een lovers, and I left him, to walk back rith Claire. That night the story was all old in our little home. My trunk was rought and carried to my bare and cramped chamber; and when the accustomed early hour for retirement came I knelt with the >ther children and worshiped as of old.

My father was happy, my mother was reconciled to the change, for Claire had been recognized at The Mansion, and I went to bed and rested through a dreamless sleep until the morning light summoned me to new charges and new duties.

PORTALS:

I.

PRELUDE.

A WIND and a voice from the North!

A courier-wind sent forth

From the mountains to the sea:

A summons borne to me

From halls which the Muses haunt-from hills where

the heart and the wind are free!

"Come from the outer throng!"
(Such was the burden it bore),
"Thou who hast gone before,

Hither! and sing us a song,

Far from the round of the town and the sound of the great world's roar !"

O masterful voice of Youth,

That will have, like the upland wind, its own wild way!

O choral words, that with every season rise
Like the warblings of orchard-birds at break of day!
O faces, fresh with the light of morning skies!
No marvel world-worn toilers seek you here,
Even as they life renew, from year to year,

In woods and meadows lit with blossoming May;
But O, blithe voices, that have such sweet power,
Unto your high behest this summer hour
What answer has the poet: how shall he frame his
lay?

II. THEME.

"What shall my song rehearse?" I said
To a wise bard, whose hoary head
Is bowed, like Kearsarge crouching low
Beneath a winter weight of snow,
But whose songs of passion, joy, or scorn,
Within a fiery heart are born.

"What can I spread, what proper feast
For these young Magi of the East?
What wisdom find, what mystic lore,
What chant they have not heard before?
Strange words of old has every tongue
Those happy cloistered hills among;
For each riddle I divine
They can answer me with nine;
Their footsteps by the Muse are led,
Their lips on Plato's honey fed;
Their eyes have skill to read the page
Of Theban bard or Attic sage;

"What is there left? what shall my verse Within those ancient halls rehearse?" Deep in his heart my plaint the minstrel weighed, And a subtle answer made:

"The world that is, the ways of men,

Not yet are glassed within their ken.
Their foster-mother holds them long,-
Long, long to youth,-short, short to age, appear
The rounds of her Olympic Year,-
Their ears are quickened for the trumpet-call.
Sing to them one true song,

Ere from the Happy Vale they turn,

Of all the Abyssinian craved to learn-
And dared his fate, and scaled the mountain-wall,
To join the ranks without, and meet what might
befall."

III.

VESTIGIA RETRORSUM.

Gone the Arcadian age, When, from this hill-side hermitage Sent forth, the gentle scholar strode At ease upon a royal road,

And found the outer regions all they seem In Youth's prophetic dream.

The graduate took his station then
By right, a ruler among men :
Courtly the three estates, and sure;
The bar, the bench, the pulpit, pure;
No cosmic doubts arose, to vex
The preacher's heart, his faith perplex,--
Content in ancient paths he trod,

Nor searched beyond his Book for God.
Great virtue lurked in many a saw
And in the doctor's Latin lay;
Men thought, lived, died, in the appointed way.
Yet eloquence was slave to law,

And law to right: the statesman sought A patriot's fame, and served his land, unbought, And bore erect his front, and held his oath in awe.

IV.

ÆREA PROLES.

But, now, far other days

Have made less green the poet's bays,-
Have less revered the band and gown,
The grave physician's learnéd frown,-
Shaken the penitential mind

That read the text nor looked behind,— Brought from his throne the bookman down, Made hard the road to station and renown!

Now from this seclusion deep

The scholar wakes-as one from sleep,
As one from sleep remote and sweet,
In some fragrant garden-close
Between the lily and the rose,
Roused by the tramp of many feet,
Leaps up to find a ruthless, warring band,
Dust, strife, an untried weapon in his hand !

The time unto itself is strange,
Driven on from change to change,
Neither of past nor present sure,
The ideal vanished nor the real secure.

Heaven has faded from the skies,

Faith hides apart and weeps with clouded eyes;
A noise of cries we hear, a noise of creeds,
While the old heroic deeds

Not of the leaders now are told, as then,
But of lowly, common men.

See by what paths the loud-voiced gain
Their little heights above the plain:
Truth, honor, virtue, cast away
For the poor plaudits of a day!
Now fashion guides at will

The artist's brush, the writer's quill,
While, for a weary time unknown,
The reverent workman toils alone,

Asking for bread and given but a stone.

Fettered with gold the statesman's tongue;
Now, even the church, among

New doubts and strange discoveries, half in vain
Defends her long, ancestral reign;

Now, than all others grown more great,
That which was the last estate

By turns reflects and rules the age,—

Laughs, scolds, weeps, counsels, jeers,—a jester and

a sage!

