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 This melancholy episode is very illuminating. It shows the difficulty into which the reformers were brought by their repudiation of the elaborate ecclesiastical machinery, which had been slowly constructed to match the needs of human nature and secure some application to human life of the Christian law of marriage. They were perforce driven back on the Scripture, which they invested with the character of a sufficient, infallible, and self-explanatory rule of life. In these connections, where human conduct in the relationships of society was concerned, they found themselves drawn more to the Old Testament than to the New. reason is plain enough. The New Testament gave extremely little guidance in practical matters, for most of the writings which it contained were biographical, or theological, or occasional; but the Old Testament contained in the earlier books the legislation of a commonwealth, and to that extent covered the ground of the abrogated canon law. The reformers had little power of discrimination;

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text:
Author:Antonio Joseph Mendez

Works

 * A Classic Case of Deception: CIA Goes Hollywood (1999)
 * Master of Disguise' (2000)
 * Spy Dust (2002)

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title: Author:Antonio Joseph Mendez


text: Category:Spies

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 for the historical sense was as yet undeveloped, and their exalted theory of the Bible as a whole made all parts of it sacred and binding alike.

All this was not immediately favourable to a high conception of marriage, for the standard of the Old Testament is not a Christian standard, and the sacramental doctrine of the medieval Church marked a great advance of Christian thought. There is something almost pathetic in the conflict between their Judaic standard provided by the Old Testament, and their Christian spirit inspired by the New.

When Fuller, following the plan of his quaint treatise on "The Holy State," would find an illustration for the guidance of Christian folk of "the good husband," he selects the polygamist Abraham, whose name stands in the sacred record in more than one morally dubious narrative. Fuller was neither a polygamist, nor a slave-holder, nor a champion of incestuous liberty; but he had to use much wit and some adroitness in order to keep out of view

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 all these characters of his pattern husband. The tone of his counsels, moreover, is more Jewish than Christian. Here is his description of marital forbearance. The good husband, he says, bears with his wife's infirmities:

"All hard using of her he detests; desiring therein to do not what may be lawful, but fitting. And, grant her to be of a servile nature, such as may be bettered by beating; yet he remembers he hath enfranchised her by marrying her. On her wedding-day she was, like St. Paul, free-born,' and privileged from any servile punishment."

Fuller, in selecting the patriarch as the model husband, did but follow the example of the Prayer-Book which proposes Sarah as the model wife in the often-criticised paragraph with which the homily in the marriage service ends:

"For after this manner in the old time the holy women also, who trusted in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands; even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord; whose daughters ye are as long as ye do well, and are not afraid with any amazement."

In England a part of the ancient papal power of issuing dispensations was reserved, and

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 transferred by statute to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the medieval canons were still held to govern the procedure of the ecclesiastical courts, so far as they did not contravene prerogative, custom, or statute. The whole consequences of the breaking-up of Christendom were only gradually perceived. The evangelical principles, which the reformers professed, expressed themselves in legislation and practice slowly, and haltingly.

Three changes, however, were made at the Reformation which had a beneficent effect on the theory and practice of Christian marriage. There were: I. The definite repudiation of ascetic views of human life; II. The abrogation throughout the Protestant world of the ascetic rule of clerical celibacy; III. The exaltation and widely-extended circulation of the New Testament. To these changes there may perhaps be added, though with somewhat less confidence, the creation of the modern State.

I. The opening paragraph of Lord Acton's

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 lecture on the "Beginning of the Modern State" will serve excellently to indicate the nature of the change which passed over Christendom when the mediaval epoch ended:

"Modern history tells how the last four hundred years have modified the medieval conditions of life and thought. In comparison with them, the Middle Ages were the domain of stability, and continuity, and in- stinctive evolution, seldom interrupted by such origina- tors as Gregory VII. or St. Francis of Assisi. Ignorant of history, they allowed themselves to be governed by the unknown Past; ignorant of Science, they never believed in hidden forces working onwards to a happier future. The sense of decay was upon them, and each generation seemed so inferior to the last, in ancient wisdom and ancestral virtue, that they found comfort in the assurance that the end of the world was at hand."

In this state of feeling there could be no free expansion of the human spirit; a dead weight of self-conscious futility hung over life, and the deeper natures felt its burden most. Marriage is the climax and covenant of human life, and it cannot take its due place in the estimate of mankind, unless human life is

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 reckoned a grand and potent thing, full of energy, promise and happiness.

Now, throughout the Middle Ages, marriage was regarded by the best Christians of both sexes as implying something short of the rightful method of living. If one were indeed what the Gospel called men to become, then one would enter "religion," that is, become a monk or nun. Archbishop Trench has rightly offered this use of the word "religion" as an example of words preserving a record of a perversion of the moral sense. He says:

"We have a signal example of this, in the use, or rather misuse, of the word 'religion', during all the ages of Papal domination in Europe. A 'religious' person did not mean any one who felt and allowed the bonds that bound him to God and to his fellow-men, but one who had taken peculiar vows upon him, a member of the monkish orders; a 'religious' house did not mean, nor does it now mean in the Church of Rome, a Christian household, ordered in the fear of God, but a house in which these persons were gathered together according to the rule of some man. A 'religion' meant not a service of God, but a monastic order; and taking the monastic vows was termed going into a 'religion'. What a light does this one word so used throw on the entire state of mind and habits of thought in those ages!

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 That then was 'religion', and nothing else was deserving of the name! And 'religious' was a title which might not be given to parents and children, husbands and wives, men and women fulfilling faithfully and holily in the world the several duties of their stations, but only to those who had devised such a self-chosen service for themselves."

This radically false conception of the meaning and value of human life was carried into every household and neighbourhood by the ubiquitous monastic system, and by the multitudes of preaching friars. It is hard for us now to realise the dominating place in mediæval Europe held by the monastic institutions. At the dissolution of the monasteries in England there had been already a considerable reduction in the number, but, even so, Henry VIII.'s Government dissolved more than eight hundred houses, some of them very small, but many of them splendid and famous,

Every Englishman grew up in the

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 of some monastery, and a great proportion of the people were connected with the system either as members, or servants, or tenants. Marriage was stamped with the badge of moral inferiority; child-bearing was wrapped up in a doctrine of hereditary sin; the shadow of the Fall lay darkly on family life. There was a suggestion of evil concupiscence in the joys of home. All this ascetic sentiment was disallowed by the Reformation. By an uprising of the genuine human sentiments, too long suppressed by the artificial disciplines of the mediæval Church, but in the Bible frankly recognised and consecrated, the ill tradition was once for all broken. Christian marriage could not but benefit in the first place, and in the greatest measure, from the change.

II.—In the same direction worked the abrogation of the ascetic rule of clerical celibacy. We have already spoken of the immense mischiefs which followed to the clergy from this rule, by bringing them into

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 universal suspicion; but it is not only so that mischief was caused. The clergy throughout the Middle Ages were to a very great extent married, though against the law of the Church; and their unions, instead of being what they have admittedly since become in every Protestant country, a valuable moral force, providing a model of Christian family life all over the community, and associating family life intimately with the the profession of Christianity, were looked upon as sinful, winked at by authority in order to avoid worse things, but none the less made the subject of continual public denunciation. The moral influence of the clergy was weakened, and the marriage union was degraded by the notorious and commonly witnessed discord between the theory of the Church and the practice of its representatives. The evidence is collected and set out in Lea's "History of Sacerdotal Celibacy in the Christian Church."

Christianity itself has taken a humaner tone as expounded by men who are themselves

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 husbands and fathers, and a close student of theological literature will soon learn to recognise the notes of artificiality and lack of sympathy which mark the work of unmarried moralists. Lord Bacon must perhaps be reckoned an advocate for clerical celibacy on grounds of practical utility, but he admits frankly enough the indurating tendency of the single life. He says:

"Certainly, wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, though they be many times more charitable because their means are less exhaust, yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hard-hearted (good to make severe inquisitors), because their tenderness is not so oft called upon."

Clerical marriage has disadvantages from the point of view of ecclesiastical discipline which are sufficiently obvious, but there can be no doubt that few influences can be more degrading on the whole conception of domestic life in any community, than that the official exponents of religion should be exiled by reason of their sacred profession

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 from the disciplines, sorrows, and joys of home.

III.—The Reformation brought into general knowledge the life of Christ, and the writings of the apostles. In this circumstance may be recognised the most powerful of all the forces which have tended to exalt the theory and practice of Christian marriage. For when full allowance has been made for ascetic elements in the Apostolic teaching, for their mistaken expectation that the world was about to end, for the moral confusions of their hereditary Judaism, it remains the case that the New Testament, taken as a whole, is fatal to asceticism, eminently favourable to all those pure and gentle sentiments which most flourish within the domestic sphere, and carries to the individual, in the most moving and salutary of its expressions, the spirit of Jesus Christ.

Experience would teach the reformers and their followers that they could not find in the Old Testament a code of Christian morals; in due course the historical spirit would be

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 developed among students, and by its aid men would come to read the sacred literature with larger intelligence and a more discriminating appreciation; social science would have something to say in aid of the statesmen, who would succeed the canonists in the task of regulating what must always be the chief of all contracts, and the most socially important of all institutions; but the New Testament would only become the more evidently supreme in the regard of Christians as time disallowed all rivals.

It appears to be the fact that the morally soundest family life within Christendom is to be found precisely in those classes and sections of society which most cherish and use the New Testament. It is hard to conceive a greater calamity to any Christian community than that, for whatever reason, the New Testament should fall out of the constant use and supreme regard of the people. The Reformation brought with it the translation of the Bible into the vernacular languages of modern

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 Europe, and its general diffusion among the Protestant nations; it gave also a powerful stimulus to public education, and greatly raised the standard of the general intelligence.

Thus the Bible came to a public able to read and value it. In their hands that sacred volume (and in this connection pre-eminently what is said of the Bible must be understood to apply to the New Testament) was a power of moral discipline, cleansing and ordering life, immensely more effective than the elaborate, ubiquitous, always active machinery of ecclesiastical authority.

