noble son Henry-your father is about to die-love one another-love Emma and Hiram-love and obey your kind, your loving mother, and remember your Creator, and obey His holy will in all you do. My dear wife, let my servants one by one bid me adieu." Then meekly, quietly, with large tears gushing from their eyes, his servants in succession took the hand of their master, the older ones kissing it, who bade them his last earthly adieu-telling them to meet him in Heaven. In an hour afterwards his wife and children weeping around, he again spoke : "Hiram there are many, many things I could wish to speak to you about-you have some experience-a little acquaintance in such matters but I am unable ;-the estate is much involved; I know not how much. I did not get all the mortgages secured to me that I wished, to save my wife and these orphans from want-my name, as endorser, is on much paper; but you must try and save these kind servants, if possible-and next, if it be possible, this place. I've lived here since I was married. Be kind to my Emma and these children—and now the wife of my bosom, God Almighty bless you, and "The tide of his love was overpowering, and his weakened nature gave way. His hand held that of his wife-"Oh God! My father's God! receive for Jesus' sake-" marble chill of death was on his brow-his soul was in Heaven. The CHAPTER VI. It will not be-it may not last- The fancied fabric melts away.-SCOTT. THE anticipations of those, who in 1836 dreaded that a commercial convulsion would shortly ensue, were in the succeeding year more than realized. The golden twilight that had gilded the horizon, and that had tempted the wanderings of thousands from the sober paths of industrythat had long glittered and gladdened over the deep ocean, over the wide wilderness of speculation-suddenly vanished, and a darkness intense and unfathomable, spread in continental folds over the land. A breeze of uncertainty sprung up, which increasing, soon changed to a gale, in which losses and dangers grew thick and fearful:—and finally, on came the tornado-raging and roaming at will over this dark ocean-crushing and crashing through this wide wilderness-driving and sweeping all therein to ruin-while in the sky above, gleamed not a star. The western hemisphere was convulsed. The tornado had prostrated the high and the low, the great and small. Its billows had dashed to atoms the fortunes, its fury had scattered to chaos the schemes of millions; and as it died away, vibration after vibration of anguish, indulation after indulation of misery, rolled over the face of society. The year 1837 closed, but how different from what it opened! On a morning in the early part of October, 1837-a morning in which the sun colored all things with its purest golden gush-when the air was bland in its autumnal elasticity-the sky placid in the depths of its clear external blue-the verdure faintly changed from the apparently stereotyped hues of August-a select party had assembled at Sylvan Place. Sophia, whose elegance of dress and manner all admired, whose figure was grace itself in motion, the fascination of whose beauty was the them of every one-was there in all her charms. Emma and Hiram then and there vowed a life-long love before the minister of God; which, as she did, Emma shed a tear; but it was one of joy and love, which Sophia kissed away. Late one evening, in the latter part of January, 1838, a young gentleman rode up to a residence in Alabama. His countenance, as he entered the house, although lit up with the gladness of seeing those whom he loved, wore the marks of sad disappointment. Tea was soon served, after which a party of seven individuals formed around a brightly-burning wood fire. "Tell us, dear Hiram, our fate." My dear mother, you ask me to do that which I dread to do. To satisfy you and Emma and her mother, I will read the statement of Mr. Point, as to the condition and prospects of both estates." As soon as the ominous, and to all except one, unintelligible document was read, a shade of deep sadness, approaching gloom, spread over the faces of all. "Tell us, my dear husband," said Emma, "what that horrid paper means? It speaks as if it carried rain to us all.” "Do tell us, Hiram, my son," spoke his mother. "It brings to you, dear mother and Sophia, no ruin, not even a loss of any kind; but to me and others it does convey the knowledge of great loss, which, as much as possible, I shall trust to avert, and not to feel." "Do explain, my brother, for you know that you can never want while I have anything," said Sophia. "Father's will, after securing a third of his estate to you, and a third to mother, assigned the remainder, after the debts were paid, to me, The revulsion, as the merchants call it, has unhinged everything, and is bankrupting every body. Property has gone down over one hundred per cent., and to pay all the debts of father's estate, after losing all that was due, it takes all he left me, except four servants. However, I'll never despair." "Inform us what is the fate of me and my poor children, my poor orphans and myself? And does it mean that that wretch, Speed, can imprison me or them, when it speaks of the personality?" asked Mrs. Parr. "No-no-it don't mean that; but it means that the law will compel him to take the servants before he can touch the land, in payment of his claims that he can have the hire of the slaves and the rent of the lands paid to him, before they can come into my hands, as Mr. Parr's