 | Paul Ardenheim, the monk of Wissahikon |  |
EPISODE.
FROM JANUARY, 1775, TO JUNE, 1777.
Two years pass away. The Manuscripts from which this history is
taken have not a word to say in regard to the period that elapsed from the
first of January, 1775, until some time in June, 1777. A shadow rests
upon the history of the Wissahikon during that period—a shadow
unbroken by a solitary ray.
Not a word of the fate of Paul, nor of the Wizard's child, nor of Madeline,
the orphan girl,—there is silence and night upon the Wissahikon,
while these years pass away.
The Manuscript speaks in full and terrible details of the last night of
1774; but after that night—so crowded with incident and fate—is over,
there is a blank until June, 1777. It is therefore in June, 1777, that we
are to take up again the broken thread of our narrative.
From the 1st of January, 1775, to June, 1777,—who shall dare write
the history of that time, not in regard to the Wissahikon and its people,
but in relation to the American Continent?
Two years and six months!—In times of peace, when traffic freezes
every noble pulsation of man into a dull torpor, or only excites the soul
into a feverish lust for gold, this space of time might pass, without one
event more glorious than a rise in the price of dry-goods, or one thought
higher than the cobwebs of the counting-house.
But this was no time for mere men of traffic, nor was it an age for puny
politicians. It was the time of men; the age of noble thoughts; the
epoch of deeds inspired by God.
When the year 1775 began, a Continent lay trembling in suspense, its
happiness or its ruin hanging upon the changes of a crowned Idiot's health.
The destiny of three millions, the fate of hundreds of millions, yet
unborn, depended upon the health of an Idiot. It looks absurd, but it
is true.
Behold him, ranging the half-lighted corridor of yonder palace, his
receding forehead impressed with the curse which hangs upon his race,
his eye glassy and vacant, his nether-lip trembling in a meaningless
streams through windows which are shadowed by curtains of silk and
gold; before and behind the wandering Idiot are ranges of lofty chambers,
furnished with every thing that can please a royal eye, or wake a royal
soul from the torpor of satiety into one quick pulse of sensation.
There is Royalty in the very atmosphere; Royalty glares upon him in
the sunshine; it broods in the silence of those great and shadowy rooms;
and the Idiot wandering from room to room, from corridor to corridor, is
King of England—King of the eighth part of the World; the Arbiter of
the fate of America, and its three millions of people!
Is the crowned Idiot cheerful to-day? Then a few guineas are given
to the beggars who clamor in the kennels near his palace gates, and an
army of licensed cut-throats is hurried over the waters, to crush the three
millions of America into silence and slavery.
Is he gloomy? Has the last prescription of the royal physician failed
to quicken his blood, and clear the fog of his brain? Has the curse of
his reason developed itself in grotesque forms? Does he see foul
reptiles creeping over the rich carpet at his feet, or behold himself
encircled by a throng of hideous phantoms?
Then woe to America! woe to Ireland! woe to Man! For at once, in
obedience to the commands of this poor wretch, who is more miserable
with his crown, than the vilest leper of St. Giles with his rags, armies
hurry to and fro, crushing into dust, into blood, the hopes of millions of
mankind.
The Ministers of State are listening near the door of the Idiot's
chamber; they are awaiting for his commands. Upon the words which
fall from his lips, hangs the fate of England, Ireland, Scotland, America;
the fate of one-eighth of the entire globe.
For he is King. King! Pursued by the curse which has descended
from age to age upon his race; frightened in his royal chambers by the
phantoms of a maniac's frenzy; afraid of the motes that float in the sun;
afraid of the shadow on the wall, he is yet a King; and the drivelling of
his Idiot's lip is law and fate to some hundred millions of souls.
Beautiful picture of the divine right of Kings!
These fits of frenzy, this torpor of idiotic vacancy, which by turns
possess the Monarch, are known only to the few who are admitted to his
privacy; known only to some nine or ten persons in a hundred millions.
Yet he is King, by Grace of God too, commissioned by Heaven to tax,
and murder, and maim the human race, to convert whole nations into
sepulchres, and drain the life-blood from a million hearts.
And yet they tell us that there is no beauty in Royalty, nothing sublime
in the atmosphere inhaled by Kings!
