Ralph Waldo Emerson - Part 4

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The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson - Part 4

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Every the favoured aims of mankind, but every 
one of these is the seed of vice, war, and useful, every elegant art, every exercise 
national disorganization. It is our part of imagination, ihe height of reason, the 
to carry out to the last the ends of liberty noblest affection, the purest religion will 
and justice. We shall stand, then, for find their home in our institutions, and 
7ast iateresU; north and south, east and write our laws for the benefit of men, 



THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


FATE. 


“! Delicate omens traced in air 
To the lone bard true witness bare; 
Birds with auguries on their wings 
Chanted undeceiving things 
Him to beckon, him to warn ; 

Well might then the poet scorn 
To learn of scribe or courier 
Hints writ in vaster character; 

And on his mind, at dawn of day, 

Soft shadows of the evening lay. 

For the prevision is allied 
Unto the thing so siguihed ; 

Or say, tuc forc.sigut that awaits 
Is the same Genius that cieates.*' 

It chanced during one winter, a few years 
^go, that our cities were bent on dis- 
cussing the theory of the Age. 13y an 
odd coincidence, four or five noted 
men were each reading a discourse to the 
citizens of Boston or New York, on the 
Spirit of the Times. It so happened that 
the subject had the same prominence in 
some remarkable pamphlets and journals 
issued in London in the same season. 
To me, however, the question of the times 
resolved itself into a practical question of 
the conduct of life. How shall I live ? 
We are incompetent to solve the times. 
Our geometry cannot span the huge orbits 
of the prevailing ideas, behold their re- 
turn, and reconcile their opposition. We 
can only obey our own polarity. ’Tis fine 
for us to speculate and elect our course, 
if we must accept an irresistible dicta- 
tion. 

in our first steps to gain our wishes, we 
come upon immovable limitations. We 
are fired with the hope to reform men. 
After many experiments, we find that we 
must begin earlier — at school. But the 
boys and girls are not docile ; we can 
make nothing of them. We decide that 
tliey are not of good stock. We must begin 
our reform earlier still — at generation; 
that is to say, there is Fate, or laws of the 
world. 

But if there be irresistible dictation, 
this dictation understands itself. If we 
must accept Fate, we are not less com- 


pelled to affirm liberty, the significance 
of the individual, the grandeur of duty, 
the power of character. This is true, and 
that other is true. But our geometry can- 
not span these extreme points, and recon- 
cile them. What to do ? By obeying 
each thought frankly, by harpir/g, or, if 
you will, pounding on each string, we 
learr at last its power. By the same 
obedience to other thoughts, we learn 
theirs, and then comes some reasonable 
hope of harmonising them. We are sure, 
that, though we know not how, neces- 
sity does comport with liberty, the indi- 
vidual with the world, my polarity with 
the spirit of the times. The riddle of 
the age has for each a private solution. 
If one would study his own time, it must 
be by this method of taking up in turn 
each of the leading topics which belong to 
our scheme of human life, and, by firniiy 
stating all that is agreeable to experience 
on one, and doing the same justice to the 
opposing facts in the others, the true 
limitations will appear. Any excess of 
emphasis, on one part, would be cor- 
rected, and a just balance would bo made. 
But let us honestly state the facts. Our 
America has a bad name for superficial- 
ness. Great men, great nations, have not 
been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers 
of the terror of life, and have manned 
themseves to face it. The Spartan, em- 
bodying his religion in his country, dies 
before its majesty without a question. 
The Turk, who believes his doom is writ- 
ten on the iron leaf in the moment when 
he entered the world, rushes on the 
enemy’s sabre with undivided will. The 
Turk, the Arab, the Persian, accepts the 
foreordained fate, 

On two days, it steads not to run hroin thy 
grave, 

The appointed, and the unappointed day ; 

On the first, neither balm nor physician can 
save, 

Nor thee, on the secona, the Uni verso 
slay,” 



cotjbvcr oP LiPP. 


454 

The Hindoo, under the wheel, is as firm. 
Our Calvinists, in the last generation, had 
something of the same dignity. They 
felt that the weight of the universe held 
them down to their place. What could 
they do ? Wise men feel that there is 
something which cannot be talked^ or 
voted away — a strap or belt which girds 
the world. 

•• The Destiny, minister general. 

That executeth in the world o’er all. 

The purveyance which God hath seen beforne, 
So strong it is, that though the worldhad sworn 
The contrary of a thing by yea or nay, 

Vot sometime it shall fallen on a day 
That falleth not oft in a thousand year; 

For, certainly, our appetites here, 

Be it of war, or peace, or hate, or love, 

All this is ruled by the sight above. 

Chaucer; The Knighte's Tale, 

The Greek Tragedy expressed the same 
sense : “ Whatever is fated, that will take 
place. The great immense mind of Jove 
is not to be transgressed.” 

Savages cling to a local god of one 
tribe or town. The broad ethics of Jesus 
were quickly narrowed to village theolo- 
gies, which preach an election of favouri- 
tism. And, now and then, an amiable 
parson, like Jung Stilling, or Robert 
Huntington, believes in a pistareen-Provi- 
dence, which, whenever the good man 
wants a dinner, makes that somebody 
shall knock at his door, and leave a half- 
dollar. But Nature is no sentimentalist 
— doesinot cosset or pamper us. We must 
see that the world is rough and surly, and 
will not mind drowning a man or a woman ; 
but swallows your ship like a grain of 
dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, 
tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, 
freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, 
the elements fortune, gravity, lightning, 
respect no persons. The way of Provi- 
dence is a little rude. The habit of snake 
and spider, the snap of the tiger, and other 
ieapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle 
of the bones of his prey in the coil of the 
anaconda — these are in the system, and 
our habits are like theirs. You have just 
dined, and, however scrupulously the 
slaughter-house is concealed in the grace- 
ful distance of miles, there is complicity 
•—expensive races— race living at the ex- 
pense of race. The planet is liable to 
shocks from comets, perturbations from 
planets, rendings from earthquake and 
volcano, alterations of climate, preces- 
sions of equinoxes. Rivers dry up by 
opening of the forest. The sea changes 
its bed. Towns and counties fall into it. 


At Lisbon, an earthquake killed men !!ko 
flies. At Naples, three years ago, ten 
thousand persons were crushed in a few 
minutes. The scurvy at sea ; the sword 
of the climate in the west of Africa, at 
Cayenne, at Panama, at New Orleans, cut 
off men lik# a massacre. Our Western 
prairie shakes with fever and ague. The 
cholera, the small-pox, have proved as 
mortal to some tribes as a frost to the 
crickets, which, having filled the summer 
with noise, are silenced by a fall of the 
temperature of one night. Without un. 
covering what does not concern us, or 
counting how many species of parasites 
hang on a bombyx, or groping after in- 
testinal parasites, or infusory biters, or 
the obscurities of alternate generation — 
the forms of the shark, the labrus, the jaw 
[ of the sea-wolf paved wilh crushing teeth, 
the weapons of the grampus, and otlier 
warriors hidden in the sea — are hints of 
I ferocity in the interiors of nature. Let us 
not deny it up and down. Providence has 
a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, 
and it is of no use to try to whitewash its 
huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress 
up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt 
and white neckcloth of a student in 
divinity. 

Will you say, the disasters which 
threaten mankind are exceptional, and 
one need not lay [his account for cata- 
clysms every day ? Ay, but what happens 
once may happen again, and so long as 
these strokes are not to be parried by 
us, they must be feared. 

these shocks and ruins are less 
destructive to us than the stealthy power 
of other laws which act on us daily. An 
expense of ends to means is fate — organi- 
sation tyrannising over character. The 
menagerie or forms and powers of the 
spine, is a book of fate ; the bill of the 
bird, the skull of the snake, determines 
tyrannically its limits. So is the scale of 
races, of temperaments ; so is sex ; so 
is climate ; so is the reaction of talents 
imprisoning the vital power in certain 
directions, tivery spirit makes its house ; 
but afterwards the house confines the 
spirit. 

The gross lines are legible to the dull I 
the cabman is phrenologist so far: he 
looks in your face to see if his shilling if 
sure. A dome of brow denotes one thing ; 
a pot-belly another : a squint, a pug-nose, 
mats of hair, the pigment of the epi- 
dermis, betray character, People seem 
sheathed in their tough organisation. Ask 
Spurzheim, ask the doctors, ask Quetelet* 



PATk. 


If te!np6ramen(3 decide nothing ? or if 
there be anything they do not decide ? 
Read the description in medical books of 
the four temperaments, and you will think 
you are reading your own thoughts which 
you had not yet told. Find the part which 
black eyes, and whicxi blue eyes, play 
severally in the company. How shall a 
man escape from his ancestors, or draw off 
from his veins the black drop which he 
drew from his father’s or his mother’s i 
life ? It often appears in a family as if all | 
the qualities of the progenitors were 
potted in several jars — some ruling quality 
in each son or daughter of the house — 
and sometimes the unmixed tempera- 
ment, tho rank unmitigated elixir, the 
family vice, is drawn off in a separate in- 
dividual, and the others are proportionally 
relieved. We sometimes see a change of 
expression in our companion, and say, his 
father, or his mother, comes to the win- 
dows of his eyes, and sometimes a remote 
relative. In different hours a man repre- 
sents each of several of his ancestors, as 
if there were seven or eight of us 
rolled up in each man's skin — seven or 
eight ancestors at least— and they consti- 
tute the variety of notes for that new piece 
of music which his life is. At the corner 
of the street you read the possibility of 
each passenger, in the facial angle, in the 
complexion, in the depth of his eye. His 
parentage determines it. Men arc what 
their mothers made them. Yon may as 
well ask a loom which weaves huckaback 
why it does not make cashmere as expect 
poetry from this engineer, or a chemical 
discovery from that jobber. Ask the digger 
in the ditch to explain Newton’s laws ; the 
fine organs of his brain have been pinched 
by overwork and squalid poverty from 
father to son, for a hundred years. When 
each conies forth from his mother’s womb, 
the gate of gifts closes behind him. Let 
him value his hands and feet, he has but 
one pair. So he has but one future, and 
that is already predetermined in his lobes, 
lind described in that little fatty face, pig- 
eye, and squat form. All the privilege 
and all the legislation of the world cannot 
meddle or help to make a poet or a prince 
of him, 

Jesus said, " When he looketh on her, I 
he hath committed adultery.” But he is 
an adulterer before he has yet looked on 
the woman, by the superfluity of animal 
and the defect of thought in his constitu- 
tion. Who meets him, or who meets her, 
in the street, sees that they are ripe to be 
each other’s victim. 


495 

In certain nlen, digestion and sex absorb 
the vital force, and the stronger these are, 
the individual is so much weaker. The 
more of these drones perish, the better 
for the hive. If, later, they give birth 
to some superior individual, with force 
enough to add to this animal a new aim, 
and a complete apparatus to work it out, 
all the ancestors are gladly forgotten. 
Most men and most women are merely 
one couple more. Now and then, one has 
a new cell or camarilla opened in his 
brain — an architectural, a musical, or a 
philological knack, some stray taste or 
talent for flowers, or chemistry, or pig- 
ments, or story-telling, a good hand for 
drawing, a good foot for dancing, aa 
athletic frame for wide journeying, «S:c. — 
which skill nowise alters rank in the scale 
of nature, but serves to pass the time, the 
life of sensation going on as before, At 
last, these hints and tendencies are fixed 
in one, or in a succession. Each absorbs 
so much food and force as to become itself 
a new centre. The new talent draws off 
so rapidly the vital force, that not enough 
remains for the animal functions, hardly 
enough for health ; so that, in the second 
generation, if the like genius appear, the 
health is visibly deteriorated, and the 
generative force impaired. 

People are born with the moral or with 
the material bias ; uterine brothers 
with this diverging destination : and I 
suppose, with high magnifiers, Mr. Frau- 
enhofer or Dr. Carpenter might come 
to distinguish in the embryo at the 
fourth day, this is a Whig, and that a 
Free-soiler. 

It was a poetic attempt to lift this 
mountain of Fate, to reconcile this despo- 
tism of race with liberty, which led the 
Hindoos to say, “ Fate is nothing but the 
deeds committed in a prior state of exist- 
ence.” I find the coincidence of tho 
extremes of Eastern and Western specu- 
lation in the daring statement of Schelling; 
** There is in every man a certain feeling, 
that he has been what he is from all 
eternity, and by no means became such 
in time.” To say it less sublimely, in the 
history ot' the individual is always an 
account of his condition, and he knows 
hiiTiself to bo a party to his present 
estate. 

A good deal of our politics Is physiolo- 
gical. Now and then, a man of wealth in 
the heyday of youth adopts the tenet of 
broadest freedom. In England, there is 
always some man of wealth and largo 
connection planting himself, during ^ 



496 CONDVCt 

his years of health, ou the side of pro- 
gress, who, as soon as he begins to die, 
checks his forward play, calls in his troops, 
and becomes conservative. All conserva- 
tives are such from personal defects. 
They have been effeminated by position 
or nature, born halt and blind, through 
luxury of their parents, and can only, 
like invalids, act on the defensive. But 
strong natures, backwoodsmen. New 
Hampshire giants, Napoleons, Burkes, 
Broughams, Websters, Kossuths, are ine- 
vitable patriots, until their life ebbs, and 
their defects and gout, palsy and money, 
warp them. 

The strongest idea incarnates itself in 
majorities and nations, in the healthiest 
and strongest. Probably, the election 
goes by avoirdupois weight, and, if you 
could weigh bodily the tonnage of any 
hundred of the Whig and the Demo- 
cratic party in a town on the Dearborn 
balance, as they passed the hayscales, 
you could predict with certainty which 
party would carry it On the whole, it 
would be rather the speediest way of 
deciding the vote, to put the select men 
or the mayor and aldermen at the hay- 
Bcales. 

In science, we have to consider two 
things ; power and circumstances. All 
we know of the egg, from each successive 
discovery, is, another vesicle ; and if, after 
five hundred years, you get a better ob- 
server, or a better glass, he finds within 
the last observed another. In vegetable 
and animal tissue, it is just alike, and all 
that the primary power or spasm operates, 
is, still, vesicles, vesicles. Yes, but the 
tyrannical Circumstance I A vesicle in 
new circumstances, a vesicle lodged in 
darkness, Oken thought, became animal ; 
in light, a plant. Lodged in the parent 
animal, it suffers changes, which end in 
unsheathing miraculous capability in the 
unaltered vesicle, and it unlocks itself to 
fish, bird, or quadruped, head and foot, 
©ye and claw. The Circumstance is Na- 
ture. Nature is what you may do. There 
is much you may not. We have two 
things, the circumstance and the life. 
Once we thought positive power was all. 
Now we learn that negative power, or 
circumstance, is half. Nature is the 
tyrannous circumstance, the thick skull, 
the sheathed snake, the ponderous, rock- 
like jaw ; necessitated activity ; violent 
direction ; the conditions of a tool, like 
the locomotive, strong enough on its 
track, but which can do nothing but 
cnifichicf off of it ; or skstes. which 


Oh LIFE. 

are wings on the Ice, but fettdffi 6a tilQ 
ground. 

The book of Nature is the book of Fate« 
She turns the gigantic pages — leaf after 
leaf — never re-turning one. One leaf bL# 
lays down, a floor of granite ; then a 
thousand ages, and a bed of slate ; a thou- 
sand ages, and a measure of coal ; a 
thousand ages, and a layer of marl and 
mud : vegetable forms appear ; her first 
misshapen animals, zoophyte, trilobium, 
fish : then saurians — rude forms, in which 
she has only blocked her future statue, 
concealing under these unwieldly mon- 
sters the fine type of her coming king. 
The face of the planet cools and dries, thu 
races meliorate, and man is born. But 
when a race has lived its term, it comes 
no more again. 

The population of the world is a condi- 
tional population; not the best, but the 
best that could live now ; and the scale of 
tribes, and the steadiness with which vic- 
tory adheres to one tribe, and defeat co 
another, is as uniform as the superposition 
of strata. We know in history what weight 
belongs to race. We see the English, 
French, and Germans planting themselves 
on every shore and market of America and 
Australia, and monopolising the com 
merce of these countries. We like the 
nervous and victorious habit of our own 
branch of the family. We follow the step 
of the Jew, of the Indian, of the Negro. 
We see how much will has been expended 
to extinguish the Jew, in vain. Look at 
the unpalatable conclusions of Knox, in 
his “Fragment of Races” — a rash and 
unsatisfactory writer, but charged with 
pungent and unforgetable truths. “ Nature 
respects race, and not hybrids.” “ Every 
race has its own habitat." “ Detach a 
colony from the race, and it deteriorates 
to the crab.” See the shades of the pic- 
ture. The German and Irish millions, 
like the Negro, have a great deal of guano 
in their destiny. They are ferried over 
the Atlantic, and carted over America, to 
ditch and to drudge, to make corn cheap, 
and then to lie down prematurely to make 
a spot of green grass on the prairie. 

One more fagot of these adamantine 
bandages, is, the new science of Statistics. 
It is a rule, that the moat casual and ex- 
traordinary events — if the basis of popula- 
tion is broad enough — become matter of 
fixed calculation. It would not be safe to 
say when a captain like Bonaparte, a singer 
like Jenny Lind, or a navigator like Bow- 
ditch, would be born in Boston ; but, on 
a population of twenty or two hundred 



PAtB, 




millions, something like accuracy may be 
had.* 

'Tis frivolous to fix pedantically the 
date of particular inventions. They have 
all been invented over and over fifty times. 
Man is the arch machine, of which all 
these shifts drawn from himself are toy 
models. He helps himself on each emer- 
gency by copying or duplicating his own 
structure, just so far as the need is. ‘Tis 
hard to find the right Homer, Zoroaster, 
or Menu ; harder still to find the Tubal 
Cain, or Vulcan, or Cadmus, or Copernicus, 
or Fust, or Fulton, the indisputable inven- 
tor. There are scores and centuries of 
them. “ The air is full of men.” This 
kind of talent so abounds, this constructive 
tool-making efficiency, as if it adhered to 
the chemic actions, as if the air he breathes 
were made of Vaucansons, Franklins, and 
Watts. 

Doubtless, in every million there will be 
an astronomer, a mathematician, a comic 
poet, a mystic. No one can read the his- 
tory of astronomy without perceiving that 
Copernicus, Nei^'ton, Laplace, are not 
new men, or a new kind of men, but that 
Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empe- 
docles, Aristarchus, Pythagoras, CEni- 
podes, had anticipated them : each had 
the same tense geometrical brain, apt for 
the same vigorous computation and logic, 
a mind parallel to the movement of the 
world. The Roman mile probably rested 
on a measure of a degree of the meridian. 
Mahometan and Chinese know what we 
know of leap-year, of the Gregorian calen- 
dar, and of the procession of the equinoxes. 
As in every barrel of cowries brought to 
New Bedford there shall be one orangia, 
BO there will, in a dozen millions of Malays 
and Mohometans, be one or two astrono- 
mical skulls. In a large city the most 
casual things, and things whose beauty 
lies in their casualty, are produced as 
punctually and to order as the baker’s 
muffin for breakfast. Punch makes ex- 
actly one capital joke a week ; and the 
journals contri ve to furnish one good piece 
of news every day. 

And not less work the laws of repres- 
sion, the penalties of violated functions. 
Famine, typhus, frost, war, suicide, and 

♦ “ Everything which pertains to the human 
species, considered as a whole, belongs to the 
order oi physical facts. The greater the num- 
ber of individuals, the more does the influence 
of the individual will disappear, leaving pre- 1 
dominance to a series of general facts depen- 
dent on causes by which society exists, and is 
pf«Berved.'*— Q wstblbti 


497 

effete races, must be reckoned calculable 
parts of the system of the world. 

These are pebbles from the mountains, 
hints of the terms by which our life is 
walled up, and which show a kind of me- 
chanical exactness, as of a loom or mill, in 
what we call casual or fortuitous events. 

The force with which we resist these 
torrents of tendency looks so ridiculously 
inadequate, that it amounts to little more 
than a criticism or a protest made by a 
minority of one, under compulsion of 
millions. I seemed, in the height oi a 
tempest, to see men overboard struggling 
in the waves, and driven about here and 
there. They glanced intelligently at each 
other, but it was little they could do for 
one another ; it was much if each could 
keep afloat alone. Well, they had a right to 
their eye-beams, and all the rest was Fate, 

We cannot trifle with this reality, this 
cropping-out in our planted gardens of the 
core of the world. No picture of life can 
have any veracity that does not admit the 
odious facts. A man’s power is hooped in 
by a necessity, which, by many experi- 
ments, he touches on every side, until ho 
learns its arc. 

The element running through entire 
nature, which we popularly call Fate, is 
known to us as limitation. Whatever 
limits us we call Fate. If we are brute 
and barbarous, the fate takes a brute and 
dreadful shape. As we refine, our cheeks 
become finer. If we rise to spiritual 
culture, the antagonism takes a spiritual 
form. In the Hindoo fables, Vishnu 
follows Maya through all her ascending 
changes, from insect and craw-fish up to 
elephant; whatever form she took, he 
took the male form of that kind, until she 
became at last woman and goddess, and 
he a man and a god. The limitations 
refine as the soul purifies, but the ring of 
necessity is always perched at the topi 

When the gods in the Norse heaven 
were unable to bind the Fenris Wolf with 
steel or with weight of mountains— the 
one he snapped and the other he spurned 
with his heel — they put round his foot a 
limp band softer than silk or cobweb, and 
this held him : the more he spurned it, 
the stiffer it drew. So soft and so staunch 
is the ring of Fate. Neither brandy, nor 
nectar, nor sulphuric ether, nor heil-firo, 
nor ichor, nor poetry, nor genius, can get 
rid of this limp band. For if we give it 
the high sense in which the poets use it, 
even thought itself is not above Fate; 
that too must act according to eternal 



498 CONDUdT 

laws, and all is wilful and fantastic in 
it is in opposition to its fundamental 
essence. 

And last of all, high over thought, in 
the world of morals, Fate appears as vindi- 
cator, leveiling the high, lifting the low, 
requiring justice in man, ^ and always 
striking soon or late, when justice is not 
done. What is useful will last ; what is 
hurtful will sink. “ The doer must suffer,” 
said the Greeks : ” you would soothe a 
Deity not to be soothed.” ” God himself 
cannot procure good for the wicked,” said 
the Welsh triad. ” God may consent, but 
only for a time,” said the bard of Spain. 
The limitation is impassable by any 
insight of man. In its last and loftiest 
ascensions, insight itself, and the freedom 
of the will, is one of its obedient mem- 
bers. But we must not run into generali- 
sations too large, but show the natural 
bounds or essential distinctions, and seek 
to do justice to the other elements as 
well. 

Thus we trace Fate, in matter, mind, 
and morals, in race, in retardations of 
strata, and in thought and character as 
well. It is everywhere bound or limita- 
tion. But Fate has its lord ; limitation its 
limits ; is different seen from above and 
from below ; from within and from without. 
For, though Fate is immense, so is power, 
which is the other fact in the dual world, 
immense. If Fate follows and limits 
power, power attends and antagonizes 
Fate. VVe must respect Fate as natural 
history, but there is more than natural 
history. For who and what is this criti- 
cism that pries into the matter ? Man is 
not order of nature, sack and sack, belly 
and members, link in a chain, nor any 
ignominious baggage, but a stupendous 
antagonism, a dragging together of the 
poles of the Universe. Ho betrays his 
relation to what is below him — thick- 
skulled, small-brained, fishy, quadru- ! 
manous — quadruped ill-disguised, hardly 
escaped into biped, and has paid for the 
new powers by loss of some of the old 
ones. But the lightning which explodes 
and fashions planets, maker of planet and 
Buns, is in him. On one side, elemental 
order, sandstone and granite, rock-ledges, 
peal-bog, forest, sea and shore ; and, on 
the other part, thought, the spirit which 
composes and decomposes nature— here 
they are side by side, god and devil, mind 
and matter, king and conspirator, belt | 
and spasm, riding peacefully together in , 
tbe eye and brain of every man. I 


OP LIFE, 

Nor can he blink the freewill. To hazard 
the contradiction, freedom is necessary. 
If you please to plant yourself on the side 
of Fate, and say, Fate is all ; then we say, 
a part of Fate is the freedom of man. For- 
ever wells up the impulse of choosing and 
acting in the soul. Intellect annuls Fate. 
So far as a man thinks, he is free. And 
though nothing is more disgusting than 
the crowing about liberty by slaves, as 
most men are, and the flippant mistaking 
for freedom of some paper preamble like 
a *‘ Declaration of Independence,” or the 
statute right to vote, by those who have 
never dared to think or to act, yet it is 
wholesome to man to look not at Fate, but 
the other way ; the practical view is the 
other. His sound relation to these facts 
is to use and command, not to cringe to 
them. ” Look not on nature, for her name 
is fatal,” said the oracle. The too much 
contemplation of these limits induces 
meanness. They who talk much of des- 
tiny, their birth-star, «&c., are in a lower 
dangerous plane, and invite the evils they 
fear. 

I cited the instinctive and heroic races 
as proud believers in Destiny. They con- 
spire with it ; a loving resignation is with 
the event. But the dogma makes a dif- 
ferent impression, when it is held by the 
weak and lazy. 'Tis weak and vicious 
people who cast the blame on Fate. The 
right use of Fate is to bring up our conduct 
to the loftiness of nature. Rude and in- 
vincible except by themselves are the 
elements. So let man be. Let him empty 
his breast of his windy conceits, and show 
his lordship by manners and deeds on the 
scale of nature. Let him hold his purpose 
as with the tug of gravitation. No power, 
no persuasion, no bribe, shall make him 
give up his point. A man ought to com- 
pare advantageously with a river, an oak, 
or a mountain. He shall have not less the 
flow, the expansion, and the resistance of 
these. 

’Tis the best use of Fate to teach a fatal 
courage. Go face the fire at sea, or the 
cholera in your friend’s hou.se, or the 
burglar in your own, or what danger lies 
ia the way of duty, knowing you are 
guarded by the cherubim of Destiny. If 
you believe in Fate to your harm, believe 
it, at least, for your good. 

For, if Fate is so prevailing, man also iti 
part of it, and can confront fate with fate. 
If the Universe have these savage acci- 
dents, our atoms are as savage in resist- 
ance. We should be crushed by the 
atmosohere but for the reaction of the 



PATE. 


m 


air within the body. A tube made of a 
film of glass can resist the shock of the 
ocean, if filled with the same water. If 
there be omnipotence in the stroke, there 
is omnipotence of recoil. 

I. But Fate against Fate is only parry- 
ing and defence : there are, also, the noble 
creative forces. The revelation of Thought 
takes man out of servitude into freedom. 
We rightly say of ourselves, we were born, 
and afterward we were born again, and 
many times. We have successive expe- 
riences so important, that the new forgets 
the old, and hence the mythology of the 
seven or the nine heavens. The day of 
days, the great day of the feast of life, is 
that in which the inward eye opens to the 
Unity in things, to the omnipresence of 
faw; secs that what is must be, and ought 
to be, or is the best. This beatitude dips 
from on high down on us, and we see. It 
is not in us so much as we are in it. If the 
air come to our lungs, we breathe and 
live; if not, we die. If the light come to 
our eyes, wc see ; else not. And if truth 
come to our mind, we suddenly expand to 
its dimensions, as if we grew to worlds. 
We are as lawgivers ; we speak for Na- 
ture ; we prophesy and divine. 

This insight throws us on the party and 
interest of the Universe, against all and 
sundry; against ourselves, as much as 
others. A man speaking from insight 
affirms of himself what is true of the 
mind: seeing its immortality, ho says, I 
am immortal; sceing 'its invincibility, he 
says, 1 am strong. It is not in us, but we 
are in it. It is of the maker, not of what 
is made. All things are touched and 
changed by it. This uses, and is not 
used. It distances those who share it, 
from those who share it not. Those who 
share it not are flocks and herds. It dates 
from itself — not from former men or better 
men— gospel, or constitution, or college, 
or custom. Where it shines. Nature is no 
longer intrusive, but all things make a 
musical or pictorial impression. The 
world of men show like a comedy without 
laughter : populations, interests, govern- 
ment, history; 'tis all toy figures in a toy 
house. It does not over-value particular 
truths. We hear eagerly every thought 
and word quoted from an intellectual man. 
But, in his presence, our own mind is 
roused to activity, and we forget very fast 
what he says, much more interested in the 
new play of our own thought, than in any 
thought of his. 'Tis the majesty into which 
we have suddenly mounted, the imperson- 
ality, 5CQr4QC spber^ of 


laws, that engage us. Once we were step* 
ping a little this way, and a little that way » 
now, we are as men in a balloon, and do 
not think so much of the point we have 
left, or the point we would make, as of the 
liberty and glory of the way. 

Just as much intellect as you add, so 
much organic power. He who sees 
through the design, presides over it. and 
must will that which must be. We sit 
and rule, and, though we sleep, our dream 
will come to pass. Our thought, though 
it were only an hour old, affirms an oldest 
necessity, not to be separated from 
thought, and not to be separated from 
will. They must always have co-existed. 
It apprises us of its sovereignty and god- 
head, which refuse to be severed from it. 
It is not mine or thine, but the will of all 
mind. It is poured into the souls of all 
men, as the soul itself which constitutes 
them men. I know not whether there be, 
as is alleged, in the upper region of our 
atmosphere, a permanent westerly current, 
which carries with it all atoms which rise 
to that height, but I see, that when souls 
reach a certain clearness of perception, 
they accept a knowledge and motive 
above selfishness. A breath of will blows 
eternally through the universe of souls in 
the direction of the Right and Necessary, 
It is the air which all intellects inhale and 
exhale, and it is the wind which blows the 
worlds into order and orbit. 

Thought dissolves the material universe, 
by carrying the mind up into a sphere 
where all is plastic. Of two men, each 
obeying his own thought, he whoso 
thought is deepest will be the strongest 
character. Always one man more than 
another represents the will of Divine Pro- 
vidence to the period. 

2 . If thought makes free, so docs the 
moral sentiment. The mixtures of spiri- 
tual chemistry refuse to be analyzed. Yet 
we can see that with the perception of 
truth is joined the desire that it shall pre- 
vail. That affection is essential to will. 
Moreover, when a strong will appears, it 
usually results from a certain unity of 
organization, as if the whole energy of 
body and mind flowed in one direction. 
All great force is real and elemental. 
There is no manufacturing a strong will. 
There must be a pound to balance a 
pound. Where power is shown in will, it 
must rest on the universal force. Alaric 
and Bonaparte must believe they rest on 
a truth, or their will can be bought or 
bent. There is a bribe possible for any 
fi^ife wilt ^ut ^he pure ^ytnpj^thy y\(itk 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


500 

universal ends is an infinite force, and 
cannot be bribed or bent. Whoever has 
had experience of the moral sentiment 
cannot choose but believe in unlimited 
power. Each pulse from that heart is an 
oath from the Most High. I know not 
what the word sublime means, if it be not 
the intimations in this infant of a terrific 
force. A text of heroism, a name and 
anecdote of courage, are not arguments, 
but sallies of freedom. One of these is 
the verse of the Persian Hafiz, “ ’Tis writ- j 
ten on the gate of heaven, * Woe unto ! 
him who suffers himself to be betrayed by 
Fate ! ’ '* Does the reading of history 
make us fatalists ? What courage does 
not the opposite opinion show 1 A little 
whim of will to be free gallantly contend- 
ing against the universe of chemistry. 

But insight is not will, nor is affection 
will. Perception is cold, and goodness 
dies in wishes ; as Voltaire said, 'tis the 
misfortune of worthy people that they are 
cowards ; un des plus grands malheurs des 
honnHes gens c'est quHls sont des Idches.*' 
There must be a fusion of these two to 
generate the energy of will. There can 
be no driving force, except through the 
conversion of the man into his will, mak- 
ing him the will, and the will him. And 
one may say boldly, that no man has a | 
right perception of any truth, who has not 
been reacted on by it, so as to bo ready to 
be its martyr. 

The one serious and formidable thing 
in nature is a will. Society is servile from 
want of will, and therefore the world wants 
saviours and religions. One way is right 
to go: the hero sees it, and moves on that 
aim, and has the world under him for root 
and support. He is toothers as the world. 
His approbation is honour ; his dissent, in- 
famy. The glance of his eye has the force 
of sunbeams. A personal influence towers 
up in memory only worthy, and we gladly 
forget numbers, money, climate, gravita- 
tion, and the rest of Fate. 

We can afford to allow the limitation, if 
we know it is the meter of the growing 
man. We stand against Fate, as children 
stand up against the wall in their father’s 
house, and notch their height from year 
to year. But when the boy grows to man, 
and is master of the house, he pulls down 
that wall, and builds a new and bigger. 
’Tis only a question of time. Every brave 
youth is in training to ride and rule this 
dragon. His science is to make weapons 
and wings of these passions and retarding 
forces. Now whether, seeing these two 


things, fate and power, we ar£ permitted 
to believe in unity ? The bulk 0/ mankind 
believe in two gods. They are under one 
dominion here in the house, as friend and 
parent, in social circles, in letters, in art, 
in love, in religion ; but in mechanics, in 
dealing with steam and climate, in trade, 
in politics, they think they come under 
another ; and that it would be a practica 
blunder to transfer the method and way 
of working of one sphere, into the other. 
What good, honest, generous men at 
home, will be wolves and foxes on ’Change I 
What pious men in the parlour will vote 
for what reprobates at the polls ! To a 
certain point, they believe themselves the 
I care of a Providence. But, in a steam- 
boat, in an epidemic, in war, they believe 
a malignant energy rules. 

But relation and connection are not 
somewhere and sometimes, but every- 
where and always. The divine order does 
not stop where their sight stops. The 
friendly power works on the same rules, 
in the next farm, and the next planet. 
But, where they have not experience, they 
run against it, and hurt themselves. Fate, 
then, is a name for facts not yet passed 
under the fire of thought ; for causes which 
are unpenetrated. 

But evei7 jet of chaos which threatens 
to exterminate us, is convertible by intel- 
' lect into wholesome force. Fate is urn 
penetrated causes. The water drowns 
ship and sailor, like a grain of dust. But 
learn to swim, trim your bark, and the 
wave which drowned it will be cloven by 
it, and carry it, like its own foam, a plume 
and a power. The cold is in considerate of 
persons, tingles your blood, freezes a man 
like a dew-drop. But learn to skate, and 
the ice will give you a graceful, sweet, and 
poetic motion. The cold will brace your 
limbs and brain to genius, and make you 
foremost men of time. Cold and sea will 
train an imperial Saxon race, which 
nature cannot bear to lose, and, after 
cooping it up for a thousand years in 
yonder England, gives a hundred Englandg 
a hundred Mexicos. All the bloods it 
shall absorb and domineer : and more than 
Mexicos, the secrets of water and steam, 
the spasms of electricity, the ductility pjf 
metals, the chariot of the air, the rud- 
dered balloon, are awaiting you. 

The annual slaughter from typhus far 
exceeds that of war ; but right drainage 
destroys typhus. The plague in the sea- 
service from scurvy is he^ed by lemoii^ 
juice and other diets portable or procur- 
able : the depopulation by cholera and 



FATE, 


•ffl^lpox is ended by drainage and vacci- 
nation ; and every other pest is not less in 
the chain of cause and effect, and may be 
fought off. And, whilst art draws out the 
venom, it commonly extorts some benefit 
from the vanquished enemy. The mis- 
chievous torrent is taught to drudge for 
man ; the wild beasts he makes useful for 
food, or dress, or labour ; the chemic ex- 
plosions are controlled like his watch. 
These are now the steeds on which he 
rides. Man moves in all modes, by legs 
of horses, by wings of wind, by steam, by 
gas of balloon, by electricity, and stands 
on tiptoe threatening to hunt the eagle in 
his own element. There’s nothing he 
will not make his carrier. 

Steam was, till the other day, the devil 
which we dreaded. Every pot made by 
any human potter or brazier had a hole in 
its cover to let off the enemy, lest he should 
lift pot and roof, and carry the house away. 
But the Marquis of Worcester, Watt, and 
Fulton bethought themselves, that, where 
was power, was not devil, but was God ; that 
it must be availed of, and not by any 
means let off and wasted. Could he lift 
pots and roofs and houses so handily ? 
he was the workman they were in search 
of. He could be used to lift away, chain, 
and compel other devils far more reluc- 
tant and dangerous, namely, cubit miles 
of earth, mountains, weight or resistance 
of water, machinery, and the labours of 
all men in the world ; and time he shall 
lengthen, and shorten space. 

It has not fared much otherwise with 
higher kinds of steam. The opinion of 
the million was the terror of the world, 
and it was attempted either to dissipate 
it, by amusing nations, or to pile it over 
with strata of society, a layer of soldiers; 
over that, a layer of lords ; and a king on 
the top ; with clamps and hoops of castles, 
garrisons, and police. But, sometimes, 
the religious principle would get in, and 
burst the hoops, and ride every mountain 
laid on lOp of it. The Fultons and Watts 
of politics, believing in unity, saw that it 
was a power, and, by satisfying it (as 
justice satisfies everybody), through a dif- 
ferent disposition of society, grouping it on 
a level, instead of piling it into a mountain, 
they have contrived to make of this terror 
the most harmless and energetic form of 
a State. 

Very odious, I confess, are the lessons 
of Fate. Who likes to have a dapper 
phrenologist pronouncing on his fortunes ? 
Who likes to believe that he has hidden 
in his skull, spine and pelvis, all the vices 


501 

of a Saxon or Celtic race, which will D€ 
sure to pull him down with what grandeur 
I of hope and resolve he is fired, into a 
[ selfish, huckstering, servile, dodging ani- 
mal ? A learned physician tells us, the 
fact is invariable with a Neapolitan, that, 
when mature, he assumes the forms of 
the unmistakable scoundrel. That is a 
little overstated — but may pass. 

But these are magazines and arrenals, 
A man must thank his defects, and stand in 
some terror of his talents. A transcen- 
dent talent draws so largely on his forces, 
as to lame him ; a defect pays him reven- 
ues on the other side. The suffrance, which 
is the badge of the Jew, has made him, in 
these days, the ruler of the rulers of the 
earth. If Fate is ore and quarry, if evil is 
good in the making, if limitation is power 
that shall be, if calamities, oppositions, 
and weights are wings and means, we are 
reconciled. 

Fate involves the melioration. No 
statement of the Universe can have any 
soundness, which does not admit its 
ascending effort. The direction of the 
whole, and of the parts, *s towards bene- 
fit, and in proportion to the health. 
Behind every individual closes organisa- 
tion : before him opens liberty, the Better, 
the Best. The first and worst races are 
decid. The second and imperfect races 
are dying out, or remain for the maturing 
of higher. In the latest race, in man, 
every generosity, every new perception, 
the love and praise he extorts from his 
fellows, are certificates of advance out of 
fate into freedom. Liberation of the will 
from the sheaths and clogs of organisa- 
tion which he has outgrown, is the end 
and aim of this world. Every calamity 
is a spur and valuable hint ; and where 
his endeavours do not yet fully avail, they 
tell as tendency. The whole circle of 
animal life, tooth against tooth, devour- 
ing war, war for food, a yelp of pain and 
a grunt of triumph, until, at last, the 
whole menagerie, the whole chemical 
mass is mellowed and refined for higher 
use, pleases at a sufficient perspective. 

But to see how fate slides into freedom, 
and freedom into fate, observe how far 
the roots of every creature run, or find, if 
you can, a point where there is no thread 
of connection. Our life is consentaneous 
and far-related. This knot of nature is so 
well tied, that nobody was ever cunning 
enough to find the two ends. Nature is 
intricate, overlapped, and interweaved, 
and endless. Christopher Wren said of 
the beautiful King’s College chapel, 



$02 CONDUCT 

“ that, If anybody would tell him where to 
lay the first stone, he would build such 
another.” But where shall we find the 
first atom in this house of man, which is 
all consent, inosculation, and balance of 
parts ? 

The web of relation is shown in habitat, 
shown in hybernation. When hyberna- 
tion was observed, it was found, that, 
whilst some animals became torpid in 
winter, others were torpid in summer : 
hybernation then was a false name. The 
long sleep is not an effect of cold, but is 
regulated by the supply of food proper to 
the animal. It becomes torpid when the 
fruit or prey it lives on is not in season, 
and regains its activity when its food is 
ready. 

Eyes are found in light ; ears in auric- 
ular air ; feet on land ; fins in water ; 
wings in air ; and, each creature where it 
was meant to be, with a mutual fitness. 
Every zone has its own Fauna. There is 
adjustment between the animal and its 
food, its parasite, its enemy. Balances 
are kept. It is not allowed to diminish 
in numbers, nor to exceed. The like ad- 
justments exist for man. His food is 
cooked, when he arrives : his coal in the 
pit ; his house ventilated ; the mud of the 
deluge dried ; his companions arrived at 
the same hour, and awaiting him with 
love, concert, laughter, and tears. These 
are coarse adjustments, but the invisible 
are not less. There are more belongings 
to every creature than his air and his 
food. His instincts must be met, and he 
has predisposing power that bends and 
fits what is near him to his use. He is 
not possible until the invisible things are 
right for him, as well as the visible. 
Of what changes, then, in sky and earth 
and in finer skies and earths, does the 
appearance of some Dante or Columbus 
apprise us ! 