V.

ENCHANTMENTS.

Here, in Learning's shaded haunt,

The battle-fugue and mingled cries forlorn

Softened to music seem, nor the clear spirit daunt;

Here, in the gracious world that looks
From earth and sky and books,
Easeful and sweet it seems all else to scorn
Than works of noble use and virtue born;
Brave hope and high ambition consecrate
Our coming years to something great.
But when the man has stood,
Anon, in garish outer light,
Feeling the first wild fever of the blood
That places self with self at strife
Whether to hoard or drain the wine of life,-
When the broad pageant flares upon the sight,
And tuneful Pleasure plumes her wing
And the crowds jostle and the mad bells ring,-
Then he, who sees the vain world take slow heed
Albeit of his worthiest and best,

And still, through years of failure and unrest,
Would keep inviolate his vow,—

Of all his faith and valor has sore need!
Even then, I know, do nobly as we will,
What we would not, we do, and see not how;
That which we would, is not, we know not why;
Some fortune holds us from our purpose still,-
Chance sternly beats us back, and turns our steps
awry!

VI.

AH! SI JEUNESSE SAVAIT, SI VIEILLESSE POUVAIT! How slow, how sure, how swift,

The sands within each glass,

The brief, illusive moments, pass!
Half unawares we mark their drift

Till the awakened heart cries out- Alas!
Alas, the fair occasion fled,

The precious chance to action all unwed!
And murmurs in its depths the old refrain-
Had we but known betimes what now we know in
vain !

When the veil from the eyes is lifted

The seer's head is gray;

When the sailor to shore has drifted
The sirens are far away.

Why must the clearer vision,

The wisdom of Life's late hour, Come, as in Fate's derision,

When the hand has lost its power?

Is there a rarer being,

Is there a fairer sphere

Where the strong are not unseeing,
And the harvests are not sere;
Where, ere the seasons dwindle
They yield their due return;
Where the lamps of knowledge kindle
While the flames of youth still burn?
O, for the young man's chances!
O, for the old man's will!
These flee while this advances,
And the strong years cheat us still.

VII.

WHAT CHEER?

Is there naught else?-you say-
No braver prospect far away?
No gladder song, no ringing call
Beyond the misty mountain-wall?
And were it thus indeed, I know

Your hearts would still with courage glow;

I know how yon historic stream

Is laden yet, as in the past,

With dreamful longings on it cast

By those who saunter from the crown Of this broad slope, their reverend Academe,Who reach the meadowed banks, and lay them down On the green sward, and set their faces south, Embarked in Fancy's shallop there, And with the current seek the river's mouth, Finding the outer ocean grand and fair.

Ay, like the stream's perpetual tide,
Wave after wave each blithe, successive throng
Must join the main and wander far and wide.
To you the golden, vanward years belong!

Ye need not fear to leave the shore:
Not seldom youth has shamed the sage
With riper wisdom,-but to age
Youth, youth, returns no more!

Be yours the strength by will to conquer fate,
Since to the man who sees his purpose clear,

And gains that knowledge of his sphere
Within which lies all happiness,—
Without-all danger and distress,-

And seeks the right, content to strive and wait,

To him all good things flow, nor honor crowns him late.

His works your heritage and guide,
Through East and West his stalwart fame divide.
Mourn, for the liberal youth,

The undaunted spirit whose quintessence rare,
Fanned by the Norseland air,
Saw flaming in its own white heat the truth

That Man, whate'er his ancestry,
Tanned by what sun or exiled from what shore,
Hears in his soul the high command-Be Free!
For him who, at the parting of the ways,

Disdained the flowery path, and gave
His succor to the hunted Afric slave,

Whose cause he chose nor feared the world's dispraise;

Yet found anon the right become the might,

And, in the long revenge of time,

Lived to renown and hoary years sublime.
Ye know him now, your beacon-light!

Ay, he was fronted like a tower,—

In thought large-moulded, as of frame;
He that, in the supreme hour,

Sat brooding at the river-heads of power
With sovereign strength for every need that came !
Not for that blameless one the place

crown;

For which the toilers long have wrought,
And poets sung, and heroes fought;
The new Saturnian age is yours,

That juster season soon to be

On the near coasts (whereto your vessels sail
Beyond the darkness and the gale),

Of proud Atlantis risen from the sea!
You shall not know the pain that now endures
The surge, the smiting of the waves,
The overhanging thunder,

The shades of night which plunge engulfed under
Those yawning island-caves;

But in their stead for you shall glisten soon
The coral circlet and the still lagoon,

Green shores of freedom, blest with calms,
And sunlit streams and meads, and shadowy palms;
Such joys await you, in our sorrows' stead;

Thither our charts have almost led; Nor in that land shall worth, truth, courage, ask for alms.