To let the Bible be crowded out of public knowledge by the inrush of newer claimants is to wound the national morality in a vital place. The New Testament has always been the grand corrective of ecclesiastical aberrations, and the authoritative source of Christian morals; in the Reformation it became the manual of individual practice and the accepted rule of family life, accepted not adequately of course in practice, but universally in principle,

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Reformation broke up the unity of Western Christendom, and made impossible the system of ecclesiastical government which had been built up on the assumption of that unity; but this was by no means all the change it effected. Within the separated states of Europe there was no longer any security for religious agreement, and in point of fact the Reformation inaugurated a long series of domestic conflicts and devastating wars of religion, which, after the interval of more than a century, left the religious divisions, from which they mainly arose, not only existing, but deepened and stereotyped. Under these circumstances it is clear that the national churches which replaced the medieval Church were

title: Page:Christian Marriage.djvu/139


text:
Author:Christina Walsh

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 * A Woman to Her Lover

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 doubly incompetent to retain control of a matter so important, and in its effects so wide-reaching, as marriage. They were not of themselves strong enough to resist the encroachments of civil authority; and, within the State, they could not reckon on the undivided support of the community. The State, and the State alone, had power enough, and a sufficiently undisputed title, to take control of marriage.

Accordingly, in every modern community we find that marriage is no longer a matter of ecelesiastical regulation, but has its place in the civil codes. Europe has in this respect returned to the conditions of the præ-mediæval epoch, when the vast fabric of the Roman Empire remained unshattered. It is important to bear in mind that the civil control of marriage is no novelty of recent birth, but an indispensable return to conditions which obtained before the dominance of the Church had been established. Ecclesiastical control of marriage could not possibly survive the

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 dislocation of the ecclesiastical system, and the weakening in men's minds of those sacramental and sacerdotal notions, which had ruled the thought of Christendom for a thousand years.

"Marriage is nothing but a civil contract," said Selden. "'Tis true 'tis an ordinance of God; so is every other contract. God commands me to keep it when I have made it." It is to be remembered that the Reformation, in adding greatly to the power of the State, did also rescue the notion of the State from the unworthy conceptions of the medieval canonists, and asserted on its behalf a supremacy, based on divine appointment, which secured for its action a religious sanction, and commended that action to the conscientious acceptance of Christian folk. The State, however, clearly acted with far more liberty than the Church, and was compelled to take account of many considerations which the Church could leave out of reckoning. The State was not bound by precedents as was the Church; and the

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 State had primarily to legislate for the social welfare of the entire community, and not for the presumed spiritual advantage of individuals.

It needs no prolonged examination of the circumstances under which the rival authorities necessarily acted to see that a wide discrepancy of law and method would speedily become apparent between them. The Church in theory could not vary, for the law it applied to human life claimed to be divine, and therefore unalterable. The State, when it had shaken off the ecclesiastical and Biblical notions of its constitution, was necessarily the reflection of the popular will, and by the law of its own being forced to adapt itself to the varying requirements of popular opinion.

To those who accept the claim of any organised society of Christians to express with plenary right the mind of Christ, it is clear enough that this discrepancy between the ecclesiastical and the civil handling of marriage will appear nowise perplexing. They will

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 apprehend what is their duty without any hesitation. The law of the Church—according to their theory—holds their allegiance by divine right; they must obey God rather than men. This simple and, to those who can accept it, satisfactory solution of a difficult problem will not be possible for the student of social science, or of history, or of ecclesiastical law. For he will be met at the start by the unquestionable fact that all the assumptions of that facile theory are unsound.

There is no institution now existing on the earth which can make out a good title to the character of the divinely-ordained exponent of the mind of Christ; there is no agreement between the churches on the subject of marriage; the conditions of a sound political treatment of the most important of all social relationships are only now coming within the range of human knowledge, as science, physio- logical and sociological, yields her witness. It is plain enough that the task of determining the way of duty for a Christian man is by no

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 means so easy as the zealots of the churches pretend.

There are three aspects of marriage which must always be taken into account by the Christian citizen, and which are affected in varying degrees and measures by his discipleship. First of all, marriage is the fundamental natural relationship; next, it is the most important of social contracts; finally, it is (for every Christian who marries as alone Christians may rightly marry," in the Lord") a holy estate entered by a divine vocation.

Of these three aspects the State is concerned only with the first two; the third has no meaning or importance outside the sphere of Christian discipleship. The Church has no special illumination with respect to the natural or to the social aspects of marriage, but only to the religious. The principles of Christ's religion are indeed the right principles on which natural and social relationships must be controlled; but the application of those principles is left to the decision of Christians,

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 associated and individual, to be made in the light of experience as it is interpreted by the Spirit of God.

Experience is a wide term; it gathers within itself all the accumulations of relevant knowledge, as well as the specific warnings and encouragements of history. When the Christian with the Gospel in hand aspires to learn his duty here and now, he must assuredly abandon the simple notion that he carries a set of sufficient oracles which can meet all the demands of the situation. He must never fall so far from the whole meaning of discipleship as to suppose that it gives him some short and easy way out of political and social difficulties. The Gospel does certainly give him the point of view from which all such difficulties must be regarded, and it assists his vision of duty by the precepts and example of Christ, but it leaves him as the rest of men to learn practical wisdom in the stern school of life.

If there be a discrepancy between the

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 traditional teaching of Christianity on the subject of divorce and the laws of the modern State, that is primâ facie a reason for carefully reexamining the traditional teaching of Christianity: and it is this because the laws of the modern State must be supposed to represent the deliberate decisions of citizens taken with full knowledge of all the circumstances of society at the present time, and therefore presumably expressing the latest testimony of human experience.

It is not maintained that a careful reexamination of Christian traditional teaching will necessarily lead to an endorsement of the legislation of the modern State; for it does not admit of doubt that such legislation may be determined by some wave of licentious opinion sweeping across a community, and for the moment carrying all before it, and the traditional doctrine of Christianity, with which it comes into opposition, may represent the true conclusions of human experience. It may do this, but it may not; and therefore the

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 argument is that in all cases there should be a frank and thorough consideration of the situation, to which the State is necessarily required to address itself, before there is issued a declaration of war between Church and State.

On the subject of divorce there are some excellent observations by Dr. Newman Smyth, which may well be quoted here:

"Jesus undoubtedly laid down an absolute ethical principle concerning the marriage relation in what he was called to say in view of the loose divorce customs of the Jews. That principle from which his precept proceeded should be law in Christian ethics. Moreover, the particular instance which was the only one considered in Christ's declaration of the true principle of divorce, required the simplest and most unequivocal assertion of the sanctity of the obligation of marriage. For adultery, the instance considered, is the direct breach of the marriage relation. It is the one sin which immediately and unmistakably illustrates the only valid reason on which divorce, according to Christ's teaching, may be legally allowed-the ground that the union between husband and wife has already in fact been criminally destroyed. There is no other legitimate principle for divorce than that presented by the nature of the sin of adultery. If, however, we can say with a good conscience that some other sin (some sin which possibly in Christ's

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 day had not reached its full measure of iniquity—a sin, for instance, like drunkenness, which may utterly destroy the spiritual unity of a home and threaten even the physical security of one of the persons bound by the vows of marriage) is the moral equivalent of the cause which our Lord had immediately before him for pronouncing divorce, shall we be justified in admitting it to be likewise a proper Christian ground of divorce?

"Such is the question fairly stated upon which Christian moralists have not been entirely agreed. Our answer to it will depend very much on two considerations. The first will be our general habit of reading the New Testament as another law, or of interpreting its precepts to the best of our understanding in what we may judge to have been the spirit in which they were spoken, remembering the Master's own saying that his words are spirit and they are life. The other consideration will be our confidence in the correctness of the premise that the special sin alleged, by which the marriage union has been violated, is the moral equivalent of adultery. In proportion as we are satisfied that it is in its consequence as destructive of the possibility of moral continuance in the married relation, we shall be inclined to think that it is included under the supreme principle which controlled the judgment of Jesus concerning certain habits, at which Moses winked, of the easy putting away of a wife. In other words, we shall argue that divorce for such other cause justifies itself to the Christian conscience, because we are satisfied that Jesus himself, if he were present and speaking to the men of our times, in the same intent and spirit in which he spoke of old, would pronounce this cause to be as heinous as adultery in its destruction of the sacredness

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text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Briggs, John (1788-1861)


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Briggs, John Thomas


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  of the last will and testament' of Margaret, late wife of Nicholas Brigham, is to execute the trusts contained in it. From this it appears that Brigham died in December 1558, and that Margaret did not long survive him - indeed, her will, dated 2 June 1559, was proved on 12 Oct. following. Brigham had but one child, Rachael, who died on 21 June 1557, and was buried near Chaucer's tomb in Westminster Abbey with this inscription - 'Unica quæ fueram proles spesque alma parent um Hoc Rachael Brigham condita sum tumulo. Vixit annis quatuor, mensibus tribus, diebus quatuor horis 15.' He wrote: (1) 'De Venationibus Rerum Memorabilium;' (2) 'Memoirs by way of a Diary; ' and (3) 'Miscellaneous Poems,' but none of these seem now to be extant. Perhaps his only production now known is his epitaph on Chaucer. Before his time a leaden plate hung in St. Bennet's Chapel, in Westminster Abbey, with Chaucer's epitaph by Surigonius of Milan (, i. p. 83) : 'Galfridus Chaucer vates et fama Poesis Materne hac sacra sum tumulatus humo.' Brigham in 1555 removed the poet's bones to a marble tomb he had built in the south transept, and on which there was a portrait of Chaucer taken from Occleve's 'De Regimine Principis,' with this epitaph :

Qui fuit Anglorum vates ter maximus olim Galfridus Chaucer conditur hoc tumulo : Annum si quseras Domini, si tempora vitse, Ecco notae subsunt quse tibi cuncta notant. Octobris 1400. Ærumnarum requies mors.

