Read Ebook: The Chautauquan Vol. 03 April 1883 by Chautauqua Institution Chautauqua Literary And Scientific Circle Flood Theodore L Editor

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 825 lines and 90370 words, and 17 pages

SUNDAY READINGS The Law of the Household 377 The Law of the Household 378 Finding and Bringing 379 Finding and Bringing 380 Faith the Soul Saving Act 380

They Grow to Flowers, Or to Weeds 383 Habit of Taking Pains 384 A Chaplet of Pearls 385 The Worth of Fresh Air 386 The Mammalia 389 Washington Irving 390 Hours of Rest 392 The Resources of the United States 393 Montana 394 Tales from Shakspere Much Ado About Nothing 395 The Head and the Heart 398 Defects in Our American Homes 399

C. L. S. C. Work 401 C. L. S. C. Testimony 402 C. L. S. C. Song 402 Local Circles 403 Robin and I 407 Questions and Answers Fifty Questions and Answers on Hampton Tracts, No. 5, "A Haunted House," and No. 9. "Cleanliness and Disinfection." 407 Outline of C. L. S. C. Studies 408 Thomas Hood 409 An Unnoted Evidence 412 Loss and Gain 413 Chautauqua Emerging from Winter 413 Chautauqua School of Languages 414 Editor's Outlook 415 Editor's Note-book 417 Editor's Table 419

REQUIRED READING FOR APRIL English Literature The Poet Described 423 On Giving Advice 424 Education Compared to Sculpture 425 New Books 426

REQUIRED READING

FOR THE

APRIL.

HISTORY OF RUSSIA.

THE TATAR INVASIONS--1224-1264.

The Russian principalities, weakened by civil wars, had no time for federation or concentration against the race that, moving with the swiftness of wild horses, darkened the horizon of the realm with their coming in 1224. Their aspect was rude, gross, and frightful: collectively, they were like an army of goblins. An English writer, who had perhaps witnessed one of their attacks, describes them: "They have broad and flat visages of a tanned color, yellow and black; thin hayre upon the upper lip, and a pit upon the chin. Their speeche is sudden and loud, speaking as if out of a deep hollow throat. When they sing, you would think a cow lowed, or a great Ban dog howled. They suffer not their children to eat till they have shot near the Marke, within a certain scantling." The bellowing of their cattle, the neighing of their wild horses, the grinding of the wooden wheels of their wagons, heightened the din and terror of their approach. In appearance and in warfare they were, in effect, half a million maniacs, mounted on horses as frenzied as themselves. Such conception of government as they had, took form in companies or hordes, who lived together in consenting communities, guarded by hosts of mounted archers. The poet, Matthew Arnold, in "Sohrab and Rustum," gives a vivid enumeration of a Tatar host, as it mustered "by the broad-flowing Oxus," many centuries prior to the period whereof we write:

"Kalmucks and Kuzzaks, tribes who stray Nearest the pole; and wandering Kirghizes, Who come on shaggy ponies from Pamere:

The Tatars of the Oxus, the king's guard, First, with black sheepskin caps, and with long spears; Large men, large steeds, who from Bokhara come, And Khiva, and ferment the milk of mares. Next, the more temperate Toorkums of the south, The Tukas, and the lances of Salore, And those from Attruck, and the Caspian sands-- Light men, and on light steeds, who only drink The acrid milk of camels, and their wells. And then a swarm of wandering horse, who come From far, and a more doubtful service owned-- The Tatars of Ferghana, from the banks Of the Jaxartes--men with scanty beards, And close-set skull-caps; and those wilder hordes Who roam o'er Kipschak and the northern waste."

In 1237 the nomads who traversed the lands long before occupied by the Bulgarians of the Volga, gave notice of a second irruption of the Mongol hosts, in a line of approach toward Suzdalian Russia. Forthwith followed tidings of the destruction of the "Great City," capital of the half-civilized Bulgarui, and the massacre of all, or nearly all, of the people of that region. The invaders, led by Batui, nephew of Genghis, plunged into the forests of the Volga, and sent forward to Riazan two envoys with a sorcerer or Shaman. "If you want peace give us a tribute of the tenth of your goods," ran their message. The ancient Slav courage and quickness that had spurred the Princes by the Kalka, was still regnant; and Riazan, with the neighboring States, represented in all by seven Princes, made answer: "When we are dead you may have the whole, if you can get them." But, as before, the rude, wild race laid low the bravery of the nobler one. The Russian soldiers were cut down, till scarce any were left to tell the story of the day of ruin. Feodor, one of the fair youth of the Russian chivalry, as he lay bleeding on the field, exclaimed: "I thank thee, Great God, that thou takest me now to thyself. Mine eyes shall not behold Euphrasia the spoil of Batui." Euphrasia, his beautiful wife, learning his fate, and forecasting her own, leaped from her castle window, her infant boy in her arms, crying: "Receive me, Christ and Feodor! Me, the hunted prey of the savage!" Oleg the Handsome, found bleeding from many wounds, among his dead drujina, repelled the offers, the caresses of the Khan, and was hewn into fragments. The ancient capital, the whole principality of Riazan was laid waste with sword and fire.

