with
the trash that came from beyond the Cape of Good Hope, "warped with
hoop-poles, and filled with oven-wood." Our foreign merchandise came
tumbling down so fast, that no prospective calculations could be made
upon their value. Not having manufactured ourselves, we knew nothing
about the cost of production, and had no idea how much our friends over
sea could afford to fall, even from the lowest prices ever heard of.
British calicoes, or prints, for example, which I sold by the case for
eighty-five cents cash, at auction, were in every way inferior to our
own, which were retailed before the Rebellion broke out for ten cents a
yard. In fact, if we had known the real cost of production, it would
have made but little difference; for long after all our foreign
merchandise had fallen from thirty-three and a third to fifty per cent,
some of our shrewdest calculators were utterly ruined by purchasing at
much lower prices, on what they believed to be a rising market.

Under such circumstances, what was a poet, a scholar, and a lawyer,
without any knowledge of business, to do? Pierpont and Lord were large
dealers, and had a heavy stock on hand, not paid for. Their notes were
maturing with frightful rapidity, and Mr. Lord wanted all his available
funds for "transactions" in gold, and other perilous "operations" along
the Canada frontier. Specie was twenty-five per cent above par, or
rather banknotes, everywhere but in a part of New England, where they
continued to pay specie to the last, were at twenty-five per cent
discount; and "Boston money," upon the average, about one per cent above
gold and silver, so as to cover the cost and risk of transportation.

But something had to be done. A consultation was held between the
members of "our house," and it was finally arranged that Mr. Pierpont,
as the man we could best spare from the salesroom and the shop, and the
partner who would best represent what was called, with singular
propriety, "our concern," should go to Baltimore with the best of
letters, and open a way for me in that city, which I had visited once,
and once only, for the purpose of buying exchange on England,--though
for a time it was thought I had run away with all the funds intrusted to
me. I had taken a prodigious liking to Baltimore from the first, though
I had no idea of going there to live, and was not easily persuaded to
give up my little establishment in Boston. I was doing very well, and
did not care to do better, till business got settled; but we were three,
and I was always in the minority,--Mr. Lord being a shrewd "operator,"
and Mr. Pierpont, of course, deferring to him. They were _my_ partners,
to be sure; but I never had anything to do with their business, apart
from my own.

Nevertheless, when Mr. Pierpont returned, and gave an account of his
doings there, and of the opening there was for just such a man as I had
proved myself to be, I consented to pull up stakes, and transplant
myself to that beautiful city.

I went with no large expectations, intending to open a retail shop, such
as I had left; but within a week, finding that I could sell even my cut
goods for prices much beyond what I had been retailing them for over and
above the exchange, I went into the wholesale business, and with one
clerk, Mr. Jenkins Howland, greatly distinguished in after life as a man
of enterprise at Charleston, S.C., sold more goods, and for cash too,
than perhaps any three or four of what were called the large dealers
about me, with two or three clerks apiece, and at prices which fairly
took away my breath at first;--Irish linens, for example, by the case at
two dollars and fifty cents all round, worth not over eighty cents
before the war; and assorted broadcloths by the bale at fourteen dollars
a yard all round, which, within a twelvemonth, would have hung fire at
three dollars and fifty cents. And this, it will be remembered, was
after goods had been falling--falling--falling--for six months.

No wonder people's heads were turned--those of Pierpont and Lord among
the rest. We, who had large stocks on hand, were growing rich too fast.
I remember selling fourteen thousand dollars' worth of goods one day for
a clear profit of more than forty per cent, and this while my poor
friends at Boston were gasping for breath in that exhausted receiver;
but they were kept alive by the remittances I made from Baltimore, which
not only furnished them with funds for immediate use, but gave them for
a few months almost unbounded credit.

This was in the fall and winter of 1815, only a few months after the
Bramble arrived with the news from Ghent that our last negotiations had
been successful, and that the war was over most gloriously for _us_, the
United States. We were almost ready, in our thankfulness and joy, to
canonize the ship and crew, and cut her up into snuffboxes and
toothpicks.

And now--what next? "as the tadpole said, when he his tail dropped off."
Weary of the growing distrust they saw, after my remittances began to
fall off, and heartily sick of the Gerrymandering about them, of the
usurers and money-changers and Shylocks, who were bleeding them to
death, by lending them money upon pledges of merchandise, the two elder
partners, Pierpont and Lord, lost no time in following their junior. He
had opened on South Calvert Street; they took the whole of a large
building opposite, opened below their wholesale business, and after a
few months went to housekeeping overhead, both families living together.
Then, to get rid of our stock, Mr. Pierpont went off to Charleston,
S.C., where he had served his time as a tutor, and there set up a retail
establishment, under the charge of a former clerk in their service, and
of another man, a heartless vagabond, whom they had happened to get
acquainted with at a boarding-house on their first arrival, and took a
fancy to, nobody ever knew why. He was an Englishman, had probably been
upon the stage, and lived from hand to mouth, nobody knew how, until we
took him _up_, and he took us _in_ most pitiably.

After a brief struggle, and the establishment of another retail store in
Calvert Street, which I took charge of, with what there was left of the
Charleston adventure, we failed outright, and all this within six or
eight months after we had called our creditors together and obtained an
extension of twelve months and testimonials in our favor of the most
gratifying character, and within little more than a year after leaving
Boston.

And then, for want of anything better to do, I began writing for the
papers, for the "Portico," and at last for the public, as an editor and
as an author, mainly at the instigation of Mr. Pierpont, for whom I
wrote both "Niagara"[1] and "Guldau," and a part of "Allen's" American
Revolution, studying law, and languages by the half-dozen at the same
time, and laboring upon the average about sixteen hours a day, while Mr.
Pierpont struck out boldly for a far-off perilous and rocky shore, with
a lighthouse, in the shape of a pulpit, before him, and achieved the
"Airs of Palestine" while undergoing the process of regeneration, and
starving by inches upon what there were left of his wife's teaspoons,
which were sold one by one to pay the rent of a cheap room in Howard
Street. So poor indeed were we at one time, that we could hardly muster
enough between us to pay our bootblack.

I have already said that Mr. Pierpont had no aptitude for extemporaneous
speaking; and what was even worse, he had no hope of being able to
overcome the difficulty. Once, and once only, did I ever hear him try
his hand in that way, until many years after he had entered upon the
ministry. A club had been organized among us for literary purposes. We
were both members, and he the Vice-President. We called ourselves the
Delphians, and passed among our contemporaries for the _male_ Muses, our
number being limited to nine,--not seven, as I see it stated in the
Boston Advertiser, on the authority of our friend Paul Allen. The rest
of the story is near enough to the truth, although the verses therein
mentioned were written by Mr. Pierpont as a volunteer offering, after
the Della-Cruscan school, or manner of "Laura Matilda," and not upon the
spur of the occasion, as there related, nor as a trial of wit; and the
last line should be, "Pulls where'er the zephyr _roves_"--not, as given
there, "Pulls where'er the zephyr moves."

It was in this club that Mr. Pierpont first tried himself--and the
brethren--with extemporaneous speaking. It was a pitiable failure, worse
if possible than my own, and I never made another attempt. Even General
Winder, who was a fine advocate, and a capital speaker before a jury,
boggled wretchedly before the club, and our President, Watkins, who was
said to be exceedingly eloquent before the great Masonic lodges, where
he occupied the highest position, could not be persuaded to open his
mouth, and all the rest of the brethren were mutes. True, it was like
apostrophizing your own grandmother, in the hope of raising a laugh or
of bringing tears into her eyes, to make speeches at one another across
the table, whatever Moliere might be able to do, when alone with his
aged servant. Nor did it much help the matter, when, with a view to the
treasury, which began to threaten a collapse, we made a law, like that
of the Medes and Persians which altereth not, whereby it was provided,
among other things, that no member should ever talk over five minutes,
nor stop short of three, under any circumstances,--the President being
timekeeper, and the sufferer not being allowed to look at a watch. Fines
of course were inevitable, and we were once more able to luxuriate on
bread and cheese, with an occasional pot of beer,--nothing better or
stronger being tolerated among us under any pretence, except on our
anniversaries, when the President, or sometimes a member, stood treat,
and gave us a comfortable, though not often a costly or showy supper.