After which comes -

N. Brigham hos fecit Musarum nomine sumptus. and round the base, :Si rogitas quis eram, forsan te fama docebit;
 * Quod si fama negat, mundi quia gloria transit,
 * Haec monumenta lege.

[Bale's Scriptores, ed. 1557-9; Pits; Weever's Funeral Monuments, ed. 1631, p. 489; Tanner; Wood's Athenæ Oxon. i. 309; Dodd's Hist. of the Church, i. 369; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1547-80, pp. 77, 101, 102, and 1601-3, Add. p. 538; Dart's Westminster Abhey, i. 83, ii. 61; Camden's Reges. Reginæ, &c. (ed/1606), pp. 66, 67; Patent Rolls.]  BRIGHT, HENRY (1814–1873), watercolour painter, was born at Saxmundham, Suffolk, in 1814. His talent for drawing was early exhibited, but little encouraged. He was apprenticed by his father to a chemist and druggist at Woodbridge. After serving his time he went to Norwich, and became dispenser to the Norwich Hospital. Whilst yet at Woodbridge he seems to have given to drawing whatever time he could get. The removal to Norwich, throwing him as it did into the company of the then famous artists of that city, was fortunate, as well for the world as for him. The influence of such painters as John Crome, Cotman, the elder Ladbrook, Stark, and Vincent was soon sufficient to make him abandon his bottles for the brush. He gave up his place at the hospital, and came to London to study. Here his talents introduced him to Prout, David Cox, J. D. Harding, and other well-known London painters, and he soon became a member of the Institute of Painters in Water Colours, and later of the Graphic Society. To the exhibitions of the former society he contributed in 1841 and 1844. He then seceded from it, and 'from that time till 1850 was an exhibitor of landscapes in oil to the Royal Academy exhibitions.' He spent more than twenty years in London, and then, his health failing, he retired to Ipswich, where he died on 21 Sept. 1873. During the time of his residence in London he spent a part of each year in travelling, when he painted scenery on the Rhine, the coasts of France and Holland, the Isle of Arran, and the Yorkshire Moors. On one of the continental trips he met J. W. M. Turner, and formed an acquaintance with him which ripened into friendship. The first painting in oil which he exhibited was hung at the Academy in 1845. It was bought by Clarkson Stanfield, R. A. The result of this purchase was an enduring friendship between the two painters. Prout and Harding were admirers of Bright's pictures and sketches. The queen and the prince consort were among his earliest patrons. In 1844 a water-colour painting called 'Entrance to an old Prussian Lawn - Winter - Evening effect' was bought by her majesty, who now possesses several others of Bright's works. As a teacher of his art Bright was for some years very popular, and derived nearly 2,000l. a year from this branch of his profession. Bright's pictures are varied in subject, and usually masterly in manipulation. His colouring is rich and deep. The largest and finest of his pictures (Suffolk Chronicle, 27 Sept. 1873), amongst which is 'Orford Castle,' are in the possession of Mr. Charles T. Maud of Bath.

[Art Journal, October 1873; Suffolk Chronicle, 27 Sept. 1873; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of the English School; Athenæum, 27 Sept. 1873.]  BRIGHT, HENRY ARTHUR (1830–1884), merchant and author, was born at Liverpool on 9 Feb. 1830, the eldest son of Samuel Bright, J.P. (1799-1870; a younger


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 edited by J. R. Beard, D.D.), and issued anonymously and without date as a tract about 1870. To the same magazine he contributed a prose tale, 'The Martyr of Antioch,' illustrating the early history of Arianism; part of this was reprinted in the 'Christian Freeman.'

BRIGHT, JOHN (1619–1688), parliamentarian, of Carbrook and Badsworth, Yorkshire, born in 1619, took up arms for the parliament at the outbreak of the civil war. He raised several companies in the neighbourhood of Sheffield, and received a captain's commission from Lord Fairfax. He was also named one of the sequestration commissioners for the West Riding (1 April 1643). About the same date he became a colonel of foot : 'He was but young when he first had the command, but he grew very valiant and prudent, and had his officers and soldiers under good conduct' (Memoirs of Captain John Hodgson, p. 102). He accompanied Sir T. Fairfax in his expedition into Cheshire, commanded a brigade at the battle of Selby, and on the surrender of the castle of Sheffield was appointed governor of that place (August 1644), and a little later military governor of York. In the second civil war he served under Cromwell in Scotland, and also took part in the siege of Pontefract. On Cromwell's second expedition into Scotland, Bright threw up his commission when the army arrived at Newcastle, in consequence of the refusal of a fortnight's leave (, Memoirs). Nevertheless he continued to take an active part in public affairs. In 1651 he was commissioned to raise a regiment to oppose the march of Charles II into England (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Ser.), and he undertook the same service in 1659, on the rising headed by Sir George Booth (Journals of the House of Commons). In 1654 and 1655 he was high sheriff of Yorkshire, and he also acted as governor of York and of Hull. 'He may be presumed to have concurred in the measures for bringing about the Restoration, for we find that as early as July 1660 he was admitted into the order of baronets, having been previously knighted'. He died on 13 Sept. 1688.

BRIGHT, JOHN (1783–1870), physician, was born in Derbyshire, and educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. 1801, and M.D. 1808. He at first practised in Birmingham, and was appointed physician to the General Hospital in 1810, but before long he removed to London. He was elected fellow of the College of Physicians in 1809, was several times censor, and was Harveian orator in 1830. From 1822 to 1843 he was physician to the Westminster Hospital. In 1836 he was appointed lord chancellor's adviser in lunacy, to which office he almost entirely limited himself for many years. He never practised extensively, having an ample private fortune. 'He was,' says the 'Lancet,' 'a most accomplished classical scholar, and may be said to have represented that old school of physicians whose veneration for Greek and Latin certainly exceeded their estimation of modern pathological research, and who valued an elegant and scholarly prescription before the most searching post-mortem report.' He died 1 Feb. 1870, aged 87.

BRIGHT, MYNORS (1818–1883), decipherer of Pepys, born in 1818, was the son of (the subject of the previous article), and of Eliza his wife (College Books). He was educated at Shrewsbury, and entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, on 3 July 1835. He was a senior optime in mathematics, and took a second-class in classics. He proceeded B.A. in 1840, and M.A. in 1843. He became foundation-fellow, tutor, and eventually president of Magdalene, and was chosen proctor in 1853. The Pepysian library being at Magdalene, Bright resolved to re-decipher the whole of Pepys's 'Diary,' and to this end he learnt the cipher from Shelton's 'Tachygraphy.' In 1873 he retired from Magdalene, and left Cambridge for London. His 'Pepys' was printed


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 between 1875 and 1879, and was published simultaneously in 4to and 8vo, 6 vols. each. The edition includes engravings of Faithorne's 'Map of London,' 1658, and Evelyn's 'Posture of the Dutch Fleet,' 1667. It corrects numerous errors occurring in the original decipherment, and inserts many passages hitherto suppressed. [A complete reissue of Bright's transcript was edited by H. B. Wheatley in 10 vols. in 1893-1899.]

Bright became paralysed about 1880, and died on 23 Feb. 1883, aged 65. He never married. Part of his interest in his 'Pepys' he bequeathed to Magdalene College. His portrait was painted by F. Dickenson, and presented by his friends to his college.

 BRIGHT, RICHARD (1789–1858), physician, born at Queen Square, Bristol, on 28 Sept: 1789, was the third son of Richard Bright, a merchant and banker of that city. The father belonged to the family of the Brights of Brockbury, Herefordshire, who trace their descent from Henry Bright, D.D. (d. 1626), master of the King's School at Worcester in Queen Elizabeth's time. In 1808 he matriculated at the university of Edinburgh in the faculty of arts, attending the instructions of Dugald Stewart, Playfair, and Leslie in their respective subjects, and in the next year entered the medical faculty, where his teachers were Hope, Monro, and Duncan.

In the summer of 1810 he was invited to join Sir George Stuart Mackenzie and Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Holland on a visit to Iceland, which occupied some months. To the account of this voyage, written by Sir George Mackenzie ('Travels in Iceland,' Edinburgh, 1811), Bright contributed chapters on botany and zoology. He also brought back with him a large collection of dried plants; and though this journey must have been a serious interruption to his professional studies, doubtless it had its use in training his great powers of exact observation.

On returning from Iceland, Bright pursued his medical studies in London, living for two years in the house of one of the resident officers of Guy's Hospital. Here he attended the medical lectures of Dr. W. Babington and James Currie, and studied anatomy and surgery in the united school of Guy's and St. Thomas's, under Astley Cooper, the two Clines, and Travers. It is supposed that from Astley Cooper he imbibed a sense of the value of morbid anatomy in the study of disease; and even at that time he executed a drawing, since preserved, of the appearance of the kidney in that malady, by the investigation of which he afterwards made himself famous. At the same time he became interested in the study of geology, probably through the example of Dr. William Babington, and in 1811 he read a paper to the Geological Society on the strata in the neighbourhood of Bristol.

In 1812 Bright returned to Edinburgh, where the celebrated Dr. Gregory was his principal teacher in medicine, and where he still pursued the study of geology and natural history under Professor Jameson. He graduated M.D. on 13 Sept. 1812, with a dissertation, 'De Erysipelate Contagioso.' It was at that time his intention to graduate also at Cambridge, and accordingly he entered at Peterhouse, of which college his brother was a fellow; but after having kept two terms he found residence in college incompatible with his other pursuits, and left the university. Bright then returned to London, and became a pupil at the public dispensary under Dr. Bateman. But his love of travel again carried him away from London, and in 1814, when the continent became open to English travellers, he made a tour through Holland and Belgium to Berlin, where he spent some months, attending the hospital practice of Horn and Hufeland, besides profiting by the acquaintance of other eminent men of science. From Berlin he passed to Vienna, where he spent the winter of 1814-15.

