University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.
THE PROGRESS.

In this life there was much of that peculiar charm which
seems to pervade all mankind, of whatever class or country,
and in whatever hemisphere; which irresistibly impels him to
return to his, perhaps, original and primitive state, as a nomadic
being, a rover of the forest and the plain; which, while
it often seduces the refined and civilized man of cities to reject
all the conveniences and luxuries of polite life, for the excitement
and freshness, the inartificial liberty and self-confiding
independence of semi-barbarism, has never been known to allow
the native savage to renounce his freeborn instincts, or to
abandon his natural and truant disposition, for all the advantage,
all the powers, conferred by civilization.

And if, even to the freeborn and lofty-minded noble, the
careless, unconventional, equalizing life of the forest was felt
as giving a stronger pulsation to the free heart, a wider expansion

to the lungs, a deeper sense of freedom and power, how
must not the same influences have been enjoyed by those, who
now, for the first time since they were born, tasted that mysterious
thing, liberty—of which they had so often dreamed,
for which they had longed so wistfully, and of which they had
formed, indeed, so indefinite an idea—for it is one of the particulars
in the very essence of liberty, as it is, perhaps, of that
kindred gift of God, health, that although all men talk of it as
thing well understood and perfectly appreciated, not one man
in ten understands or appreciates it in the least, unless he has
once enjoyed it, and then been deprived of its possession.

It is true that, personally, neither Kenric nor Edith had
ever known what it is to be free; but they came of a free,
nay! even of an educated stock, and, being children of that
Northern blood, which never has long brooked even the suspicion
of slavery, and, in some sort, of the same race with
their conquerors and masters, they had never ceased to feel
the consciousness of inalienable rights; the galling sense of
injustice done them, of humiliating degradation inflicted on
them, by their unnatural position among, but not of, their fellows;
had never ceased to hope, to pray, and to labor for a
restitution to those self-existing and immutable rights—the
rights, I mean, of living for himself, laboring for himself, acquiring
for himself, holding for himself, thinking, judging,
acting for himself, pleasing and governing himself, so long as
he trench not on the self-same right of others—to which the
meanest man that is born of a woman is entitled, from the
instant when he is born into the world, as the heir of God and
nature.

The Saxon serf was, it is true, a being fallen, debased, partially

brutalized, deprived of half the natural qualities of manhood,
by the state of slavery, ignorance, and imbecility, into
which he had been deforced, and in which he was willfully detained
by his masters; but he had not yet become so utterly
degraded, so far depressed below the lowest attributes of humanity,
as to acquiesce in his own debasement, much less to
rejoice in his bondage for the sake of the flesh-pots of Egypt,
or to glory in his chains, and honor the name of master.

From this misery, from this last perversion and profanation
of the human intellect divine—the being content to be a slave
—the Saxon serf had escaped thus far; and, thanks to the
great God of nature, of revelation, that last curse, that last
profanation, he escaped forever. His body the task-master
had enslaved; his intellect he had emasculated, debased,
shaken, but he had not killed it; for there, there, amid the
dust and ashes of the all-but-extinguished fire, there lurked
alive, ready to be enkindled by a passing breath into a devouring
flame, the sacred spark of liberty.

Ever hoping, ever struggling to be free, when the day
dawned of freedom, the Saxon slave was fit to be free, and became
free, with no fierce outbreak of servile rage and vengeance,
consequent on servile emancipation, but with the calm
although enthusiastical gladness which fitted him to become a
freeman, a citizen, and, as he is, the master of one half of the
round world. It is not, ah! it is not the chain, it is not the
lash, it is not the daily toil, it is not the disruption of domestic
ties and affections, that prove, that constitute the sin, the
sorrow, and the shameful reproach of slavery.