In all the pages of history, there is no picture which for a moment will
compare with this solitary Fact:—
In 1775, George, the grandson of George the Second, was King of
England; that is to say, King of England, Scotland, Ireland, America,
and India. He was thirty-eight years of age. He was subject to
moments of unutterable gloom; now threatened with madness, now
torpid with blank idiocy. Of this fact, his subjects knew nothing; if a
vague rumor crept abroad, it was crushed at once, as a blasphemy. In
lucid intervals, that iś to say, when idiocy quickened for an instant into
thought, or madness became for a moment calm, he governed the eighth
part of the world, and decided the fate of the millions who then existed, and
stamped his impress upon the fate of hundreds of millions yet unborn.
Is it not a beautiful thought?
Summon all the horrors of history; crowd into one page the accumulated
crimes of a thousand years, and still you have nothing half so horrible
as this solitary fact—that an Idiot, whose idiocy is unknown to the
world, should decide, by the drivellings of his idiocy, the fate of millions
of immortal souls; souls born of God, redeemed by Christ; every one
as precious in the sight of Heaven as the soul of any King that ever
lived.
O for a high mass, chanted by devils, amid the carnage of a battle-field,
in honor of the Divine Right of Kings!
It was this Idiot King who, in 1775, held in his hand—under the
royal pen, agitated by the tremors of lunacy — the fate of America.
At his command, the leper of the jail and the cut-throat of St. Giles,
the starved wretch of the factory, and the peasant of the field—all
assumed the scarlet uniform, took sword and bayonet, were disciplined
into all the minute details of murder, and sent over the ocean to assert the
Divine Right of the King among the valleys of the New World.
Wherefore? Because the people of the New World refused to pay a
tax, or would not do obeisance to the petty ministers who encircled the
petty King? No. This does not comprise the whole truth of the contest.
It was, in a word, because King George of England wished to bind
the land of the New World to his crown, as his property, his own especial
domain, subject to every impulse of his will, and to the caprices of
all Kings—Idiots or Murderers—who might come after him.
The people of America did not recognise with any favor this idea of the
King.
Therefore, roughly clad in the garb of farmer and mechanic, they met
the vassals of the King, on a pleasant day in April, 1775, and shot them
from the shelter of the hedge by the roadside, and confronted them in the
centre of the highway, opposing their rude fowling-pieces to the glittering
arms of the royal soldiers.
The day was April 19th, and the place was Lexington.
The blood, smoking on the roadside and in the fields of Lexington,
spoke to the hearts of millions, and roused a people into arms.
It was on the 10th of May, 1775, that a band of farmers and mechanics
with here and there a lawyer or a rich man, assembled in Philadelphia,
and were known as the Continental Congress. This congress, with professions
of love for the King, coupled scorn for his Ministers, and resistance
to his laws. They were yet in that twilight which descends upon
the souls of men, just before the daybreak of freedom. Joined to England
by ties of ancestry, by the language of Shakspeare and Milton, by English
customs and English laws, they trembled at the idea of a separate destiny.
They were afraid of independence.
And while the Congress of the New World was in session in Philadelphia,
there came to Boston another British Army, sent by the British
King—in one of his lucid intervals perchance—and with this army were
gallant soldiers, Clinton, Burgoyne and Howe. This was on the 25th
of May, 1775.
But, on a clear starry night in June, there were shadows moving on the
hill and along the shore; there were boats upon the waves, and the subdued
tread of armed men broke through the stillness. Then there was,
all at once, the peal of musquetry mingled with the hurrah of conflict;—
there were smoke-clouds rolling into the sky, like shrouds for the dead;
—there was fighting on the hill-top, where peasants, behind a bank of
mud, levelled whole lines of splendid soldiers into dust;—there was a
brave young man, named Warren, who grappled the bayonet that stabbed
him, and poured forth his blood upon the grass as a holy oblation unto
freedom.
The British were driven back, defeated and mocked by a peasant army,
encamped near Boston, on the heights of Bunker Hill.
That word, Bunker Hill, coupled with the name of Warren, spoke like
the voice of God to the Continental Congress and to the people of the
Thirteen Provinces.
Blood had been shed; Lexington found an echo in Bunker Hill; there
was no time for hesitation; no thought of submission.
The Congress determined to raise an army. Where should a leader be
found? The British King had generals of renown, who were skilled in
shedding blood, perfect in the art of leading uniformed slaves to deeds of
Murder. But where should the Continental Congress find a leader for
their peasant army?
It was a question of awful moment. There was no time for hesitation,
however, and the eyes of the farmers and mechanics, the rich men and
the lawyers, who composed the Continental Congress, were turned
towards one of their number. He was a man of forty-three years of age.