What is known as the old Vienna School of Medicine was then in high repute, and Hildenbrand was the chief clinical professor; but Bright was also much impressed by the then celebrated John P. F. Frank. The political interest of the congress then sitting also engaged much of Bright's attention, and he refers to it in an account of his travels which he afterwards published. In the spring he extended his journey to Hungary, but returned in the summer in time to reach Brussels a fortnight after the battle of Waterloo. Here the immense military hospitals, crowded with sufferers after the great battle, supplied matter of professional interest which naturally delayed his homeward journey.

On 23 Dec. 1816 Bright was admitted a licentiate of the College of Physicians. Soon after he was made assistant physician to the London Fever Hospital, and filled the same office for a short time at the Public Dispensary. In the fever hospital he contracted a severe attack of fever which nearly cost him his life. Whether in consequence of this illness, or from other reasons, it is curious to note that Bright was in 1818 again induced to


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 brother of Richard Bright, M.D., the pathologist), by Elizabeth Anne, eldest daughter of Hugh Jones, a Liverpool banker. The family pedigree goes back to Nathaniel Bright of Worcester (1493-1564), whose grandson, Henry (1562-1626), was canon of Worcester, and purchased the manor of Brockbury in the parish of Colwall, Herefordshire, which still remains in the family. Henry Arthur Bright, who on his mother's side was related to the late Lord Houghton, was educated at Rugby, under Tait, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he qualified for his degree, but as a nonconformist was unable to make the subscription then required as a condition of graduation. When this restriction had been removed, Bright and his relative James Heywood were the first nonconformists to take the Cambridge degrees of B.A. (1857) and M.A. (1860). On leaving Cambridge Bright became a partner with his father in the shipping firm of Gibbs, Bright, & Co., by whose enterprise regular communication was established between this country and Australia. Bright was chairman of the sailors' home in Canning Street in 1867, and again in 1877; in the latter year the dispensary in the Custom House arcade was opened mainly through his exertions, and in August 1878 a second sailors' home, projected by him, was opened in Luton Street. In 1865 he was placed on the commission of peace for the borough, and in 1870 for the county. He was a Unitarian in religion, and from 1856 to 1860, by his counsels and by his pen, very much guided the policy of the 'Inquirer' newspaper towards conservative unitarianism. He wrote also in the 'Christian Reformer,' and contributed occasionally to the 'Christian Life,' established in 1876. But his catholicity of spirit may be seen in one of his most finished public speeches, at the Liverpool celebration of the Channing centennial (Centenary Commemoration, &c., 1880, p. 176 seq.) In Liverpool he held a place unique in his time, but akin to that filled by William Roscoe in a previous generation, as a centre of literary interests and literary friendships. He was a member of the Roxburghe Club and of the Philobiblon Society, as well as of the local historical and literary societies. His personal intercourse with literary men and women was very extended and sympathetic, and was sustained by a wide correspondence, in which his own part was characterised by a singular fertility and charm. In the world of letters he will be best remembered by the frequent allusions to him in the 'Note-books' and biography of Hawthorne, whose acquaintance he made at Concord in 1852. The friendship was renewed and deepened in the following year, when Hawthorne became consul at Liverpool. In 1854 they made a tour in Wales together, and till Hawthorne's death the intimacy of their intercourse was not relaxed. As a literary critic Bright possessed great judgment and much felicity of expression. He wrote for the 'Examiner,' and contributed regularly to the 'Athenæum' from 1871. His great literary success was the 'Year in a Lancashire Garden,' 1879, a delicious narrative, in which the truth of nature and the poetry of literature are happily blended. In 1882 his health, never robust, began seriously to give way. He tried the effect of a sojourn in the south of France, and a winter at Bournemouth, but returned to Liverpool in the spring of 1884, and died on 5 May at his residence, Ashfield, Knotty Ash. In 1861 he had married Mary Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Samuel H. Thompson of Thingwall Hall, and left three sons and two daughters. Of his publications the following are of most 'interest: 1. 'A Historical Sketch of Warrington Academy,' 1859, 8vo (reprinted from the 'Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire,' vol. xi.; chiefly drawn up from original papers in his possession). 2. 'The Brights of Colwall,' 1872, 8vo (reprinted from 'The Herald and Genealogist,' vol. vii.) 3. 'Some Account of the Glenriddell MSS. of Burns's Poems,' 1874, 4to (these manuscripts had been deposited in the Liverpool Athenæum Library by the widow of Wallace Currie, son of Burns's biographer; Bright first made them known, communicating the unpublished matter to the 'Athenæum' of 1 Aug. 1874). 4. 'Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby's Papers,' 1877, 4to (edited for the Roxburghe Club from papers long in the possession of the Bright family). 5. 'A Year in a Lancashire Garden,' 1879, 8vo (first published, month by month, in the 'Gardener's Chronicle' for 1874; fifty copies were privately printed in 1875; the published volume has considerable additions; there are two editions, same year). 6. 'The English Flower Garden,' 1881, 8vo (originally contributed as an article to the 'Quarterly Review, April 1880). 7. 'Unpublished Letters from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to the Rev. John Prior Estlin,' 1884, 4to (printed for the Philobiblon Society; the letters belong to Coleridge's Unitarian period, and include a previously unprinted poem). He contributed also a hymn ('To the Father through the Son') to 'Hymns, Chants, and Anthems,' 1858, edited by John Hamilton Thorn for Renshaw Street Unitarian chapel; and wrote (before 1858) 'The Lay of the Unitarian Church,' a spirited poem, originally contributed to a magazine ('Sabbath Leisure


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 set out on continental travel, and spent the greater part of a year in a tour through Germany, Italy, and France. In the year 1820, however, he finally settled down in London, in Bloomsbury Square; and being in the same year elected assistant-physician to Guy's Hospital, he commenced that course of arduous clinical study and indefatigable industry as a teacher which made his own reputation, and contributed much to raise that of the school in which he worked. In 1824 he was made full physician, and occupied this post till 1843, when, on resigning, he was made consulting physician.

Bright's energy and industry in his hospital work were very remarkable. For some years he is said to have spent six hours a day in the wards or post-mortem room, and he was an active lecturer in the medical school. In 1822 he gave a course on botany in relation to materia medica, which was continued for three years. In 1823 he began to give clinical lectures; in 1824 he took part in the medical lectures with Dr. Cholmley, and afterwards for many years shared the course with Dr. Addison. The outcome of their joint labours was the commencement of a text-book, 'Elements of the Practice of Medicine,' of which, however, only one volume appeared in 1839, and this was understood to be chiefly the composition of Addison.

In 1827 he published the first volume of a collection of 'Reports of Medical Cases,' intended to show the importance of morbid anatomy in the study of disease. In this he gave the first account of those researches on dropsy with which his name is inseparably connected, though his first observation on the subject was made, he says, in 1813. While the symptom dropsy, or watery swelling, had been known from the earliest period of medicine, it had been, shortly before Bright's time, shown by Blackall and Wells that it was in many cases connected with a special symptom, namely, that the urine was coagulable by heat, from the presence in it of albumen. But these two symptoms were not traced to their source, or connected with a diseased condition of any organ. Bright, by his investigations of the state of the body after death, ascertained that in all such cases a peculiar condition of the kidneys was present, and thus proved that the symptoms spoken of were really those of a disease of the kidneys. The explanation once given seems as simple as 'putting two and two together;' but the importance of the discovery is shown by the fact that no one before had suspected the kidney to be the organ implicated. It proved Bright not only to be an acute observer, but to possess the much rarer Bright faculty of synthesis, which makes an observer a discoverer. The truth and importance of his researches were soon generally recognised. In a short time Morbus Brightii, or Bright's Disease, was a familiar appellation over the whole of Europe, and will doubtless preserve the memory of Bright so long as the disease is known by a separate name. Next to Laennec's discoveries in chest diseases, this of Bright's is perhaps the most important special discovery made in medicine in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The volume of medical reports contained, besides those on dropsy, other observations, which would alone have made the book a very valuable one. It was followed in 1831 by a second volume, in two parts, containing reports on diseases of the brain and nervous system, full of observation of the highest value. Both volumes are illustrated with admirable plates, and taken together form one of the most important contributions to morbid anatomy ever made in this country by one person.

In 1836 appeared the first volume of the well-known 'Guy's Hospital Reports,' to which Bright was from the first a copious contributor. The first and second papers in the first volume, on the 'Treatment of Fever' and on 'Diseased Arteries of the Brain' respectively, are by him, as are also six other papers in the same volume, of which the most important are 'Cases and Observations illustrative of Renal Disease,' and 'A Tabular View of the Morbid Appearances in One Hundred Cases of Albuminous Urine.' The two last mentioned extend and support his great discovery by several additional developments, which subsequent research has done nothing but confirm. In the second volume are two papers by Bright one on 'Abdominal Tumours,' which was the first of an important series continued by two papers in the third volume of the 'Reports,' one in the fourth, and one in the fifth. This same fifth volume also contains an important paper entitled 'Observations on Renal Diseases: Memoir the Second.' In the first volume of the second series (1843) appears an account of observations made under the superintendence of Bright by Dr. Barlow and Dr. Owen Rees on patients with albuminous urine; but after this Bright's name does not appear in the reports.

Bright's professional success, apart from his hospital work, was steady, if not rapid. On 25 June 1832 he was promoted from being a licentiate to the fellowship of the College of Physicians, at that time a rare distinction. He was Gulstonian lecturer in 1833, and took as his subject 'The functions of the


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Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter I

Chapter I.
Buff and Blue.

Dear, faithful old colors! They never appeared more brave and trusty than in Major Skerrett’s coat, — a coat of 1777.

“White at the seams of the blue, soiled at the edges of the buff,” said the Major, inspecting himself in a triangular bit of looking-glass. “I must have a new one, if I can find a tailor who will take an order on the Goddess of Liberty in pay. Good morning, Mrs. Birdsell.”

This salutation he gave as he passed out of the little house in Fishkill where he had been quartered last night.

“Good mornin’, Sir,” returned Mrs. Birdsell, rushing out of her kitchen, with a rolling-pin in hand, and leaving her pie-crust flat on its back, all dotted with dabs of butter, as an ermine cape is with little black tails.

