Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 by Various

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Then Hoonamunta broke away from his captors, and with a loud laugh
started on his fiery race,--over house-tops and hay-ricks, through close
bazaars and dry rice-fields, through the porticoes of palaces and the
porches of pagodas,--kindling a roaring conflagration as he went.

And all the people pursued him, screaming with fear, imploring
mercy, imploring pardon, crying, "Spare us, and we will make you our
high-priest! Spare us, and you shall be our king!"

But Hoonamunta staid not, till, having laid half the city in flames,
he ascended to the top of a lofty tower to survey his work with
satisfaction.

Thither the great men of Lunka followed him,--the princes, and the
Brahmins, and the victorious chieftains, the strong giants, and the
cunning dwarfs.

And when they were all gathered underneath the tower, and in the porch
of it, he shook it, till it fell and crushed a thousand of the first
citizens.

Then Hoonamunta sped away northward to Ayodhya, extinguishing his tail
in the sea as he went.

And when he came to where his army lay, he found them all waiting in
silence. When he entered the hut of Rama, the bereaved one still lay on
his face. But Hoonamunta spake softly in his ear: "My Lord, arise! for
Seeta calls you, and her heart sickens within her that you come not!"

Immediately Rama uprose, and stood erect, and all the god blazed in his
eyes; and he grew in the sight of Hoonamunta until his stature was
as the stature of Rawunna, the giant, and his countenance was as the
countenance of Indra, King of Heaven.

And he went forth, and stood at the head of Hoonamunta's monkey host,
and called for a sword; and when they gave him one, it became alive in
his hand, and was a sword of flame; and when they gave him a spear, lo!
it became his slave, flying whithersoever he bade it, and striking where
he listed.

So Rama and Hoonamunta, with all their monkey host, took up their march
for Lunka.

When they came to the sea (which is the Gulf of Manaar) there was no
bridge; but Rama mounted the back of Hoonamunta, and called to the host
to follow him; and all the monkeys leaped across.

Then immediately they fell upon Lunka; and Rama slew Rawunna, the
Monster, and rescued the delighted Seeta.

And now those three sit together on a throne in heaven,--Seeta, the
faithful wife, on the left hand of Rama,--and Hoonamunta on his right
hand, the shrewd and courageous friend.

Who would not be a monkey in Hindostan?

* * * * *

THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW.

Oh, that last day in Lucknow fort!
We knew that it was the last,
That the enemy's lines crept surely on,
And the end was coming fast.

To yield to that foe was worse than death,
And the men and we all worked on;
It was one day more of smoke and roar,
And then it would all be done.

There was one of us, a corporal's wife,
A fair, young, gentle thing,
Wasted with fever in the siege,
And her mind was wandering.

She lay on the ground, in her Scottish plaid,
And I took her head on my knee:
"When my father comes hame frae the pleugh," she said,
"Oh! then please wauken me."

She slept like a child on her father's floor
In the flecking of woodbine-shade,
When the house-dog sprawls by the open door,
And the mother's wheel is staid.

It was smoke and roar and powder-stench,
And hopeless waiting for death;
And the soldier's wife, like a full-tired child,
Seemed scarce to draw her breath.

I sank to sleep; and I had my dream
Of an English village-lane,
And wall and garden;--but one wild scream
Brought me back to the roar again.

There Jessie Brown stood listening
Till a sudden gladness broke
All over her face, and she caught my hand
And drew me near, as she spoke:--

"The Hielanders! Oh! dinna ye hear
The slogan far awa?
The McGregor's? Oh! I ken it weel;
It's the grandest o' them a'!

"God bless thae bonny Hielanders!
We're saved! we're saved!" she cried;
And fell on her knees; and thanks to God
Flowed forth like a full flood-tide.

Along the battery-line her cry
Had fallen among the men,
And they started back;--they were there to die;
But was life so near them, then?

They listened for life; the rattling fire
Far off, and the far-off roar,
Were all; and the colonel shook his head,
And they turned to their guns once more.

But Jessie said, "The slogan's done;
But winna ye hear it noo,
_The Campbells are comin'_? It's no a dream;
Our succors hae broken through!"

We heard the roar and the rattle afar,
But the pipes we could not hear;
So the men plied their work of hopeless war,
And knew that the end was near.