On their return route, the Tatars razed "Tver, the ancient and the rich," and Torjok, where "the Russian heads fell beneath the Tatar swords as falls the grass before the scythe." All traces of human habitation and human life disappeared in the track of their wanderings; for their cloud-like advances could not be called a march. The Great Republic began to tremble, for they had passed within her frontier. But swollen rivers, and forests till then untrodden by human feet, delayed the host, who sought, moreover, a softer clime and booty more easily obtained. It surged up to the Cross of Ignatius, within fifty miles of Novgorod Veliki, and there turned to the southeast. The village of Kozelsk , resisted to the death, and caused severe loss to the attacking squadrons. They named it the Wicked Town, and left not one of its people alive. Its young prince, Vasili, was drowned in a pool of blood.

Pereiaslaf and Tchernigof, though defended with similar desperation, suffered the same destruction . All Russia, save the principality of Kief, was red with the blood of her children, or marred by the conflagrations kindled by the Asiatics. Mangu, grandson of Genghis, coveted the city whose praises had been uttered ofttimes by travelers and merchants in the Orient. From the left bank of the Dnieper he gazed upon its walls of hewn stone, its springing towers, its many-domed churches, roofed with silver and gold. Such a city in such a sunlight, not even a Tatar could despise. Could it but be preserved intact, a trophy of the conquest, it might well serve as a capital, a center for the incoming conquering race. Messengers were sent across the river, offering what the chief considered doubtless as fair conditions of surrender. But though Riazan, Vladimir, Tchernigof, Tver, venerable capitals of powerful states, had been burned to ashes, the indomitable Slavic heart would

The great states of Volhynia and Gallicia, abandoned by their princes, were in no condition for a resolute resistance, after the ruin of the rest of the realm. They bent themselves to the Mongol yoke, which had now been imposed upon all Russia outside the Great Republic. Those of the people who had escaped the Tatar arrows, were made slaves. The wives of boyars who had been surrounded with luxury, clothed in costly stuffs from the Orient, adorned with jewels and with golden collars, became the menials of the rude and filthy Tatars, were forced to cook their mutton and grain, and to grind their mills.

Upon the European steppes, apparently extensions of the Asiatic plains, beside a branch of the Lower Volga, Batui paused to build a "castle," or city, Sara?, that became in time the capital of the Russian Tatar empire, the Golden Horde--so called from its sending a tent made of cloth of gold to the Grand Khan in Asia, as a part of its annual tribute; or perhaps from the chief tent of Batui, which was made of this precious stuff. This empire, called also Kipschak, extended from the Ural River and the Caspian Sea, westward to the mouth of the Danube, seventeen hundred miles; and from north to south, above a thousand miles, covering an area of one million seven hundred thousand square miles, or about half the area of our republic. Here gathered the Tatar Mongols, or modern Nogais, the remnants of the Petchenegs and the Polovtsui , the Bashkirs, and later the Kalmucks, with various Turkish nomad tribes, such as the Tatars of Astrakan, and the aboriginal Finnish populations,--all save the last named invaders of the Russian realm from the ninth to the eighteenth centuries. The Golden Horde remained tributary to the first three successors of Genghis, but revolted from the fourth, Khubula?, conqueror of the Chinese, and announced itself an independent empire in 1260. United and strong under the firm reign of Batui, it fell into dismemberment under his successors, till Khan Uzbek, in the fourteenth century, restored its unity and its primal prosperity. Gradually the nomads who settled upon its vast plains accepted the faith of Islam, and enrolled themselves among its fiercest propagandists. Gradually, too, they adopted partially the civilization of the people they had enslaved. The modern Russian Tatar is mild, peaceable, industrious, has a keen eye to trade, and unless in military ranks, cares nothing for warfare. But the advent of his race ushered a night of gloom over the young empire. All its arts and industries were annihilated for a century or more; its people were massacred or enslaved, its governments shattered, its national growth hopelessly obstructed. Its original Orientalism was intensified and used as the groundwork for the uprearing of an Oriental barbarism. The fine sensibilities, the poetry and grace, the generous spirit and gentle, hospitable manners of the Slav, were inoculated and depraved by the cruelty, the contempt of life, the falsehood, treachery, perfidy, and filthiness of the Mongol barbarians. One of the laws of Genghis was that clothes must never be washed, but worn without washing till they decayed. A like prohibition extended to the cooking utensils. The virtues and vices of his race have been enumerated as those of the animals of their zodiac:

Thievish as mice, Strong as oxen, Ferocious as panthers, Cautious as hares, Subtle as serpents, Horrible as dragons, Mettlesome as horses, Obedient as sheep, Child-loving as apes, Faithful as dogs, Unclean as swine.

Their ferocity led to the report in Greece and Western Europe that they had dog's heads, and lived on human flesh. The degeneracy of the ancient Slav began with the entrance of the horsemen of Tchep and Subuda?-bagadur into the Russian realm. In the modern Russian, compounded of Finn, Turk, Tatar, and German, scarcely a trace of the nobler Slav lineaments is evident; and from the fourteenth century the current maxim gains continually in veracity: "Scratch a Russian and you find a Tatar."

A GLANCE AT THE HISTORY AND LITERATURE OF SCANDINAVIA.

Translated by L. A. SHERMAN, PH.D.

And with the word he turned away. He took his sword, and king's commands, And through Czar Peter's hundred lands Resumed his swift and dangerous way, Oft hid in woods the whole day through, And guided in his paths by night From heaven's peerless signal light,-- The star of Northland, steadfast, true, Or by those stars in heaven's crown, Which know no hour of going down, The Wain of Charles, with argent beam, And wheel-spikes forged of brightest gold. And thus he rode through risks extreme, And hordes of foemen manifold, To M?lars palace, where amid The council's wonderment he told How had escaped their sovereign bold, And gave the letter as he bid.

So said so done. Resolve and deed Are one with woman, and with speed She is disguised. A casque compressed And hid her dark abundant hair, A doublet stayed her swelling breast, Her powder-sack she filled with care, And from her fair white shoulder slung Death's telescope, her carabine. Down from a belt of Greek design A crooked sabre gleaming hung, And either lip and cheek she smeared With black,--the hint of future beard.

She seemed, thus girt with belt and sword Like Love in hero's garb concealed, Or Klinias' son's fair form restored, Once painted on the gleaming shield.

"Farewell, my father's home, farewell! I shall return with love and dwell Again within thy walls some day. I can not wait, I must away. Hide me beneath thy veil, O Night, And give my Axel to my sight." Already lay upon the strands Of slumbering Sweden's vanquished lands Czar Peter's city, which has since Held crowns in pledge from many a prince. Then was it paltry. On its bay It like a new-born dragon lay. Yet nature is betrayed in young That coils itself on heated sands, Already venom in its glands, And hisses on its cloven tongue. A fleet to ravage Svea's shores Was lading there with murderous stores, And thitherward Maria pressed, And where the ships received their hoard Traced out her way, and made request That she might have a place on board. An officer who walked the quay, And saw, surprised, addressed her then: "You seem more dangerous, Sir youth, To Northern maids than Northern men. However it shall go with thee, They can not tweak thy beard, forsooth! Yet thou canst learn of them the whole Of war: it is for death or life; But either issue of the strife God and Saint Nicholas control."

The sails are set, the keel cuts through The foam, and hastens toward the west, And Svea's cliffs soon rise to view In sunset flames: they stand at rest Amid the swirl of tide and wave, The giant landmarks nature gave Of old to warn of dangerous strands. They landed on the famous sands Which skirt the base of Sota's reef, Where parted Hjalmar from the side Of Ingeborg, his faithful bride, Where afterward she died of grief, When Odin called the youth above To Valhall's courts, to do his will; And there her ghost sits lingering still Upon the cliff and mourns her love.

But towns are blazing one by one, And children shriek and women fly; Too well they know the war begun, And bells are ringing far and nigh Both night and day the call to arms. Alas! the dead hear no alarms. Woe! wretched land! what arm can save? Thy valiant men are in their grave. But still the peril of the land Joins boys and old men in a band With swords which smote on German mail, And saw Gustavus's hosts prevail, And halberds wielded with despatch In Denmark, worn with victory, And curious shapes of musketry With rusted locks, and kindled match. Such was the kingdom's sole defence, A paltry troop, and weaponed ill; Without surprise or doubt it still Went forth to drive the foemen thence. These did not battle hand to hand, But spread their cloud across the land, And lightened from the mountain's crown Where boldest hearts could not aspire, And unrevenged death thundered down On scanty ranks with ceaseless fire.

