Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, No. 64, February, 1863

Philip II., the greatest monarch of modern times,—perhaps the greatest of all time, the extent and diversity of his dominions considered, and the ability of the races over which he ruled taken into the account,—was under the painful necessity of putting his eldest son, Don Carlos, in close confinement, from which he never came forth until he was brought out feet foremost, the presumption being that he had been put to death by his father's orders. Carlos has been made a hero of romance, but a more worthless character never lived. On his death-bed Philip II. was compelled to see how little his son Philip, who succeeded him, cared for his feelings and wishes. Peter the Great put to death his son Alexis; and Frederick William I. of Prussia came very near taking the life of that son of his who afterward became Frederick the Great.

Jealousy is so common a feeling in Oriental royal houses, that it is hardly allowable to quote anything from their history; but we may be permitted to allude to the effect of one instance of paternal hate in the Ottoman family at the time of its utmost greatness. Solyman the Magnificent was jealous of his eldest son, Mustapha, who is represented by all writers on the Turkish history of those times as a remarkably superior man, and who, had he lived, would have been a mighty foe to Christendom. This son the Sultan caused to be put to death, and there are few incidents of a more tragical cast than those which accompanied Mustapha's murder. They might be turned to great use by an historical romancer, who would find matters all made to his hand. The effect of this murder was to substitute for the succession that miserable drunkard, Selim II., who was utterly unable to lead the Turks in those wars that were absolutely essential to their existence as a dominant people. "With him," says Ranke, "begins the series of those inactive Sultans, in whose dubious character we may trace one main cause of the decay of the Ottoman fortunes." Solyman's hatred of his able son was a good thing for Christendom; for, if Mustapha had lived, and become Sultan, the War of Cyprus—that contest in which occurred the Battle of Lepanto—might have Lad a different termination, and the Osmanlis have been successful invaders of both Spain and Italy. It was a most fortunate circumstance for Europe, that, while it was engaged in carrying on civil wars and wars of religion, the Turks should have had for their chiefs men incapable of carrying on that work of war and conquest through which alone it was possible for those Mussulmans to maintain their position in Europe; and that they were thus favored was owing to the causeless jealousy felt by Sultan Solyman for the son who most resembled himself: and Solyman was the greatest of his line, which some say ended with him.

One Sunday morning, long ago, a girl stood in her bed-room, lingeringly occupied with the last touches of her toilet.

A string of beads, made of pure gold and as large as peas, lay before her. They had been her mother's,—given to her when the distracted state of American currency made a wedding-present of the precious metal as welcome as it was valuable. Three several times, under circumstances of great pecuniary urgency, had the beads sufficed, one by one, to restore the family to comfort,—to pay the expenses of a journey, to buy seed-grain, and to make out the payment of a yoke of oxen. Afterwards, when peace and plenty came to be housemates in the land, the gold beads were redeemed, and the necklace, dearer than ever, encircled the neck of the only daughter.

The only daughter took them up, and clasped them round her throat with a decisive snap. But the crowning graces remained in the shape of two other ornaments that lay in a small China box. It had a head on the cover, beautifully painted, of some queen,—perhaps of the Empress Josephine, the girl thought. The hat had great ostrich-feathers, that seemed proper to royalty, and it was a pretty face.

In the box lay a pin and ring. On the back of the pin was braided hair, and letters curiously intertwined. The young girl slipped the ring on her own finger once more, and smiled. Then she took it off, with a sigh that had no pain in it, and looked at the name engraved inside,—DORCAS FOX.

Whoever saw this name in the town records would naturally image to himself the town tailoress or nurse, or somebody's single sister who had been wise too long,—somebody tall, a little bent, and bony,—somebody weather-beaten and determined—looking, with a sharp, shrewd glance of a gray eye that said you could not possibly get the better of her and so need not try,—somebody who goes out unattended and fearless at night; for, as she very properly observes, "Who'd want to speak to me ?"

This might have described the original owner of the pin and ring, who had died years before, and left the ornaments for her namesake and niece, when she was too young to remember or care for her, but not the niece herself. She was young, blooming, twenty-two, and the belle of the country-village where she dwelt.

The bed-room where the girl stood and meditated, after her fashion, was six feet by ten in dimensions, and the oval mirror before which she stood was six inches by ten. It was a genuine relic of the Mayflower, and had been brought over, together with the great chest in the entry, by the grand-grand-grandmother of all the Foxes. If anybody were disposed to be skeptical on this point, Colonel Fox had only to point to the iron clamp at the end, by which it had been confined to the deck; that would have produced conviction, if he had declared it came out of the Ark. This was a queer-looking little mirror, in which the young Dorcas saw her round face reflected: framed in black oak, delicately carved, and cut on the edge with a slant that gave the plate an appearance of being an inch thick.

Sixty years ago there were not many mirrors in country-towns in New England; and in Colonel Fox's house this and one more sufficed for the family-reflections. In the "square room," a modern long looking-glass, framed in mahogany, and surmounted by the American emblem of triumph, was the astonishment of the neighbors,—and in Walton those were many, though the population was small.

Dorcas looked wistfully and wishingly at the oval pin; but with no more notion of what she was looking at than the child who gazes into the heavens on a winter night. When she looked into the oval mirror, no dream of the centuries through which it had received on its surface fair and suffering faces, grave, noble, self-sacrificing men, and scenes of trial deep and agonizing,—no dream of the past disturbed the serene unconsciousness of her gaze. She looked at the large pearls that formed the long oval pin, and at the exquisite allegorical painting, which, in the quaint fashion of the time of its execution, was colored with the "ground hair" of the beloved; so materializing sentiment, and, as it were, getting as near as possible to the very heart's blood. Yet the old gold, the elaborate execution of the quaint classical device, and the fanciful arrangement of the braided hair interwoven with twisted gold letters, all told no tales to the observer, whose unwakened nature, indeed, asked no questions.

The little room, so small that in these days a College of Physicians would at once condemn it, as a cradle of disease and death, had nevertheless for twenty years been the nightly abode of as perfect a piece of health as the country produced. Whatever might be wanting in height and space was amply made up in inevitable and involuntary ventilation. Health walked in at the wide cracks around the little window-frame, peeped about in all directions with the snow-flakes in winter and the ready breezes in summer, and settled itself permanently on the fresh cheeks and lips of the light sleeper and early riser.