From the New York Independent. THE WEEPING PROPHET. * BY LUCY LARCOM. WOE, woe is me for my dear country's sin! How guilt draws down that light in burning levin How awful is the purity of heaven! A boy among the hills of Anathoth I saw the visionary caldron seethe, The almond-tree its ominous blossoms wreathe, To be his messenger of woe I shrank; I cried, "Ah, Lord, I am a child so weak! Therefore I sit a mourner, and mine eyes Pour day and night their heavy sorrows down; My people pass me by, for they despise His goodness, and with scoffs his warnings drown; The birds of prey that scent their ruin go. Was ever any sorrow like to mine? It is no selfish trouble that I weep, Vigil for thee, beneath the wrath divine, *Suggested by a bas-relief of the prophet Jeremiah, by Miss Marguerite Foley, of Boston, who has been for several years busy at her art in Rome, and is now about to return after a brief absence. It is an impressive head-that of a quiet, thoughtful old man, one who would never have chosen for himself the lot which has fallen to him, to be a "man of strife," and who is bowed in deep depression at the rejection of the Divine message. It is especially interesting as having been produced by an American woman away from her country during the war. One can easily fancy how she wrought, under such circumstances, in sympathy with the prophet's words: "That I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughters of my people." For evermore the tables of that law, Broken by man, are back upon him hurled. Wandering from him an outcast in the world, Alike in visions of the day and night, A spectral presence not to be shut out, For thou wert beautiful, Jerusalem! Celestial colors wrapped thee at thy birth, THE LOYAL STATES IN THE WAR.--- THOMAS HUGHES ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. THOMAS HUGHES, a member of Parliament, contributes to the January number of Maximilian's Magazine a pleasant sketch of the part taken by the people of the loyal States during our war against rebellion. "The true hero of the war," he says, “is, after all, the American people." He proceeds as follows: WHAT THE SMALLEST STATE DID. Let us look, as a first instance, at the smallest in area of all the States and the smallest in population of all the free States. Little Rhode Island, at the census of 1860, just before the breaking out of the war, contained a population of 174,650. As usual in the eastern States, the females considerably exceeded the males, and of the latter there were 82,304 altogether. Up to December 1st, 1862—that is to say, in less than two years from the first call of the President for troops-Rhode Island furnished 14,626 men to the army, and 1,400 to the navy, or almost one in five of her total male population, and, of course, far more than that proportion of her men of fighting age between eighteen and forty-five. In the first enthusiasm, when the call for 500,000 men came in the summer of 1861, the quota of Rhode Island was 4,057, and she furnished 5,124. I do not give the later returns, because there appears to have been a large number of substitutes amongst her recruits after 1862, and I have no means of knowing whether these were or were not natives of the State. There is no need to overstate the case, and I should, on every account shrink from doing so. Rhode Island, though the smallest, is tenth in rank of all the States as a producer, and her people are consequently rich and prosperous. If in the latter years of the war they found substitutes in large numbers, it must be at the same time remembered that they contributed more largely than any other State, in proportion to numbers, to that noblest of all charities the Sanitary Commission. MASSACHUSETTS. Massachusetts, at the outbreak of the war, held a population of 1,230,000 or thereabouts, out of which there were 257,833 males between the ages of fifteen and forty. The first blood shed in the war against the slave power, as in the Revolutionary war against England, was Massachusetts blood. The Sixth Massachusetts was fired on in the streets of Baltimore, on April 19th, 1861, and had to fight its way through the town, losing three killed and thirty wounded in the operation. Well, the number of men demanded of Massachusetts during the war was 116,624. The number furnished by her (reducing all to the three years' standard) was 125,437, being a surplus over all calls of 7,813. Besides these, 6,670 were mustered in answer to a call for three months' men in 1864, which were never credited to her by the government. Look at the meaning now of this other fact, that she has actually sent more men to the war than are now to be found in the State liable to do military duty. How does this tell as to wear and tear of the human material in those southern campaigns? The last assessors' return gave these at 133,767; while the total number who served (including three and nine months' men, and not adhering to the three years' standard) was 