The Press.
London, England, 1856-09-06 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

participated. With the most guarded caution, Vesey had
exempted this son from suspicion. It had been an agreed
policy with them both, that in the presence of others they
should counterfeit alienation and dislike. Their confiden-
tial meetings with each other had been stolen and secret.
At the time of his father's execution, Dred was a lad of
fourteen. He could not be admitted to his father's prison,
but he was a witness of the undaunted aspect with which
he and the other conspirators met their doom. The
memory dropped into the depths of his soul as a stone
drops into the desolate depths of a dark mountain lake.
Sold to a distant plantation, he became noted for his des-
perate unsulaluable disposition. He joined in none of the
social recreations and amusements of the slaves, laboured
with proud and silent assiduity, but, on the sli4htest rebuke
or threat, flashed up with a savage fierceness, which, sup-
ported by his immense bodily strength, made him an
object of dread among overseers. He was one of those of
whom they gladly rid themselves; and, like a fractious
horse, was sold from master to master. Finally, an over-
seer, hardier than the rest, determined on the task of
subduing him. In the scuffle that ensued Dred struck
him to the earth, a dead man, made his escape to the
swamps, and was never afterwards heard of in civil-
ised life.

The description of the swamp which follows
is perfectly magnificent :
The realer who consults the map will discover that the
whole eastern shore of the southern states, with slight in •
terruptions, is belted by an immense chain of swamps,
regions of hopeless disorder, where the abundant growth
and vegetation of nature, sucking up its forces from the
humid soil, seems to rejoice in a savage exuberance, and
bid defiance to all human efforts either to penetrate or
subdue. These wild regions are the homes of the alligator,
the mocassin, and the rattle•snake. Evergreen trees,
mingling freely with the deciduous children of the forest,
form here dense jungles, verdant all the year round, and
which afford shelter to numberless birds, with whose
warbling the leafy desolat.on perpetually resounds.
Climbing vines, and parasitic plants, of untold splendour,
and boundless exuberance of growth, twine and interlace
and hang, from the heights of the highest trees, pennons
of gold and purple—triumphant banners whit i attest the
solitary majesty of nature. A species of parasitic moss
wreaths its abundant draperies from tree to tree, and hangs
in pearly festoons, through which shine the scarlet berry
and green leaves of the American holly. What the moun-
tains of Switzerland were to the persecuted Vaudois, this
swampy belt has been to the American slave. The con-
stant effort to recover from thence fugitives has led to the
adoption, in these states, of a separate profession, unknown
at this time in any other Christian land—hunters, who
train and keep dogs for the hunting of men, women, and
children. And et, with all the convenience of this profes-
sion, the reclaiming of the fugitives from these fastnesses
of nature has been a work of such expense and difficulty,
that the near proximity of the swamp has always been a
considerable check on the otherwise absolute power of the
overseer.

Modern literature contains no passage of
superior eloquence to that descriptive of the
only companion which Dred took with him.
The clear tones of genius ring in every word
of this noble passage :
Dred carried with him to the swamp but one solitary
companion—the bible of his father. To him it was not
the messenger of peace and good will, but the herald of
woe and wrath. As the mind, looking on the great volume
of nature, sees there a reflection of its own internal pas•
Mons, and seizes on that in it which sympathises with
i.self—as the fierce and savage soul delights in the roar of
torrents, the thunder of avalanches, and the whi•l of ocean
storms, so is it in the great answering volume of revelation.
There is something there for every phase of man's nature ;
and hence its endless vitality and stimulating force. Dred
had heard read in the secret meetings of the conspirators
the wrathful denunciations of ancient prophets against op-
pression and injustice. He hud read of kingdoms con•
vulsed by plagues ; of tempest, and pestilence, and locusts ;
of the sea cleft in twain, that an army of slaves might pass
through, and of their pursuers whelmed in the returning
waters. He had heard of prophets and deliverers, armed
with supernatural powers, raised up for oppressed people ;
hail pondered on the nail of Jael, the goad of Shamgar,
the pitcher and lamp of Gideon ; and thrilled with fierce
joy as he re id how Samson, with his two strong arms,
pulled down the pillars of the festive temple, and
whelmed his tr.utophant persecutors in one grave with
himself. In the vast solitudes which he daily traversed
these things entered deep into his soul.
Cut off from all human companionship, after going
weeks without seeing a human face, there was no recur-
rence of every-day and prosaic ideas to check the current
of the enthusiasm thus kindled. Even in the soil of the
cool Saxon heart the Bible has thrown out its roots with
an all pervading energy, so that the whole framework of
society may be said to rest on soil held together by its
fibres. Even in cold and misty England armies have been
made defiant and invincible by the incomparable force and
deliberate valour which it breathes into men. But when
this oriental seed, an exotic among us, is planted hack in
the fiery soil of a tropical heart, it bursts forth sit:t an in-
calculable ardour of growth.
A stranger cannot fail to remark the fact, that though the
slaves of the South are unable to read the Bible for them-
selves, yet most completely have its language and senti-
ment penetrated among them, giving a Hebraistic colouring
to their habitual mode of expression. How much greater,
then, must have been the force of the solitary perusal of
this volume on so impassioned a nature I a nature, too,
kindled by memories of the self-sacrificing ardour with
which a father and his associates had met death at the call
of freedom ; for none of us may deny that, wild and hope-
less as this scheme was, it was still the same in kind with

SATURDAY,

the more successful one which purchased for our fathers a
national existence.

Can this be from the same pen that wrote of
Nina's little hands pawing among her heap of
love letters ? We doubt it. The second para-
graph of the above passage is an example of
poetic fire being fused with massive thought
into a splendid specimen of prose composition.
At page 215, abruptly following on some
clever nigger dialect, is a most eloquent
description, of the refuge of Dred in the
swamp:—

The reader must follow us far beyond the abodes of man
into the recesses of that wild desolation known as the
"Dismal Swamp." We pass over vast tracts where the
forest seems growing out of the water. Cypress, red cedar,
sweet gum, tulip, poplar, beech, and holly, form a goodly
fellowship, waving their rustling boughs above. The trees
shoot up in vast columns, fifty, seventy five, and a hundred
feet in height ; and below are clusters of evergreen gall
bushes, with their thick and glossy foliage, mingled in
with swamp honeysuckles, grape-vines, twining brier, and
laurels, and other shrubs, forming an impenetrable
thicket. The creeping plants sometimes climb seventy or
eighty feet up the largest trees, and hang in heavy festoons
from their branches.

It would seem impossible that human foot could pene-
trate the will impervious jungle ; but we must take
our readers through it to a cleared spot, where trunks of
fallen trees, long decayed, have formed an island of
vegetable mould, which the art ot some human hand has
extended and improved. The clearing is some sixty yards
long by thirty broad, and is surrounded with a natural
rampart, which might well bid defiance to man or beast.
Huge trees have been felled, with all their branches lying
thickly one over another, in a circuit around; and Nature,
seconding the efforts of the fugitives who sought refuge
here, has interlaced the framework thus made with thorny
cat-briars, cables of grape-vine, and thickets of Virginia
creeper, which, running wild in their exuberance, climb
on to the neighbouring trees, and swinging down again
lose themselves in the mazes from which they sprung, so as
often to form a verdurous wall fifty feet in height. In some
places the laurel, with its glossy green leaves and its
masses of pink-tipped snowy blossoms, presents to the
eye, rank above rank, a wilderness of beauty. The pen-
dants of the yellow jessamine swing to and fro in the air
like censers, casting forth clouds of perfume. A thousand
twining vines, with flowers of untold name, perhaps un-
known as yet to the botanist, help to fill up the mosaic.
The leafy ramparts sweep round on all the sides of the
clearing, for the utmost care has been taken to make it im-
penetrable, and in that region of heat and moisture Nature
in the course of a few weeks admirably seconds every
human eff .rt. The only egress from it is by a winding
path cut through with a hatchet, which can be entered by
only one person at a lime ; and the water which surrounds
this island entirely cuts off the trail from the scent of dogs.
The following pages, descriptive of the death
of an escaped negro, of the agony of his wife,
and of the unexpected appearance of Dred at
a camp-meeting to startle the vast assembly
with fierce denunciations of wrath and
vengeance, must rank among the finest exam-
ples of romance composition. As the book is
very remarkable for its striking thought, com-
bining in a degree rarely found poetic ideas
with penetrating perception and logical,
sequence, we shall make no apology for
quoting a few more passages, sufficiently
beautiful in themselves to deserve preserva-
tion in scrap-books, and very illustrative of
that masculinely intellectual character distin-
guishing portions of the narrative. There is
great subtlety in the description of the effect
produced on Dyed by his solitary life :

Our readers will perhaps feel an interest to turn back
with us, and follow the singular wanderings of the myste-
rious personage whose wild denunciations had so disturbed
the minds of the worshippers at the camp•meeting. There
is a twilight ground between the boundaries of the sane
and insane which the old Greeks and Romans regarded
with a peculiar veneration. They held a person whose
faculties were thus darkened as walking under the awful
shadow of a supernatural presence ; and, as the mysterious
secrets of the stars only became visible in the night, so in
these eclipses of the more material faculties they held
there was often an awakening of supernatural perceptions.
The hot and positive light of our modern materialism,
which exhales from the growth of our existence every dew-
drop, which searches outand dries every rivulet of romance,
which sends an unsparing beam into every cool grotto of
poetic possibility, withering the moss and turning the
dropping cave into a dusty den, this spirit, so remorseless,
allows us no such indefinite land. There are but two words
in the whole department of modern anthropology—the
sane and the insane—the latter di,missed from human
reckoning almost with contempt. We should find it diffi-
cult to give a suitable name to the strange and abnormal
condition in which this singular being of whom we are
speaking passed the most of his time. It was a state of
exaltation and trance, which yet appeared not at all to im-
pede the exercise of his outward and physical faculties, but
rather to give them a preternatural keenness and intensity,
such as sometimes attends the more completely-developed
phenomena of sonnatnhulism.