How is this effected ? Nature is no 
spendthrift, but takes the shortest way to 
her ends. As the general says to his 
soldiers, ” If you want a fort, build a fort,” 
80 nature makes every creature doits own 
work and get its living, is it planet, 
animal, or tree. The planet makes itself. 
The animal cell makes itself ; then, 
what it wants. Every creature, wren or 
dragon, shall makes its own lair. As soon 
as there is life, there is self-direction, and 
absorbing and using of material. Life is 
freedom, life in the direct ratio of its 
amount. You may be sure, the new-born 
man is not inert. Life works both volun- 
tarily and iupernaturally io jts peighpour- 


OF LIFE. 

hood. Do you suppose he can be estima- 
ted by his weight in pounds, or that he 
is contained in his skin, this reaching, 
radiating, jacnlating fellow ? The small- 
est candle fills a mile with its rays, and 
the papillae of a man run out to every 
star. 

When there is something to be done, 
the world knows how to get it done. The 
vegetable eye makes leaf, pericarp, root, 
bark, or thorn, as the need is; the first 
cell converts itself into stomach, mouth, 
nose, or nail, according to the want ; the 
world throws its life into a hero or a shep- 
herd ; and puts him where he is wanted. 
Dante and Columbus were Italians, in 
their time ; they would be Russians or 
Americans to-day. Things ripen, new 
men come. The adaptation is not capri- 
cious. The ulterior aim, the purposrO 
beyond itself, the correlation by which 
planets subside and crystallize, then ani- 
mate beasts and men, will not stop ; but 
will work into finer particulars, and from 
finer to finest. 

The secret of the world is, the tie be- 
tween person and event. Person makes 
event, and event person. The “ times,” 
“ the age,” what is that, but a few profound 
persons and a few active persons who 
epitomise the times? — Goethe, Hegel, 
Metternich, Adams, Calhoun, Guizot, Peel, 
Cobden, Kossuth, Rothschild, Astor, 
Brunei, and the rest. The same fitness 
must be presumed between a man and the 
time and event, as between the sexes, or 
between a race of animals and the food it 
eats, or the inferior races it uses. He 
thinks his fate alien, because the copula is 
hidden. But the soul contains the event 
that shall befall it, for the event is only, the 
actualisation of its thouglits ; and what 
we pray to ourselves for is always granted. 
The event is the print of your form. It 
fits you like your skin. What each does 
is proper to him. Events are the children 
of his body and mind. We learn that the 
soul of Fate is the soul of us, as Hafiz 
sings, 

“Alas I till now I had not known, 

My guide and fortune’s guide are one.** 

All the toys that infatuate men, and which 
they play for — houses, land, money, 
luxury, power, fame, are the selfsame 
thing, with a new gauze or two of illusion 
overlaid. And of all the drums and rattles 
by which men are made willing to have 
their heads broke, and are led out 
solemnly every morning to parade — the 
mo^t atjmjrabl^ *3 by whjffb w® giyp 



FATE. 


brought to believe that events are arbi- 
trary, and independent of actions. At the 
conjurer’s, we detect the hair by which he 
moves his puppet, but we have not eyes 
sharp enough to descry the thread that 
ties cause and effect. 

Nature magically suits the man to his 
fortunes, by making these the fruit of his 
character. Ducks take to the water, eagles 
to the sky, waders to the sea margin, hun- 
ters to the forest, clerks to the counting- 
rooms, soldiers to the frontier. Thus 
events grow on the same stem with per- 
sons ; are sub-persons. The pleasure of 
life is according to the man that lives it, 
and not according to the work or the place. 
Info is an ecstacy. We know what mad- 
ness belongs to love — what power to paint 
a vile object in hues of heaven. As insane 
persons are indifferent to their dress, diet, 
and other accommodations, and, as we do 
in dreams, with etpianimity, the most ab- 
surd acts, so, a drop more of wine in our cup 
of life will reconcile us to strange com- 
pany and work. Flach creature puts forth 
from itself its own condition and sphere, 
as the slug sweats out its slimy house on 
the pear leaf, and the woolly aphides on 
the apple perspire their own bed, and the 
hsh its shell. In youth, we clothe our- 
selves with rainbows, and go as brave as 
the zodiac. In age, we put out another 
sort of persx^iration — gout, fever, rheuma- 
tism, caprice, doubt, fretting and avarice. 

A man’s fortunes are the fruit of his 
character. A man’s friends are his mag- 
netisms. We go to Herodotus and Plutarch 
for examples of Fate ; but we are exam- 
ples. “ Qnisque suos patimur manes."' 
The tendency of every man to enact all 
that is in his constitution is expressed in 
the old belief, that the efforts which we 
make to escape from our destiny only 
serve to lead us into it : and I have noticed, 
a man likes better to be complimented on 
his position, as the proof of the last or 
total excellence, than on his merits. 

A man will see his character emitted in 
the events that seem to meet, but which 
exude from and accompany him. Events 
expand with the character. As once he 
found himself among to^s, so now he plays 
a part in colossal systems, and his growth 
is declared in his ambition, his compa- 
nions, and his performance. He looks 
like a piece of luck, but is a piece of causa- 
tion ; the mosaic, angulated and ground 
to fit into tlie gap he tills. Hence in each 
town there is some man who is, in his 
brain and performance, an explanation of 
the production- factories, banks, 


503 

churches, ways of living, and soc.ety, oi 
that town. If you do not chance to meet 
him, all that you see will leave you a little 
puzzled : if you see him, it will become 
plain. We know in Massachusetts who 
built New Bedford, who built Lynn, 
Lowell, Lawrence, Clinton, Fitchburg, 
Holyoke, Portland, and many another 
noisy mart. Each of these men, if they 
were transparent, would seem to you not 
so much men, as walking cities, and, 
wherever you put them, they would build 
one. 

History is the action and reaction of 
these two— Nature and Thought; two 
boys pushing each other on the curb-stone 
of the pavement. Everything is pusher or 
pushed : and matter and mind are in per- 
petual tilt and balance, so. Whilst the 
man is weak, the earth takes up to him. 
He plants his brain and affections. By 
and by he will take up the earth, and have 
his gardens and vineyards in the beautiful 
order and productiveness of his thought. 
Every solid in the universe is ready to be- 
come fluid on the approach of the mind, 
and the power to flux it is the measure of 
the mind. If the wall remain adamant, it 
accuses the want of thought, To a subtler 
force, it will stream into new forms, ex- 
pressive of the character of the mind. 
What is the city in which we sit here, but 
an aggregate of incongruous materials, 
which have obeyed the will of some man ? 
The granite was reluctant, but his hands 
were stronger, and it came. Iron was 
deep in the ground, and well combined 
with stone, but could not hide from his 
fires. Wood, lime, stuffs, fruits, gums, 
were dispersed over the earth and sea, in 
vain. Here they are, within reach of every 
man’s day-labour — what he wants of them. 
The whole world is the flux of matter over 
the wires of thought to the poles or points 
where it would build. The races of men 
rise out of the ground preoccupied with a 
thought which rules them, and divided 
into parties ready armed and angry to fight 
for this metaphysical abstraction. The 
quality of the thought differences the 
Egyptian and the Roman, the Austrian and 
the American. The men who come on 
the stage at one period are all found to be 
related to each other. Certain ideas are 
in the air. We are all impressionable, for 
we are made of them ; all impression- 
able, but some more than others, and 
these first express them, This explains 
the curious contemporaneousness of in- 
ventions and discoveries, The truth is in 
the ^ir, the mgs^ Impressionable brain 

3 K 



504 


CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


will announce it first, but all will an- 
nounce it a few minutes later. So women, 
as most susceptible, are the best index of 
the coming hour. So the great man, that 
is, the man most imbued with the spirit of 
the time, is the impressionable rnan— of a 
fibre irritable and delicate, like iodine to 
light. He feels the infinitesimal attrac- 
tions. His mind is righter than others, 
because he yields to a current so feeble as 
can be felt only by a needle delicately 
poised. 

The correlation is shown in defects. 
Moller, in his Essay on Architecture, 
taught that the building which w'as fitted 
accurately to answer its end, would turn 
out to be beautiful, though beauty had not 
been intended. I find the like unity in 
human structures rather virulent and per- 
vasive ; that a crudity in the blood will 
appear in the argument ; a hump in the 
shoulder will appear in the speech and 
handiwork. If his mind could be seen, the 
hump would be seen. If a man has a see- 
saw in his voice, it will run into his 
sentences, into his poem, into the structure 
of his fable, into his speculation, into his 
charity. And, as every man is hunted by 
his own demon, vexed by his own disease, 
this checks all his activity. 

So each man, like each plant, has his 
parasites. A strong, astringent, bilious 
nature has more truculent enemies than 
the slugs and moths that fret my leaves. 
Such a one has curculios, borers, knife- 
worms : a swindler ate him first, then a 
client, then a quack, then smooth, plau- 
sible gentlemen, bitter and selfish as 
Moloch. 

This correlation really existing can be 
divined. If the threads are there, thought 
can follow and show them. Especially 
when a soul is quick and docile: as 
Chaucer sings : — 

Or if the soul of proper kind 
Be so parfect as men find. 

That it wot what is to come, 

And that be warneth all and soin€ 

Of every of their averitures. 

By previsions or figures ; 

But that our flesh hath not might 

It to understand aright 

For it is warned too darkly.” 

Some people are made up of rhyme, coin- 
cidence, omen, periodicity, and presage : 
they meet the person they seek; what 
their companion prepares to say to them, 
they first say to him ; and a hundred 
signs apprise them of what is about to 
befall. 

Wonderful iatricacy in the web, won- 


derful constancy in the design, this vaga« 
bond life admits. We wonder how the 
fly finds its mate, and yet year after yeai 
w'e find two men, two women, without 
legal or carnal tie, spend a great part of 
their best time within a few feet of each 
other. And the moral is, that what we 
seek we shall find ; what we flee from flees 
from us; as Goethe said, “what we wish 
for in youth, comes in heaps on us in old 
age,” too often cursed with the granting 
of our prayer : and hence the higu caution, 
that, since we are sure of having what wo 
wish, we beware to ask only for high 
things. 

One key, one solution to the mysteries 
of human condition, one solution to the 
old knots of fate, freedom and foreknow- 
ledge exists, the propounding, namely, of 
the double consciousness. A man must 
ride alternately on the horses of his pri- 
vate and his public nature, as the eques- 
trians in the circus throw themselves 
nimbly from horse to horse, or plant one 
foot on the back of one, and the other foot 
on the back of the other. So when a man 
is the victim of his fate, his sciatica in his 
loins, and cramp in his mind ; a club-foot 
and a club in his wit ; a sour face, and a 
selfish temper ; a strut in his gait ; and a 
conceit in his affection ; or is ground to 
powder by the vice of his race ; he is to 
rally on his relation to the Universe, 
which his ruin benefits. Leaving the 
demon who suffers, he is to take sides with 
the Deity who secures universal benefit 
by his pain. 

To offset the drag of temperament and 
race, which pulls down, learn this lesson, 
namely, that by the cunning co-presence 
of two elements, which is throughout 
nature, whatever lames or paralyses you, 
draws in with it the divinity, in some 
form, to repay. A good intention clothes 
itself with sudden power. When a god 
wishes to ride, any chip or pebble wull bud 
and shoot out winged feet, and servo him 
for a horse. 

Let us build altars to the Blessed 
Unity which holds nature and souls in 
perfect solution, and compels every atom 
to serve a universsil end. I do not won- 
der at a snow-flake, a shell, a summer 
landscape, or the glory of the stars ; but 
at the necessity of beauty under which 
the universe lies ; that all is and must be 
pictorial ; that the rainbow, and the curve 
of the horizon, and the arch of the blue 
vault, are only results from the organism 
of the eye. There is no need for foolish 
amateurs to fetch me to admire a garden 



POWER. 


cf flowers, or a sun-gilt cloud, or a water- 
fall, when I cannot look without seeing 
splendour and grace. How idle to choose 
a random sparkle here or there, when the 
indwelling necessity plants the rose of 
beauty on the brow of chaos, and discloses 
the central intention of nature to be 
harmony and joy. 

Let US build altars to the Beautiful 
Necessity. If we thought men were free 
in the sense, that, in a single exception 
one fantastical will could prevail over the 
law of things, it were all one as if a child's 
hand could pull down the sun. If, in the 
least particular, one could derange the 
order of nature, — who would accept the 
gift of life ? 

Let us build altars to the Beautiful 
Necessity, which secures that all is made 
of one piece ; that plaintiff and defend- 
ant, friend and enemy, animal and planet, 
food and eater, are of one kind. In astro- 


505 

nomy is vast Ipace, but no foreign system * 
in geology, vast time, but the same laws 
as to-day. Why should we be afraid of 
Nature, which is no other than “philo- 
sophy and theology embodied”? Why 
should we fear to be crushed by savage 
elements, we who are made up of the 
same elements? Let us build to the 
Beautiful Necessity, which makes man 
brave in believing that he cannot shun a 
danger that is appointed, nor incur one 
that is not ; to the Necessity which rudely 
or softly educates him to the perception 
that there are no contingencies ; that Law 
rules throughout existence, a Law which 
is not intelligent but intelligence — not 
personal nor impersonal — it disdains 
words and passes understanding ; it dis- 
solves persons; it vivifies nature; yet 
solicits the pure in heart to draw on all iti 
omnipotence. 


POWER. 


His toniTue was framed to music, 

And his band was armed with skill, 

His face was the mould of beauty, 

And his heart the throne of will.” 

There is not yet any inventory of a man’s 
faculties, any more than a biblo of his 
opinions. Who shall set a limit to the 
influence of a human being ? There are 
men, who, by their sympathetic attrac- 
tions, carry nations with them, and lead 
the activity of the human race. And if 
there be such a tie, that, wherever the 
mind of man goes, nature will accompany 
him, perhaps there are men whose mag- 
netisms are of that force to draw material 
and elemental powers, and, where they 
appear, immense instrumentalities organ- 
ize around them. Life is a search after 
power ; and this is an element with which 
the world is so saturated — there is no 
chink or crevice in which it is not lodged — 
that no honest seeking goes unrewarded. 
A man should prize events and posses- 
sions as the ore in which this fine mineral 
is found : and he can well afford to let 
events and possessions, and the breath of 
the body go, if their value has been added 
to him in the shape of power. If he have 
secured the elixir, he can spare the wide 
gardens from which it was distilled. A 
cultivated man, wise to know and bold to 
perform is the end to which nature works, 


and the education of the will is the flower- 
ing and result of all this geology and 
astronomy. 

All successful men have agreed in one 
thing— they were causationists. They 
believed tliat things went not by luck, but 
I by law ; that there was not a weak or a 
cracked link in the chain that joins the 
I first and last of things. A belief in cau- 
sality, or strict connection between every 
pulse-beat and the principle of being, and, 
in consequence, belief in compensation, 
or, that nothing is got for nothing, charac- 
terizes all valuable minds, and must 
control every effort that is made by an 
industrious one. The most valiant men 
are the best believers in the tension of the 
laws, “ All the great captains,” said 
Bonaparte, “ have performed vast achieve- 
ments by conforming with tlie rules of the 
art— by adjusting efforts to obstacles.” 

The key to the age may be this, or that, 
or the other, as the young orators de- 
scribe ; the key to all ages is, imbecility ; 
imbecility in the vast majority of men, at 
all times, and, even in heroes, in all but 
certain eminent moments ; victims of 
gravity, custom, and fear. This gives 
force to the strong— that the multitude 
have no habit of self-reliance or original 
action. 

We must reckon success a coastitutlOBai 



CONDUCT OF LIFF, 


506 

trait. Courage— the old physicians taught 
(and their meaning holds, if their physi- 
ology is a little mythical) — courage, or the 
degree of life, is as the degree of circula- 
tion of the blood in the arteries. “ During 
passion, anger, fury, trials of strength, 
wrestling, fighting, a large amount of 
blood is collected in the arteries, the 
maintenance of bodily strength requiring 
it, and but little is sent into the veins. 
This condition is constant with intrepid 
persons.” Where the arteries hold their 
blood, is courage and adventure possible. 
Where they pour it unrestrained into the 
veins, the spirit is low and feeble. For 
performance of great mark, it needs ex- 
traordinary health. If Eric is in robust 
health, and has slept well, and is at the 
top of his condition, and thirty years old, 
at his departure from Greenland, he will 
Bteer west, and his ships will reach New- 
foundland. But take out Eric, and put in 
a stronger and bolder man — Biorn, or 
Thorfin — and the ships will, with just as 
much ease, sail six hundred, one thousand, 
fifteen hundred miles farther, and reach 
Labrador and New England. There is no 
chance in results. With adults, as with 
children, one class enter cordially into 
the game, and whirl with the whirling 
world ; the others have cold hands, and 
remain bystanders : or are only dragged 
»n by the humour and vivacity of those 
who can carry a dead weight. The first 
wealth is health. Sickness is poor- 
spirited, and cannot serve any one : it 
must husband its resources to live. But 
health or fulness answers its own ends, 
and has to spare, runs over, and inundates 
the neighbourhoods and creeks of other 
men’s necessities. 

All power is of one kind, a sharing of 
the nature of the world. The mind that 
is parallel with the laws of nature will be 
in the current of events, and strong with 
their strength. One man is made of the 
j^amc stuff of which events are made ; is in 
sympathy with the course of things ; can 
redict it. Whatever befalls, befalls him 
rst : so that he is equal to whatever shall 
Happen. A man who knows men, can 
talk well on politics, trade, law, war, 
religion. For, everywhere, men are led 
in the same manners. 

The advantage of a strong pulse is not 
to be supplied by any labour, art, or con- 
cert. It is like the climate, which easily 
rears a crop, which no glass, or irrigation, 
or tillage, or manures, can elsewhere 
rival. It is like the opportunity of a city 
like New York, or Constantinople, which 


needs no diplomacy to force capital Of 
genius or labour to it. They come of 
themselves, as the waters flow to it. So 
a broad, healthy, massive understanding 
seems to lie on the shore of unseen rivers, 
of unseen oceans, which are covered with 
barks, that, night and day, are drifted to 
this point. That is poured into its lap, 
which other men lie plotting for. It is in 
everybody’s secret ; anticipates every- 
body’s discovery ; and if it do not com- 
mand every fact of the genius and the 
scholar, it is because it is large and 
sluggish, and does not think them worth 
the exertion which you do. 

This affirmative force is in one, and is 
not in another, as one horse has the spring 
in him, and another ia the whip. “On 
the neck of the young man,” said Hafiz, 
‘‘ sparkles no gem so gracious as enter- 
prise.” Import into any stationary dis- 
trict, as into an old Dutch population in 
New York or Pennsylvania, or among the 
planters of Virginia, a colony of hardy 
Yankees, with seething brains, heads full 
of steam-hammer, pulley, crank, and 
toothed wheel, and everything begins to 
shine with values. What enhancement to 
all the water and land in England, is the 
arrival of James Watt or iSrunel ! In 
every company there is not only the ac- 
tive and passive sex, but in both men and 
women a deeper and more important sex 
0/ mind, namely, the inventive or creative 
class of both men and women, and the 
uninventive or accepting class. Each 
plus man represents his set, and, if he 
have the accidental advantage of personal 
ascendency, which implies neither more 
nor less of talent, but merely the tem- 
peramental or taming eye of a soldier or 
a schoolmaster (which one has, and one 
has not, as one has a black moustache and 
one a blonde), then quite easily and with- 
out envy or resistance, all his coadjutors 
and feeders will admit his right to absorb 
them. The merchant works by book- 
keeper and cashier ; the lawyer’s authorn- 
ties are hunted up by clerks; the geologist 
reports the surveys of his subalterns; 
Commander Wilkes appropriates the re- 
sults of all the naturalists attached to the 
Expedition ; Thorwaldsen’s statue ia 
finished by stone-cutters ; Dumas has 
journeymen ; and Shakespeare was 
theatre-manager, and used the labour of 
many young men, aa well as the play- 
books. 

There is always room for a man of force, 
and he makes room for many, Society is 
a troop of thinkers, and the best heads 



POWER. SO? 


amdng them take the best places. A 
feeble man can see the farms that are 
fenced and tilled, the houses that are 
built. The strong man sees the possible 
houses and farms. His eye makes estates, 
as fast as the sun breeds clouds. 

When a new boy comes into school, 
when a man travels, and encounters 
strangers every day, or, when into an old 
club a new comer is domesticated, that 
happens which befalls, when a strange 
ox is driven into a pen or pasture where 
cattle are kept ; there is at once a trial of 
strength between the best pair of horns 
and the new comer, and it is settled 
thenceforth which is the leader. So now, 
there is a measuring of strength, very 
courteous, but decisive, and an acquies- 
cence thenceforward when these two 
meet. Each reads his fate in the other’s 
eye.s. The weaker party finds that none 
of his information or wit quite fits the 
occasion. He thought he knew this or 
that : he finds that he omitted to learn the 
end of it. Nothing that he knows will 
quite hit the mark, whilst all the rival’s 
arrows are good, and well thrown. But if 
he knew all the facts in the encyclopaedia, 
it would not liclp him : for this is an affair 
of presence of mind, of attitude, of 
aplomb ; the opponent has the sun and 
wind, and, in every cast, the choice of 
weapon and mark; and, when he himself 
is matched with some other antagonist, 
his own shafts (ly well and hit. ’Tis a 
question of stomach and constitution. 
T/ie second man is as good as the first, 
perhaps better ; but has not stoutness or 
stomach, as the first has, and so his wit 
seems over-fine or under-fine. 

Health is good, power, life, that resists 
disease, poison, and all enemies, and is 
conservative, as well as creative. Here 
is question, every spring, whether to graft 
with wax, or whether with clay ; whether 
to whitewash or to potash, or to prune : 
but the one point is the thrifty tree. A 
good tree, that agrees with the soil, will 
grow in spite of blight, or bug, or pruning, 
or neglect, by night and by day, in all 
weathers and all treatments. Vivacity, 
leadership, must be had, and we are not 
allowed to be nice in choosing. We must 
fetch the pump with dirty water, if clean 
cannot be had. If we will make bread, 
we must have contagion, yeast, emptyings, 
or what not, to induce fermentation into 
the dough : as the torpid artist seeks in- 
spiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, 
by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by 
wiae. And we have a cettain instinct, that 


where is great amount of life, though gross 
and peccant, it has its own checks and 
purifications, and will be found at last in 
harmony with moral laws. 

We watch in children with pathetic 
interest the degree in which they possess 
recuperative force. When they are hurt 
by us, or by each other, or go to the bottom 
of the class, or miss the annual prizes, or 
are beaten in the game— if they lose heart, 
and remember the mischance in their 
chamber at home, they have a serious 
check. But if they have the buoyancy and 
resistance that preoccupies them with new 
interest in the new moment— the wounds 
cicatrise, and the fibre is the tougher for 
the hurt. 

One comes to value this plus health, 
when he sees that all difficulties vanish 
before it. A timid man listening to tho 
alarmists in Congress, and in the news- 
papers, and observing the profligacy of 
party — sectional interests urged with a 
fury which shuts its eyes to consequences, 
with a mind made up to desperate extre- 
mities, ballot in orre hand, and rifle in the 
other — might easily believe that he and 
his country have seen their best days, and 
he hardens himself the best he can against 
the coming ruin. But, after this has been 
foretold with equal confidence fifty times, 
and Government six per cents, have not 
declined a quarter of a mill, ho discovers 
that the enormous elements of strength 
which are here in play make our politics 
unimportaut. Personal power, freedom, 
and the resources of nature strain every 
faculty of every citizen. We prosper with 
such vigour that, like thrifty trees, which 
grow in spite of ice, lice, mice, and borers, 
so we do not suffer from the profligate 
swarms that fatten on the national trea- 
sury. The huge animals nourish huge 
parasites, and the rancour of the disease 
attests the strength of the constitution. 
The same energy in the Greek Demos 
drew the remark, that the evils of popular 
government appear greater than they are ; 
there is compensation for them in tho 
spirit and energy it awakens. The rough- 
and-ready style which belongs to a people 
of sailors, foresters, farmers, and mecha- 
nics, has its advantages. Power educates 
the potentate. As long as our people 
quote English standards they dwarf their 
own proportions. A Western lawyer of 
eminence said to me he wished it were a 
penal offence to bring an English law-book 
into a court in this country, so pemicioua 
bad he found in his experience our defer- 
ence to English precedent The very 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


508 


word ** commerce ” has only an English 
meaning, and is pinched to the cramp 
exigencies of English experience. The 
commerce of rivers, the commerce of rail- 
roads, and who knows but the commerce 
of air-balloons, must add an American 
extension to the pond-hole of admiralty. 
As long as our people quote English 
standards, they will miss the sovereignty 
of power ; but let these rough riders — legis- 
lators in shirt-sleeves — Iloosier, Sucker, 
Wolverine, Badger — or whatever hard 
head Arkansas, Oregon, or Utah sends, 
half orator, half assassin, to represent its 
wrath and cupidity at Washington — let 
these drive as they may ; and the disposi- 
tion of territories and public lands, the 
necessity of balancing and keeping at bay 
the snarling majorities of German, Irish, 
and of native millions, will bestow prompt- 
ness, address, and reason, at last, on our 
buffalo -hunter, and authority and majesty 
of manners. The instinct of the people is 
right. Men expect from good whigs, put 
into office by the respectability of the 
country, much less skill to deal with 
Mexico, Spain, Britain, or with our own 
malcontent members, than from some 
strong transgressor like Jefferson, or 
Jackson, who first conquers his own 
government, and then uses the same 
genius to conquer the foreigner. The 
senators who dissented from Mr. Polk’s 
Mexican war were not those who knew 
better, but those who, from political posi- 
tion, could afford it; not Webster, but 
Benton and Calhoun. 

This power, to be sure, is not clothed in 
satin. 'Tis the power of Lynch law, of 
soldiers and pirates ,* and it bullies the 
peaceable and loyal. But it brings its own 
antidote ; and here is my point— -that all 
kinds of power usually emerge at the same 
time ; good energy, and bad ; power of 
mind, with physical health ; the ecstasies 
of devotion, with the exasperations of de- 
bauchery. The same elements are always 
present, only sometimes these conspicu- 
ous, and sometimes those; what was 
yesterday foreground, being to-day back- 
ground — what was surface, playing now a 
not less effective part as basis. The longer 
the drought lasts, the more is the atmo- 
sphere surcharged with water. The faster 
the ball falls to the sun, the force to fly off 
IS by so much augmented. And, in morals, 
wild liberty breeds iron conscience ; 
natures with great impulses have great 
resources, and return from far. In politics, 
the^ sons of democrats will be whigs; 
srbilst red republicanism, in the father, is 


a spasm of nature to engender an intoler* 
able tyrant in the next age. On the other 
hand, conservatism, ever more timorous 
and narrow, disgusts the children, and 
df''‘ves them for a mouthful of fresh air 
into radicalism. 

Those who have most of this coarse 
energy — the “ bruisers,” who have run the 
gauntlet, of caucus and tavern through the 
county or the state, have their own vices, 
but they have the good-nature of strength 
and courage. Fierce and unscrupulous, 
they are usually frank and direct, and 
above falsehood. Our politics fall into 
bad hands, and churchmen and men of 
refinement, it seems agreed, are not fit 
persons to send to Congress. Politics is 
a deleterious profession, like some poison- 
ous handicrafts. Men in power have no 
opinions, but may be had cheap for any 
opinion, for any purpose — and if it bo only 
a question between the most civil and the 
most forcible, I lean to the last. Thcrie 
Hoosiers and Suckers are really better 
than the snivelling opposition. Theil 
wrath is at least of a bold and manly cash 
They see, against the unanimous declara- 
tions of the people, how much crime the 
people will bear ; they proceed from step 
to step, and they have calculated but too 
justly upon their Excellencies the New 
England Governors, and upon their 
Honours the New England legislators. 
The messages of the Governors and the 
resolutions of the legislatures are a pro- 
verb for expressing a sham virtuous indig- 
nation, which, in the course of events, is 
sure to be belied. 

In trade, also, this energy usually car- 
ries a trace of ferocity. Philanthropic and 
religious bodies do not commonly make 
their executive officers out of saints. The 
communities hitherto founded by Social- 
ists— the Jesuits, the Port-Royalists, the 
American communities at New Harmony, 
at Brook Farm, at Zoar, are only possible, 
by installing Judas as steward. The rest 
of the offices may be filled by good bur- 
gesses, The pious and charitable proprie- 
tor has a foreman not quite so pious and 
charitable. The most amiable of country 
gentlemen has a certain pleasure in the 
teeth of the bulldog which guards his 
orchard. Of the Shaker society, it was 
formerly a sort of proverb in the country, 
that they always sent the devil to market. 
And in representations of the Deity, paint- 
ing, poetry, and popular religion have 
ever drawn the wrath from hell. It is an 
esoteric doctrine of society, that a little 
wickedness is good to make museb ; m M 



POWER, 


conscience were not good for hands and 
legs, as if poor decayed formalists of law 
and order cannot run like wild goats, 
wolves, and conies ; that, as there is a use 
in medicine for poisons, so the world can- 
not move without rogues; that public 
spirit and the ready hand are as well 
found among the malignants. ’Tis not 
very rare, the coincidence of sharp private 
and political practice, with public spirit, 
and good neighbourhood. I knew a burly 
Boniface who for many years kept a public- 
house in one of our rural capitals. He 
was a knave whom the town could ill 
spare. He was a social, vascular creature, 
grasping and selfish. There was no crime 
which he did not or could not commit. 
Rut he made good friends of the selectmen, 
served them with his best chop, when they 
supped at his house, and also with his 
honour the Judge, he was very cordial, 
grasping his hand. He introduced all the 
fiends, male and female, into the town, 
and united in his person the functions of 
bully, incendiary, swindler, bar-keeper, 
and burglar. He girdled the trees, and 
cut off the horses’ tails of the temperance 
people, in the night. Ho led the “ rum- 
mies ” and radicals in town-meeting with 
aspeech. Meantime, he was civil, fat, and 
easy, in his house, and precisely the most 
public-spirited citizen. He was active in 
getting the roads repaired and planted 
with shade-trees ; he subscribed for the 
fountains, the gas, and the telegraph ; he 
introduced the new horse-rake, the new 
Bcraper, the baby-jumper, and what not, 
that Connecticut sends to the admiring 
citizens. He did this the easier, that the 
pedlar stopped at his house, and paid his 
keeping, by setting up his new trap on the 
landlord’s premises. 

Whilst thus the energy for originating 
and executing work deforms itself by 
excess, and so our axe chops off our own 
fingers — this evil is not without remedy. 
All the elements whoso aid man calls in 
will sometimes become his masters, espe- 
cially those of most subtle force. Shall 
he, then, renoxmee steam, fire, and electri- 
city, or shall he learn to deal with them ? 
The rule for this whole class of agencies 
is— all plm is good ; only put it in the 
right place. 

Men of this surcharge of arterial blood 
cannot live on nuts, herb-tea, and elegies ; 
cannot read novels, and play whist ; cannot 
satisfy all their wants at the Thursday 
Lecture, or the Boston Athenaeum. They 



509 

Pawnee, than sit all day and every day at a 
counting-room desk. They are made for 
war, for the sea, for mining, hunting, and 
clearing; for hair-breadth adventures, 
huge risks, and the joy of eventful living. 
Some men cannot endure an hour of calm 
at sea. I remember a poor Malay cook, 
on board a Liverpool packet, who, when 
the wind blew a gale, could not contain 
his joy ; “ Blow I ” he cried, “ me do tell 
you, blow ! ” Their friends and governers 
must see that some vent for their explosive 
complexion is provided. The roisters who 
are destined for infamy at home, if sent to 
Mexico, will “cover you with glory,” and 
come back heroes and generals. There 
are Oregons, Californias, and Exploring 
Expeditions enough appertaining to Ame- 
rica, to find them in files to gnaw, and in 
crocodiles to eat. The young English are 
fine animals, full of blood, and when they 
have no wars to breathe their riotous 
valours in, they seek for travels as dan- 
gerous as war, diving into Maelstroms; 
swimming Hellesponts ; wading up the 
snowy Himmaleh ; hunting lion, rhinocer- 
ous, elephant, in South Africa ; gypsying 
with Borrow in Spain and Algiers ; riding 
alligitors in South America wiUi Waterton ; 
utilising Bedouin, Sheik, and Pacha, with 
Layard ; yachting among the icebergs of 
Lancaster Sound ; peeping into craters on 
the equator; or running on the creases of 
Malays in Borneo. 

The excess of virility has the same im- 
portance in general history, as in private 
and industrial life. Strong race or strong 
individual rests at last on natural forces, 
which are best in the savage, who, like the 
beasts around him, is still in reception of 
the milk from the teats of Nature. Cut off 
the connection between any of our works, 
and this aboriginal source, and the work 
is shallow. The people lean on this, and 
the mob is not quite so bad an argument 
as we sometimes say, for it has this good 
side. “ March without the people,” said 
a French deputy from the tribune, “ and 
you march into night : their instincts are 
a finger-pointing of providence, always 
turned toward real benefit. But when you 
espouse an Orleans party, or a Bourbon, 
or a Montalembert party, or any other but 
an organic party, though you mean well, 
you have a personality instead of a prin- 
ciple, which will inevitably drag you into 
a comer.” 

The best anecdotes of this force are to 
be had from savage life, in explorers, 
soldiers, and buccaneers. But who cares 
for fallings-out of assassins, and fights oi 



COMDVCT OP LIPB. 


bears, oi grindings of icebergs ? Physical 
force has no value, where there is nothing 
else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in vol- 
canoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury 
of ice is in tropical countries, and mid- 
summer days. The luxury of fire is, to 
have a little on our hearth : and of elec- 
tricity, not volleys of the charged cloud, 
but the manageable stream on the battery- 
wires. So of spirit, or energy ; the rests 
or remains of it in the civil and moral man 
are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific. 

In history, the great moment is, when 
the savage is just ceasing to be a savage, 
with all his hairy Pelasgic strength di- 
rected on his opening sense of beauty : 
and you have Pericles and Phidias — not 
yet passed over into the Corinthian 
civility. Everything good in nature and 
the world is in that moment of transition, 
when the swarthy juices still flow plenti- 
fully from nature, but their astringency or 
acridity is got out by ethics and humanity. 

The triumphs of peace have been in 
some proximity to war. Whilst the hand 
was still familiar with the sword-hilt, 
whilst the habits of the camp were still 
visible in the port and complexion of the 
gentleman, his intellectual power culmi- 
nated ; the compression and tension of 
these stern conditions is a training for the 
finest and softest arts, and can rarely be 
compensated in tranquil times, except by 
some analagous vigour drawn from occu- 
pations as hardy as war. 

We say that success is constitutional; 
depends on a plus condition of mind and 
body, on power of work, on courage ; that 
it is of main efficacy in carrying on the 
world, and, though rarely found in the 
right state for an article of commerce, 
but oftener in the supersaturate or excess, 
which makes it dangerous and destructive, 
yet it cannot be spared, and must be had 
in that form, and absorbents provided to 
take off its edge. 

The affirmative class monopolize the 
homage of mankind. They originate and 
execute all the great feats. What a force 
was coiled up in the skull of Napoleon ! 
Of the sixty thousand men making his 
army at Eylau, it seems some thirty thou- 
sand were thieves and burglars. The 
men whom, in peaceful communities, we 
hold if we can, with iron at their legs, in 
prisons, under the muskets of sentinels, 
this man dealt with, hand to hand, dragged 
them to their duty, and won his victories 
by their bayonets. 

This aboriginal might gives a surprising 
pl^Bure when it appears under conditions 


of supreme refinement, as In the proflclentl 
in high art. When Michel Angelo was 
forced to paint the Sistine Chapel in 
fresco, of which art he knew nothing, he 
went down into the Pope’s gardens behind 
the Vatican, and with a shovel dug out 
ochres, red and yellow, mixed them with 
glue and water with his own hands, and 
having, after many trials, at last suited 
himself, climbed his ladders, and painted 
away, week after week, month after month, 
the sibyls and prophets. He surpassed 
his successors in rough vigour, as much 
as in purity of intellect and refinement. 
He was not crushed by his one picture 
left unfinished at last. Michel was wont 
to draw his figures first in skeleton, then 
to clothe them with flesh, and lastly to 
drape them. “ Ah ! ” said a brave painter 
to me, thinking on these things, " if a 
man has failed, you will find he has 
dreamed instead of working. There is no 
way to success in our art, but to take off 
your coat, grind paint, and work like a 
digger on the railroad, all day and every 
day.” 

Success goes thus invariably with a 
certain plus or positive power : an ounce 
of power must balance an ounce of weight. 
And, though a man cannot return into his 
mother’s womb, and be born with new 
amounts of vivacity, yet there are two 
economies, which are the best succ^^aiiea 
which the case admits. The first is, the 
stopping off decisively our miscellaneous 
activity, and concentrating our force on 
one or a few points ; as the gardener, by 
severe pruning, forces the sap of the treo 
into one or two vigoiirous limbs, instead 
of suffering it to spindle into a sheaf of 
twigs. 

" Enlarge not thy destiny," said the 
oracle: “endeavour not to do more than 
is given thee in charge.” The one pru- 
dence in life is concentration ; the one 
evil is dissipation : and it makes no differ- 
ence whether our dissipations are coarse 
or fine ; property and its cares, friends, 
and a social habit, or politics, or music, of 
feasting. Everything is good which takes 
away one plaything and delusion more, 
and drives us home to add one stroke of 
faithful work. Friends, books, pictures, 
lower duties, talents, flatteries, hopes— all 
are distr- ctions which cause oscillations 
in our giddy balloon, and make a good 
poise and a straight course impossible. 
You must elect your work ; you shall take 
what your brain can, and drop all the rest, 
Only so, can that amount of vital force 
accumulate, which can make step from 



POWER. 


knowing to doing. No matter how much 
faculty of idle seeing a man has, the step 
from knowing to doing is rarely taken. 
*Tis a step out of a chalk circle of imbe- 
cility into fruitfulness. Many an artist 
lacking this, lacks all : he sees the mascu- 
line Angelo or Cellini with despair. He, 
too, is up to Nature and the First Cause 
in his tnought. But the spasm to collect 
and swing his whole being into one act, he 
has not The poet Campbell said, that “ a 
man accustomed to work was equal to 
any achievement he resolved on, and, that, 
for himself, necessity, not inspiration, 
was the prompter of his muse.” 

Concentration is the secret of strength 
in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all 
management of human affairs. One of 
the high anecdotes of the world is the 
reply of Newton to the enquiry, ” how he 
had been able to achieve his discoveries ?” 
” By always intending my mind.” Or if 
you will have a text from politics, take 
this from Plutarch : “ There was, in the 
whole city, but one street in which Peri- 
cles was ever seen, the street which led 
to the market-place and the council house. 
He declined all invitations to banquets, 
and all gay assemblies and company. 
During the whole period of his adminis- 
tration, he never dined at the table of a 
friend.” Or if we seek an example from 
trade, ” I hope,” said a good man to Roths- 
child, ” your children are not too fond of 
money and business : I am sure you would 
not wish that.” ” I am sure I should 
wish that : I wish them to give mind, soul, 
heart, and body to business — that is the 
way to be happy. It requires a great deal 
of boldness and a great deal of caution to 
make a great fortune, and when you have 
got it, it requires ten times as much wit 
to keep it. If I were to listen to all the 
projects proposed to me, I should ruin 
snysclf very soon. Stick to one business, 
young man. Stick to your brewery (he 
said this to young Buxton), and you will 
be the great brewer of London. Be 
brewer, and banker, and merchant, and 
manufacturer, and you will soon be in the 
Gazette.” 

Many men are knowing, many are ap- 
prehensive and tenacious, but they do not 
rush to a decision. But in our flowing 
affairs a decision must be made — the best, 
if you can ; but any is better than none. 
There are twenty ways of going to a point, 
and one is the shortest ; but set out at 
once on one. A man who has that presence 
of mind which can bring to him on the 
instant all be knows, is worth for action a 


5H 

dozen men who know as much, but can 
only bring it to light slowly. The good 
Speaker in the House is not the man who 
knows the theory of parliamentary tactics, 
but the man who decides off-hand. The 
good judge is not he who does hair-split- 
ting justice to every allegation, but who, 
aiming at substantial justice, rules some- 
thing intelligible for the guidance of 
suitors. The good lawyer is not the man 
who has an eye to every side and angle of 
contingency, and qualifies all his qualifi- 
cations, but who throws himself on your 
part so heartily, that he can got you out 
of a scrape. Dr. Johnson said, in one of 
his flowing sentences : ” Miserable beyond 
all names of wretchedness is that unhappy 
pair, who are doomed to reduce before- 
hand to the principles of abstract reason 
all the details of each domestic da/^ 
There are cases where little can be saja, 
and much must be done.” 