Among that strange, whimsical brotherhood--consisting of Dr. Tobias
Watkins, editor of the "Portico"; General Winder (William H.), who had
been "captivated" by the British, along with General Chandler, at the
first invasion of Canada; William Gwin, editor of the "Federal Gazette";
Paul Allen, editor of the "Federal Republican," and of Lewis and
Clarke's "Tour," and author of "Noah"; Dr. Readel, "a fellow of infinite
jest"; Brackenridge, author of "Views in Louisiana," and "History of the
War"; Dennison, an Englishman, who wrote clever doggerel; and, at
different times, two or three more, not worth mentioning, even if I
remembered their names--we passed every Saturday evening, after the club
was established, until it was broken up by President Watkins's going to
Washington, Vice-President Pierpont to the Divinity School at Cambridge,
and Jehu O'Cataract abroad. All the members bore "clubicular" names, by
which they were always to be addressed or spoken to, under another
penalty; and most of them held "clubicular" offices and
professorships,--Dr. Readel being Professor of Crambography, and
somebody else--Gwin perhaps--Professor of Impromptology. The name given
to Mr. Pierpont was Hiero Heptaglott, under an idea that he was a
prodigious linguist,--another Sir William Jones, at least, if not
another Learned Blacksmith; and the President himself went so far as to
say so in the "Portico," where he pretended to give an account of the
Delphians. Nothing could well be further from the truth, however; for,
instead of being a great Hebrew scholar, and learned in the Chaldee,
Coptic, and other Eastern languages, he knew very little of Hebrew, and
absolutely nothing of the rest. With "a little Latin and less Greek," he
was a pretty fair Latin and Greek scholar in the judgment of those who
are satisfied with what we are doing in our colleges; and he was
sufficiently acquainted with French to enjoy Chateaubriand, St. Pierre,
Rousseau, and Lamartine, and to write the language with correctness,
though not idiomatically; but he was never able to make himself
understood in conversation, beyond a few phrases, uttered with a
deplorable accent,--not being able to carry the flavor in his
mouth,--and, though free and sprightly enough in talking English, having
no idea of what passes for freedom and sprightliness with the French. He
knew nothing of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, or Dutch, nor
indeed of any other modern language.

And now let me say how he came to be an extemporaneous speaker, and
sometimes not only logical and convincing, but truly eloquent. On my
return from abroad, in 1826, I passed through Boston, on my way to
Portland, for a visit to my family, and was taken possession of by him,
and went to Hollis Street Church, where I heard my friend, for the
second time, in the pulpit. He was exceedingly impressive, and the
sermon itself was one of the best I ever heard,--calm, serious, and
satisfying; not encumbered with illustration, but full of significance.
Although the discourse was carefully written out, word for word, and
almost committed to memory, yet he ventured to introduce a
paragraph--one paragraph only--which had not been prepared beforehand.
My eyes were upon him, and he told me at dinner that he saw by my look
how well I understood his departure, and how soon I detected it. "And
now," said he, "I hope you are satisfied. You see now that I shall never
be able to extemporize. I put that paragraph into my sermon this morning
to see how you would take it, after having urged me, year after year, to
extemporize at least occasionally. No, no, John; though writing two
sermons a week is no trifling labor, I must continue writing to the end;
for, if I cannot extemporize a single paragraph, how can I hope to
extemporize a whole sermon?"

"Suffer me to say that I think you misunderstand the whole question,"
said I. "The difficulty is in beginning. After you are well under way,
if you can talk sitting, you may talk standing. Better take with you
into the pulpit the merest outline of the discourse, and then trust to
the inspiration of the subject, or to the feeling of the hour, when you
have the audience before you, and can look into their eyes, than to have
a discourse partly written, with blanks to be filled up as you go along;
for then you are always beginning afresh, and by the time you have got
easy in your spontaneous effort, you are obliged to go back to what you
have written, and of course can never get warmed up with your subject,
nor try any new adaptations, whatever may be the character of your
hearers."

He shook his head. "No, no," said he, "you will never be able to
persuade me that it is easier to say over the whole alphabet than to say
only a part."

I persisted, urging the great advantage of spontaneous adaptation to the
people. He agreed with me altogether, provided it were _possible_ for
him to do it, which he denied, though he promised to take the subject
into serious consideration once more, to oblige me.

From Boston I went to Portland, where I had a similar talk with that
most amiable and excellent man, the late Dr. Nichols, who labored under
a similar disqualification, owing to a similar misapprehension of what
was required for extemporaneous speaking, either on the platform or in
the pulpit. I told him the story, and urged the same considerations; but
he, like Mr. Pierpont, only smiled,--compassionately, as I thought, and
rather as if he pitied the delusion I was laboring under. Yet within two
years both of these remarkable men became free and natural spontaneous
speakers, and both acknowledged to me that they had always misunderstood
the difficulty. Dr. Nichols began afar off, as I suggested, in the
Sabbath school; and Mr. Pierpont, after making two or three attempts in
a small way, which were anything but satisfactory to himself,--as I told
him they would be for a while, if he had the true stuff in him,--was at
last surprised into doing what he believed to be impossible, by the
merest accident in the world; after which he had no further trouble. It
seems that he had engaged to supply a neighboring pulpit,--perhaps that
of his son John, who was newly settled at Lynn. He thought he had his
sermon in his pocket; but, on entering the pulpit, found that he had
either left it at home or lost it on the way. What was to be done?
Luckily, he had just read it over the night before, and was full of the
subject therein treated. Remembering what I said, as he told me himself,
he determined to go to work, hit or miss, and either make a spoon or
spoil a horn.

The result was, that, after a little hesitation and floundering, he got
fairly in earnest, and threw off a discourse which so delighted those
who were best acquainted with him, that they stopped round the door to
shake hands and congratulate him. He had never preached so well in all
his life, they said. This settled the question forever; and from that
day forward he began to believe that anybody who can talk in his chair
can talk standing up, after he has got over his first impressions, and
all the better for having a large auditory, with upturned faces, before
him; so that he became at last, and within a few years, one of the
finest pulpit orators of the day, and one of the best platform speakers,
though not, perhaps, what the multitude consider eloquent; for, at the
best, he was only argumentative and earnest and clear and convincing, in
his highest manifestations.

Of his career after this, I cannot say anything as I wish, without the
risk of saying too much. He had one of the wealthiest and most liberal
congregations of New England. He was their idol. He was in every way
most agreeably situated, with a large family flowering into usefulness
about him, and hosts of friends, enthusiastic and devoted.
Nevertheless, believing that, as a servant of God, he had no right to
preach smooth things where rough things were needed, and that
acknowledging other people's transgressions would not satisfy the law,
he came out boldly, with helm and spear, against two of the worst forms
of human slavery,--the slavery of the body and the slavery of the soul,
the slavery of the wine-cup, and the slavery of bondage to a master.
Whether his beloved people would hear or whether they would forbear,
being all the more beloved because of their danger, he must preach what
he believed to be the truth, and the whole truth. It was like a fire
shut up in his bones. He persisted, and they remonstrated, or rather a
part of them did so; and the result was a speedy and hopeless
alienation, followed by years of strife and bitter controversy at law,
and a final separation; though by far the larger part of the church and
congregation, if I do not mistake, upheld him to the last, and adhered
to him through good report and through evil report,--Deacon Samuel May,
a host in himself, being of their number.

During this protracted and sorrowful controversy, he became a
phrenologist,--a believer in phrenology,--at any rate, following the
lead of Spurzheim; and after many years, a Spiritualist,--in which faith
he died,--one of his last, if not the very last, of his appearances
before the public being as President of a convention held by the leading
Spiritualists of the land at Philadelphia.

He could not be a materialist; and having faith in the evidence of his
own senses, and being as truly conscientious a man as ever breathed, and
accustomed to the closest reasoning, what was he to do? There were the
_facts_. They were not to be controverted; they could not be explained;
they could not be reconciled to any hypothesis in physics. If he was
given over to delusion, to be buffeted by Satan, whose fault was it?
That he was by nature somewhat credulous, and, though patient enough in
his investigations, rather too fond of the marvellous, may be
acknowledged; but what then? His conclusions might be wrong, his
inferences faulty, though honest; but how were they to be counteracted?
That he sometimes took too much for granted, I believe, nay, more, _I
know_; because I myself have seen him grossly imposed on by a woman he
took me to see, whose impersonations were thought most wonderful. But
then he was a devout man, a close observer, an admirable logician,
accustomed to the "competition of opposite analogies" and to weighing
evidence; and if he misunderstood the _facts_, or misinterpreted them,
or inferred the supernatural from false premises, why then let us grieve
for his delusion, and wait patiently for the phenomena which led him
astray to be explained.

He went abroad for a time, while pastor of the Hollis Street Church, and
visited the Holy Land, in devout pilgrimage; and though he lost his
first wife, the mother of all his children, and a most worthy
gentlewoman, but the other day, and married another superior woman after
a brief widowhood, his last days have been, I should say, most
emphatically his best days; for he has lectured through the length and
breadth of the land on Temperance, and, after enduring all sorts of
persecution as one of the anti-slavery leaders, he lived to see the
whole system against which they had been warring so long, and with so
little apparent effect, utterly overthrown throughout the land, and the
great God of heaven and earth acknowledged as the God of the black man.
Thousands and thousands of miles he travelled, not only after having
passed the meridian of his life, but after he had reached the allotted
term, when life begins to be a heaviness for most, as a laborer in the
cause of truth,--often of unacknowledged truth; and if mistaken, as a
theologian, or as a Spiritualist, or as a man,--being what he was,--let
us remember that he was never false to his convictions, never a
hypocrite nor a deceiver, and that he died with his harness on, having
been occupied for the last five years of his life in digesting the
treasury decisions, often contradictory, and always inaccessible, for
there was no index, until he took them in hand, going back thirty years,
I believe, and reducing the whole to a system which need be no longer
unintelligible to the Department.

One word more. Among the scores of letters I had from him in the day of
his bitterest trials and sorest temptations, there was one which he sent
off in the midst of his first great triumph,--with no date now, although
I find a mark upon it which leads me to suppose it was written November
16, 1818, and from which I must venture to take a single paragraph.