But then, as cometh angry Thor With hammer, girt with manhood's belt, So Axel came and joined the war, Where flight prevailed and horror dwelt,-- An angel sent in time of need. His arm is death, his glance a frown; He posts his men, spurs up and down The lines upon his foam-white steed. "Stand, Swedes, close up the ranks again! I have been sent by Carl to bring His greeting home to all his men. Our watchword, God, and Carl our king!" God and King Charles sound through the field. They follow where he leads the way, And heights from which the death-shots play Are stormed, and in a moment yield. And so was stopped the throat of hell, And fields were sown with weapons well, And blindly raged the sword throughout The terrible and bloody rout, Till awe-struck swept the robber-band, With quick-snatched cables from the strand.

Now like a sated beast of prey Lay Slaughter sleeping on the field. From heaven's tent the moon revealed The awful scene with pitying ray. Along the shore, with sighs, alone, Went Axel where the dead were strewn. They lay by twos, men face to face: How fierce the grasp of their embrace! A faithful clasp wouldst thou behold? Think not of lovers who enfold Each other, smiling tenderly; Go to the battlefield and see How hate, inflamed by death's fierce smart, Can press its foeman to its heart! Ah! charms of love and happiness Are fleeting as the zephyr's breath, But hate, and sorrow, and distress Are faithful even unto death. Thus musing, in the darkness nigh He heard the words of weak complaint: "O Axel, water! I am faint,-- A last farewell before I die!" He started at the well known sounds, And looking on the rocks espied A youth unknown who leaned beside The sharp cliff, pale and weak with wounds. The moon broke through the cloud and shone Upon the face, and with a groan Of trembling horror bitterly He shrieked, "O Jesus, it is she!"

Such was his plaint on Sota's shore, Where yet he stands at break of day, At night-fall will not go away, But lingers weeping as before. One morning saw him lifeless there, His hands clasped upward as in prayer, While on his cheeks the last tears lie, Half stiffened in the morning's chill; But on the grave is fastened still The viewless luster of his eye.

Such was the saga that I heard; How deep my tender heart was stirred. Full thirty years have passed away, Yet lives it in my soul to-day. For with lines definite and sharp Stand childhood's fancies graven well In hearts of skalds, where small they dwell, As Asl?g in King Heimer's harp,

Till summoned they come forth as she, Betraying god-like pedigree In dazzling raiment, gestures high, And golden hair, and kingly eye. Ah! full with golden lyres is hung The heaven of our childhood's hours, And all that skalds may since have sung, As great as heroes, small as flowers, Already in a fairer guise Has passed before our youthful eyes. Yet when melodiously ring The far-piped notes of quails in spring, When leaves the moon its eastern wave, A ghost uprising from the grave, And paints so mournfully and still The hue of death on dale and hill, Then sounds of sighs invade mine ear, Then seems as if I still could hear The ancient tale, and told so wide, Of Axel and his Russian bride.

PICTURES FROM ENGLISH HISTORY.

Macaulay has remarked as singular the fact that two great relics of barbarism in England were never abolished by law: disappeared, melted away before the advance of civilization. These were feudalism and human slavery.

While this was going on, during twenty years, other things helped to create the spirit of insubordination. John Wickliffe had begun to thunder against the tyranny of Rome and the corruptions of the clergy, and to preach individual liberty of conscience. The sect of Lollards, of which he was the head, had offshoots of ruder tenets and practices. A preacher named John Ball had for many years itinerated, with all England for his circuit and the fields, market-places and church-yards for his chapels. He "preached politics" with an unction and genuine eloquence, as this condensed report of one of his sermons will show:

And John Ball, like all men who move the masses, boiled his whole political and religious platform down into a motto with a rhyme to it, so that the most stolid ignorance could learn and remember it--for, mark you, poetry is the aspiration of the ignorant as well as the inspiration of the gifted:

When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?

Immortal old epigrammatist and poet of democracy! His lines are heard to-day wherever manhood rebels against the pride and tyranny of property. It was in every poor man's mouth in England for a quarter of a century, and it did a wonderful work, that little couplet. Such is the power of a thought!

There were other street orators and other poets. An Oxford student wrote "The Plaints of Piers, the Ploughman," the saddest, fiercest protest against caste that England ever heard.

