of his lineage-Tscharner De'Graffenreidt Michaux. For the most part these French names have been Americanized. Soublette is now metamorphosed into Sublitt; D'Aubigné into Dabney; and Souinné into Sweeney, whose lineal descendant, Joe Sweeny, with his banjo, accompanied the gay and dashing rebel General J. E. B. Stuart through all his campaigns. The descendants of these Huguenots have preserved many of the characteristics of their forefathers. While no one of them, except Matthew Fontaine Maury, whose name is the property of America by his great work on the Geography of the Sea, has been distinguished for genius, yet all have been remarkable for good sense and sterling integrity. While fickle Fortune in the revolution of her wheel has made a great difference in their conditions and stations in life-some being opulent planters and others daylaborers for the owners of their paternal lands-while no one has been distinguished as a governor or president, general or statesman, or as holding any high official position, yet no one holding in his veins any of the Huguenot blood has ever yet been convicted of any infamous offence.

The most interesting relic of antiquity among them in the vicinity of their settlement is a large Bible containing the Old and New Testament without the Apocrypha, in the French language, which was brought over by one of the first immigrants from his native land, in which it is more than probable he was not there permitted to read. The first owner was one of the family of Chastainé, which name is now extinct except as a Christian name. It is now in the hands of one of his lineal descendants. This Bible was printed in Amsterdam.

WILLIAM POPE DABNEY

AMERICA

I

SULLY PRUDHOMME TO AMERICA

A quoi bon, tristes gens, vos ports et vos boutiques,
Si vous traînez au flanc le principe du mal,
Et si le vieux démon des fureurs politiques

Vous emporte avec nous dans son cercle fatal ?
Ce cercle est tout tracé par notre antique histoire.
A ton tour, peuple fier, tu salûras César;
A ton tour tu verras, au seuil de ton prétoire,

La tache de ton sang, la marque de son char;
Tu verras quelque fils des empereurs du Tibre,
Porter un monde au bout de son sceptre insolent,
Pareil au bateleur qui tient en équilibre

Sur la pointe d'un glaive un disque chancelant! Tu connaîtras aussi les gloires, les conquêtes,

Et les sanglots perdus dans le bruit des tambours ; Le triomphe et le deuil, la panique et les fêtes ;

Après les jours brillants, l'horreur des mauvais jours. Tu briseras tes lois, tu les voudras refaire,

Et, jouet éternel de tes ambitieux,

Quand l'un te voudra vendre un flambeau qui t'éclaire, L'autre te montera le bâillon jusqu'aux yeux.

A la féroce épée, à la toge hypocrite,

Mendiant tour à tour des chartes pour tes droits,
Tu feras comme nous, ton histoire est écrite :
Flux et reflux sans fin de l'anarchie aux rois.

Ta fortune est vulgaire, et nous la croyions belle,
O terre de Colomb! et, quand la liberté,
A travers l'océan volant à tire-d'aile,

Vint jeter dans tes bras son corps ensanglanté,
Nous la croyions ravie aux soufflets de la guerre,
Et notre amour jalouse l'accompagnait là-bas.
O terre de Colomb! ta fortune est vulgaire,
Nous te croyions bénie, et tu ne l'étais pas.

Translation

To what end, wretched race! your ports, your wealth,
If in your womb you bear the germ of ill?
If the old fiend of party-strife, by stealth
Within our fatal orbit drags you still?
Traced is that orbit by our history.

Proud race, thou too, at Cæsar's feet shalt kneel;

On thy pretorian threshold thou shalt see

Stains of thy blood, marks of his chariot-wheel.

See some imperial son of Tiber still

Thy world upon his insolent sceptre rear, Even as a juggler poises with nice skill,

Upon a sword's keen point, a trembling sphere. Conquests and glories thou shalt likewise know, And sobs drowned by the beating of the drum. Panics and feasts, and victory and woe;

After bright days, horror of days to come. And thou shalt break thy laws, then learn to prize; Shalt be the plaything of ambitious minds. One offers thee a torch to light thine eyes,

One with a gag up to thy forehead binds. To the fierce sword, the hypocritic gown,

Begging a charter of thy rights, thou'lt go. As we do, so shalt thou; thy history's known: From anarchy to kings an ebb and flow. Mean are thy fortunes that we thought so fair,

Land of Columbus! When young Freedom blest Soared o'er the ocean, wide-winged through the air, Her wounded form within thine arms to rest, We deemed her safe from all the shocks of warOur jealous love followed to yonder spot. Land of Columbus! mean thy fortunes are; We thought thee blessed-blessed thou art not!