Ah! no. But it is the very converse of these—the very
point insisted on so complacently, proclaimed so triumphantly,

by the advocates of this accursed thing—it is that, in spite of
the chain, in spite of the lash, in spite of the enforced labor,
in spite of the absence or disruption of family ties and affections,
the slave is sleek, satisfied, self-content; that he waxes
fat among the flesh-pots; that he comes fawning to the smooth
words, and frolies, delighted, fresh from the lash of his master,
in no wise superior to the spaniel, either in aspiration or in
instinct. It is in that he envies not the free man his freedom,
but, in his hideous lack of all self-knowledge, self-reliance,
self-respect, is content to be a slave, content to eat, and grow
fat and die, without a present concern beyond the avoidance
of corporeal pain and the enjoyment of sensual pleasure, without
an aspiration for the future, beyond those of the beasts,
which graze and perish.

It is in this that lies the mortal sin, the never-dying reproach,
of him who would foster, would preserve, would propagate,
the curse of slavery; not that he is a tyrant over the
body, but that he is a destroyer of the soul—that he would
continue a state of things which reduces a human being, a fellow-man,
whether of an inferior race or no—for, as of congenerous
cattle there are many distinct tribes, so of men, and
of Caucasian men too, there be many races, distinct in physical,
in moral, in animal, in intellectual qualities, as well as
in color and conformation, if not distinct in origin—to the
level of the beast which knoweth not whence he cometh or
whither he goeth, nor what is to him for good, or what for
evil, which hopes not to rise or to advance, either here or
hereafter, but toils day after day, contented with his daily
food, and lies down to sleep, and rises up to labor and to feed,
as if God had created man with no higher purpose than to

sleep and eat alternately, until the night cometh from which,
on earth, there shall be no awakening.

But of this misery the Saxon serf was exempt: and, to do
him justice, of this reproach was the Norman conqueror exempt
also. Of the use of arms, and the knowledge of warfare,
he indeed deprived his serfs, for as they outnumbered him by
thousands in the field, equalled him in resolution, perhaps excelled
him in physical strength, to grant such knowledge
would have been to commit immediate suicide—but of no
other knowledge, least of all of the knowledge that leads to
immortality, did he strive to debar him. Admittance to holy
orders was patent to the lowest Saxon, and in those days the
cloister was the gate to all knowledge sacred or profane, to all
arts, all letters, all refinements, and above all to that knowledge
which is the greatest power—the knowledge of dealing
with the human heart, to govern it—the knowledge, which so
often set the hempen sandal of the Saxon monk upon the
mailed neck of the Norman king, and which, in the very
reign of which I write, had raised a low-born man of the
common Saxon race to be Archbishop of Canterbury, the
keeper of the conscience of the king, the primate, and for a
time the very ruler of the realm.

Often, indeed, did the superior knowledge of the cowled
Saxon avenge on his masters the wrongs of his enslaved
brethren; and while the learned priesthood of the realm were
the brethren of its most abject slaves, no danger that those
slaves should ever become wholly ignorant, hopeless, or degraded—and
so it was seen in the end; for that very knowledge
which it was permitted to the servile race to gain, while
it taught them to cherish and fitted them to deserve freedom,

in the end won it for them; at the expense of no floods of
noble blood, through the sordure and soil of no savage Saturnalia,
such as marked the emancipation alike of the white
serfs of revolutionized France, and the black slaves of disenthralled
St. Domingo.

And so it was seen in the deportment of Kenric the serf,
and of the slave girl Edith, even in these first days of their
newly-acquired freedom.

Self-respect they had never lost altogether; and their increased
sense of it was shown in the increased gravity and
calmness and becomingness of their deportment.

Slaves may be merry, or they may be sullen. But they
can not be thoughtful, or calm, or careworn. The French,
while they were feudal slaves, before the Revolution, were the
blithest, the most thoughtless, the merriest, and most frolic-some,
of mortals; they had no morrows for which to take
care, no liberties which to study, no rights which to guard.
The English peasant was then, as the French is fast becoming
now, grave rather than frivolous, a thinker more than a
fiddler, a doer very much more than a dancer. Was he, is
he, the less happy, the less respectable, the lower in the scale
of intellect, that he is the farther from the monkey, and the
nearer to the man?