"My God!" he says,--"my God! I do most devoutly thank Thee. My prayer
has reached Thee, and been accepted. My dear friend, join with me in
thanking Him in whom I put my trust,--to whom alone I look, or to whom I
_have_ looked, for a smile. He has blessed me. I have been heard by man,
and have not been forsaken by God. Though I have not done _perfectly_, I
have done as well as I could rationally wish, and better than my most
sanguine hopes. At Brattle Square _this_ morning, and at the New South
(late Mr. Thacher's) _this_ afternoon. Lord! now let thy servant depart
in peace; for thou hast lifted the cloud under which he has so long
moved, and he may now die in thy light."

Can such a temper as this be misunderstood? Was he not a man fearing God
in 1818,--forty-eight years ago?--or, rather, loving God with that
perfect love which casteth out all fear?

But we need not stop here. After he had become a Spiritualist, that is,
on the 5th of April, 1862, the evening before his seventy-seventh
birthday, he wrote a poem of one hundred and sixty lines, entitled
"Meditations of a Birthday Eve," a copy of which he sent me on the 10th
of November following, upon the express condition that nobody but myself
was to see it, until it should be all over with him. It must have been
written without labor, as one would breathe a prayer upon a death-bed.
The following extracts--I wish we had room for more--will show what were
his feelings and what his aspirations at this time.

    "Spirit, my spirit, hath each stage
       That brought thee up from youth
     To thy now venerable age
       Seen thee in search of Truth?

    "Hast thou in search of Truth been true,--
       True to thyself and her,--
     And been with many or with few
       Her _honest_ worshipper?

           *       *       *       *       *

    "Spirit, thy race is nearly run;
       Say, hast thou run it well?
     Thy work on earth is almost done;
       _How_ done, no _man_ can tell.

    "Spirit, toil on! thy house, that stands
       Seventy years old and seven,
     Will fall; but one 'not made with hands'
       Awaiteth thee in heaven.

    "WASHINGTON, D.C., 5 April, 1862."

With the foregoing came another poem, "In Commemoration of a Silver
Wedding," October 2, 1863, full of tenderness and pleasantry,--the
wedding of Mr. and Mrs. J. Pierpont Lord.

And on his eighty-first birthday, called by a strange mistake his
eightieth, there was another celebration, yet more solemn and affecting,
where the greetings and congratulations of his brother-poets, all over
the land, were sent to him and published in the newspapers of the day.

Among his later poems, the "E Pluribus Unum" appears to me most worthy
of his reputation, and least like the doings of his early manhood.

And now, though we had little reason to look for the prolongation of
such a life;--a continued miracle from the age of thirty or thirty-five,
after which he built himself up anew, by living as well in cold water as
in hot, and luxuriating in cold baths, and working hard,--harder,
perhaps, on the whole, at downright drudgery, than any other man of his
age, like Rousseau in copying music, as a relief from writing
poetry,--yet when death happens we are all taken by surprise, just as if
we thought God had overlooked his aged servant, or made him an exception
to the great, inflexible law of our being; or as if a whisper had
reached us, saying, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that
to thee?"

But enough; a volume of such memoranda would be far short of what such a
man deserves when he is finally translated. Faithful among the
faithless, may we not hope that his grandeur and strength of purpose,
and downright, fearless honesty, will have their appropriate reward,
both here and hereafter?

FOOTNOTES:

[1] And here I may as well mention a curious incident. When I wrote my
poem, I had never seen Niagara; but we agreed to go together on a
pilgrimage at our earliest convenience. One thing and another happened,
until I had been abroad and returned, without our seeing it together. At
last, being about to go to the South of Europe, I made a new arrangement
with him; but just as we--my wife and I--were ready to go, he was called
away to consecrate some church in the West, and we started on a journey
of two thousand miles through portions of our country I had never seen,
and was ashamed to go abroad again without seeing. On my way back we
stopped in Buffalo, and as I stood in the piazza I saw a little card on
one of the pillars saying that the Rev. Mr. Pierpont would preach in the
evening somewhere. I found him, and we went _together_ at last, and saw
Niagara together, as we had agreed to do forty years before. And that
night the heavens rained fire upon us, and the great November
star-shooting occurred, and our landlord, being no poet, was unwilling
to disturb us, so that we missed the show altogether.

       *       *       *       *       *

MY GARDEN.


    If I could put my woods in song,
    And tell what's there enjoyed,
    All men would to my gardens throng,
    And leave the cities void.

    In my plot no tulips blow,
    Snow-loving pines and oaks instead,
    And rank the savage maples grow
    From spring's faint flush to autumn red.

    My garden is a forest-ledge,
    Which older forests bound;
    The banks slope down to the blue lake-edge,
    Then plunge in depths profound.

    Here once the Deluge ploughed,
    Laid the terraces, one by one;
    Ebbing later whence it flowed,
    They bleach and dry in the sun.

    The sowers made haste to depart,
    The wind and the birds which sowed it;
    Not for fame, nor by rules of art,
    Planted these and tempests flowed it.

    Waters that wash my garden-side
    Play not in Nature's lawful web,
    They heed not moon or solar tide,--
    Five years elapse from flood to ebb.

    Hither hasted, in old time, Jove,
    And every god,--none did refuse;
    And be sure at last came Love,
    And after Love, the Muse.

    Keen ears can catch a syllable,
    As if one spake to another
    In the hemlocks tall, untamable,
    And what the whispering grasses smother.

    AEolian harps in the pine
    Ring with the song of the Fates;
    Infant Bacchus in the vine,--
    Far distant yet his chorus waits.

    Canst thou copy in verse one chime
    Of the wood-bell's peal and cry?
    Write in a book the morning's prime,
    Or match with words that tender sky?

    Wonderful verse of the gods,
    Of one import, of varied tone;
    They chant the bliss of their abodes
    To man imprisoned in his own.

    Ever the words of the gods resound,
    But the porches of man's ear
    Seldom in this low life's round
    Are unsealed that he may hear.

    Wandering voices in the air,
    And murmurs in the wold,
    Speak what I cannot declare,
    Yet cannot all withhold.

    When the shadow fell on the lake,
    The whirlwind in ripples wrote
    Air-bells of fortune that shine and break,
    And omens above thought.

    But the meanings cleave to the lake,
    Cannot be carried in book or urn;
    Go thy ways now, come later back,
    On waves and hedges still they burn.

    These the fates of men forecast,
    Of better men than live to-day;
    If who can read them comes at last,
    He will spell in the sculpture, "Stay."

       *       *       *       *       *

BORNEO AND RAJAH BROOKE.


Off the southeastern extremity of Asia, and separated from it by the
Chinese Sea, lies a cluster of great islands, comprising that portion of
Oceanica commonly called Malaysia. Of these islands Borneo is the most
extensive, and, if you call Australia a continent, it is by far the
largest island in the world. Situated on the equator, stretching from 7 deg.
of north to 4 deg. of south latitude, and from 108 deg. to 119 deg. of east
longitude, its extreme length is 800 miles, its breadth 700, and it
contains 320,000 square miles,--an area seven times as great as that of
the populous State of New York.

But though its size and importance are so great, though it was
discovered by the Portuguese as early as 1518, though several European
nations have at various times had settlements on its coasts, though it
is rich in all the products of a tropical clime, and in base and
precious metals, diamonds and stones, and though its climate, contrary
to what might have been expected, is in many localities salubrious even
to an American or European constitution, yet until recently almost
nothing was known by the world of its surface, its products, or its
inhabitants.

The causes of this ignorance are obvious. The very shape of Borneo is
unfavorable to discovery. A lumpish mass, like Africa and Australia, the
ocean has nowhere pierced it with those deep bays and gulfs in which
commerce delights to find a shelter and a home. And though it has
navigable rivers, their course is through the almost impenetrable
verdure of the tropics, and they reach the sea amid unwholesome jungles.
The coast, moreover, is in most places marshy and unhealthy, for the
distance of twenty or thirty miles inland; while the interior is filled
with vast forests and great mountain ranges, almost trackless to any but
native feet. Besides, the absence of all just and stable government has
reduced society to a state of chaos. And to all this must be added
piracy, from time immemorial sweeping the sea and ravaging the land.
Under such circumstances, if there were little opportunity for commerce,
there was none for scientific investigations; and only by the
enterprises of commerce or the researches of science do we know of new
and distant countries.

