fairy phantasms for the deep consciousness of humanity. The wood heard, bewildered. A shudder as of sorrow thrilled through it. A breeze that was almost sad swept down the shady aisles as the Poet passed out into the sunshine and the world. But Nature knows no pain, though Arborines appear never more. A balm springs up in every wound. Over the hills, and far away beyond their utmost purple rim, and deep into the dying day the happy love-born one followed her love, happy to exchange her sylvan immortality for the spasm of mortal life, happy, in her human self-abnegation, to lie close on his heart and whisper close in his ear, though he knew only the loving voice and never the loving lips. Through the world they passed, the Poet and his mystic viol. It gathered to itself the melodies that fluttered over sea and land, songs of the mountains, and songs of the valleys, murmurs of love, and the trumpet-tones of war, bugleblast of huntsman on the track of the chamois, and mother's lullaby to the baby at her breast. All that earth had of sweet ness the nymph drew into her viol-home, and poured it forth anew in strains of more than mortal harmony. The fire and fervor of human hearts, the quiet ripple of inland waters, the anthem of the stormy sea, the voices of the flowers and the birds lent their melody to the song of her who knew them all. The Poet died. Died, too, sweet Arborine, swooning away in the fierce grasp of this stranger Sorrow, to enter by the black gate of death into the full presence and recognition of him by loving whom she had learned to be. The viol passed into strange hands and wandered down the centuries, but its olden echoes linger still. Fragrance of Southern woods, coolness of shaded waters, inspiration of mountain-breezes, all the secret forces of Nature that the woodnymph knew, and the joy, the passion, and the pain that throb only in a woman's heart, lie still, silent under the silent strings, but wakening into life at the touch of a royal hand. Do you not believe my story? But I have seen the viol and the royal hand! SPRING AT THE CAPITAL. THE poplar drops beside the way Its tasselled plumes of silver-gray; The chestnut pouts its great brown buds, impatient for the laggard May. The honeysuckles lace the wall; And mellow sun and pleasant wind and odorous bees are over all. Down-looking in this snow-white bud, How distant seems the war's red flood! How far remote the streaming wounds, the sickening scent of human blood! For Nature does not recognize This strife that rends the earth and skies; No war-dreams vex the winter sleep of clover-heads and daisy-eyes. She holds her even way the same, Though navies sink or cities flame; A snow-drop is a snow-drop still, despite the nation's joy or shame. When blood her grassy altar wets, She sends the pitying violets To heal the outrage with their bloom, and cover it with soft regrets. O crocuses with rain-wet eyes, O tender-lipped anemones, What do ye know of agony and death and blood-won victories? No shudder breaks your sunshine-trance, Though near you rolls, with slow advance, Clouding your shining leaves with dust, the anguish-laden ambulance. Yonder a white encampment hums; The clash of martial music comes; And now your startled stems are all a-tremble with the jar of drums. Whether it lessen or increase, Or whether trumpets shout or cease, Still deep within your tranquil hearts the happy bees are murmuring, "Peace!" O flowers! the soul that faints or grieves Sweet confidence and patient faith are hidden in your healing leaves. Help us to trust, still on and on, That this dark night will soon be gone, And that these battle-stains are but the blood-red trouble of the dawn, — Dawn of a broader, whiter day Than ever blessed us with its ray, A dawn beneath whose purer light all guilt and wrong shall fade away. THE HORRORS OF SAN DOMINGO.* THE subject which I hoped to present intelligibly in three or four articles has continually threatened to step out of the columns of a magazine and the patience of its readers. The material which is at hand for the service of the great points of the story, such as the Commercial Difficulty, the Mulatto Question, the State of Colonial Parties, the Effect of the French Revolution, the Imbroglio of Races, the Character of Toussaint l'Quverture, the Present Condition of Hayti, and a Bibliography of the whole subject, is now detached for perhaps a more deliberate publication; and two or three points of immediate interest, such as the French Cruelties, Emancipation and the Slave Insurrection, and the Negroes as Soldiers, are grouped together for the purpose of this closing article. PLANTATION CRUELTIES. THE Social condition of the slaves cannot be fully understood without some reference to the revolting facts connected with plantation management. It is well to know what base and ingenious cruelties