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Close by the cascade of the Anisippi, and on
the brink of the little dell which I have described,
stood the Pagoda. This was a summer-house
in the Chinese taste. It contained a large tea-room,
with one or two chambers, and was christened
in honour of the Emperor of China. — The
room was furnished coolly and comfortably with
straw sofas and couches, while a huge figure of
a mandarin, with pipe, moustachios, and tea-caddy
complete, sat rolling his head about on a sort of
throne, at one end of the room, and looked like
the presiding deity of the place. So far all was
in keeping, but Joshua had got tired of China
before he completed the apartment, and had in
the most incongruous manner completed the furniture,
by thrusting into it a collection of casts
from celebrated statues, and copies from celebrated
paintings, which he had procured in Italy, for
the purpose of making a private gallery. There
were the Aurora, the Transfiguration, and the
Beatrice Cenci, half-a-dozen Cleopatras and Sibyls,

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and Virgins innumerable; in short, a good collection
of copies, for Joshua had a taste in pictures,
and could descant to you upon them an hour
by Shrewsbury clock; but as for his gallery, it
was likely to remain for ever an appendage to
the tea-room. The statues were orthodox also:
the Borghese Gladiator “fought his battles o'er
again” in one corner, and the Laocoon struggled
in the coils of what Fortitude, with more historical
accuracy than she knew of, called the seaserpents,
in the other; the mandarin, with a face
of decent gravity, sat lolling his head complacently
to and fro, from the Venus de Medici on
one side, to the Niobe who was protecting her
child from the hurtling arrow on the other;
while the elegant cause of her dismay, the naked
dandy of the Vatican, stood very much in everybody's
way, with his threatening hand stretched
toward the tea-table.

One day — I was then some dozen years old—
my uncle had taken me out with him, to give
me what he called my first theoretical lesson in
the art of riding. I had been allowed to run
wild all my days, and had ridden at pleasure
every horse, cow, and pig on the estate, so that
I considered myself an adept, and felt insulted
at the proposal. Joshua had prepared himself
for six months beforehand, by a diligent perusal
of the Duke of Newcastle and Geoffrey Gambado

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and one fine morning we set forth. After a short
ride, we came to a low rail-fence, and Joshua,
first ordering a halt, took his note book from his
pocket, and commenced reading the duke's instructions
on the topic of leaping, accompanied
by a running commentary. He signified his intention
of clearing the fence in the most approved
style, and told me to lead the way, mentally resolving,
I suppose, if there seemed to be any difficulty,
to keep himself out of the scrape. As for
me, I was mounted on a double-jointed pony,
called Pocahontas, in honour of my paternal
family, and we scrambled over the fence without
any difficulty. My uncle, attired in a bob-tailed
seersucker coat, and pepper-and-salt small-clothes,
was perched on the top of a tall camelopard of
an animal, which had about as much agility as
a clothes-horse. He was determined not to be
outdone; pricked towards the fence; the horse
stumbled clumsily against the rails — floundered,
and my uncle, describing a parabola through the
air, alighted in a thicket of barberry bushes, with
his arms and legs bruised to a jelly, and the bob-tailed
seersucker torn to rags. I picked him up,
as well as I could, and with the assistance of some
labourers, carried him home.

The next afternoon he was sitting in the Pagoda,
when Fortitude began briefly advising him
to despatch me to school.

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“I'm sick at the sight of him — he's doing no
sort of good — learning nothing, and for ever in
mischief; why don't you send him to school?”

“A school is an improper place for him,” said
my uncle; “I tell you he knows more than all
the schoolmasters in New England already.
Where can he gain more instruction than here,
under my own peculiar superintendence?”

“Well,” said Fortitude, “it's particular that
you should consider yourself a proper schoolmaster
for him. Do you teach him every thing as systematically
as you do riding?”

“Psha!” said Joshua, wrathfully, “I will not
talk with you on that subject. It was always a
theory of mine, that women were incapable of
an opinion on any matter connected with horsemanship;
but as to the boy's education, why,
where can we do better?—a boy with his imagination,
his brilliancy of intellect — than in this
very room, surrounded by the fairest works of
genius which have illuminated the world. Why,
Fortitude, why,” continued Joshua, getting oratorical—
“why is it that the Greeks were the
most refined, the most cultivated of the ancient
nations?—Because, Fortitude, the images of their
gods, of their deified heroes, of their living fellowcitizens,
embalmed in the deathless beauty of
sculpture, stood ever and around, inciting them to
emulation and to equal heroism. Why—why is

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it that the Italians still surpass the whole modern
world, and are the tutors of the whole school
of art? Because religion has taken art to her
bosom—because the rudest peasant, as he bends
before the shrine of the Madonna, beholds the
seraphic features of a Raphael's creation looking
down upon him, as if from heaven. Because
beauty is the chosen handmaid of divinity. Yes—
yes — I am determined that my nephew shall,
as far as in my power lies, reap the advantage
of this theory of mine. I am determined that
visions of immortal beauty shall melt and mingle
with the earliest dawnings of the intellect; that
they shall form a brilliant halo around the sunrise
of his soul.”