Many races inhabit Borneo; but the Malays and Sea and Land Dyaks greatly
preponderate. The Malays, who came from continental Asia, are the
conquering and governing race. In their native condition they are
indolent, treacherous, and given to piracy. The very name Malay has come
to stand for cruelty and revenge. But well governed, they prove to be
much like other people, susceptible to kindness, capable of affection,
amiable, fond to excess of their children, and courteous to strangers.
The Sea Dyaks are piratical tribes, dwelling on the coasts or borders of
rivers, and subsisting by rapine and violence. The Land Dyaks are the
descendants of the primitive inhabitants. They are a mild, industrious
race, and remarkably honest. One hideous custom, that of preserving the
heads of their fallen enemies as ghastly tokens of victory, has invested
the name of Dyak with a reputation of cruelty which is not deserved.
This singular practice, originating, it is said, in a superstitious
desire to propitiate the Evil Spirit by bloody offerings, has in process
of time become connected with all their ideas of manly prowess. The
young girl receives with proud satisfaction from her lover the gift of a
gory head, as the noblest proof both of his affection and his heroism.
This custom is woven, too, into the early traditions of the race. The
Sakarrans tell us that their first mother, who dwells now in heaven
near the evening star, asked of her wooer a worthy gift; and that when
he presented her a deer she rejected it with contempt; when he offered
her a mias, the great orang-outang of Borneo, she turned her back upon
it; but when in desperation he went out and slew a man, brought back his
head, and threw it at her feet, she smiled upon him, and said that was
indeed a gift worthy of her. This legend shows, at any rate, how fixed
is this habit, not alone in the passions of the people, but also in
their traditional regard. Yet, strange as it may seem, they are an
attractive race. A missionary's wife who has known them well declares
that they are gentle and kindly, simple as children, disposed to love
and reverence all who are wiser and more civilized than themselves. Ida
Pfeiffer concludes that the Dyaks pleased her best, not only among the
races of Borneo, but among all the races of the earth with which she has
come in contact. And a cultivated Englishman, with wealth and social
position at command, has been so attracted to them, that he has lavished
both his fortune and his best years in the work of their elevation. The
social condition of the Dyaks has been sufficiently wretched. Subjected
to the Malays, they have been forced to work in the mines without pay,
while they were liable at any moment to be robbed of their homes, and
even of their wives and children. "We do not live like men," said one of
them, with great pathos. "We are like monkeys, hunted from place to
place. We have no houses, and we dare not light a fire lest the smoke
draw our enemies upon us."

Running along the whole northern coast of Borneo, eight hundred miles,
and inland perhaps two hundred, is found Borneo Proper, one of the three
great Mohammedan kingdoms into which the island was divided as early as
the sixteenth century. This state is governed, or rather misgoverned, by
a sultan, and, under him, by rajahs and pangerans,--officials who give
to the commands of their nominal superior but a scanty obedience. For
two centuries Borneo Proper has been steadily settling into anarchy and
barbarism. With a government both feeble and despotic, it was torn by
intestine wars, crushed within by oppression and ravaged without by
piracy, until commerce and agriculture, the twin pillars of the state,
were equally threatened, and not one element of ruin seemed to be
wanting. What evidence of decay could be more striking than the simple
fact that Bruni, its capital, which in the sixteenth century was crowded
with a population of more than two hundred thousand souls, had in 1840
scarcely fourteen thousand inhabitants?

       *       *       *       *       *

To one corner of this wasting empire came, twenty-five years ago, a
young Englishman. Simply a gentleman, he had no governmental alliances
to help him, and no advantages of any sort for founding empire, except
such as sprang from the possession of a sagacious mind, an undaunted
temper, and a heart thoroughly in sympathy with the oppressed. Alone he
has built up a flourishing state, introducing commercial activity and
the habits of civilized life where only oppression and misery were, and
has achieved an enterprise which seems to belong rather to the days of
chivalry than to a plodding, utilitarian age,--an enterprise which, in
romance and success, but not in carnage, calls to mind the deeds of the
great Spanish captains in the New World.

James Brooke, the second and only surviving son of Thomas Brooke, a
gentleman who had acquired a fortune in the service of the East India
Company, was born in India, April 29, 1803. At an early age he entered
the employ of the same company to whose interests his father had given
his best days. In 1826, as a cadet, he accompanied the British army to
the Burmese war, was dangerously wounded, received a furlough, and came
to England. To restore his health and gratify his curiosity he spent the
year 1827 in travelling on the Continent. His furlough having nearly
expired, he embarked for India, but was wrecked on the voyage, and could
not report for duty in proper season. This was one of those apparently
fortuitous circumstances which so often change the whole aspect of a
man's life. At any rate, it was the turning-point in Mr. Brooke's
career. Finding that his misfortune had cost him his position, and that
he could not recover it without tedious formalities, he left the
service. Uncontrolled master of himself, and endowed with sagacity and
courage of no ordinary stamp, he was ready for any undertaking which his
adventurous spirit or his love of research might dictate. In fact, it
was during this interval of leisure that he embarked for China, and on
his passage saw for the first time the Eastern Archipelago. He was
painfully interested in the condition of Borneo and Celebes, those great
islands, sinking apparently into hopeless decay. His sympathies were
awakened by the sufferings of the helpless natives, and his indignation
was aroused by the outrages of an unbridled piracy. His feelings can be
best gathered from his own language. "These unhappy countries afford a
striking proof how the fairest and richest lands under the sun may
become degraded by a continuous course of oppression and misrule. Whilst
extravagant dreams of the progressive advancement of the human race are
entertained, a large tract of the globe has been gradually relapsing
into barbarism. Whilst the folly of fashion requires an acquaintance
with the deserts of Africa, and a most ardent thirst for a knowledge of
the customs of Timbuctoo,--whilst the trumpet tongue of many an orator
excites thousands to the rational and charitable object of converting
the Jews or of reclaiming the Gypsies,--not a single prospectus is
spread abroad, not a single voice is raised in Exeter Hall, to relieve
the darkness of this paganism and the horrors of this slave-trade. Under
these circumstances I have considered that individual exertions may be
usefully applied to rouse the zeal of slumbering philanthropy."

The feelings thus awakened were not of a transient character. His dreams
henceforth were to visit these islands, see them for himself, study
their natural history, understand their social condition, and ascertain
what avenues could be opened for trade, and what steps taken to redeem
the oppressed native races.

       *       *       *       *       *

In 1835 the death of his father, leaving him master of an independent
fortune, enabled him to realize his dreams. He was a member of the Royal
Yacht Club, as well as owner and commander of a yacht,--a position which
admitted him in foreign ports to all the privileges of an English naval
officer. In this little vessel he resolved to undertake an adventurous
voyage of discovery. He approached his enterprise with a wary
forethought. "I was convinced," he says, "that it was necessary to form
men to my purpose, and by a line of steady and kind conduct to raise up
a personal regard for myself and an attachment to the vessel." He
cruised three years in the Mediterranean, carefully selecting and
training his crew. He studied thoroughly the whole subject of the
Eastern Archipelago, and acquainted himself as perfectly as possible
with the minutiae of seamanship and with every useful art. And when his
preparations were all complete, on the 16th of December, 1838, he set
sail for Singapore, in the yacht Royalist, a vessel of one hundred and
forty-two tons, manned by twenty men and officers, with an armament of
six six-pounders and a full supply of small arms of all sorts. Such were
the mighty resources wherewith he began an enterprise which has ended in
raising him to the government of a petty kingdom, and to almost
sovereign influence over the whole empire of Borneo Proper.

The reader has already had glimpses of the feelings which prompted this
expedition. In a communication to the "Geographical Register" he more
fully unfolds his views; and from this and from his familiar letters it
is not difficult to gain a clear idea of the character and motives of
the man. That his ardent mind had been fired by a study of the career of
his great predecessor, Stamford Raffles, is evident. That he was himself
one of those energetic, restless natures, to which idleness or mere
routine-work is the severest of penalties, is equally evident. He had,
moreover, a large share of that kind of enthusiasm which the cool,
sagacious men of this world call romance, and which delights to fasten
on objects seemingly impossible. He was like the old knights, rejoicing
most when the field of their devoir was distant and dangerous. Yet not
altogether like them. He was rather a man of the twelfth century,
disciplined and invigorated by the hard common-sense and sharp
utilitarianism of the nineteenth century. And we must not forget that he
honestly wished to benefit the native races. Every page, nay, almost
every line, in his journals and letters, bears witness to his profound
compassion for the despised and downtrodden Dyaks. Aside from this, when
we remember that he was a genuine Englishman, proud of his native land
and thoughtful always of her aggrandizement, we need be at no loss to
understand his motives. He went forth to gratify a love of adventure,
"to see something of the world and come back again," to extend a little
the realms of scientific knowledge, to suggest, perhaps, some plans for
the improvement of native character, and last, but not least, to learn
whether there might not be opened new avenues for the extension of
British trade and British power.

That the methods by which these objects were to be attained were not
very well defined even to his own mind is clear. He himself said, "I
cast myself upon the waters, like Southey's little book; but whether the
world will know me after many days, is a question I cannot answer." And
some years after, alluding to a charge of inconsistency, he said, "I did
not embrace my position _at once_; and indeed the position itself
altered very rapidly; and I am free to confess before the world that my
views of duty and responsibility were not so high at first as they have
since been." Without doubt his direct and primary purpose was
investigation. He took with him men of some scientific knowledge,
himself being no mean observer; and he proposed to prosecute, wherever
opportunity occurred, researches into the geography, natural history,
and commercial resources of these islands. If he had ulterior ends, as
yet they existed in his mind as fascinating dreams, rather than
well-defined plans.

       *       *       *       *       *

After a tedious voyage of nearly six months, the Royalist reached
Singapore, June 1, 1839. While Mr. Brooke was engaged in refitting his
yacht, and anxiously revolving in his mind how he should obtain
permission to penetrate into the neighboring kingdom of Borneo, he
learned that Muda Hassim, uncle of the Sultan, and Rajah of Sarawak, the
northwestern province of Borneo, had displayed great humanity towards a
crew of shipwrecked Englishmen. On receiving this information he started
at once for Sarawak, hoping to get some hold upon the Rajah, and by such
help to pursue his researches. But the time of his visit was most
unfortunate. The whole province was in a state of open rebellion; so
that, while he was received courteously, and permitted to make some
local surveys, nothing of importance could be accomplished. Baffled and
wearied by delay, he sailed back to Singapore, and from thence to
Celebes, where he remained several months, engaged in extensive
explorations, and in collecting specimens to illustrate the natural
history of that island.