The second substitute for temperament 
is drill, the power of use and routine. The 
hack is a better roadster than the Arab 
barb. In chemistry, the galvanic stream, 
slow, but continuous, is equal in power to 
the electric spark, and is, in our arts, a 
better agent. So in human action, against 
the spasm of energy, we offset the conti- 
nuity of drill. We spread the same 
amount of force over much time, instead 
of condensing it into a moment. ’Tis the 
same ounce of gold here in a ball, and 
there in a leaf. At West Point, Colonel 
Buford, the chief engineer, pounded with a 
hammer on the trunnions of a cannon, un- 
til he broke them off. He fired a piece of 
ordnance some hundred times in swift suc- 
I cession, until it burst. Now which stroke 
broke the trunnion ? Every stroke. Which 
blast burst the piece ? Every blast. “DtZt- 
gtnoe stnz," Henry VIII. was wont 
to say,; or, great is drill. John Kemble 
said, that the worst provincial company 
of actors would go through a play better 
than the best amateur company. Basil 
Hall likes to show that the worst regular 
troops will beat the best volunteers. 
Practice is nine tenths. A course of mobs 
is good practice for orators. All the great 
speakers were bad speakers at first. 
Stumping it through England for seven 
years made Cobden a consummate de- 
bater, Stumping it through New England 
for twice seven trained Wendell Phillips, 
The way to learn German, is, to read the 
same dozen pages over and over a hundred 
times, till you know every word and par- 
ticle in them and can pronounce and 
repeat them by heart No genius can 



5*2 CONDUCT 

recite a ballad at first reading, so well as 
mediocrity can at the fifteenth or twen- 
tieth reading. The rule for hospitality 
and Irish “ help,” is, to have the same 
dinner every day throughout the year. 
At last, Mrs. O’Shaughiiessy learns to cook 
it to a nicety, the host learns to carve it, 
and the guests are well served. A humour- 
ous friend of mine thinks, that the reason 
why Nature is so perfect in her art, and 
gets up such inconceivably fine sunsets, 
is, that she has learned how, at last, by 
dint of doing the same thing so very often. 
Cannot one converse better on a topic on 
which he has experience, than on one 
which is new ? Men whose opinion is 
valued on ’Change, are onlv such as have i 
a special experience, and off that ground ' 
their opinion is not valuable. ‘‘ More 
are made good by exercitation than by 
nature,” said Democritus. The friction 
in nature is so enormous that we cannot 
*pare any power. It is not question to 
express our thought, to elect our way, but 
to overcome resistances of the medium 
and material in everything we do. Hence 
the use of drill, and the worthlessness of 
amateurs to cope with practitioners. Six 
hours every day at the piano, only to give j 
facility of touch ; six hours a day at paint- j 
ing, only to give command of the odious i 
materials, oil, ochres, and brushes. The 
masters say that they know a master in 
music, only by seeing the pose of the 
hands on the key ; so difficult and vital 
an act is the command of the instrument. 
To have learned tlie use of the tools, by 
thousands of manipulations ; to have | 
learned the arts of reckoning, by endless 
adding and dividing, is the power of the 
mechanic and the clerk. 

I remarked in England, in confirma- 
tion of a frequent experience at home, 
that, in literary circles, the men of trust 
and consideration, bookmakers, editors, i 
university deans and professors, bishops, i 
too, were by no means men of the largest j 
literary talent, but usually of a low and j 
ordinary intellectuality, with a sort of mer- j 
cantile activity and working talent. In- j 
different hacks and mediocrities tower, by 
pushing their forces to a lucrative point, 
or by working power, over multitudes of 
superior men, in Old as in New England. | 

I have not forgotten that there are ; 
sublime considerations which limit the I 
value of talent and superficial success. | 
We can easily overpraise the vulgar hero. | 
There are sources on which we have not j 
drawn. I know what I abstain from. 1 1 
vdiourn what I have to say on this topic ' 


OF LIFE. 

to the chapters on Culture and Worship. 
But this force or spirit, being the means 
relied on by Nature for bringing the work 
of the day about — as far as we attach im- 
portance to household life, and the prizes 
of the world, we must respect that. And 
I hold, that an economy may be applied to 
it; it is as much a subject of exact law 
and arithmetic as fluids and gases are ; it 
may be husbanded, or wasted ; every man 
is efficient only as he is a container or 
vessel of this force, and never was any 
signal act or achievement in history, but 
by this expenditure. This is not gold, but 
the gold-maker; not the fame, but the 
exploit. 

If these forces and this husbandry are 
within reach of our will, and the laws of 
them can be read, we infer that all suc- 
cess, and all conceivable benefit for man, 
is also, first or last, within his reach, 
and has its own sublime economies by 
which it may be attained. The world 
is mathematical, and has no casualty, in 
all its vast and flowing curve. Success 
has no more eccentricity, than the gingham 
and muslin we weave in our mills. I know 
no more affecting lesson to our busy, 
plotting New England brains, than to go 
into one of the factories with which we 
have lined all the water-courses in the 
States. A man hardly knows how much 
he is a machine until he begins to make 
telegraph, loom, press, and locomotive, in 
his own image. But in these, he is forced 
to leave out his follies and hindrances, so 
that when we go to tlie mill, the machine 
is more moral than we. Let a man dare 
go to a loom, and see if he be equal to it. 
Let machine confront machine, and see 
how they come out. The world-mill ia 
more complex than the calico-mill, and 
the architect stooped less. In the ging- 
ham mill, a broken thread or a shred 
spoils the web through the piece of a 
hundred yards, and is traced back to the 
girl that wove it, and lessens her wages. 
The stockholder, on being shown this, 
rubs his hands with delight. Are you so 
cunning, Mr. Profitloss, and do you expect 
to swindle your master and employer, in 
the web you weave ? A day is a more 
magnificent cloth than any muslin, the 
mechanism that makes it is infinitely 
cunninger, and you shall not conceal the 
sleezy, fraudulent, rotten hours you have 
slipped into the piece, nor fear that any 
honest thread, or straighter steel, or more 
inflexible shaft, will not testify in the 
web. 



wealth. 


513 


WEALTH. 


Who shall tCil what did befalli 
Far away in time, when once, 

Over the lifeless ball, 

Hung idle stars and suns? 

What god the element obeyed 7 
Wings of what wind the lichen borai 
Waiting the puny seeds of power, 

Which, lodged in rock, the rock abrade? 

And well the primal pioneer 
Knew the strong task to it assigned 
Patient through Heaven’s enormous year 
To build in matter home for mind. 

From air the creeping centuries drew 
The matted thicket low and wide, 

This must the leaves of ages strew 
The granite slab to clothe and hide, 

Kre wheat can wave its golden pride. 

What smiths, and in what furnace, rolled 
(In dizzy aeons dim and mute 
The reeling brain can ill compute) 

Copper and iron, lead, and gold ? 

What oldest star the fame can save 
Of races perishing to pave 
The planet with a floor of lime ? 

Dust is their pyramid and mole; 

Who saw what ferns and palms wore pressed 
Under the tumbling mountain’s breast. 

In the safe herbal of the coal ? 

But when the quarried means were piled. 

All is waste and worthless, till 
Arrives the wise selecting will, 

A ad, out of slime and chaos, Wit 
Draws the threads of lair and tit. 

Then temples rose, and towns, and marts, 
The shop of toil, the hall of arts ; 

Then flew the sail across the seas 
To feed the North from tropic trees ; 

The storm-wind wove, the torrent span, 
Where they were bid the rivers ran ; 

New slaves fulfilled the poet’s dream, 
Galvanic wire, strong-shouldered steam. 
Then docks were built, and crops were stored, 
And ingots added to the hoard. 

But, though light-headed man forget, 
Remembering Matter pays her debt: 

Still, through her motes and masses, draw 
Electric thrills and ties of Law, 

Which bind the strengths of Nature wild 
To the conscience of a child. 


As soon as a stranger is introduced into 
any company, one of the first questions 
which all wish to have answered, is, How 
does that man get his living? And with 
reason. He is no whole man until he 
knows how to earn a blameless livelihood. 
Society is barbarous, until every indus- 
trious man can get his living without 
dishonest customs. 

Every man is a consumer, and ought to 
be a producer. He fails to make his place 

g ood in the world, unless he not only pays 
is debt, but also adds something to the j 


common wealth. Nor can he do justica 
to his genius, without making some larger 
demand on the world than a bare subsis- 
tence. He is by constitution expensive, 
and needs to be rich. 

Wealth has its source in applications of 
the mind to nature, from the rudest strokes 
of spade and axe, up to the last secrets of 
art. Intimate ties subsist between thought 
and all production ; because a better order 
is equivalent to vast amounts of brute 
labour. The forces and the resistances 
are Nature’s, but the mind acts in bringing 
things from where they abound to where 
they are wanted ; in wise combining ; in 
directing the practice of the useful arts, 
and in the creation of finer values, by fine 
art, by eloquence, by song or the repro- 
ductions of memory. Wealth is in appli- 
cations of mind to nature ; and the art cA 
getting rich consists not in industry, much 
less in saving, but in a better order, in 
timeliness, in being at the right spot. One 
man has stronger arms, or longer legs ; 
another sees by the course of streams, and 
growth of markets, where land will be 
wanted, makes a clearing to the river, goes 
to sleep, and wakes up rich. Steam is no 
stronger now, than it was a hundred years 
ago ; but is put to better use. A clever 
fellow was acquainted with the expansive 
force of steam ; he also saw the wealth of 
wheat and grass rotting in Michigan, Then 
he cunningly screws on the steam-pipe to 
the wheat- crop. Puff now, O Steam 1 The 
steam puffs and expands as before, but 
this time it is dragging all Michigan at its 
back to hungry New York and hungry 
England. Coal lay in ledges under the 
ground since the Flood, until a labourer 
with pick and windlass brings it to the 
surface. We may well call it black dia- 
monds. Every basket is power and civili- 
zation. For coal is a portable climate. It 
carries tlie heat of the tropics to Labrador 
and the polar circle ; and it is the means 
of transporting itself whithersoever it is 
wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered 
in the ear of mankind their secret, that 
a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a 
mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by 
boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, 
and with its comfort brings its industrial 
power. 

When the farmer’s peaches are taken 
from under the tree, and carried into town* 



eONDUCT QP UPS. 


SH 

they have a new look, and a hundred-fold 
value over the fruit which grew on the 
same bough, and lies fulsomely on the 
ground. The craft of the merchant is this 
bringing a thing from where it abounds, 
to where it is costly. 

Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps 
the rain and wind out; in a good pump 
that yields you plenty of sweet water ; in 
two suits of clothes, so to change your 
dress when you are wet ; in dry sticks to 
burn; in a good double-wick lamp; and 
three meals ; in a horse, or a locomotive, 
to cross the land ; in a boat to cross the 
sea; in tools to work with; in books to 
read ; and so, in giving, on all sides, by 
tolls and auxiliaries, the greatest possible 
extension to our powers, as if it added 
feet, and hands, and eyes, and blood, 
length to the day, and knowledge, and 
good-will. 

Wealth begins with these articles of ne- 
cessity. And here we must recite the 
iron law which Nature thunders in these 
northern climates. First, she requires 
that each man should feed himself. If. 
happily, his fathers have left him no in- 
heritance, he must go to work, and by 
making his wants less, or his gains more, 
he must draw himself out of that state of 
pain and insult in which she forces the 
beggar to lie. She gives him no rest until 
this is done ; she starves, taunts, and tor- 
ments him, takes away warmth, laughter, j 
sleep, friends, and daylight, until he has 
fought his way to his own loaf. Then, less 
peremptorily, but still with sting enough, j 
she urges him to the acquisition of such 
things as belong to him. Every warehouse 
and shop-window, every fruit-tree, every 
thought of eve^ hour, opens a new want 
to him, which it concerns his power and 
dignity to gratify. It is of no use to argue 
the wants down ; the philosophers have 
laid the greatness of man in making his 
wants few; but will a man content him- 
self with a hut and a handful of dried 
pease ? He is born to be rich. He is 
thoroughly related ; and is tempted out by 
his appetites and fancies to the conquest 
of this and that piece of nature, until he 
finds his well-being in the use of his 
planet, and of more planets than his own. 
Wealth requires, besides the crust of bread 
and the roof— the freedom of the’ city, the 
freedom of the earth, travelling, machin- 
ery, the benefits of science, music, and 
fine arts, the best culture, and the best 
company. He is the rich man who can 
avail himself of all men’s faculties. Ha 
il tbe richest man who knows how tr> 


draw a benefit the laboufS 6f t&a 
greatest number of men, of men in distant 
countries, and in past times. The same 
correspondence that is between thirst in 
tlio stomach, and water in the spring, 
exists between the whole of man and the 
whole of nature. The elements offer 
their service to him. The sea, washing 
the equator and the poles, offers its peril- 
ous aid, and the power and empire that 
follow it — day by day to his craft and 
audacity. “ Beware of me.” it says, *' but 
if you can hold me, I am the key to all 
the lands.” Fire offers, on its side, an 
equal power. Fire, steam, lightning, 
gravity, ledges of rock, mines of iron, lead, 
quicksilver, tin, and gold ; forests of all 
woods ; fruits of all climates ; animals of 
all habits ; the powers of tillage ; the 
fabrics of his chcmic laboratory ; the webs 
of his loom ; the masculine draught of his 
locomotive ; the talismans of the machine- 
shop ; all grand and subtle things, 
minerals, gases, ethers, passions, war, 
trade, government, are his natural play- 
mates. and. according to the excellence of 
the machinery in each human being, is 
his attraction for the instruments he is to 
employ. The world is his tool-chest, and 
he is successful, or his education Is carried 
on just so far, as is the marriage of his 
faculties with nature, or, the degree in 
which he takes up things into himself. 

The strong race is strong on these 
terms. The Saxons are the merchants of 
the world; now, for a thousand years, the 
leading race, and by nothing more than 
their quality of personal independence, 
and, in its special modification, pecuni- 
ary independence. No reliance for bread 
and games on the government, no clan- 
ship, no patriarchal style of living by the 
revenues of a chief, no marrying-on — no 
system of clientship suits them ; but every 
man must pay his scot. The English are 
prosperous and peaceful, with their habit 
of considering that every man must take 
care of himself, and has liimself to thank, 
if he do not maintain and improve hia 
position in society. 

The subject of economy mixes itself 
with morals, inasmuch as it is a peremp- 
tory point of virtue that a man's indepen- 
dence is secured, Poverty demoralizes. 
A man in debt is so far a slave ; and Wall 
Street thinks it easy fora millionaire to be 
a man of his word, a man of honour, but, 
that, in failing circumstances, no man can 
be relied on to keep his integrity. And 
when one observes in the hotels and 
palaces of our Atlantic capitals the habit 



WEALTH, 51 


of expense, the riot of the senses, the 
absence of bonds, clanship, fellow-feeling 
of any kind, he feels, that, when a man or 
woman is driven to the wall, the chances 
of integrity are frightfully diminished, as 
if virtue were coming to be a luxury which 
few could afford, or, as Burke said, “ at a 
market almost too high for humanity.” 
He may fix his inventory of necessities 
andjof enj oy ments on what scale he pleases, 
but if he wishes the power and privilege 
of thought, the chalking out his own 
career, and having society on his own 
terms, he must bring his wants within his 
proper power to satisfy. 

The manly part is to do with might and 
main what you can do. The world is full 
of fops who never did anything, and who 
have persuaded beauties and men of 
genius to wear their fop livery, and these 
will deliver the fop opinion, that it is not 
respectable to |be seen earning a livingl; 
that it is much more respectable to spend 
without earning ; and this doctrine of the 
snake will come also from the elect sons 
of light ; for wise men are not wise at all 
hours, and will speak five times from 
their taste or their humour, to once from 
their reason. The brave workman, who 
might betray his feeling of it in his 
manners, if he do not succumb in his 
practice, must replace the grace or 
elegance forfeited, by the merit of the 
w'ork done. No matter whether he make 
shoes, or statues, or laws. It is the privi- 
lege of any human work which is well 
done to invest the doer with a certain 
haughtiness. He can well afford not to 
conciliate, whose faithful work will answer 
for him. The mechanic at his bench 
carries a quiet heart and assured manners, 
and deals on even terms with men of any 
condition. The artist has made his pic- 
ture so true, that it disconcerts criticism. 
The statue is so beautiful that it contracts 
no stain from the market, but makes the 
market a silent galiery for itself. The 
case of the young lawyer was pitiful to 
disgust — a paltry matter of buttons or 
tweezer-cases ; but the determined youth 
saw in it an aperture to insert his danger- 
ous wedges, made the insignificance of the 
thing forgotten, and gave fame by his 
sense and energy to the name and affairs 
of the Tittleton snuff-box factory. 

Society in large towns is babyish, and 
wealth is made a toy. The life of pleasure 
Is so ostentatious, that a shallow observer 
must believe that this is the agreed best 
use of wealth, and, whatever is pretended, 
It ends in cosseting. But, if this were the 


main use of surplus capital, It would bring 
us to barrica 3es, burned towns, and toma- 
hawks, presently. Men of sense esteem 
wealth to be the assimilation of nature to 
themselves, the converting of the sap and 
juices of the planet to the incarnation and 
nutriment of their design. Power is what 
they want — not candy — power to execute 
their design, power to give legs and feet, 
form and actuality, to their thought, 
which, to a clear-sighted man, appears the 
end for which the Universe exists, and 
all its resources might be well applied. 
Columbus thinks that the sphere is a pro- 
blem for practical navigation, as well as 
for closet geometry, and looks on all kings 
and peoples as cowardly landsmen, until 
they dare fit him out. Few men on the 
planet have more truly belonged to it. 
But he was forced to leave much of his 
map blank. His successors inherited his 
map, and inherited his fury to complete it. 

So the men of the mine, telegraph, mill, 
map, and survey — the monomaniacs, who 
talk up their project in marts, and offices, 
and entreat men to subscribe : how did 
our factories get built ? how did North 
America get netted with iron rails, except 
by the importunity of these orators, who 
dragged all the prudent men in ? Is party 
the madness of many for the gain of a 
few ? This speculative genius is the mad- 
ness of few for the gain of the world. The 
projectors are sacrificed, but the public is 
the gainer. Each of these idealists, 
working after his thought, would make it 
tyrannical, if he could. He is met and 
antagonized by other speculators, as hot 
as he. The equilibrium is preserved by 
these counteractions, as one tree keeps 
down another in the forest, that it may not 
absorb all the sap in the ground. And the 
supply in nature of railroad presidents, 
copper-miners, grand-junctioners, smoke- 
burners, fire-annihilators, &c., is limited 
by the same law which keeps the propor- 
tion in the supply of carbon, of alum, and 
of hydrogen. 

To be rich is to have a ticket of admis- 
sion to the masterworks and chief men of 
each race. It is to have the sea, by voyag- 
ing ; to visit the mountains, Niagara, the 
Nile, the desert, Rome, Paris, Constanti- 
nople ; to see galleries, libraries, arsenals, 
manufactories. The reader of Hum- 
boldt’s *' Cosmos ” follows the marches of 
a man whose eyes, ears, and mind are 
armed by all the science, arts, and imple- 
ments which mankind have anywhere 
accumulated, and who is using these to 
^dd to $tock. So if it with Denon* 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


516 

Beckford, Belzoni, Wilkinson, Layard, | 
Kane, Lepsius, and Livingston. " The 
rich man,” says Saadi, ” is everywhere 
expected and at home.” The rich take 
up something more of the world into 
man’s life. They include the country as 
well as the town, the ocean-side, the White 
Hills, the Far West, and the old European 
homesteads of man, in their notion of 
available material. The world is his who 
has money to go over it. He arrives at 
the sea-shore, and a sumptuous ship has 
floored and carpeted for him the stormy 
Atlantic, and made it a luxurious hotel, 
amid the horrors of tempests. The Per- 
sians say, ” 'T is the same to him who 
wears a shoe, as if the whole earth were 
covered with leather.” 

Kings are said to have long arms, but 
every man should have long arms, and 
should pluck his living, his instruments, 
his power, and his knowing, from the sun, 
moon, and stars. Is not then the demand 
to be rich legitimate ? Yet, I have never 
seen a rich man. I have never seen a 
man as rich as all men ought to be, or, 
with an adequate command of nature. 
The pulpit and the press have many 
commonplaces denouncing the thirst for 
wealth ; but if men should take these j 
moralists at their word, and leave off 
aiming to be rich, the moralists would i 
rush to rekindle at all hazards this love 1 
of power in the people, lest civilization 
should be undone. Men are urged by 
their ideas to acquire the command over 
nature. Ages derive a culture from the 
wealth of Roman Csesars, Leo Tenths, 
magnificent Kings of France, Grand Dukes 
of Tuscany, Dukes of Devonshire, Town- 
leys, Vernons, and Peels, in England ; or 
whatever great proprietors. It is the in- 
terest of all men, that there should be 
Vaticans and Louvres full of noble works 
of art , British museums, and French 
Gardens of Plants, Philadelphia Academies 
of Natural History, Bodleian, Ambrosian, 
Royal, Congressional Libraries. It is the 
interest of all that there should be Ex- 
ploring Expeditions ; Captain Cooks to 
voyage round the world, Rosses, Franklins, 
Richardsons, and Kanes, to find the 
magnetic and the geographic poles. We 
are all richer for the measurement of a 
degree of latitude on the earth’s surface. 
Our navigation is safer for the chart. 
How intimately our knowledge of the 
system of the Universe rests on that !— and 
a true economy in a state or an individual 
will forget its frugality in behalf of claims 
like the^. 


Whilst it is each man's Mterest, that« 
not only ease and convenience of living, 
but also wealth or surplus product should 
exist somewhere, it need not be in his 
hands. Often it is very undesirable to 
him. Goethe said well, ** Nobody should 
be rich but those who understand it” 
Some men are born to own, and can ani- 
mate all their possessions. Others can- 
not : their owning is not graceful ; seems 
to be a compromise of their character; 
they seem to steal their own dividends. 
They should own who can administer ; not 
they who hoard and conceal ; not they 
who, the greater proprietors they are, are 
only the greater beggars, but they whose 
work carves out work for more, opens a 
path for all. For he is the rich man in 
whom the people are rich, and he is the 
poor man in whom the people are poor ; 
and how to give all access to the master- 
pieces of art and nature, is the problem of 
civilization. The socialism of our day has 
done good service in setting men on think- 
ing how certain civilizing benefits, now 
only enjoyed by the opulent, can be en- 
joyed by all. For example, the providing 
to each man the means and apparatus of 
science, and of the arts. There are many 
articles good for occasional use, which 
few men are able to own. Every man 
wishes to see the ring of Saturn, the satel- 
lites and belts of Jupiter and Mars ; tho 
mountains and craters in the moon : yet 
how few can buy a telescope ! and of 
those, scarcely one would like the trouble 
of keeping it in order, and exhibiting it. 
So of electrical and chemical apparatus, 
and many the like things. Every man 
may have occasion to consult books which 
he does not care to possess, such ascyclo- 
p£?dias, dictionaries, tables, charts, maps, 
and public documents ; pictures also of 
birds, beasts, fishes, shells, trees, flowers, 
whose names he desires to know. 

There is a refining influence from the 
arts of Design on a prepared mind, which 
is as positive as that of music, and not to 
be supplied from any other source. But 
pictures, engravings, statues, and casts, 
beside their first cost, entail expenses, as 
of galleries and keepers for the exhibition ; 
and the use which any man can make of 
them is rare, and their value, too, is much 
enhanced by the numbers of men who ccji 
share their enjoyment. In the Greek 
cities, it was reckoned profane, that any 
person should pretend a property in a 
work of art, which belonged to all w'ho 
could behold it. I think sometiirpf^ 
could 1 9Qly have music on my own tenps^— 



WEALTH. 


517 


could I IIto in a great cit^« and know 
where I could go whenever I wished the 
ablution and inundation of musical waves 
— that were a bath and a medicine. 

If properties of this kind were owned 
by states, towns, and lyceums, they would 
draw the bonds of neighbourhood closer. 
A town would exist to an intellectual pur- 
pose. In Europe, where the feudal forms 
secure the permanence of wealth in cer- 
tain families, those families buy and pre- 
serve these things, and lay them open to 
the public. But in America, where demo- 
cratic institutions divide every estate into 
small portions, after a few years, the pub- 
lic should step into the place of these 
proprietors, and provide this culture and 
inspiration for the citizen. 

Man was born to be 'rich, or, inevitably 
grows rich by the use of his faculties : by 
the union of thought with nature. Property 
is an intellectual production. The game 
requires coolness, right reasoning, prompt- 
ness, and patience in the players. Culti- 
vated labour drives out brute labour. An 
infinite number of shrewd men, in infinite 
years, have arrived at certain best and 
shortest ways of doing, and this accumu- 
lated skill in arts, cultures, harvestings, 
curings, manufactures, navigations, ex- 
changes, constitutes the worth of our world 
to-day. 

Commerce is a game of skill, which 
every man cannot play, which few 
men can play well. The right merchant 
Is one who has the just average of facul- 
ties we call common sense ; a man of a 
strong affinity for facts, who makes up 
his decision on what he has seen. He is 
thoroughly persuaded of the truths of 
arithmetic. There is always a reason, in 
the man, for his good or bad fortune, and 
10, in making money. Men talk as if 
there were some magic about this, and 
believe in magic, in all parts of life. He 
knows, that all goes on the old road, 
pound for pound, cent for cent — for every 
effect a perfect cause — and that good luck 
is another name for tenacity of purpose. 
He insures himself in every transaction, 
and likes small and sure gains. Probity 
and closeness to the facts are the basis, 
but the masters of the art add a certain 
long arithmetic. The problem is, to com- 
bine many and remote operations, with 
the accuracy and adherence to the facts, 
which is easy in near and small transac- 
tions ; so to arrive at gigantic results, 
without any compromise of safety. Napo- 
leon was fond of telling the story of the 
Marseilles banker, who said to his visitor. 


surprised at the contrast between tha 
splendour of the banker’s chateau and 
hospitality, and the meanness of the 
counting-room in which he had seen him : 
“ Young man, you are too young to under- 
stand how masses are formed — the true 
and only power— wl.ether composed of 
money, water, or men, it is all alike— a 
mass is an immense centre of motion, 
but it must be begun, it must be kept 
up and he might have added, that the 
way in which it must be begun and kept 
up, is, by obedience to the law of par- 
ticles. 

Success consists in close appliance to 
the laws of the world, and, since those 
laws are intellectual and moral, an intel- 
lectual and moral obedience. Political 
Economy is as good a book wherein to 
read the life of man, and the ascendency 
of laws over all private and hostile influ- 
ences, as any Bible which has come down 
to us. 

Money is representative, and follows 
the nature and fortunes of the owner. 
The coin is a delicate metre of civil, social, 
and moral changes. The farmer is covet- 
ous of his dollar, and with reason. It is 
no waif to him. He knows how many 
strokes of labour it represents. His bones 
ache with the day’s work that earned it. 
He knows how much land ‘it represents ; 
how much rain, frost, and sunshine. Ha 
knows that, in the dollar, he gives you so 
much discretion and patience, so much 
hoeing and threshing. Try to lift his 
dollar ; you must lift all that weight. In 
the city, where money follows the skit of a 
pen, or a lucky rise in exchange, it comes 
to be looked on as light. I wish the farmer 
held it dearer, and would spend it only for 
real bread ; force for force. 

The farmer’s dollar is heavy, and the 
clerk’s is light and nimble; leaps out of 
his pocket ; jumps on to cards and faro- 
tables : but still more curious is its sus- 
ceptibility to metaphysical changes. It is 
the finest barometer of social storms, and 
announces revolutions. 

Every step of civil advancement makes 
every man’s dollar worth more. In Cali- 
fornia, the country where it grew, what 
would it buy ? A few years since, it 
would buy a shanty, dysentery, hunger, 
bad company, and crime. There are wide 
countries, like Siberia, where it would buy 
little else to-day, than some petty mitiga- 
tion of suffering. In Rome, it will buy 
beauty and magnificence. Forty years 
ago, a dollar would not buy much in 
Boston. Now it will buy a great dai 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


518 

more in our old town, thanks to railroads, 
telegraphs, steamers, and the contempo- 
raneous growth of New York, and the 
whole country. Yet there are many goods 
appertaining to a capital city, which are 
not yet purchasable here, no, not with a 
mountain of dollars. A dollar in Florida 
is not worth a dollar in Massachusetts. A 
dollar is not value, but representative of 
value, and, a^ last, of moral values. A 
dollar is rated for the corn it will buy, or 
to speak strictly, not for the corn or house- 
room, but for Athenian corn, and Roman 
house-room — for the wit, probity, and 
power, which we eat bread and dwell in 
houses to share and exert. Wealth is 
mental ; wealth is moral. The value of a 
dollar is, to buy just things : a dollar goes 
on increasing in value with all the genius, 
and all the virtue of the world. A dollar 
in a university is worth more than a dollar 
in a jail; in a temperate, schooled, law- 
abiding community, than in some sink of 
crime, where dice, knives, and arsenic 
are in constant play. 

The “ Bank-Note Detector” is a useful 
publication. But the current dollar, silver 
or paper, is itself the detector of the right 
and wrong where it circulates. Is it not 
instantly enhanced by the increase of 
equity ? If a trader refuses to sell his 
vote, or adheres to some odious right, he 
makes so much more equity in Massachu- 
setts ; and every acre in the State is more 
worth, in the hour of his action. If you 
take out of State Street the ten honestest 
merchants, and put in ten roguish persons, 
controlling the same amount of capital — 
the rates of insurance will indicate it ; the 
soundness of banks will show it : the high- 
ways will be less secure ; the schools will 
feel it ; the children will bring home their 
little dose of the poison: the judge will 
sit less firmly on the bench, and his deci- 
sions be less upright ; he has lost so much 
support and constraint — w'hich all need ; 
and the pulpit will betray it, in a laxer rule 
of life. An apple-tree, if you take out 
every day for a number of days, a load of 
loam, and put in a load of sand about its 
roots, will find it out. An apple-tree is a 
stupid kind of creature, but if this treat- 
ment be pursued for a short time, I think 
it would begin to mistrust something. 
And if you should take out of the powerful 
class engaged in trade a hundred good 
men, and put in a hundred bad, or, what 
h just the same thing, introduce a demo- 
ralizing institution, would not the dollar, 
which is not much stupider than an apple- 
presently find it out ? The value of 


a dollar is social, as it is created by society. 
Every man who removes into this city, 
with any purchasable talent or skill in 
him, gives to every man’s labour in the 
city a new worth. If a talent is any^vhere 
born into the world, the community of 
nations is enriched; and, much more, 
with a new degree of probity. The ex- 
pense of crime, one of the principal 
charges of every nation, is so fai’ stopped. 
In Europe, crime is observed to increase 
or abate with the price of bread. If the 
Rothschilds at Paris do not accept bills, 
the people at Manchester, at Paisley, at 
Birmingham, are forced into the highway, 
and landlords are shot down in Ireland. 
The police records attest it. The vibra- 
tions are presently felt in New York, New 
Orleans, and Chicago. Not much other- 
wise, the economical power touches the 
! masses through the political lords. Roths- 
child refuses the Russian loan, and there 
is peace, and the harvests are saved. He 
takes it, and there is war, and an agitation 
through a large portion of mankind, with 
every hideous result, ending in revolution, 
and a new order. 

Wealth brings with it its own checks 
and balances. The basis of political econ- 
omy is non-interference. The only safe 
rule is found in the self-adjusting meter 
of demand and supply. Do not legislate. 
Meddle, and you snap the sinews with 
your sumptuary laws. Give no bounties : 
make equal laws : secure life and property, 
and you need not give alms. Open the 
doors of opportunity to talent and virtue, 
and they will do themselves justice, and 
property will not be in bad hands. In a 
free and just commonwealth, property 
rushes from the idle and imbecile, to the 
industrious, brave, and persevering. 

The laws of nature play through trade, 
as a toy-battery exhibits the effects of 
electricity. The level of the sea is not 
more surely kept, than is the equilibrium 
of value in society, by the demand and 
supply ; and artifice or legislation punishes 
itself by reactions, gluts, and bankrupt- 
cies. The sublime laws play indifferently 
through atoms and galaxies. Whoever 
knows what happens in the getting and 
spending of a loaf of bread and a pint of 
beer; that no wishing will change the 
rigorous limits of pints and penny loaves; 
that, for all that is consumed, so much 
less remains in the basket and pot ; but 
what is gone out of these is not wasted, 
but well spent, if it nourish his body, and 
enable him to finish his task ; knows all 
gf political economy that thf budgets oi 



WEALTH. 


519 


empires can teach him. . The interest of 
petty economy is this symbolization of the 
great economy ; the way in which a house, 
and a private man’s methods, tally with 
the solar system, and the laws of give and 
take, throughout nature ; and however 
v.^ary we are of the falsehoods and petty 
tricks which we suicidally play off on each 
otlier, every man has a certain satisfaction, 
whenever his dealing touches on the inevi- 
table facts ; when ho sees that things 
themselves dictate the price, as they al- 
ways tend to do, and, in large manufac- 
tures, are seen to do. Your paper is not 
fine or coarse enough — is too heavy, or 
too thin. The manufacturer says, he will 
furnish you with just that thickness or 
thinness you want; the pattern is quite 
indifferent to him ; here is his schedule ; 
any variety of paper, as cheaper or dearer, 
with the prices annexed. A pound of 
paper costs so much, and you may have 
it made up in any pattern you fancy. 

There is in all our dealings a self-regu- 
lation that supersedes chaffering. You 
will rent a house, but must have it cheap. 
The owner can reduce the rent, but so he 
incapacitates himself from making proper 
repairs, and the tenai'it gets not the house 
ho would have, but a worse one ; besides, 
that a relation a little injurious is estab- 
lished between landlord and tenant. You 
dismiss your labourer, saying, “ Patrick, I 
shall send for you as soon as I cannot do 
without you.” Patrick goes off contented, 
for he knows that the weeds will grow with 
the potatoes, the vines must be planted, 
next week, and, however unwilling you 
may be, the cantelopes, crook-necks, and 
cucumbers will send for him. Who but 
must wish that all labour and value should 
stand on the same simple and surly mar- 
ket ? If it is the best of its kind, it will. 
We must have joiner, locksmith, planter, 
priest, poet, doctor, cook, weaver, ostler; 
each in turn, through the year. 

If a St. Michael’s pear sells for a shilling, 
It costs a shilling to raise it. If, in Boston, 
the best securities offer twelve per cent for 
money, they have just six per cent of in- 
security. You may not see that the fine 
pear costs you a shilling, but it costs the 
community so much. The shilling repre- 
sents the number of enemies the pear has, 
and the amount of risk in ripening it. The 
price of coal shows the narrowness of the 
coal-field, and a compulsory confinement 
of the miners to a certain district. All 
salaries are reckoned on contingent, as 
well as on actual services. “If the wind 
were always south-west by west,” said the 


skipper, '* women might take ships to sea.** 
One might say, that all things are of ono 
price ; that nothing is cheap or dear; and 
that the apparent disparities that strikw 
us are only a shopman’s trick of conceal- 
ing the damage in your bargain. A youth 
coming into the city from his native New 
Hampshire farm, with its hard fare still 
fresh in his remembrance, boards at a first- 
class hotel, and believes he must somehow 
have outwitted Dr. Franklin and Malthus, 
for luxuries are cheap. But he pays for 
the one convenience of a better dinner, by 
the loss of some of the richest social and 
I educational advantages. He has lost what 
guards ! what incentives 1 He will perhaps 
find by and by, that he left the Muses 
at the door of the hotel, and found the 
Furies inside. Money often costs too 
much, and power and pleasure are not 
cheap. The ancient poet said, ” The 
gods sell all things at a lair price.” 

There is an example of the compensa- 
tions in the commercial history of this 
country. When the European wars threw 
the carry ing-trade of the world, from 1800 
to 1812, into American bottoms, a seizure 
was now and then made of an American 
ship. Of course, the loss was serious to 
the owner, but the country was indemni- 
fied ; for we charged threepence a pound 
for carrying cotton, sixpence for tobacco, 
and so on ; which paid for the risk and 
loss, and brought into the country an im- 
mense prosperity, early marriages, private 
wealth, the building of cities, and of states ; 
and, after the war was over, we received 
compensation over and above, by treaty, for 
all the seizures. Well, the Americans 
grew rich and great. But the pay-day 
comes round. Britain, France, and Ger- 
many, which our extraordinary profits 
had impoverished, sent out, attracted by 
the fame of our advantages, first their 
thousands, then their millions, of poor 
people, to share the crop. At first, wo 
employ them, and increase our prosperity ; 
but, in the artificial system of society and 
of protected labour, which vve also havo 
adopted and enlarged, there come pre- 
sently checks and stoppages. Then we 
refuse to employ these poor men. But 
they will not so be answered. They go 
into the poor rates, and, though we refuse 
wages, we must now pay the same amount 
in the form of taxes. Again, it turns out 
that the largest proportion of crimes are 
committed by foreigners. The cost of 
the crime, and the expense of courts, and 
of prisons, we must bear, and the standing 
army of preveotiYO police we must pay. 

? V 



520 


CONDUCT 

The cost of edncstion of the posterity of 
this great colony, I will not compute. But 
the gross amount of these costs will begin 
to pay back what we thought was a net 
gain from our Transatlantic customers of 
1800. It is vain to refuse this payment. 
We cannot get rid of these people, and we 
cannot get rid of their will to be supported. 
That has become an inevitable element 
in our politics; and, for their votes, each 
of the dominant parties courts and assists 
them to get it executed. Moreover, we 
have to pay, not what would have con- 
tended them at home, but what they have 
learned to think necessary here ; so that 
opinion, fancy, and all manner of moral 
considerations complicate the problem. 

These were the prevalent opinions in 
1850. Yet this result is no more final than 
the last. We have hardly time to study 
this adjustment and deplore these disad- 
vantages, before the scale rights itself 
again, this time disclosing new and im- 
mense benefits. For this countless host 
of immigrants are now seen to be adding 
by their labour to the wealth of the country. 
They plant the wilderness with wheat and 
corn, work the mines for coal and lead and 
copper and gold, build roads and towns 
and states, create a market for the manu- 
factures and commerce of eitlier sea coast, 
and swell by their taxes the national 
treasury. 

There are a few measures of economy 
which will bear to be named without dis- 
gust ; for the subject is tender, and we may 
easily have too much of it ; and therein 
resembles the hideous animalcules of 
which our bodies are built up — which, 
offensive in the particular, yet compose 
valuable and effective masses. Our nature 
and genius force us to respect ends, whilst 
we use means. We must use the means, 
and yet, in our most accurate using, some- 
how screen and cloak them, as we can only 
give them any beauty, by a reflection of 
the glory of the end. That is the good 
head, which serves the end, and commands 
the means. The rabble are corrupted by 
their means : the means are too strong for 
them, and they desert their end. 

I. The first of these measures is that 
each man’s expense must proceed from his 
character. As long as your genius buys, 
the investment is safe, though you spend ' 
like a monarch. Nature arms each man 
with some faculty which enables him to do 
easily some feat impossible to any other, 
and thus makes him necessary to society. 
This native determination guides his labour 


OF LIFE. 

and his spending. He wants an equip- 
ment of means and tools proper to his 
talent. And to save on this point, were 
to neutralize the special strength and help- 
fulness of each mind. Do your worlr, 
respecting the excellence of the work, and 
not its acceptableness. This is so much 
economy, that, rightly read, It is the sum 
of economy. Profligacy consists not in 
spending years of time or chests of money, 
but in spending them off the line of your 
career. The crime which bankrupts men 
and states, is, job work — declining from 
your main design, to serve a turn here or 
there. Nothing is beneath you, if it is in 
the direction of your life : nothing is great 
or desirable, if it is off from that. I think 
we are entitled here to draw a straight 
line, and say, that society can never pros- 
per, but must always be bankrupt, until 
every man does that which he was created 
to do. 

Spend for your expense, and retrench 
the expense which is not yours. Allston, 
the painter, was wont to say, that he 
built a plain house, and filled it with plain 
furniture, because he would hold out no 
bribe to any to visit him, who had not 
similar tastes to his own. We are sym- 
pathetic, and, like children, want every- 
thing we see. But it is a large stride to 
independence — when a man, in the dis- 
covery of his proper talent, has sunk the 
necessity for false expenses. As the be- 
trothed maiden, by one secure affection, 
is relieved from a system of slaveries — the 
daily inculcated necessity of pleasing all — 
so the man who has found what he can 
do, can spend on that, and leave all other 
spending. Montaigne said : “ When ha 
was a younger brother, he went brave in 
dress and equipage, but afterward his 
chateau and farms might answer for him/’ 
Let a man who belongs to the class of 
nobles, those, namely, who have found 
out that they can do something, relieve 
himself of all vague squandering on ob- 
jects not his. Let the realist not mind 
appearances. Let him delegate to others 
the costly courtesies and decorations of 
social life. The virtues are economists, 
but some of the vices are also. Thus, next 
to humility, 1 have noticed that pride is a 
P'.etty good husband. A good pride is, as 
I reckon it, worth from five hundred to 
fifteen hundred a year. Pride is hand- 
some, economical : pride eradicates so 
many vices, letting none subsist but itself, 
that it seems as if it were a great gain to 
exchange vanity for pride. Pride can go 
without domestics, without fine clothes, 



WEALTH. 


eaa live in a house with ^wo rooms, can 
•at potato, purslain, beans, lyed corn, can 
work on the soil, can travel afoot, can talk 
with poor men, or sit silent well-contented 
in fine saloons. But vanity costs money, 
labour, horses, men, women, health, and 
peace, and is still nothing at last, a long 
way leading nowhere. Only one draw- 
back ; proud people are intolerably selfish, 
and the vain are gentle and giving. 

Art is a jealous mistress, and, if a man 
have a genius for painting, poetry, music, 
architecture, or philosophy, he makes a 
bad husband, and an ill provider, and 
should be wise in season, and not fetter 
himself with duties which will embitter 
his days, and spoil him for his proper work. 
We had in this region, twenty years ago, 
among our educated men, a sort of Arca- 
dian fanaticism, a passionate desire to go 
upon the land, and unite farming to intel- 
lectual pursuits. Many effected their 
purpose, and made the experiment, and 
some became downright ploughmen *, but 
all were cured of their faith that scholar- 
ship and practical farming (I mean, with 
one’s own hands) could be united. 