administrator, provided he has the lawsuit decided in his favor-that you and no one else are entitled to the entire crop of last year, or the proceeds of it when sold, and that no one can take it from you-that you can take a child's part, or a third of the estate, whichever you please-that we can make Mr. Shaves pay the value of the cotton (he was to deliver) at the time, and not the value now; but he is not worth a cotton seed. I shall be compelled to pay every cent of the debts as far as the property goes, and I am fearful it will take every servant Mr. Parr ever owned.” "Oh, Hiram! Hiram! You cannot think they will ever do that. I had a thousand times rather give up that dear home of ours, where I played when a child, than to see the kind old servants and their children, with whom I lived all my life, and whom I always loved-Oh! they will not take them if we offer them the land, will they?" "The law gives them the right to take the servants first." "What a horrid law!" exclaimed Sophia. "And that then," said Emma, with strong emotion, "explains what that wretch, Speed, meant, when he and that sly villain, Slyp, were at Sylvan Place the day before we left-asking all sorts of questions of the overseer about the servants, and especially about the younger ones who are grown up. Oh! the vipers-I wish." The summer of 1838 rolled round. Hiram and his wife, with her mother and sweet little Alice, and Master Henry, lived at Mrs. Russell's. Sophia became a kind of governess for little Alice, while Henry went to a school some four miles off. Young Russell wound up the affairs of his father's estate, and found he had six instead of four servants left. He also, at their earnest request, continued to manage the plantation of his mother and sister. Hiram, although deprived of the happiness which he anticipated in being an independent planter, was still happy with his Emma; and, what was better than even that, he determined to be happy let his fate be what it might. With her love, and with an unalterable faith in God, a trust in the blessed promises of the Saviour-in total reliance on our Heavenly Father for protection-with a firm, unswerving determination to lead the life of a true Christian, he was prepared to fulfil the expectations of his admiring friends, and to perform the duties of life in every station thereof to which he might be called. CHAPTER VII. In the Southern States there are a class of individuals-no, they are not numerous enough for that designation-they are more properly a clan -who are known from the banks of the Potomac to the Rio Grande, as Negro-Traders. The moral estimation in which these individuals are held, as well as the social position that they occupy, is by no means complimentary. There is a strong, pervading, silent, ineradicable detestation of such characters in the public mind. Mr. Speed, mentioned in the Opinion of Mr. Point as holding certain mortgages and notes on Mr. Parr, was, or rather had been, a Negro-Trader;-for it is a fact that these gentlemen (?) dislike to be known to the world as Negro Traders when they retire from that pursuit. Sylvan Place, with all its rural elegancies of garden and lawn, of park and orchard, with all its broad fields and forests, became the property of Mr. Speed. He and his legal friend, Mr. Slyly Slyp, now spread themselves to enjoy life," as they called it, at that spacious mansion. Thither they invited their companions of every grade, who made that once joyous abode vocal with ribald mirth, with low revelry and dissipation. Slyly Slyp was constituted by Speed his upper factotum, and actually spent three fourths of his time at that place, instead of following his profession of pettifogger, at which his snakish cunning, and his quick, eel-like pliancy of character, enabled him to make a living. Speed was almost continually absent, sometimes for a day, and then again for a month. But when he did return from one of his longer journeys, then did he indeed, as Slyp said, "make up for lost time." Such scenes and doings never were heard in the neighborhood as Speed, Slyp and "gang," so were they called, perpetrated daily and nightly. His "gang" would fasten their horses to the shrubbery, the trees and evergreens in the park, around the garden and in the grounds in front of the house; so that it was a sad sight to see the trees all barked and skinned with the horses' teeth, the grasses and hedges all tramped down, and the grounds all torn up. On the noble elliptic way Slyp had weekly racesand crowds would there gather together to gaze at, and to destroy that beautiful park. Slyp had all the pebbles raked off from the curve, so that the horses might, as he said, go it a leetle faster." Speed farmed out the fields, and keeping only two servants about the house, the garden and enclosures, the orchards and grounds, went sadly out of repair. A kind of dearth—a sort of blight-seemed to reign over that once delightful country-seat. The fiscal affairs of Mr. Speed had become amazingly intricate, and finally, in the early part of 1840, a wholesale insolvency followed wholesale extravagance and dissipation. He had been for two years in the hands of Mr. Shaves, and in spite of all the cunning of Slyly Slyp, Sylvan Place ceased to be owned by that amiable member of the community, Mr. Speed. In May, 1840, Mr. Shaves became owner of Sylvan Place, which he immediately transferred to Hiram Russell and others, in fee simple, for judgment of $10,000 and interest that