Mr. Fields, upon his second visit to Europe, in 1851, was in Paris during the latest French revolution, and witnessed the coup d'étât of Louis Napoleon-the bloody encounter between the troops and the populace upon the Boulevards in December of that year. A cannon ball shattered the house two doors from where he stood among the crowd. He spent a winter in Italy, devoting the principal portion of the time to Rome, where he enjoyed the high culture arising from an appreciative study of the great works of art. He remained a number of months in England, three of which he gave to London and its literary circles. Several clubs invited him to a membership, and opened to him all their social privileges. At a corporation dinner of the city he was honored with a toast, and brought down the house, in the form of nine rousing cheers, by a successful and spirited address. In Edinburgh he renewed the grateful acquaintance, which he had formed upon his previous visit, with Professor Wilson, and commenced that intimate and confidential intercourse with De Quincy which is even to this day productive of valuable results to the literary world. The " "Opium-Eater," whose writings, in eighteen volumes, Mr. Fields has edited and published in a truly elegant series, in America, welcomed him to his house, and accompanied him upon several excursions in Scotland. One day they walked fourteen miles together on a trip to Roslin Castle, De Quincy beguiling the time, and cheating the miles of their weariness, with anecdotes of his earlier days, when Coleridge, Southey, and Charles Lamb were his companions among the hills of Westmoreland. There is a touching and characteristic vein of melancholy running through the highly-complimentary letter prefacing the American edition of his autobiographic sketches. To Mr. Fields he says: "These papers I am anxious to put into your hands, and, so far as regards the United States, of your house exclusively; not with any view to future emoluments, but as an acknowledgment of the services which you have already rendered me: namely, first, in having brought together so widely scattered a collection-a difficulty which in my own hands, by too painful an experience, I had found, from nervous depression, to be absolutely insurmountable; secondly, in having made me a participator in the pecuniary profit of the American edition without solicitation, or the shadow of any expectation on my part; without any legal claim VOL. VII.-32 that I could plead, or equitable warrant in established usage-solely and merely upon your own spontaneous motion." Upon Mr. Fields's return to America he was invited to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa poem before the society at Harvard University, and during the same season was elected to fill the same office at Dartmouth. He delivered about this time a very successful lecture before the Mer cantile Library upon "Preparations for Travel," which, while it was replete with humor, was full of sensible and valuable suggestions. Various colleges, lyceums, &c., have since kept Mr. Fields from the temptation of placing his light under a bushel. His unpublished poem upon "Eloquence" has already been publicly read more than twenty times, and the demand is still unsupplied. If our merchant-poet lives, (and may a good Providence grant this!) he has not yet written his best verse. He has but stepped out upon the threshold of manhood, and the dew is still upon his lips. The poems that will bear up his name and memory when other generations walk our streets, and we slumber under old tombstones, are still receiving their vital warmth, and quickening in his imagination, and waiting the hour of resurrection. Little of the sad travail of the historic poet has Mr. Fields known. emaciated face, the seedy garment, the collapsed purse, the dog-eared and often rejected manuscript, he has never known, Of the save from well-authenticated tradition. His muse was born in sunshine, and has only been sprinkled with the tears of affection. Every effort has been cheered to the echo, and it is impossible for so genial a fellow to fail of an ample and approving audience for whatever may fall from his lip or pen. The spur of necessity, which is the almost indispensable goad to great endeavors, is of course wanting; and the temptation of our Apollo, with his golden harp, is to be satisfied with the success which has been, and can be so readily purchased, and not to attempt, by painful self-discipline, to write himself excelsior! Willis says of Mr. Fields's poems : "They are scholar-like in their structure, musical, genial-toned in feeling, effortless, and pure-thoughted. He has a playful and delicate fancy, which he uses skillfully in his poems of sentiment, and a strongly perceptive observation, which he exercises finely in his hits at the times present day; and their night-watch carried and didactic poetry." Of his personal appearance here is a characteristic profile, cut by the same slashing hand: each a bell, to give the alarm in case of accident or danger. They hung bells, also, to the necks of criminals on their way to execution, that persons might be warned from their path, as it was deemed a bad omen to meet those sacrifices devoted to the dii manes; and Phædrus mentions that bells were commonly attached to the necks of animals. To remove them was theft, according to the civil laws of Rome; "Mr. Fields is a young man of twenty-five, (a few years older now,) and the most absolute specimen of rosy and juvenescent health that would be met with by the takers of the census. His glowing cheek and white teeth, full frame and curling beard, clear eyes and ready smile, are, to tell the truth, most unsymptomatic of the poet-not even very common in publishers." and if the animals were lost, the person To