With brow bent, with firm intent, the 
pale scholar leaves his desk to draw a 
freer breath, and get a juster statement of 
his thought, in the garden-walk. He 
stoops to pull up a purslain, or a dock, that 
is choking the young corn, and finds there 
are two : close behind the last, is a third ; 
he reaches out his hand to a fourth ; be- 
hind that are four thousand and one. He 
ts heated and untuned, and, by and by, 
wakes up from his idiot dream of chick- 
weed and red-root, to remember his morn- 
ing thought, and to find, that, with his 
adamantine purposes, he has been duped 
by a dandelion. A garden is like those 
pernicious machineries we read of, every 
month, in the newspapers, which catch a 
man’s coat-skirt or his hand, and draw in 
his arm, his leg, and his whole body to 
irresistible destruction. In an evil hour 
he pulled down his wall, and added a field 
to his homestead. No land is bad, but 
land is worse. If a man own land, the 
land owns him. Now let him leave home, 
if he dare. Every tree and graft, every 
hill of melons, row of corn, or quickset 
hedge, all ho has done, and all he means 
to do, stand in his way, like duns, when 
he would go out of his gate. The devo- 
tion to these vines and trees he finds 
poisonous. Long free walks, a circuit of 
miles, free his brain, and serve his body. 
Long marches are no hardship to him. 
He believes he cornposes easily on the 


521 

hills. But this pottering In a few square 
yards of garden is dispiriting and drivel- 
ling. The smell of the plants has drugged 
him, and robbed him of energy. He finds 
a catalepsy in his bones. He grows 
peevish and poor-spirited. The genius 0/ 
reading and of gardening are antagonistic, 
like resinous and vitreous electricity, Ona 
is concentrative in sparks and shocks ; the 
other is diffuse strength ; so that each dis- 
qualifies its workman for the otlier's 
duties. 

An engraver whose hands must be o( 
an exquisite delicacy of stroke should net 
lay stone-walls. Sir David Brewster gives 
exact instructions for microscopic obser- 
vation : “ Lie down on your back, and 
hold the single lens and object over your 
eye,” &c., &c. How much more the 
seeker of abstract truth, who needs periods 
of isolation, and rapt concentration, and 
almost a going out of the body to think ! 

2. Spend after your genius, and by sys- 
tern. Nature goes by rule, not by sallies 
and saltations. There must be system in 
the economies. Saving and unexpensive- 
ness will not keep the most pathetic family 
from ruin, nor will bigger incomes make 
free spending safe. The secret of success 
lies never in the amount of money, but in 
the relation of income to outgo ; as if, 
after expense has been fixed at a certain 
point, then new and steady rills of income, 
though never so small, being added, 
wealth begins. But in ordinary, as means 
increase, spending increases faster, so 
tliat, large incomes, in England and else- 
where, are found not to help matters — the 
eating quality of debt does not relax its 
voracity. When the Colerado is in the 
potato, what is the use of planting larger 
crops? In England, the richest country 
in the universe, I was assured by shrewd 
observers, that great lords and ladies had 
no more guineas to give away than other 
people ; that liberality with money is as 
rare, and as immediately famous a virtue 
as it is here. Want is a growing giant 
whom the coat of Have was never large 
enough to cover. I remember in Warwick- 
shire, to have been shown a fair manor, 
still in the same name as in Shakespeare’s 
time. The rent-roll, I was told, is soma 
fourteen thousand pounds a year; but, 
when the second son of the late proprietor 
was born, the father was perplexed how 
to provide for him. The eldest son must 
inherit the manor ; what to do with this 
supernumerary ? He was advised to breed 
him for the Church, and to settle him in 
the rectorship, which was in the gift ol 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


1522 

the family ; which was done. It is a gene- 
ral rule in that country, that bigger 
incomes do not help anybody. It is com- 
monly observed, that a sudden wealth, 
like a prize drawn in a lottery, or a large 
bequest to a poor family, does not per- 
manently enrich. They have served no 
apprenticeship to wealth, and, with the 
rapid wealth, cOmo rapid claims: which 
they do not know how to deny, and the 
treasure is quickly dissipated. 

A system must be in every economy, or 
the best single expedients are of no avail. 
A farm is a good thing when it begins and 
ends with itself, and does not need a 
salary, or a shop, to eke it out. Thus, 
the cattle are a main link in the chain- 
ring. If the nonconformist or Esthetic 
farmer leaves out the cattle, and does not 
also leave out the want which the Rattle 
must supply, he must fill the gap by 
begging or stealing. When men nowalive 
were born, the farm yielded everything 
that was consumed on it. The farm 
yielded no money, and the farmer got on 
without. If he fell sick, his neighbours 
came into his aid : each gave a day’s 
work ; or a half-day ; or lent his yoke of 
oxen, or his. horse, and kept his work 
even : hoed his potatoes, mowed his hay, 
reaped his rye ; well knowing that no man 
could afford to hire labour, without selling 
his land. In autumn, a farmer could sell 
an ox or a hog, and get a little money to 
pay taxes withal. Now, the farmer buys 
almost all he consumes — tin-ware, cloth, 
sugar, tea, coffee, fish, coal, railroad 
tickets, and newspapers, 

A master in each art is required, be- 
cause the practice is never with still or 
dead subjects, but they change in your 
hands. You think farm buildings and 
broad acres a solid property : but its 
value is flowing like water. It requires as 
much watching as if you were decanting 
wine from a cask. The farmer knows 
what to do with it, stops every leak, turns 
all the streamlets to one reservoir, and 
decants wine ; but a blunderhead comes 
out of Cornhill, tries his hand, and it all 
leaks away. So is it with granite streets, 
or timber townships, as with fruit or 
flowers. Nor is any investment so per- 
manent, that it can be allowed to remain 
without incessant watching, as the history 
of each attempt to lock up an inheritance 
through two generations for an unborn 
Inheritor may show. 

When Mr. Cockayne takes a cottage 
in the country, and will keep his cow, 
ha thinka a cow is a creature that is 


fed on hay, and gives a pail of milk twice 
a day. But the cow that he buys gives 
milk for three months ; then her bag dries 
up. What to do with a dry cow ? who will 
buy her ? Perhaps he bought also a yoke 
of oxen to do his work ; but they get blown 
and lame. What to do with blown and 
lame oxen ? The farmer fats his after the 
spring work is done, and kills tliem in the 
fall. But how can Cockayne, who has no 
pastures, and leaves his cottage daily in 
the cars, at business hours, he pothered 
with fatting and killing oxen ? He plants 
trees ; but there must be crops, to keep 
the trees in ploughed land. What shall 
be the crops ? He will have nothing to do 
with trees, but will have grass. After a 
year or two, the grass must be turned up 
and ploughed : now what crops ? Credu- 
lous Cockayne ! 

3. Help comes in the custom of the 
country, and the rule of Jmpera partndo. 
The rule is not to dictate, nor to insist on 
carrying out each of your schemes by 
ignorant wilfulness, but to learn practi- 
cally the secret spoken from all nature, 
that things themselves refuse to be mis- 
managed, and will show to the watchful 
their own law. Nobody need stir hand or 
foot. The custom of the country will do 
it all. I know not how to build or to 
plant ; neither how to buy wood, nor what 
to do with the house-lot, the field, or the 
wood-lot, when bought. Never fear ; it is 
all settled how it shall be, long beforehand, 
in the custom of the country, whether to 
sand, or whether today it, when to plough, 
and how to dress, whether to grass, or to 
corn ; and you cannot help or hinder it. 
Nature has her own best mode of doing 
each thing, and she has somewhere told 
it plainly, if we will keep our eyes and 
ears open. If not, she will not be slow in 
undeceiving us, when we prefer our own 
way to hers. How often wa must re- 
member the art of the surgeon, which, in 
replacing the broken bone, contents itself 
with releasing the parts from false posi- 
tion ; they fly into place by the action of 
the muscles. On this art of nature all our 
arts rely. 

Of the two eminent engineers in the 
recent construction of railways in England, 
Mr. Brunei went straight from terminus 
to terminus, through mountains, over 
streams, crossing highways, cutting ducal 
estates in two, and shooting through thig 
man’s cellar, and that man’s attic window, 
and so arriving at his end, at great plea- 
sure to geometers, but with cost to hia 
company. Mr. Stepberisou, ou tho coa 



WEALTH. 


ira’fy, believing that the fiver knows the 
way, followed his valley, as implicitly as 
our Western Railroad follows the West- 
field River, and turned out to be the safest 
and cheapest engineer. We say the cows 
laid out Boston. Well, there are worse 
surveyors. Every pedestrian in our pas- 
tures has frequent occasion to thank the 
cows for cutting the best path through the 
thicket, and over the hills ; and travellers 
and Indians know the value of a buffalo- 
trail, which is sure to be the easiest pos- 
sible pass through the ridge. 

When a citizen, fresh from Dock Square, 
or Milk Street, comes out and buys land 
in the country, his first thought is to a 
fine outlook from his windows ; his library 
must command a western view : a sunset j 
every day bathing the shoulder of Blue 
Hills, Wachusett, and the peaks of Mo- 
nadnoc and Uncanoonuc. What, thirty 
acres, and all this magnificence for fifteen 
hundred dollars ! It would be cheap at 
fifty thousand. He proceeds at once, his 
eyes dim with tears of joy, to fix the spot 
for his corner-stone. But the man who is 
to level the ground thinks it will take 
many hundred loads of gravel to fill the 
hollow to the road. The stone-mason 
who should build the well thinks he shall 
have to dig forty feet : the baker doubts 
he shall never like to drive up to the door : 
the practical neighbour cavils at the posi- 
tion of the barn ; and the citizen comes 
to know that his predecessor the farmer 
built the house in the right spot for the 
Bun and wind, the spring, and water- 
drainage, and the convenience to the 
pasture, the garden, the field, and the 
road. So Dock Square yields the point, 
and things have their own way. Use has 
made the farmer wise, and the foolish 
citizen learns to take his counsel. From 
step to step he comes at last to surrender 
at discretion. The farmer affects to take 
his orders ; but the citizen says. You may 
ask me as often as you will, and in what 
ingenious forms, for an opinion concern- 
ing the mode of building my wall, or sink- 
ing my well, or laying out my acre, but 
the ball will rebound to you. These are 
matters on which I neither know, nor 
need to know anything. These are ques- 
tions which you and not I shall answer. 

Not less, within doors, a system settles 
itself paramount and tyrannical over 
master and mistress, servant and child, 
cousin and acquaintance. ’Tis in vain 
that genius or virtue or energy of character 
strive and cry against it. This is fate. 
Aod 'tis very well that the poor husband 


523 

reads in a book of a new way of living, and 
resolves to adopt it at home ; let him go 
home and try it, if he dare. 

4. Another point of economy is to look 
for seed of the same kind as you sow ; and 
not to hope to buy one kind with another 
kind. Friendship buys friendship ; justice, 
justice; military merit, military success. 
Good husbandry finds wife, children, and 
household. The good merchant, large 
gains, ships, stocks, and money. The 
good poet, fame, and literary credit ; but 
not either, the other. Yet there is com- 
monly a confusion of expectations on 
these points. Hotspur lives for the mo- 
ment ; praises himself for it ; and despises 
Furlong, that he does not. Hotspur, of 
course, is poor; and Furlong, a good 
provider. The old circumstance is, that 
Hotspur thinks it a superiority in himself, 
this improvidence, which ought to be 
rewarded with Furlong’s lands. 

I have not at all completed my design. 
But we must not leave the topic, without 
casting one glance into the interior re- 
cesses. It is a doctrine of philosophy, 
that man is a being of degrees ; that there 
is nothing in the world, which is not re- 
peated in his body; his body being a sort 
of miniature or summary of the world; 
then that there is nothing in his body, 
which is not repeated as in a celestial 
sphere in his mind ; then, there is nothing 
in his brain, which is not repeated in a 
higher sphere, in his moral system. 

5. Now these things are so in Nature. 
All things ascend, and the royal rule of 
economy is, that it should ascend also, or, 
whatever we do must have a higher aim. 
Thus it is a maxim, that money is another 
kind of blood, Pecunia alter sanguis: or, 
the estate of a man is only a larger kind or 
body, and admits of regimen analogous to 
his bodily circulations. So there is no 
maxim of the merchant, which does not 
admit of an extended sense, e.g., “ The 
best use of money is to pay debts ; ” 
" Every business by itself; ” “ Best time 
is present time ; ” “ The right investment 
is in tools of your trade; ” and the like. 
The counting-room maxims liberally ex- 
pounded are laws of the Universe. The 
merchant’s economy is a coarse symbol of 
the soul’s economy. It is, to spend for 
power, and not for pleasure. It is to in- 
vest income ; that is to say, to take up 
particulars into generals ; days into integ- 
ral eras — literary, emotive, practical, of 
its life, and still to ascend in its invest* 
ment. The merchant has but one rule, 
absorb and invest ; he is to be capitalist I 



5^4 


COl^DUCT OF LIFE. 


tba scraps and filings must be gathered 
back into the crucible ; the gas and smoke 
must be burned, and earnings must not go 
to increase expense, but to capital again. 
Well, the man must be capitalist. Will 
he spend his income, or will he invest ? 
His body and every organ is under the 
same law. His body is a jar, in which the 
liquor of life is stored. Will he spend for 
pleasure ? The way to ruin is short and 
facile. Will he not spend, but hoard for 
power ? It passes through the sacred fer- 
mentations, by that law of Nature where- 
by everything climbs to higher platforms, 
and bodily vigour becomes mental and 
moral vigour. The bread he eats is first 
strength and animal spirits ; it becomes, in 


higher laboratof ies, imagery and thought } 
and in still higher results, courage antj 
endurance. This Is the right compound 
interest; this is capital doubled, quad- 
rupled, centupled ; m?n raised to his 
highest power. 

The true thrift is always to spend on 
the higher plane; to invest and invest, 
with keener avarice, that he may spend in 
spiritual creation, and not in augmenting 
animal existence. Nor is the man en- 
riched, in repeating the old experiments 
of animal sensation, nor unless through 
new powers and ascending pleasures, he 
knows himself by the actual experience of 
higher good, to be already on the way to 
the highest* 


CULTURE. 


Can rules or tutors educate ^ 

The seraigod wliom we await? 

He must be musical. 

Tremulous, impress ional, 

Alive to gentle influence 
Of landscape and of sky, 

And tender to the spirit-touch 
Of man's or maiden’s eye : 

But, to his native centre fast, 

Shall into Future fuse the Past, 

And the world’s flowing fates in his own 
mould recast. 

The word of ambition at the present day 
is Culture. Whilst all the world is in pur- 
suit of power, and of wealth as a means of 
power, culture corrects the theory of suc- 
cess. A man is the prisoner of his power. 
A topical memory makes him an almanac ; 
a talent for debate, a disputant ; skill to 
get money makes him a miser, that is, a 
beggar. Culture reduces these inflamma- 
tions by invoking the aid of other powers 
against the dominant talent, and by appeal- 
ing to the rank of powers. It watches 
success. For performance, Nature has no 
mercy, and saorifices the performer to get 
it done ; makes a dropsy or a tympany of 
him. If she wants a thumb, she makes 
one at the cost of arms and legs, and any 
excess of power in one part is usually paid 
for at once by some defect in a contiguous 
part. 

Our efficiency depends so much on our 
concentration, that Nature usually in the 
instances where a marked man is sent in- 
to the world, overloads him with bias, 
sacrificing his symmetry to his working 
power. It is said, a man can write but one 
^ook ; and if a man have a defect, it is apt 


to leave its impression on all his perform 
mances. If she creates a policeman like 
Fouclie, he is made up of suspicions and 
of plots to circumvent them. "The air," 
said Fouch6, " is full of poniards." The 
physician Sanctorious spent his life in a 
pair of scales, weighing his food. Lord 
Coke valued Chaucer highly, because tha 
Canon Yeman’s Tale illustrated the statute 
fifth Hen, /F,, Chap, 4, against alchemy. 
I saw a man who believed the principal 
mischiefs in the English state were deri- 
ved from the devotion to musical concerts. 
A freemason, not long since, set out to ex- 
plain to this country, that the principal 
cause of the success of General Washing- 
ton, was the aid he derived from the free- 
masons. 

But worse than the harping on one 
string. Nature has secured individualism, 
by giving the private person a high conceit 
of his weight in the system. The pest of 
society is egotists. There are dull and 
bright, sacred and profane, coarse and 
fine egotists. 'Tis a disease that, like 
influenza, falls on all constitutions. In 
the distemper known to physicians as 
chorea, the patient sometimes turns round, 
and continues to spin slowly on one spot. 
Is egotism a metaphysical variety of this 
malady? The man runs round a ring 
formed by his own talent, falls into an 
admiration of it, and loses relation to the 
world. It is a tendency in all minds. One 
of its annoying forms is a craving for syra- 
! pathy. The sufferers parade their miseries, 

I tear the lint from their bruises, reveal 
I their indictable crimes, that you may pity 



CULTURE. 


S25 


^lem like «icknc*s, because phy- 

sical pain will extort some show of interest 
jErom the by-standers, as we have seen 
children, who, finding themselves of no 
account when grown people come in, will 
cough till they choke, to draw attention. 

This distemper is the scourge of talent 
artists, inventors, and philosophers. 
Eminent spiritualists shall have an inca- 
pacity of putting their act or word aloof 
from them, and seeing it bravely for the 
nothing it is. Beware of the man who 
says, “ I am on the eve of a revelation.” ; 
It is speedily punished, inasmuch as this ' 
habit invites men to humour it, and by 
treating the patient tenderly, to shut him 
up in a narrower selfism, and exclude him 
from the great world of God's cheerful 
fallible men and women. Let us rather 
be insulted, whilst we are insultable. 
Religious literature has eminent exam- 
ples, and if we run over our private lists 
of poets, critics, philanthropists, and 
philosophers, we shall find them infected 
with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which 
we ought to have tapped. 

This goitre of egotism is so frequent 
among notable persons, that we must infer 
some strong necessity in nature which it 
subserves ; such as we see in the sexual 
attractions. The preservation of the 
species was a point of such necessity, that 
Nature had secured it at all hazards by 
immensely overloading the passion, at the 
risk of perpetual crime and disorder. So 
egotism has its root in the cardinal neces- 
sity by which each individual persists to 
be what he is. 

This individuality is not only not incon- 
sistent with culture, but is the basis of it. 
Every valuable nature is there in its own 
right, and the student we speak to must 
have a mother wit invincible by his cul- 
ture, which uses all books, arts, facilities, 
and elegancies of intercourse, but it never 
subdued and lost in them, He only is a 
well-made man who has a good deter- 
mination. And the end of culture is not | 
to destroy this, God forbid I but to train I 
away all impediment and mixture, and ! 
leave nothing but pure power. Our stu- ! 
dent must have a style and determination, j 
and be a master in his own specialty. 
But, having this, he must put it behind 
him. He must have a catholicity, a power 
to see with a free and disengaged look 
every object, Yet is this private interest 
and self so over-charged, that, if a man 
seeks a companion who can look at 
ejects for their own sake, and without 
affectioii or self-reference, he will find the 


fewest who will give him that satisfaction ; 
whilst most men are afflicted with a cold- 
ness, an incuriosity, as soon as any -abject 
does not connect with their self-love. 
Though they talk of the object before 
them, they are thinking of themselves, 
and their vanity is laying little traps for 
your admiration. 

But after a man has discovered that 
there are limits to the interest which 
his private history has for mankind, hs 
still converses with his family, or a few 
companions — perhaps with half a dozen 
ersonalities &at are famous in his neigh- 
ourhood. In Borion, the question of life 
is the names of sc«ne eight or ten men, 
Have you seen Mr, Allston, Doctor Chan- 
ning, Mr. Adams, Mr. Webster, Mr. 
Greenough ? Hava you heard Everett, 
Garrison, Father Taylor, Theodore Par- 
ker? Have you talked with Messieurs 
Turbinewheel, Summitlevel, and Lacof- 
rupees ? Then you may as well die. In 
New York, the question is of some other 
eight, or ten, or twenty. Have you seen 
a few lawyers, merchants, and brokers — 
two or three scholars, two or three capi- 
talists, two or three editors of newspapers ? 
New York is a sucked orange. All con- 
versation is at an end, when we have 
discharged ourselves of a dozen person- 
alities, domestic or imported, which make 
up our American existence. Nor do we 
expect anybody to be other than a faint 
copy of these heroes. 

Life is very narrow. Bring any club or 
company of intelligent men together again 
after ten years, and if the presence of 
some penetrating and calming genius 
could dispose them to frankness, what a 
confession of insanities would come up I 
The *' causes ” to which we have sacri- 
ficed, Tariff or Democracy, Whigism or 
Abolition, Temperance or Socialism, 
would show like roots of bitterness and 
dragons of wrath ; and our talents are aa 
mischievous as if each had been seized 
upon by some bird of prey, which had 
whisked him away from fortune, from 
truth, from the dear society of the poets, 
some zeal, some bias, and only when he 
was now gray and nerveless, was it relax- 
ing its claws, and he awaking to sober 
perceptions. 

Culture is the suggestion from certais 
best thoughts, that a man has a range of 
affinities, through which he can modulate 
the violence of any master-tones that have 
a droning preponderance in bis scale, and 
succour him against himself. Culture 
redresses his Mlancei puts 1dm amoa# 



CONDUCT OP LIFE. 


5j6 

his equals and superioi's, reTives the 
delicious sense of sympathy, and warns 
him of the dangers of solitude and re 
pulsion. 

’Tis not a compliment but a disparage- 
ment to consult a man only on horses, or 
on steam, or on theatres, or on eating, or 
on books, and, whenever he appears, 
considerately to turn the conversation to 
the bantling he is known to fondle. In 
the Norse heaven of our forefathers, 
Thor’s house had five hundred and forty 
floors ; and man’s house has five hundred 
and forty floors. His excellence is facility 
of adaptation and of transition through 
many related points, to wide contrasts and 
extremes. Culture kills his exaggeration, 
his conceit of his village or his city. We 
must leave our pets at home, when we go 
into the street, and meet men on broad 
grounds of good meaning and good sense. 
No performance is worth loss of geniality. 
'Tis a cruel price we pay for certain fancy 
goods called fine arts and philosophy. In 
the Norse legend. Allfadir did not get a 
drink of Mimir’s spring, (the fountain of 
wisdom,) until he left his eyi pledge. 
And here is a pedant that cannot unfold 
his wrinkles, nor conceal his wrath at 
interruption by the best, if their conver- 
sation do not fit his impertinency — here is 
he to afflict us with his personalities. ’Tis 
incident to scholars, that each of them 
fancies he is pointedly odious in his com- 
munity. Draw him out of this limbo of 
irritability. Cleanse with healthy blood 
his parchment skin. You restore to him 
his eyes which he left in pledge at Mimir’s 
gpring. If you are the victim of your 
doing, who cares what you do ? We can 
spare your opera, your gazetteer, your 
chemic analysis, your history, your syllo- 
gisms. Your man of genius ^ays dearly 
for his distinction. His head runs up 
into a spire, and instead of a healthy man, 
merry and wise, he is some mad dominie. 
Nature is reckless of the individual. 
When she has points to carry, she carries 
them. To wade in marshes and sea 
margins is the destiny of certain birds, 
and they are so accurately made for this, 
that they are imprisoned in those places. 
Each animal out of its habitat would 
starve. To the physician, each man, each 
woman, is an amplification of one organ. 
A soldier, a locksmith, a bank-clerk, and 
a dancer could not exchange functions. 
And thus we are victims of adaptation. 

The antidotes against this organic ego- 
tUZfli are, the range and variety of attrac- 
itons, ta gained by acquaintance with the 


world, with meipof merit, \vith classes ^ 
society, with travel, with eminent persons, 
and with the high resources of philosophy, 
art, and religion ; books, travel, society, 
solitude. 

The hardiest sceptic who has seen » 
horse broken, a pointer trained, or, who 
has visited a menagerie, or the exhibition 
of the Industrious Fleas, will not deny the 
validity of education. “ A boy,” says 
Plato, ” is the most vicious of all wild 
beasts;” and, in the same spirit, the old 
English poet Gascoigne says, “ A boy is 
better unborn than untaught.” The city 
breeds one kind of speech and man- 
ners ; the back country a different style • 
the sea, another ; the army, a fourth. 
We know that an army which can be con- 
fided in, may be formed by discipline ; 
that, by systematic discipline all men may 
be made heroes : Marshal Lannes said to 
a French officer, “ Know, Colonel, that 
none but a poltroon will boast that he 
never was afraid.” A great part of cour- 
age is the courage of having done the 
thing before. And, in all human action, 
those faculties will be strong which are 
used. Robert Owen said, "Give mo a 
tiger and I will educate him.” ’Tis in- 
human to want faith in the power of edu^ 
cation, since to meliorate is the law of 
nature ; and men are valued precisely as 
they exert onward or meliorating force, 
On the other hand, poltroonery is tlie 
acknowledging a fault to be incurable. 

Incapacity of melioration is the only 
mortal distemper. There are people who 
can never understand a trope, or any 
second or expanded sense given to your 
words, or any humour; but remain liter- 
alists, after hearing the music, and poetry, 
and rhetoric, and wit, of seventy or eighty 
years. They are past the help of surgeon 
or clergy. But even these can under- 
stand pitchforks and the cry of Firei 
and I have noticed in some of this class a 
marked dislike of earthquakes. 

Let us make our education brave and 
preventive. Politics is an after^work, a 
poor patching. We are always a little 
late. The evil is done, the law is passed, 
and v/e begin the uphill agitation for re- 
peal of that of which we ought to have 
prevented the enacting. We shall one day 
learn to supersede politics by education. 
What we call our root-and-branch reforms 
of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, 
is only medicating the symptoms. Wo 
must begin higher up, namely, in Educa- 
tion. 

Our artf and tools gifo to him who can 



CULTURE. 


bAn^e them much the seme advantage 
over the novice, as if you extended his 
life ten, fifty, or a hundred years. And I 
think it the part of good sense to provide 
every fine soul with such culture, that it 
shall not, at thirty or forty years, have to 
say, “ this which I might do is made hope- 
less through my want of weapons. * 

But it is conceded that much of our 
training fails of effect ; that all success is 
hazardous and rare ; that a largo part of 
our cost and pains is thrown away. Nature 
takes the matter into her own hands, and, 
though we must not omit any jot of our 
system, we can seldom be sure that it 
has availed much, or, that as much good 
would not have accrued from a different 
system. 

Books, as containing the finest records 
of human wit, must always enter into our 
notion of culture. The best heads that 
ever existed, Pericles, Plato, Julius Caesar, 
Shakespeare, Goethe, Milton, were well- 
read, universally educated men, and quite 
lOO wise to undervalue letters. Their opin- 
ion has weight, because they had means of 
knowing the opposite opinion. We look 
that a great man should be a good reader, 
or, in proportion to the spontaneous 
power, should be the assimilating power. 
Good criticism is very rare, and always 
precious. I am always happy to meet 
persons who perceive the transcendent 
superiority of Shakespeare over all other 
writers. I like people who like Plato. 
Because this love does not consist with 
ielf-conceit. 

But books are good only as far as a boy 
is ready for them. He sometimes gets 
ready very slowly. You send your child 
to the schoolmaster, but 'tis the school- 
boys who educate him. You send him to 
the Latin class, but much of his tuition 
comes, on his way to school, from the 
■hop-windows. You like the strict rules 
and the long terms ; and he finds his best 
leading in a by-way of his own, and refuses 
any companions but of his choosing. He 
hates the grammar and Gradus, and loves 
guns, fishing-rods, horses, and boats. 
Well, the boy is right ; and you are not 
fit to direct his bringing up, if your 
theory leaves out his gymnastic training. 
Archery, cricket, gun and fishing-rod, 
horse and boat, are all educators, liberal- 
izers ; and so are dancing, dress, and the 
street talk ; and — provided only the boy 
has resources, and is of a noble and in- 
cenuous strain — these will not serve him 
toss then the books. He learns chess, 
whist, dancing, and theatricala. The 


527 

father observes that another boy has 
learned algebra and geometry in the same 
time. But the first boy has acquired 
much more than these poor games along 
with them. He is infatuated for weeks 
with whist and chess ; but presently will 
find out, as you did, than when he rises 
from the game too long played he is 
vacant and forlorn, and despises himself. 
Thenceforward it takes place with other 
things, and has its due weight in his ex- 
perience. These minor skills and accom- 
plishments, for example, dancing, are 
tickets of admission to the dress-circle 
of mankind, and the being master of them 
enables the youth to judge intelligently 
of much, on which otherwise he v/ould 
give a pedantic squint. Landor said, “ I 
have suffered more from my bad dancing, 
than from all the misfortunes and miseries 
of my life put together.” Provided always 
the boy is teachable (for we are not pro- 
posing to make a statue out of punk), foot- 
ball, cricket, archery, swimming, skating, 
climbing, fencing, riding, are lessons in 
the art of power, which it is his main 
business to learn; riding, specially, of 
which Lord Herbert of Cherbury said, 

I ” A good rider on a good horse is as much 
' above himself and others as the world can 
make him.” Besides, the gun, fishing-rod, 
boat, and horse, constitute, among all who 
use them, secret freemasonries. They are 
as if they belonged to one club. 

There is also a negative value in these 
arts. Their chief use to the youth, is, 
not amusement, but to be known for what 
they are, and not to remain to him occa- 
! sions of heartburn. We are full of super- 
stitions. Each class fixes its eyes on the 
advantages it has not ; the refined, on 
rude strength, the democrat, on birth and 
breeding. One of the benefits of a college 
education is, to show the boy its little 
avail. I knew a leading man in a leading 
city, who, having set his heart on an edu- 
cation at the university, and missed it, 
could never quite feel himself the equal 
of his own brothers who had gone thither. 
His easy superiority to multitudes of pro- 
fessional men could never quite counter- 
vail to him this imaginary defect. Balls, 
riding, wine-parties, and billiards pass to a 
poor boy for something fine and romantic, 
which they are not ; and a free admission 
to them on an equal footing, if it were pos» 
sible, only once or twice, would be worth 
ten times its cost, by undeceiving them. 

I am not much an advocate for travel- 
ling, and 1 observe that men run away to 
other countries, because they are not good 



528 CONDUCT 

In their own, and run back to their own, 
because they pass for nothing in the new 
places. For the most part, only the light 
characters travel. Who are you that have 
no task to keep you at home ? I have 
been quoted as saying captious things 
about travel; but I mean to do justice. 

I think there is a restlessness in our 
people, which argues want of character. 
All educated Americans, first or last, go 
to Europe ; perhaps, because it is their 
mental home, as the invalid habits of this 
country might suggest. An eminent 
teacher of girls said, “ The idea of a girl’s 
education, is, whatever qualifies her for 
going to Europe.” Can we never extract 
this tapeworm of Europe from the brain 
of our countrymen ? One sees very well 
what their fate must be. He that does 
not fill a place at hpme, cannot abroad. 
He only goes there to hide his insignifi- 
cance in a larger crowd. You do not 
think you will find anything there which 
you have not seen at home ? The stuff 
of all countries is just the same. Do you 
suppose, there is any country where they 
do not scald milkpans, and swaddle the 
infants, and bum the brushwood, and broil 
the fish ? What is true anywhere is true 
everywhere. And let him go where he 
will, ho can only find so much beauty or 
worth as he carries. 

Of course, for some men, travel may be 
useful. Naturalists, discoverers, and 
sailors are bom. Some men are made 
for couriers, exchangers, envoys, mission- 
aries, bearers of despatches, as others are 
for farmers and working men. And if the 
man is of a light and social turn, and 
Nature has aimed to make a legged and 
winged creature, framed for locomotion, 
we must follow her hint, and furnish him 
with that breeding which gives currency, 
as sedulously as with that which gives 
worth. But let us not be pedantic, but 
allow to travel its full effect The boy 
grown up on the farm, which he has never 
left, is said in the country to have had no 
chance, and boys and men of that condi- 
tion look upon work on a railroad, or 
drudgery in a city, as opportunity. Poor 
country boys of Vermont and Connecticut 
formerly owed what knowledge they had 
to their peddling trips to the Southern 
States. California and the Pacific Coast 
is now the university of this class, as 
Virginia was in old times. "To have 
tome chance'* is their word. And the 

S hrase ** to know the world,” or to travel , 
\ synonymous with all men’s ideas of 
Advantage and superiority. No doubt, to 


OF LIFE. 

a man of sensev travel offers advantages. 
As many languages as he has, as many 
friends, as many arts and trades, so many 
times is he a man. A foreign country is 
a point of comparison, wherefrom to judge 
his own. One use of travel, is, to recom- 
mend the books and works of home — foi 
we go to Europe to be Americanized ; and 
another, to find men. For, as Nature 
has put fruits apart in latitudes, a new 
fruit in every degree, so knowledge and 
fine moral quality she lodges in distant 
men. And thus, of the six or seven 
teachers whom each man wants among 
his contemporaries, it often happens that 
one or two of them live on the other side 
of the world. 

Moreover, there is in every constitution 
a certain solstice, when the stars stand 
still in our inward firmament, and when 
there is required some foreign force, some 
diversion or alterative to prevent stagna- 
tion. And, as a medical remedy, travel 
seems one of the best. Just as a man 
witnessing the admirable effect of ether 
to lull pain, and meditating on thecontin* 
gencies of wounds, cancers, lockjaws, 
rejoices in Dr. Jackson’s benign discovery* 
so a man who looks at Paris, at Naples, 
or at London, says : "If I should be 
driven from my own home, here, at least, 
my thoughts can be consoled by the most 
prodigal amusement and occupation which 
the human race in ages could contrive and 
accumulate.” 

I Akin to the benefit of foreign travel, the 
aesthetic value of railroads is to unite the 
advantages of town and country life, 
neither of which we can spare. A man 
should live in or near a large town, 
because, let his own genius bo what it 
may, it will repel quite as much of agree- 
able and valuable talent as it draws, and, 
in a city, the total attraction of all the 
citizens is sure to conquer, first or last, 
every repulsion, and drag the most im- 
probable hermit within its walls some day 
in the year. In town, he can find the 
swimming-school, the gymnasium, the 
dancing-master, the iiooting-gallery, 
opera, theatre, and panorama; the che- 
mist’s shop, the museum of natural 
history; the gallery of fine arts; the 
national orators, in their turn; foreign 
travellers, the libraries, and his club. In 
the country, he can find solitude and 
reading, manly labour, cheap living, and 
his old shoes ; moors for game, hills for 
geology, and groves for devotion. Aubrey 
writes: "I have heard Thomas Hobbes 
say, that, in the Earl of Devon’s house, io 



CULTURE. 


Derbyshife, there was a good library and 
books enough for him, and his lordship 
stored the library with what books he 
thought fit to be bought. But the want of 
good conversation was a very great incon- 
venience, and, though he conceived he 
could order his thinking as well as another, 
yet h 0 found a great defect. In the coun- 
try, in long time, for want of good con- 
versation, one’s understanding and inven- 
tion contract a moss on them, like an old 
paling in an orchard.” 

Cities give us collision. ’Tis said, Lon- 
don and New York take the nonsense out 
of a man. A great part of our education 
is sympathetic and social. Boys and girls 
who have been brought up with well-in- 
formed and superior people show in their 
manners an inestimable grace. Fuller 
says, that ” William, Earl of Nassau, won 
a subject from the King of Spain, every 
time he put off his hat.” You cannot have 
one well-bred man, without a whole 
society of such. They keep each other up 
to any high point. Especially women ; it 
requires a great many cultivated women, 
saloons of bright, elegant, reading women, 
accustomed to ease and refinement, to 
spectacles, pictures, sculpture, poetry, 
and to elegant society, in order that you 
should have one Madame de StaSl. The 
head of a commercial house, or a leading 
lawyer or politician is brought into daily 
contact with troops of men from all parts 
of the country, and those too the driving- 
wheels, the business men of each section, 
and one can hardly suggest for an appre- 
hensive man a more searching culture. 
Besides, we must remember the high 
social possibilities of a million of menu 
The best bribe which London offers to-day 
to the imagination, is, that, in such a vast 
variety of people and conditions, one can 
believe there is room for persons of roman- 
tic character to exist, and that the poet, 
the mystic, and the hero may hope to 
confront their counterparts. 

I wish cities could teach their best les- 
son— of quiet manners. It is the foible 
especially of American youth — pretention. 
The mark of the man of the world is 
absence of pretension. He does not make 
a speech ? he takes a low business-tone, 
avoids all brag, is nobody, dresses plainly, 
promises not at all, performs much, j 
speaks in monosyllables, hugs his fact, j 
He calls his employment by its lowest 
name, and so takes from evil tonnes their 
sharpest weapon. His conversation clings 
to the weather and the news, ye^ he 
allows himself to be surprised into 


529 

thought, and the unlocking of his learning 
and philosophy. How the imagination ia 
piqued by anecdotes of some great man 
passing incognito, as a king in gray clothei 
of Napoleon affecting a plain suit at his 
glittering levee; of Burns, or Scott, or 
Beethoven, or Wellington, or Goethe, or 
any container of transcendent power, 
passing for nobody ; of Epaminondas, 
** who never says anything, but will listen 
eternally ; ” of Goethe, who preferred 
trifling subjects and common expressions 
in intercourse with strangers, worse rather 
than better clothes, and to appear s little 
more capricious than he was. Thete are 
advantages in the old hat and box-coat, 
I have heard, that, throughout this coun- 
try, a certain respect is paid to good 
broadcloth ; but dress makes a little re- 
straint : men will not commit themselves. 
But the box-coat is like wine ; it unlocks 
the tongue and men say what they think. 
An old poet says, 

“ Go far and go sparing. 

For you’ll find it certain. 

The poorer and the baser you appear, 

The more you’ll look through still." * 

Not much otherwise Milnes writes, in the 
** Lay of the Humble,” 

To me men are for what they are, 

They wear no masks with me." 

'Tis odd that our people should have- 
not water on the brain — but a little gas 
there. A shrewd foreigner said of the 
Americans, that, ” whatever they say has 
a little the air of a speech.” Yet one of 
the traits down in the books as distin- 
guishing the Anglo-Saxon, is, a trick of 
self-disparagement. To be sure, in old, 
dense countries, among a million of good 
coats, a fine coat comes to be no distinc- 
tion, and you find humourists. In an Eng- 
lish party, a man with no marked man- 
ners or features, with a face like red 
dough, unexpectedly discloses wit, learn- 
ing, a wide range of topics, and personal 
familiarity with good men in all parts of 
the world, until you think you have fallen 
upon some illustrious personage. Can it 
be that the American forest has refreshed 
some weeds of old Pictish barbarism just 
ready to die out — the love of the scarlet 
feather, of beads, and tinsel ? The Italians 
are fond of red clothes, peacock plumes, 
and embroidery; and 1 remember one 
rainy morning in the city of Palermo, the 
Street was in a blaze with scarlet umbrellasi 

* Beaoxuoot and Fletcher. Tk$ Tanur TamiA 



530 


CONDUCT OF LIFE, 


The English ha?d A pl&iii taste. The 
equipages of the grandees are plain. A 
gorgeous livery indicates nev7 and awkward 
city wealth. Mr. Pitt, like Mr. Pym, 
thought the title of Mister good against 
any king in Europe. They have piqued 
themselves on governing the whole world 
in the poor, plain, dark Committee-room 
which the House of Commons sat in, 
before the fire. 

Whilst we want cities as the centres 
where the best things are found, cities 
degrade us by magnifying trifles. The 
countryman finds the town a chop-house, 
a barber’s shop. He has lost the lines of 
grandeur of the horizon, hills and plains, 
and with tliem, sobriety and elevation. He 
has come among a supple, glib-tongued 
tribe, who live for show, servile to public 
opinion. Life is dragged down to a fracas 
of pitiful cares and disasters. You say the 
gods ought to respect a life whose objects 
are their own ; but in cities they have be- 
trayed you to a cloud of insignificant an- 
noyances : 

** Mirmidons, race f^condc, 

Mirmidoiis, 

Plnfin nous commandons ; 

Jupiter livre le monde 

Aux mirmidons, aux mirmidoni.'** 

*Tis heavy odds 
Against the gods, 

When they will match with myrmidons. 
We spawning, spawning myrmidons, 

Our turn to-day ! we lake command, 

Jove gives the globe into the hand 
Of myrmidons, of myrmidons. 

What is odious but noise, and people 
who scream and bewail ? people whose 
vane points always cast, who live to dine, 
who send for the doctor, who coddle them- 
selves, who toast their feet on the register, 
who intrigue to secure a padded chair, and 
a corner out of the draught. Suffer them 
once to begin the enumeration of their in- 
firmities, and the sun will go down on the 
unfinished tale. Let these trifles put us 
out of conceit with petty comforts. To a 
man at work, the frost is but a colour :,the 
rain, the wind, he forgot them when ho 
came in. Let us learn to live coarsely, 
dress plainly, and lie hard. The 
least habit of dominion over the palate 
has certain good effects not easily esti- 
mated. Neither will we be driven into a 
quiddling abstemiousness. ’Tis a super- 
stition to insist on a special diet All is 
made at last of the same chemical atoms. 
A man in pursuit of greatness feels no 

• Biraoger. 


little wants. Ho' if can you mind diet, bad 
dress, or salutes or compliments, or the 
figure you make in company, or wealth, 
or even the bringing things to pass, when 
you think how paltry are the machinery 
and the workers ? Wordsworth was 
praised to me, in Westmoreland, for hav- 
ing afforded to his country neighbours an 
j example of a modest household Where 
comfort and culture were secured, with- 
out display. And a tender boy who wears 
his rusty cap and outgrown coat, that ha 
may secure the coveted place in college, 
and the right in the library, is educated to 
some purpose. There is a great deal of 
self-denial and manliness in poor and 
middle-class houses, in town and country, 
that has not got into literature, and never 
will, but that keeps the earth sweet ; that 
saves on superfluities, and spends on 
essentials ; that goes rusty, and educates 
the boy ; that sells the horse, but builds 
the school ; works early and late, takes 
two looms in the factory, three looms, six 
looms, but pays off the mortgage on tho 
paternal farm, and then goes back cheer- 
fully to work again. 