His stature was commanding; his face full of energy and fire. He was
a man to be remarked in a crowd of ten thousand. Not often did
he speak, but his words were concise and to the point—every word embodied
an idea, and overwhelmed with its truth the hearts of all who
as the Leader of the Continental armies. He sat listening to a speech,
which rung in words of fire from the lips of bold John Adams, and the
last word of the speech was his own name. Covered with blushes, the
Planter fled from the Hall of Congress; but soon the people of Thirteen
Provinces recognized their champion in the person of this Virginian
Planter, and King George—may be in one of his lucid intervals—heard,
for the first time, the name of George Washington.
Then began the epoch of illustrious deeds. The young Commander
Washington, secluded in his tent near Cambridge, surveyed the map of
the New World, and laid his sword upon it, the hilt resting upon Labrador,
while the point touched Patagonia, thus symbolizing the great purpose
of his soul—the possession of the Continent of freemen.
From this camp near Cambridge went, one autumn day, a man who
was bold enough to think of the conquest of Canada. He was followed
by eleven hundred men. He was determined to traverse three hundred
miles of untrodden wilderness with this little army, and then attack the
Gibraltar of America, the rock of Quebec. He did traverse the wilderness;
ice, snow, trackless ravines, impetuous torrents, days of starvation,
and nights of hopeless extremity—all these he dared, he and his band of
iron men.
On the last night of 1775, he stood on the rock of Quebec, under a
leaden sky, his uniform whitened by the fast-falling snow. He took by
the hand a youthful soldier, whose handsome face was contrasted with the
bold outlines of his own visage. They plighted faith together; they swore
to meet in Quebec in victory or in death. On the rock which had borne,
not fifteen years before, the corses of Montcalm and Wolfe, the little army
of Continentals prepared to attack and possess Quebec. This was when
the daybreak was yet faint and dark, while the St. Lawrence, heaving
sullenly under rocks of ice, was whitened by the falling snow.
When the day was bright, and the sun shone vividly over the City and
rock, covered by frozen snow, there was a mangled body amid five other
corses on Cape Diamond. It was the wreck of the youthful soldier,
Richard Montgomery.
There were heaps of dead by the St. Charles; dismal stains of blood
upon the barriers; corses and wounded in the dark streets of Quebec.
There was the soldier of the wilderness, covered with wounds, and fighting
as he sank upon the frozen snow, fighting on, until his sight was dim, his
arm stiffened. His name was Benedict Arnold.
The attack was glorious, though unsuccesful; the Americans did not
possess the town, but they won another name. To Bunker Hill and
Lexington they added Quebec. These names are greater than armies in
a good cause.
And all the while, as the hand and brain of Washington gave impulse
George's victims, and the smoke of the conflict ascended to heaven, with
the souls of the dead, the Americans were fighting, not for Independence,
but for a change in the British Ministry. They were still afraid of that
word, Independence.
While Arnold fell covered with wounds, and Montgomery lay a crushed
and bloody image upon the rock of Quebec, there was a battle fighting in
another part of the Continent. It was a fearful battle. It was not a
battle fought with musquet and cannon, or with scalping-knife and tomahawk;
nor were armies of men called up on gory fields, opposed to each
other's throats, and set upon each other like rabid beasts, in this contest.
No! It was a battle fought by one man, his only weapons a quill,
some sheets of paper, and a bottle of ink.
While Arnold was bleeding in Quebec, this man was sitting in a
garret in Philadelphia, surveying certain loose sheets of paper, which
were crowded with the intense workings of his brain for the last six
months. From June until December, he had been engaged in this battle;
that is to say, he had been embodying upon those loose sheets of paper,
an idea which would work more judgment, more ruin for King George,
than all the armies of the world.
While the last groan of Montgomery arose to God from the dark rock
of Quebec, this man in the Philadelphia garret gazed upon his manuscripts,
and, with a brightening eye, beheld the idea which was to conquer
King George embodied in a single word.
Soon the news of Quebec came to Philadelphia, and soon the manuscripts
of the unknown, poured into the alembic of the printing-press, appeared
in the shape of a Book.
The name of that Book was in itself a Battle. To Bunker Hill,
Ticonderoga, Lexington, Quebec, the American people now added the
name of the book, “Common Sense.”