add that he is of about medium height and well-proportioned, would bring our merchant-poet before the mind's eye as visibly, perhaps, as pen-painting is capable of doing. A CHAPTER ON BELLS. PLEASANT and venerable are the as sociations connected with bells. They are the special poets of man's life; the unconscious assistants of his deeds; the ministering servants of his religion. At his birth, they rejoice; at his marriage, theirs are the merriest voices; at his death, alas! they are too often his only mourners. They swell the clamorous alarms of revolt -they herald in the triumph-they peal sweetly and holily over meadow and valley, calling the prayerful to the old gray church on the Sabbath morning. No other object of common manufacture and general use is hallowed by memories so various; no other tongue tells a story so touching to the ear of universal humanity. The use of bells is so ancient as to be lost in the gloom of remotest antiquity. Setting aside that bell which, as we are told by an Eastern writer, was manufactured by Tubal Cain, and used by Noah to summon his ship-carpenters to their daily labors, we may content ourselves with the earliest authentic mention of them as it occurs in the Book of Exodus, where we find that the high-priest was ordained to wear golden bells, alternating with golden pomegranates, on the blue vestment in which he was robed during the performance of religious ceremonies. It is remarkable that the same fashion was observed in the decorations of the regal costume of the ancient Persians. The Romans had bells and knockers at their doors, and porters to answer the inquiries of visitors, as we have in this who had stolen the bells remained answerable for their value. That the ancient Jews were in the habit of suspending bells round the necks of animals, we ascertain by these words of the prophet Zechariah: "In that day there shall be upon the bells of horses, Holiness unto the Lord." The Greeks hung bells, with whips, to the chariots of victorious generals, by way of reminding them that, notwithstanding their services and valor, they were still within the pale of law and justice. Those soldiers who went the rounds of their garrisons and camps by night, carried small bells, which it was their duty to ring at each sentry-box. In funeral processions, a bell-man walked before the body; and at Athens, a priest of Proserpine, called Hierophantus, rang a bell to summon the citizens to sacrifice. All Greek and Roman market-places, temples, camps, and frontier towns, were furnished with them; and in the vast public baths of Rome, notice was given of the hours of opening by the ringing of a bell. It is an agreeable instance of the generous chivalry practiced by the ancient Florentines, that so far from seeking to obtain any advantage over their enemies by means of a surprise, they gave them a month's warning before they drew their army into the field, by the continued tolling of a bell, named by them Mortinella. The earliest mention of bells, as applied to the purposes of religious worship, is by Polydore Virgil, who states that Paulinus, Bishop of Nola, a city of Campania, in Italy, first adapted them to his church in the year 400; hence the word campanile, belfry, still used in Italian. They were not adopted in the churches of Britain till near the end of the seventh century, but they were in use in Caledonia as early as the sixth; and in the year 610, we read that the army of the French monarch, Clothaire II., was terrified from the siege of the city of Sens by the ringing from the bells of St. Stephen's Church. The second excerpt of Egbert, in 750, commanding every priest to sound the bells of his church at the proper hours, and then to perform the sacred offices, is translated into an antique French capitulary of 801, favoring the supposition that, by this time, bells were common to the parishchurches of both countries. Alletius asserts that bells were used for churches by the Greek Christians up to the period when Constantinople was taken by the Turks, who forthwith prohibited their being rung, lest their clamor should disturb the repose of souls, which, according to their belief, wander through the realms of air. He adds, that they were still used after this in places remote from the ears of the new rulers, and that there were very ancient bells on Mount Athos. The passing-bell took its origin in a superstition that dates back to the earliest Egyptian periods-namely, to the belief that at the moment of death good and evil spirits lie in wait for the liberated soul, and fought together for it on its way to heaven. These wicked demons, according to Durandus, were terrified even unto flight at the sound of bells; and the louder the ringing, the more complete our victory over the powers of darkness. This singular superstition is thus recorded by W. De Worde in the pages of the "Golden Legend:" "It is said the evill spirytes that ben in the regyon of thayre doubte moche whan they here the belles rongen: and this is the cause why the belles ben rongen whan it thondreth, and whan grete tempeste and outrages of wether happen, to the ende that the feinds and wycked spirytes should be abashed and flee, and cease of the movynge of tempeste." Not only to drive away evil spirits, but in later ages to counteract the natural influences of storm and pestilence, did it become customary to ring the bells of churches. "Let the bells in cities and towns be rung often," says one Dr. Herring in a treatise upon pestilential contagion, 1625, "and let the ordnance be discharged; therefore the air is purified." And there still exists a belief in Switzer uity; but he adds that the design was "not so much to shake the air, and so dissipate the thunder, as to call people to church to pray that the parish might be