We can ill spare the commanding social 
benefits of cities ; they must be used ; yet 
cautiously, and haughtily — and will yield 
their best values to him who best can do 
without them. Keep the town for occa- 
sions, but the habits should be formed to 
retirement. Solitude, the safeguard of 
mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend, 
the cold, obscure shelter where moult 
the wings which will bear it farther than 
suns and stars. He who should inspire and 
lead his race must be defended from 
travelling with the souls of other men, 
from living, breathing, reading, and writ- 
ing in the daily, time-worn yoke of thtfir 
opinions. “ In the morning — solitude,” 
said Pythagoras ; that Nature may speak 
to the imagination, as she does never in 
company, and that her favourite may make 
acquaintance with those divine strengths 
which disclose themselves to serious and 
abstracted thought. 'Tis very certain 
that Plato, Plotinus, Archimedes, Hermes, 
Newton, Milton, Wordsworth, did not 
live in a crowd, bnt descended into it 
from time to time as benefactors ; and 
me wise instructor will press this point 
of securing to the young soul in the dis- 
position of time and the arrangements of 
living, periods and habits of solitude. 
The high advantage of university life is 
often the mere mechanical one, I may call 
it, of a separate chamber and fire — which 
parents will allow the boy without hesita- 



CULTURE. 


tion at Cambridge, but df not think need- 
ful at home. We say solitude, to mark 
the character of the tone of thought; 
but if it can be shared between two or 
more than two, it is happier, and not less 
noble. “ We four,” wrote Neander to his 
sacred friends, “ will enjoy at Halle the 
inward blessedness of a civita^ Deiy whose 
foundations are for ever friendship. 
The more I know you, the more I dis- 
satisfy and must dissatisfy all my wonted 
companions. Their very presence stupefies 
me. The common understanding with- 
draws itself from the one centre of all 
existence.” 

Solitude takes off the pressure of present 
importunities that more catholic and 
humane relations may appear. The 
saint and poet seek privacy to ends the 
most public and universal ; and it is the 
secret of culture, to interest the man more 
in his public than in his private quality. 
Here is a new poem, which elicits a good 
many comments in the journals, and in 
conversation. From these it is easy, at 
last, to eliminate the verdict which 
readers passed upon it ; and that is, in the 
main, unfavourable. The poet, as a 
craftsman, is only interested in the praise 
accorded to him, and not in the censure, 
though it be just. And the poor little 
poet hearkens only to that, and rejects 
the censure, as proving incapacity in the 
critic. But the poet cultivated becomes 
a stockholder in both companies — say Mr. 
Curfew — in the Curfew stock, and in the 
humanity stock ; and, in the last, exults 
as much in the demonstration of the 
unsoundness of Curfew, as his interest in 
the former gives him pleasure in the cur- 
rency of Curfew. For, the depreciation of 
his Curfew stock only shows the immense 
values of the humanity stock. As soon as 
he sides with his critic against himself, 
with joy, he is a cultivated man. 

We must have an intellectual quality in 
all property and/in all action, or they are 
naught. I must have children, I must have 
events, I must have a social state and his- 
tory, or my thinking and speaking want 
body or basis. }3ut to give these accessories 
any value, I must know them as contingent 
and rather showy possessions,' which pass 
for more to the people than to me. We see 
this abstraction in scholars, as a matter of 
course ; but what a charm it adds when 
observed in practical men. Bonaparte, 
like CjEsar, was intellectual, and could 
look at every object for itself, without 
fiflection. Though an egotist d VouU 
rancf? he could criticise a play, a building, 


‘531 

a character, on universal grounds and 
give a just opinion. A man known to us 
only as a celebrity in politics or in ti’ade 
gains largely in our esteem if we discover 
that he has some intellectual taste or 
skill ; as when we learn of Lord Fairfax, 
the Long Parliament’s general, his passion 
for antiquarian studies ; or of the French 
regicide, Carnot, his sublime genius in 
mathematics ; or of a living banker, his 
success in poetry ; or of a partisan jour- 
nalist, his devotion to ornithology. So, if 
in travelling in the dreary wildernesses of 
Arkansas or Texas, we should observe on 
the next seat a man reading Horace, or 
Martial, or Calderon, we should wish to 
hug him. In callings that require roughest 
energy, soldiers, sea-captains, and civil 
engineers sometimes betray a fine insight, 
if only through a certain gentleness when 
off duty ; a good natured admission that 
there are illusions, and who shall say that 
he is not their sport ? We only vary the 
phrase, not the doctrine, when we say 
that culture opens the sense of beauty. 
A man is a beggar who only lives to be 
useful, and, however he may serve as a 
pin or rivet in the social machine, cannot 
be said to have arrived at self-possession. 
I suffer, every day, from the want of percep- 
tion of beauty in people. They do not know 
the charm with which all moments and ob- 
jects can be embellished, the charm of man- 
ners, of self-command, of benevolence. 
Repose and cheerfulness are the badge of 
the gentleman— repose in energy. The 
Greek battle-pieces are calm ; the heroes, 
in whatever violent actions engaged, 
retain a serene aspect ; as we say of 
Niagara, that it falls without speed. A 
cheerful, intelligent face is the end of 
culture, and success enough. For it indi- 
cates the purpose of Nature and wisdom 
attained. 

When our higher faculties are in acti- 
vity, we are domesticated, and awkward- 
ness and discomfort give place to natural 
and agreeable movements. It is noticed, 
that the consideration of the great periods 
and spaces of astronomy induces a dignity 
of mind, and an indifference to death. 
The influence of fine scenery, the presence 
of mountains, appeases our irritations 
and elevates our friendships. Even a 
high dome, and the expansive interior of 
a cathedral, have a sensible effect on man- 
ners. I have heard that stiff people lose 
something of tlieir awkwardness under 
high ceilings, and in spacious halls. I 
think sculpture and painting have an effect 
to teach us manners, and abolish hurry. 



532 


CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


But, over all, culture must reinforce 
from higher influx the empirical skills of 
eloquence, or of politics, or of trade, and 
the useful arts. There is a certain loftiness 
of thought and power to marshal and ad- 
just particulars, which can only come from 
an insight of their whole connection. The 
orator who has once seen things in tlieir 
divine order, will never quite lose sight of 
this, and will come to affairs as from a 
higher ground, and, though ho will say 
nothing of philosophy, he will have a cer- 
tain mastery in dealing with them, and an 
incapableness of being dazzled or frighted, 
which will distinguish his handling from 
that of attorneys and factors. A man who 
stands on a good footing with the heads of 
parties at Washington, reads the rumours 
of the newspapers, and the guesses of pro- 
vincial politicians, with a key to the right 
and wrong in each statement, and sees 
well enough where all this will end. Ar- 
chimedes will look through your Connecti- 
cut machine, at a glance, and judge of its 
fitness. And much more, a wise man who 
knows not only what Plato, but what Saint 
John can show him, can easily raise the 
affair he deals with to a certain majesty. 
Plato says Pericles owed his elevation to 
the lessons of Anaxagoras. Burke de- 
scended from a higher sphere when he 
would influence human affairs, Franklin, 
Adams, Jefferson, Washington, stood on a 
fine humanity, before which the brawls of 
modern senates are but pot-house politics. 

But there are higher secrets of culture, 
which are not for the apprentices, but for 
proficients. These are lessons only for 
the brave. We must know our friends 
under ugly masks. The calamities are our 
friends. Ben Jonson specifies in his ad- 
dress to the Muse ; 

** Get him the time’s long grudge, the court*! 
ill-will. 

And, reconciled, keep him suspected still, 

Make him lose all bis friends, and, what is 
worse. 

Almost all ways to any better course ; 

With me thou leav’st a better Muse than 
thee, 

And which thou brought’st me, blessed 
Poverty.’* 

We wish to learn philosophy by rote, and 
play at heroism. But the wiser God says, 
Take the shame, the poverty, and the 
penal solitude, that belong to truth -speak- 
ing. Try the rough water as well as the 
smooth. Rough water can teach lessons 
worth knowing. When the state is un- 
quiet, personal qualities are more than 
ever decisive. Fear not a revolution which 


will constrain yc^ to live five years in one, 
Don’t be so tender at making an enemy 
now and then. Be willing to go to Coven- 
try sometimes, and let the populace bestow 
on you their coldest contempts. The fin- 
ished man of the world must eat of every 
apple once. He must hold his hatreds 
also at arm’s length, and not remember 
spite. He has neither friends nor enemies, 
but values men only as channels of power. 

He who aims high must dread an easy 
home and popular manners. Heaven 
sometimes hedges a rare character about 
with ungainliness and odium, as the burr 
that protects the fruit. If there is any 
great and good thing in store for you, it 
will not come at the first or the second 
call, nor in the shape of fashion, ease, and 
city drawing-rooms. Popularity is for 
dolls. “ Steep and craggy,” said Por- 
phyry, “ is the path of the gods.” Open 
your Marcus Antoninus. In the opinion 
of the ancients, he was the great man who 
scorned to shine, and who contested the 
frowns of fortune. They preferred the 
noble vessel too late for the tide, contend- 
ing with winds and waves, dismantled and 
unrigged, to her companion borne into 
harbour with colours flying and guns 
firing. There is none of the social goods 
that may not be purchased too dear, and 
mere amiableness must not take rank with 
high aims and self-subsistency. 

Bettine replies to Goethe’s mother, who 
chides her disregard of dress, ” If I can- 
not do as I have a mind, in our poor 
Frankfort, I shall not carry things far.” 
And the youth must rate at its true mark 
the inconceivable levity of local opinion. 
The longer we live, the more wo must 
endure the elementary existence of men 
and women ; and every brave heart must 
treat society as a child, and never allow 
it to dictate. 

*• All that class of the severe and restric- 
tive virtues,” said Burke, “ are almost too 
costly for humanity.” Who wishes to be 
j severe ? Who wishes to resist the emi- 
nent and polite, in behalf of the poor, and 
low, and impolite ? and who that dares do 
it, can keep his temper sweet, his frolio 
spirits ? The high virtues are not debon- 
air, but have their redress in being 
illustrious at last. What forests of laurel 
we bring, and the tears of mankind, to 
those who stood firm against the opinion 
of their contemporaries! The measure 
of a master is his success in bringing all 
men round to his opinion twenty years 
later. 

Let me say here, that culture canned 



BEHA 

begin too early. In talkii^ with scholars, 
1 obsorvo that they lost^n ruder com- 
panions those years of boyhood which 
alone could give imaginative literature a 
religious and infinite quality in their 
esteem. I find, too, that the chance for 
appreciation is much increased by being 
the son of an appreciator, and that these 
boys who now grow up are caught not 
only years too late, but two or three births 
too late, to make the best scholars of. 
And I think it a presentable motive to a 
scholar, that, as, in an old community, a 
W’ell-born proprietor is usually found, 
after the first heats of youth, to be a care- 
ful husband, and to feel a habitual desire 
that the estate shall suffer no harm by 
his administration, but shall be delivered 
down to the next heir in as goqd condi- 
tion as he received it ; so, a considerate 
man will reckon himself a subject of that 
secular melioration by which mankind is 
mollified, cured, and refined, and will 
shun every expenditure of his forces on 
pleasure or gain, which will jeopard this 
social and secular accumulation. 

The fossil strata show us that Nature 
began with rudimental forms, and rose to 
the more complex, as fast as the earth was 
fit for their dwelling-place; and that the 
lower perish, as the higher appear. Very 
Tew of our race can be said to be yet 
finished men. We still carry sticking to 
US some remains of the preceding iufe- i 


VJOUR. 533 

rior quadruped organization. We call 
these millions men ; but they are not yet 
men. Half engaged in the soil, pawing to 
get free, man needs all the music that can 
be brought to disengage him. If Love, 
red Love, with tears and joy; if Want 
with his scourge ; if War with his can- 
nonade; if Christianity with his charity; 
if Trade with its money ; if Art with its 
portfolios ; if Science with her telegraphj 
through the deeps of space and time ; can 
set his dull nerves throbbing, and by loud 
taps on the tough chrysalis, can break its 
w^ls, and let the new creature emerge erect 
and free — make way, and sing paean I The 
age of the quadruped is to go out — the age 
of the brain and of the heart is to come 
in. The time will come when the evil 
forms we have known can be no more 
organized. Man’s culture can spare no* 
thing, wants all the material. He is to 
convert all impediments into instruments, 
all enemies into power. The formidable 
mischief will only make the more useful 
slave. And if one shall read the future of 
the race hinted in the organic effort of 
Nature to mount and meliorate, and the 
corresponding impulse to the Better in 
the human being, we shall dare affirm 
that there is nothing he will not overcome 
and convert, until at last culture shall 
absorb the chaos and gehenna. He will 
convert the Furies into Muses, and the 
hells into benefit* 


BEHAVIOUR; 


Grace, Beauty, and Caprice 
Build this golden portal ; 

Graceful women, chosen men 
Dazzle every mortal ; 

Their sweet and lofty countenance 
His enchanting food ; 

He need not go to them, their forms 
Beset his solitude. 

He looketh seldom in their face. 

His eyes explore the ground, 

The green grass is a looking-glass 
Whereon their traits are found. 

Little he says to them, 

So dances his heart in his breast^ 

Their tranquil mien bereaveth him 
Of wit, of words, of rest. 

Too weak to win^ too fond to shun 
The tyrants of his doom. 

The much deceived Endymion 
Slips behind a tomb. 

Tbb soul which animates Nature is not 
L«es significantly published in the figure, 
mevement, and gesture of animated bt^ies, 


than in its last vehicle of articulate speech. 
This silent and subtile language is Man- 
ners ; not what, but how» Life expresses. 
A statue has no tongue, and needs none. 
Good tableaux do not need declamation. 
Nature tells every secret once. Yes, but 
in man she tells it all the time, by form, 
attitude, gesture, mien, face, and parts of 
the face, and by the whole action of the 
machine. The visible carriage or action 
of the individual, as resulting from hia 
organization and his will combined, we 
call manners. What are they but thought 
entering the hands and feet, controlling 
the movements of the body, the speech 
and behaviour ? 

There is always a best way of doing 
everything, if it be to boil an egg. Man- 
ners are the happy ways of doing things ; 
each once a stroke of genius or of love--* 
now repeated and hardened into uaagei 



534 CONDUCT 

They form at last a rich varnish, with 
which the routine of life is washed, and its 
details adorned. If they are superficial, 
80 are the dew-drops which give such a 
depth to the morning meadows. Manners 
are very communicable ; men catch them 
from each other. Consuelo, in the ro- 
mance, boasts of the lessons she had given 
the nobles in manners, on the stage ; and, 
in real life, Talma taught Napoleon the 
arts of behaviour. Genius invents fine 
manners, which the baron and the baroness 
copy very fast, and, by the advantage of 
a palace, better the instruction. They 
stereotype the lesson they have learned 
into a mode. 

The power of manners is incessant — an 
element as unconcealable as fire. The 
nobility cannot in any country be dis- 
guised, and no more in a republic or a 
democracy, than in a kingdom. No man 
can resist their influence. There are cer- 
tain manners which are learned in good 
society, of that force, that, if a person have 
them, he or she must be considered, and 
is everywhere welcome, though without 
beauty, or wealth, or genius. Give a boy 
address and accomplishments, and you 
give him the mastery of palaces and for- 
tunes where he goes. He has not the 
trouble of earning or owning them ; they 
solicit him to enter and possess. We 
send girls of a timid, retreating disposition 
to the boarding-school, to the riding- 
school, to the ball-room, or v/heresoever 
they can come into acquaintance and 
nearness of leading persons of their own 
sex, where they might learn address, and 
see it near at hand. The power of a woman 
of fashion to lead, and also to daunt and 
repel, derives from their belief that she 
knows resources and behaviours not 
known to them ; but when these have 
mastered her secret, they learn to con- 
front htr, and recover their self-posses- 
sion. 

Every day bears witness to their gentle 
rule. People who would obtrude, now do 
not obtrude. The mediocre circle learns 
to demand that which belongs to a high 
state of nature or of culture. Your man- 
ners are always under examination, and 
by committees little suspected— a police 
in citizens’ clothes— but are awarding or 
denying you very high prizes when you 
least think of it. 

We talk much of utilities — but 'tis our 
manners that associate us. In hours of 
business, we go to him who knows, or has, 
or does this or that which we want, and 
fre do not let our taste or feeling stand in  


OF LIFE. 

the way. But ^lis activity over, we return 
to the indolent Stale, and wish for those we 
can be at ease with ; those who will go 
where we go, whose manners do no. 
offend us, whose social tone chimes with 
ours. When we reflect on their persup.sivo 
and cheering force ; how they recommend, 
prepare, and draw people together ; how, 
in all clubs, manners make the members; 
how manners make the fortune of tho 
ambitious youth ; that, for the most part, 
his manners marry him, and, for the most 
part, he marries manners ; when we thinls 
what keys they are, and to what secrets : 
what high lessons and inspiring tokens of 
character they convey ; and what divina- 
tion is required in us, for the reading of 
this fine telegraph, wo see what range the 
subject has, and what relations to con- 
venience, power, and beauty. 

Their first service is very low— when 
they are the minor morals : but ’tis the 
beginning of civility — to make us, I mean, 
endurable to each other. We prize them 
for their rough-plastic, abstergent force ; 
to get people out of the quadruped state ; 
to get them washed, clothed, and set up 
on end ; to slough their animal husks and 
habits ; compel them to be clean ; overavvo 
their spite and meanness, teach them to 
stifle the base, and choose the generous 
expression, and make them know how 
much happier the generous behaviourg 
are. 

Bad behaviour the laws cannot reach. 
Society is infested with rude, cynical, 
restless and frivolous persons who prey 
upon the rest, and whom, a public 
opinion concentrated into good man- 
ners-forms accepted by the sense of 
all — can reach : the contradictors and 
railers at public and private tables, who 
are like terriers, who conceive it the duty 
of a clog of honour to growl at any passer- 
by, and do the honours of the house by 
barking him out of sight : I have seen men 
who neigh like a horse when you contra- 
diet them, or say something which they 
do not understand : then the overbold, 
who make their own invitation to your 
hearth ; the persevering talker, who gives 
you his society in large, saturating doses ; 
the pitiers of themselves — a perilous 
class ; the frivolous Asmodeus, who relies 
on you to find him in ropes of sand to 
twist ; the monotones ; in short, every 
stripe of absurdity ; these are social in* 
fiictions which the magistrate cannot cure 
or defend you from, and which must be 
intrusted to the restraining force of cus- 
tom, and proverbs, and familiar rules of 



BEHA VIOUR. 


Iwhariour impressed on ^oung people in 
their school-days. 

In the hotels on the banks of the Mis- 
sissippi, they print, or used to prirrt, 
among the rules of the house, that “ no 
gentleman can be permitted to come 
to the public table without his coat 
and in the same country, in the pews 
of the churches, little placards plead 
with the wetshipper against the fury of 
expectoration. Charles Dickens self-sacri- 
ficingly undertook the reformation of our 
American manners in unspeakable par- 
ticulars. I think the lesson was not quito 
lost ; that it held bad manners up, so that 
the churls could see the deformity. ^ Un- 
happily, the book had its own deformities. 
It ought not to need to print in a reading- 
room a caution to strangers not to speak 
loud ; nor to persons who look over fine 
engravings, that they should be handled 
like cobwebs and butterflies’ wings ; nor to 
persons who who look at marble statues, 
that they shall not smite them with canes. 
But, even in the perfect civilization of this 
city, such cautions are not quite needless 
in the Athenoeum and City Library. 

Manners are factitious, and grow out of 
circumstances as well as out of character. 
If you look at the pictures of patri- 
cians and of peasants, of different periods 
and countries, you will see how well 
they match the same classes in our 
towns. The modern aristocrat not only 
is well drawn in Titian’s Venetian doges, 
and in Roman coins and statues, but also 
in the pictures which Commodore Perry 
brought home of dignitaries in Japan. 
Broad lands and great interests not only 
arrive to such heads as can manage them, 
but form manners of power. A keen eye, 
too, will see nice gradations of rank, or see 
In the manners the degree of honiage 
the party is wont to receive. A prince 
who is accustomed every day to be courted 
and deferred to by the highest grandees, 
acquires a corresponding expectation, and 
a becoming mode of receiving and reply- 
ing to this homage. 

There are always exceptional people 
and modes. English grandees affect to 
be farmers. Claverhouse is a fop, and, 
under the finish of dress, and levity of 
behaviour, hides the terror of his war. 
But nature and Destiny are honest, and 
never fail to leave their mark, to hang out 
a sign for each and for every quality. It 
is much to conquer one’s face, and per- 
haps the ambitious youth thinks he has 
got the whole secret when ho has learned, 
that disengaged manners are commanding. 


535 

Don't be deceived by a tacile exterior. 
Tender men sometimes have strong wills. 
We had, in Massachusetts, an old states- 
man, who had sat all his life in courts and 
in chairs of state, without overcoming an 
extreme irritability of face, voice, and 
bearing : when he spoke, his voice would 
not serve him ; it cracked, it broke, it 
wheezed, it piped; little cared he; ho 
knew that it had got to pipe, or wheeze, 
or screech his argument and his indigna- 
tion. When he sat down, after speaking, 
he seemed in a sort of fit, and held on to 
his chair with both hands: but under- 
neath all this irritability was a puissant 
will, firm, and advancing, and a memory 
in which lay in order and method like 
geologic strata every fact of his history, 
and under the control of his will. 

Manners are partly factitious, but, 
mainly, there must be capacity for culture 
in the blood. Else all culture is vain. The 
obstinate prejudice in favour of blood, 
which lies at the base of the feudal and 
monarchical fabrics of the Old World, has 
some reason in common experience. 
Every man— mathematician, artist, sol- 
dier, or merchant — looks with confidence 
for some traits and talents in his own 
child, which he would not dare to presume 
in the child of a stranger. The Orientalists 
are very orthodox on this point. “ Take 
a thorn-bush," said the emir Abdel-Kader, 
“ and sprinkle it for a whole year with 
water; it will yield nothing but thorns. 
Take a date-tree, leave it without culture, 
and it will always produce dates. Nobility 
is the date-tree, and the Arab populace is 
a bush of thorns.” 

A main fact in the history of manners is 
the wonderful expressiveness of the hi> 
rnan body. If it were made of glass, or of 
air, and the thoughts were written on steel 
tablets within, it could not publish more 
truly its meaning than now. Wise men 
read very sharply all your private history 
in your look and gait and behaviour. The 
whole economy of nature is bent on ex- 
pression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. 
Men are like Geneva watches with crystal 
faces which expose the whole movement. 
They carry the liquor of life flowing up 
and down in these beautiful bottles, and 
announcing to the curious how it is with 
them. The face and eyes reveal what tha 
spirit is doing, how old it is, what aims it 
has. The eyes indicate the antiquity of 
the soul, or, through how many forms it 
has already ascended. It almost violates 
the proprieties, if we say above the breath 
here, what the confeswg eyes do not 

2 M 



536 


CONDUCT OF LIFE. 

hesitate to utter to every street passen- times terrific* ^The confession of a low« 
ger. usurping devil is there made, and the ob- 

Man cannot fix his eye on the sun, and server shall seem to feel the stirring of 
BO far seems imperfect. la Siberia, a late owls, and bats, and horned hoofs, where 
traveller found men who could see the sat- he looiced for innocence and simplicity, 
ellites of Jupiter with their unarmed eye. 'Tis remarkable, too, that the spirit that 
In some respects the animals excel us. appears at the windows of the house does 
The birds have a longer sight, beside the at once invest himself in a new form 
advantage by their wings of a higher ob- of his own, to the mind of the beholder, 
servatory. A cow can bid her calf, by The eyes of men converse as much as 
secret signal, probably of the eye, to run their tongues, with the advantage, that the 
away, or to lie down and hide itself. The ocular dialect needs no dictionary, but is 
jockeys say of certain horses, that “ they understood all the world over. When the 
look over the whole ground." The out- eyes say one thing, and the tongue 
door life, and hunting, and labour, give another, a practised man relies on the 
equal vigour to the human eye. A farmer language of the first. If the man is off 
looks out at you as strong as the horse ; his centre, the eyes phow it. You can 
his eye-beam is like the stroke of a staff, read in the eyes of your companion. 
An eye can threaten like a loaded and whether your argument hits him, though 
levelled gun, or can insult like hissing or his tongue will not confess it. There is a 
kicking ; or, in its altered mood, by beams look by which a man shows he is going to 
of kindness, it can make the heart dance say a good thing, and a look when he has 
with joy. said it. Vain and forgotten are all the 

The eye obeys exactly the action of the fine offers and offices of hospitality, if 
mind. When a thought strikes us, the there is no holiday in the eye. How 
eyes fix, and remain gazing at a distance ; many furtive inclinations avowed by thv 
in enumerating the names of persons or eye, though dissembled by the lips I One 
of countries, as France, Germany, Spain, comes away from a company, in which, it 
Turkey, the eyes wink at each new name, may easily happen, he has said nothing, 
There is no nicety of learning sought by and no important remark has been ad- 
the mind, which the eyes do not vie in ac- dressed to him, and yet, if in sympathy 
quiring. " An Artist," said Michel An- with the society, he shall not have a sense 
gelo, " must have his measuring tools not of this fact, such a stream of life has been 
in the hand, but in the eye ; " and there is flowing into him, and out from him, 
no end to the catalogue of its performan- through the eyes. There are eyes, to bo 
ces, whether in indolent vision (that of sure, that give no more admission into 
health and beauty), or, in strained vision the man than blueberries. Others are 
(that of art and labour). liquid and deep— wells that a man might 

Eyes are bold as lions— roving, running, fall into ; others are aggressive and de- 
leaping, here and there, far and near, vouring, seem to call out the police, take 
They speak all languages. They wait for all to much notice, and require crowded 
no introduction ; they are no Englishmen ; Broadways, and the security of millions, 
ask no leave of age or rank ; they respect to protect individuals against them. The 
neither poverty nor riches, neither learn- military eye I meet, now darkly sparkling 
ing nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but under clerical, now under rustic brows, 
intrude, and come again, and go through 'Tis the city of Lacedeemcn ; tis a stack 
and through you, in a moment of time, of bayonets. There are asking eyes, as- 
What inundation of life and thought is serting eyes, prowling eyes ; and eyes full 
discharged from one soul into another, of fate— some of good, and some of sinister 
through them ! The glance is natural omen. The alleged power to charm down 
magic. The mysterious communication insanity, or ferocity in beasts, is a power 
established across a house between two behind the eye. It must be a victory 
entire strangers, moves all the springs of achieved in the will, before it can be sig- 
wonder. The communication by the nified in the eye. ’Tis very certain that 
glance is in the greatest part not subject each man carries in his eye the exact in- 
to the control of the will. It is the bodily dication of his rank in the immense scale 
symbol of identity of nature. We look of men, and we are always learning to 
into the eyes to know if this other form is read it. A complete man should need no 
another self, and the eyes will not lie, but auxiliaries to his personal presence. Who^ 
make a faithful confession what inhabi- ever looked on him would consent to his 
tant is there. The ;reveUtlQim are some- will, being certified that his aims were. 



BEHAVIOUR. 


537 


generous and universal. The reason why 
men do not obey us, is bfecausa they see 
the mud at the bottom of our eye. 

If the organ of sight is such a vehicle 
of power, the other features have their 
own, A man finds room in the few 
square inches of the face for the traits 
of all his ancestors ; for the expression of 
all his history, and his wants. The sculp- 
tor, and Winckelmann, and Lavater, will 
tell you how significant a feature is the 
nose : how its forms express strength or 
weakness of will, and good or bad temper. 
The nose of Julius Caesar, of Dante, and 
of Pitt suggest “ the terrors of the beak." 
What refinement, and what limitations, 
the teeth betray ! " Beware you don’t 

laugh," said the wise mother, " for then 
you show all your faults." 

Balzac left in manuscript a chapter, 
which he called " Thdorie de la ddmarche,** 
in which he says : " The look, the voice, 
the respiration, and the attitude or walk, 
are identical. But, as it has not been 
given to man, the power to stand guard, 
at once over these four different simul- 
taneous expressions of his thought, watch 
that one which speaks out the truth, and 
you will know the whole man." 

Palaces interest us mainly in the ex- 
hibition of manners, which in the idle 
and expensive society dwelling in them 
are raised to a high art. The maxim of 
courts is that manner is power, A calm 
and resolute bearing, a polished speech, 
an embellishment of trifles, and the art of 
hiding all uncomfortable feeling, are es- 
sential to the courtier ; and Saint Simon, 
and Cardinal de Retz, and Roederer, and 
an encyclopaedia of Memoires, will instruct 
you, if you wish, in those potent secrets. 
Thus, it is a point of pride with kings, to 
remember faces and names. It is re- 
ported of one prince, that his head had 
the air of leaning downwards, in order not 
to humble the crowd. There are people 
who come in ever like a child with a piece 
of good news. It was said of the late Lord 
Holland, that he always came down to 
breakfast with the air of a man who had 
just met with some signal good-fortune. 
In ** Notre Dame,'' the grandee took his 
place on the dais, with the look o£ one 
who is thinking of something else. But 
we must not peep and evesdrop at palace- 
doors. 

Fine manners need the support of fine 
manners in others. A scholar may be a 
well-bred man, or ho may not. The en- 
thusiast is introduced to polished scholars 
in society, and is chilled and silenced l?y 


finding himself not in their element. 
They all have somewhat which he has 
not, and, it seems, ought to have. But U 
he finds the scholar apart from his com- 
panions, it is then the enthusiast’s turn, 
and the scholar has no defence, but murt 
deal on his terms. Now they must fight 
the battle out on their private strengths. 
What is the talent of that character so 
common — the successful man of the world 
— in all marts, senates, and drawing- 
rooms ! Manners : manners of power ; 
sense to see his advantage, and manners 
up to it. See him approach his man. He 
knows that troops behave as they are 
handled at first ; that is his cheap secret ; 
just what happens to every two persons 
who meet on any affair, one instantly per- 
ceives that he has the key of the situation, 
that his will comprehends the other’s will, 
as the cat does the mouse ; and he has 
only to use courtesy, and furnish good- 
natured reasons to his victim to cover up 
the chain, lest he be shamed into re- 
sistance. 

The theatre in which this science of 
manners has a formal importance is not 
with us a court, but drcss-circles, wherein, 
after the close of the day’s business, men 
and women meet at leisure, for mutual 
entertainment, in ornamented drawing- 
rooms. Of course, it has every variety of 
attraction and merit: but, to earnest per- 
sons, to youths or maidens who have great 
objects at heart, we cannot extol it highly. 
A well-dressed, talkative company, where 
each is bent to amuse the other — yet the 
high-born Turk who came hither fancied 
that every woman seemed to be suffering 
for a chair ; that all the talkers were 
brained and exhausted by the deoxygen- 
ated air ; it spoiled the best persons ; 
it put all on stilts. Yet here are the secret 
biographies written and read. The aspect 
of that man is repulsive ; I do not wish to 
deal with him. The other is irritable, 
shy, and on his guard. The youth looks 
humble and manly : I choose him. Look 
on this woman. There is not beauty, nor 
brilliant sayings, nor distinguished power 
to serve you ; but all see her gladly ; her 
whole air and impression are healthful. 
Here come the sentimentalists, and tha 
invalids. Here is Elise, who caught cold 
in coming into the world, and has always 
increased it since. Here are creep-mouse 
manners ; and thievish manners. " Look 
at Northcote," said Fuseli ; *’ he looks 
like a rat that has seen a cat." In tha 
shallow company, easily excited, easily 
tired, here is the columnar Bernard : ib» 



53S CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


Alleghanies do not express more repose 
than his behaviour. Here are the sweet 
following eyes of Cecile : it seemed always 
that she demanded the heart Nothing 
can be more excellent in kind than the 
Corinthian grace of Gertrude’s manners, 
and yet Blanche, who has no manners, has 
better manners than she ; for the move- 
ments of Blanche are the sallies of a spirit 
which is suflicient for the moment, and 
she can afford to express every thought 
by instant action. 

Manners have been somewhat cynically 
defined to be a contrivance of wise men 
to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is 
shrewd to detect those who do not belong 
to her train, and seldom wastes her atten- 
tions. Society is very swift in its instincts, 
and, if you do not belong to it, resists and 
sneers at you ; or quietly drops you. The 
first weapon enrages the party attacked ; 
the second is still more effective, but is 
not to be resisted, as the date of the trans- 
action is not easily found. People grow 
up and grow old under this infliction, 
and never suspect the truth, ascribing the 
solitude which acts on them very injuri- 
ously to any cause but the right one. 

The basis of good manners is self-reli- 
ance. Necessity is the law of all who are 
not self-possessed. Those who are not 
self-possessed obtrude and pain us. Some 
men appear to feel that they belong to a 
Pariah caste. They fear to offend, they 
bend and apologize, and walk through life 
with a timid step. As we sometimes 
dream that we exe in a well-dressed com- 
p.any without any coat, so Godfrey acts 
ever as if he suffered from some mortify- 
ing circumstance. The hero should find 
himself at home, wherever he is ; should 
impart comfort by his own security and 
good-nature to all beholders. The hero 
is suffered to be himself. A person of 
strong mind comes to perceive that for him 
an immunity is secured so long as he ren- 
ders to society that service which is native 
and proper to him— an immunity from all 
the observances, yea, and duties, which 
society so tyrannically imposes on the 
rank and file of its members. “ Euripides,” 
says Aspasia, ” has not the fine manners 
of Sophocles: but,” she adds, good-hum- 
ouredly, ” the movers and masters of our 
souls have surely a right to throw out their 
limbs as carelessly as they please, on the 
world that belongs to them, and before the 
creatures they have animated.*’* 

Manners require time, as nothing is 

* Ld^ndor, PericU$ and Aipasia* 


more vulgar thaq haste. F riendship should 
be surrounded with ceremonies and re 
spects, and not crushed into corners: 
Friendship requires more time than poor 
busy men can usually command. Here 
comes to me Roland, with a delicacy of 
sentiment leading and inwrapping him like 
a divine cloud or holy ghost. ’Tis a great 
destitution to both that this should not be 
entertained with large leisures, but con- 
trariwise should be balked by importunate 
affairs. 

But through this lustrous varnish, the 
reality is ever shining. 'Tis hard to keep 
the what from breaking through this 
pretty painting of the how. The core will 
come to the surface. Strong will and keen 
perception overpower old manners, and 
create new ; and the thought of the pre- 
sent moment has a greater value than all 
the past. In persons of character, we do 
not remark ms^nners, because of their in- 
stantaneousness. We are surprised by the 
thing done, out of all power to watch the 
way of it. Yet nothing is more charming 
than to recognize the great style which 
runs through the actions of such. People 
masquerade before us in their fortunes, 
titles, offices, and connections, as academic 
or civil presidents, or senators, or pro- 
fessors, or great lawyers, and impose on 
the frivolous, and a good deal on each 
other, by these fames. At least, it is a 
point of prudent good manners to treat 
these reputations tenderly, as if they were 
merited. But the sad realist knows these 
I fellows at a glance, and they know him ; 
as when in Paris the chief of the police 
enters a ball-room, so many diamonded 
pretenders shrink and make themselves 
as inconspicuous as they can, or give him 
a supplicating look as they pass. ” I had 
received,” said a sibyl — ” I had received at 
birth the fatal gift of penetration ; ” and 
these Cassandras are always born. 

Manners impress as they indicate real 
power. A man who is sure of his point, 
carries a broad and contented expression, 
which everybody reads. And you cannot 
rightly train one to an air and manner; 
except by making him the kind of man of 
whom that manner is the natural expres 
sion. Nature forever puts a premium on 
leality. What is done for effect, is seen 
to be done for effect ; what is done for 
love, is felt to bo done for love. A man 
inspires affection and honour, because he 
was not lying in wait for these. The things 
of a man for which we visit him, wern done 
in the dark and the cold. A little intregity 
is better than any career. So deep are 



BEHA VIOUR. 


tho sources of this BU|face-action. that 
even the size of your companion seems 
to vary with his freedom of thought. Not 
only is he larger, when at ease, and his 
thoughts generous, but everything around 
him becomes variable with expression. 
No carpenter’s rule, no rod and chain, 
will measure the dimensions of any house 
or house-lot: go into the house: if the 
proprietor is constrained and deferring, 
•tis of no importance how large his house, 
how beautiful his grounds— you quickly 
come to the end of all ; but if the man is 
self-possessed, happy, and at home, his 
house is deep-founded, indefinitely large 
and interesting, the roof and dome buoy- 
ant as the sky. Under the humblest roof, 
the commonest person in plain clothes sits 
there massive, cheerful, yet formidable 
like the Egyptian colossi. 

Neither Aristotle, nor Leibnitz, nor 
Junius, nor Champollion has set down the 
grammar-rules of this dialect, older than 
Sanscrit ; but they who cannot yet read 
English, can read this. Men take each 
other’s measure, when they meet for the 
first time — and every time they meet. 
How do they get this rapid knowledge, 
even before they speak, of each other’s , 
power and dispositions ? One would say, | 
that the persuasion of their speech is not 
in what they say — or, that men do not 
convince by their argument — but by their 
personality, by who they are, and what 
they said and did heretofore. A man 
already strong is listened to, and every- 
thing ho says is applauded. Another 
opposes him with sound argument, but 
the argument is scouted, until by and by 
it gets into the mind of some weighty 
person ; then it begins to tell on the com- 
munity. 

Self-reliance is the basis of behaviour, 
as it is the guaranty that the powers are 
not squandered in too much demonstra- 
tion. In this country, where school edu- 
cation is universal, we have a superficial 
culture, and a profusion of reading and 
writing and expression. We parade our 
nobilities in poems and orations, instead 
of working them up into happiness. 
There is a whisper out of the ages to him 
who can understand it — ” whatever is 
known to thyself alone has always very 
great value.” There is some reason to 
believe, that, when a man does not write 
his poetry, it escapes by other vents 
through him, instead of the one vent of 
writing ; clings to his form and manners, 
whilst poets have often nothing poetical 
Ikbout them except their verses, Jacobi 


S30 

said, that “ when a man has fully expressed 
his thought, he has somewhat less pos- 
session of it.” One would say, the rule 
is— What a man is irresistibly urged to 
say, helps him and us. In explaining his 
thought to others, he explains it to him- 
self: but when he opens it for show, it 
corrupts him. 

Society is the stage on which manners 
are shown ; novels are their literature. 
Novels are the journal or record of man- 
ners ; and the new importance of these 
books derives from the fact, that the 
novelist begins to penetrate the surface, 
and treat this part of life more worthily. 
The novels used to be all alike, and had a 
quite vulgar tone. The novels used to 
lead us on to a foolish interest in the for- 
tunes of the boy and girl they described. 
The boy was to be raised from a humble 
to a high position. He was in want of a 
wife and a castle, and the object of the 
story was to supply him with one or both. 
We watched sympathetically, step by step, 
his climbing, until, at last, the point is 
gained, tlie wedding-day is fixed, and we 
follow the gala procession home to the 
bannered portal, when the doors are 
slammed in our face, and the poor reader 
is left outside in the cold, not enriched by 
so much as an idea, or a virtuous im* 
pulse. 

But the victories of character are in- 
stant, and victories for all. Its greatness 
enlarges all. We are fortified by every 
heroic anecdote. The novels are as useful 
as Bibles, if they teach you the secret, 
that the best of life is conversation, and 
the greatest success is confidence, or per- 
fect understanding between sincere people, 
’Tis a French definition of friendship, 
rien que s'entendre, good understanding, 

I The highest compact we can make wi3i 
our fellow, is — ” Let there be truth be- 
twe^in us two forevermore." That is the 
charm in all good novels, as it is the charm 
in all good histories, that the heroes 
mutually understand, from the first, and 
deal loyally, and with a profound trust in 
each other. It is sublime to feel and say 
of another, I need never meet, or speak, 
or write to him : we need not reinforce 
ourselves, or send tokens of remembrance ; 
I rely on him as on myself : if he did tlius 
or thus, I know it was right. 

In all the superior people I have met, 1 
notice directness, truth spoken more truly, 
as if everything of obstruction, of malfor- 
mation had been trained away. Whai 
have they to conceal ? What have they ta 
exhibit ? Between simple and noble pex 



MO CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


tons, there is always a quick intelligence : 
they recognize at sight, and meet on a 
better ground than the talents and skills 
they may chance to possess, namely, on 
iincerity and uprightness. For, it is not 
srhat talents or genius a man has, but how 
he is to his talents, that constitutes friend- 
ship and character. The man that stands 
by himself, the universe stands by him 
blIso. It is related of the monk Basle, 
that, being excommunicated by the Pope, 
he was, at his death, sent in charge of an 
angel to find a fit place of suffering in hell ; 
but, such was the eloquence and good- 
humour of the monk, that, wherever he 
went he was received gladly, and civilly 
treated, even by the most uncivil angels : 
and, when he came to discourse with 
them, instead of contradicting or forcing 
him, they took his part, and adopted his 
manners: and even good angels came 
from far, to see him, and take up their 
abode with him. The angel that was sent 
to find a place of torment for him at- 
tempted to remove him to a worse pit, 
but with no better success ; for such was 
the contented spirit of the monk, that he 
found something to praise in every place 
and company, though in hell, and made a 
kind of heaven of it. At last the escorting 
angel returned with his prisoner to them 
that sent him, saying, that no phlegethon 
could be found that would burn him ; for 
that, in whatever condition, Basle re- 
mained incorrigibly Basle. The legend 
says, his sentence was remitted, and he 
was allowed to go into heaven, and was 
canonized as a saint. 