She looked after him, as he stepped out into the village street. Her first emotion was feminine admiration, — her second, feminine curiosity.

“What a beautiful young man!” she said to her respectable self. “Sech legs! Sech hair, — jest the color of ripe chesnut burrs, — only I don’t like that streak of it on his upper lip. I’ve olluz understood from Deacons that the baird of a man cum in with Adam’s fall and waz to be shaved off. Naow I’d give a hul pie to know what Gineral Washington’s sent him on here for. It’s the greatest kind of a pity he didn’t come a few days before. That old granny, Gineral Putnam, wouldn’t hev let Sirr Henery Clinton grab them forts down to the Highlands, if he’d hed sech a young man as this to look arter him and spry him up.”

Before he continued his walk, Major Skerrett paused a moment for a long hearty draught of new October, — new American, a finer tipple than old English October.

Finer and cheaper! In fact it was on free tap.

No cask to bore. No spigot to turn. No pewter pot to fill. Major Skerrett had but to open his mouth and breathe. He inhaled, and he had swallowed Science knows how many quarts of that mellow golden nectar, the air of an American October morning. It was the perfection of potables, — as much so then in 1777, as it is now in 1860.

“I have seen the lands of many men, and drained their taps,” soliloquized the Major, parodying the Odyssey; “but never, in the bottle or out of the bottle, tasted I such divine stuff as this. O lilies and roses, what a bouquet! O peaches and pippins, what a flavor! O hickory-nuts and chinkapins, what an aroma! More, Hebe, more! Let me swig! — forgive the word! But one drinks pints; and I want gallons, puncheons.”

While he is indulging in this harmless debauch, let Mrs. Birdsell’s question, “What did General Washington send him on for?” be answered.

“Peter,” said Washington familiarly to Major Skerrett, his aide-de-camp, “I have written peremptorily several times to General Putnam to send me reinforcements. They do not come.”

The chief was evidently somewhat in the dumps there at his camp, near Pennibecker’s Mill, on the Perkiomy Creek, twenty miles from Philadelphia, at the end of September, 1777.

“I suppose,” the Major suggested, “that Putnam cannot get out of his head his idle scheme for the recapture of New York, — that ‘suicidal parade’ as Aleck Hamilton calls it.”

“I must have the men. Our miserable business of the Brandywine must be done over.”

“Yes; Sir William Howe is bored enough in Philadelphia by this time. Everybody always is there. It would be only the courtesy of war to challenge him out, and then beat him away to jollier quarters.”

“I do not like to challenge him unless I have a couple of thousand more men. You must take a little ride, Major, up to Old Put at Peekskill, and see that they start.”

“The soldier obeys. But he sighs that he may miss a battle or an adventure.”

“Adventures sprout under the heels of knights-errant like you, Peter. Peekskill is not many miles away from the spot of one of my young romances.”

The noble old boy paused an instant, sentimental with the recollection of handsome Mary Phillipse and nineteen years ago.

“The men will come like drawing teeth,” he resumed. “Old Put is — what was that Latin phrase you used about him to Lafayette the other day?”

“Tenax propositi,” Skerrett replied.

“Anglice, obstinate as a mule. Ah, Skerrett! we poor land-surveyors, that had to lug levels and compasses through the woods, know little Latin and less Greek. But there was more of your quotation, to express the valuable side of Putnam’s character.”

“Nec vultus instantis tyranni, Mente quatit solida,” quoted the Major; and then translated impromptu, “Never a scowl, o’er tyrant’s jowl, His stiff old heart can shake.”

Washington laughed. Skerrett laughed louder. He was at that ebullient age when life is letting off its overcharge of laughter. Young fellows at that period are a bore or an exhilaration; — a bore, to say the least, if their animal spirits are brutal spirits, — no bore, even if not quite the ripest company, provided their glee does not degenerate into uproar.

“I don’t know what I should do, Peter, in these dark times, without your irrepressible good spirits,” said the chief. “My boys — you and Hamilton and Lafayette and Harry Lee — keep me up. I get tired to death of the despondencies and prejudices and jealousies of some of these old women in breeches who wear swords or cast votes.”

“Perhaps you cannot spare me then to go to Peekskill,” the Major said, slyly.

His Country’s Father smiled. “Be off, my boy; but don’t stay too long. Your head will be worth more to Old Put than a regiment. He’s growing old. He shows the effects of tough campaigning in his youth. Besides, keeping a tavern was not the best business for a man of his convivial habits.”

“We youngsters found that out at the siege of Boston, when you, General, were keeping your head cool on baked apples and milk.”

“I ate ’em because I liked ’em, my boy. My head keeps itself cool. By the way, you will be able to help General Putnam with that hot-tempered La Radière. The old gentleman never can forget how the Frenchmen and their Indians mangled him in Canada in ’58.”

“He never can let anybody else forget it. I would give odds that he’ll offer to tell that story before I’ve been with him fifteen minutes.”

“Well, good bye! Hurry on the regulars! Let him call in the militia in their places! Tell him he must hold the Highlands! If he cannot keep Sir Henry Clinton back until Gates takes Jack Burgoyne, you and I, Peter, will have to paint ourselves vermilion and join the Tuscaroras.”

After such a talk with our chief, — who was not the stilted prig that modern muffs have made him, — Major Skerrett departed on his mission. He left head-quarters a few days before that hit-and-miss battle of Germantown.

Skerrett was young and a hard rider. He lamed his horse the first day. He lost time in getting another. It was the evening of October eighth, when, as he approached the North River to cross to Peekskill, the country people warned him back with the news that on the sixth Sir Henry Clinton had taken the Highland forts, and Putnam had run away to Fishkill.

“Black news!” thought Skerrett. “General Washington will turn Tuscarora now, if ever.”

Skerrett made a circuit northward, crossed the Hudson at Newburgh, and reported to General Putnam, October 9, sunset, at the Van Wyck farm-house, on the plain, half a mile north of the Fishkill Mountains. The heights rose in front, a rampart a thousand feet high.

Old Put limped out to meet Washington’s aide-de-camp. He was a battered veteran, lame with a fractured thigh, stiff with coming paralysis and now despondent after recent blunders.

“Dusky times, Skerrett,” says he, forlornly. “I suppose the Chief sent you for men. He’s a cannibal after human flesh. But don’t worry me to-night. To-morrow we’re to have a Council of War, and I’ll see what can be done. I suppose you know what’s happened.”

“Yes, — generally.”

“Well; it’s all clear for Clinton to go up and join that mountebank, Jack Burgoyne. I might just as well go home, and set up tahvern again to Pomfret for anything I can do here. God save the King is going to make Yankee Doodle sing small from yesterday on. It was all the fault of that cursed fog, — we had a fog, thick as mush, all day on the sixth. I believe them British ships brought it with ’em in bags, from the Channel. They chocked up the river with their fog, and while I was waitin’ for ’em over to Peekskill, they crep across and took the forts. Darn it all!”

Putnam paused to take an indignant breath. Skerrett smiled at the old hero’s manner. When he was excited, the Yankeeisms of his youth came back to him. His lisp also grew more decided. Nobody knows whether the lisp was natural, or artificial, and caused by a jaw-breaker with the butt of a musket he got from an uncivil Gaul at Fort Ti in ’58. His Yankeeisms, his lisp, his drollery, his muddy schemes, made the jolly old boy the chief comic character of our early Revolutionary days.

“How Jack Burgoyne will stick out that great under-lip of his, — the ugly pelican!” continued old Put, “when he hears of this. He’ll stop fightin’, while he goes at his proper trade, and writes a farce with a Yankee in it, who’ll never say anything but, ‘I veouw! By dollars, we’re chawed up!’”

“Don’t you remember, General,” says Skerrett, “how Bunker Hill interrupted the acting of a farce of his? Perhaps Gates will make him pout his lip, as he did when he saw you pointing the old mortar Congress at him and Boston from Prospect Hill. Don’t you recollect? We saw him with a spy-glass, and you said he looked like a pelican with a mullet in his pouch. By the way, where did you ever see pelicans?”

“When I was down to take Cuba in ’62, and we didn’t take it. I’ll tell you the story when I feel brighter. We were wrecked, and had not a thing but pelicans to eat for two days, — and fishy grub they are!”

“Well, we must not despair,” says Skerrett, cheerily, seeing that the old brave began to brighten.

“Dethpair?” lisped Putnam, “who’s a goin’ to despair? I tell you, my boy, you’ll eat a Connecticut punkin-pie with me, yet, in peace and Pomfret. I wish we had one now, for supper.”

“There’s raw material enough about,” Skerrett said, glancing at the piles of that pomaceous berry which wallowed among the corn shocks and smiled at the sugary sunset.

“Yes; but this is York State, and punkin-pies off their native Connecticut soil are always a mushy mess, or else tough as buckskin. Never mind, my boy, we’ll sit every man under his own corn-stalk, on his own squash, and whistle Yankee Doodle and call it macaroni, yet. It don’t look half so dark to me now as it did in the Ticonderogy times. Did I ever tell you the story how the Frenchmen and their cussed Indians mauled me there?”

“It’s coming. I knew it would,” thought Peter, at the beginning of this sentence, “and I did not bring any cotton to plug my ears!”

“Well,” continued Put, without waiting for his companion’s answer, “I shall have to tell my tale another time, for here comes my orderly, with papers to sign. You remember Sergeant Lincoln, don’t you, Skerrett?”

“I should not remember much in this world, if he had not saved my life and my memory for me. Shall I tell you my story, short? Scene I. Bunker Hill. A British beggar with a baggonet makes a point at Peter Skerrett’s rebel buttons on his left breast. Rebel Sergeant Lincoln twigs, describes a circle with a musket’s butt. Scene II. Bunker Hill. A British beggar on his back sees stars and points upward with his baggonet at those brass buttons on the blue sky. In the distance two pairs of heels are seen, — these,” says Peter, lifting his own, “and yours, Sergeant Lincoln. And that’s what I call a model story.”