II

REPLY TO SULLY PRUDHOMME

High-hearted, deep-browed Poet, whose proud lyre Vibrated never to ignoble strain,

What film obscures, what strange tears cloud the fire Of sight and soul? What blind fears veil thy brain

With thickly woven cobwebs of despair,
There where thou need but open to the light
Windows of vision, to be made aware

Of radiant day-dawn and retreating night?
A clearer knowledge had brought braver faith,
A closer insight shown an undreamed world.
Pardon at thy Cassandra-notes of death

The young Republic's smiling lips are curled.
On thy sea-sundered coast thou canst but hear
Our wrangling factions' echo, fierce debate,
Vociferous party-strife-draw nigh thine ear

To hear the People's Voice reverberate,
A murmur like the ground-swell of the deep,
Majestic and incessant. At a word—

Touch but the springs of Love or Law!-'twill leap
To thunder-music tuned to one accord.

The People's Voice! through cycles gagged or dumb,
Whose wakening cry in Marat's France was "Blood!"
Trained to articulate speech, has here become

་

The nation's counsellor for highest good.
Think you the Olympian voice of Cæsar now
Their multitudinous eloquence could stem?

Far as a dream the turbid Tiber's flow,

Musset.

It holds nor past nor future ghosts for them.
Nightmares fantastical as those, we fear,

As France a second Alaric might wait.

If History's orbit ringed a changeless sphere—
A vicious circle-such would be your fate.

No! thine own words disprove the dismal creed,

Uttered in happier hour, in braver mood

Poet, wouldst thou dishearten us indeed,

Thou shouldst have looked for less." * Thou too didst brood,

With no mean hopes, upon Humanity

With no vainglorious boast, with joy unfeigned,

Sobered by thought of what was yet to be,

Didst point to harvests reaped, to conquests gained.

Come hither, in our thronging ports to see

The Old World exiles swarming crowd on crowd,

Pour nous décourager il fallait moins attendre." See Sully Prudhomme's poem to Alfred de

Who seek the space to toil, the right to be,

By centuries of bondage crushed and cowed.
The free air bathes their brows, to their dazed eyes.
Long, broadening vistas of ambition ope.
Wealth is the slave of their own energies,

Honor and fame lie in the humblest's scope.
From these, the refuse of your shores, behold
The Man, the President, the hero rise,
Great with the great occasion, self-controlled-
Our corner-stone your builders did despise.
No! we may still be clogged by mortal weights,
The burden of the flesh, the veils of sense,
Hampered by creature-limits, narrow fates-
But the historic curse has vanished hence :
Bondage of man to man, the obsequious knee,
The yoke about the neck, the impending sword.
Our priceless Pearl, snatched from the insatiate sea,
Think you, were lightly lost or rash restored?
Nations may mount and sink, Arts halt, advance,
But Truth is fixed; when once the Law is known,
The world recedes not back to ignorance,

From Galileo, Newton, Washington.

As when the Arabian fisherman unsealed
The mystic, wave-tost bottle, whence unfurled
The sky-embracing vapor that revealed
So vast a spirit as to dwarf the world,
So from our precious vase of truth, distilled
By the wise fathers, soars o'er land and sea,
Till State and continent and globe are filled
With awful beauty-the Djinn Liberty.

"not blest,"

Oh, were your black words true, were we
Were we too doomed with Prince and King and Czar,
Were there no Cis-Atlantic goal of rest,

For the Earth's Pariahs-then would the world-star

In red eclipse be blotted from the skies.

The People, the blind Samson who has learned His fatal strength, mad with brute rage would rise, Nor stay his hand till chaos had returned.

EMMA LAZARUS