The crowning act of folly and injustice came when Parliament laid a poll-tax on every person in the kingdom over fifteen years of age. This made the poor man pay as much as the rich; and more, if the poorer the man the larger his family, which was probably the case then as now. There were no census statistics, and the tax-gatherers had to make a domiciliary visit in every case, an inquisition Englishmen especially resent; for the feeling that every man's house is his castle dates back to the life of family segregation for which they were remarked in old Roman times. The tax, payable in money, came hard on poor people, who generally worked for their food and clothing, paid in kind. With an exaggerated idea of the population of England, Parliament had not levied a large enough unit per head. The rich, instead of helping the poor heads of families to pay the tax, as directed in the writs, shirked their own share. Thus the returns were insufficient to meet government needs, and the tax-gatherers were sent out again, with sheriffs' posses, to glean more thoroughly.

With all these exactions when the times were ripe for an outbreak, you may be sure England was soon in a fever of excitement. Collectors' processes began to be resisted, and they and their posses driven away by force. One day a rough collector went into the house of a man in Dartford, Kent, named Walter, a tyler by trade. Demanding his tax the collector insisted, in spite of the mother's denial, that the eldest daughter was over fifteen years of age, and at last, to settle the dispute, he made an insulting proposition and laid hands on the girl. The screams of the mother and children brought the father running from his shop, hammer in hand, and seeing his daughter struggling in the arms of the man, he smashed his brains out with the hammer, regardless of the royal coat-of-arms. Walter himself had worn that uniform, for he had been a brave campaigner in France. The deed was done, and his life was forfeit. Instead of shrinking from the consequences, he placed himself at the head of his neighbors, who now gathered around him. His hammer had struck the percussion cap to the mine long prepared.

In another part of Kent there was another outbreak. A noble claimed a runaway bondsman and shut him up in Rochester Castle. The people stormed the castle and delivered the prisoner-slave to a double freedom. Couriers now went through all England bearing calls to rise, couched in rude rhymes which tell at once of the lowly state of the masses and of the art of those who called to arms. One ran thus:

"John Ball greeteth you all, And doth for to understand he hath rung your bell, Now, right and might, will and skill, God speede every dele."

"Help truth and truth shall help you. Now reigneth pride in place and covetise is counted wise, and lechery withouten shame, and gluttony withouten blame. Envy reigneth with treason, and sloth is taken in great season. God do bote! for now is time."

"Jack Carter prays you all that ye may make a good end of that ye have begun, and do well and aye better and better. For at the even men heareth the day."

"Truth hath been set under a lock, and falseness and guile reigneth in every stock. True love is away that was so good and clerks for wealth work us woe. God do bote for now is tyme.

"JACK TREWMAN."

These unmistakable references to preparations already made, help us to understand how it was that almost in a day Wat Tyler found himself at the head of a hundred thousand men marching on London. One force under a leader named Jack Straw, came by Canterbury, which threw open its gates, as "the whole town was of their sort," and they gutted the palace of the archbishop, who had ground the face of the poor by assuming a monopoly of all the grinding of grain in his district, on which he had placed excessive toll.

There is something very pathetic in this movement on London. They would appeal to the young king himself, and not to the selfish dukes, his uncles, who guarded him and misgoverned the realm. The son of the Black Prince, the defender of England, and, so long as he lived, the protector of the people against the cruelty of the nobles, should hear their appeal and do them right. It was said the boy king was no better than a prisoner in his uncles' hands; peradventure they might deliver him and themselves by the same blow. All the way to London they made everybody they took swear allegiance to Richard. But all the lawyers they captured they hung, as the instruments of oppression, the contrivers of technicalities by which freedmen had been re-enslaved.

And thus they settled down on Blackheath, before London, June 12, 1381. Panic had gone before them. John, the Duke of Lancaster, fled to Scotland, deserting the young king he had overruled with no gentle hand. All the knights and nobles about the king threw themselves into the tower. The king's mother, the widow of the Black Prince, hearing of the disturbance in her country home, made brave by a mother's fear, hastened to London, passing through the camp of the insurgents unhurt and with honor; she kissed Walter Tyler and Jack Straw and took their devotion to her son.

In the general panic Richard was the only man in England equal to the emergency. Man! He was only sixteen, but at about that age his father had won his spurs at Cressy. He took boat on the Thames and rowed down to the insurgents' camp. The Archbishop of Canterbury and some ministers were with him, and when Tyler asked the king to land and talk with them, promising respect and loyalty, this prelate prevented him, thus confirming the stories of the king's duress. The rescue of their sovereign became their first object. They marched on the city, and the sympathizing citizens threw open the gates.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet