The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ from Neal's impulsive nature, he was not the last man to do something to be sorry for; but his wife and children looked as if they were never sorry. We remember a little girl of some five or six years; we believe they called her Maggie. Her dimpled cheek, her white round neck and arms, and the perfect symmetry of her form, and the grace of her motions, have haunted us these twelve years. We would not promise to remember her as long or as well if we should see her again in these days. But we made up our mind then, that we would rather be the father of that child than the author of all Neal had written, or might have written, even though he had been a wise and prudent man, and had done his work as well as he doubtless wishes now that he had done it. Neal is only half himself away from his beautiful home. There, he is in place—an eagle in a nest lined with down, soft as eider. There his fine taste is manifest in every thing. If we judge of his taste by his rapidly-written works, we are sure to do him injustice. We find in him a union of the most opposite qualities. We can not say a harmonious union. An inflexible industry is not often united with a bird-like celerity and grace of movement. With Neal, the two first have always been combined—the whole on occasions, which might have been multiplied into unbroken continuity if he had possessed the calm greatness that never hastens and never rests. He did not rest; but through the first half of his life, he surely forgot the Scripture which saith: 'He that believeth shall not make haste.' It has often been asserted, that power which has rest is greater than a turbulent power. We shall not attempt to settle whether Erie or Niagara is greater, but we should certainly choose the Lake for purposes of navigation.

      Many men are careless of their character in private, but sufficiently careful in public. The reverse is true of Neal. He has never hesitated to throw his gauntlet in the face of the public as he threw his letters of introduction in the fire when he arrived in Europe. But when he comes into the charmed circle of his home, he is neither reckless nor pugilistic, but a downright gentleman. We don't mean to say that Neal never gets in a passion in private, or that he never needed the wholesome restraint of a strait-waistcoat in the disputes of a Portland Lyceum or debating-club. We do not give illustrative anecdotes, because a lively imagination can conceive them, and probably has manufactured several that have been afloat; still, we dare guess that the subject has sometimes given facts to base the fictions on.

      We speak of the past. A man with a forty-wildcat power imprisoned in him is not very likely to travel on from youth to age, keeping the peace on all occasions. Years bring a calming wisdom. The same man who once swore five consecutive minutes, because he was forbidden by his landlady to swear on penalty of leaving her house, and then made all the inmates vote to refrain from profane language, and rigidly enforced the rule thus democratically established, is now, after a lapse of more than thirty years, (particularly provoking impulse aside,) a careful and dignified gentleman, who might be a Judge, if the public so willed.

      That a long line of intellectual and finely developed ancestry gives a man a better patent of nobility than all the kings of all countries could confer, is beginning to be understood and believed among us; though the old battle against titles and privilege, and the hereditary descent of both, for a time blinded Americans to the true philosophy of noble birth.

      Neal's ancestors came originally from Scotland, and exemplify the proverb that 'bluid is thicker than water,' in more ways than one. They have a strong feeling of clanship, or, in other words, they are convinced that it is an honor to be a Neal, and many of the last generation have given proof positive that their belief is a fact. The present generation we have little knowledge of, and do not know whether they fulfill the promise of the name.

      Neal has done good service to the Democracy of our country in many ways, besides being one of the first and bravest champions of woman's rights. He has labored for our literature with an ability commensurate with his zeal, and he has drawn many an unfledged genius from the nest, encouraged him to try his wings, and magnetized him into self-dependence. A bold heavenward flight has often been the consequence. A prophecy of Neal's that an idea or a man would succeed, has seldom failed of fulfillment. We can not say this of the many aspiring magazines and periodicals that have solicited the charity of his name. We recollect, when brass buttons were universally worn on men's coats, a wag undertook to prove that they were very unhealthy, from the fact that more than half the persons who wore them suffered from chronic or acute disease, and died before they had reached a canonical age. According to this mode of generalization, Neal could be convicted of causing the premature death of nine tenths of the defunct periodicals in this country—probably no great sin, if it really lay at his door.

      In a brief outline sketch, such as we have chosen to produce, our readers will perceive that only slight justice can be done to a man in the manifold relations to men and things which contribute to form the character.

      John Neal's personal appearance is a credit to the country. He is tall, with a broad chest, and a most imposing presence. One of the finest sights we ever saw, was Neal standing with his arms folded before a fine picture. His devotion to physical exercise, and his personal example to his family in the practice of it—training his wife and children to take the sparring-gloves and cross the foils with him in those graceful attitudes which he could perfectly teach, because they were fully developed in himself—all this has inevitably contributed to the health and beauty of his beautiful family.

      Few men have had so many right ideas of the art or science of living as John Neal, and fewer still have acted upon them so faithfully. When we last saw him, some ten years since—when he had lived more than half a century—his eye had lost none of its original fire, not a nerve or sinew was unbraced by care, labor, or struggle. He stood before us, a noble specimen of the strong and stalwart growth of a new and unexhausted land.

      Note,—The foregoing must have been written years ago, if one may judge by the color of the paper; and as the writer is now abroad, so as not to be within reach, the manuscript has been put into the hands of a gentleman who has been more or less acquainted with Mr. Neal from his boyhood up, and he has consented to finish the article by bringing down the record to our day, and putting on what he calls a 'snapper.'

      Most of what follows, if we do not wholly misunderstand the intimations that accompany the manuscript, is in the very language of Mr. Neal himself word for word; gathered up we care not how, whether from correspondence or conversation, so that there is no breach of manly trust and no indecorum to be charged.

      'As to my family,' he writes, in reply to some body's questioning, 'I know not where they originated, nor how. Sometimes I have thought, although I have never said as much before, that we must have come up of ourselves—the spontaneous growth of a rude, rocky soil, swept by the boisterous north-wind, and washed by the heavy surges of some great unvisited sea. Of course, the writer you mention, who says that my ancestors—if I ever had any—'came from Scotland,' must know something that I never heard of, to the best of my recollection and belief. Somewhere in England I have supposed they originated, and probably along the coast of Essex; for there, about Portsmouth and Dover, I have always felt so much at home in the graveyards—among my own household, as it were, the names being so familiar to me, and the grave-stones now to be seen in Portsmouth and Dover, New-Hampshire, where the Neals were first heard of three or four generations ago, being duplicates of some I saw in Portsmouth and Dover, England.

      'Others have maintained, with great earnestness and plausibility, as if it were something to brag of, that we have the blood of Oliver Cromwell in us; and one, at least, who has gone a-field into heraldry, and strengthens every position with armorial bearings—which only goes to show the unprofitableness of all such labor, so far as we are concerned—that we are of the 'red O'Neals,' not the learned O'Neals, if there ever were any, but the 'red O'Neals of Ireland,' and that I am, in fact, a lineal descendant of that fine fellow who 'bearded' Queen Elizabeth in her presence-chamber, with his right hand clutching the hilt of his dagger.

      'But, for myself, I must acknowledge that if I ever had a great-great-grandfather, I know not where to dig for him—on my father's side, I mean; for on the side of my mother I have lots of grandfathers and great-grandfathers—and furthermore this deponent sayeth СКАЧАТЬ