could be tolerated by public opinion, and endured by the slaves without exciting continual insurrections. Wonder at this sustained patience of the blacks passes into rage and indignation long before the student of this epoch reaches the eventual outbreaks of 1791: it seems as if a just instinct of manhood should have more promptly doomed these houses of iniquity, and handed them over to a midnight vengeance. And there results a kind of disappointment from the discovery, that, when the blacks finally began to burn and slaughter, they were not impelled by the desire of liberty or the recollection of great crimes, but were blind agents of a complicated situation. * See Numbers LVI., LVIII., LIX., and LXV. of this magazine. It is only in the remote historical sense that Slavery provoked Insurrection. The first great night of horror in San Domingo rose from circumstances that were not explicitly chargeable to the absence of freedom or to the outrages of the slaveholder. But if these things had not fuelled the lighted torches and whetted the blades when grasped, it would have been strange and monstrous indeed. Stranger still would it have been, if the flames of that first night had not kindled in the nobler breasts among that unchained multitude a determination never to endure plantation ferocity again. The legitimate cause for rebelling then took the helm and guided the rest of the story into dignity. The frequency of enfranchisement might mislead us into expecting that the colonial system of slavery was tempered with humanity. It was rather like that monarchy which the wit described as being "tempered by assassination." The mulatto was by no means a proof that mercy and justice regulated the plantation life. His enfranchisement reacted cruelly upon the negro. It seemed as if the recognition of one domestic sentiment hurt the master's feelings; the damage to his organization broke out against the lower race in anger. The connections between black and white offered no protection to the former, nor amelioration of her lot. Indeed, the overseer, who desired always to be on good terms with the agent or the proprietor of a plantation, was more severe towards the unhappy object of his passion than to the other women, for fear of incurring reproach or suspicion. When he became the owner of slaves, his emancipating humor was no guaranty that they would receive a salutary and benignant treat ment. When a Frenchman undertakes to be cruel, he acts with great esprit. There is spectacular ingenuity in the atrocities which he invents, and even his ungovernable bursts of rage instinctively aim a coup de théâtre at his victim. The negro is sometimes bloodthirsty, and when he is excited he will quaff at the opened vein; but he never saves up a man for deliberate enjoyment of his sufferings. When the wild orgy becomes sated, and the cause of it has been once liquidated, there is no further danger from this disposition. But a French colonist, whether smiling or sombre, was always disposed to be tormenting. The ownership of slaves unmasked this tendency of a race which at home, in the streets of Paris and the court-yard of the Abbaye and La Force, proved its ferocity and simple thirst for blood. The story of the Princess Lamballe's death and disfiguration shows the broad Gallic fancy which the sight of blood can pique into action. But the every-day life of many plantations surpassed, in minuteness and striking refinement of tormenting, all that the sansculotte ever dared or 'the savage ever dreamed. Let a few cases be found sufficient to enlighten the reader upon this point. They are specimens from a list of horrors which eye-witnesses, inhabitants of the island, have preserved; and many of them, being found in more than one authority, French as well as colored, are to be regarded as current and unquestionable facts. The ordinary brutalities of slaveholding were rendered more acute by this Creole temper. Whippings were carried to the point of death, for the slave-vessel was always at the wharf to furnish short lives upon long credit; starving was a common cure for obstinacy, brine and red-pepper were liberally sprinkled upon quivering backs. Economy was never a virtue of this profuse island. Lives were sauce piquante to luxury. The incarceration of slaves who had marooned, stolen vegetables, or refused to work, had some features novel to the Bastille and the Inquisition. A man would be let down into a stone case or cylinder just large enough to receive his body: potted in this way, he remained till the overseer considered that he had improved. Sometimes he was left too long, and was found spoiled; for this mode of punishment soon ended a man, because he could not move a limb or change his attitude. Dungeons were constructed with iron rings so disposed along the wall that a man was held in a sitting posture