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"Oh! because she's the masterest hand for fun and carryin' on that ever ye see, I expect; and she must a known him, though it seems he didn't know her, sartin. Ye see, he was here and staid six weeks or two months last summer, takin' picters, and he undertook to shin up to Miss Jemima Smith, Cap'n Bill's sister, a reglar old maid as ever ye see, and they du say, the old cretur actilly agreed to marry him; but it was all kep secret as a hen stealin' a nest, from the Cap'n, until Mary got home from the Springs and about, where she'd been all summer a travellin' round with the Eliots; but jist as soon as she got home, she larnt all about it, and the upshot was that the same night, or the next night, I dunno which, but Miss Curtiss knows and can tell ye all about it, the feller was round serenadin', or suthin', and Cap'n Bill sot his dog on him and gin him Aleck, and the feller turned round and brought a breach of promise suit agin the hull family, the Kurnel says, dog and all, and it's to be tried this tarm, and that's what he's here for now."

Of course the last cloud of doubt exhaled in the light of the deacon's explanation, and the identity of the fair lady passenger and Miss Mary Smith was clearly manifest.

"But it's the queerest thing on airth," continued the deacon, "why the Kurnel kep so clus about tellin'."

I didn't think so. On the contrary, it seemed to me the most natural thing in the world that Mary Smith should wish to let Mr. Fitzhoward remain in ignorance of the fact that he had ridden with her in the stage from the city. "That accounts for the fun the girls had to themselves," thought I, "and, by Jove! after we get better acquainted will have a laugh in which I can join."

"The dumbdest queerest thing," muttered the deacon, rubbing his head.

"So Miss Smith is rather given to high spirits, is she?" said I, affecting a yawn, by way of a hint; for I was getting a little weary of the deacon, who, stupid

fellow, had fallen into a brown study on the subject of the Colonel's most transparent motives for secrecy.

"The beatinest cretur for carryin' on that ever ye see," replied the deacon, waking up: "The Kurnel says she's a hull team and a hoss to let, besides a big dog under the waggin. I heerd him say so myself, last spring, when she driv Squire Eliot's Morgan colt through the streets, the first time he was ever in harness, to go out of the yard at any rate. She got Simon Adams, the squire's hired man, to put him intu the buggy, and what does she do, before he knows it, but takes the lines right out of his hand, and gets in and drives right up the hill, and round the square, and back agin, and the way she handled that are colt was surprisin'. The sowin' circle didn't talk of nothin' else for a fortnit, so Miss Curtiss said, and she orter tu know, for she allus goes, no matter ef the house is full o' company and runnin' over; though I often tell her, that though I'm in favor of the heathen, I don't believe they'll suffer, in them warm climits, ef they go without woollen jackets and yarn stockins and mittins a day or two, while she's tendin tu company tu hum. But she says it's a dooty, and she can't in conscience neglect it, and so she goes all weathers. Yes, I tell you, squire, Mary Smith's one on 'em now. bosses Cap'n Bill, and that's a pretty considerable of a chore when he's rampin. "I expect I've been a keepin' ye up, squire."

She

So, bidding good night again, as he softly turned the handle of the door, audibly wondering "what on airth could make the Kurnel so dumb?" the deacon departed.

"Just to think of that lovely creature breaking a colt," thought I, as I bolted the door and again sat down in the rocking chair.

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WHAT WE HAVE TO DO WITH THE EASTERN QUESTION.

A DISTINGUISHED editor, who is also

a general, in certain letters from London addressed to his readers, takes it for granted that the Americans are all on the side of England and France, in the great European controversy now raging, and urges them to give some visible expression of their sympathies. Now it is quite natural that one who eats the mutton of British ministers, and lives in the focus of a warlike excitement, should speak and urge in this wise; but we, who are away from the field of action, who are not permitted to see how lovingly the dapper guards of the saloon take the huge paws of the street-sweepers, and press them with all the fervor of a common enthusiasm, may consider the matter with more coolness, and, like the mouse in the fable, suggest modestly whether there may not be a cat in the meal tub.

It is, no doubt, of considerable importance to England that America should think well of her present movements; we believe, too, that any little contribution of ours in the way of sympathy or active assistance, will be thankfully received by Lord Clarendon, Louis Napoleon, and a good many others, yet we are not so clear in the conviction that it would be quite so well for America to take up their cudgels. We cannot discover, either in the motives of the original dispute, avowed or concealed, or in the characters of the chief parties to it, or in the objects of the powerful Alliance which has taken the quarrel upon itself, any causes that ought to move us to so much as even a sympathetic participation in the melée. Remote as we are from the theatre of trouble, disdaining as we do, the selfish, petty, and malignant policy of the foreign dynasties, holding in equal contempt and abhorrence the principles of despotism, whether the machinery be controlled by a Czar, a Sultan, a usurping Emperor, an hereditary aristocracy, or a corrupt mass of bureaucrats, we are at liberty to treat their squabbles with the utmost indifference, or to mingle in them only so far as it may advance our own solid interests, or our own distinctive principles, or give an impulse to the civilization of the world.