The merriment, the riotous glee, the absolute abandonment
of the plantation African to the humor, the glee of the moment,
is unapproached by any thing known of human mirthfulness.

The gravity, the concentrated thought, the stern abstractedness,
the careworn aspect of the free American is proverbial
—the first thing observable in him by foreigners. He has

more to guard, more at which to aspire, more on which he
prides himself, at times almost boastfully, more for which to
respect himself, at times almost to the contempt of others,
than any mortal man, his co-equal, under any other form of
government, on any other soil. Is he the less happy for his
cares, or would he change them for the recklessness of the
well-clad, well-fed slave—for the thoughtlessness of the first
subject in a despotic kingdom?

Kenric had been always a thinker, though a serf; his elder
brother had been a monk, a man of strong sense and some
attainment; his mother had been the daughter of one who
had known, if he had lost, freedom. With his mother's milk
he had imbibed the love of freedom; from his brother's love
and teachings he had learned what a freeman should be; by
his own passionate and energetic will he had determined to
become free. He would have become so ere long, had not
accident anticipated his resolve; for he had laid by, already,
from the earnings of his leisure hours, above one half of the
price whereby to purchase liberty. He was now even more
thoughtful and calmer; but his step was freer, his carriage
bolder, his head was erect. He was neither afraid to look a
freeman in the eye, nor to render meet deference to his superior.
For the freeman ever knows, nor is ashamed to acknowledge,
that while the equality of man in certain rights,
which may be called, for lack of a better title, natural and
political, is co-existent with himself, inalienable, indefeasible,
immutable, and eternal, there is no such thing whatever, nor
can ever be, as the equality of man in things social, more than
there can be in personal strength, grace, or beauty, in the
natural gifts of intellect, or in the development of wisdom.

Of him who boasts that he has no superior, it may almost be
said that he has few inferiors.

Thereof Kenric—as he rode along with his harness on his
back, and his weapons in his hand, a freeman among freemen,
a feudal retainer among the retainers, some Norman, some
Saxon, of his noble lord—was neither louder, nor noisier,
nor more exultant, perhaps the reverse, than his wont,
though happier far than he had conceived it possible for him
to be.

And by his bearing, his comrades and fellows judged him,
and ruled their own bearing toward him. The Saxons of the
company naturally rejoiced to see their countryman free by
his own merit, and, seeing him in all things their equal, gladly
admitted him to be so. The haughtier Normans, seeing that
he bore his bettered fortunes as became a man, ready for
either fortune, admitted him as one who had won his freedom
bravely, and wore it as if it had been his from his birth—they
muttered beneath their thick mustaches, that he deserved to
be a Norman.

Edith, on the contrary, young yet, and unusually handsome,
who had been the pet of her own people, and the favorite of
her princely masters, who had never undergone any severe
labor, nor suffered any poignant sorrow, who knew nothing of
the physical hardships of slavery, more than she did of the
real and tangible blessings of liberty, had ever been as happy
and playful as a kitten, and as tuneful as a bird among the
branches.

But now her voice was silent of spontaneous song, subdued
in conversation, full fraught with a suppressed deeper feeling.
The very beauty of the fair face was changed, soberer, more

hopeful, farther seeing, full no longer of an earthly, but more
with something of an angel light.

The spirit had spoken within her, the statue had learned
that it had a soul.

And Guendolen had noted, yet not fully understood the
change or its nature. More than once she had called her to
her bridle-rein and conversed with her, and tried to draw her
out, in vain. At last, she put the question frankly—

“You are quieter, Edith, calmer, sadder, it seems to me,”
she said, “than I have ever seen you, since I first came to
Waltheofstow. I have done all that lies in me to make you
happy, and I should be sorry that you were sad or discontented.”

