THE DECAY OF AMERICAN COMMERCE.

209

of genius, Arabia shines through long ages over a great section of the world.

Belief is great, life-giving. The history of a nation becomes fruitful, soul-elevating, great, so soon as it believes. These Arabs, the man Mahomet, and that one century, is it not as if a spark had fallen, one spark, on a world of what seemed black unnoticeable sand? But lo! the sand proves explosive powder: blazes heaven-high from Delhi to Grenada! I said the great man was always as lightning out of heaven. The rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.

THOMAS CARLYLE.

Note 92.

THE DECAY OF AMERICAN COMMERCE.

To one born inland the sea has a wondrous mystery. I have studied its moods as a lover those of his mistress. Its enchantment has led me over liquid leagues on leagues to remotest realms. Not alone does it enchant because of its majestic expanse, its resistless force, its depth and unity, its monstrous forms, its riches and rocks, its graves, its requiem, its murmur of repose and mirror of placid beauty, but for its wrath, peril, and sublimity. These have led adventurous worthies of every age, by sun, star, and compass, over its trackless wastes, and returned them for their daring untold wealth and the eulogy of history.

But it is for its refining, civilizing, elevating influences upon our kind that the ocean lifts its mighty minstrelsy. Unhappy that nation which has no part in the successes of the sea. Happy in history those realms like Tyre, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Norway, whose gathered glories are symboled in the trident. Happy in the present are those nations who, under the favoring gales of commerce, the fostering economies of freedom, and the unwavering faith in the guidance of Providence, bear the blessings of varied industry to distant realms, and bring back to their own the

magnificent fruits of ceaseless interchange. Happy that nation whose poet can raise his voice to herald the hope and humanity of its institutions in the grandeur of the familiar symbol of Longfellow :

"Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"

Amid this divided marine dominion, in which one power alone has half the rule of the ocean, shall America sit sceptreless and forlorn-dethroned, ignoble, dispirited, and disgraced? The ensign of our nationality takes its stars from the vault of heaven. By them brave men sail. It is now an unknown emblem upon the sea. We welcome every

race to our shores in the vessels of other nations. Our enormous surplus, which feeds the world, is for others to bear away. We gaze at the leviathians of commerce entering our harbors and darkening our sky with the pennons of smoke; but the thunder of the engines is under another flag and the shouting of the captains is in an alien tongue. Others distribute the produce, capitalize the moneys, gather the glories, and elevate their institutions by the amenities and benignities of commerce, and we, boasting of our invention, heroism, and freedom, allow the jailers of a hated and selfish policy to place gyves upon our energy, and when we ask for liberty to build and for liberty to buy, imprison our genius in the sight of these splendid achievements.

If you would that we should once more fly our ensign upon the sea, assist us to take off the burdens from our navigation, and give to us the first, last, and best-the indispensable condition of civilization by commerce-liberty.

S. S. Cox.

FRA LUIGI'S MARRIAGE.

211

Note 93.

FRA LUIGI'S MARRIAGE.

"A SAD strange tale it is, and long to tell :
Would't weary you to hear it, sir? It fell
To me alone to witness how he wed
Young Fra Luigi. Years he has been dead,
Yet it doth seem but little while ago.

I loved him. That is how I came to know
What no one knew but me.

""Twas on a day

When all roads out of Rome were bright and gay
With daisies and anemones; the spring

Thrilled every little lark and thrush to sing;
So full the sunlit air of bloom and song,
An hour seemed but a magic moment long.
You know the grand Basilica they call
Paolo Santo, past the city wall?
'Twas there.

"The tale is strange, almost I fear
Lest it seem false unto your foreign ear.
But you may trust it, sir. I loved him so

I knew what she who bore him did not know.
The day-this spring day full of song and bloom-
I hear those larks yet singing in the broom—
Had been for months appointed as the day
When he his friend Andrea, too-should lay
His worldly garments at the altar down
And take the Benedictine cowl and gown.
Perhaps you've seen that service, sir?

Nay? Then

You'd like to hear how they make monks of men.

I've not forgotten it. I loved him so

Each thing that happened on that day I know
As it were yesterday."

"A monk? You said

Your tale was how the Fra Luigi wed.”

"Did take the church as bride?

That is no secret marvellous to hide

Behind thy phrase."

"Nay, no such empty phrase
Above my tale its idle shelter lays.
The Fra Luigi's bride had face more fair
Than any blossom in that spring-time air.
I stood that day the nearest to her side.
And well the face of Fra Luigi's bride

I knew, for I had served her house when she
First gladdened it by her sweet infancy.
Stern sat the Abbot in his snow-white chair,
Between the violet marble pillars fair.

The columns of red porphyry shone and gleamed
Beneath the yellow quivering rays that streamed
From myriad tapers making light so fast
The gorgeous Baldacchino scarce did cast
A shadow on the altar underneath,
Or on the faces cold and still as death
Of all the Benedictine brothers placed

In solemn circles which the altar faced.

The priests' robes blazed with scarlet and with gold;
The swinging censers flashed with gems untold,
And music wildly sorrowful and slow

All down the shadowed aisles went echoing low.
As men who walked with Heaven full in sight,
Their faces lit by supernatural light,

Luigi and Andrea came and knelt.

The silence like a darkness could be felt

In which their voices rang out young and clear,
Taking the vows so terrible to hear,

FRA LUIGI'S MARRIAGE.

Obedience and poverty till death,

And chastity in every act and breath ;

213

Between the vows sweet chanted prayers were said
That they might keep these vows till they were dead.
Ah me! I think the good God sorrowed then
To see such burdens laid on mortal men.

"All was done

Now, save that last, most dreadful sight of all,
The dying to the world.

One gold-wrought pall
Of black, the acolytes laid on the ground.
The music sank to lower, sadder sound.
Another pall was lifted high to spread
Above the bodies.

"With a joyous tread
Luigi came to lay him down. One glance
He lifted—oh, what sped the fatal chance?
What cruel fate his ardent eyes did guide
Unto her face who had been born his bride?
I saw the glance. I saw the quick blood mount
Her cheeks as well as his. No man may count
How swift love's motion in a vein can be ;
Light is a laggard, by its ecstasy.

'Twas but a glance :-I said this tale was strange-
Might seem to you but idle-such a change

Did pass upon their faces, his and hers,

As comes upon the sea, when sudden stirs

A mighty wind. More ghastly now, and white
Than he were dead, Luigi's face.

"The rite

Went on. The pall upon their forms was dropped.
Rigid they lay, as if their hearts had stopped:
The candles flickered down; the light grew dim ;
The singers chanted low, a funeral hymn ;