“Ne quid nimis, certainly. Not a word to spare, Sir,” says the Sergeant, taking Peter’s proffered hand.

He was a slender, quiet, elderly man. Perhaps prematurely aged by care or campaigning or a wound, rather than old. He handed his papers to the General, and withdrew.

“I guess I’ve got the only orderly in the Continental Army that can talk Latin,” says Put, proud as if this possession made a Julius Caesar of himself. “Lincoln must have been a school-master before he ’listed.”

“There’s no flavor of birch about him,” Skerrett rejoined. “Perhaps he stepped out of a pulpit to take the sword.”

“He don’t handle the sword very kindly. He’s brave enough.”

“But not bloody,” interjected Peter.

“No. There’s men enough that can squint along a barrel, and drop a redcoat, and sing out, ‘Hooray! another bully gone!’ — but not many, like my orderly, that can tell you why a redcoat has got to be a bully, and why we’re doing our duty to God and man by a droppin’ on ’em. I tell you, he in the ranks to keep up the men’s sperits is wuth more than generals I could name with big appleettes on their backs.”

“Is that the reason why he stays in the ranks, and does not ask for epaulettes?”

“He might have had them long ago; but he’s shy of standing up for himself. I guess he’s some time or other ben wownded in his mind, and all the impudence has run out at the wownd.”

“Liberty, preserve me from such phlebotomy!” devoutly ejaculated Peter. “But has the Sergeant been with you all this time?”

“With my division. But I did not have him with me in Westchester. I stationed him here to look after the stores, and put recruits through the motions. Now, Major, I must look at these papers. Come to the Council of War to-morrow, and give us a good word. We shall want all we can get. The news gets worse and worse. This very morning General Tryon — spiteful dog — has been marauding this side of Peekskill, and burning up a poor devil of a village at the lower edge of the Highlands.”

“Arson is shabby warfare,” said Peter, taking leave.

title: Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter I


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Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter II

Chapter II.
It was in the Skerrett blood to come out red at a pinch.

“Things do look a little dusky for the good cause,” thought Skerrett, as, wearing his buff and blue coat, — far too dull a coat for so bright a fellow, — he stood drinking October next morning, as we have seen him, before Mrs. Birdsell’s cottage.

“The Liberty-tree is a little nipped,” he continued. “I suppose all the worm-eaten people will drop off now. Let ’em go! and be food for pigs! We sound chestnuts will stick to the boughs, and wear our burrs till Thanksgiving.

“Fine figure that! quite poetic! Who wouldn’t be a poet in such a poem of a morning? O Lucullus, you base old glutton, with your feasts and your emetics! see here, how I breathe and blow, breathe and blow, — that’s a dodge you were not up to!

“Hooray! now I’m full of gold air and go-ahead spirits.”

He marched off, — the gallant, buoyant young brave. No finer figure of a Rebel walked the Continental soil unhung. On his nut-brown face his blonde moustache lay lovingly curling.

The Marquis de Chastellux, the chief, if not the only, authority on the Revolutionary moustache, does not specify Skerrett’s in his “Travels in America.” The distinction might have been invidious. But it was understood that, take it “by and large,” color and curl, Skerrett’s was the Moustache (with a big M) of its era. Many brother officers shaved in despair when they beheld it. Hence, perhaps, the number of shorn lips in the portraits of our heroes of that time.

“Something is going to happen to-day,” thought the Major. “I bubble. I shall boil over, and make a fool of myself before night. I am in that ridiculous mood when a man loves his neighbor as himself, believes in success, wants to tilt at windmills. O October! you have intoxicated me! I challenge the world. Hold me, somebody, or I shall jump over the Highlands and take Sir Henry Clinton by the hair, then up to Saratoga and pick up Jack Burgoyne, knock their pates together, and fling them over the Atlantic.”

A man’s legs gallop when his blood and spirits are boiling after such a fashion. It did not take the Major any considerable portion of eternity to measure off the furlongs of cultivated plain between Fishkill village and Putnam’s head-quarters. In fact, he had need to despatch. He had slept late after his journey. The Council would be assembled, and already muddling their brains over the situation.

The Van Wyck farm-house stood, and still stands, with its flank to the road and its front to the Highlands.

“Not much clank and pomp and pageantry in this army of Israel Putnam,” thought Skerrett. “No tents! Men are barracked in barns, I suppose, or sleep under corn-stalks, with pumpkins for pillows. No sentinels! But probably every man keeps his eyes peeled and his ears pricked up for the tramp of British brogans or Hessian boots on the soil.”

There was, however, a sentry standing at the unhinged gate in the decimated paling of the farm-yard.

He turned his back, and paced to the end of his beat, as Major Skerrett approached.

“Aha!” thought the latter, “Jierck Dewitt is as quick-sighted as ever. He wants to dodge me. Poor fellow! Bottle has got him again, I fear. Why can’t man be satisfied with atmosphere, and cut alcohol?”

Skerrett entered the gate, and hailed, “Jierck!”

The sentinel turned and saluted.

A clear case of Bottle! The Colony of Jamaica was a more important ally to Great Britain in the Revolution than is generally known. Ah! if people would only take their rum latent in its molasses, and pour out their undistilled toddies on their buckwheat cakes!

“Jierck,” said the Major kindly, “you promised me you would not touch it.”

“So I did,” says the man, inflicting on himself the capital punishment of hanging his head; “and I kep stiff as the Lord Chancellor, till I got back home to Peekskill below here. There I found my wife had gone wrong.”

The poor fellow choked. A bad wife is a black dose.

“We grew up together, sir, on the Brothertoft Manor lands. She was a Bilsby, one of the old families, — as brisk and bright a gal as ever stepped. We were married, and travelled just right, she alongside of me, and I alongside of her, pullin’ well and keepin’ everything drawin’. Well, when I shouldered arms, Lady Brothertoft — that’s the Patroon’s widow — got my wife to go down to York and be her maid. It was lettin’ down for Squire Dewitt’s son’s wife to eat in anybody’s kitchen. But that’s nothing. The harm is that Lady Brothertoft’s house is unlucky. Women don’t go into it and stay straight. There’s too much red in the parlors, — too many redcoats round. They say that’s why the Patroon cleared out, and got himself killed, if he is killed. That’s what spoilt my wife.”

Skerrett’s supernatural spirits sank a little at this. There was an undeveloped true lover in the young man, — developed enough to show him what misery may come from such a wrong as Jierck’s.

“That’s why I took to rum,” continued the man, dismally. “When my company was ordered to join Old Put at Peekskill, and I saw all the old places where my wife and I used to do our courtin’, and saw my sister Kate smilin’ at her sweetheart and makin’ comforters for him, I couldn’t stand it. They all told me to keep away from the woman. But I didn’t quite believe it, you know. So I went down to the Manor-House and saw her. She didn’t dare to look me in the face. That had to be drownded somehow. I drownded it in rum. I can’t get drunk like a beast, — that isn’t into me, — but I haven’t been sober one hour since until we came up here to Fishkill.”

“Stop it now, Jierck, and try to forget.”

“What’s the use?”

“The use is this. We were all proud of you, as a crack man. We cannot spare you. You know as well as I do what we are fighting for. The Cause cannot spare you. Stand to your guns now, like a man, against King George and Old Jamaica.”

The sentinel was manned by these hearty words and tones.

“I’ll try,” said he, “to please you, Major Skerrett.”

Up went his head and his courage.

“That’s right,” says the Major; “and we’ll have a fling at the enemy together before I go, and spike a gun for him.”

“I must take another sip of October, after that,” thought Skerrett, as he walked on toward the farm-house.

He halted on the steps, and inspected the scene.

October was quite as gorgeous to see, as it was glorious to tipple. It was in the Skerrett blood to love color.

“Color! O blazes, what a conflagration of a landscape!” thought the Major; “O rainbows, what delicious blending! V.I.B.G.Y.0.R. Violet hills far away, indigo zenith, blue sky on the hill-tops, green pastures, yellow elms, chestnuts, and ashes, orange pumpkins, red maples! Flames! Rainbows! Splendors! Take my blood, O my dear country! and cheap, too, for such a pageant!”

There were two parts to the scene he was regarding with this exhilaration, — a flat part and an upright part. All around was a great scope of fertile plain, gerrymandered into farms. Half a mile away in front, the sudden mountains set up their backs to show their many-colored gaberdines, crimson, purple, and gold at the bottom flounce, belted with different shades of the same in regular gradation above, and sprigged all over with pines and cedars, green as May.

The morning sun winked at the Major over the summits, saying, as plain as a wink can speak, “Beat this, my Skerrett, in any clime, on any continent, if you can!”

The Major, with both his eyes, blinked back ecstatically, “It can’t be beat! O Sol! It can’t be beat!”

When he opened his dazzled eyes, and glanced again about him, he seemed to see thousands of little suns rollicking over the fields, and congeries of suns piling themselves like golden bombs here and there. They were not suns, but pumpkins, rollicking in the furrows, and every congeries was a heap of the same, putting their plump cheeks together and playing “sugar my neighbor.”

“We must keep war out of this,” thought the Major. “Nerve my good right arm, Liberty, to protect this pie-patch!”

His earnest prayer was disturbed by the sound of voices close at hand.

Immediately Sergeant Lincoln appeared at the corner of the house. A wondrously wiggy negro accompanied him.

“Make way for the Lord Chancellor!” says Skerrett to himself, as this gray-headed, dusky dignitary loomed up. “If I am ever elected Judge, I shall take that old fellow’s scalp for a wig. And his manners, too! He seems to be laying down the law to the Sergeant, so flat that it will never stir again. Mysterious fellow, this orderly who quotes Latin! I’d like to solve him, and offer him sympathy, if he has had the ‘wownd’ old Put talks of. I owe him a cure for saving me from a kill.”

The two passed by, in eager conversation. Skerrett turned, and entered the farm-house, where the officers of Putnam’s army were sighing over blunders past, and elaborating schemes for the future.