Joshua was becoming very enthusiastic, and
very eloquent, when he was interrupted by Fortitude,
who observed that she had hitherto seen
very little effects of the fine arts upon Uncas; but
only some of his influence upon the specimens
in the room; “for instance, his intercourse with
the naked creature in the corner has not been
very beneficial to one party,” said she, pointing
to the fighting Gladiator.

This was very true. My uncle, a few years
previous, when I was very young, was possessed
with a curiosity, something like that of king Psammeticus,
to see whether works of art would not
have a manifest effect on the infant that was

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exposed alone to their influence; so one day he
locked me up in the Pagoda, and marched off
with the key in his pocket. When he returned,
after half an hour, he found that I had vented
my rage, at being imprisoned, on the objects
within my reach. I had assaulted the Niobe,
tooth and nail; kicked Apollo; and when he
entered, he found me in personal conflict with
the Borghese Gladiator, the consequence of which
to Chabrias (as Lessing proclaims him to be) had
been the loss of three fingers of his sword-hand,
and a fraction of his nose, which I had reached
by means of the mandarin's pipe-stem.

“Psha!” said Joshua again — “you take a
delight in annoying me. Was it my fault that
the statues were not of stone, which would have
been good, or bronze, which would have been
better, and would have then resisted the boy's
attempt at assault and battery. Besides, recollect
how young he was; other children would have
been frightened to death; you see he was excited
to deeds of arms.”

“Then, again,” said Fortitude, not caring to
pursue her triumph on this point; “then again,
there's this profane stage-playing which you encourage
him in. Pious children ought not to
be taught such wicked doings,” said Fortitude,
who was as Puritanic as a pilgrim.

“Ridiculous woman!” said Joshua, “are you

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not aware that the drama in ancient times,—nay,
in the early period of the English—”

Fortitude cut short a long historical oration
on the subject of the drama, by exclaiming,
“Well, pious or not; 'tis sinful to waste so much
money on your green-house, and then turn all
the exotics out of doors into the snow bank, to
make the green-house a theatre for Uncas.”

“Why, the fact is, Fortitude, that I found the
green-house business too expensive, and so I
thought it a good opportunity to get out of the
scrape, and the room being vacant, why, you
know Uncas's theatre might do as well there as
any thing.”

“You might have done what I begged you,
and made a family portrait gallery. I'm sure
there would have been room enough.”

“Family fiddlesticks! Where the devil are
the portraits to come from? Except the profiles
of Plentiful's children, done by Josiah Brewster,
and the portrait of my brother Jeroboam, with
the sextant under his arm, and the spy-glass in
his pocket, done at Rotterdam, when he commanded
the `Amiable Jezabel;' I don't know
where you would find materials for your gallery.”

Here Joshua obtained the mastery. It was
one of Fortitude's weak points, and he knew it,
and he went on chuckling and laughing, and

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making game of her ridiculous affectation, till
he was tired. Nobody, however, that knew my
uncle, will be surprised when I tell them, that
the very first thing he did the next day, was
to purchase a quantity of fancy portraits at auction,
which he made room for by thrusting a
parcel of stuffed monkeys and pickled alligators,
which he called his cabinet of natural history,
into the garret, and depositing the pictures in
their place.

Just at this crisis I entered the room with a
petition to my uncle, to attend the performance
of a play which I had on hand. Ever since my
puppet-show days I had been flattered into the
belief that I was wonderfully gifted with the
dramatic talent, and now at the mature age of
twelve, I considered myself second to no one in
the world as author, actor, and stage-manager.

Notwithstanding the warm eulogium which my
uncle had just been making upon every thing
connected with the drama, it will not be considered
singular that, instead of granting my request,
he instantly began a harangue upon the
pernicious effect of stage plays. After reading me
a long lecture, he concluded by declaring with
the most rigid expression of countenance, that he
entirely disapproved of all such proceedings, and
before he had time to finish, I had bounced out
of the room in a huff.

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