with nothing to sit upon but a sharpened stick: he was soon obliged to try it, and so oscillated between the two tortures. Other cells were furnished with cases, of the size of a man, that could be hermetically sealed: these were for suffocation. The floors of some were kept submerged with a foot or two of water: the negroes who came out of them were frequently crippled for life by the dampness and cold. Iron cages, collars, and iron masks, clogs, fetters, and thumbscrews were found upon numerous plantations, among the ruins of the dungeons. The quatre piquet was a favorite style of flogging. Each limb of the victim was stretched to the stake of a frame which was capable of more or less distention; around the middle went an iron circle which prevented every motion. In this position he received his modicum of lashes, every muscle swollen and distended, till the blood dripped from the machine. After he was untied, the overseer dressed the wounds, according to fancy, with pickled pimento, pepper, hot coals, boiling oil or lard, sealing-wax, or gunpowder. Sometimes hot irons stanched the flow of blood. cage, so confined that the birds could have free access to him. They fed daily upon the unfortunate man; his eyes were carried off, his jaws laid bare, his arms torn to pieces, clouds of insects covered the lacerated body and regaled upon his blood. Another planter, attests M. Frossard, after having lived several years with a negress, deserted her for another, and wished to force her to become the slave of her rival. Not being able to endure this humiliation, she besought him to sell her. But the irritated Frenchman, after inflicting various preparatory punishments, buried her alive, with her head above ground, which he kept wet with eau sucrée till the insects had destroyed her. How piteous is the reflection that the slaves made a point of honor of preserving their backs free from scars, -so that the lash inflicted a double wound at every stroke! There was a planter who kept an iron box pierced with holes, into which the slaves were put for trivial offences, and moved towards a hot fire, till the torment threatened to destroy life. He considered this punishment preferable to whipping, because it did not suspend the slave's labors for so long a time. "What rascally sugar!" said Caradeux to his foreman; "the next time you turn out the like, I will have you buried alive; you know me." The occasion came soon after, and the black was thrown into a dungeon. Caradeux, says Malenfant, did not really wish to lose his black, yet wished to preserve his character for severity. He invited a dozen ladies to dinner, and during the repast informed them that he meant to execute his foreman, and they should see the thing done. This was not an unusual sight for ladies to witness: the Roman women never were more eager for the agonies of the Coliseum. But on this occasion they demurred, and asked pardon for the black. "Very well," said Caradeux; "remain at table, and when you see me take out my handkerchief, run and solicit his life." After the dessert, Caradeux repaired to the court, where the negro had been obliged to dig his own grave and to get into it, which he did with singing. The earth was thrown around him till the head only appeared. Caradeux pulls out his handkerchief; the ladies run, throw themselves at his feet; after much feigned reluctance, he exclaims, — "I pardon you at the solicitation of these ladies." The negro answered,— "You will not be Caradeux, if you pardon me." "What do you say?" cried the master, in a rage. "If you do not kill me, I swear by my god-mother that I will kill you." At this, Caradeux seized a huge stone, and hurled it at his head, and the other blacks hastened to put an end to his suffering. Burning the negro alive was an occasional occurrence. Burying him alive was more frequent. A favorite pastime was to bury him up to his neck, and let the boys bowl at his head. Sometimes the head was covered with molasses, and left to the insects. Pitying comrades were found to stone the sufferer to death. One or two instances were known of planters who rolled the bodies of slaves, raw and bloody from a whipping, among the ant-hills. If a cattle-tender let a mule or ox come to harm, the animal was sometimes killed and the man sewed up in the carcass. This was done a few times in cases where the mule died of some epizootic malady. Hamstringing negroes had always been practised against marooning, theft, and other petty offences: an overseer seldom failed to bring down his negro with a well-aimed hatchet. Coupe-jarret was a phrase applied during the revolutionary intrigues to those who were hampering a movement which appeared to ad vance. Cutting off the ears was a very common punishment. But M. Jouanneau, who lived at Grande-Riviére, nailed one of his slaves to the wall by the ears, |