* * * * *

SONNET.

  The starry flower, the flower-like stars that fade
  And brighten with the daylight and the dark,
  The bluet in the green I faintly mark,
  And glimmering crags with laurel overlaid,
  Even to the Lord of light, the Lamp of shade,
  Shine one to me,—­the least still glorious made
  As crowned moon or heaven’s great hierarch. 
  And, so, dim grassy flower and night-lit spark
  Still move me on and upward for the True;
  Seeking, through change, growth, death, in new and old,
  The full in few, the statelier in the less,
  With patient pain; always remembering this,—­
  His hand, who touched the sod with showers of gold,
  Stippled Orion on the midnight blue.

THE HORRORS OF SAN DOMINGO.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION.

Among the stock fallacies which belong to public writers and thinkers, and which exercise a kind of conventional influence as often as they are paraded, there is none greater than this,—­that History always repeats herself, because Human Nature never changes.  The Tories of all ages and countries content themselves and alarm their neighbors by an adroit interpolation of this formula in their speech.  They create the alarm because they are contented and intend to remain so.  Successive audiences yield, as to the circus-jokes of the clown, who hits his traditional laugh in the same place so often that it is a wonder the place is not worn through.  But people of a finer wit are not so easily surprised.  If they bore a fair numerical proportion to the listeners of doctrinaires and alarmists, the repetition would be eventually resisted, with an indignation equal to the amount of literary and political damage which it had effected.

If people mean, when they say that Human Nature is always the same, that a few primitive impulses appear through the disguise of all ages and races, which can be modified, but never extinguished, which work and are worked upon, are capable of doing good or harm according to circumstances, but are at all events the conditions of life and motion, it is fortunately true.  That is to say, it is very fortunate that men and women inhabit the earth.  Their great, simple features uplift and keep all landscapes in their places, and prevent life from falling through into the molten and chaotic forces underneath.  These rugged water-sheds inclose, configure, temper, fertilize, and also perturb, the great scenes and stretches of history.  They hold the moisture, the metal, the gem, the seeds of alternating forests and the patient routine of countless harvests.  Superficially it is a great way round from the lichen to the vine, but not so far by way of the centre.  The many-colored and astonishing life conceals a few simple motives.  Certainly it is a grand and lucky thing that there are so many people grouped along the lines of divine consistency.