The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864. Various
due time made freemen, and start as a free peasantry on a new career. A hundred thousand slaveholders, with their families, not more than one million of people in all, will hate the Union permanently. They will be defeated, we hope and believe, and disorganized as a social and political power, and the people rule in every State they have cursed by their ambition for the last fifty years.
We do not prophesy just when or how the people will triumph. The victory, we believe, will come; but whether all at once, or through temporary revulsions of purpose and alternate truce and war, whether finished by arms or yet cast again into the arena of polities, whether by occupying all this three millions of square miles of territory or gaining on despotism year by year, nobody knows. The Slave Power has not yet played its trump card. It has a hundred devilish resources yet to foil us. It may yet try to use the negroes it still holds against us by emancipation. It may yet drag us into a war with Europe, and Saratoga and Lake Erie and Plattsburg, and Long Island and Trenton and Bunker Hill, and Detroit and New Orleans may yet be fought over again. But we have seen how, for the last forty years, the people of the United States have strode on toward supremacy, led by a Power they did not always recognize, and sometimes scorned, but led to victory spite of themselves.
There has indeed been a Divine Intelligence guiding the destiny of our republic by the 'higher law' of the progress of free society toward a Christian democracy. We do not think the Peace Party will be able to abolish that 'higher law,' as certain of our politicians expect. We believe God Almighty is shaping a free and exalted civilized nation out of this republic, by a law of progress which we did not make and cannot repeal. We may postpone that nation by our folly and sins, but it must be made. Through labor and education, and religion and arts, and politics and war, 'it marches' on to supremacy—the people's nation. And when it is established it will be the controlling nation of this continent, one of the firmest powers on the earth, the terror of every aristocracy, and the joy and hope of every people on the round globe.
THE UNDIVINE COMEDY-A POLISH DRAMA
PART III
'Il fut administé, parceque le niais demandait un prètre, puis pende à la satisfaction generale,' etc, etc.—Rapport du citoyen Gaillot, commissaire de la sixième chambre, an III., 5 prairial.
'The sacraments were administered to him, because the fool demanded a priest; he was hung to the general satisfaction.'—Report of citizen Gaillot, commissary of the sixth session, 3d year, 5th prairial.
A song! a new song!
Who will begin it? Who will end it?
Give me the Past, clad in steel, barbed with iron, floating in knightly plumes! With magic power I would invoke before you gothic towers and castellated turrets, bristling barbacans and mighty arches, baronial halls and clustered shafts; I would throw around you the giant shadows of vaulted domes and of revered cathedrals: but it may not be; all that is with the Past: the Past is never to return!
Speak, whosoever thou mayst be, and tell me in what thou believest! It is easier to lose thy life than to invent a faith; to awaken any belief in it!
Shame upon you all, great and small, for all things pursue their own course in defiance of your schemes! You may be mean and wretched, without hearts and without brains, yet the world hastens to its allotted destiny; it hurries you on whether you will or no, throws you in the dust, tosses you into wild confusion, or whirls you in resistless circles, which cease not until they grow into dances of Death! But the world rolls on—on; clouds and storms arise and vanish; then it grows slippery—new couples join the dance of Death—they totter—fall—lost in an abyss of blood—for it is slippery-blood-human blood is gushing everywhere, as if the path to peace led through a charnel house!
Behold the crowds of people thronging the gates of the cities, the hills, the valleys, and resting beneath the shadows of the trees! Tents are spread about, long boards are placed on the trunks of fallen trees or on pikes and sticks to serve as tables; they are covered with meat and drink, the full cups pass from hand to hand, and, as they touch the eager mouth, threats, oaths, and curses press forth from the hot lips. Faster and faster fly the cups from hand to hand, beaded, bubbling, glittering, always filling, striking, tinkling, ringing, as they circle among the millions: Hurrah! hurrah! Long live the cup of drunkenness and joy!
How fiercely they are agitated; how impatiently they wait! They murmur, they break into riotous noise!
Poor wretches! scarcely covered with their miserable rags, the seal of weary labors deeply stamped upon their sunburnt faces set with uncombed, bristling hair, the sweat starting from their rugged brows, their strong and horny hands armed with scythes, axes, hammers, hatchets, spades!
Look at that broad youth with the pickaxe; at the slight one with the sword. Here is one who holds aloft a glittering pike; another who brandishes a massive club with his brawny arm! There under the willows a boy crams cherries into his mouth with the one hand, and with the other punches the tree with a long, sharp awl. Women are also there, wives, mothers, daughters, poor and hungry as the men, Not a single trace of womanly beauty, of healthful freshness upon them; their hair is disordered and sprinkled with the dust of the highways, their tawny bodies scarcely covered with unsightly rags, their gloomy eyes seem fading into their sockets, only half open as if gluing together in very weariness: but they will soon be quickened, for the full cup flies from lip to lip, they quaff long draughts: Hurrah! hurrah! Long live the cup of drunkenness and joy!
Hark! a noise and rustling among the masses! Is it joy, or is it grief? Who can read the meaning of a thing so monstrously multiform!
A man arrives, mounts a table, harangues and sways the multitude. His voice drags and grates upon the ear, but hacks itself into sharp, strong words, clearly heard and easily understood; his gestures are slow and light, accompanying his words as music, song. His brow is high and strong, his head is entirely bald; thought has uprooted its last hair. His skin is dull and tawny, the blood never tinges its dingy pallor, no emotion ever paints its secrets there, yellow wrinkles form and cross between the bones and muscles of his face, and a dark beard, like a black wreath, encircles it from temple to temple. He fastens a steady gaze upon his hearers, no doubt or hesitation ever clouds his clear, cold eye. When he raises his arm and stretches it out toward the people, they bow before him, as if to receive, prostrate, the blessing of a great intellect, not that of a great heart! Down, down with the great hearts! Away, away with old prejudices! Hurrah! hurrah! for the words of consolation! Hurrah for the license to murder!
This man is the idol of the people, their passion, the ruler of their souls, the stimulator of their enthusiasm. He promises them bread and money, and their cries rise like the rushing of a storm, widening and deepening in every direction: 'Long live Pancratius! Hurrah! Bread and money! Bread for us, our wives, our children! Hurrah! hurrah!'
At the feet of the speaker, leaning against the table on which he stands, rests his friend, companion, and disciple. His eye is dark and oriental, shadowed by long and gloomy lashes, his arms hang down, his limbs bend under him, his body is badly formed and distorted, his mouth is sensual and voluptuous, his expression is sharp and malicious, his fingers are laden with rings of gold—he joins the tumult, crying with a rough, hoarse voice: 'Long live Pancratius!' The speaker looks at him carelessly for a moment, and says: 'Citizen, Baptized, hand me a handkerchief!'
Meantime the uproar continues; the cries become more and more tumultuous: 'Bread for us! Bread! bread! Long live Pancratius! Death to the nobles! to the merchants! to the rich! Bread! bread! Bread and blood! Hurrah! hurrah!'
A tabernacle. Lamps. An open book lies on a table. Baptized Jews.
The Baptized. My wretched brethren; my revenge-seeking, beloved brethren! let us suck nourishment from the pages of the Talmud, as from the breast of our mother; it is the breast of life from which strength and honey flow for us, bitterness and poison for our enemies.
Chorus of Baptized Jews. Jehovah is our God, and ours alone; therefore has He scattered us in every land!
Like the coiled folds of an enormous serpent, He has wreathed us everywhere round and through the adorers of the cross; our lithe and subtile rings pass round and through our foolish,