153,486. Out of these, how many does the reader (who has probably heard more or less of "stopping the war by prohibiting emigration from Ireland," and of "New England hiring foreign mercenaries to do the fighting,") think were foreign recruits? Just 907. This does not include men born out of the States, but resident or naturalized there before the war broke out. These latter, however, I suppose could not come within the definition of foreign mercenaries; and of foreigners arriving in America during the war, Massachusetts enlisted, as I have said, 907 out of 150,000. While on this point I may add that the most reliable statistics as to the whole forces of the north show that of native-born Americans there were nearly 80 per cent., of naturalized Americans 15, of foreigners 5 per cent. only, in the ranks. CONTRIBUTIONS. I need scarcely pause to note how the northern people have paid in purse as well as in person. Let one instance suffice. In 1864 the assessment of Massachusetts for taxes to support the general government amounted to fourteen millions, every fraction of which was collected without impediment or delay. Add to this the State taxation, and the amounts contributed to Sanitary Commission and other organizations for distributing voluntary contributions in the support of the war, and we should reach a figure almost exceeding belief. I have no means of stating it accurately, but am quite safe in putting it as high as twenty-five million dollars, actually raised and paid, by a State with a population less than half of that of our metropolis, in one twelve month. PERSONAL EXAMPLES. And now for my second point- the example set by the men of birth, wealth and high position. Here, too, I feel sure that a few simple facts, taken at hazard from the mass which I have under my hand, will be more than enough to satisfy every just and generous man among my countrymen; and I am proud to believe, that whatever our prejudices may be, there are few indeed among us to whom such an appeal will be made in vain. I have said above that the mass of the materials is large; I might have said unmanageable. It is, indeed, impossible to take more than an example, here and there, to bring these out as clearly as one can in the limits of an article. Let me take as mine a family or two, with some one or more of whose members I have the honor of friendship or acquaintance. And first, that of J. Russell Lowell, the man to whose works I owe more, personally, than to those of any other American. It would be hard to find a nobler record. The young men of this stock seem to have been all of high mark, distinguished specially for intellectual powers and attainments. Surely the sickle of war has never been put more unsparingly into any field! First in order comes Willie Putnam, aged twenty-one, the sole surviving son of Lowell's sister, a boy of the highest culture and promise, mortally wounded at Ball's Bluff in October, 1861, in the first months of the war, while in the act of going to the help of a wounded companion. At the same bitter fight his cousin, James Jackson Lowell, was badly hurt, but, after a short absence to recruit, joined his regiment again, and fell on June 30th, 1862. "Tell my father I was dressing the line of my company when I was hit," was his last message home. He had been first in his year at Harvard, and was taking private pupils in the law school when the war broke out. Warren Russell fell at Bull Run in August, 1862. Many of us here may remember the account, which was re-printed in the Times and other papers, of the presentation of colors to the Second Massachusetts Infantry by Mr. Motley, at Boston, in the summer of 1861. It attracted special notice from the fact that the author of the "History of the Dutch Republic" had been so lately living amongst us, and was so well known and liked here. The group of officers who received these colors were the jeunesse doree of Massachusetts Quincy, Dwight, Abbott, Robeson, Shaw, Gordon, Savage, Perkins. Such a roll will speak volumes to all who have any acquaintance with New England history. Those colors have come home riddled, tattered, blackened; but five-sixths of the young officers have given their lives for them, and of the one thousand rank and file who then surrounded them, scarcely one hundred and fifty survive. I refer to the muster, because Robert Shaw was amongst those officers-a name already honored in these pages, and another nephew of Lowell's. Shaw's sister married Charles Lowell, of whom more presently. We all know how Robert Shaw, after two years' gallant service, accepted the command of the first black regiment raised in Massachusetts, (the fifty-fourth,) how he led them in the operations before Charleston, and was buried with his "niggers" in the pit under Fort Wagner-the grandest sepulture earned by any soldier of this country. By his side fought and died Cabot Russell, the third of Lowell's nephews, then a captain of a black company. Stephen George Per |