BIRDOFREDOM SAWIN.
James Russell Lowell
[Those have not been wanting (as, indeed, when hath Satan been to seek
for attorneys?) who have maintained that our late inroad upon Mexico was
undertaken not so much for the avenging of any national quarrel, as for
the spreading of free institutions and of Protestantism. _Capita vix
duabus Anticyris medenda!_ Verily I admire that no pious sergeant among
these new Crusaders beheld Martin Luther riding at the front of the host
upon a tamed pontifical bull, as, in that former invasion of Mexico, the
zealous Gomara (spawn though he were of the Scarlet Woman) was favored
with a vision of St. James of Compostella, skewering the infidels upon
his apostolical lance. We read, also, that Richard of the lion heart,
having gone to Palestine on a similar errand of mercy, was divinely
encouraged to cut the throats of such Paynims as refused to swallow the
bread of life (doubtless that they might be thereafter incapacitated for
swallowing the filthy gobbets of Mahound) by angels of heaven, who cried
to the king and his knights,_--Seigneurs, tuez! tuez!_ providentially
using the French tongue, as being the only one understood by their
auditors. This would argue for the pantoglottism of these celestial
intelligences, while, on the other hand, the Devil, _teste_ Cotton
Mather, is unversed in certain of the Indian dialects. Yet must he be a
semeiologist the most expert, making himself intelligible to every
people and kindred by signs; no other discourse, indeed, being needful,
than such as the mackerel-fisher holds with his finned quarry, who, if
other bait be wanting, can by a bare bit of white rag at the end of a
string captivate those foolish fishes. Such piscatorial persuasion is
Satan cunning in. Before one he trails a hat and feather, or a bare
feather without a hat; before another, a Presidential chair or a
tide-waiter's stool, or a pulpit in the city, no matter what. To us,
dangling there over our heads, they seem junkets dropped out of the
seventh heaven, sops dipped in nectar, but, once in our mouths, they are
all one, bits of fuzzy cotton.
This, however, by the way. It is time now _revocare gradum_. While so
many miracles of this sort, vouched by eye-witnesses, have encouraged
the arms of Papists, not to speak of Echetlæus at Marathon and those
_Dioscuri_ (whom we must conclude imps of the pit) who sundry times
captained the pagan Roman soldiery, it is strange that our first
American crusade was not in some such wise also signalized. Yet it is
said that the Lord hath manifestly prospered our armies. This opens the
question, whether, when our hands are strengthened to make great
slaughter of our enemies, it be absolutely and demonstratively certain
that this might is added to us from above, or whether some Potentate
from an opposite quarter may not have a finger in it, as there are few
pies into which his meddling digits are not thrust. Would the Sanctifier
and Setter-apart of the seventh day have assisted in a victory gained on
the Sabbath, as was one in the late war? Do we not know from Josephus,
that, careful of His decree, a certain river in Judaea abstained from
flowing on the day of Rest? Or has that day become less an object of His
especial care since the year 1697, when so manifest a providence
occurred to Mr. William Trowbridge, in answer to whose prayers, when he
and all on shipboard with him were starving, a dolphin was sent daily,
'which was enough to serve 'em; only on _Saturdays_ they still catched a
couple, and on the _Lord's Days_ they could catch none at all'? Haply
they might have been permitted, by way of mortification, to take some
few sculpins (those banes of the salt-water angler), which unseemly fish
would, moreover, have conveyed to them a symbolical reproof for their
breach of the day, being known in the rude dialect of our mariners as
_Cape Cod Clergymen_.
It has been a refreshment to many nice consciences to know that our
Chief Magistrate would not regard with eyes of approval the (by many
esteemed) sinful pastime of dancing, and I own myseif to be so far of
that mind, that I could not but set my face against this Mexican Polka,
though danced to the Presidential piping with a Gubernatorial second. If
ever the country should be seized with another such mania _pro
propaganda fide_, I think it would be wise to fill our bombshells with
alternate copies of the Cambridge Platform and the Thirty-nine Articles,
which would produce a mixture of the highest explosive power, and to
wrap every one of our cannon-balls in a leaf of the New Testament, the
reading of which is denied to those who sit in the darkness of Popery.
Those iron evangelists would thus be able to disseminate vital religion
and Gospel truth in quarters inaccessible to the ordinary missionary. I
have seen lads, unimpregnate with the more sublimated punctiliousness of
Walton, secure pickerel, taking their unwary _siesta_ beneath the
lily-pads too nigh the surface, with a gun and small shot. Why not,
then, since gunpowder was unknown in the time of the Apostles (not to
enter here upon the question whether it were discovered before that
period by the Chinese), suit our metaphor to the age in which we live,
and say _shooters_ as well as _fishers_ of men?
I do much fear that we shall be seized now and then with a Protestant
fervor, as long as we have neighbor Naboths whose wallowings in
Papistical mire excite our horror in exact proportion to the size and
desirableness of their vineyards. Yet I rejoice that some earnest
Protestants have been made by this war,--I mean those who protested
against it. Fewer they were than I could wish, for one might imagine
America to have been colonized by a tribe of those nondescript African
animals the Aye-Ayes, so difficult a word is _No_ to us all. There is
some malformation or defect of the vocal organs, which either prevents
our uttering it at all, or gives it so thick a pronunciation as to be
unintelligible. A mouth filled with the national pudding, or watering in
expectation thereof, is wholly incompetent to this refractory
monosyllable. An abject and herpetic Public Opinion is the Pope, the
Anti-Christ, for us to protest against _e corde cordium_. And by what
College of Cardinals is this our God's-vicar, our binder and looser,
elected? Very like, by the sacred conclave of Tag, Rag, and Bobtail, in
the gracious atmosphere of the grog-shop. Yet it is of this that we must
all be puppets. This thumps the pulpit-cushion, this guides the editor's
pen, this wags the senator's tongue. This decides what Scriptures are
canonical, and shuffles Christ away into the Apocrypha. According to
that sentence fathered upon Solon, [Greek: Onto daemosion kakon erchetai
oikad ekasto] This unclean spirit is skilful to assume various shapes. I
have known it to enter my own study and nudge my elbow of a Saturday,
under the semblance of a wealthy member of my congregation. It were a
great blessing, if every particular of what in the sum we call popular
sentiment could carry about the name of its manufacturer stamped legibly
upon it. I gave a stab under the fifth rib to that pestilent
fallacy,--'Our country, right or wrong,'--by tracing its original to a
speech of Ensign Cilley at a dinner of the Bungtown Fencibles.--H.W.]
No. III