It was not long ere it made its way,--
A shrilling, ceaseless sound:
It was no noise from the strife afar,
Or the sappers under ground.

It _was_ the pipes of the Highlanders!
And now they played _Auld Lang Syne_;
It came to our men like the voice of God,
And they shouted along the line.

And they wept and shook one another's hands,
And the women sobbed in a crowd;
And every one knelt down where he stood,
And we all thanked God aloud.

That happy time, when we welcomed them,
Our men put Jessie first;
And the general gave her his hand, and cheers
Like a storm from the soldiers burst.

And the pipers' ribbons and tartans streamed,
Marching round and round our line;
And our joyful cheers were broken with tears
As the pipes played _Auld Lang Syne_.

NEW ENGLAND MINISTERS.

Dr. Sprague, of Albany, has added to the literature of our country
two large octavo volumes, containing biographical accounts of the
Congregational clergy of New England, from its earliest settlement until
the year 1841. The book has been for the most part compiled from letters
furnished by different individuals, who, either through personal
knowledge or through tradition, had the most intimate acquaintance with
the subjects of which they wrote.

The characters here sketched, though perfectly individual, are in so
great a degree the result of peculiar political influences, that it
would be difficult to suppose their existence elsewhere than in New
England. We have therefore chosen this book as a kind of standpoint from
which to take a glance at the New England clergy and pulpit.

The earliest constitution of government in New England was a theocracy;
it was the realization of Arnold's idea of the identity of Church and
State. Under it the clergy had peculiar powers and privileges, which,
it is but fair to say, they turned to the advantage of the Commonwealth
more than has generally been the case with any privileged order.

A time, however, came when the democratic element, which these men
themselves had fostered, worked out its logical results, by depriving
them of all special immunities, and leaving them, like any other
citizens, to make their way by pure force of character, and to be rated,
like other men, simply for what they were and what they could do.

It is creditable to the intelligence and shrewdness of this body of
men that the more far-sighted among them received this change with
satisfaction; that they were such uncommonly fair logicians as to be
willing to accept the direct inference from principles which they had
been foremost to inculcate, and, like men of strong mind and clear
conscience, were not afraid to rest their claim to influence and
deference on the manfulness with which they should strive to deserve
them.

Dr. Sprague's book contains pictures of life under both the old _regime_
and the new. The following extract from the venerable Josiah Quincy's
recollections of the Rev. Mr. French, of Andover, is interesting, as an
illustration of the olden times.

"Mrs. Dowse, my maternal aunt, has often related to me her pride
and delight at visiting at the Rev. Mr. Phillips', her paternal
grandfather's house, when a child; which was interesting as a statement
of the manners of those early times in Massachusetts, before the sceptre
of worldly power, which the first settlers of the Colony had placed in
the hands of the clergy, had been broken. The period was about between
1760 and the Revolution. The parsonage at Andover was situated about two
or three hundred rods from the meeting-house, which was three stories
high, of immense dimensions, far greater, I should think, than those of
any meeting-houses in these anti-church-going, degenerate times. It was
on a hill, slightly elevated above the parsonage, so that all the flock
could see the pastor as he issued from it.

"Before the time of service, the congregation gradually assembled in
early season, coming on foot or on horseback, the ladies behind their
lords or brothers or one another, on pillions, so that before the time
of service the whole space before the meeting-house was filled with a
waiting, respectful, and expecting multitude. At the moment of service
the pastor issued from his mansion with Bible and manuscript sermon
under his arm, with his wife leaning on one arm, flanked by his negro
man on his side, as his wife was by her negro woman, the little negroes
being distributed according to their sex by the side of their respective
parents. Then followed every other member of the family according to age
and rank, making often, with family visitants, somewhat of a formidable
procession. As soon as it appeared, the congregation, as if moved by one
spirit, began to move towards the door of the church; and before the
procession reached it, all were in their places.

"As soon as the pastor entered the church, the whole congregation
rose and stood until the pastor was in the pulpit and his family
seated,--until which was done the whole assembly continued standing. At
the close of the service the congregation stood until he and his family
had left the church, before any one moved towards the door.

"Forenoon and afternoon the same course of proceeding was had,
expressive of the reverential relation in which the people acknowledged
that they stood towards their clergyman.

"Such was the account given me by Mrs. Dowse in relation to times
previous to my birth, and which I relate as her narrative, and not
as part of my recollections. The procession from the parsonage, the
disappearance of the people on the appearance of the procession, and
that their pastor was received with every mark of decorum and respect,
I well remember, but of their rising at his entrance and standing after
the service until he had departed, I have no recollection; my time was
almost twenty years after that narrated by Mrs. Dowse. During that
period the Revolution had commenced."

Some might think it an advantage, if more of the decorum and reverence
of such a state of society had been preserved to our day; for this
respect paid to the minister was but part of a general and all-pervading
system. Children were more reverential to their parents, scholars to
their teachers, the people to their magistrates. A want of reverence
threatens now to become the besetting sin of America, whether young or
old.

The clergy of New England have, as a body, been distinguished for a rare
union of the speculative and the practical. In both points they have
been so remarkable, that in observing the great development of either of
these qualities by itself one would naturally suppose that there was no
room for the other.

Generally speaking, they were rural pastors,--living on salaries so
small as to afford hardly a nominal support; and in order to bring up
their families and give their sons a college education, it was necessary
to understand fully the practical _savoir faire_. Accordingly, they
farmed and gardened, and often took young people into their families to
educate, and in these ways eked out a subsistence. It is related of the
venerable Moses Hallock, that he educated in his own family, during his
ministerial lifetime, three hundred young people, of whom thirty were
females. One hundred and thirty-two of these he fitted for college;
fifty became ministers, and six foreign missionaries.

Some of the clergy gained such an acquaintance with the practice of
medicine as to be able sometimes to unite the offices of physician of
the body and of the soul; and not unfrequently a general knowledge
of law enabled the pastor to be the worldly as well as the spiritual
counsellor of his people. A striking case in point is that of the
venerable Parson Eaton, who resided in a lonely seafaring district
on the coast of Maine, and preached to a congregation who lived the
amphibious life of farmers and fishermen. The town of Harpswell, where
he ministered,--

"is a narrow projection of ten miles southward into Casco Bay, on both
sides of which it comprises within its incorporated limits several
islands, some of them of considerable size and well inhabited. In his
pastoral visits and labors, the clergyman was often obliged to ride
several miles, and then cross the inlets of the sea, to preach a lecture
or to minister comfort or aid to some sick or suffering parishioner.
In addition to his clerical duties, Mr. Eaton, having experience and
discernment in the more common forms of disease, was generally applied
to in sickness; and he usually carried with him a lancet and the more
common and simple medicines. If a case was likely to baffle his skill,
he advised his patient to send for a regular physician. His admirable
sense, moreover, and his education fitted him to render aid and counsel
in matters of controversy; so that he often acted as an umpire, and
very often to the settling of disputes. Seldom did his people consult a
lawyer; and it is even said, that, at the time of his death, most of the
wills in the town were in his handwriting."

It is a singular thing, that the preaching and the bent of mind of a
set of men so intensely practical should have been at the same time
intensely speculative. Nowhere in the world, unless perhaps in Scotland,
have merely speculative questions excited the strong and engrossing
interest among the common people that they have in New England. Every
man, woman, and child was more or less a theologian. The minister, while
he ground his scythe or sharpened his axe or laid stone-fence, was
inwardly grinding and hammering on those problems of existence which are
as old as man, and which Christian and heathen have alike pondered.
The Germans call the whole New England theology rationalistic, in
distinction from traditional.

There are minds which are capable of receiving certain series of
theological propositions without even an effort at comparison,--without
a perception of contradiction or inconsequency,--without an effort at
harmonizing. Such, however, were not the New England ministers. With
them predestination _must_ be made to harmonize with freewill; the
Divine entire efficiency with human freedom; the existence of sin with
the Divine benevolence;--and at it they went with stout hearts, as men
work who are not in the habit of being balked in their undertakings.
Hence the Edwardses, the Hopkinses, the Emmonses, with all their various
schools and followers, who, leviathan-like, have made the theological
deep of New England to boil like a pot, and the agitation of whose
course remains to this day.