Peter’s seedy coat was freshness and elegance compared to the scarecrow uniforms it now encountered. Our Revolutionary officers were braves at heart, but mostly Guys in costume.

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42 The first circumstance that alarmed me was a part of my nest scattered on the ground just at the entrance of my habitation; I then perceived a large opening in the wall, where before there was only room for myself to pass. I stopped with a beating heart, in hopes of hearing the chirpings of my beloved family, but all was silent. I then resolved to enter: but what was my consternation when I found that the nest which my dear mate and I had with so much labour built, and the dear little ones who were the joy of our lives, were stolen away! nay, I did not know but the tender mother also was taken. I rushed out of the place distracted with apprehensions for the miseries they might endure, and lamenting my weakness, which rendered me incapable of rescuing them. I was ready to tear off my own feathers with vexation; but recollecting that my dear mate might in all probability have escaped, I resolved to go in search of her.

"As I was flying along I saw three boys, whose appearance was far from disagreeable; one of them held in his hand my nest of young ones, which he eyed with cruel delight, while his companions seemed to share his joy. The dear little creatures, insensible of their fate (for they were newly hatched), opened their mouths, expecting to be fed by me or their

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Edwin Brothertoft/Part II Chapter III

Chapter III.
“Ah mon camarade! ma belle Moustache! My Petare!” cried Colonel La Radière, as Skerrett entered. “Soyez le bienvenu!”

The ardent Parisian officer of engineers rushed forward, and embraced his young friend with effusion.

“Glad to see you, Peter!” says Captain Livingston, a dry fellow, son of the Patroon. “Now, Radière, there’s a second man who talks French, to fire back your sacrebleus. Moi et Anthony’s Nose sommes fatigués à vous faire echo.”

“Come, boys,” says old Put, “talk Continental!”

The other officers in turn made Skerrett welcome, and the business of brewing blunders went on.

Does any one want a historic account of that Council of War, and what it did not do?

The want is easily supplied. Rap for the spirit of Colonel Humphreys, then late of Derby, Connecticut, late of Yale College, late tutor at Phillipse-Manor. He was Putnam’s aide, and wrote his biography. He was an inexorable poetaster. He was afterwards pompous gold-stick to Mr. President Washington. He went as Plenipo to Madrid, returned, became a model of deportment, and was known to his countrymen as the Ambassador from Derby.

(Raps are heard. Enter the Ghost of Humphreys.

“Now then, Ghost, talk short and sharp, not, as you used to, — to borrow two favorite words of yours, — sesquipedalian and stentorophonic! Tell us what was done at that council, and be spry about it!”

“Young Sir, I shall report your impertinence to George Washington and Christopher Columbus in Elysium. Christopher will say, ‘Founder the continent!’ George will say, ‘Perish the country!’ if its youth have drawn in and absorbed their bump of reverence.”

“O, belay that, old boy! Tell us what you did at the Council!”

“Nothing, your nineteenth-century ship!” responds Ghost, quelled and humble. “We pondered, and propounded, and finally concluded to do nothing, and let the enemy make the next move.”

“Which he proceeded to do by sending up General Vaughan to burn Kingston. That’s enough! Avaunt, Ghost!”

Exit Humphreys to tell Chris and George that America is going to the dogs.)

“Well,” said Putnam at last, “we’ve discussed and discussed, and I don’t see that there’s any way of getting a crack at the enemy, unless one of you boys wants to swim down the river, with a torch in his teeth, and set one of those frigates below the Highlands on fire. Who speaks?”

“Cold weather for swimming!” says Livingston.

“Well, boys, you must contrive something to keep our spirits up,” Putnam resumed. “When I was up to Fort Ti in ’58, and fighting was dull, we used to go out alone and bushwhack for a private particular Indian.”

“Perhaps I can offer a suggestion,” said Major Scrammel, Putnam’s other aide, re-entering the room after a brief absence.

Scrammel was a handsomish man with a baddish face. A man with his cut of jib and shape of beak hardly ever weathers the lee shore of perdition. For want of a moustache to twirl, he had a trick of pulling his nose. Perhaps he was training that feature for tweaks to come.

“Blaze away, Scrammel!” said his General; “you always have some ambush or other in your head.”

“Lady Brothertoft’s nigger, the butler, is up here with the latest news from below. I have just been out to speak to him.”

“What, Scrammel!” says Livingston, sotto voce. “A billet-doux from the fair Lucy?”

“La plus belle personne en Amerique!” Radière sighs.

“You don’t except the mother?” Livingston inquired; “that mature, magnificent Amazon!”

“No,” replied the Frenchman, laboriously building, brick by brick, a Gallo-American sentence. “The mother of the daughtare is too much in the Ladie Macquebeth. I figure to myself a poniard, enormous sharpe, in her fine ouhite hand, and at my heart. I seem to see her poot ze — pardon! the poison in the basin — the bowl — the gobbelit. I say, ‘Radière, care thyself! It is a dame who knows to stab.’ Mais, Mees Lucie! Ah, c’est autre chose!”

“Come, Scrammel!” Putnam said, impatiently; “we are waiting for your news.”

“The nigger stole away on some business of his own, which he is mysterious about; but he tells me that his mistress consoled herself at once for our retirement from Peekskill after we lost the forts. She had some of her friends from the British ships and Clinton’s army at her house as soon as we were gone.”

“I believe she is as dangerous a Tory as lives in all Westchester,” said the General. “She ought to be put in security.”

“What! after all those dinners of hers we have eaten, General?” says Livingston.

“I wish the dinners were out of me, and had never been in me,” Old Put rejoined, sheepishly. “I’m afraid we used to talk too much after her Madeira.”

The Council was evidently of that opinion, as a look whisking about the circle testified.

A very significant look, with a great basis of facts behind it. Suppose we dig into the brain of one of these officers, — say that keen Livingston’s, — and unearth a few facts about Mrs. Brothertoft, as she is at the beginning of Part II. of this history.

Now, then, off with Livingston’s scalp, and the top of his skull! and here we go rummaging among the convolutions of his brain for impressions branded, We strike a lead. We find a pocket. How compact this brain stows its thoughts! It must, for it has the millions on millions of a lifetime to contain. We have read of a thousand leagues of lace packed into a nut-shell. We have seen the Declaration of Independence photographed within the periphery of a picayune. Here’s closer stowage, — a packet of thoughts of actual material dimensions, but so infinitesimal that we shall have to bring a microscope to bear before we can apply the micrometer. Come, Sirius, nearest neighbor among the suns of eternity, pour thy beams through our lens and magnify this record! Thanks, Sirius! Quite plain now! That little black point has taken length and breadth, and here’s the whole damnation in large pica, — Heaven save us from the like!

Livingston Junior on Mrs. Brothertoft. Abstract of Record: —

“By scalps and tomahawks, what a splendid virago! She must be, this summer of 1777, some thirty-five or thirty-six, and in her primest prime. Heart’s as black as her hair, some say. Crushed her husband’s spirit, and he took himself off to kingdom come. Ambitious? I should think so. Tory, and peaches to the enemy? Of course. She uses her womanhood as a blind, and her beauty as a snare. Very well for her to say, ‘My business is to protect my property, and establish my daughter. Women don’t understand politics, and hate bloodshed.’ Bah! she understands her kind of politics, like a Catherine de’ Medici. Bloodshed! She could stab a man and see him writhe. But she gives capital dinners, — more like England than any others in America. Poor old Put, honest, frank, simple-hearted fellow! look at him on the sofa there with her, and a pint too much of her Madeira under his belt! She knows just how near to let his blue sleeve and buff cuff come to that shoulder of hers. He’ll tell all his plans to her, she’ll whisper ’em to a little bird, and pounce! one of these fine days the redcoats will be upon us. Upon us and on her sofa! Yes, and a good many inches nearer than Old Put is allowed to sit. For they do whisper scandal about Madam. When she dropped Julia Peartree Smith, the old tabby talked as old cats always talk about their ex-friends. Scandal! Yes, by the acre; but it’s splendid to see how she walks right over it. And several of us fine fellows will not hear or speak scandal of a house where that lovely Lucy lives, — the sweet, pure, innocent angel. They say the mother means to trade her off to a redcoat as soon as she can find one to suit. Mamma wants a son-in-law who will give her, scandal and all, a footing among stars and garters in England, when she has seen her estates safe through the war. It’s too bad. I’d go down and kidnap that guileless, trustful victim myself, if I wasn’t so desperately lazy. There’s Scrammel too, — he would play one of his meanest tricks to get her. Scrammel was almost the only one of us boys in buff and blue that was not taboo from Miss Lucy’s side. Mamma was not over cordial to our color unless it was buttoned over breasts that held secrets. Her black eyes very likely saw scoundrel in Scrammel’s face, and used him. Poor Lucy! It looks dark for her. And yet her love will never let her see what her mother is.”

Enough, Livingston! Thanks for this bit of character! Here’s your dot of a record, labelled “Brothertoft, Mrs.”! Now trepan your self with your own skull, clap your scalp back again on your sinciput, and listen to what Scrammel is saying!

“The old nigger tells me,” he was saying, “that Sir Henry Clinton and his Adjutant spent the night after Forts Clinton and Montgomery were taken quietly at Brothertoft Manor-House.”

“Well,” said the General, “then they had a better night than we had, running away through the Highlands. We can’t protect our friends. If the enemy have only made themselves welcome at the Manor-House, instead of burning it for its hospitality to us, Madam is lucky.”

“She seems to have made her new guests welcome. The nigger thinks she knew they were coming.”

“By George! — by Congress! I mean,” says Put, wincing, “if I ever get back to Peekskill —”

“She seems to think, according to her butler’s story, that you are never to come back,” Scrammel struck in.

“If that is all the news you have to tell, by way of keeping our spirits up, you might as well have been silent, sir!” growls Putnam.

“It’s not all,” Scrammel resumed. “The nigger thinks they are getting up some new expedition. But whether they do or not, the adjutant don’t go. He is to stay some days at the Manor.”