“Sad, discontented! Oh! no, lady, no!” she replied, smiling
among her tears. “Only too happy—too happy, to be
loud or joyous. All happiest things, I think, have a touch of
melancholy in them. Do you think, lady, yonder little
stream,” pointing to one which wound along by the roadside,
now dancing over shelvy rapids, now sleeping in silent eddies,
“is less happy where it lies calm and quiet, reflecting heaven's
face from its deep bosom, and smiling with its hundred
tranquil dimples, than where it frolics and sings among the
pebbles, or leaps over the rocks which toss it into noisy foam-wreaths?
No! lady, no. There it gathers its merriment and
its motion, from the mere force of outward causes; here it collects
itself from the depth of its own heart, and manifests its
joy and love, and thanks God in silence. It is so with me,
Lady Guendolen. My heart is too full for music, but not too
shallow to reflect boundless love and gratitude forever.”

The lady smiled, and made some slight reply, but she was

satisfied; for it was evident that the girl's poetry and gratitude
both came direct from her heart; and in the smile of
the noble demoiselle there was a touch of half-satiric triumph,
as she turned her quick glance to Sir Yvo, who had heard all
that passed, and asked him, slyly, “And do you, indeed,
think, gentle father, that these Saxons are so hopelessly
inferior, that they are fitting for nothing but mere toil; or is
this the mere inspiration that springs from the sense of freedom?”

“I think, indeed,” he replied, “that my little Guendolen is
but a spoiled child at the best; and, as to my thoughts in regard
to the Saxons, them I shall best consult my peace
of mind and pocket by keeping my own property; since, by
our Lady's Grace! you may take it into your head to have all
the serfs in the north emancipated; and that is a little beyond
my powers of purchase. But see, Guendolen, see how the
sunbeams glint and glitter yonder on the old tower of Barden,
and how redly it stands out from those purple clouds
which loom so dark and thunderous over the peaceful woods
of Bolton. Give your jennet her head, girl, and let her canter
over these fair meadows, that we may reach the abbey and
taste the noble prior's hospitality before the thunder gust is
upon us.”

And quickening its pace, the long train wound its way
upward, by the bright waters of the beautiful Wharfe, and
speedily obtained the shelter, and the welcome they expected
from the good and generous monks of Bolton, the noblest
abbaye in the loveliest dale of all the broad West Riding.

The next morning found them traversing the broken green
country that lies about the head of the romantic Eyre, and

threading the wild passes of Ribbledale, beneath the shadow
of the misty peaks of Pennigant and Ingleborough, swathed
constantly in volumed vapor, whence the clanging cry of the
eagle, as he wheeled far beyond the ken of mortal eyes, came
to the ears of the voyagers, on whom he looked securely
down as he rode the storm.

That night, no castle or abbey, no village even, with its
humble hostelry, being, in those days, to be found among
those wild fells and deep valleys, bowers were built of the
materials with which the hillsides were plentifully feathered
throughout that sylvan and mountainous district, of which
the old proverbial distich holds good to this very day:

Young sprouts of the juniper, soft ferns, and the delicious
purple heather, now in its most luxurious flush of summer
bloom and perfume, furnished agreeable and elastic couches;
and, as the stores carried by the sumpter mules had been
replenished by the large hospitality of the prior of Bolton,
heronshaw and egret, partridge and moorgame, wildfowl and
venison, furnished forth their board, with pasties of carp and
eels, and potted trout and char from the lakes whither they
were wending, and they fared most like crowned heads
within the precincts of a royal city, there, under the shadow
of the gray crags and bare storm-beaten brow of bleak
Whernside, there where, in this nineteenth century, the belated
wayfarer would deem himself thrice happy, if he secured
the rudest supper of oat-cakes and skim-milk cheese, with a
draught of thin ale, the luxuries of the hardy agricultural
population of the dales.