The following thought, though obvious, is
not commonplace
In life, organised as it is at the Sonth, there are two cur-
rents—one the current of the master's fortunes, feelings,

SEPT. 6, 1856.

and hopes, the other that of the slave's. It is a melancholy
fact in the history of the human race as yet that there have
been multitudes who follow the triump'ial march of life
only as captives, to whom the voice of the trumpet, the
waving of the banners, the shouts of the people, only add
to the bitterness of their enthralment.

At page 326 there is a notice of the approach
of cholera, something like that to be found in
Euc,fetie Sue, but less open to the charge of
exaggeration. Young Clayton, on his way to
visit Nina, for whose safety he has fears, hears
the voice of Dred crying " Woe, woe, woe,"
in the wilderness. Spiiitual sentiment and
poetic description are happily blended in the
account of the close of the lover's journey :

The tones of the voice, and the wild style of the speaker,
recalled the strange incident of the camp meeting ; and
though he endeavoured strenuously to reason with himself
that probably some wild and excited fanatic, made still
more frantic ty the presence of death and destruction all
around, was the author of these fearful denunciations,
still he could not help a certain weight of fearful for&
This life may be truly called a haunted house, built as it
is on the very confines of the land of darkness and the
shadow of death. A thousand living fibres connect us
with the unknown and unseen state; and the strongest
hearts, which never stand still for any mortal terror, have
sometimes hushed their very beating at the breath of •
whisper from within the veil. Perhaps the most resolute
unbeliever in spiritual things has hours of which he would
be ashamed to tell, when he, too, yields to the powers of
those awful affinities which hind us to that unknown realm.
It is not surprising that Clayton, in spite of himself,
should have felt like one mysteriously warned. It was a
relief to him when the dusky dimness of the solemn dawn
was pierced by long shafts of light from the rising sun,
and the day broke gbidsome and jubilant, as if sorrow,
sighing, and death were &dream of the night. During the
whole prevalence of this fearful curse it was strange to
witness the unaltered regularity, splendour, and beauty,
with which the movements of the natural world went on.
Amid fears, and dying groans, and wailings, and sobs, and
broken hearts, the sun rose and set in splendour, the
dews twinkled, and twilight folded her purple veil heavy
with stars; birds sang, waters danced and warbled, flowers
bloomed, and everything in nature was abundsnt, and
festive, and joyous. When Clayton entered tbe bounda-
ries of the plantation, he inquired eagerly of the first per-
son he met for the health of its mistress. " Thank God,
she is yet alive !" said he. "It was but a dream, after all !"

We might quote many other passages
equally indicative of intellectual power of the
highest order, but with one more we close this
portion of our review. It again concerns
Dred

It is difficult to fathom the dark recesses of a mind so
powerful and active as his, placed under a pressure of
ignorance and social disability so tremendous. In those
desolate regions which he made his habitation, it is said
that trees often, from the singularly•unnatural and wildly-
stimulating properties of the slimy depths from which
they spring, assume a strange and goblin growth, entirely
different from their ncrrnal habit. All sorts of vegetable
monsters stretch their weird fantastic forms among its
shadows. There is no principle so awful through all nature
as this principle of growth. It is a mysterious and dread
condition of existence which, place it under what impedi-
ment or disadvantage you will, is constantly forcing on,
and when unnatural pressures hinder, it develops in forms
portentous and astonishing.
The wild dreary belt of swamp land which girds in those
states scathed by the fires of despotism, is an apt
emblem in its rampant, and we might say delirious, exube-
rance of vegetation to that darkly-struggling wildly-vege-
tating swamp of human souls—cut off like it from the
usages and improvements of cultivated life.
beneath that fearful pressure, souls, whose energy well
directed might have blessed mankind, start out in preter-
natural and fearful developments, whose strength is only
a portent of dread.

The action of the narrative is never, we think,
quite equal to its descriptive power. One of
the most forcible scenes is the merciless
assault on Father Dickson, the abolitionist
preacher. There is also great tragic power in
that portion of the romance where Cora
Gordon, the sister of Harry, murders her
children to prevent their falling into Tom
Gordon's hands, and defends her deed in open
court :

"Yes!" she said again, "I killed them; and oh how
glad lam that I have done it! Do you want to know
what I killed them for? 13ecause I loved them—loved
them so well that I was willing to give up my soul to save
theirs. I have heard some persons -ay that I was in a
frenzy, excited, and didn't know what I was doing. They
are mistaken—l was not in a fteney, I was not excited, and
I did know what I was doing, and I bless God that it is
done. I was born the slave of my own father. Your old
proud Virginia blood is in my veins, as it is in half of those
you whip and sell. I was the lawful wife of a man of
honour, who did what he could to evade your cruel laws
and set me free. My children were born to libetty—they
were brought up to liberty till my father's son entered
a suit for us and made us slaves. Judge and jury helped
him—all your laws and your officers helped him to take
away the rights of the widow and the la;herless The
judge said that my son, being a slave, could no more hold
property than the mule before his plough, and we were
delivered into Tom Gordon's hands. I shall not say
what ha is; it is not >lt to be said. God will show at
the judgment day. But I escaped with my children to