“Lord Rawdon, isn’t it?” Put asked. Well, he is a gentleman and a fine fellow, — not one of those arrogant, insolent dogs that rile us so.”

“Not Rawdon. He was to be. But Major Kerr got the appointment by family influence.”

“Kurr! c’est chien, n’est ce pas?” whispered Radière to Livingston.

“Yes,” returned the Captain; “and this Kerr is a sad dog. He bit Scrammel once badly at cards in New York, before the war. Scrammel don’t forgive. He hates Kerr, and means to bite back. Hear him snarl now!”

“The Honorable Major Kerr,” Scrammel continued, “third son of the Earl of Bendigh, Adjutant-General to Clinton’s forces, a fellow who hates us and abuses us and maltreats our prisoners, but an officer of importance, is staying and to stay several days, the only guest, at Brothertoft Manor-House. Let me see; it can’t be more than twenty miles away.”

He marked his words, and glanced about the circle. His eyes rested upon Livingston last.

“Oho!” says that gentleman. “I begin to comprehend. You mean to use the Brothertoft major-domo as Colonel Barton did his man Prince at Newport. Woolly-head’s skull is to butt through Kerr’s bedroom door, at dead of night. Then, enter Scrammel, puts a pistol to his captive’s temple and marches him off to Fishkill. Bravo! Belle ideé, n’est ce pas, mon Colonel?”

“Magnifique!” rejoined Radière. “I felicit thee of it, my Scaramelle.”

“Now, boys!” says Put, “this begins to sound like business. We need some important fellow, like Kerr, taken prisoner and brought here, to keep our spirits up. The thing’s easy enough and safe enough. If I was twenty years younger, general or no general, I’d make a dash to cut him out. Who volunteers to capture the Adjutant?”

“I remember myself,” said Radière, gravely, “of a billet, very short, very sharp, which our Chief wrote to Sir Clinton, lately. It was of one Edmund Palmer, taken — so this billet said — as one espy, condemned as one espy, and hangged as espy. Sir Clinton waits to answer that little billet. But I do not wish to read in his response the name of one of my young friends, taken as espy and hang-ged.”

“Why does not Scrammel execute Scrammel’s plan?” asked Livingston.

“I cannot be spared,” the aide-de-camp responded.

“O yes! never mind me!” cried the General. “Skerrett, here, can fill your place. Or Humphreys can stop writing doggerel and do double duty.”

Scrammel evidently was not eager to leave a vacancy, or to gag his brother aide-de-camp’s muse.

“Why don’t you volunteer yourself, Livingston?” he said. “You know the country and the house, and seemed to be well up in the method of Prescott’s capture at Newport.”

“I have not my reputation to make,” said the other, haughtily. Indeed, his reckless pluck was well known. “But I’m desperately lazy,” which was equally a notorious fact.

No other spoke, and presently all eyes were making focus upon that blonde Moustache, which the Marquis de Chastellux does not, and these pages do, endow with a big M, and make historic.

It was only the other day that the wearer of that decoration had become the hero of a famous ballad, beginning, —

“’T was night, rain poured; when British blades, In number twelve or more, As they sat tippling apple-jack, Heard some one at the door.

“‘Arise,’ he cried, — ’t was Skerrett spoke,— ‘And trudge, or will or nill, Twelve miles to General Washington, At Pennibecker’s Mill.’”

Then the ballad went on to state, in stanzas many and melodious, how it happened that the “blades” of his Majesty’s great knife, the Army, were sheathed in a carouse, at an outpost near Philadelphia, without sentries. Apple-jack, too, — why they condescended to apple-jack, — that required explanation: “And apple-jack, that tipple base, Why did these heroes drain? O, where were nobler taps that night, — Port, sherry, and champagne?” Then the forced march of the unlucky captives was depicted: “It rained. The red coats on their backs Their skins did purple, blue; The powder on their heads grew paste; Each toe its boot wore through.” The poem closed with Washington’s verdict on the exploit: “Skerrett, my lad, thou art a Trump, The ace of all the pack; Come into Pennibecker’s Mill, And share my apple-jack!”

Hero once, hero always! When a. man has fairly compromised himself to heroism, there is no let-up for him. The world looks to him at once, when it wants its “deus ex machina.”

In the present quandary, all eyes turned to Peter Skerrett, Captor of Captives and Washington’s Ace of Trumps.

“General,” said he, “I seem to be the only unattached officer present. Nothing can be done now about my mission. I do not love to be idle. Allow me to volunteer in this service, if you think it important.”

Old Put began to look grave. “You risk your life. If they catch you in their lines, it is hanging business.”

“I knew this morning,” thought the Major, “that I should make a fool of myself before night. I have!”

“No danger, General!” he said aloud. “I’ve got the knack of this work. I like it better than the decapitation part of my trade.”

“Ah, Skerrett!” Livingston says, “that ballad will be the death of you. You will be adding Fitte after Fitte, until you get yourself discomfitted at last. Pun!”

Mark this! It was the Continental Pun at its point of development reached one year after the Declaration of Independence. O let us be joyful! Let us cry aloud with joy at our progress since. Puns like the above are now deemed senile, and tolerated only in the weekly newspapers.

No doggerel had been written about Scrammel. No lyric named him hero. “Your friend seems to have a taste for the office of kidnapper,” he caitiffly sneered to Livingston, under cover of his own hand, which tweaked the Scrammel nose as he spoke.

“He has a taste for doing what no one else dares,” rejoined the other. “Your nose is safe from him, even if he overhears you. I say, Skerrett, I don’t feel so lazy as I did. Take me with you. I know this country by leagues and by inches.”

“No, Harry; General Putnam cannot spare his Punster. One officer is enough. I shall take Jierck Dewitt for my aide-de-camp. He knows the Brothertoft-Manor country.”

“Empty Jierck of rum, cork him and green-seal him, mouth and nose, and there cannot be a better man.”

“Since you will go, you must,” says Put. “By the way, if you want a stanch, steady man, take Sergeant Lincoln. He somehow knows this country as if he had crept over it from the cradle. Where is that negro of Lady Brothertoft’s, Scrammel?”

“I left him talking to Lincoln. Major Skerrett will easily find him.”

“He was my wiggy friend,” thought Skerrett.

“Don’t fail to bag Kerr,” says Livingston. “He wants a Yankee education, — so does all England.”

“Yes,” says Radière, “we must have these Kurr at school. We must teach to them civility through our noses of rebels. We must flogge them with roddes from the Liberté-Tree. They shall partake our pork and bean. Yankee Doodle shall play itself to them on our two whistles and a tambour. Go, my Skerrett! Liberty despatch thee! Be the good, lucky boy!”

All the officers gave him Good speed! and Humphreys, Poetaster-General, began to bang the two lobes of his brain together, like a pair of cymbals, to strike out rhymes in advance for a pæan on the conquering hero’s return.

“You won’t stay to dinner,” cries Put. “There’s corned beef and apple-sauce, and a York State buckskin pumpkin-pie, — I wish it was a Connecticut one!”

“Yes,” says Livingston, “and I watched the cook this morning coursing that dumb rooster of yours, General, until he breathed his last.”

“Ah, my Skerrett!” sighed Radière. “Will posterity appreciate our sacrifices? Will they remember themselves — these oblivious posterity — of the Frenchmen who abandoned the cuisines of Paris to feed upon the swine and the bean a discretion, to swallow the mush sans melasse, to drink the Appel Jacque? Will they build the marble mausoleum, inscribed, ‘?’”

Skerrett laughed. “I will mention it to posterity, Colonel,” he said, — and this page redeems his promise.

Then, lest weeds might sprout under his feet, the Major turned his back upon dinner, — that moment announced, — and launched himself upon the current of his new adventure.

“Down!” he soliloquized; “down, my longings for buckskin pie, and for rooster dead of congestion of the lungs from over coursing! Tempt me not, ye banquets of Sybaris, until my train is laid and waiting for the fusee.”

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 Rh mother, but all in vain; to have attempted feeding them at this time would have been inevitable destruction to myself; but I resolved to follow the barbarians, that I might at least see to what place my darlings were consigned.

"In a short time the party arrived at a house, and he who before held the nest now committed it to the care of another, but soon returned with a kind of victuals I was totally unacquainted with, and with this my young ones, when they gaped for food, were fed; hunger induced them to swallow it, but soon after, missing the warmth of their mother, they set up a general cry, which pierced my very heart. Immediately after this the nest was carried away, and what became of my nestlings afterwards I never could discover, though I frequently hovered about the fatal spot of their imprisonment with the hope of seeing them."

"Pray," said the hen redbreast, "what became of your mate?" "Why, my dear," said he, "when I found there was no chance of assisting my little ones, I pursued my course, and sought her in every place of our usual resort, but to no purpose; at length I returned to the bush, where I beheld an afflicting sight indeed my beloved companion lying on the ground, just expiring! I flew to her instantly, and

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44 endeavoured to recall her to life. At the sound of my voice she lifted up her languid eyelids, and said, 'Are you then safe, my love? what is become of our little ones?' In hopes of comforting her, I told her they were alive and well; but she replied, 'Your consolations come too late; the blow is struck, I feel my death approaching. The horror which seized me when I missed my nestlings, and supposed myself robbed at once of my mate and infants, was too powerful for my weak frame to sustain. Oh! why will the human race be so wantonly cruel? The agonies of death now came on, and after a few convulsive pangs she breathed her last, and left me an unhappy widower. I passed the remainder of the summer, and a dreary winter that succeeded it, in a very uncomfortable manner, though the natural cheerfulness of my disposition did not leave me long a prey to unavailing sorrow. I resolved the following spring to seek another mate, and had the good fortune to meet with you, whose amiable disposition has renewed my happiness. And now, my dear," said he, "let me ask you what became of your former companion?"

"Why," replied the hen redbreast, "soon after the loss of our nest, as he was endeavouring to discover what was become of it, a cruel hawk caught him up,

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