There is a stroke of magnanimity in the 
correspondence of Bonaparte with his 
brother Joseph, when the latter was King 
of Spain, and complained that he missed 
in Napoleon’s letters the affectionate tone 
which had marked their childish corres- 
pondence. "lam sorry," replies Napoleon, 
"you think you shall find your brother 
again only in the Elysian Fields. It is 
natural, that at forty, he should not feel 
towards you as he did at twelve. But his 
feelings towards you have greater truth 
and strength. His friendship has the 
features of his mind." 

How much we forgive in those who yield 
ns the rare spectacle of heroic manners! 
We will pardon them the want of books, 
of arts, and even of the gentler virtues. 
How tenaciously we remember them! 
Here is a lesson which I brought along 
with me in boyhood from the Latin 
School, and which ranks with the best of 
anecdotes. Marcus Scaurus was 


accused by Quiiffus Vanus Hispanus, that 
he had excited' the allies to take arms 
against the Republic. But he, full of 
firmness and gravity, defended himself in 
this manner: " Quintus Varius Hispaaus 
alleges that Marcus Scaurus, President of 
the Senate, excited the allies to arras : 
Marcus Scaurus, President of the Senate, 
denies it. There is no witness. Which 
do you believe, Romans ? " “ Utri cre- 
ditis, Quirites ? " When he had said these 
words, he was absolved by the assembly 
of the people. 

I have seen manners that make a 
similar impression with personal beauty ; 
that give the like exhilaration, and refine 
ns like that ; and, in memorable expe- 
riences, they are suddenly better than 
beauty, and make that superfluous and 
ugly. But they must be marked by fine 
perception, the acquaintance with real 
beauty. They must always show self- 
control : you shall not be facile, apolo- 
getic, or leaky, but king over your word ; 
and every gesture and action shall indicate 
power at rest. Then they must be in- 
spired by the good heart. There is no 
beautifier of complexion, or form, or be- 
haviour, like the wish to scatter joy and 
not pain around us. 'Tis good to give a 
stranger a meal, or a night’s lodging. 
'Tis better to be hospitable to his good 
meaning and thought, and give courage to 
a companion. We must be as courteous 
to a man as we are to a picture, which we 
are willing to give the advantage of a good 
light. Special precepts are not to be 
thought of: the talent of well-doing con- 
tains them all, Every hour will show a 
duty as paramount as that of my whim 
just now; and yet I will write it — that 
there is one topic peremptorily forbidden 
to all well-bred, to all rational mortals, 
namely, their distempers. If you have 
not slept, or if you have slept, or if you 
have headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or 
thunder-stroke, I beseech you, by all 
angels, to hold your peace, and not pollute 
the morning, to which all the housemates 
bring serene and pleasant thoughts, by 
corruption and groans. Come out of the 
azure. Love the day. Do not leave the 
sky out of your landscape. The oldest 
and the most deserving person should 
come very modestly into any newly awaked 
company, respecting the divine communi- 
cations, out of which all must be pre- 
sumed to have newly come. An old man 
who added an elevating culture to a large 
experience of Ufei said to me : " When 
you come into the room, I think I will 



WORSHIP. 


study how to make humr^ity beautiful to 
you.” " 

As respects the delicate question of 
culture, I do not think that any other than 
negative rules can be laid down. For 
positive rules, for suggestion, Nature 
alone inspires it. Who dare assume to 
guide a youth, a maid, to perfect manners ? 
the golden mean is so delicate, difficult — 
say frankly, unattainable. What finest 
hands would not be clumsy to sketch the 
genial precepts of the young girl’s de- 
meanour ? The chances seem infinite 


S4I 

against success ; and yet success is con- 
tinually attained. There must not be 
secondariness, and ’tis a thousand to one 
that her air and manner will at once be- 
tray that she is not primary, but that there 
is some other one or many of her class, 
to whom she habitually postpones herself. 
But Nature lifts her easily, and without 
knowing it, over these impossibilities, and 
we are continually surprised with graces 
and felicities not only unteachable^ but 
undescribable. 


WORSHIP. 


This is he, who, felled by foes, 

Sprung harmless up, refreshed by blows : 
He to captivity was sold, 

But him no prison-bars would hold : 
Though they sealed him in a rock, 
Mountain chains he can unlock: 

Thrown to lions for their meat, 

The crouching lion kissed his feet : 

Bound to the stake, no flames appalled. 

But arched o’er him an honouring vault. 
This is he men miscall Fate, 

Threading dark ways, arriving late, 

But ever coming in time to crown 

The truth, and hurl wrongdoers down. { 

He is the oldest, and best known, 

More near than aught thou caU’stthy own, 
Yet, greeted in another’s eyes, 

Disconcerts with glad surprise. 

This is Jove, who, deaf to prayers, 

Floods with blessings unawares. 

Draw, it thou canst, the mystic line. 
Severing rightly bis from thine, 

Which is human, which divine. 

SOMB of my friends have complained, 
when the preceding papers were read, 
that we discussed Fate, Power, and Wealth, 
on too low a platform ; gave too much line 
to the evil spirit of the times ; too many 
cakes to Cerberus ; that we ran Cudworth’s 
risk of making, by excess of candour, the 
argument of atheism so strong, that he 
could not answer it. I have no fears of 
being forced in my own despite to play, as 
we say, the devil’s attorney. I have no 
infirmity of faith; no belief that it is of 
much importance what I or any man may 
say ; I am sure that a certain truth will be 
said through me, though I should be dumb, 
or though I should try to say the reverse. 
Nor do I fear scepticism for any good soul. 
A just thinkir will fa;l swing to his 
scepticism, 1 dip my pen in the blackest 
ink, because I am not afraid of falling into 
my inkpot 1 have no sympathy with a 


poor man I knew, who, when suicides 
abounded, told me he dared not look at 
his razor. We are of different opinions at 
different hours, but we always may be 
said to be at heart on the side of truth. 

I see not why we should give ourselves 
such sanctified airs. If the Divine Provi- 
dence has hid from men neither disease, 
nor deformity, nor corrupt society, but has 
stated itself out in passions, in war, in 
trade, in the love of power and pleasure, 
in hunger and need, in tyrannies, litera- 
tures, and arts, let us not be so nice that 
we cannot write these facts down coarsely 
as they stand, or doubt but there is a 
counter-statement as ponderous, which we 
can arrive at, and which, being put, will 
make all square. The solar system has 
no anxiety about its reputation, and 
the credit of truth and honesty is as safe ; 
nor have I any fear that a sceptical bias 
can be given by leaning hard on the sides 
of fate, of practical power, or of trade, 
which the doctrine of Faith cannot down- 
weigh. The strength of that principle is 
not measured in ounces and pounds ; it 
tyrannizes at the centre of Nature. We 
may well givesceptism as much line as we 
can. The spirit will return and fill us. It 
drives the drivers. It counterbalances 
any accumulations of power, 

“ Heaven kindly gave our blood a moral flow." 

We are born loyal. The whole creation it 
made of hooks and eyes, of bitumen, of 
sticking-plaster, and whether your com 
munity is made in Jerusalem or in Cali- 
fornia, of saints or of wreckers, it coheres 
hi a perfect ball. Men as naturally make 
a state, or a church, as caterpillars a web. 
If they were more refined, it would be less 
formal, it would be nervous like that of 



545 


CONDUCT OF LIFR. 


the Shakers, who, from long habit of think- 
ing and feeling together, it is said, are 
affected in the same way, at the same time, 
to work and to play, and as they go with 
perfect sympathy to their tasks in the field 
or shop, so are they inclined for a ride or 
a journey at the same instant, and the 
horses come up with the family carriage 
unbespoken to the door. 

We are born believing. A man bears 
beliefs, as a tree bears apples. A self- 
poise belongs to every particle ; and a rec- 
titude to every mind, and is the Nemesis 
and protector of every society. I and my 
neighbours have been bred in the notion, 
that, unless we came soon to some good 
church — Calvinism, or Behmenism, or 
Romanism, or Mormonism — there would 
be a universal thaw and dissolution. No 
Isaiah or Jeremy has arrived. Nothing 
can exceed the anarchy that has followed 
in our skies. The stern old faiths have all j 
pulverized. ’Tis a whole population of j 
gentleman and ladies out in search of 
religions. ’Tis as flat anarchy in our 
ecclesiastic roalms,!as that which existed in 
Massachusetts, in the Revolution, or which 
prevails now on the slope of the Rocky 
Mountains or Pike's Peak. Yet we may shift 
[olive. Men are loyal. Nature has self-poise 
in all her works; certain proportions in 
which oxygen and azote combine, and, not 
less a harmony in faculties, a fitness in 
the spring and the regulator. 

The decline of the influence of Calvin, 
or Fenelon, or Wesley, or Channing, need 
give us no uneasiness. The builder of 
heaven has not so ill constructed bis crea- 
ture as that the religion, that is, the public 
nature, should fall out : the public 
and the private element, like north and 
south, like inside and outside, like centri- 
fugal and centripetal, adhere to every soul, 
and cannot be subdued, except the soul is 
dissipated. God builds his temple in the 
heart on the ruins of churches and religions. 

In the last chapters, we treated some 
particulars of the question of culture. 
Bui the whole state of man is a state of 
culture ; and its flowering and completion 
maybe described as Religion, or Worship. 
There is always some religion, some hope 
and fear extended into the invisible — from 
the blind boding which nails a horseshoe 
to the master the threshold, up to the song 
of the Elders in the Apocalypse. But the 
religion cannot rise above the state of 
the votary. Heaven always bears some 
proportion to earth. The god of the canni- 
bals will be a cannibal, of the crusaders 
a crusader, and of the merchants a mer- 


chant, In all a^3, s6ulS out 6f tiMe, 
traordinary, prophetic, are born, who are 
rather related to the system of the world, 
than to their particular age and locality. 
These announce absolute truths, which, 
with whatever reverence received, are 
speedily dragged down into a savage in- 
terpretation. The interior tribes of our 
Indians, and some of the Pacific-Islanders, 
flog their gods, when things take an un- 
favourable turn. The Greek poets did 
not hesitate to let loose their petulent 
wit on their deities also. Laomedon, in 
his anger at Neptune and Apollo, who 
had built Troy for him, and demanded 
their price, does not hesitate to menace 
them that he will cut their ears off.* 
Among our Norse forefathers. King Olaf s 
mode of converting Eyvind to Christianity 
was to put a pan of glowing coals on his 
belly, which burst asunder. “ Wilt thou 
now, Eyvind, believe in Christ ? ” asks 
Olaf, in excellent faith. Another argu- 
ment was an adder put into the mouth of 
the reluctant disciple Rand, who refused 
to believe. 

Christianity, in the romantic ages, sig- 
nified European culture— the grafted or 
meliorated tree in a crab forest, And to 
marry a pagan wife or husband was to 
marry Beast, and voluntarily to take a 
step backwards towards the baboon. 

** Hengist had verament, 

A daughter both fair and gentf 
But she was heathen Sarazine, 

And Vortigern for love fine 
Her took to fere and to wife, 

And was cursed in all his life ; 

For he let Christian wed heathen, 

And mixed our bloodas flesh and mathen.‘'t 

What Gothic mixtures the Christian creed 
drew from the pagan sources, Richard of 
Devizes’s chronicle of Richard I.’s crusade 
in the twelfth century may show. King 
Richard taunts God with forsaking him : 
“ O fie 1 O how unwilling should I be to 
forsake thee in so forlorn and dreadful a 
position, were I thy lord and advocate, as 
thou art mine. In sooth, my standards 
I will in future bo despised, not through my 
fault, but through thine ; in sooth, not 
through any cowardice of my warfare, art 
thou thyself, my king and my God, con- 
quered this day, and not Richard thy 
vassal.” The religion of the early English 
oets is annomalous, so devout and so 
lasphemous, in the same breath. Sucb 
is Chaucer’s extraordinary confusion \ 
heaven and earth in the picture of Dido. 

* Iliad, Book 1, 455* t Moths or worms* 



WORSHIP, 


l5he was so fair, 

Si> young, io liiftty, with her eycn glad, 

That if that God that heaven and earthe made 
Would have a love for beauty and goodness, 
And womanhede, truth, and seemliness, 

Whom should he loven but this lady sweet? 
There n’ is no woman to him half so meet.'* 

With these grossnesses, we compla- 
cently compare our own taste and de- 
corum. We think and speak with more 
temperance and gradation — but is not 
indifferentism as bad as superstition ? 

We live in a transition period, when the 
old faiths which comforted nations, and 
not only so, but made nations, seem to 
have spent their force. I do not find the 
religions of men at this moment very 
creditable to them, but either childish 
and insignificant, or unmanly and effemi- 
nating. The fatal trait is the divorce 
between religion and morality. Here are 
know-nothing religions, or churches that , 
prescribe intellect ; scortatory religions ; 
slave-holding and slave-trading religions ; 
and, even in the decent populations, 
idolatries wherein the whiteness of the 
ritual covers scarlet indulgence, The lover 
of the old religion complains that our 
contemporaries, scholars as well as mer- 
chants, succumb to a great despair — have 
corrupted into a timorous conservatism, 
and believe in nothing. In our large cities, 
the population is godless, materialized — 
no bond, no fellow-feeling, no enthusiasm. 
These are not men, but hungers, thirsts, 
fevers, and appetites walking. How is it 
people manage to live on— so aimless as 
they arc ? After their peppercorn aims 
are gained, it seems as if the lime in their 
bones alone held them together, and not 
any worthy purpose. There is no faith in 
the intellectual, none in the moral uni- 
verse. There is faith in chemistry, in 
meat, and wine, in wealth, in machinery, | 
in the steam-engine, galvanic battery, 
turbine wheels, sewing machines, and in 
public opinion, but not in divine causes, 
A silent revolution has loosed the tension 
of the old religious sects, and, in place of 
the gravity and permanence of those so- 
cieties of opinion, they run into freak and 
extravagance. In creeds never was such 
levity ; witness the heathenisms in Chris- 
tianity, the periodic “ revivals,” the 
Millennium mathematics, the peacock 
ritualism, the retrogression to Popery, the 
maundering of Mormons, the squalor of 
Mesmerism, the deliration of rappings, 
the rat and mouse revelation, thumps in 
table-drawers, and black art. The archi- 
tectttxf, the music, the prayer, partake of 


543 

the madness : the arts sink into shift and 
make-believe. Not knowing what to do, 
we ape our ancestors ; the churches stag- 
ger backward to the mummeries of the 
Dark Ages. By the irresistible maturing 
of the general mind, the Christian tradi- 
tions have lost their hold. The dogma of 
the mystic offices of Christ being dropped, 
and he standing on his genius as a moral 
teacher, ’tis impossible to maintain the 
old emphasis of his personality ; and it 
recedes, as all person’s must, before the 
sublimity of the moral laws, From this 
change, and in the momentary absence of 
any religious genius that could offset the 
immense material activity, there is a 
feeling that religion is gone. When Paul 
Leroux offered his article Dieu ” to the 
conductor of a leading French journal, ha 
replied, ‘‘Z.a question, de Dieu manque 
d'actualiU'' In Italy, Mr. Gladstone said 
of the late King of Naples, ” It has been 
a proverb, tliat he has erected the negation 
of God into a system of government.” In 
this country, the like stupefaction was in 
the air, and the phrase ‘‘higher law '* be- 
came a political jibe. What proof of infi- 
delity, like the toleration and propagan- 
dism of slavery ? What, like the direction 
of education ? What, like the facility ol 
conversion ? V/hat, like the externality of 
churches that once sucked the roots of 
right and wrong, and now have perished 
away till they are a speck of whitewash 
on the wall ? What proof of scepticism 
like the base rate at which the highest 
mental and moral gifts are held ? Let a 
man attain the highest and broadest 
culture that any American has possessed, 
then let him die by sea-storm, railroad 
collision, or other accident, and all 
America will acquiesce that the best 
thing has happened to him ; that, after 
the education has gone far, such is the ex- 
pensiveness of America, that the best use 
to put a fine person to, is, to drown him 
to save his board. 

Another scar of this scepticism is the 
distrust in human virtue. It is believed 
by well-dressed proprietors that there is 
no more virtue than they possess ; that 
the solid portion of society exist for the 
arts of comfort: that life is an affair to 
put somewhat between the upper and 
lower mandibles. How prompt the sug- 
gestion of a low motive I Certain patriots 
in England devoted themselves for years 
to creating a public opinion that should 
break down the corn-laws and establish 
free trade. *' Well,” says the man in the 
street, ” Cobden got a stipend out of it” 



544 


CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


Kossuth fled nither across the ocean to You say, there ,^0 no religion now. ''ll* 
try if he could rouse the New World to like saying in rainy weather, there is no 
a sympathy with European liberty, ** Ay,” sun, when at that moment we are witness- 
says New York, ” he made a handsome ing one of his superlative effects. The 
thing of it, enough to make him comfort- religion of the cultivated class now, to be 
able for life.” sure, consists in an avoidance of acts and 

See what allowance vice finds in the engagements which it was once their 
respectable and well-conditioned class. If religion to assume. But this avoidance 
a pickpocket intrude into the society of will yield spontaneous forms in their due 
gentlemen, they exert what moral force hour. There is a principle which is the 
they have, and he finds himself uncom- basis of things, which all speech aims to 
fortabie, and glad to get away. But if an say, and all action to evolve, a simple, 
adventurer go through all the forms, pro- quiet, undescribed, undescribable pres- 
cure himself to be elected to a post ence, dwelling very peaceably in us, our 
of trust, as of senator, or president — rightful lord ; we are not to do, but to let 
though by the same arts as we detest in do ; not to work, but to be worked upon ; 
the house-thief — the same gentlemen who and to this homage there is a consent of 
agree to discountenance the private rogue, all thoughtful and just men in all ages and 
will be forward to show civilities and conditions. To this sentiment belong 
marks of respect to the public one : and vast and sudden enlargements of power, 
no amount of evidence of his crimes will 'Tis remarkable that our faith in ecstasy 
prevent them giving him ovations, compli- consists with total inexperience of it. It 
mentary dinners, opening their own houses is the order of the world to educate with 
to him, and priding themselves on his ac- accuracy the senses and the understand- 
quaintance. We were not deceived by ing ; and the enginery at work to draw out 
the professions of the private adventurer these powers in priority, no doubt, has its 
— the louder he talked of his honour, the office. But we are never without a hint 
faster we counted our spoons ; but we that these powers are mediate and servile, 
appeal to the sanctified preamble of the ar»d ^hat we are one day to deal with real 
messages and proclamations of the public being— essences with essences, Even the 
sinner, as the proof of sincerity. It must fury of material activity has some results 
be that they who pay this homage have friendly to moral health. The energetic 
said to themselves, On the whole, we don’t action of the times develops individualism, 
know about this that you call honesty; a and the religious appear isolated. I esteem 
bird in the hand is better, this a step in the right direction. Heaven 

Even well-disposed, good sort of people deals with us on no representative sys- 
are touched with the same infidelity, and tern. Souls are not saved in bundles, 
for brave, straightforv’ard action, use half- The Spirit saith to the man, ” How is it 
measures and compromises. Forgetful with thee ? thee personally ? is it well ? is 
that a little meaure is a great error, for- it ill ? ” For a great nature, it is a happi- 
getful that a wise mechanic uses a sharp ness to escape a religious training — relig- 
tool, they go on choosing the dead men of ion of character is so apt to be invaded, 
routine. But the official men can in no Religion must always be a crab fruit: it 
wise help you in any question of to-day, cannot be grafted and keep its wild beauty, 
they deriving entirely from the old dead “ I have seen,” said a traveller who had 
things. Only those can help in counsel or known the extremes of society — ” I have 
conduct who did not make a party pledge seen human nature in all its forms, it is 
to defend this or that, but who were everywhere the same, but the wilder it is, 
appointed by God Almighty, before they the more virtuous.” 
came into the world, to stand for this Wo say, the old forms of religion de- 
which they uphold. cay, and that a scepticism devastate* 

It has been charged that a want of the community. I do not think it can be 
sincerity in the leading men is a vic*^' cured or stayed by any modification of 
general throughout American society, theologic creeds, much less by theologic 
Bat the multitude of the sick shall not discipline. The cure for false theology is 
make us deny the existence of health. In mother-wit. Forget your books and tra- 
tpite of our imbecility and terrors, and ditions, and obey your moral perception* 
'* uiniversal decay of religion,” {&c., &c., at this hour. That which is signified by 
the moral sense reappears to-day with the the words ” moral ** and '* spiritual ” is a 
same morning newness that has been from lasting essence, and, with whatever illu- 
of old the fountain of beauty and strength, sions we have loaded them, will certainlv 



WORSHIP. 


bring back the words, after age, to 
their ancient meaning. I know no words 
that mean so much. In our definitions, 
we grope after the spiritual by describing 
it as invisible. The true meaning of 
ipi^itual is real; that law which executes 
itself, which works without means, and 
which cannot be conceived as not existing. 
Men talk of “mere morality" — which is 
much as if one should say, ** Poor God, 
with nobody to help him. I find the 
omnipresence and the almightiness in the 
reaction of every atom in Nature. I can 
best indicate by examples those reactions 
by which every part of Nature replies to 
the purpose of the actor — beneficently to 
the good, penally to the bad. Let us re- 
place sentimentalism by realism, and 
dare to uncover those simple and terrible 
laws, which, be they seen or unseen, 
pervade and govern. 

Every man takes care that his neigh- 
bour shall not cheat him. But a day 
comes when he begins to care that he do 
not cheat his neighbour. Then all goes 
well. He has changed his market-cart 
into a chariot of the sun. What a day 
dawns, when we have taken to heart the 
doctrine of faith 1 to prefer, as a better 
investment, being to doing; being to 
Ifeeing; logic to rhythm and to display; 
the year to the day ; the life to the year ; 
character to performance ; and have come 
to know that justice will be done us ; and, 
if our genius is slow, the term will be long. 

’Tis certain that worship stands in some 
commanding relation to the health of man, 
and to his highest powers, so as to be, in 
some manner, the source of intellect. All 
the great ages have been ages of belief. I 
mean, when there was any extraordinary 
power of performance, when great national 
movements began, when arts appeared, 
when heroes existed, when poems were 
made, the human soul was in earnest, 
and had fixed its thoughts on spiritual 
verities, with as strict a grasp as that of 
fhe hands on the sword, or the pencil, or 
the trowel. It is true that genius takes 
its rise out of the mountains of rectitude ; 
that all beauty and power which men 
covet are somehow born out of that Alpine 
district ; that any extraordinary degree of 
beauty in man or woman involves a moral 
charm. Thus, I think, we very slowly 
admit in another man a higher degree of 
moral sentiment than our ovm — a finer 
conscience, more impressionable, or, 
which marks minuter degrees; an ear 
to hear acuter notes of right and wrong, 
than wo^can. 1 think we listen suspiciously 


545 

and very slowly to any evidence to that 
point. But, once satisfied of such supe» 
riority, we set no limit to our expectation 
of his genius. For such persons are nearer 
to the secret of God than others are 
bathed by sweeter waters ; they near 
notices, they see visions, where others are 
vacant. We believe that holiness confers 
a certain insight, because not by our 
private, but by our public force, can we 
share and know the nature of things. 

There is an intimate interdependence 
of intellect and morals. Given the equality 
of two intellects — which will form the most 
reliable judgments, the good, or the bad 
hearted ? “ The heart has its arguments, 
with which the understanding is not ac- 
quainted." For the heart is at once aware 
of the state of health or disease, which is 
the controlling state, that is, of sanity or 
of insanity, prior, of course, to all ques- 
tion of the ingenuity of arguments, the 
amount of facts, or the elegance of 
rhetoric. So intimate is this alliance of 
mind and heart, that talent uniformly 
sinks with character. The bias of errors 
of principle carries away men into perilous 
courses, as soon as their will does not 
control their passion or talent. Hence 
the extraordinary blunders, and final 
wrong head, into which men spoiled by 
ambition usually fall. Hence the remedy 
for all blunders, the cure of blindness, 
the cure of crime, is love, ‘ ' As much 
love, so much mind," said the Latin pro- 
verb. The superiority that has no su- 
perior; the redeemer and instructor of 
souls, as it is their primal essence, is 
love. 

The moral must be the measure of 
health. If your eye is on the eternal, 
your intellect will grow, and your opinions 
and actions will have a beauty which no 
learning or combined advantages of other 
men can rival. The moment of your loss 
of faith, and acceptance of the lucrative 
standard, will be marked in the pause, or 
solstice of genius, the sequent retrogres- 
sion, and the inevitable loss of attraction 
to other minds. The vulgar are sensible 
of the change in you, and of your descent, 
though they clap you on the back, and 
congratulate you on your increased com* 
mon sense. 

Our recent culture has been in natural 
science. We have learned the manners 
of the sun and of the moon, of the rivers 
and the rains, of the mineral artd 
mental kingdoms, of plants and animals* 
Man has learned to weigh the sun, and ita 
weight neither loses nor gains. The path 



S 46 conduct 

of A Star, the moment of an eclipse, can 
be determined to the fraction of a second. 
Well, to him the book of history, the book 
of love, the lures of passion, and the com- 
mandments of duty are opened ; and the 
next lesson taught, is, the continuation of 
the inflexible law of matter into the sub- 
tile kingdom of will, and of thought ; that, 
if, in sidereal ages, gravity and projection 
keep their craft, and the ball never loses 
its way in its wild path through space — a 
secreter gravitation, a secreter projection, 
rule not less tyrannically in human his- 
tory, and keep the balance of power from 
age to age unbroken. For, though the 
new element of freedom and an individual 
has been admitted, yet the primordial 
atoms are prefigured and predetermined 
to moral issues, are in search of justice, 
and ultimate right is done. Religion or 
worship is the attitude of those who see 
this unity, intimacy, and sincerity ; who 
see that, against all appearances, the 
nature of things works for truth and right 
for ever. 

’Tis a short sight to limit our faith in 
laws to those of gravity, of chemistry, of 
botany, and so north. Those laws do not 
stop where our eyes lose them, but push 
the same geometry and chemistry up into 
the invisible plane of social and rational 
life, so that, look where we will, in a boy’s 
game, or in the strifes of races, a perfect 
reaction, a perpetual judgment keeps 
watch and ward. And this appears in a 
class of facts which concerns all men, 
within and above their creeds. 

Shallow men believe in luck, believe in 
circumstances: It was somebody’s name, 
or he happened to be there at the time, 
or, or it was so then, and another day it 
would have been otherwise. Strong men 
believe in cause and effect. The man was 
born to do it, and his father was born to 
be tlie father of him and of this deed, 
and, by looking narrowly, you shall see 
there was no luck in the matter, but it 
was all a problem in arithmetic, or an 
experiment in chemistry. The curve of 
the flight of the moth is preordained, and 
all things go by number, rule, and weight. 

Scepticism is unbelief in cause and 
effect. A man does not see, that, as he 
eats, so he thinks : as he deals, so he is, 
and so he appears ; he does not see, that 
his son is the son of his thoughts and of 
his actions ; that fortunes are not excep- 
tions but fruits ; that relation and connec- 
tion are not somewhere and sometimes, 
but everywhere and always; no miscel- 
lany, no exemption, no anomaly— but 


OF LIFE. 

I method, and {in even wob ; and what 
comes out, that was put in. As ♦ve are. 
so we do ; and as wo do, so is it done to 
us ; we are the builders of our fortunes ; 
cant and lying and the attempt to secure 
a good which does not belong to us, are, 
once for all, balked and vain. But, in the 
human mind, this tie of faith is made 
alive. The law is the basis of the human 
mind. In us, it is inspiration ; out there 
in Nature, we see its fatal strength. We 
call it the moral sentiment. 

We owe to the Hindoo Scriptures a de- 
finition of Law, which compares well with 
any in our Western books. " Law it is, 
which is without name, or colour, or hands, 
or feet ; which is smallest of the least, and 
largest of the large ; all, and knowing all 
things; which hears without ears, sees 
without eyes, moves without feet, and 
seizes without hand*.” 

If any reader tax me with using vagsae 
and traditional phrases, let me suggest to 
him, by a few examples, what kind of a 
trust this is, and how real. Let mo show 
him that the dice are loaded; that the 
colour* are fast, because they are the native 
colours of the fleece ; that the globe is a 
battery, because every atom is a magnet ; 
and that the police and sincerity of the 
Universe are secured by God’s delegating 
his divinity to every particle ; that there is 
no room for hypocrisy, no margin for 
choice. 

The countryman leaving his native vil- 
lage, for the first time, and going abroad, 
finds all his habits broken up. In a new 
nation and language, his sect, as Quaker, 
or Lutheran, is lost. What ! it is not then 
necessary to the order and existence of 
society ? He misses this, and the com- 
manding eye of his neighbourhood, which 
held him to decorum. This is the peril of 
New York, of New Orleans, of London, of 
Paris, to young men. But after a little 
experience, he makes the discovery that 
there are no large cities — none largo 
enough to hide in ; that the censors of 
action are as numerous and as near in 
Paris, as in Littleton or Portland ; that the 
gossip is as prompt and vengeful. There 
is no concealment, and, for each offence, a 
several vengeance ; that, reaction, or 
nothing for nothing, or, things are as 
broad as they are long, is not a rule for 
Littleton or Portland, but for the Uni- 
verse. 

We cannot spare the coarsest muni- 
ment of virtue. We are disgusted by gos- 
sip ; yet it is of importance to keep tho 
angels in their proprieties. The sm^les^ 



WORSHIP. 


fly will draw blood, and gossip is a weapon 
impossible to exclude froli the privatest, 
highest, selectest. Nature created a police 
of many ranks. God has delegated him- 
self to a million deputies. From these 
low external penalties, the scale ascends. 
Next come the resentments, the fears, 
which injustice calls out; then, the false 
relations in which the offender is put to ' 
other men ; and the reaction of his fault 
on himself, in the solitude and devastation 
of his mind. 

You cannot hide any secret. If the 
artist succour his flagging spirits by opium 
or wine, his work will characterize itself 
as the effect of opium or wine. If you 
make a picture or a statue, it sets the be- 
holder in that state of mind you had, when 
you made it, If you spend for show, on 
building, or gardening, or on pictures, or 
on equipages, it will so appear. We are 
all physiognomists and penctrators of 
character, and things themselves are de- 
tective. If you follow the suburban fashion 
in building a sumptuous-looking house 
for a little money, it will appear to all eyes 
as a cheap dear house. There is no 
privacy that cannot be penetrated. No 
secret can be kept in the civilized world. 
Society is a masked ball, where every one 
hides his real character, and reveals it by 
hiding. If a man wish to conceal any- 
thing he carries, those whom he meets 
know that he conceals somewhat, and 
usually know what he conceals. Is it 
otherwise if there be some belief or some 
purpose he would bury in his breast ? 
’Tis as hard to hide as fire. He is a strong 
man who can hold down his opinion. A 
man cannot utter two or three sentences, 
without disclosing to intelligent ears pre- 
cisely where he stands in life and thought, 
namely, [whether in the kingdom of the 
senses and the understanding, or, in that 
of ideas and imagination, in the realm of 
intuitions and duty. People seem not to 
see that their opinion of the world is also 
a confession of character. We can only 
see what we are, and if we misbehave we 
suspect others. The fame of Shakespeare 
or of Voltaire, of Thomas i Kempis, or of 
Bonaparte, characterizes those who give 
it. As gaslight is found to be the best 
nocturnal police, so the universe protects 
itself by pitiless publicity. 

Each must bo armed— not necessarily 
with musket and pike. Happy, if, seeing 
these, he can feel that he has better mus- 
kets and pikes in his energy and con- 
Btancy. To every creature is his own 
weapon j however skilfully concealed from 


547 

himself, a good while. His work ia sword 
and shield. Let him accuse none, let him 
injure none. The way to mend the bad 
world is to create the right world. Hera 
is a low political economy plotting to cut 
the throat of foreign competition, and es- 
tablish our own ; excluding others by 
force, or making war on them ; or, by 
cunning tariffs, giving preference to worse 
wares of ours. But the real and lasting 
victories are those of peace, and not of 
war. The way to conquer the foreign 
artisan, is not to kill him, but to beat his 
work. And the Crystal Palaces and World 
Fairs, with their committees and prizes on 
all kinds of industry, are the result of this 
feeling. The American workman who 
strikes ten blows with his hammer whilst 
the foreign workman only strikes one, iei 
as really vanquishing that foreigner, as if 
the blows were aimed at and told on his 
person. I look on that man as happy, 
who, when there is question of success, 
looks into his work for a reply, not into 
the market, not into opinion, not into pat- 
ronage. In every variety of human em- 
ployment, in the mechanical and in tho 
fine arts, in navigation, in farming, in 
legislating, there are among the numbers 
who do their task perfunctorily, as we say, 
or just to pass, and as badly as they dare 
— there are the working men, on whom the 
burden of the business falls — those who 
love work, and love to see it rightly done, 
who finish their task for its own sake ; and 
the state and the world is happy, that has 
the most of such finishers. The world 
will always do justice at last to such finish- 
ers: it cannot otherwise. He who has 
acquired the ability may wait securely the 
occasion of making it felt and appreciated, 
and know that it will not loiter. Men talk 
as if victory were something fortunate. 
Work is victory, Wherever work is done, 
victory is obtained. There is no chance, 
j and no blanks. You want but one verdict : 
I if you have your own, you are secure of 
the rest. And yet, if witnesses are wanted, 
witnesses are near. There was never a 
man born so wise or good, but one or 
more companions came into the world 
with him, who delight in his faculty and 
report it. I cannot see without awe, that 
no man thinks alone, and no man acts 
alone, but the divine assessors who came 
up with him into life — now under one dis- 
guise, now under another — like a police ia 
citizens’ clothes, walk with him, step for 
step, through the kingdom of time. 

This reaction, this sincerity, is the pro- 
perty of all things. To make our word or 



CONDUCT OP LIPB. 


548 


act sublime, we must make it real. It is I 
our system that counts, not the single 
word or unsupported action. Use what' 
language you will, you can never say any- 
thing but what you are. What I am, and 
what I think, is conveyed to you, in spite 
of my efforts to hold it back. What I am 
has been secretly conveyed from me to 
another, whilst I was vainly making up my 
mind to tell him it. He has heard from 
me what 1 never spoka. 

As men get on in life, they acquire a love 
for sincerity, and somewhat less solicitude 
to be lulled or amused. In the progress of 
the character, there is an increasing faith 
In the moral sentiment, and a decreas- 
ing faith in propositions. Young people 
admire talents, and particular excellencies. 
As we grow older we value total powers 
and effects, as the spirit, or quality of the 
man. We have another sight, and a new 
standard; an insight which disregards 
what is done for the eye, and pierces to 
the doer; an ear which hears not what 
men say, but hears what they do not say. 

There was a wise, devout man who is 
called, in the Catholic Church, St. Philip 
Neri, of whom many anecdotes touching 
his discernment and benevolence are told 
at Naples and Rome. Among the nuns 
in a convent not far from Rome, one had 
appeared, who laid claim to certain rare 
gifts of inspiration and prophecy, and the 
abbess advised the Holy Father, at Rome, 
of the wonderful powers shown by her 
novice. The Pope did not well know what 
to make of these new claims, and Philip 
coming in from a journey, one day, he 
consulted him, Philip undertook to visit 
the nun, and ascertain her character. He 
threw himself on his mule, all travel- 
soiled as he was, and hastened through 
the mud and mire to the distant convent. 
He told the abbess the wishes of his Holi- 
ness, and begged her to summon the nun 
without delay. The nun was sent for, and, 
as soon as she came into the apartment, 
Philip stretched out his leg all bespattered 
with mud, and desired her to draw off his 
boots. The young nun, who had become 
the object of much attention and respect, 
drew back with anger, and refused the 
office : Philip ran out of doors, mounted 
his mule, and returned instantly to the 
Pope ; ' ' Give yourself no uneasiness, 
Holy Father, any longer; here is no 
miracle, for here is no humility.” 

We need not much mind what people 
please to say, but what they must say ; 
what their natures say though their busv, 
artful Yankee understandings try to bold 


back, and choke that word, and to artica« 
late something^different. If we will sit 
quietly — what they ought to say is said, 
with their will, or against their will. Wa 
do not care for you, let us pretiend what 
we will ; we are always looking through 
you to the dim dictator behind you. 
Whilst your habit or whim chatters, we 
civilly and impatiently wait until that 
wise superior shall speak again. Even 
children are not deceived by the false 
reasons which their parents give in answer 
to their questions, whether touching natu- 
ral facts, or religion, or persons. When 
the parent, instead of thinking how it 
really is, puts them off with a traditional 
or a hypocritical answer, the children 
perceive that it is traditional or hypo- 
critical. To a sound constitution the 
defect of another is at once manifest ; and 
the marks of it are only concealed from 
us by our own dislocation. An anatomical 
observer remarks, that the sympathies of 
the chest, abdomen, and pelvis tell at last 
on the face, and on all its features. Not 
only does our beauty waste, but it leaves 
word how it went to waste. Physiognomy 
and phrenology are not new sciences, but 
declarations of the soul that it is aware 
of certain new sources of information. 
And now sciences of broader scope are 
starting up behind these. And so for our- 
selves, it is really of little importance 
what blunders in statement we make, so 
only we make no wilful departures from 
the truth. How a man’s truth comes to 
mind, long after we have forgotten all his 
words I How it comes to us in silent 
hours, that truth is our only armour in all 
passages of life and death ! Wit is cheap, 
and anger is cheap ; but if you cannot 
argue or explain yourself to the other 
party, cleave to the truth against me, 
against thee, and you gain a station from 
which you cannot be dislodged. The other 
party will forget the words that you spoke, 
but the part you took continues to plead 
for you. 

Why should I hasten to solve every 
riddle which life offers me ? I am well 
assured that the Questioner, who brings 
me so many problems, will bring the 
answers also in due time. Very rich, 
^^ery potent, very cheerful Giver that he 
is, he shall have it all his own way for me. 
Why should I give up my thought, because 
I cannot answer an objection to it ? Con- 
sider only, whether it remains in my life 
the same it was. That only which wo 
have within, can we see without. If 
meet no gods, it is because we baibouf 



WORSHIP. 549 


none. If there ia gttindeur in you» you 
will find grandeur in portirs and sweeps. 
He only is rightly immortal, to whom all 
things are immortal. I have read some- 
where, that none is accomplished, so long 
as any are incomplete; that the happi- 
ness of one cannot consist with the misery 
of any other. 

The Buddhists say, “ No seed will die : ’* 
every seed will grow. Where is the ser- 
vice which can escape its remuneration ? 
What is vulgar, and the essence of all 
vulgarity, but the avarice of reward ? 'Tis 
the difference of artisan and artist, of 
talent and genius, of sinner and saint. 
The man whose eyes are nailed not on 
the nature of his act, but on the wages, 
whether it be money, or office, or fame, 
is almost equally low. He is great, whose 
eyes are opened to see that the reward of 
actions cannot bo escaped, because he is 
transformed into his action, and taketh 
its nature, which bears its own fruit, like 
every other tree. A great man cannot be 
hindered of the effect of his act, because 
it is immediate. The genius of life is 
friendly to the noble, and in the dark 
brings them friends from far. Fear God, 
and where you go, men shall think they 
walk in hallowed cathedrals. 

And so I look on those sentiments which 
make the glory of the human being, love, 
humility, faith, as being also the intimacy 
of Divinity in the atoms; and, that, as 
soon as the man is right, assurances and 
previsions emanate from the interior of 
his body and his mind ; as, when flowers 
reach their ripeness, incense exhales 
from them, and, as a beautiful atmos- 
phere is generated from the planet by the 
averaged emanations from all its rocks 
and soils. 

Thus man is made equal to every event. 
Ha can face danger for the right. A poor, 
tender, painful body, he can run into 
flame or bullets or pestilence, with duty 
for his guide. He feels the insurance of 
a just employment. I am not afraid of 
accident, as long as I am in my place. It 
is strange that superior persons should 
not feel that they have some better resist- 
ance against cholera, than avoiding green 
peas and salads. Life is hardly respect- 
able— is it ? if it has no generous, guaran- 
teeing task, no duties or affections, that 
constitute a necessity of existing. Every 
man’s task is his life-preserver. The con- 
viction that his work is dear to God and 
cannot be spared, defends him. The 
lightning-rod that disarms the cloud of its 
l,hreat is his body in its duty. A high aim 


reacts on the means, on the days, cn the 
organs of the body. A high aim is cura- 
tive, as well as arnica. ** Napoleon,** 
says Goethe, “visited those sick of the 
plague, in order to prove that the man 
who could vanquish fear, could vanquish 
the plague also ; and he was right. 'Tis 
incredible what force the will has in such 
cases : it penetrates the body, and puts it 
in a state of activity, which repels all hurt- 
ful influences ; whilst fear invites them.” 

It is related of William of Orange, that 
whilst he was besieging a town on the 
continent, a gentleman sent to him on 
public business came to his camp, and, 
learning that the King was before the 
walls, he ventured to go where he was. 
He found him directing the operation of 
his gunners, and, having explained his 
errand, and received his answer, the King 
said : ” Do you not know, sir, that every 
moment you spend hero is at the risk of 
your life ? ” ‘‘I run no more risk,” replied 
the gentleman, ** than your Majesty.” 
“Yes,” said the King, “but my duty 
brings me here, and yours does not.” In a 
few minutes, a cannon-ball fell on the 
spot, and the gentleman was killed. 

Thus can the faithful student reverse 
all the warnings of his early instinct, 
under the guidance of a deeper instinct. 
He learns to welcome misfortune, learns 
that adversity is the prosperity of the 
great. He learns the greatness of humil- 
ity. He shall work in the dark, work 
against failure, pain, and ill-will. If he is 
insulted, he can be insulted; all his affair 
is not to insult. Hafiz writes : — 

At the last day, men shall wear 

On their heads the dust, 

As ensign and as ornament 

Of their lowly trust. 