The ostensible grounds of dispute between Russia and Turkey at the outset were, the demands of the former, for a more efficient protection by the latter, of a few lazy and dirty Greek priests in the

Holy Land, of a guaranty for the security of the Russo-Greek church in Turkey,— and for the expulsion of political refugees harbored at Constantinople and other places. As the Porte had already guaranteed to France, in behalf of the Latin Church, the restoration of the key to the principal gate at Bethlelem; and had replaced, at the same instance, a certain silver star in the grotto of the Nativity, with a Latin inscription (which had been displaced in 1847); and had consented that the cupola over the Sacred Sepulchre should be constructed in the ancient and not in the Byzantine order of architecture; and as, moreover, the Porte had granted to Austria, consequent upon the Montenegrin insurrection of which she complained-the harbor of Kleeck and the Sutorian ports, with a control of the Bosnian Catholics, and a few commercial facilities, while at the same time the Sultan was getting more and more thick, as the schoolboys say, with the clever English ambassador,-Russia supposed it a good opportunity for asserting some of her own old claims of a similar character. She accordingly sent Prince Menchikoff to Constantinople, to make a parade of the following points: "Look you! oh Sultan Medul Abjid, illustrious Padisha of all the Mohammedan faithful,-my august master Nicholas, the transparent protector of all the true believers of Græco-Christendom, not wishing that France or England should take the wind out of his sails, demands these things: 1st, a common possession with the Latin believers of the key of the gate at Bethlehem, of the silver star on the subterranean altar, and of the rites of worship, with a supremacy over all interlopers; 2d, the immediate repair of the cupola of the sepulchre, which lets the rain in on the bare heads of the devout, and the walling up or destruction of certain harems which overlook that sepulchre, sometimes to the scandal of the monks and pilgrims; and 3dly, and finally, a Sened or convention for the guaranty of the privileges of all the Catholic Greek worshippers and their priests and their sanctuaries, both in Turkey and in the East." "But," added the good Menchikoff, "since you have been considerably remiss in this part of your duties hitherto, my august master proposes to take most of the trouble off your hands and see to it himself!" To which the Padisha, the mighty and the illustrious! through his

chief Vizier for Foreign Affairs-may he always be blessed! replied, "that there was nobody in the world for whom he, the Father of the Faithful, had an intenser admiration and respect than for his amiable friend, the most Pious Autocrat, Guardian and Protector of all the Russians, but that he could hardly consent to his demands. As for the Holy Shrines and Holy Places, he had attended to them as well as he could, considering the several classes of vagabonds, lay and clerical, with whom he had to deal, and, as to the Christians, he had always taken the best care of them, even to cutting their heads off when they were refractory, and he always meant to, being very much obliged meanwhile to his illustrious Brother, for his kind intentions and offers of assistance, but he had rather not, if it were all the same to him. Besides, the internal affairs of Turkey were in his keeping, and he would thank his illustrious Brother, with the profoundest deference, if he would just mind his own business." Menchikoff, then, in the blandest way, requested precisely the same things, only in different terms, and the Sultan made precisely the same answer, only in different terms. Menchikoff got huffy, and threatened to go home, the ambassador of Austria thought he had better not: Count Nesselrode wrote a plaintive yet furious dispatch to all the foreign governments, calling the Sultan names, and threatening to trounce him if he did not come to reason in eight days: France replied spunkily that there were two who could play at trouncing, and that the good Sultan was his friend: England remarked; "Gentlemen, do not let us tread upon each other, there is enough of Turkey for all of us, and let us have an amicable talk over the whole matter." They accordingly went to work at Vienna and talked,-and then they talked again,-talked for a whole year,and first Abdul Mejid wouldn't, and then Nicholas wouldn't, and, finally, neither of them would, and so they all ordered out their gunboats for a free and general fight. France and England, that had never before done any thing but void their superfluous rheum in cach other's faces, shook hands like brothers, fell upon each other's necks, swore a lasting friendship-swore that they would never more allude to Waterloo or to Perfide Albion, and sent their fleets into the Baltic and Black Seas, where we will leave them for the present.