Mr. Brooke returned from Celebes worn out and sick, and was obliged to
remain at Singapore several months to recruit his strength. In August,
1840, he made a second visit to Sarawak, intending to tarry there a few
days, and then proceed homeward by the way of Manilla and China. "I
have done fully as much as I promised the public," he writes. He found
things in much the same state as when he left. No progress had been made
in the suppression of the rebellion. Few lives indeed had been lost, but
the most bloody war could hardly have produced worse results. The
country was filled with combatants. Every straggler was cut off.
Violence and rapine were the law. Trade and agriculture languished. A
rich province was fast relapsing into a wilderness; and all its people
were beginning to suffer alike for shelter and sustenance. As our hero
was about to set sail, the Rajah opened his whole heart to him. His
prospects were anything but flattering. He found himself unequal to the
reduction of the rebels. He was surrounded by traitors. At the court of
the Sultan, a hostile cabal, taking advantage of his ill-fortune,
threatened his power and his life. In this strait, he besought his
visitor to remain and give him aid, promising in event of success to
confer upon him the government of the province. After a few days'
reflection, Mr. Brooke, believing, as he declares, that the cause of the
Sultan was just, believing also that what the whole people needed most
was peace, and that peace would place him in a position to render them
the greatest service, acceded to this request, without, however, be it
observed, binding Muda Hassim to any precise stipulations concerning the
government.

Many pages of his journal are devoted to an account of this war; and a
most curious story it is of cowardice, bravado, and inefficiency. It was
advance and retreat, boastful challenge and as boastful reply, marching
and countermarching, day after day, and month after month. "Like the
heroes of old, the adverse parties spoke to each other: 'We are coming,
we are coming; lay aside your muskets and fight us with your swords';
and so the heroes ceased not to talk, but always forgot to fight";--the
sum of all their achievements being to lay waste the country, to
interrupt honest industry, and to put in peril the lives of the
unoffending. Mr. Brooke soon tired of this farce. Gathering a motley
force, consisting of Malays, Dyaks, Chinese, and his own crew, he
prepared for an assault. Then, planting his cannon where they commanded
the stronghold of the enemy, with a few well-directed volleys he brought
its walls tumbling about their ears. The insurgents, driven to the open
country, and altogether amazed by this specimen of Saxon energy,
surrendered at discretion. At one blow a desolating war was ended.

       *       *       *       *       *

Peace being restored, Mr. Brooke did not insist on the literal
fulfilment of the terms which Muda Hassim had in his extremity been so
ready to proffer. He chose to occupy a position of influence, rather
than one of outward authority. A contract was entered into by which he
became Resident of Sarawak. The conditions of the agreement were, that
the Rajah on his part should repress piracy, protect legitimate
commerce, and as far as possible remove from the Dyaks unjust burdens;
while his ally, in return for these concessions, should open trade,
sending a vessel to and fro between Singapore and Sarawak, exchanging
foreign luxuries for native products, and more especially for antimony,
of which article the Rajah had the monopoly. In fulfilment of his part
of the treaty, Mr. Brooke proceeded to Singapore, purchased a schooner,
loaded her with an assorted cargo, returned to Sarawak, and at the
earnest request of Muda Hassim landed and distributed his goods.

But auspicious as was the commencement of this alliance, soon grave
causes of complaint arose. On every point the deceitful Malay came short
of his agreement. Having obtained valuable property, he showed no
alacrity in paying for it; weeks and months passed without bringing him
apparently any nearer to a pecuniary settlement. So far from repressing
piracy, he encouraged it; and a fleet of one hundred and twenty prahus,
with his tacit consent, actually put to sea. When a crew of English
seamen were enslaved and carried to Bruni, under the most frivolous
pretexts he refused to intercede with the Sultan for these unfortunate
men. And so this strange friendship cooled. It was no slight proof
either of his courage or his humanity to despatch at this very time, as
Mr. Brooke did, his yacht to Bruni, to attempt something in behalf of
his enslaved countrymen, and to remain himself with only three men at
Sarawak. The yacht came back, however, having effected nothing.

By this time the patience of the creditor was exhausted. Despoiled of
his goods, finding that, despite his remonstrances, the Dyaks were
cruelly oppressed, and that piracy was encouraged, he resolved to try
the effect of threats. He repaired on board his yacht, loaded her guns
with grape and canister, and brought her broadside to bear upon the
Rajah's palace. Then taking a small, but well-armed guard, he sought an
interview with Muda Hassim. The terror of that functionary was extreme.
The native tribes openly sided with their English friend. The Chinese
residents remained obstinately neutral. The Malays, between cowardice
and treachery, afforded him no efficient support. To crown all, his
resolute and incensed ally had only to wave his hand to bring down upon
him swift destruction. "After this demonstration, things went cheerily
to a conclusion." Muda Hassim, finding that his creditor was inflexible,
and being unable or unwilling to pay for the goods which he had
fraudulently obtained, offered in payment of all debts to surrender the
government. The offer was accepted, the agreement drawn up, signed,
sealed, guns fired and flags waved, and on September 24, 1841, Mr.
Brooke became Rajah of Sarawak. In August of the following year the
Sultan solemnly confirmed the agreement.

The territory thus strangely passing into the hands of a private English
gentleman was a tract of country bordering upon the sea sixty miles, and
extending inland from seventy to eighty miles. Situated at the
northeastern extremity of Borneo, pierced by two small, but navigable
rivers, its position is most favorable for commerce. Its soil is deep
and rich, yielding under any proper culture large crops of all tropical
products. Its forests are filled with trees fit for shipbuilding, and
abound in that variety from which is obtained the gutta percha of
commerce. The hills are rich in iron and tin of the best quality. The
mountain streams wash down gold. In the beds of smaller rivers are found
diamonds, in such profusion that most of the Malays wear them set in
rings and other ornaments. From this single province comes nearly the
whole supply of antimony in the world. "I do not believe," says a
resident, "that in the same given space there can be found so great
mineral and vegetable wealth in any land in the whole world."

       *       *       *       *       *

With what sentiments the new Rajah entered upon his duties can be best
understood by a perusal of his familiar letters. He writes to his
mother: "Do not start when I say that I am going to settle in Borneo,
that I am about to endeavor to plant there a mixed colony amid a wild
but not unvirtuous race, and to become the pioneer of European knowledge
and improvement. The diffusion of civilization, commerce, and religion
through so vast an island as Borneo, I call a grand object,--so grand
that self is quite lost when I consider it; and even failure would be
much better than the non-attempt." "A few days ago I was up a high
mountain and looked over the country. It is a prospect which I have
rarely seen equalled; and sitting there, lazily smoking a cigar, I
called into existence the coffee plantations, the sugar plantations, the
nutmeg plantations, and pretty white villages and tiny steeples, and
dreamed that I heard the buzz of life and the clang of industry amid the
jungles, and that the China Colins whistled as they went, for want of
thought, as they homeward bent."

The first duty which claimed attention was the relief of the native
Dyaks. A shrewd Dyak once defined the Malay government as "a plantain in
the mouth and a thorn in the back." A plantain giving to their poor
subjects a little to keep life in them; a thorn stripping them to the
skin and piercing them to the bone. The description is pithy, and it is
true. The exactions of the Malay chiefs were almost beyond belief.
Seizing and monopolizing some article of prime necessity,--salt
perhaps,--they would force the natives to buy at the rate of fifty
dollars' worth of rice for a teacup of salt; until the wretched
cultivator, who had raised a plentiful crop, was brought to the verge of
starvation. They reserved to themselves the right of purchasing the
articles which the Dyaks had to sell, and then affixed to those articles
an arbitrary price, perhaps less than a five-hundredth of their real
value. They would send a bar of iron two or three feet long, and having
an intrinsic worth of a few cents, to the head mart of a tribe,
demanding that his village should give for it a sum equal to five, ten,
or twenty dollars. Another was sent in the same way, and another, and
another, until the rapacity of the chiefs was satisfied, or the wretched
natives had no more to give. Often, when the latter had been robbed of
everything, the Malays would seize and sell their wives and children. It
is recorded of one tribe, that there was not so much as one woman or
child to be found in it. All had been swept off by these remorseless
slave-hunters. Nor did their wrongs end here. If a Dyak killed a Malay
"under any circumstances of aggression," he was put to death, often with
every possible addition of torture. If he accidentally injured one of
the ruling caste, he was fortunate to escape with the loss of half or
two thirds of his little savings. On the other hand, a Malay might kill
as many Dyaks as he pleased, and if perchance justice were a little
sterner than usual, he might be fined a few cents or a few dollars.
Volumes are contained in this one statement, that in the ten years from
1830 to 1840, the Dyaks in the province of Sarawak dwindled from 14,000
to 6,000 souls.