The moral equalizes all ; enriches, em- 
powers all. It is the coin which buys all, 
and which all find in their pocket. Under 
the whip of the driver, the slave shall feel 
his equality with saints and heroes. In 
the greatest destitution and calamity, it 
surprises man with a feeling of elasticity 
which makes nothing of loss. 

I recall some traits of a remarkable 
person whose life and discourse betrayed 
many inspirations of this sentiment. 
Benedict was always great in the present 
time. He had hoarded nothing from the 
past, neither in his cabinets, neither in 
his memory. He had no designs on the 
future, neither for what he should do to 
men, nor for what men should do for him. 
lie 9ai(} : '* I am never beaten until 1 know 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


650 

that I am beaten. 1 meet powerful brutal 
people to whom I have no skill to reply. 
They think they have defeated me. It is 
so published in society, in the journals; I 
am defeated in this fashion, in all men’s 
sight, perhaps on a dozen different lines. 
My leger may show that I am in debt, can- 
not yet make my ends meet, and vanquish 
the enemy so. My race may not be pros- 
pering: we a/0 sick, ugly, obscure, un- 
popular. My children may be worsted. I 
seem to fail in my friends and clients, too. 
That is to say, in all the encounters that 
have yet chanced, I have not been 
weaponed for that particular occasion, and 
have been historically beaten ; and yet, I 
know, all the time, that I have never been 
beaten ; have never yet fought, shall cer- 
tainly fight, when my hour comes, and 
shall beat.” ” A man,” says the Vishnu 
Sarma, ‘‘who having well compared his 
own strength or weakness with that of 
others, after all doth not know the differ- 
ence, is easily overcome by his enemies.” 

“ I spent,” he said, “ ten months in the 
country. Thick-starred Orion was my 
only companion. Wherever a squirrel or 
a bee can go with security, I can go. I 
ate whatever was set before me ; I touched 
ivy and dogwood. When I went abroad, 
I kept company with every man on the 
road, for I knew that my evil and my good 
did not come from these, but from the 
Spirit, whose servant I was. For I could 
not stoop to be a circumstance, as they 
did, who put their life into their fortune 
and their company. I would not degrade 
myself by casting about in my memory 
for a thought, nor by waiting for one. If 
the thought come, I would give it enter- 
tainment. It should, as it ought, go into 
my hands and feet ; but if it come not 
spontaneously, it comes not rightly at all. 
If it can spare me, I am sure I can spare 
it. It shall be the same with my friends. 
I will never woo the loveliest. I will not 
ask any friendship or favour. When I 
come to my own, we shall both know it. 
Nothing will be to be asked or to be 
granted.” Benedict went out to seek 
his friend, and met him on the way; 
but he expressed no surprise at any coin- 
cidences. On the other hand, if he called 
at the door of his friend, and he was not 
at home, he did not go again ; concluding 
that he had misinterpreted the intima- 
tions. 

He had the whim not to make an apo- 
logy to the same individual whom he had 
wronged. For this, he said, was a piece 
of personal vanity ; but he would correct 


his conduct in that respect in which hO 
had faulted, tu the next person he should 
meet. Thus, he said, universal justice 
was satisfied. 

Mira came to ask what she should do 
with the poor Genesee woman who had 
hired herself to work for her, at a shilling 
a day, and, now sickening, was like to be 
bedridden on her hands. Should she keep 
her, or should she dismiss her ? But 
Benedict said, ‘‘ Why ask ? One thing 
will clear itself as the thing to be done, 
and not another, when the hour comes. 
Is it a question, whether to put her into 
the street. Just as much whether to thrust 
the little Jenny on your arm into the 
street. The milk and meal you give the 
beggar will fatten Jenny, Thruci the 
woman out, and you thrust your babe out 
of doors, whether it so seem to you or 
not.” 

In the Shakers, so called, I find one 
piece of belief, in the doctrine which they 
faithfully hold, that encourages them to 
open their doors to every wayfaring man 
who proposes to come among them ; for, 
they say, the Spirit will presently manifest 
to the man himself, and to the society* 
what manner of person he is, and whether 
he belongs among them. They do not re- 
ceive him, they do not reject him. And 
not in vain have they worn their clay coat, 
and drudged in their fields, and shuffled 
in their bruin dance, from year to year, if 
they have truly learned thus much wis- 
dom. 

Honour him whose life is perpetual 
victory; him, who, by sympathy with the 
invisible and real, finds support in labour, 
instead of praise; who does not shine, 
and would rather not. With eyes open, 
he makes the choice of virtue, which out- 
rages the virtuous ; of religion, which 
churches stop their discords to burn and 
exterminate : for the highest virtue is al- 
ways against the law. 

Miracle comes to the miraculous, not to 
the arithmetician. Talent and success 
interest me but moderately. The great 
class, they who affect our imagination, the 
men who could not make their hands 
meet around their objects, the rapt, the 
lost, the fools of ideas — they suggest what 
they cannot execute. They speak to the 
I ages, and are heard from afar. The Spirit 
does not love cripples and malformations. 

I If there ever was a good man, be certain 
there was another, and will be more. 

And so in relation to that future hour, 
that spectre clothed with beauty at our 
curtain by night at our table by day— ^ 



WORSHIP. 


55 1 


apprehension, the assurance of a coming 
change, The race of manlind have always 
offered at least this implied thanks for the 
iftof existence — namely, the terror of its 
eing taken away ; the insatiable curiosity 
and appetite for its continuation. The 
whole revelation that is vouchsafed us, is, 
the gentle trust, which, in our experience 
we find, will cover also with flowers the 
elopes of this chasm. 

Of immortality, the soul, when well em- 
ployed, is incurious. It is so well, that it 
IS sure it will be well. It asks no questions 
of the Supreme Power. The son of Antio- 
chus asked his father, when he would join 
battle. “ Dost thou fear,” replied the 
King, “ that thou only in all the army 
wilt not hear the trumpet ? ” Tis a higher 
thing to confide, that, if it is best we 
should live, we shall live — ’tis higher to 
have tliis conviction than to have the lease 
of indefinite centuries and millenniums 
and aeons. Higher than the question of our 
duration is the question of our deserving. 
Immortality will come to such as are fit 
for it, and he who would be a great soul 
in future, must be a great soul now. It is 
a doctrine too great to rest on any legend, 
that is, on any man’s experience but our 
own, It must be proved, if at all, from 
our own activity and designs, which imply 
an interminable future for their play. 

What is called religion effeminates and I 
demoralizes. Such as you are, the gods 
themselves could not help you. Men are 
too often unfit to live, from their obvious 
inequality to their own necessities, or, they 
suffer from politics, or bad neighbours, or 
from sickness, and they would gladly know 
that they were to be dismissed from the 
duties of life. But the wise instinct asks, 
” How will death help them ? ” These are 
not dismissed when they die. You shall 
not wish for death out of pusillanimity. 
The weight of the Universe is pressed 
down on the shoulders of each moral agent 
to hold him to his task. The only path of 
escape known in all the worlds of God is 
performance. You must do your work, 
before you shall be released. And as far 
as it is a question of fact respecting the 
government of the Universe, Marcus An- 
toninus summed the whole in a word : ” It 
is pleasant to die, if there be gods ; and 
sad to liyOi if there bo Qoae,” 


And so I think that the last lesson oC 
life, the choral song which rises from all 
elements and all angels, is, a voluntary 
obedience, a necessitated freedom. Man 
is made of the same atoms as the world 
is, he shares the same impressions, pre- 
dispositions, and destiny. When his mind 
is illuminated, when his heart is kind, ha 
throws himself joyfully into the sublima 
order, and does, with knowledge, what tha 
stones do by structure. 

The religion which is to guide and fulfil 
the present and coming ages, whatever 
else it be, must be intellectual. Tha 
scientific mind must have a faith which 
is science. ” There are two things,” said 
Mahomet, ** which I abhor, the learned 
in his infidelities, and the fool in his de- 
votions.” Our times are impatient of 
both, and specially of the last. Let us 
have nothing now which is not its own 
evidence. There is surely enough for th^ 
heart and imagination in the religion 
itself. Let us not be pestered with as- 
sertions and half-truths, with emotions 
and snuffle. 

There will be a new church founded on 
moral science, at first cold and naked, a 
babe in a manger again, the algebra and 
mathematics of ethical law, the church of 
men to come, without shawms, or psaltery, 
or sackbut ; but it will have heaven and 
earth for its beams and rafters; science 
for symbol and illustration; it will fast 
enough gather beauty, music, picture, 
poetry. Was never stoicism so stern and 
exigent as this shall be. It shall send 
man home to his central solitude, shame 
these social, supplicating manners, and 
make him know that much of the time ho 
’ must have himself to his friend. He shall 
expect no co-operation, he shall walk with 
no companion. Tha nameless Thought, 
the nameless Power, the super-personal 
Heart— he shall repose alone on that. 
He needs only his own verdict. No good 
fame can help, no bad fame can hurt him. 
The Laws are his consolers, the good 
Laws themselves are alive, they know 
if we have kept them, they animate him 
with the leading of great duty, and an 
endless horizon. Honour and fortune 
exist to him who always recognizes th« 
neighbourhood of the great, always feoli 
bimself in the presence of high causes. 



552 


CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


i 

CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 


Hear what British Merlin sung, 

Of keenest eye and truest tongue. 

Say not, the chiefs who first arrive 
Osurp the seats for which all strive: 

The forefathers this land who found 
Failed to plant the vantage-ground ; 

Ever from one who comes to-morrow 
Men wait their good a^d truth to borrow. 
But wilt thou measure all thy road, 

See thou lift the lighten \ load. 

Who has little, to him who has less, can 
spare. 

And thou, Cyndyllan's son I beware 
Ponderous gold and stuffs to bear. 

To falter ere thou thy task fulfil — 

Only the light-armed climb the hill. 

The richest of all lords is Use, 

And ruddy Health the loftiest Muse. 

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, 

Drink the wild air’s salubrity : 

Where the star Canope shines in May, 
Shepherds are thankful, and nations gay. 
The music that can deepest reach, 

And cure all ill, is cordial speech : 

Mask thy wisdom with delight, 

Toy with the bow, yet hit the white. 

Of all wit’s uses, the main one 
Is to live well with who has none. 

Cleave to thine acre: the round year 
Will fetch all fruits and virtues here ; 

Fool and foe may harmless roam, 

Loved and lovers bide at home, 

A day for toil, an hour for sport. 

But lor a friend is life too snort. 

Although this garrulity of advising is 
DOrn with us, I confess that life is rather 
a subject of wonder, than of didactics. 
So much fate, so much irresistible dicta- 
tion from temperament and unknown 
inspiration enters into it, that we doubt 
we can say anything out of our ov/n experi- 
ence whereby to help each other. All the 
professions are timid and expectant agen- 
cies. The priest is glad if his prayers or 
his sermon meet the condition of any 
soul ; if of two, if of ten, ’tis a signal suc- 
cess. But he walked to the church with- 
out any assurance that he knew the 
distemper, or could heal it. The physi- 
cian prescribes hesitatingly out of his few 
resources, the same tonic or sedative to 
this new and peculiar constitution, which 
he has \ pplied with various success to a 
hundred men before. If the patient 
mends, ha is glad and surprised. The 
lawyer advises the client, and tells his 
story to the jury, and leaves it with 
them, and is as gay and as much relieved 
as the client, if it turns out that he has a 
verdict. The judge weighs the arguments, 


and puts a brave face on the matter, and, 
since there must be a decision, decides ai 
he can, and hopes he has done justice, 
and given satisfaction to the community ; 
but is only an advocate afte^* Jill. And so 
is all life a timid and unskilful spectator. 
We do what we must, and call it by the 
best names. We like very well to be 
praised for our action, but our conscience 
says, “ Not unto us.” 'Tis little we can 
do for each other. We accompany the 
youth with syn.pathy, and manifold 
old sayings of the wise, to the gate of the 
arena, but 'tis certain that not by strength 
of ours, or of the old sayings, but only on 
strength of his own, unknown to us or to 
any, he must stand or fall. That by which 
a man conquers in any passage, is a pro- 
found secret to every other being in the 
world, and it is only as he turns his baoi 
on us and all men, and draws on this most 
private wisdom, that any good can com« 
to him. What we have, therefore, to say 
of life, is rather description, or, if you 
please, celebration, than available rules. 

Yet vigour is contagious, and whatever 
makes us either think or feel strongly, 
adds to our power and enlarges our field 
of action. We have a debt to every great 
heart, to every fine genius ; to those who 
have put life and fortune on the cast of an 
act of justice; to those who have added new 
sciences ; to those who have refined life 
by elegant pursuits. ’Tis the fine souls 
who serve us, and not what is called fine 
society. Fine society is only a self-pro- 
tection against the vulgarities of the street 
and the tavern. Fine society, in the 
common acceptation, has neither ideas nor 
aims. It renders the service of a perfu- 
mery, or a laundry, not of a farm or fac- 
tory. ’Tis an exclusion and a precinct, 
Sidney Smith said, " A few yards in 
London cement or dissolve friendship.” 
It is an unprincipled decorum ; an affair 
of clean linen and coaches, of gloves, 
cards, and elegance in trifles. There are 
other measures of self-respect for a man, 
than the number of clean shirts he puts on 
every day. Society wishes to be amused, 
I do not wish to be amused. I wish that 
life should not be cheap, but sacred. I 
wish the days to be as centuries, loaded, 
fragrant. Now we reckon them as bank- 
days, by some debt which is to be paid us, 
or which we are to pay, or some pleasurp 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 


wo are to taste. Is all we have to do to 
draw the breath in, and Blow it out again? 
Porphyry's definition is better : “ Life is 
that which holds matter together.” The 
babe in arms is a channel through which 
the energies we call fate, love, and reason, 
visibly stream. See what a cometary 
train of auxiliaries man carries with him, 
of animals, plants, stones, gases, and 
imponderable elements. Let us infer his 
ends from this pomp of means. Mirabeau 
said : “ Why should we feel ourselves to 
be men, unless it be to succeed in every- 
thing, everywhere. You must say of 
nothing, is beneath me, nor feel that 

anything can be out of your power. Nothing 
is impossible to the man who can will. 
Js that necessary ? That shall be : this is 
the only law of success.” Whoever said 
it, this is in the right key. But this is 
not the tone and genius of the men in the 
street. In the streets, we grow cynical. 
The men we meet are coarse and torpid. 
The finest wits have their sediment. 
What quantities of fribbles, paupers, in- 
valids, epicures, antiquaries, politicians, 
thieves, and triflers of both sexes, might 
be advantageously spared I Mankind 
divides itself into two classes — benefactors 
and malefactors. The second class is 
vast, the first a handful. A person sel- 
dom falls sick, but the bystanders are 
animated with a faint hope that he will 
die: quantities of poor lives; of distress- 
ing invalids ; of cases for a gun. Franklin 
iaid : ” Mankind are very superficial and 
dastardly; they begin upon a tning, out, 
meeting with a difficulty, they fly from it 
discouraged ; but they have capacities, if 
they would employ them.” Shall we then 
judge a country by the majority, or by 
the minority? By the minority, surely. 
'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the 
census, or by square miles of land, or other 
than by their importance to tiie mind of 
the time. 

Leave this hypocritical prating about 
the masses. Masses are rude, lame, un- 
made, pernicious in their demands and 
influence, and need not to be flattered but 
to be schooled. 1 wish not to concede 
anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, 
and break them up, and draw individuals 
out of them. The worst of charity is, 
that the lives you are asked to preserve 
are not worth preserving. Masses! the 
calamity is the masses. I do not wish 
any mass at all, but honest men only, 
lovely, sweet, accomplished women only, 
and no shovel-handed, narrow-brained, 
gia*drinking million stackingers of lapcza- 


553 

roni at all. If government knew how, 1 
should like to see it check, not multiply 
the population. When it reaches its true 
law of action, every man that is born will 
be hailed as essential. Away with this 
hurrah of masses, and let us have the con- 
siderate vote of single men spoken on 
their honour and their conscience. In old 
Egypt, it was established law, that the 
vote of a prophet bo reckoned equal to a 
hundred hands. 1 think it was much 
underestimated. ” Clay and clay differ in 
dignity,” as we discover by our prefer- 
ences every day. What a vicious practice 
is this of our politicians at Washington 
pairing off! as if one man who votes 
wrong, going away, could excuse you, 
who mean to vote right, for going away ; 
or, as if your presence did not tell in more 
ways than in your vote. Suppose the 
three hundred heroes at Thermopylae had 
paired off with three hundred Persians ; 
would it have been all the same to Greece, 
and to history ? Napoleon was called by 
his men Cent Mille, Add honesty to him, 
and they might have called him Hundred 
Million. 

Nature makes fifty poor melons for one 
that is good, and shakes down a tree full 
of gnarled, wormy, unripe crabs, before 
you can find a dozen dessert apples ; and 
she scatters nations of naked Indians, and 
nations of clothed Christians, with two or 
three good heads among them. Nature 
works very hard, and only hits the white 
once in a million throws. In mankind, 
she is contented if she yields one master 
in a century. The more difficulty there is 
in creating good men, the more they are 
used when they come. I once counted in 
a little neighbourhood, and found that 
every able-bodied man had, say from 
twelve to fifteen persons dependent on 
him for material aid — to whom he is to bo 
for spoon and jug, for backer and sponsor, 
for nursery and hospital, and many func- 
tions beside : nor does it seem to make 
much difference whether he his bachelor 
or patriarch ; if he do not violently decline 
the duties that fall to him, this amount of 
helpfulness will in one way or another be 
brought home to him. This is the tax 
which his abilities pay. The good men are 
employed for private centres of use, and 
for larger influence. All revelations, 
whether of mechanical or intellectual or 
moral science, are made, not to communi- 
ties, but to single persons. All the marked 
eventsof our day, all the cities, all the colo- 
nizations, may be traced back to their ori- 
gin in a private brain. AU the feats whtcli 



5S4 


CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


make our civhity were the thou«;hts of a 
fov/ good heads. 

Meantime, this spawning productivity 
is not noxious or needless. You would 
say, this rabble of nations might be spared. 
But no, they are all counted and depended 
on. Fate keeps everything alive so long 
as the smallest thread of public neces- 
sity holds it on to the tree. The coxcomb 
and bully and thief class are allowed as 
proletaries, every one of their vices being 
the access or acridity of a virtue, The mass 
are animal, in pupilage, and near chim- 
panzee. But the units, whereof this mass 
is composed are neuters, every one of 
which may be grown to a queen-bee. The 
rule is, we are used as brute atoms, until 
we think : then, wo use all the rest. Na- 
ture turns all malfaisance to good. Na- 
ture provided for real needs. No sane 
man at last distrusts himself. His exist- 
ence is a perfect answer to all sentimental 
cavils. If he is, he is wanted, and has the 
precise properties that are required. That 
we are here, is proof we ought to be here. 
We have as good right, and the same sort 
of right to be here, as Cape Cod or Sandy 
5iook have to be there. 

To say then, the majority are wicked, 
means no malice, no bad heart in the 
observer, but, simply, that the majority 
are unripe, and have not yet come to them- 
selves, do not yet know their opinion. 
That, if they knew it, is an oracle for them 
and for all. But in the passing moment, 
the quadruped interest is very prone to 
prevail : and this beast-force, whilst it 
makes the discipline of the world, the 
school of heroes, the glory of martyrs, has 
provoked in every age the satire of wits, 
and the tears of good men. They find the 
journals, tlie clubs, the governments, the 
churches, to bo in the interest, and the 
pay of the Devil. And wise men have 
met this obstruction in their times, like 
Socrates, with his famous irony ; like 
Bacon, with life-long dissimulation ; like 
Erasmus, with his book “ The Praise of 
Folly:” like Rabelais, with his satire 
rending tlie nations. “They were the 
fools who cried against me, you will say,” 
wrote the Chevalier de Boufflers to Grimm; 
” ay, but the fools have the advantage of 
numbers, and 'tis that which decides. | 
’Tis of no use for us to make war with 
them : we shall not weaken them ; they I 
will always be the masters. There will 1 
not be a practice or an usage introduced, I 
of which they are not the authors.” 

In front of these sinister facts, the first 
9f bi9t9i^y W thp good pf eyil, Good 


is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a 
better. ’Tis the ‘oppressions of William 
the Norman, savage forest-laws, and 
crushing despotism, that made possible 
the inspirations of Magna Charta under 
John. Edward I. wanted money, armies, 
j castles, and as much as he could get. It 
I was necessary to call the people together 
by shorter, swifter ways — and the House 
of Commons arose. To obtain subsidies, 
he paid in privileges. In the twenty- 
fourth year of his reign, he decreed, 
” that no tax should bo levied without 
consent of Lords and Commons ; ” which 
is the basis of the English Constitution. 
Plutarch affirms that the cruel wars which 
followed the march of Alexander, intro- 
duced the civility, language, and arts of 
Greece into the savage East i introduced 
marriage ; built seventy cities ; and united 
hostile nations under one government. 
The barbarians who broke up the Roman 
empire did not arrive a day too soon. 
Schiller says, the Thirty Years’ War made 
Germany a nation. Rough, selfish despots 
serve men immensely, as Henry VIII. ia 
the contest with the Pope ; as the infatua- 
tions no less than the wisdom of Crom- 
well ; as the ferocity of the Russian czars ; 
as the fanaticism of the French regicides 
of 1789. The frost which kills the harvest 
of a year, saves the harvests of a century, 
by destroying the weevil or the locust. 
Wars, fires, plagues, break up immovable 
routine, clear the ground of rotten races, 
and dens of distemper, and open a fair 
field to new men. There is a tendency in 
tilings to right themselves, and the war or 
revolution or bankruptcy that shatters a 
rotten system, allows things to take a new 
and natural order. The sharpest evils 
are bent into that periodicity which makes 
the errors of planets, and the fevers and 
distempers of men, self-limiting. Nature 
is upheld by antagonism. Passions, re- 
sistance, danger, are educators. We ac- 
quire the strength we have overcome. 
Without war, no soldier ; without enemies, 
no hero. The sun were insipid, if tho 
universe were not opaque. And the glory 
of character is in affronting the horrors of 
depravity, to draw thence new nobilities 
of power : as Art lives and thrills in new 
use and combining of contrasts, and mining 
into the dark evermore for blacker pits of 
night. What would painter do, or what 
would poet or saint, but for crucifixions 
and hells ? And evermore in the world in 
this marvellous balance of beauty and 
disgust, magnificence and rats. Not An 
tonintis, but a poqr washerwQmaa said 



C0NSID^:nATlONS BY THE WaY. 


•• The more trouble, thamore lion ; that’s 

my principle.” ^ 

I do not think very respectfully of the 
dasigns or the doings of the people who 
went to California, in 1849. It was a rush 
and a scramble of needy adventurers, and, 
in the western country, a general jail- 
delivery of all the rowdies of the rivers. 
Some of them went with honest purposes, 
some with very bad ones, and all of them 
with the very commonplace wish to find a 
short way to wealth. But Nature watches 
over all, and turns this malfaisance to 
good. California gets peopled and sub- 
dued — civilized in this immoral way — and, 
on this fiction, a real prosperity is rooted 
and grown. ’Tis a decoy-duck ; 'tis tubs 
thrown to amuse the whale: but real 
ducks, and whales that yield oil, are 
caught. And out of Sabine rapes, and 
out of robbers’ forays, real Romes and 
their heroisms come in fulness of time. 

In America, the geography is sublime, 
but the men are not : the inventions are 
excellent, but the inventors one is some- 
times ashamed of. The agencies by which 
events so grand as the opening of Cali- 
fornia, of Texas, of Oregon, and the junc- 
tion of the two oceans, are effected, are 
paltry — coarse selfishness, fraud, and 
conspiracy : and most of the great results 
of history are brought about by discredit- 
able means. 

The benefaction derived in Illinois, and 
the great West, from railroads is inestim- 
able, and vastly exceeding any inten- 
tional philanthropy on record. What is 
the benefit done by a good King Alfred, or 
by a Howard, or Pestalozzi, or Elizabeth 
Fry, or Florence Nightingale, or any lover, 
less or larger, compared with the involun- 
tary blessing wrought on nations by the 
selfish capitalists who built the Illinois, 
Michigan, and the network of the Missis- 
sippi valley roads, which have evoked not 
only all the wealth of the soil, but the 
energy of millions of men. ’Tis a sen- 
tence of ancient wisdom, ” that God hangs 
the greatest weights on the smallest 
wires.” 

What happens thus to nations, befalls 
every day in private houses. When the 
friends of a gentleman brought to his no- 
tice the follies of his sons, with many hints 
of their danger, he replied, that he knew 
so much mischief when he wa.s a boy, and 
had turned out on the whole so success- 
fully, that he was not alarmed by the dis- 
sipation of boys ; 'twas dangerous water, 
but, he thought, they would soon touch 
bottom, and then swim to the top. This 


555 

is bold practice, and there are manj* 
failures to a good escape. Yet one would 
say, that a good understanding would suf- 
fice as well as moral sensibility to keep 
one erect ; the gratifications of the pas- 
sions are so quickly seen to be damaging, 
and — what men like least — seriously 
lowering them in social rank. Then all 
talent sinks Vvfith character. 

” Croyez moi, I’erreur aussi a son merits,* 
said Voltaire. We see those who sur» 
mount, by dint of some egotism or infatua* 
tion, obstacles from which the prudent 
recoil. The right partisan is a heady narrow 
man, who, because he does not see many 
things, sees some one thing with heat and 
exaggeration, and, if he falls among other 
narrow men, or on objects which have a 
brief importance, as some trade or politics 
of the hour, he prefers it to the universe, 
and seems inspired, and a godsend to 
those who wish to magnify the matter, 
and carry a point. Better, certainly, if 
we could secure the strength and fire which 
rude, passionate men bring into society, 
quite clear of their vices. But who dares 
draw out the linchpin from the waggon- 
wheel ? ’Tis so manifest, that there is no 
moral deformity but is a good passion out 
of place ; that there is no man who is not 
indebted to his foibles : that, according to 
the old oracle, ” the Furies are the bonds 
of men; ” that the poisons are our princi- 
pal medicines, which kill the disease, and 
save the life. In the high prophetic 
phrase, He causes the wrath of man to 
praise him, and twists and wrenches our 
evil to our good, Shakespeare wrote ; — 

’Tis said, best men are moulded of their 
faults 

and ^eat educators and lawgivers, and 
especially generals, and leaders of colonies, 
mainly rely on this stuff, and esteem men 
of irregular and passional force the best 
timber. A man of sense and energy, the 
late head of the Farm School in Boston 
Harbour said to mo : "I want none of 
your good boys— give me the bad ones.” 
And this is the reason, I suppose, why, as 
soon as the children are good, the mothers 
are scared, and think they are going to die, 
Mirabeau said : ” There are none but men 
of strong passions capable of going to 
greatness ; none but such capable of merit- 
ing the public gratitude.” Passion, though 
a bad regulator, is a powerful spring. Any 
absorbing passion has the effect to deliver 
from the little coils and cares of every 
day : ’tis the heat which sets our human 
atoms spinning, overcomes the friction 



CONDUCT QF LIFE, 


SS^y 

crossing thresholds, and first addresses in 
society, and gives us a good start and 
speed, easy to continue, when once it is 
begun. In short, there is no man who is 
not at some time indebted to his vices, as 
no plant that is not fed from manures. 
We only insist that the man meliorate, 
and that the plant grow upward, and con- 
vert the base into the better nature. 

The wise workman will not regret the 
poverty or the solitude which brought out 
his working talents. The youth is charmed 
with the fine air and accomplishments of 
the children of fortune : but all great men 
come out of the middle classes. ‘Tis 
better for the head ; ’tis better for the j 
heart. Marcus Antoninus says, that 
Fronto told him, “ that the so-called high- | 
bom are for the most part heartless ; ” 
whilst nothing is so indicative of deepest 
culture as a tender consideration of the 
ignorant. Charles James Fox said of Eng- 
land : “ The history of this country proves, 
that we are not to expect from men in 
affluent circumstances the vigilance, 
energy, and exertion without which the 
House of Commons would lose its greatest i 
force and weight. Human nature is prone 
to indulgence, and the most meritorious 
public services have always been per- 
formed by persons in a condition of life 
removed from opulence.” And yet what we 
ask daily, is to be conventional. Supply, 
most kind gods ! this defect in my address, 
in my form, in my fortunes, which puts 
me a little out of the ring : supply it, and 
let me be like the rest whom I admire, 
and on good terms with them. But the 
wise gods say. No, we have better things 
for thee. By humiliations, by defeats, by 
loss of sympathy, by gulfs of disparity, 
learn a wider truth and humanity than 
that of a fine gentleman. A Fifth- Avenue 
lardlord, a West-End householder, is not 
the highest style of man ; and, though 
good hearts and sound minds are of no 
condition, yet he who is to be wise forj 
many, must not be protected. Ha must i 
know the huts where poor men lie, and the | 
chores which poor men do. The first- 
class minds, Homer, ^sop, Socrates, 
Alfred, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Franklin, 
had the poor man’s feeling and mortifica- 
tion. A rich man was never insulted in 
bis life ; but this man must be stung. A 
rich man was never in danger from cold, 
or hunger, or war, or ruffians, and you can 
see he was not, from the moderation of 
his ideas. ’Tis a fatal disadvantage to be 
cockered, and to eat too much cake. What 
. tests of manhood could be stand ? Take 


him out of his protections. He Is a good 
book-keeper ; or be is a shrewd adviser in 
the insurance office : perhaps he could 
pass a college examination, and take his 
degrees : perhaps he can give wise 
counsel in a court of law. Now plant him 
down among farmers, firemen, Indians, 
and immigrants. Set a dofe on him : seta 
highwayman on him : try him with a 
course of mobs : send him to Kansas, to 
Pike’s Peak, to Oregon : and, if he have 
true faculty, this may be the element he 
wants, and he will come out of it with 
broader wisdom and manly power, i^tsop, 
Saadi, Cervantes, Regnard, have been 
taken by corsairs, left for dead, sold for 
slaves, and know the realities of human 
life. 

Bad times have a scientific value. 
These are occasions a good learner would 
not miss. As we go gladly to Faneuil 
Hall, to be played upon by the stormy 
winds and strong fingers of enraged 
patriotism, so is a fanatical persecution, 
civil war, national bankruptcy, or revolu* 
tion, more rich in the central tones than 
languid years of prosperity. Wha6 
had been, ever since our memory, solid 
continent, yawns apart, and discloses its 
composition and genesis. We learn geology 
the morning after the earthquake, on 
ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, 
upheaved plains, and the dry bed of 
the sea. 

In our life and culture, everything is 
worked up and comes in use — passion, 
war, revolt, bankruptcy, and not less, 
folly and blunders, insult, ennui, and bad 
company. Nature is a rag-merchant, who 
works up every shred and ort and end into 
new creations ; like a good chemist, whom 
I found, the other day, in his laboratory, 
converting his old shirts into pure white 
sugar. Life is a boundless privilege, and 
when you pay for your ticket, and get into 
the car, you have no guess what good 
company you shall find there. You buy 
much that is not rendered in the bill. 
Men achieve a certain greatness unawares, 
when working to another aim. 

If now in this connection of discourse, 
we should venture on laying down the 
first obvious rules of life, I will not here 
repeat the first rule of economy, already 
propounded once and again, that every 
man shall maintain himself— but I "'Ul 
say, get health. No labour, pains, tem- 
perance, poverty, nor exercise, that can 
gain it, must be grudged. For sickness 
I is a cannibal which eats up all the life 
I and youth it can lay hold of, and absorbs 



CONSIDERATWNS BY THE WAY. ^S7 


Its own sons and daughters. I figure it as 
a pale, wailing, distracttH phantom, abso- 
lutely selfish, heedless of what is good 
and great, attentive to its sensations, 
losing its soul, and afflicting other souls 
with meanness and mopings, and with 
ministration to its voracity of trifles. Dr. 
Johnson said severely, " Every man is a 
rascal as soon as he is sick.” Drop the 
cant, and treat it sanely. In dealing with 
the drunken, we do not affect to be drunk. 
We must treat the sick with the same 
firmness, giving them, of course, every aid 
— but withholding ourselves. I once asked 
a clergyman in a retired town, who were 
his companions ? what men of ability he 
saw ? He replied, that he spent his time 
with the sick and the dying. I said, he 
seemed to me to need quite other com- 
pany, and all the more that he had this : 
for if people were sick and dying to any 
purpose, we would leave all and go to 
them, but, as far as I had observed, they 
were as frivolous as the rest, and some- 
times much more frivolous. Let us en- 
gage our companions not to spare us. 
I knew a wise woman who said to her 
friends, ” When I am old, rule me.” And 
the best part of health is fine disposition. 
It is more essential than talent, even in 
the works of talent. Nothing will supply 
the want of sunshine to peaches, and, to 
make knowledge valuable, you must have 
the cheerfulness of wisdom. Whenever 
you are sincerely pleased, you are 
nourished. The joy of the spirit indi- 
cates its strength. All healthy things are 
sweet-tempered. Genius works in sport, 
and goodness smiles to the last ; and, for 
the reason, that whoever sees the law 
which distributes things does not despond, 
but is animated to great desires and en- 
deavours. He who desponds betrays that 
he has not seen it. 

’Tis a Dutch proverb, that ” paint costs 
nothing,” such are its preserving qualities 
in damp climates. Well, sunshine costs 
less, yet is finer pigment. And so of 
cheerfulness, or a good temper, the more 
it is spent, the more of it remains. The 
latent heat of an ounce of wood or stone 
is inexhaustible. You may rub the same 
chip of pine to the point of kindling, a 
hundred times ; and the power of happi- 
ness of any soul is not to bo computed or 
drained. It is observed that a depression 
of spirits develops the germs of a plague 
in individuals and nations. 

It is an old commendation of right be- 
haviour, "AZu’s l(£tuSt sapiens which 
our English proverb translates, ” ^ merry 


wise.” I know how easy it is to men 
of the world to look grave and sneer at 
your sanguine youth, and its glittering 
dreams. But I find the gayest castles in 
the air that were ever piled, far better for 
comfort^ and for use, than the dungeons 
in the air that are daily dug and cavemed 
out by grumbling, discontented people. 
I know those miserable fellows, and I 
hate them, who see a black star always 
riding through the light and coloured 
clouds in the sky overhead : waves of light 
pass over and hide it for a moment, but 
the black star keeps fast in the zenith. 
But power dwells with cheerfulness ; hope 
puts us in a working mood, whilst despair 
is no muse, and untunes the active powers. 
A^ man should make life and Nature hap- 
pier to us, or he had better never been 
born. When the political economist 
reckons up the unproductive classes, he 
should put at the head this class of pitiers 
of themselves, cravers of sympathy, be- 
wailing imaginary disasters. An old 
French verse runs, in my translation ■ 

Some of your griefs you have cured. 

And the sharpest you still have survived ; 
Lut what torments of pain you endured 
From evils that never arrived I 

There are three wants which never can 
be satisfied : that of the rich, who wants 
something more; .that of the sick, who 
wants something different; and that of 
me traveler, who says: “Anywhere but 
here. The Turkish cadi said to Layard, 
After the fashion of thy people, thou 
hast wandered from one place to another, 
until thou art happy and content in none.” 
My countrymen are not less infatuated 
with the rococo toy of Italy, All America 
seems on the point of embarking for 
Europe. But we shall not always traverse 
seas and lands with light purposes, and 
for pleasure, as we say. One day we shall 
cast out the passion for Europe, by the 
passion for America. Culture will give 
gravity and domestic rest to those who 
now travel only as not knowing how else 
. money. Already, who provoke 

pity like that excellent family party just 
arriving in their well-appointed carriage, 
as far from home and any honest end as 
^ Each nation has asked successively, 
What are they here for?” until at last 
the party are shamefaced, and antici- 
pate the question at the gates of each 

town. 

Genial manners are good, and power* of 
accommodation to any circumstance, but 
tlie high prize of life, the croweisg Ss»« 



CONbVCt 

tune of a man is to be born with a bias 
to some pursuit, which finds him in em- 
ployment and happiness — whether it be 
to make baskets, or broadswords, or canals, 
or statutes, or songs. I doubt not this was 
the meaning of Socrates, when he pro- 
nounced artists the only truly wise, as be- 
ing actually, not apparently so. 

In childhood,we fancied ourselves walled 
in by the horizon, as by a glass bell, and 
doubted not, by dislpj”!! travel, we should 
reach the baths of the descending sun and 
stars. On experiment, the horizon flies 
before us, and leaves us on an endless 
common, sheltered by no glass bell. Yet 
tis strange how tenaciously we cling to 
that bell-astronomy, of a protecting do- 
mestic horizon. I find the same illusion 
in the search after happiness, which I 
observe, every summer, recommenced in 
this neighbourhood, soon after the pairing 
of the birds. The young people do not 
like the town, do not like the sea-shore, 
they will go inland ; find a dear cottage 
deep in the mountains, secret as their 
hearts. They set forth on their travels in 
search of a home : they reach Berkshire ; 
they reach Vermont ; they look at the 
farms—good farms, high mountain-sides, 
but where is the seclusion ? The farm is 
near this ; 'tis near that ; they have got far 
from Boston, but ’tis near Albany, or near 
Burlington, or near Montreal. They ex- 
plore a farm, but the house is small, old, 
thin ; discontented people lived there, and 
are gone ; there’s too much sky, too much 
out-doors; too public. The youth aches 
for solitude. When he comes to the 
house, he passes through the house. 
That does not make the deep recess he 
sought. “ Ah I now, I perceive," he says, 
" it must be deep with persons ; friends 
only can give depth." Yes, but there is a 
great dearth, this year, of friends ; hard 
to find, and hard to have when found; 
they are just going away ; they too are in 
the whirl of the flitting world, and have 
engagements and necessities. They are 
just starting for Wisconsin ; have letters 
from Bremen — see you again, soon. Slow, 
slow to learn the lesson, that there is but 
one depth, but one interior, and that is — 
his purpose. When joy or calamity or 
genius shall show him it, then woods, then 
farms, then city shopmen and cab-drivers, 
indifferently with prophet or friend, will 
mirror back to him its unfathomable 
heaven, its populous solitude. 

The uses of travel are occasional, and 
abort; but the best fruit it finds, when it 
lads it, la conversation; and this ia a 


OF LIPB. 

main function of lilo. What a differencs 
in the hospitality of minds I Inestimable 
is he to whom we can say what we cannot 
say to ourselves. Others are involuntarily 
hurtful to us, and bereave us of the power 
of thought, impound and imprison us. 
As, when there is sympathy, there needs 
but one wise man in a company, and all 
are wise — so a blockhead makes a block- 
head of his companion. Wonderful power 
to benumb possesses this brother. When 
he comes into the office or public room, 
the society dissolves ; one after another 
slips out, and the apartment is at his 
disposal. What is incurable but a frivo- 
lous habit ? A fly is as untamable as a 
hyena. Yet folly in the sense of fun, 
fooling, or dawdling can easily be borne ; 
as Talleyrand said, “ I find nonsense 
singularly refreshing;" but a virulent, 
aggressive fool taints the reason of a 
household. I have seen a whole family 
of quiet, sensible people unhinged and 
beside themselves, victims of such a 
rogue ; for the steady wrongheadedness 
of one perverse person irritates the best ; 
since we must withstand absurdity. But 
resistance only exasperates the acrid fool, 
who believes that Nature and gravitation 
are quite wrong, and he only is right 
Hence all the dozen inmates are soon 
perverted, with whatever virtues and in- 
dustries they have, into contradictors 
accusers, explainers, and repairers of this 
one malefactor : like a boat about to be 
overset, or a carriage run away with — not 
only the foolish pilot or driver, but every- 
body on board is forced to assume strange 
and ridiculous attitudes, to balance the 
vehicle and prevent the upsetting. For 
remedy, whilst the case is yet mild, I 
recommend phlegm and truth : let all the 
truth that is spoken or done be at the 
zero of indifferency, or truth itself will bo 
folly. But, when the case is seated and 
malignant, the only safely is in amputa- 
tion; as seamen say, you shall cut and 
run. How to live with unfit companions ? 
for, with such, life is for the most part 
spent ; and experience teaches little better 
than our earliest instinct of self-defence, 
namely, not to engage, not to mix yourself 
in any manner with them ; but let their 
madness spend itself unopposed. 

Conversation is an art in which a man 
has all mankind for his competitors, for it 
is that which all are practising every day 
while they live. Our habit of thought- 
take men as they rise— is not satisfying ; 
in the common experience, I fear, it 1s 
poor and squalid. The success which 



CONSIDERATIONS BY THE WAY. 559 


#M1 OOGteat them is a bar^in, a lucrative 
employment, an advantage gained over a 
competitor, a marriage, a patrimony, a 
legacy, and the like. With these objects, 
their conversation deals Nvith surfaces : 
politics, trade, personal defects, exag- 
gerated bad news, and the rain. This is 
forlorn, and they feel sore and sensitive. 
Now, if one comes who can illuminate 
this dark house with thoughts, show them 
their native riches, what gifts they have, 
how indispensable each is, what magical 
powers over nature and men ; what access 
to poetry, religion, and the powers which 
constitute character; he wakes in them 
the feeling of worth, his suggestions re- 
quire new ways of living, new books, -new 
men, new arts and sciences — then we come 
out of our egg-shell existence into the 
great dome, and see the zenith over and 
the nadir under us. Instead of the tanks 
and buckets of knowledge to which we 
are daily confined, we come down to the 
shore of the sea, and dip our hands in 
its miraculous waves. ’Tis wonderful the 
effect on the company. They are not the 
men they were. They have all been to 
California, and all have come back mil- 
lionnaires. There is no book and no 
pleasure in life comparable to it. Ask 
what is best in our experience, and we 
shall say, a few pieces of plain-dealing 
with wise people. Our conversation once 
and again has apprised us that we belong 
to better circles than we have yet beheld ; 
that a mental power invites us, whose 
generalizations are more worth for joy and 
for effect than anything that is now called 
philosophy or literature. In excited con- 
versation, we have glimpses of the Uni- 
verse, hints of power native to the soul, 
far-darting lights and shadows of an 
Andes landscape, such as we can hardly 
attain in lone meditation. Here are 
oracles sometimes profusely given, to 
which the memory goes back in barren 
hours. 