These are the ostensible grounds, we say, of the controversy, as they strike an independent observer, who simply

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reads the documents and the journals; but it is to be confessed, at the same time, that, as in so many other disputes, the outward pretexts are only guys or coverings for a real and serious secret hostility. Every body who has read the history of the last fifty years, is aware, that the Eastern Question " is not a question of recent date. It is as old as the century at least, and, in various shapes, now breaking out as a question of maritime jurisdiction in the Black Sea, now as a question concerning the integrity of the Ottoman Empire, and now again as to the respective rights of the worthless and donothing churches of Jerusalem,-involves a complicated theory of politics, and a profound antagonism of interests and principles. Standing between Europe and Asia, as an oriental European power,with a government borrowed from the Caliphs and a religion borrowed from Mohammed,-Turkey forms the barrier to the eastward progress of Christian commerce and civilization. It is, therefore, the seat of battle and intrigue to all those western powers, whose simulated zeal for religion, and real zeal for "proviant," leads them to covet that mysterious and dazzling abstraction called The East, which, from the earliest time, has had a strange power in captivating the imaginations and bewildering the judgments of rulers. No Crockford's or Pat Hearn's was ever a more desperate scene of play than Constantinople has been. The ambassadors of every power gather there, as the sporting-gentlemen and legs gather in the betting-houses of London, or round a sweat-cloth at a race-course. Every one is loud in professing his attachment to the Porte, and every one alternately uses the Porte as the cat's-paw of his own rapacious designs. Ready at all times, too, for any reckless foray, any scheme of warlike aggression, while they are too proud and foolish to discover their own abasement, the Osmanlis have been just the tools to be used. Now, France would inflame their resentment against the Muscovite, and then the Muscovite would stir them up against France. England would impel them one way, to check the advances of Russia, and Russia threaten them another, to embarrass the commerce of England. But the uniform and remarkable result of every movement, of every battle, whether instigated by others, or undertaken of their own savage ferocity, has been a loss of some part of their territory. Conquerors or conquered, these infatuated noodles always managed to make a cession of lands to the enemy. They fought

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Peter the Great, and gave him Transylvania; they fought Venice, and gave her the Morca; they fought Poland and restored Podolia and the Ukraine; they fought Austria and surrendered Belgrade and a part of Wallachia, and Servia; they fought the Empress Catharine and yielded the free navigation of the Turkish seas and the passage of the Dardanelles ; they fought Mehemet Ali and left him Egypt; they fought Alexander and presented him the mouth of the Danube;and they fought Nicholas, and handed over to him the fortresses of Asia; in short, the Turks, with every struggle, vigorous as it may have been, and brilliant as the warlike qualities which they displayed, shook off some portion of their own dominions and found themselves weaker from the effort. Yet, all their treaties with foreign powers have guaranteed the integrity of their empire. "The Integrity of the Ottoman Empire" has been the shibboleth, from the beginning, of every one of their allies. A more sounding yet hollow pretence was never urged; for while every European nation agreed to it, as a check upon every other nation, and a cloak for its own designs, every nation was the more busily plotting in consequence of it, for a slice of the common spoil!

This famous eastern question," then, is a long-continued scuffle between the great powers for an extension of Empire. Russia especially, from the acquisition of Azof by Peter the Great, has had no other ambition in her thousand and one interferences with Turkey. Her recent scruples in regard to the Holy Shrines and the protection of the Greek Christians, have been the veriest rigmarole conceivable-the most transparent duplicity. And now that the battle is about to be joined with England and France, and it is found necessary to defend her course, she openly confesses that religious zeal was only one of her motives. An official article in the Journal de St. Petersbourg, replying to Lord John Russell's speech in the House of Commons, declares that it was the impression of the Czar long since, and before Menchikoff negotiated, that Turkey had been harassed to death and that it was time for him and the other sovereigns, to look out for the pieces. "Let England," he says, in his magnanimity, "take a wing, and France a leg, and the smaller powers some of the feathers, while, as for me, I shall be satisfied with the other leg, the other wing, both sidebones, and a piece of the breast." Illustrious Czar! It would have been more

manly, we think, to announce this prospective division, at the outset of the gameto enter openly upon the negotiation as Catharine and Joseph did when they met on the Wolga, eighty years ago-but honesty, as we have seen, is not the prevailing weakness of those who conduct the "Eastern Question."

Is it not obvious now, from this view of the origin and progress of the existing war, that the American people can have no sympathy with any of its motives or objects? But can they have any more with the characters of either of the principal combatants? An effort, we know, is made by the English press, and by some of our own journals,—who too often, alas! merely reflect the sentiments,-or if not the sentiments, the one-sided information, of that press,-to enlist our feelings in behalf of the Turks. But who are the Turks? A race of lazy, corrupt, truculent and semi-barbarous Mohammedans, who cherish a rooted aversion to all the arts of civilized life, and an inveterate hatred of Christianity. Since their first appearance on the plains of Europe, their whole career has been marked, first by brutal conquests, and secondly, by a rotting and sensual indolence. Lamartine said truly, that "the Turks for four centuries had been merely encamped in Europe," for their stay there has not been one of residence but of military possession. Appropriating to themselves by violence, one of the most beautiful and fertile regions of the globe,-a region whose soil is as productive as that of the United States, and whose climate is as genial as that of Italy,-surrounded by seas, intersected by rivers, rolling up from the richest valleys into fine woodcrested mountains,-abaunding in mines of copper, silver, iron and salt,-yielding to the first touch of the rudest plough, plentiful harvests of the cereals, of cotton, of tobacco, and of fruits which range from the olive and pomegranate of the South, to the apple and cherry of the North,furnished to luxuriance with aromatic shrubs and useful plants,-and supporting by its luscious pastures the best breeds of cattle in Europe,-what use have the Turks made of it all to justify their stewardship? What has the Mussulman returned for the ten talents Providence committed to his care? What new culture has he introduced; what arts has he discovered or improved, what inroads has he made upon the unfriendly influences of nature; what wilderness has he reclaimed, what marsh redeemed, what hostile sea disarmed; what distant regions