preserved from that terrible meteor." Be these opinions as they may, they scarcely balance the written evidence of legendary lore, the graven inscriptions upon bells themselves, the still lingering superstitions of many lands, and the graceful perpetuations of them in the pages of our poets. Thus Longfellow, on the alarm and rout of evil spirits on the ringing of cathedral bells : I have read in some old marvelous tale, White as a sea-fog, landward bound, The river flow'd between. No other voice nor sound was there, Proclaim'd the morning-prayer, Down the broad valley, fast and far, land, that the undulation of air caused by I call the living-I mourn the dead-I break the sound of a bell breaks the electric fluid of a thunder-cloud. Lobineau observes, that the custom of ringing bells at the approach of thunder is of great antiq the lightning. This brief and impressive announcement was common to very many church-bells of the middle ages, and is to be found on the bell of the great Minster of Schaffhausen, and on that of the church near Lucerne. Another and a usual one, which is, in fact, but an amplification of the first, is this: Funera plango-Fulgura frango-Sabbato pango. Excito lentos-Dissipo ventos-Paco cruentos. I mourn at funerals-I break the lightning-I proclaim the Sabbath. I urge the tardy-I disperse the winds-I calm the turbulent. On the largest of three bells, placed by Edward III. in the Little Sanctuary, Westminster, are these words : King Edward made me thirtie thousand weight and three; Take me down and wey me, and more you shall find me; which recalls to us a Cambridge tradition, that the bells of King's College Chapel were taken by Henry V. from some church in France after the battle of Agincourt. On the famous alarm-bell called Roland, in the belfry-tower of the once powerful city of Ghent, is engraved the subjoined inscription, in the old Walloon or Flemish dialect: Mynen naem is Roland; als ik klep is er brand, and als ik luy is er victorie in het land. Anglice. My name is Roland; when I toll there is fire, and when I ring there is victory in the land. The books of the Roman Catholic faith contain a ritual for the baptism of bells, which decrees that they be named and anointed-a ceremonial which was supposed to insure them against the machinations of evil spirits. Solemnly, mournfully, Is beginning to toll. And put out the light; Dark grow the windows, No voice in the chambers, Gray says— The curfew tolls the knell of parting day; and Dante, in the Purgatorio, makes it weep for the day that is dying. In Shakspeare, Benedick "hath a heart as sound as a bell; " Hamlet's intellects are "like sweet bells jangled out of tune;" Lady Capulet, on the discovery of the dead lovers of Verona, exclaims : O me this sight of death is as a bell, That warns my old age to a sepulcher! Sweeter, gentler, holier, perhaps, than all bells, are those of the vespers in the ear of the peasant returning from his toil in the vineyard-in the ear of the fisherman pausing upon his oars in the still bay-in the ear of the traveler weary of the day's long pleasure. Heard under a deep Italian sky, lapsing in with the latest songs of the birds, and with the shrill note of the cicada, that sound echoes along the quiet shore beautiful and melancholy, like a voice out of the dim past. Ave Maria! blessed be the hour! The Curfew Bell is popularly supposed to have been introduced by the Conqueror, "The stanza respecting the Ave Maria," and imposed as a badge of servitude uponing, "is surely the best in Don Juan:”says a living critic of rare taste and feelthe nation; but it was really a precaution against fire, then prevailing throughout Europe, and only a stricter observance of the old law was enforced during the reigns of the two first Williams. The practice is now more interesting to us on account of the pleasant allusions which it has furnished to our poets, than for any records or traditions resulting from the custom. On a plat of rising ground I hear the far-off curfew sound, Longfellow has a brief suggestive poem The time, the clime, the spot where I so oft Have felt the moment in its fullest power While swung the deep bell in the distant tower, Sink o'er the earth, so beautiful and soft, Or the faint dying day-hymn stole aloft, prayer. Few readers, we trust, are unacquainted with Schiller's Song of the Bell; which, answering a double purpose, depicts with equal truth and splendor the casting, completing, and uses of a bell, and the birth, progress, and duties of a man's life. EDITORIAL NOTES AND GLEANINGS. The National Magazine. NOVEMBER, 1855. EDITORIAL NOTES AND GLEANINGS. THE YELLOW FEVER AT NORFOLK AND PORTSMOUTH, VA.-A terrible picture of the fearful ravages of this epidemic is given in the address of the Rev. Mr. McCabe, chairman of a committee appointed by the citizens to wait on the President of the United States, and seek, through him, some relief from the general government. "We appear before you, sir, as the representatives of a sorrowing, suffering, disease-stricken, and deathsmitten people, a committee appointed at a meeting held in the town of Hampton on yesterday, composed of a number of the citizens of Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Hampton, to wait upon the President of the United States, and the appropriate heads of departments, to seek that relief which the awful exigencies of the case require, and which the resolutions we now submit most respectfully ask. As chairman of that committee, I am somewhat anticipated in my remarks by the appalling facts which must each day reach the ears of your excellency, as borne upon the wings of the telegraph or through the medium of the public prints; and yet, sir, startling and terrible as are each day's official reports from Norfolk and Portsmouth of the