A blow was immediately struck at the root of this black oppression. As
soon as the new government was fairly established, a few simple
enactments were published. They declared that every man, Dyak as well as
Malay, should enjoy unmolested all the gains of his toil; that all
exactions of every name and nature should cease, and that only a small
tax, evenly distributed, should be levied for the support of government;
that all roads and rivers should be free to all; that all molestation of
the Dyaks should be punished with severity. The proclamation which
contains these laws concludes with exhorting all persons who are
disposed to disturb the public peace to take flight speedily to some
other country, where they can break with impunity the laws of God and
man. These enactments were firmly executed, without fear and without
partiality. Wonderful were the results! Internal violence ceased. The
confidence of the natives was awakened. Industry and enterprise sprang
up on every hand as by magic. Sarawak became a city of refuge. Sometimes
as many as fifty fled thither in a day. In 1844, in the short space of
two months, five hundred families took shelter in the province. In 1850,
three thousand Chinese fled from Sambas to Sarawak. The Dyaks returned
the good-will of their Rajah with love and reverence. During one of his
tours in the interior, delegations from tribes numbering six thousand
souls came to seek his protection. "We have heard," said they, in simple
but touching language, "that a son of Europe has arrived, who is a
friend of the Dyaks." When he visited the native hamlets, the women
would throw themselves on the ground and clasp his feet, and the whole
tribe would spend the night in joyful feasting and merriment. It is
soberly affirmed by a credible witness, that on one occasion messengers
came fifteen days' journey from a distant province to see if there were
such a phenomenon as Dyaks living in comfort.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mr. Brooke soon found that all his efforts for internal reform must be
in a comparative sense futile so long as piracy, that curse of Borneo,
was permitted to ravage unchecked. "It is in a Malay's nature," says the
Dutch proverb, "to rove on the seas in his prahu, as it is in that of
the Arab to wander with his steed on the sands of the desert." No person
who has not investigated the subject can appreciate how wide-spread and
deep-seated this plague of piracy is. The mere statistics are appalling.
It was estimated, in 1840, that one hundred thousand men made
freebooting their trade. One single chief had under control seven
hundred prahus. Whole tribes, whole groups of islands, almost whole
races, despising even the semblance of honest industry, depended upon
rapine for a livelihood. "It is difficult to catch fish, but it is easy
to catch Borneans," said the Soloo pirates scornfully; and, acting upon
that principle, they fitted out their fleets and planned their voyages
with all the method of honest tradesmen.

This piracy was divided into two branches,--coastwise piracy and piracy
on the broad seas. The Sea Dyaks built boats called bangkongs, sixty to
a hundred feet long, narrow and sharp, propelled by thirty to fifty
oars, and so swift that nothing but a steamer could overtake them. These
freebooters were the terror of all honest laborers and tradesmen.
Skulking along the coast, pushing up rivers and creeks, landing anywhere
and every where without warning, they mercilessly destroyed the native
villages and swept the inhabitants into captivity. Or else, impelling
with the force of fifty men their snaky craft, which were swift as
race-boats and noiseless as beasts of prey, they would surprise at dead
of night some defenceless merchantman, overwhelm their victims with
showers of spears, and with morning light a plundered boat, a few dead
bodies, were the silent witnesses of their ferocity. On the other hand,
the Illanum and Balanini tribes, infesting the islands to the northeast
of Borneo, undertook far grander enterprises. Putting to sea, prepared
for a long voyage, in fleets of two or three hundred prahus, propelled
by wind and oars, armed with brass cannon, and manned by ten thousand
bold buccaneers, they swept through the whole length of the Chinese Sea,
and, turning the southernmost point of Borneo, penetrated the straits
and sounds between Java and Celebes, never stopping in their ruthless
course until they came face to face with the sturdy pirates of New
Guinea, and returned, after a voyage of ten thousand miles and an
absence of two years, laden with spoils and captives. How hapless was
the fate of the poor Dyak! If he stayed at home, cultivating his fields,
his Malay lord fleeced him to the skin. If, thinking to engage in
gainful traffic, he hugged the shore with his little bark, the
river-pirate snatched him up. If he stood out upon the broad waters, he
could scarcely hope to escape the Northern hordes who swarmed in every
sea.

Mr. Brooke's most terrible assailants were the Sakarran and Sarebus
pirates, two tribes of freebooters whose seats of power were on the
Sarebus and Batang Lupar rivers, two streams fifty or sixty miles east
of Sarawak. These tribes were encouraged and secretly helped by his own
Malay chiefs, and insolently defied his power, continuing their
depredations, capturing every vessel which ventured out, and ravaging
all the adjacent coasts. The strength of these confederacies was so
great, that it was no unusual thing for them to muster a hundred
war-boats; and they had built, on the banks of the rivers which they
infested, strong forts at every point which commanded the channel. That
the new Rajah was not able with his slender resources to curb these
sea-robbers is not surprising. The only wonder is, that he was able to
protect his own capital from the assaults which they often threatened
but never dared to attempt.

But efficient aid was at hand. In the summer of 1843 the British ship
Dido anchored off the entrance of Sarawak River. She was commissioned to
suppress piracy in and about the Chinese Sea. Her commander readily
entered into the views of the English Rajah. A boat expedition against
the strongholds of the Sarebus pirates was projected. Mr. Brooke
assisted with seven hundred Dyaks. A curious incident occurred, showing
how clearly the natives appreciated their dependence on their English
friend. When he asked their chiefs if they would aid him, they besought
him not to risk his life in so desperate an enterprise. But when he
assured them that his purpose was fixed, that he should go, alone if
necessary, they replied: "What is the use of our remaining behind? You
die, we die; you live, we live. We will go too." The expedition was
perfectly successful. Three fortified villages were stormed, many guns
spiked, many boats destroyed, and their defenders driven to the jungles.
This chastisement not sufficing, in the following year another
expedition from the same vessel attacked the Sakarran pirates and
inflicted upon them a punishment even more severe than that which had
fallen to the lot of their Sarebus brethren. Six forts, one mounting
fifty-six guns, scores of war-boats, and more than a thousand huts, were
burned. These lessons, though sharp, did not permanently subdue.

The blow which broke the power of these confederacies was inflicted in
1849. News came to Sarawak that the pirates had put to sea, marking
their course by fearful atrocities. At once Mr. Brooke applied to the
English Admiral for assistance, and the steamer Nemesis was despatched
to the scene of action. The Rajah joined her with eighteen war-boats, to
which were afterwards added eleven hundred Dyaks, in their bangkongs. On
the 31st of July, at night, they encountered the great war-fleet of the
Sarebus and Sakarran pirates, numbering one hundred and fifty bangkongs,
returning home laden with plunder. The pirates found the entrances of
the river occupied by their enemies,--the English, Malay, and Dyak
forces being placed in three detachments, while the Nemesis was fully
prepared to assist whenever the attack should begin. "Then there was a
dead silence, broken only by three strokes of a gong, which called the
pirates to a council of war. A few minutes afterwards a fearful yell
gave notice of their advance, and the fleet approached in two divisions.
In the dead of the night there ensued a terrible scene. The pirates
fought bravely, but they could not withstand the superior forces of
their enemy. Their boats were upset by the paddles of the steamer. They
were hemmed in on every side, and five hundred men were killed sword in
hand, while twenty-five hundred escaped to the jungles, many of them to
perish. The morning light showed a sad spectacle of ruin and defeat.
Upwards of eighty prahus and bangkongs were captured, and many more
destroyed." The English officers would have gladly saved life; but the
pirates would take no quarter, and the prisoners were few. It was a
striking fact, that one of the war-boats under Mr. Brooke was manned by
some thirty Malays, every one of whom had lost during the year a near
relative, killed by these same pirates. The confederacy has never risen
from this defeat, and for years the tribes composing it have returned to
the labors of peaceful life. Writing twelve months afterwards to a
friend, Rajah Brooke says: "Pray keep the 31st of July apart for a
special bumper, for during the last year not a single innocent life has
been taken by these pirates, nor a single prahu fallen into their
hands." Many a victory, famous in story, has accomplished less.

The next year a fleet of sixty-four prahus, manned by northern pirates,
and carrying 1224 guns, was destroyed by British gunboats in the Gulf of
Tonquin. This was followed by an attack of the Spaniards upon the haunts
of the Soloo pirates. A lull ensued. For three or four years almost
nothing was heard of freebooting; but it was a deceitful calm, not a
final cessation of the storm. The freebooting spirit was not taken out
of the blood of the Malay. Now piracy is said to be on the increase
again. Only three years since six Balanini pirates had the audacity to
sail into Sarawak Bay and commence depredations along its coasts. But
not one returned to tell the tale. The whole six were captured or
destroyed, and their crews killed or taken prisoners. The only permanent
remedy for the evil is just, settled, and efficient government, such as
has been established at Sarawak, destroying not simply the fleets, but
breaking up the piratical haunts, and with firm hand forcing their
people back into the habits and pursuits of civilized life.