The Idea of that book entered Congress, and spoke to the hearts of the
great men there, and awed the little men into silence. To Jefferson, to
Adams, to Franklin, to Sherman, and to all who were like them, the idea
spoke in the still small voice of a Truth, armed with the omnipotence
of God.
At last the Idea fought its battle in the hall of Congress, and it became
embodied forever in the word, Independence.
On a calm summer evening, the 9th of July, 1776, the Continental
troops encamped near New York, were informed by their General, that
the American Congress had declared these Colonies to be Free and Independent
States.
The names grew on the scroll of American glory. Another name,
enshrining a thought even as body does a soul, was added to Lexington
of all the other names, and the embodiment of all—Independence.
The King of England, in one of his lucid intervals, heard of this word,
proclaimed from the Council Hall of the New World, and chorused by
the battle-cries of Armies. Even as Pharaoh of a more ancient kingdom,
grew more blind and drunk with fury, as the hour of God's judgments
came near and nearer, so King George vented his royal rage in new measures,
new armies, new assassinations.
It was toward the close of 1776, that the darkest cloud gathered over
the Idea of a Nation. “Independence” seemed doomed to vanish in
mists of blood. There was ice upon the Delaware, near Trenton. Did
this ice freeze into one compact mass, and spread a firm pathway from
shore to shore? Then the cause of the New World was lost. Upon so
slight a fact hung the destiny of Washington and the cause.
For, on the eastern shore of the river, was the British Army, strong in
arms, in discipline, very comfortable, with well-spread tables and fine
apparel.
On the western shore, with a mob of half-clad men, was Washington,
with scarce a place in which to lay his head, scarce a roof to shelter his
starving soldiers. To nakedness and starvation, hovering like spectres
about his camp, was added a sadder and darker phantom—Treason.
Upon the freezing of the Delaware, therefore, depended the fate of
Washington and the cause. The river once frozen from shore to shore,
these Britons and Hessians, cozily encamped in Trenton, will cross on
the ice, and make an easy prey of the starving mob who skulk along the
western hills.
There was a God in Heaven, at this dark hour, and Washington did not
despair. His men suffering from hunger and cold, Treason scowling
upon his camp, Congress almost hopeless of the cause, Washington did
not despair. He even wished to add another name to Bunker Hill, Lexington,
Quebec, Common Sense, Independence.
Therefore, some time in the dark hours of Christmas Night, he placed
his starving men in boats. He besought them to look to the priming of
their guns, and keep their powder dry. That is, such of them as had
guns and powder. Those who were destitute of powder and guns,
almost destitute of rags, took such arms as they could find—perchance a
broken sword, maybe a rusted bayonet.
While the British and the Hessians were combating legions of turkeys,
parallelograms of roast beef, and hogsheads of ale,—cozily keeping their
drunken Christmas in Trenton—Washington came upon them with his
starving mob.—Ere the dawn was bright, another name was written beside
Bunker Hill, Lexington, Quebec, Common Sense and Independence.
Trenton!
And thus, enlivened now and then by a sudden glare, the dreary Night
still many dark hours between Washington and the light of perfect
freedom.
It is June, 1777. How stands the cause of freedom now?
We may not enter into all the details of the history of our land; let us
compress some events of the Future into pictures. June is now in blossom—what
says the autumn and the winter, of the cause of freedom?
—Gaze along this meadow, embosomed in the foliage of a lovely valley,
gemmed with orchards, and sparkling with a stream of clear cold water.
There is sunshine upon the tops of the trees, and shadow all around.
From clusters of forest trees, gray stone walls are visible; the walls of
peaceful homes, protected by the solitude of this world-hidden valley. Is
it not one of those scenes which speak to the soul of quiet—peace—unutterable
peace—and mock the petty greatness of wealth, the swelling
vanity of ambition, to scorn?
And this peaceful valley, secluded from the world, shut up in its own
loveliness, will soon be rich in graves. There will be cold faces in the
light of a setting sun; the grass will be wet with a bloody rain; the stream
crimson. And this will be, ere the blossoms on yonder trees have
ripened into fruit.
For it is the valley of the Brandywine.
There is a house of dark gray stone, standing in a sort of rural majesty,
at the eastern extremity of a smooth green lawn. To the north and to
the south, from this mansion, spread the tenements of a quiet town,
whose gables peep from gardens and orchard trees. Upon the roof of
the stone mansion lingers the last ray of the June sun, and not a breeze
is there to shake the white blossoms from the boughs, or stir into motion
the smooth verdure of the lawn.