progress of the yellow fever in those cities, they fall far and fearfully short of the awful reality. "Norfolk and Portsmouth are now, sir, but little more than vast charnel-houses, and their unburied dead are, perchance at this moment, attracting the keen scent of the ravening vultures. Thousands of the people of those devoted cities have fled, panicstricken; and would to God the rest had flown! Had it been so, sir, we would have been spared the recital of this tale of woe, and your excellency the pain of listening to a story whose burden is desolation and death. Mr. President, physicians are falling at their posts; nurses are dying at bedsides; and the ministers of the cross of Christ, as they stand at the couches of the sick and dying, are struck down 'Dumb and shivering.' "Business is almost entirely suspended in both cities. The city of Norfolk has but a nominal government, and nearly every private dwelling is converted into a mort-house, and from almost every chamber comes out a wail-for death is there. The remaining population of these seemingly doomed cities are too feeble and too few to give efficient help to the sick and the suffering; and ere long, unless God stay the destroyer, and the strong arm of man in power be stretched forth in their behalf, the total depopulation of those places by death must be the result, and the genius of desolation will sit in ghastly and gloomy triumph, sole master of their ports and marts. The resolutions which we herewith present will to some extent explain what it is we desire; and we submit them in a just and abiding confidence, that as a man, and as the chief magistrate of the country, in the welfare of every section whereof we believe you feel an interest, you will suggest and afford that relief which must be Immediate to be available." THE REV. DR. CONE, pastor of the First Baptist Church in this city, and one of the oldest ministers among us, died on the 29th of AuIn his gust, in the seventieth year of his age. early life Mr. Cone was a play-actor of some considerable eminence, but was converted in his thirtieth year, devoted himself to the ministry, and was, for many years, one of the most popular pulpit orators in the land. His own account of his conversion, which we find in one of our exchange papers, is deeply interesting. After giving a statement of his conviction by the Holy Spirit, he says: "I commenced reading the Scriptures with deep interest to find out how a sinner could be saved, and in two months read the Psalms and different portions of the Old Testament, and the New Testament I think more than twenty times through. The Psalms, John's Gospel, and the Epistle to the Romans, were particularly precious. It required great effort to attend to domestic duties and my business in the office, for I felt continually that it would profit me nothing to gain the whole world and at last lose my own soul.' I sought out preachers, and heard Mr. Duncan frequently, but could not learn from any of them the way of salvation. One evening, after the family had all retired, I went up into a vacant garret, and walked backward and forward in great agony of mind; I kneeled down, the instance of Hezekiah occurred to me; like him I turned my face to the wall, and cried for mercy. An answer seemed to be vouchsafed in an impression, that just as many years as I had passed in rebellion against God, so many years I must now endure before deliverance could be granted. I clasped my hands and cried out, 'Yes, dear Lord, a thousand years of such anguish as I now feel, if I may only be saved at last.' I continued to read, and whenever I could steal away unobserved into the garret, there I walked the floor when all around was hushed in sleep; there I prayed and poured out tears of bitter sorrow. While thus engaged one night, the plan of salvation was revealed to me in the figure of Noah's Ark. I saw an ungodly race swept away with the flood, but Noah and his family were saved, for God shut them in the ark. I felt that, as a sinner, I was condemned and justly exposed to immediate and everlasting destruction. I saw distinctly that in Christ alone I must be saved, if saved at all; and the view I at that moment had of God's method of saving sinners I do still most heartily entertain, after thirty years' experience of his love. This was Saturday night, and that night I slept more sweetly than I had done for many weeks. Before daylight on Lord's-day morning I awoke, and went down stairs quietly, made a fire in the front parlor and threw open the window-shutters, and as soon as I could see commenced reading the New Testament. I opened to the thirteenth chapter of John, and came to where Peter said, 'Thou shalt never wash my feet.' Jesus answered him, 'If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.' Simon Peter saith unto him, 'Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head?" At that moment my heart seemed to melt. I felt as if plunged into a bath of blood divine-I was cleansed from head to foot-guilt and the apprehension of punishment were both put away, tears of gratitude gushed from my eyes in copious streams, the fire in the grate shone on the paper upon the wall, and the room was full of light. I fell upon the hearth-rug on my face, at the feet of Jesus, and wept and gave thanks; my sins, which were many, were all forgiven, and a peace of mind succeeded which passeth understanding. Bless the Lord, O my soul! from that hour to the present a doubt of my calling and election of God has never crossed my path. With all my imperfections, shortcomings, and backslidings of heart, I have from that Neither death, nor hour steadfastly believed that life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate me from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus my Lord!'" |