       *       *       *       *       *

Being delivered for a time at least from these perils, the new Rajah was
at liberty to devote himself to the welfare of his subjects. It is not
possible, in a brief notice, even to hint at all the events and efforts
of the next fifteen years of his government,--to say how he repressed
the cupidity and lawlessness of the Malay chiefs; how he encouraged and
protected the poor Dyaks; how he opened new channels for trade; how,
from year to year, he resisted the fierce pirates, who, coming from the
neighboring islands with strong fleets, sought to sweep the adjacent
seas. Of course the prime need was to restore confidence, and to assure
to all honest workers, of every race, the gains of their industry. The
first question, indeed, of the Chinese emigrant was, "Will you protect
us, or will our plantations, so soon as they are worth anything, be
stripped by your chiefs?" It has been beautiful to behold order coming
out of chaos, peace out of violence, whole districts redeemed from
anarchy, simply by giving efficient support to the orderly part of the
population. Another object of not less importance was to create in this
people something of the feeling of nationality, and to make them
comprehend that they were citizens, with the duties of citizens. It
certainly was no easy task to awaken much of the sentiment of lofty
patriotism in the minds of those whose only common memories were of
lawless misrule and oppression. Every possible effort has been made in
this direction. The struggle has been, not to plant an English colony,
but to create a Bornean state. The laws are not English, nor built upon
English precedents. They are simply the old Bornean statutes, made
conformable to the principles of equity, and administered with just
regard to the customs and traditions of the people. The offices of
government are filled to the least possible degree with foreigners;
while native chiefs and even reclaimed pirates are associated with them,
and thus habituated to all the forms of a civilized state. Mr. Brooke,
with a rare courage and wisdom, has always trusted for his safety to the
good-will of his native subjects. He has never been sustained by
mercenary bands. At a time when piratical violence was most threatening,
when disorders were yet rife in his own state, and when his subjects but
poorly appreciated his benevolent purposes towards them, his whole
English force was twenty-four men. It is pleasant to add, that this
confidence was not misplaced. A younger generation is now springing up,
with larger views of life, and with a better appreciation of the
workings and value of equitable government. To sum up all in a brief
sentence, it may be said with truth that the administration has been
marked by rare sagacity, firmness, and comprehensiveness of view, and
that it has been crowned with success.

In 1845, Mr. Brooke came for the first time into official relations
with the British government, by accepting the office of confidential
agent in Borneo. We have already alluded to his warm love of his native
country. As early as 1841, he had expressed a willingness to sacrifice
his large outlays, and to relinquish all his rights and interests to the
crown, if a guaranty could be given that piracy would be checked and the
native races protected in all their proper rights and privileges. He
accepted gladly, therefore, a post which promised to increase his power
to benefit his people, and entered upon its duties with vigor.
Immediately upon his appointment, he was requested to make
investigations as to the existence of a harbor fit for the shelter and
victualling of ships bound from Hong-Kong to Singapore. He reported that
Labuan, a small island north of Borneo, was in every way suitable; that
it was about equidistant from the two parts; that it had a fine harbor,
or rather roadstead; that it was healthy; that it abounded in coal of
the best quality; that, finally, the Sultan stood pledged to convey it
upon reasonable terms.

But before legal papers could be drawn, the whole policy of the court of
Bruni had changed. The Sultan was a monarch with "the head of an idiot
and the heart of a pirate." All his sympathies were with violence and
robbery. Under the influence of others, he had agreed to use his power
against piracy, and had even been brought to say, in fawning phrase,
that "he wanted the English near to him." But he suddenly repented of
his good purposes. In a fit of Oriental fickleness he caused Muda Hassim
and all who favored the English alliance to be put to death, despatched
a messenger secretly to administer poison to Mr. Brooke, and entered
into even closer friendship than before with the piratical tribes. A
confidential servant of Pangeran Budrudeen, the brother of Muda Hassim,
with difficulty escaped, and fled to Sarawak. He related that his master
had bravely resisted, but, overpowered by numbers and desperately
wounded, had committed to his charge a ring, bidding him deliver it to
Rajah Brooke as a dying memento, and to tell him that he died faithful
to his pledges to the Queen; then, setting fire to a keg of powder, he
blew himself with his family into the air.

These tidings filled Mr. Brooke with grief and indignation. Every
passion of his fiery and energetic nature was aroused. He repaired on
board the British fleet, which, upon receipt of this news, had put into
Sarawak. Without delay the fleet sailed for Bruni. An immediate
explanation was demanded of the Sultan. The reply was a volley from the
forts which commanded the river. Without ceremony the ships returned the
fire. In a brief time these strongholds were stormed, and Bruni itself
was at the mercy of the enemy. The Sultan fled to the swamps. Sailing
out of Borneo River, the fleet swept along the whole northern coast,
taking in rapid succession the forts of the Illanum pirates who had
instigated the murders at Bruni, and inflicting upon them a signal
chastisement.

By this time the Sultan wearied of jungles and sighed for his palace. He
wrote a cringing letter, promising amendment, agreeing to ratify all his
former engagements, and as a sign of his true penitence was ready even
to pay royal honors to the memory of the men whom he had slain. There
was no further difficulty in respect to the cession of Labuan, and it
was taken possession of December 24, 1846,--Mr. Brooke being appointed
governor. It is said that the possession of this island goes far to make
England mistress of the Chinese Sea,--a statement easily to be credited
by any one conversant with English policy. At any rate, he who observes
how, at apparently insignificant stations,--on little islands, on a
marshy peninsula,--mere dots on the map,--England has established her
commercial depots,--at Hong-Kong in the north, at Labuan in the centre,
and at Singapore in the south,--will gain new respect for the sagacity
which in the councils of the mother country always lurks behind the
red-tapism of which we hear so much.

       *       *       *       *       *

After an absence of nine years, Rajah Brooke revisited England in the
year 1847. He was the hero of the hour. Every honor was showered upon
him. He was invited to visit Windsor Castle, received the freedom of
London, and then or soon after was knighted. Owing to his
representations of the readiness of the Dyaks to receive instruction, a
meeting was held in London, at which funds were obtained to build a
church and school-houses. Two missionaries and their families were sent
to Sarawak. The buildings were erected long since, and these Christian
means are in full activity. Brooke's language upon the proper
qualifications of a missionary exhibits in a striking light his
straightforward resolution and enlarged liberality. "Above all things, I
beg of you to save us from such a one as some of the committee desire to
see at Sarawak. Zealots, and intolerants, and enthusiasts, who begin the
task of tuition by a torrent of abuse against all that their pupils hold
sacred, shall not come to Sarawak. Whilst our endeavors to convert the
natives are conducted with charity, I am a warm friend of the mission.
But whenever there is a departure from the only visible means God has
placed at our disposal,--time, reason, patience,--and the Christian
faith is to be heralded in its introduction by disturbances and
heart-burnings and bloodshed, I want it not; and you are quite at
liberty to say, that I would rather that the mission were withdrawn."

       *       *       *       *       *

About the year 1850, Mr. Brooke became the object of a virulent attack,
continued several years, both in the public prints and in Parliament.
Prompted originally by the petty malice of those whose tool for the
advancement of their personal schemes he had refused to become, this
attack was taken up by a few persons of influence, who seem to have
misunderstood utterly both his character and work. He has been termed a
mere adventurer. He has been accused of avarice, of wringing from the
natives great sums, and receiving from England large salaries as Consul
at Borneo and as Governor of Labuan. It has been asserted that he has
been guilty of wholesale slaughter of the innocent, interfering with
tribal wars under the pretence of extirpating piracy. None of these
charges have been sustained. On the contrary, it has been conclusively
shown that he has sunk more than L20,000 of his private fortune in this
enterprise. The piracy, so mildly called intertribal war, is undoubtedly
robbery, both on the sea and on the land, and conducted with all fitting
accompaniments of cruelty and bloodshed. This persecution has not been
borne by its object with much patience, and, indeed, like Rob Roy's
Highlander, "he does not seem to be famous for that gude gift." "I am no
tame lion to be cowed by a pack of hounds. These intertribal wars are
such as the wolf wages against the lamb. I should like to ask the most
peaceable man in England what he would do if a horde of bandits
frequently burst forth from Brest and Cherbourg, ravaging the shores of
the Channel, and carrying women and children into captivity, with the
heads of their decapitated husbands and fathers? Would he preach? Would
he preach when he saw his daughter dishonored and his son murdered? And
then would he proclaim his shame and cowardice among men? What do some
gentlemen expect? They particularly desire to suppress piracy. Do they
really imagine that piracy is to be suppressed by argument and
preaching?"

Mr. Brooke's enemies have three times pressed their accusations before
the House of Commons, and three times have been defeated by overwhelming
majorities,--the last vote being 230 to 19. Finally, to end the
controversy, a royal commission was appointed to visit the scene of
these transactions, and upon the spot to decide their merits. The report
of this commission has not reached us, if indeed it has ever been made
public; but the practical results of it are certain. Mr. Brooke has
severed his official connection with the British government by a
resignation of the offices which he held under it; while he retains his
sovereignty at Sarawak, with the undiminished love of his subjects and
an unimpaired influence over the native tribes. There seems to be no
doubt that the intelligent public opinion of England fully sustains him.
And it is safe to predict that with that opinion the final verdict of
history will coincide. That, placed in circumstances of great
difficulty, he may have taken steps not to be squared with the nicest
morality, is possible; for that is what must be said of every man who
has borne the burden of great public responsibility. Neither is it
surprising that a man of such boldness of speech and such almost
Cromwellian vigor in action should have enemies; that is a necessity.
But that he has been a true and sagacious friend of the natives, and
that his career has been for the increase of human happiness, are facts
as certain as any can be.