—Ere these trees are touched by winter, yes, as they are clad in the
rainbows of autumn, there will be some hundreds of dead bodies stretched
in horrible confusion over this lawn, in all the grotesque shapes of sudden
and violent death.
For the mansion is Chew's House, and the village is called Germantown.
Behind these pictures of the pleasant valley of Brandywine, and
the town of Germantown, I see a range of snow-clad hills, crowned with
huts, and crowded with half-naked and famine-stricken men. A name is
written there—it speaks of suffering that has no tongue, of anguish only
to be soothed by tears of blood—for that name is Valley Forge.
We will follow the thread of this singular history of the olden time,
and while we learn the fate of Paul—of the Wizard's child—of Madeline
—we may perchance behold some traces of the fight of Brandywine,
some tokens of Germantown, and come at last to the huts and snow
take by the hand the Boy-General, Gilbert La Fayette.
But neither the great facts, nor the great names of general history,
shall win us from the individual narrative of the Wissahikon people. Let
us translate the dark cyphers of the ancient record—let us give voice and
speech to the dim Chronicle of old.
Shall we behold Paul of Ardenheim again? Even now I behold that
bronzed face, shadowed by dark hair, lighted by eyes, whose strange
lustre awes and wins the hearts of men. Even now I see the pure
spiritual manhood of that virgin soul battling with the physical realities
of life, with the base and gross temptations of the world.
Shall the spirit of the Dreamer come forth from the ordeal, without
blemish or scar?
But even as we ask the question, Paul is a perjured and dishonored
Man, for an overwhelming thought crowds upon our souls. The Sealed
Chamber, and the secret, which drove Paul out into the world, a scorner
of his father's gray hairs, with the stain of Perjury upon his soul!
A secret armed with supernatural power, darkened by mystery, as impenetrable
as the blackness which rests upon the World beyond the
Grave!
We may enter the old Monastery once again. We may read the name
of the Deliverer concealed in the Urn. Gathering courage for our task,
we may even confront that door whose dark panels are traced with the
sign of the Cross. And then but a step between us and the Secret of the
Sealed Chamber. Shall we look upon that fatal mystery?
Shall the Deformed, now known as Black David, now as the Invisible,
ever rush before our path again, like a lurid cloud before the light of a
summer day?
Winding among those quiet shades, and by those still waters of the
Wissahikon, shall we chance upon a new-made grave, and find upon a
rustic tombstone the name of Madeline?
Jovial Peter Dorfner, with beard of snow and cheeks of flame, shall we
ever talk with thee again, or sit beside thy broad hearth and quaff deep
draughts to Christmas Eve?
Or the Wizard's child, so queenly in her bearing, so like a spirit in her
starry loveliness, with her dark eyes fired by ambition and love, with the
serpentine vein swelling like a prophecy upon her brow—shall we ever
behold the beautiful Atheist again?
The Wizard himself, a haggard old man—old before his time,
and withered by fanaticism into premature decay—shall we converse
with him once more, and learn the result of his life-long meditation?
Is his dream of Immortal Life upon earth only a dream? or shall he
appear before us, clad in the vigor of young manhood, irresistible with the
power of boundless wealth.
Then another face comes faintly to our view; the face of the aged
man, who, companioned only by his children, waited in the Block-house
of Wissahikon, not for the secret of immortal life on earth, or for the
power of unbounded wealth, but for the coming of the Kingdom of the
Lord. We have seen him reel beneath the blow of his son; we have seen
that son rush forth from the Monastery, with the stamp of Fate upon
his forehead. Does the old man yet survive?
Treading gently through the dim corridors of the Block-house, shall
we once more meet the vision of that gentle face, with blue eyes and long,
flowing, golden hair?
We may behold the Secret Brotherhood again, assembled in mysterious
council, and bound to blind obedience by oaths too blasphemous for
repetition. A strange Brotherhood, with Lodge rising into Lodge,
Degree above Degree,—an inexplicable complication of castes, controlled
by One Man. That solitary ruler, either Gilbert the huntsman, or the
Deformed, or yet, perchance, some man altogether new to our sight.
These questions start to our lips, as we stand upon the threshold of a
new Epoch in our history; these, and a thousand others, full of the same
pervading interest and mystery.
Let us translate the dusk cyphers of the ancient record—let us give
voice and speech to the dim Chronicle of old.
| Paul Ardenheim, the monk of Wissahikon | |