X.

VALETE ET SALVETE.

O, trained beneath the Northern Star ! Worth, courage, honor, these indeed Your sustenance and birthright are! Now, from her sweet dominion freed, Your Foster Mother bids you speed; Her gracious hands the gates unbar, Her richest gifts you bear away, Her memories shall be your stay: Go where you will, her eyes your course shall mark afar.

DURING a sojourn of fifteen years in India, between 1836 and 1862, I was peculiarly fortunate, as a student of Sanskrit, in always having at my elbow Pandits of the highest

| character that the country afforded. These, with a single exception, were by origin. Brahmans; and all of them but three or four had been educated at the great Hindu

metropolis of letters, Benares. Not only did they assist me in quality of instructors, but they traveled with me, hunted with me, fished with me; and, more than once, when inspecting schools in parts remote from civilization, I have, for months together, had no rational companions save my Pandits.

Fragrant to me for evermore will be the memory of those dark-skinned sages. In gratitude, I can never forget the else weary evenings which, in the years that I spent under canvas, they helped me to beguile by their animated and instructive talk; and many a chill morning's march from three o'clock till sunrise was relieved of much of its intrinsic tedium by the companionship of my Pandit, trotting his pony at my side, and grumbling for all the world like any Anglo-Saxon. Odd as it may sound, somehow there is an unspeakable satisfaction in finding that, though a man may go wrapped in swaddling-clothes, may worship Vishnu, and may not know a word of English, he may, nevertheless, be essentially a duplicate

of one's self.

A Pandit is simply a man of learning. The word itself is Sanskrit; and equally exotic with the word is, in nature and measure, the erudition which it indicates. In a chapter on Pandits, I ought to give some idea of what a Pandit knows. But, as the reader will discover, it is no less curious to be told how he came to know it. The method of tuition by which he was disciplined is, in the main, that which has obtained among the Hin dus from time immemorial. Of this I purpose, in the first place, to give a short account.

Except when he happens to be of the very latest fashion, a Pandit has but a tepid interest in anything that does not concern his own people. The world outside the Hindu pale is to him, till he dimly comes to know better, made up of barbarians; unfortunates with whom a son of Brahma has little more in common than with so many chimpanzees. That these barbarians are under the providence of such gods as best suit them he complacently admits; and a similar admission as to fitness is made regarding their literature and science; yet alike their gods, themselves, and their literature and science, with everything that is theirs, are, at best, semi-spurious. On the other hand, the Hindu and all that belongs to him is derived directly from Heaven. His own supernal descent he has no misgiving about; while the language of his ancient books, like many of the books themselves, has been handed down to him straight from the celestials. The language referred to is the Sanskrit.

It seems that, with the Hindus of antiquity, the universal rule was for a teacher to restrict his care to a single pupil, or, at all events, to one pupil at a time. For many generations, however, Hindu students have studied in classes; and I have heard Pandits attribute to this mode of study, from its inferiority to that of former days, the comparative superficialness of their modern scholarship. There is no doubt as concerns the superficialness so frankly acknowledged; and the reason assigned for it must be, to some extent, the true one. A pupil who has a preceptor all to himself, with unlimited opportunity to ask questions, would not, to be sure, if associated with other pupils, be compensated for the lack of such opportunity by the stimulus of compe tition. But, in tracing the shallowness of contemporary Panditship to its cause, account should also be taken of the diminution of prestige and profit attached to the character of preceptor, which marks the present time, in contrast to times gone by. Before the decay of the old Hindu kingdoms, a preceptor-and every Pandit was a preceptor was had in honor as such; and further, was secure of an affluent maintenance from the benefactions of the great and wealthy. Then, too, Hinduism had a vital existence; whereas, in measure as an unshaken belief in it has waned, the zeal to master its sacred language has slackened, and so has the zeal to encourage those who dedicate themselves to its acquirement. This being the case, it is no wonder that the thoroughness of the Hindu literarians has now become a poor thing in comparison with that of their predecessors who flourished in the ages of faith.

Nowhere, on this side of the Christian era, have we ground to believe that the Sanskrit has been a spoken language. Yet its general cultivation, long after it had ceased to be a medium of domestic oral communication, must have been very considerable. As late as the tenth century, if not later, we know that the scenic exhibition of Sanskrit dramas still drew together large audiences; and as these dramas, in their presentation, bore very little analogy to our Italian Opera, it is unreasonable to suppose that they were played before persons who, without understanding what was uttered, found sufficient gratification in action substantially pantomimic.

For many centuries, however, the Sanskrit has been as dead as the Latin; a language confined to scholars, which, besides reading and writing it with ease, they could, after some practice, learn to speak with but slight difficulty. Nor is the custom