three years before was rendered against him for failing to deliver a certain amount of cotton at a certain time and place. As the estate was valued at $9,000, and there was some $2,000 interest, Mr. Russell obtained some three thousand dollars in cash from Mr. Shaves, in addition to the plantation. * It was in June. The rich, gorgeous drapery of full-grown verdure clothed forest and orchard-the sun for four hours had been flooding the world with its brightest beams-the sky, clear and soft in its immensity, spanned the earth, robed in its solstitial beauty-a cool mountain-born breeze kissed flower and leaf, in garden and grove-the many-plumaged birds had ceased their morning music, and retired to leafy bowers-and earth, in her gladness and smiles, wore the colors of paradise. Just such a forenoon it was when Sylvan Place again received its former owners, after an absence of four years. They were all back again Mrs. Parr and Alice, (who was almost grown, and very beautiful,) and Henry, and Emma, and Mr. Russell. There were two strangers there, too-and yet they were not strangers, for they were as lovely and as fair representatives of their father and mother, as ever smiled and slept through dreaming infancy. Sophia Russell was married in July of that year, to as noble and as generous a New-Englander as ever trod that classic soil, and paying Emma a short bridal visit, sought with her husband the bracing airs of a more northern clime, until winter should again send her to her natal land of flowers. Mr. Slyly Slyp and Mr. Hazard Speed, for sundry disreputable acts, took the precaution of transferring their allegiance to the Republic of Texas-being much hastened in that design by the intimations of Mr. Fogg, who had continued the fast and unflinching friend of Hiram Russell, (the son of his best benefactor) in all his legal difficulties. Mr. Slyly Slyp is the same gentleman (?) that the reader has seen mentioned in Chapter III. of these veritable annals, as being instrumental in disseminating certain documents in a certain city. The landscape, all bright and beauteous, mirth and joy and love and happiness reigning over them, the reader can then paint in ideal colors, or clothe in the robes of semi-reality, the characters herein drawn. SIR HENRY VANE.* MR. Fox, in his history of the Stuarts, alludes to the death of De Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland, at the hands of a mob, and calls it "the most completely discouraging example which history affords to the lovers of liberty." In many respects the remark is just. There were circumstances attending the fall of that great and virtuous republican statesman, which make his case a most marked and prominent instance of the world's injustice. But had Mr. Fox carefully surveyed the history of his own country, he might have found at least one example still more "completely discouraging to the lovers of liberty," in the tragic death of a contemporary with the Dutch minister-one of the brightest and noblest names in the roll of British statesmen-SIR HENRY VANE. Russel and Sidney dying on a charge of treason, real or pretended, against the Government-the Girondins laying down their lives upon the scaffold for "the freedom of the world"-Condorcet lying dead upon the floor of a dungeon, with his vial of poison beside him-are all striking and most discouraging examples of the world's injustice; but they do not bring with them the conviction that the people, though terrible and often unjust in the blind fury of a popular commotion to those whom they esteem their enemies, are either ungenerous or vengeful when that commotion has passed away. And the friends of freedom can even hope for better things from the frantic violence of the mob which tore De Witt to pieces, than from the cold, vengeful, remorseless tyranny which sent Sir Henry Vane to the scaffold. Vane had committed no crime against the existing government known to the laws of England. He was a civilian, and though a member of the Long Parliament, had not in person drawn his sword against the King. He had not sat upon the tribunal which condemned Charles Stuart to death. His hands were unstained with blood, untainted with gold. He had indeed sided with the Parliament in its struggle against the King. He had resisted Cromwell when he attempted to usurp the Government, and alike resisted Charles in his effort to regain the throne of his ancestors. He had assisted in administering the government of the commonwealth, and had upheld the power, and advanced the glory of his country upon the ocean-when the King and his future Chancellor were fugitives and wanderers throughout Europe. And for this he was adjudged to die. He died not for treason-actual or constructive-not for any crime known to the English law,-but he died because he was a republican, and because at the restoration he did not renounce the faith that was in him, and become the fawning and abject suppliant at the footstool of the royal clemency. The virtues and genius of Vane as a statesman, have never, save with rare exceptions, been justly appreciated. History, for sinister purposes, has drawn a veil around his memory, and almost blotted out his name Sir Henry Vane, the Younger. By John Forster, Statesman of the Commonwealth of England. Harper Brothers. 1846. Life of Sir Henry Vane, Fourth Governor of Massachusetts. By Charles Wentworth Upham. Vol. IV. Library of American Biography. Harper Brothers. 1848. 3 VOL. XXVI.-NO. CXLIV. |