His best defence is his works. In 1842, when he took the government of
Sarawak, it was a feeble province, torn by dissension, crushed by
slavery, and ravaged by lawless violence. Now it is a peaceful,
prosperous commonwealth. In 1842, its capital, Kuching, was a wretched
village, whose houses were miserable mud huts or tents of leaves, and
containing but fifteen hundred inhabitants. Now it numbers fifteen
thousand,--an increase almost rivalling that of our Western cities. In
1842, no boat put to sea without terror. As a result, the amount of
trade was contemptible. Now Sarawak has enterprising native merchants,
owning vessels of two hundred tons, having regular transactions with
Singapore and all the neighboring ports. This trade, as early as 1853,
employed twenty-five thousand tons of shipping, and the exports for the
year were valued at more than a million of dollars. In 1842, deaths by
violence were of almost daily occurrence. Twelve years later, a resident
could boast that for three years only one person had lost his life by
other than natural causes. How would American cities appear in
comparison with this poor Dyak and heathen metropolis? Well does Rajah
Brooke proudly ask, "Could such success spring from a narrow and sordid
policy?" Mrs. McDougall, the missionary's wife, says: "We have now a
beautiful church at Sarawak, and the bell calls us there to worship
every morning at six, and at five every evening. Neither is there
anything in this quiet, happy place to prevent our thus living in God's
presence."

Mrs. McDougall adds a story which shows the estimation in which the
natives hold their Rajah. "Pa Jenna paid me a visit at Sarawak. The
Rajah was then in England. But Pa Jenna, coming into my sitting-room,
immediately espied his picture hanging against the wall. I was much
struck with the expression of respect which both the face and attitude
of this untutored savage assumed as he stood before the picture. He
raised his handkerchief from his head, and, saluting the picture with a
bow, such as a Roman Catholic would make to his patron saint's altar,
whispered to himself, 'Our great Rajah.'" And this man was a reclaimed
pirate.

This reverential love of the natives is the one thing which does not
admit of a doubt. The proofs are constant and irresistible. Some years
since a lady with a few attendants was pushing her boat up a Bornean
river, many leagues away from Sarawak, when she encountered a wild Dyak
tribe on a warlike expedition. The sight of more than a hundred
half-naked savages, crowning a little knoll which jutted into the river
a half-dozen rods in advance of her boat, dancing frantically like
maniacs, brandishing their long knives, and yelling all the while like
demons, was not cheering. Yet at the sight of the Sarawak flag raised at
the bow of the boat, every demonstration of hostility ceased. She was
overpowered by their noisy welcome, and received from them the kindest
attention. A dozen years ago, at the very time that the accusations of
cruelty and wholesale slaughter of innocent people were most recklessly
made, a party of Englishmen, and among them the adopted son of the
Rajah, went on an exploring expedition to the extreme northeast corner
of Borneo, more than six hundred miles from Sarawak. While they were
seated one evening around their fire, the whole air resounded with the
cries, "Tuan Brooke! Tuan Brooke!" and presently the natives drew near
and expressed their joy at seeing a son of the great Rajah, and
wondering that he who had so blessed the southern Dyaks did not extend
his protection to their northern brethren. One anecdote more. During the
Chinese insurrection, of which we shall soon speak, a Malay chief,
fighting desperately against the insurgents, was mortally wounded, only
lingering long enough to be assured of the Rajah's victory, and to
exclaim with his dying breath, "I would rather be in hell with the
English, than in heaven with my own countrymen."

       *       *       *       *       *

The loyalty of the native population was thoroughly tested in the year
1857. It was the time of the second British war against China. Now the
Chinese are in one sense the most cosmopolitan of races. Wherever bread
is to be won, or gold amassed, there they go, thus becoming scattered
all through Southeastern Asia and the adjoining islands. In one aspect
they are a great blessing. They are a most laborious and thrifty race,
of almost incalculable benefit in the development of the material
resources of a country. But in some respects they are also an element of
danger. They never identify themselves with the country in which they
dwell. They simply come to get a living out of it. They band themselves
in secret societies or other exclusive organizations, and seem to get no
real love for the land which gives them bread, or the people among whom
they live. Under a peaceful rule, this race had greatly multiplied at
Sarawak. Some branches of industry had indeed almost fallen into their
hands. Especially in all mining operations was their help a positive
necessity. For the Dyak, though industrious enough on his little
plantation, will not work, except on compulsion, in the mines. These
places are bitter to him with the memory of forced labor and unrequited
misery. Besides, he believes that the bowels of the earth are filled
with demons, and no amount of pay gives him courage to face these. As a
result, the conduct of the mines was left to the Chinese, and they were
unwisely permitted to work them in large companies of several hundred,
under their own overseers. This gave them the advantages of a compact
organization: to a dangerous degree they became a state within the
state.

When the war in China broke out, the Chinese residents at Sarawak,
sympathizing with their countrymen, were naturally greatly excited; and
when tidings came that the English fleet had been repulsed from before
the Canton forts, they were emboldened to take the desperate step of
attempting to put to death or to drive out of the country Rajah Brooke
and the rest of the English people, that they themselves might take
possession of it. About dusk on a February night, six hundred of them
gathered under their chiefs, armed themselves, went on board
cargo-boats, and began to float down the river towards the capital. At
midnight they attacked the Rajah's house. Its inmates were forced to
flee to the jungles. The Rajah rose from a sick-bed, ran to the banks of
the stream, dove under one of the Chinese boats, swam the river, and
took refuge with the Malays. Several of his countrymen were murdered.
His own house, filled with the priceless collections of a lifetime,
together with a costly library, was burned.

It was a gloomy morning which succeeded the night of this catastrophe.
Though he did not doubt for a moment the ultimate suppression of the
rebellion, what ruin might not be wrought in the few days or weeks which
should elapse before that event! And where, now that he had been driven
from his capital, he should find a base of operations to which he might
gather the scattered native forces, was the perplexing question of the
hour,--when, joyful sight, he beheld a merchant steamer sailing up the
river! He hailed her, went on board, and with a sufficient force steamed
up to Sarawak. With his appearance the last vestige of hope for the
insurrection disappeared.

Meanwhile stirring events had taken place. At first the natives were
stunned. They were roused at dead of night, to find the Chinese in
possession of the town, their Rajah's house in flames, the Rajah
missing, while the rumor was that he had been killed. For a time they
wandered about listlessly, vacantly staring each other in the face, and
it seemed as though they were about to submit without a struggle. In the
midst of this gloom and uncertainty, up spoke a Malay trader, whose
veins, despite his peaceful occupation, were full of the old pirate
blood: "Are we going to submit to be governed by these Chinese, or are
we going to be faithful to our Rajah? I am no talker, but I will never
be governed by any but him, and to-night I commence war to the knife
with his enemies." This broke the spell. Both Malays and Dyaks, in city
and country alike, rose _en masse_, and after a severe fight, prolonged
till the reappearance of Mr. Brooke, drove the Chinese to the forests,
and pursued them with unrelenting fury. Many of the insurgents perished
by the sword. Many more wandered about till they died of starvation.
Some threw themselves down in their tracks, expiring from fatigue and
utter wretchedness. Some hung themselves to escape their misery. In
despair and exasperation, they even turned their arms against each
other. Of the six hundred who made the original attack, sixty escaped.
Of the four thousand who composed the Chinese population, a forlorn and
wearied remnant of two thousand took refuge in the Dutch part of the
island. This lamentable destruction was the result neither of the order
nor the permission of the Rajah. It was accomplished by the unreasoning
fury of an outraged people. In a few days the formidable insurrection
was ended. The places of the insurgents were filled as rapidly as they
had been vacated. Scarcely a trace was left of the ravages of the
rebellion; and it accomplished nothing, save to convince all doubters
that the government of the province rested, as all stable government
must rest, on the good-will of the subject.

At the height of the insurrection a striking incident occurred. While
their brethren were being hurled in utter confusion across the Dutch
borders, several hundred Chinese fled from those very Dutch territories
and sought refuge in Sarawak. Though harassed by care, the Rajah did not
neglect their appeal, but sent trustworthy men, who piloted them safely
through the incensed Dyaks, who on their part by no means appreciated
the virtue of such a step, but thought rather that every man "who wore a
tail" ought to be put to death, though they bowed to the better judgment
of their chief.

       *       *       *       *       *

The latest accounts represent the province as continuing in a state of
unabated prosperity. Its bounds, by more recent cessions, have been so
largely increased, that its shore line is now three hundred miles long,
and the whole population of the state two hundred and fifty thousand.
The haunts of the Sarebus and Sakarran pirates are included in the new
limits; and these once-dreaded freebooters have learned the habits of
honest industry. Indeed, during the days of the insurrection the state
found no more faithful or courageous defenders than they, although their
old corsair blood was visible in the relentless tenacity with which they
tracked the flying foe. Sir James Brooke, with increasing years, has
retired somewhat from the active care of the government, leaving the
conduct of affairs very much to his nephew, Captain Brooke, whom he has
designated as his heir and successor, and who is represented as being
also heir in a large degree to his uncle's principles, courage, and
sagacity.

Rajah Brooke sought persist