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has he connected by roads, what desert coasts planted with commerce, what naked backs supplied with new products of manufacture? None ! His ceaseless and entire activity has been that of war. has hated and despised industry with a perfect hatred. He has not only remained without improvement, but he has retrograded. The arts and manufactures,the edifices and public works,-" precious donations of former Christian generations," which he found at the conquest of the Eastern Empire, he has neglected or destroyed, the jets of trade, which from time to time have sprung up, under the attraction of foreign example or the pressure of local and domestic want,he has suppressed, and none but the inost desultory, precarious, and rude species of industry have been suffered to live under his hands. His government, a fierce and unmitigated military despotism.-his religion, a fanatical and brutal fatalism, disdaining every impulse of tolerance and every weapon of propagation but the sword,-he has degenerated, under a mingled tyranny and self-corruption until he has become the poorest, the least vital, and the most unpromising race in Europe. Struggling all his life to introduce a baneful superstition into the West, resisting with determined bigotry all the better influences of the West, there is surely nothing in his history or character to conciliate our good will or maintain our respect. We do not deny, that he has the virtues of a semi-barbarous people; we do not forget that his hospitality was nobly extended to the exiled Hungarians; but we cannot find in his rare and single instances of greatness,-an apology for his long-protracted career of carnage and oppression. We strive to recall the good that he may have done to the world, but, in the midst of the effort, and before we are aware, images rise before us, of bloody cimeters flashing terror through the darkness of unhappy Greece, and of armed horsemen scouring the plains of Egypt like a hot wind from the desert. Turkey may have suffered wrong at the hands of Russia, and God forbid us from wishing her evil on account of her past transgressions, but do not, 'an' you love us,' do not call upon us for any special admiration of the Turks. Let them fight their own battles, if they will-but ask no Christian man to lend them a finger of help! No! the wails of Scio still ring in our ears, and the manes of Bozzaris are yet unappeased!

You will, perhaps, reply that Turks are as good as the Russians any day, as wise,

as pure, as tolerant, as industrious, and as agreeable to their fellow-men; but, we rejoin emphatically that they are not. The government of Russia is an abominable absolutism, we admit, atrociously inhuman in its principles and its effects; and the people of Russia are very much imbruted and shrivelled by the practical workings of that absolutism; yet, as a race, the Russians are alive, vigorous, hearty, progressive. Next to the Americans they are the most "go-ahead" nation on the face of the earth. They are growing faster in population, in commerce, in manufactures and art, in all the elements of civilization, despite the obstacles raised by tyranny, than any other people on the continent. While other nations are retrograding, or remain stationary, or increase only by imperceptible degrees, the Russian race discovers a vitality like that of the old Norman or AngloSaxon races. It is perpetually doing something for itself or for others; it does not rot in its hole; but it is pushing forward innumerable works of internal or selfamelioration, and for the external redemption of warlike tribes. A vast, almost chaotic mass of savages, one century since, unheard of in the politics of Europe, contending against a niggardly soil, a rigorous climate, anarchical government and enemies on all sides,-the Muscovites have made themselves, not only a most formidable military power, but what is better, they have worked out a gigantic and growing civilization. They have built cities, founded fleets, developed agriculture, fostered manufactures, introduced the sciences, the fine arts and belleslettres, and, in short, appropriated to themselves, in large measures, whatever was good and great in the civil and social life of Europe. It is true, that they have done much of this by means of an imperious domination; that, in their march to the goal they have set themselves, they have rudely trampled on many a noble and generous, many a gentle spirit; that they have crushed to the earth the Tartars, the Poles, and the Georgians who stood in their way; that they have peopled the distant frozen zones of Siberia with the victims of their statecraft and policy,- -our hearts loathe them utterly for it, but our reason tells us, at the same time, that this trenchant crushing despotism is but an incident in their course-an ugly and venomous but necessary feature of their transitional development, out of Oriental wildness into European culture; and that they will themselves, sooner or later, throw it off, and then stand before

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