It is a mark of a shallow mind to scorn these theological wrestlings and
surgings; they have had in them something even sublime. They were always
bounded and steadied by the most profound reverence for God and his
word; and they have constituted in New England the strong mental
discipline needed by a people who were an absolute democracy. The
Sabbath teaching of New England has been a regular intellectual drill as
well as a devotional exercise; and if one does not see the advantage of
this, let him live awhile in France or Italy, and see the reason why,
with all their aspirations after liberty, there is no capability of
self-government in the masses; put the tiller of the Campagna, or
the vine-dresser of France, beside the theologically trained, keen,
thoughtful New England farmer, and see which is best fitted to
administer a government.

Another leading characteristic of the New England clergy was their great
freedom of original development. The volumes before us are full of
indications of the most racy individuality. There was no such thing as a
clerical mould or pattern; but each minister, particularly in the rural
districts, grew and flourished as freely and unconventionally as the
apple-trees in his own orchard, and was considered none the worse for
that, so long as he bore good fruit of the right sort. Thus we find
among them all stamps and kinds of men,--men of decorum and ceremony,
like Dr. Emmons and President Edwards, and men who, aiming after the
real, despised the form, kept no order, and revered no ceremony; yet all
flourished in peace, and were allowed to do their work in their own way.

We find here and there records of pleasant little encounters of humor
among them on these points. Parson Deane, of Portland, was a precise
man, and always appeared in the clerical regalia of the times, with
powdered wig, cocked hat, gown, bands. Parson Hemmenway went about with
just such clothes as he happened to find convenient, without the least
regard to the conventional order.

Being together on a council. Dr. Deane playfully remarked,--

"The ferryman, Brother Hemmenway, as we came over, hadn't the least idea
you were a clergyman. Now I am particular always to appear with my wig
on."

"Precisely," said Dr. Hemmenway; "I know it is well to bestow more
abundant honor on the part that lacketh."

It is a curious illustration of the times and people to see how quietly
the personal eccentricities of a good minister were received.

One Mr. Moody, who flourished in the State of Maine, was one of
those born oddities whose growth of mind rejects every outward rule.
Brilliant, original, restless, he found it impossible to bring his
thoughts to march in the regular platoon and file of a properly written
sermon. It is told of him, that, moved by the admiration of his people
for the calm and orderly performances of one of his neighboring brethren
of the name of Emerson, he resolved to write a sermon in the same style.
After the usual introductory services, he began to read his performance,
but soon grew weary, stumbled disconsolately, and at last stopped,
exclaiming,--"Emerson must be Emerson, and Moody must be Moody! I feel
as if I had my head in a bag! You call Moody a rambling preacher;--it is
true enough; but his preaching will do to catch rambling sinners, and
you are all runaways from the Lord."

His clerical brethren at a meeting of the Association once undertook to
call him to account for his odd expressions and back-handed strokes. He
stepped into his study and produced a record of some twenty or thirty
cases of conversions which had resulted from some of his exceptional
sayings. As he read them over with the dates, they looked at each other
with surprise, and one of them very sensibly remarked, "If the Lord owns
Father Moody's oddities, we must let him take his own way."

His son, Joseph Moody, furnished the original incident which Hawthorne
has so exquisitely worked up in his story of "The Minister's Black
Veil." Being of a singularly nervous and melancholic temperament, he
actually for many years shrouded his face with a black handkerchief.
When reading a sermon he would lift this, but stood with his back to the
audience so that his face was concealed,--all which appears to have
been accepted by his people with sacred simplicity. He was known in the
neighborhood by the name of Handkerchief Moody.

It is recorded also of the venerable and eccentric Father Mills, of
Torringford, that, on the death of his much beloved wife, he was greatly
exercised as to how a minister who always dressed in black could
sufficiently express his devotion and respect for the departed by any
outward change of dress. At last he settled the question to his
own satisfaction, by substituting for his white wig a black silk
pocket-handkerchief, with which head-dress he officiated in all
simplicity during the usual term of mourning.

We think it one result of their great freedom from any strait-laced
conventional ideas, that no point of character is more frequently
noticed in the subjects of these sketches than wit and humor. New
England ministers never held it a sin to laugh; if they did, some of
them had a great deal to answer for; for they could scarce open their
mouths without dropping some provocation to a smile. An ecclesiastical
meeting was always a merry season; for there never were wanting quaint
images, humorous anecdotes, and sharp flashes of wit, and even the
driest and most metaphysical points of doctrine were often lit up and
illuminated by these corruscations.

A panel taken out of the house of the Rev. John Lowell, of Newbury, is
still preserved, representing the common style of an ecclesiastical
meeting in those days. The divines, each in full wig and gown, are
seated around a table, smoking their pipes, and above is the well-known
inscription: _In necessariis, Unitas: in non necessariis, Libertas: in
utrisque Charitas_.

In that delightfully naive and simple journal of the Rev. Thomas Smith,
the first minister settled in Portland, Maine, in the year 1725, we find
the following entries.

"July 4, 1763. Mr. Brooks was ordained. A multitude of people from my
parish. A decent solemnity."

"January 16, 1765. Mr. Foxcroft was ordained at New Gloucester. We had a
pleasant journey home. Mr. L. was alert and kept us all merry. A jolly
ordination. We lost sight of decorum."

This Mr. L., by the by, who was so alert on this occasion, it appears by
a note, was Stephen Longfellow, the great-grandfather of the poet.
Those who enjoy the poet's acquaintance will probably testify that the
property of social alertness has not evaporated from the family in the
lapse of so many years.

It is recorded of Dr. Griffin, that, when President of the Andover
Theological Seminary, he convened the students at his room one evening,
and told them he had observed that they were all growing thin and
dyspeptical from a neglect of the exercise of Christian laughter, and he
insisted upon it that they should go through a company-drill in it then
and there. The Doctor was an immense man,--over six feet in height, with
great amplitude of chest and most magisterial manners. "Here," said he
to the first, "you must practise; now hear me!" and bursting out into a
sonorous laugh, he fairly obliged his pupils, one by one, to join, till
the whole were almost convulsed. "That will do for once," said the
Doctor, "and now mind you keep in practice!"

New England used to be full of traditions of the odd sayings of Dr.
Bellamy, one of the most powerful theologians and preachers of his
time. His humor, however, seems to have been wholly a social quality,
requiring to be struck out by the collision of conversation; for nothing
of the peculiar quaintness and wit ascribed to him appears in his
writings, which are in singularly simple, clear English. One or two of
his sayings circulated about us in our childhood. For example, when one
had built a fire of green wood, he exclaimed, "Warm me _here!_ I'd as
soon try to warm me by star-light on the north side of a tombstone!"
Speaking of the chapel-bell of Yale College, he said, "It was about as
good a bell as a fur cap with a sheep's tail in it."

A young minister, who had made himself conspicuous for a severe and
denunciatory style of preaching, came to him one day to inquire why he
did not have more success. "Why, man," said the Doctor, "can't you take
a lesson of the fisherman? How do you go to work, if you want to catch a
trout? You get a little hook and a fine line, you bait it carefully and
throw it in as gently as possible, and then you sit and wait and humor
your fish till you can get him ashore. Now you get a great cod-hook
and rope-line, and thrash it into the water, and bawl out, 'Bite or be
damned!'"

The Doctor himself gained such a reputation as an expert spiritual
fisherman, that some of his parishioners, like experienced old trout,
played shy of his hook, though never so skilfully baited.

"Why, Mr. A.," he said to an old farmer in his neighborhood, "they tell
me you are an Atheist. Don't you believe in the being of a God?"

"No!" said the man.

"But, Mr. A., let's look into this. You believe that the world around us
exists from some cause?"

"No, I don't!"

"Well, then, at any rate, you believe in your own existence?"

"No, I don't!"

"What! not believe that you exist yourself?"

"I tell you what, Doctor," said the man, "I a'n't going to be twitched
up by any of your syllogisms, and so I tell you I _don't_ believe
anything,--and I'm not going to believe anything!"

A collection of the table-talk of the clergy whose lives are sketched in
Dr. Sprague's volumes would be a rare fund of humor, shrewdness, genius,
and originality. We must say, however, that as nothing is so difficult
as to collect these sparkling emanations of conversation, the written
record which this work presents falls far below that traditional one
which floated about us in our earlier years. So much in wit and humor
depends on the electric flash, the relation of the idea to the attendant
circumstances, that people often remember only _how_ they have laughed,
and can no more reproduce the expression than they can daguerreotype the
heat-lightning of a July night.

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