Add the consent of will and tempera- 
ment, and there exists the covenant of 
friendship. Our chief want in life, is, 
somebody who shall make us do what we 
can. This is the service of a friend. 
With him we are easily great. There is 
B sublime attraction in him to whatever 
virtue is in us. How he flings wide the 
doors of existence 1 What questions we 
ask of him 1 what an understanding wo 
have I how few words are needed ! It is 
the only real society. An Eastern poet, 
Ali Ben Abu Taleb, writes with sad 
truth;— 


** He who has a thousand friends tas not a 
friend to spare, 

And he who has one enemy shall meet him 
everywhere.** 

But few writers have said anything better 
to this point than Hafiz, who indicates 
this relation as the test of mental health; 
“ Thou learnest no secret until thou 
knowest friendship, since to the unsound 
no heavenly knowledge enters.” Neither 
is life long enough for friendship. That 
is a serious and majestic affair, like a 
royal presence, or a religion, and not a 
postilion’s dinner to be eaten on the run. 
There is a prudency about friendship, as 
about love, and though fine souls never 
lose sight of it, yet they do not name it. 
With the first class of men our friendship 
or good understanding goes quite behind 
all accidents of estrangement, of condi- 
tion, of reputation. And yet we do not 
provide for the greatest good of life. We 
take care of our health ; we lay up money ; 
we make our roof tight, and our clothing 
sufficient; but who provides wisely that 
he shall not be wanting m the best pro- 
perty of all — friends ? We know that all 
our training is to fit us for this, and we do 
not take the step towards it. How long 
shall we sit and wait for these benefactors ? 

It makes no difference, in looking back 
five years, how you have been dieted or 
dressed ; whether you have been lodged on 
the first floor or the attic ; whether you 
have had gardens and baths, good cattle 
and horses, have been carried in a neat 
equipage, or in a ridiculous truck : these 
things are forgotten so quickly, and leave 
no effect. But it counts much whether 
wa have had good companions, in that 
time — almost as much as what we have 
been doing. And see the overpowering 
importance of neighbourhood in all asso- 
ciation. As it is marriage, fit or unfit, 
that makes our home, so it is who lives 
near us of equal social degree — a few 
people at convenient distance, no matter 
how bad company — these, and these only, 
shall be your life’s companions: and all 
those who are native, congenial, and by 
many an oath of the heart, sacramented 
, to you, are gradually and totally lost. 
You cannot deal systematically with this 
fine element of society, and one may taka 
I a good deal of pains to bring people to- 
gether, and to organize clubs and debat- 
ing societies, and yet no result come of it. 
But it is certain that there is a great deal 
of good in us that does not know itself, 
and that a habit of union and competition 
brings people up and keeps them up to 



560 


C01SIDUCT OF LIFE, 


their highest point; that life would be 
twice or ten times life, if spent with wise 
fruitful companions. The obvious 
inference is, a little useful deliberation 
and preconcert, when one goes to buy 
house and land. 

But we live with people on other plat- 
forms ; we live with dependents, not only 
with the young whom we are to teach all 
we know, and clothe with the advantages 
we have earned, but also with those who 
serve us directly, and for money. Yet the 
old rules hold good. Let not the tie be 
mercenary, though the service is measured 
by money. Make yourself necessary to 
somebody. ^ Do not make life hard to any. 
This point is acquiring new importance in 
American social life. Our domestic ser- 
vice is usually a foolish fracas of unrea- 
sonable demand on one side, and shirking 
on the other. A man of wit was asked, in 
the train, what was his errand in the 
city ? He replied, “I have been sent to 
procure an angel to do cooking.” A lady 
complained to me, that, of her two 
maidens, one was absent-minded, and the 
other was absent-bodied. And the evil 
increases from the ignorance and hostility 
of every ship-load of the immigrant popu- 
lation swarming into houses and farms. 
Few people discern that it rests with the 
master or the mistress what service comes 
from the man or the maid ; that this 
identical hussy was a tutelar spirit in one 
house, and a haridan in the other. All 
sensible people are selfish, and nature is 
tugging at every contract to make the 
terms of it fair. If you are proposing 
only your own, the other party must deal 
a little hardly by you. If you deal 
generously, the other, though selfish and 
unjust, will make an exception in your 
favour, and deal truly with you. When 
1 asked an iron-master about the slag and 
cinder in rail-road iron — ” O,” he said, 
” there’s always good iron to be had : if 
there’s cinder in the iron, ’tis because 
there was cinder in the pay.” 

But why multiply these topics, and their 
illustrations, which are endless ? Life 
brings to each his task, and, whatever art 
you select, algebra, planting, architec- 
ture, poems, commerce, politics — all are 
attainable even to the miraculous 
triumphs, on the same terms, of selecting 
that for which you are apt ; begin at the 
beginning, proceed in order, step by step. 
'Tis as easy to twist iron anchors, and 
braid cannons, as to braid straw, to boil 
granite as to boil water, if you take all the 
•teps in ord^r, Wber-aver is faUum; 


there is some giddiness, some supersCb 
tion about lucK, some step omitted, which 
Nature never pardons. The happy con- 
ditions of life may be had on the same 
terms. Their attraction for you is the 
pledge that they are within your reach. 
Our prayers are prophets. There must 
be fidelity, and there must be adherence. 
How respectable the life that clings to its 
objects! Youthful aspirations are fine 
things, your theories and plans of life are 
fair and commendable: but will you 
stick ? Not one, I fear, in that Common 
full of people, or, in a thousand, but one : 
and when you tax them with treachery, 
and remind them of their high resolutionS j 
they have forgotten that they made a vow^ 
The individuals are fugitive, and in the 
act of becoming something else, and 
irresponsible. The race is great, the 
ideal fair, but the men whiffling and 
unsure. The hero is he who is immov- 
ably centred. The main difference 
between people seems to be, that one man 
can come under obligations on which you 
can rely — is obligable; and another is 
not. As he has not a law within him, 
there’s nothing to tie him to. 

'Tis inevitable to name particulars of 
virtue, and of condition, and to exag- 
gerate them. But all rests at last on that 
integrity which dwarfs talent, and can 
spare it. Sanity consists in not being 
subdued by your means. Fancy prices 
are paid for position, and for the culture 
of talent, but to the grand interests, 
superficial success is of no account. The 
man — it is his attitude — not feats, but 
forces — not on set days and public occa- 
sions, but at all hours, and in repose 
alike as in energy, still formidable, and 
not to be disposed of. The populace 
says, with Horne Tooko, ” If you would 
be powerful, pretend to be powerful.” I 
prefer to say, with the old prophet, 
” Seekest thou great things ? seek them 
not : ” or, what was said of a Spanish 
prince, ” The more you took from him, 
the greater he looked,” Plus on lui ole, 
plus il est grand. 

The secret of culture is to learn, that a 
few great points steadily reappear, alike 
in the poverty of the obscurest farm, and 
in the miscellany of metropolitan life, and 
that these few are alone to be regarded — > 
the escape from all false ties ; courage to 
be what we are; and love of what is 
simple and beautiful ; independence, and 
cheerful relation, these are the essentials 
— these, and the wish to serve — to add 
somewhat to the well-being of men, 



BEAUTY . 


561 


BEAUTY. 


Was never form and never face 
So sweet to Seyd as only grace 
Which did not slumber like a stone 
But hovered gleaming and was gone. 
Beauty chased he everywhere, 

In flame, in storm, in clouds of air. 

He smote the lake to feed his eye 
With the beryl beam of the broken wave ; 
He flung in pebbles well to hear 
The moment’s music which they gave. 
Oft pealed for him a lofty tone 
From nodding pole and belting zone* 

He heard a voice none else could hear 
From centred and from errant sphere. 

The quaking earth did quake in rhyme, 
Seas ebbed and flowed in epic chime. 

In dens of passion, and pits of woe, 

He saw strong Eros struggling through, 

To sun the dark and solve the curse. 

And beam to the bounds of the universe. 
While thus to love he gave his days 
In loyal worship, scorning praise. 

How spread their lures for him, in vain. 
Thieving Ambition and paltering Gainl 
He thought it happier to be dead, 

To die for Beauty, than live for bread. 

The spiral tendency of vegetation infects 
education also. Our books approach very 
slowly the things we most wish to know. 
What a parade we make of our science, 
and how far off, and at arm’s length, it is 
from its objects ! Our botany is all names, 
not powers : poets and romancers talk of 
herbs of grace and healing ; but what does 
the botanist know of the virtues of his 
weeds? The geologist lays bare the 
strata, and can tell them all on his fingers ; 
but does he know what effect passes into 
the man who builds his house in them ? 
what effect on the race that inhabits a 
granite shelf ? what on the inhabitants of 
marl and of alluvium ? 

We should go to the ornithologist with 
a new feeling, if he could teach us what 
the social birds say, when they sit in the 
autumn council, talking together in the 
trees. The want of sympathy makes his 
record a dull dictionary. His result is a 
dead bird. The bird is not in its ounces 
and inches, but in its relations to Nature; 
and the skin or skeleton you show me is 
no more a heron, than a heap of ashes or a 
bottle of gases into which his body has 
been reduced, is Dante or Washington. 
The naturalist is led from the road by the 
whole distance of his fancied advance. 
The boy had juster views when he gazed 
at the shells on the beach, or the flowers 
In the meadow, nnable to call them by 


their names, than the man in the pride of 
his nomenclature. Astrology interested 
us, for it tied man to the system. Instead 
of an isolated beggar, the farthest star felt 
him, and he felt the star. However rash 
and however falsified by pretenders and 
traders in it, the hint was true and divinoj 
the soul’s avowal of its large relations, 
and that climate, century, remote natures, 
as well as near, are part of its biography. 
Chemistry takes to pieces, but it does not 
construct. Alchemy which sought to trans- 
mute one element into another, to prolong 
life, to arm with power — that was in the 
right direction. All our science lacks a 
human side. The tenant is more than the 
house. Bugs and stamens and spores, on 
which we lavish so many years, are not 
finalities, and man, when his powers un- 
fold in order, will take Nature along with 
him, and emit light into all her recesses. 
The human heart concerns us more than 
the poring into microscopes, and is larger 
than can be measured by the pompous 
figures of the astronomer, 
i We are just so frivolous and sceptical. 
Men hold themselves cheap and vile : and 
yet a man is a fagot of thunderbolts. All 
the elements pour through his system : ha 
is the flood of the flood and fire of the 
fire : he feels the antipodes and the pole, 
as drops of his blood : they are the exten- 
sion of his personality. His duties are 
measured by that instrument he is ; and a 
right and perfect man would be felt to the 
centre of the Copemican system. 'Tis 
curious that we only believe as deep as 
we live. We do not think heroes can 
exert any more av/ful power than that 
surface-play which amuses us. A deep 
man believes in miracles, waits for them, 
believes in magic, believes that the orator 
will decompose his adversary; believes 
that the evil eye can wither, that the 
heart’s blessing can heal ; that love can 
exalt talent ; can overcome all odds. From 
a great heart secret magnetisms flow in- 
cessantly to draw great events. But we 
prize very humble utilities, a prudent hus- 
band, a good son, a voter, a citizen, and 
deprecate any romance of character ; and 
perhaps reckon only his money value, 
his intellect, his affection, as a sort of 
bill of exchange, easily convertible into 
fine chambers, pictures, music, and 
wiro, 



CONDVCT OP LIFE. 


KCi 

tttotive ol sclent Was the extension 
of man, on all sides, into Nature, till his 
hands should touch the stars, his eyes see 
through the earth, his ears understand the 
language of beast and bird, and the sense 
of the wind ; and, through his sympathy, 
heaven and earth should talk with him. 
But that is not our science. These geo- 
logies, chemistries, astronomies, seem to 
make wise, but they leave us where they 
found us. The invention is of use to the 
inventor, of questionable help to any other. 
The formulas of science are like the papers 
in your pocket-book, of no value to any but 
the owner. Science in England, in Ame- 
rica, is jealous of theory, hates the name 
of love and moral purpose. There’s a re- 
venge for this inhumanity. What manner 
of man does science make ? The boy is 
not attracted. He says, I do not wish to 
be such a kind of man as my professor is. 
The collector has dried all the plants in 
his herbal, but he has lost weight and hu- 
mour. He has got all snakes and lizards 
in his phials, but science has done for him 
also, and has put the man into a bottle. 
Our reliance on the physician is a kind of 
despair of ourselves. The clergy have 
bronchitis, which does not seem a cer- 
tificate of spiritual health, Macready 
thought it came of the falsetto of their 
voicing. An Indian prince, Tisso, one 
day riding in the forest, saw a herd of elk 
sporting. “ See how happy,” he said, 
“these browsing elks are! Why should 
not priests, lodged and fed comfortably in 
the temples, also amuse themselves ? ” 
Returning home, he imparted this reflec- 
tion to the king. The king, on the next 
day, conferred the sovereignty on him, 
saying, “ Prince, administer this empire 
for seven days : at the termination of that 
period, I shall put thee to death.” At the 
end of the seventh day, the king inquired, 
“ From what cause hast thou become so 
emaciated ? ” He answered, “ From the 
horror of death. ’ ' The monarch rejoined : 
“ Live, my child, and be wise. Thou hast 
ceased to take recreation, saying to thy- 
self, In seven days I shall be put to death. 
These priests in the temple incessantly 
meditate on death ; how can they enter 
into healthful diversions ? ” But the men 
of science or the doctors or the clergy are 
not victims of their pursuits, more than 
others. The miller, the lawyer, and the 
merchant dedicate themselves to their own 
details, and do not come out men of more 
force. Have they divination, grand aims, 
hospitality of soul, and the equality to any 
•vent, which we demand in man, or only 


the reactions pf the mill, of the wafdiS, of 
the chicane ? ^ 

No objects really interests us but man, 
and in man only his superiorities ; and 
though we are aware of a perfect law in 
Nature, it has fascination for us only 
through its relation to him, or, as it is 
rooted in the mind. At the birth of 
Winckelmann, more than a hundred years 
ago, side by side with this arid, depart- 
mental, post-mortem science, rose an 
enthusiasm in the study of Beauty ; and 
perhaps some sparks from it may yet light 
a conflagration in the other. Knowledge of 
men, knowledge of manners, the power of 
form, and our sensibility to personal influ- 
uence, never go out of fashion. These 
are facts of a science which we study 
without book, whose teachers and subjects 
are always near us. 

So inveterate is our habit of criticism, 
that much of our knowledge in this direc- 
tion belongs to the chapter of pathology. 
The crowd in the street oftener furnishes 
degradations than angels or redeemers ; 
but they all prove the transparency. 
Every spirit makes its house ; and we can 
give a shrewd guess from the house to the 
inhabitant. But not less does Nature 
furnish us with every sign of grace and 
goodness. The delicious faces of children, 
the beauty of school-girls, ” the sweet seri- 
ousness of sixteen,” the lofty air of well- 
born, well-bred boys, the passionate histor- 
ies in the looks and manners of youth and 
early manhood, and the varied power in 
all that well-known company that escort 
us through life — we know how these forms 
thrill, paralyze, provoke, inspire, and 
enlarge us. 

' Beauty is the form under which the intel- 
lect prefers to study the world. All privi- 
lege is that of beauty ; for there are many 
beauties; as, of general nature, of the 
human face and form, of manners, of 
brain, or method, moral beauty, or beauty 
of the soul. 

The ancients believed that a genius or 
demon took possession at birth of each 
mortal, to guide him ; that these genii 
were sometimes seen as a flame of fire 
partly immersed in the bodies which they 
governed ; on an evil man, resting on his 
head ; in a good man, mixed with his sub- 
stance. They thought the same genius, 
at the death of its ward, entered a new- 
born child, and they pretended to guess 
the pilot, by the sailing of the ship. We 
recognize obscurely the same fact, though 
wo give it our own names. We say, that 
every man is entitled to be valued by bis 



BEAVTY. 


best moment. We measure our friends 
so. We know, they hafs intervals of 
folly, whereof we take no heed, but wait 
the reappearings of the genius, which are 
sure and beautiful. On the other side, 
everybody knows people who appear bed- 
ridden, and who, with all degrees of ability, 
never impress us with the air of free 
agency. They know it too, and peep 
with their eyes to see if you detect their 
sad plight. We fancy, could we pro- 
nounce the solving word, and disenchant 
them, the cloud would roll up, the little 
rider would be discovered and unseated, 
and they would regain their freedom. 
The remedy seems never to be far off, 
since the first step into thought lifts this 
mountain of necessity. Thought is the 
pent air-ball which can rive the planet, 
and the beauty which certain objects have 
for him is the friendly fire which expands 
the thought, and acquaints the prisoner 
that liberty and power await him. 

The question of Beauty takes us out of 
surfaces, to thinking of the foundations of 
things. Goethe said : “ The beautiful is 
a manifestation of secret laws of Nature, 
which, but for this appearance, had been 
for ever concealed from us.” And the 
working of this deep instinct makes all 
the excitement— much of it superficial 
and absurd enough — about works of art, 
which leads armies of vain travellers 
every year to Italy, Greece, and Egypt. 
Every man values every acquisition he 
makes in the science of beauty, above his 
possessions. The most useful man in the 
most useful world, so long as onl j com- 
modity was served, would remain unsatis- 
fied. But, as fast as he sees beauty, life 
acquires a very high value. 

I am warned by the ill fate of many 
philosophers not to attempt a definition 
of Beauty. I will rather enumerate a few 
of its qualities. We ascribe beauty to 
that which is simple ; which has no super- 
fluous parts ; which exactly answers its 
end; which stands related to all things; 
which is the mean of many extremes. It 
is the most enduring quality, and ^e most 
ascending quality. We say love is blind, 
and the figure of Cupid is drawn with a 
bandage round his eyes. Blind — yes, 
because ho does not so?» what he does not 
like; but the sharpest-sighted hunter in 
the universe is Love, for finding what he 
seeks, and only that; and the mythologists 
tell us, that Vulcan was painted lame and 
Cupid blind, to call attention to the fact, 
that one was all limbs, and the other, all 
«ye». lo the true mythglogy, Love is m 


563 

immortal child, and Beauty leads him as 
a guide : nor can we express a deepejf 
sense than when we say, Beaut> Is tha 
pilot of the young soul. 

Beyond their sensuous delight, tha 
forms and colours of Nature have a new 
charm for us in our perception, that not 
one ornament was added for ornament, 
but each is a sign of some better health, or 
more excellent action. Elegance of form 
in bird or beast, or in the human figure, 
marks some excellence of structure: or 
beauty is only an invitation from what 
belongs to us. It is a law of botany, that 
in plants, tha same virtues follow the 
same forms. It is a rule of largest appli- 
cation, true in a plant, true in a loaf of 
[ bread, that in the construction of any 
fabric or organism, any real increase of 
fitness to its end, is an increase of beauty. 

The lesson taught by the study of Greek 
and of Gothic art, of antique and of Pre- 
Raphaelite painting, was worth all the 
research — namely, that all beauty must 
be organic ; that outside embellishment is 
deformity. It is the soundness of tha 
bones that ultimates itself in a peach- 
bloom complexion : health of constitution 
that makes the sparkle and the power of 
the eye. It is the adjustment of the size 
and of the joining of the sockets of the 
skeleton, that gives grace of outline and 
the finer grace of movement. The cat 
and the deer cannot move or sit in- 
elegantly. The dancing-master can never 
teach a badly-built man to walk well. 
The tint of the flower proceeds from its 
root, and the lustres of the sea-shell begin 
with its existence. Hence our taste in 
building rejects paint, and all shifts, and 
shows the original grain of the wood : 
refuses pilasters and columns that support 
nothing, and allows the real supporters of 
the house honestly to show themselves. 
Every necessary or organic action pleast s 
the beholder. A man leading a horse to 
water, a farmer sowing seed, the labours 
of haymakers in the field, tha carpenter 
building a ship, the smith at his forge,, or 
whatever useful labour, is becoming to 
the wise eye. But if it is done to be seen, 
it is mean. How beautiful are ships on 
the sea 1 but ships in the theatre — or ships 
kept for picturesque effect on Virginia 
Water, by George IV., and men hired to 
stand in fitting costumes at a penny an 
hour! What a difference in effect be- 
tween a battalion of troops marching to 
action, and one of our independent com- 
panies on a holiday ! In the midst of a 
military show, a^d a fostal procession 



CONDUCT OF LIFE. 


5^4 

with banners, 1 saw a boy seize an old tin 
pan that lay resting under a wall, and 
poising it on the top of a stick, he set it 
turning, and made it describe the most 
elegant imaginable curves, and drew away 
attention from the decorated procession 
by this startling beauty. 

Another text from the mythologists. 
The Greeks fabled that Venus was born 
of the foam of the sea. Nothing interests 
us which is stark or bounded, but only 
what streams with life, what is in act or 
endeavour to reach somewhat beyond. 
x ne pleasure a palace or a temple gives 
the eye, is, that an order and method has 
been communicated to stones, so that they 
speak and geometrize^ become tender or 
sublime with expression. Beauty is the 
moment of transition, as if the form were 
just ready to flow into other forms. Any 
fixedness, heaping, or concentration on 
one feature — a long nose, a sharp chin, a 
hump-back — is the ^reverse of the flowing, 
and therefore deformed. Beautiful as is 
the symmetry of any form, if the form can 
move, we seek a more excellent symmetry. 
The interruption of equilibrium stimu- 
lates the eye to desire the restoration of 
symmetry, and to watch the steps through 
which it is attained. This is the charm 
of running water, sea-waves, the flight of 
birds, and the locomotion of animals. 
This is the theory of dancing, to recover 
continually in changes the lost equilibrium, 
not by abrupt and angular, but by gradual 
and curving movements. I have been 
told by persons of experience in matters 
of taste, that the fashions follow a law of 
gradation, and are never arbitrary. The 
new mode is always only a step onward in 
the same direction as the last mode ; and 
a cultivated eye is prepared for and pre- 
dicts the new fashion. This fact suggests 
the reason of all mistakes and offence in 
our own modes. It is necessary in music, 
when you strike a discord, to let down the 
ear by an intermediate note or two to the 
accord again : and many a good experi- 
ment, born of good sense, and destined to 
succeed, fails, only because it is offen- 
sively sudden. I suppose, the Parisian 
milliner who dresses the world from her 
imperious boudoir, will know how to recon- 
cile the Bloomer costume to the eye of 
mankind, and make it triumphant over 
Punch himself, by interposing the just 
gradations. I need not say how wide the 
same law ranges ; and how much it can be 
hoped to effect All that is a little harshly 
claimed by progressive parties may easily 
come to be conceded without questiooi if 


this rule be observed. Thus the circum- 
stances may br easily imagined, in which 
woman may speak, vote, argue causes, 
legislate, and drive a coach, and all the 
most naturally in the world, if only it come 
by degrees. To this streaming or flowing 
belongs the beauty that all circular move- 
ment has ; as, the circulation of waters, 
the circulation of the blood, the periodical 
motion of planets, the annual wave ot 
vegetation, the action and reaction of 
Nature; and, if we follow it out, this 
demand in our thought for an ever-onward 
u:tion is the argument for the immor- 
tality. 

One more text from the mythologists is 
to the same purpose — Beauty rides on a 
lion. Beauty rests on necessities. The 
line of beauty is the result of perfect 
economy. The cell of the bee is built at 
that angle which gives the most strength 
with the least wax ; the bone or the quill 
of the bird gives the most alar strength 
with the least weight. "It is the purga- 
tion of superfluities," said Michel Angelo. 
There is not a particle to spare in natural 
structures. There is a compelling reason 
in the uses of the plant, for every novelty 
of colour or form : and our art saves 
material, by more skilful arrangement, 
and reaches beauty by taking every super- 
fluous ounce that can bo spared from a 
wall, and keeping all its strength in the 
poetry of columns. In rhetoric, this art of 
omission is a chief secret of power, and, 
in general, it is proof of high culture, to 
say the greatest matters in the simplest way 

Veracity first of all, and forever. Rien 
de beau que le vrai. In all design, art lies 
in making your object prominent, but 
there is a prior art in choosing objects that 
are prominent. The fine arts have nothing 
casual, but spring from the instincts of the 
nations that created them. 

Beauty is the quality which makes to 
endure. In a house that I know, I have 
noticed a block of spermaceti lying about 
closets and mantel-pieces, for twenty 
years together, simply because the tallow- 
man gave it the form of a rabbit; and, I 
suppose, it may continue to be lugged 
about unchanged for a century. Let an 
artist scrawl a few lines or figures on the 
Oack of a letter, and that scrap of paper is 
rescued from danger, is put in portfolio, 
is framed and glazed, and, in proportion 
to the beauty of the lines drawn, will be 
kept for centuries. Burns writes a copy 
of verses, and sends them to a newspaper, 
and the human race take charge ot them 
that they shall not perish. 



BEAUTY. 


Ag the flute ia heard farther than the 
eart, see hew surely a beautiful form 
strikes the fancy of men, and is copied 
and reproduced without end. How many 
copies are there of the Belvedere Apollo, 
the Venus, the Psyche, the Warwick Vase, 
the Parthenon, and the Temple of Vesta ? 
These are objects of tenderness to all. In 
our cities, an ugly building is soon re- 
moved, and is never repeated ; but any 
beautiful building is copied and improved 
upon ; so that all masons and carpenters 
work to repeat and preserve the agree- 
able forms, whilst the ugly ones die out. 

The felicities of design in art, or in 
works of Nature, are shadows or fore- 
runners of that beauty which reaches its 
perfection in the human form. All men 
pe its lovers. Wherever it goes, it creates 
joy and hilarity, and everything is per- 
mitted to it. It reaches its height in 
woman, “ To Eve,*’ say the Mahometans, 
“ God gave two thirds of all beauty.” A 
beautiful woman is a practical poet, taming 
her savage mate, planting tenderness, 
hope, and eloquence in all v/hom she ap- 
proaches. Some favours of condition 
must go with it, since a certain serenity is 
essential, but we love its reproofs and 
superiorities. Nature wishes that woman 
should attract man, yet she often cunningly 
moulds into her face a little sarcasm, 
which seems to say, ” Yes, I am willing to 
attract, but to attract a little better kind 
of man than any I yet behold.” French 
mdmoires of the fifteenth century celebrate 
the name of Pauline de Viguiere, a virtu- 
ous and accomplished maiden, who so 
fired the enthusiasm of her contempo- 
raries, by her enchanting form, that the 
citizens of her native city of Toulouse 
obtained the aid of the civil authorities to 
compel her to appear publicly on the 
balcony at least twice a week, and, as 
often as she showed herself, the crowd 
was dangerous to life. Not less, in Eng- 
land, in the last century, was the fame of 
the Gunnings, of whom Elizabeth married 
the Duke of Hamilton; and Maria, the 
Earl of Coventry, Walpole says : The 
concourse was so great, when the Duchess 
of Hamilton was presented at court, on 
Friday, that even the noble crowd in the 
drawing-room clambered on chairs and 
tables to look at her. There are mobs at 
their doors to see them get into their 
chairs, and people go early to get places 
at the theatres, when it is known they 
will be there.” Such crowds,” he adds, 
elsewhere, ” flock to see the Duchess of 
Hamilton, that seven hundred people sat 


56s 

up all night, in and about an inn, in York- 
shire. to see her get into her post-chaise 
next morning.” 

But why need we console ourselves with 
the fames of Helen of Argos, or Corinra, 
or Pauline of Toulouse, or the Duchess 
of Hamilton ? We all know this magic 
very well, or can divine it. It does not 
hurt weak eyes to look into beautiful eyes 
never so long. Women stand related to 
beautiful Nature around us, and the ena- 
moured youth mixes their form with moon 
and stars, with woods and waters, and the 
pomp of summer. They heal us of awk- 
wardness by their words and looks. We 
observe their intellectual influence on the 
most serious student. They refine and 
clear his mind ; teach him to put a pleas- 
ing method into what is dry and difficult. 
We talk to them and wish to be listened 
to; wa fear to fatigue them, and acquire a 
facility of expression which passes from 
conversation into habit of style. 

That Beauty is the normal state, is 
shown by the perpetual effort of Nature 
to attain it. Mirabeau had an ugly face 
on a handsome ground ; and we see faces 
every day which have a good type, bu^ 
have been marred in the casting : a prooi 
that we are all entitled to beauty, should 
have been beautiful, if our ancestors had 
kept the laws — as every lily and every 
rose is well. But our bodies do not fit us, 
but caricature and satirize us. Thus, short 
legs, which constrain to short, mincing 
steps, are a kind of personal insult and 
, contumely to the owner ; and long stilts, 
again, put him at perpetual disadvantage, 
and force him to stoop to the general 
level of mankind. Martial ridicules a 
gentleman of his day whose countenance 
resembled the face of a swimmer seen 
under water. Saadi describes a school- 
master ” so ugly and crabbed, that a sight 
of him would derange the ecstasies of the 
orthodox.” Faces are rarely true to any 
ideal type, but are a record in sculpture 
of a thousand anecdotes of whim and 
folly. Portrait painters say that most 
faces and forms are irregular and unsym- 
metrical ; have one eye blue, and one gray ; 
the nose not straight; and one shoulder 
higher than another; the hair unequally 
distributed, &c. The man is physically 
as well as metaphysically a thing of shreds 
and patches, borrowed unequally from 
good and bad ancestors, and a misfit from 
the start. 

A beautiful person, among the Greeks, 
was thought to betray by this sign some 
secret favour of the immertal gods ; and 



566 CQNDUCT 

we can pardon pride, when a woman pos- 
sesses such a ngure, that wherever she 
stands, or moves, or throws a shadow on 
the wall, or sits for a portrait to the artist, 
she confers a favour on the world. And 
yet — it is not beauty that inspires the 
deepest passion. Beauty without grace is 
the hook without the bait. Beauty, with- 
out expression, tires. Abb6 Manage said 
of the President Le Bailleul, “ that he was 
fit for nothing but to sit for his portrait." 
A Greek epigram intimates that the force 
of love is not shown by the courting of 
beauty, but when the like desire is in- 
flamed for one who is ill-favoured. And 
petulant old gentlemen, who have chanced 
to suffer some intolerable weariness from 
pretty people, or who have seen cut 
flowers to some profusion, or who see, 
after a world of pains have been success- 
fully taken for the costume, how the least 
mistake in sentiment takes all the beauty 
out of your clothes— affirm, that the secret 
of ugliness consists not in irregularity 
but in being uninteresting. 

We love any forms, however ugly, from 
which great qualities shine. If command, 
eloquence, art, or invention exist in the 
most deformed person, all the accidents 
that usually displease, please, and raise 
esteem and wonder higher. The great 
orator was an emaciated, insignificant 
person, but he was all brain. Cardinal 
De Retz says of De Bouillon, " With the 
physiognomy of an ox, he had the perspi- 
cacity of an eagle." It was said of Hooke, 
the friend of Newton, " He is the most, 
and promises the least, of any man in 
England." "Since I am so ugly," said 
Du Guesclin, "it behooves that I be 
bold." Sir Philip Sidney, the darling of 
mankind, Ben Jonson tells us, "was no 
pleasant man in countenance, his face be- 
ing spoiled with pimples, and of high 
blood, and long." Those who have ruled 
human destinies, like planets, for thou- 
sands of years, were not handsome men. 
If a man can raise a small city to be a 
great kingdom, can make bread cheap, 
can irrigate deserts, can join oceans by 
canals, can subdue steam, can organize 
victory, can lead the opinions of mankind, 
can enlarge knowledge, ’tis no matter 
whether his nose is parallel to his spine, 
as it ought to be, or whether he has a nose 
at all; whether his legs are straight, or 
whether his legs are amputated ; his de- 
formities will come to be reckoned orna- 
mental and advantageous on the whole. 
This is the triumph of expression, de- 
grading beauty, charming U9 wj^h a ppwer 


OF LIFE. 

so fine and friendly and intoxicating, that 
it makes admiir:d persons insipid, and the 
thought of passing our lives with them in- 
supportable. There are faces so fluid with 
expression, so flushed and rippled by the 
play of thought, that we can hardly find 
what the mere features really are. When 
the delicious beauty of lineaments loses its 
power it is because a more delicious beauty 
has appeared ; that an interior and durable 
form has been disclosed. Still, Beauty 
rides on her lion, as before. Still, " it was 
for beauty that the world was made." 
The lives of the Italian artists, who estab- 
lished a despotism of genius amidst the 
dukes and kings and mobs of their stormy 
epoch, prove how loyal men in all times 
are to a finer brain, a finer method, than 
their own. If a man can cut such a head 
on his stone gate-post as shall draw p nd 
keep a crowd about it all day, by its grace, 
good-nature and inscrutable meaning ; if a 
j man can build a plain cottage with such 
I symmetry, as to make all the fine palaces 
look cheap and vulgar ; can take such ad- 
vantage of Nature that all her powers serve 
him ; making use of geometry, instead of 
expense ; tapping a mountain for his water- 
jet ; causing the sun and moon to seem 
only the decorations of his estate ; this is 
still the legitimate dominion of beauty. 

The radiance of the human form, though 
sometimes astonishing, is only a burst of 
beauty for a few years or a few months, 
at the perfection of youth, and in most, 
rapidly declines. But we remain lovers 
of it, only transferring our interest to in- 
terior excellence. And it is not only ad- 
mirable in singular and salient talents, but 
also in the world of manners. 

But the sovereign attribute remains to 
bo noted. Things are pretty, graceful, 
rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they 
speak to the imagination, not yet beauti- 
ful. This is the reason why beauty is still 
escaping out of all analysis. It is not yet 
possessed, it cannot be handled. Proclus 
says, " It swims on the light of forms," 
It is properly not in the form, but in the 
mind. It instantly deserts possession, and 
flies to an object in the horizon. If I 
could put my hand on the north star, 
would it be as beautiful ? The sea ia 
lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty 
forsakes all the near water. For the im- 
agination and senses cannot be gratified at 
the same time. Wordsworth rightly 
speaks of " a light that never was on sea 
or land," meaning, that it was supplied by 
the observer, and the Welsh bard 
bi? couiilrywohJ^Ui that ;-r 



BEAUTY. 


567 


" Half of their charms with Cadwallon shall 
die.’* I 

The cew virtue which constitutes a thing 
beautiful is a certain cosmical quality, or, 
a power to suggest relation to the whole 
world, and so lift the object out of a piti- 
ful individuality. Every natural feature — 
sea, sky, rainbow, flowers, musical tone — 
has in it somewhat which is not private, 
but universal, speaks of that central bene- 
fit which is the soul of Nature, and there- 
by is beautiful. And, in chosen men and 
women, I find somewhat in form, speech, 
and manners, which is not of their person 
and family, but of a humane, catholic, and 
spiritual character, and we love them as 
the sky. They have a largeness of sug- 
gestion, and their face and manners carry 
a certain grandeur, like time and justice. 

The feat of the imagination is in show- 
ing the convertibility of everything into 
every other thing. Facts which had never 
before left their stark common sense sud- 
denly figure as Eleusinian mysteries. My 
boots and chair and candlestick are fairies 
in disguise, meteors and constellations. 
All the facts in Nature are nouns of the 
intellect, and make the grammar of the 
eternal language. Every word has a 
double, treble, or centuple use and mean- 
ing. What ! has my stove and pepper-pot 
a false bottom ! I cry you mercy, good 
shoe-box ! I did not knov/ you were a 
jewel-case. Chaff and dust begin to 
sparkle, and are clothed about with im- 
mortality. And there is a joy in perceiving 
the representative or symbolic character 
of a fact, which no bare fact or event can 
ever give. There are no days in life so 
memorable as those which vibrated to 
some stroke of the imagination. 

The poets are quite right in decking 
their mistresses with the spoils of the 
landscape, flower-gardens, gems, rain- 
bows, flushes of morning, and stars of 
night, since all beauty points at identity, 
and whatsoever thing does not express to 
me the sea and sky, day and night, is some- 
what forbidden and wrong. Into every 
beautiful object there enters somewhat 
immeasurable and divine, and just as 
much into form bounded by outlines, like 
mountains on the horizon, as into tones 


of music, or depths of space. Polarized 
light showed the secret architecture ol 
bodies ; and when the second-sight of the 
mind is opened, now one colour or form 
or gesture, and now another, had a pun- 
gency, as if a more interior ray had be«n 
emitted, disclosing its deep holdings in 
the frame of things. 

The laws of this translation we do no\. 
know, or why one feature or gesture en- 
chants, why one word or syllable intoxi- 
cates, but the fact is familiar that the fine 
touch of the eye, or a grace of manners, 
or a phrase of poetry, plants wings at our 
shoulders ; as if the Divinity, in his ap- 
proaches, lifts away mountains of obstruc- 
tion, and deigns to draw a truer lino 
which the mind knows and owns. This 
is that haughty force of beauty, " vis 
siiperba formcCt" which the poets praise 
— under cairn and precise outline, the im- 
measurable and divine. Beauty hiding all 
wisdom and power in its calm sky. 

All high beauty has a moral element in 
it, and I find the antique sculpture as 
ethical as Marcus Antonius : and the 
beauty ever in proportion to the depth of 
thought. Gross and obscure natures, 
however decorated, seem impure sham- 
bles; but character gives splendour to 
youth, and awe to wrinkled skin and grey 
hairs. An adorer of truth we cannot 
choose but obey, and the woman who has 
shared with us the moral sentiment — her 
locks must appear to us sublime. Thus 
there is a climbing scale of culture, from 
the first agreeable sensation which a 
sparkling gem or a scarlet stain affords 
the eye, up through fair outlines and de- 
tails of tlie landscape, features of the 
human face and form, ,;signs and tokens 
of thought and character in mannere, up 
to the ineffable mysteries of the intellect. 
Wherever we begin, thither our steps 
tend : an ascent from the joy of a horsvs 
in his trappings, up to the perception of 
Newton, that the globe on which we ride 
is only a larger apple falling from a larger 
tree ; up to the perception of Plato, that 
globe and universe are rude and early ex- 
pressions of an all-dissolving Unity — th^ 
first stair on the scale to the temple o. 
the Mind. 



568 


CONDUCT OP LIPS. 


ILLUSIONS. 


FloWi flow the waves hated, | 

Accursed, adored, 

The waves of nrutation ; 

No anchorage is. 

Sleep is not, death is not j 
Who seem to die live. 

House you were bora ia| 

Friends of your spring-timei 

Old man and young maid, | 

Day’s toil and its guerdon, 

They are all vani^ing, 

Fleeing to fables, 

Cannot be moored. 

See the stars through them, 

Through treacherous marbles. 

Know, the stars yonder, 

The stars everlasting, 

Are fugitive also, 

And emulate, vaulted, 

The lambent heat-lightning, 

And fire-fly’s flight. 

When thou dost return 
On the wave's circulation, 

Beholding the shimmer. 

The wild dissipation. 

And, out of endeavour 
To change and to flow, 

The gas necomes solid. 

And phantoms and nothings 
Return to be things, 

And endless imbroglio 
Is law and the world— 

Then first shalt thou know. 

That in the wild turmoil. 

Horsed on the Proteus, 

Thou ridest to power, 

And to endurance. 

Some years ago, in company with an 
agreeable party, I spent a long summer 
day in exploring the Mammoth Calve in 
Kentucky. We traversed, through spacious 
galleries affording a solid masonry founda- 
tion for the town and county overhead, 
the six or eight black miles from the 
mouth of the cavern to the innermost 
recess which tourists visit — a niche or 
grotto made of one seamless stalactite, 
and called, I believe, Serena’s Bower. I 
lost the light of one day. I saw high 
domes, and bottomless pits ; heard the 
voice of unseen waterfalls ; paddled three- 
quarters of a mile in the deep Echo River, 
whose waters are peopled with the blind 
fish; crossed the streams “ Lethe” and 
“ Styx" ; plied with music and guns the 
echoes in these alarming galleries : saw 
every form of stalagmite and stalactite in 
the sculptured and fretted chambers — 
icicle, orange-flower, acanthus, grapes, 
and snowball. We shot Bengal lights 
li^to the vaults and groins of the sparry 


cathedrals, and examined all the master- 
pieces which the four combined engi- 
neers, water, limestone, gravitation, and 
time, could make in the dark. 

The mysteries and scenery of the cave 
had the same dignity that belongs to all 
natural objects, and which shames the fine 
things to which we foppishly compare 
them. I remarked, especially, the mi- 
metic habit, with which Nature, on new 
instruments, hums her old tunes, making 
night to mimic day, and chemistry to ape 
vegetation. But I then took notice, and 
still chiefly remember, that the best thing 
which the cave had to offer was an illu- 
sion. On arriving at what is called the 
” Star Chamber,” our lamps were taken 
from us by the guide, and extinguished or 
put aside, and, on looking upwards, I savr 
or seemed to see the night heaven thick 
with stars glimmering more or less brightly 
over our heads, and even what seemed a 
comet flaming among them. All the party 
were touched with astonishment and 
pleasure. Our musical friends sung with 
much feeling a pretty song, ” The stars 
are in the quiet sky,” etc., and I sat 
down on the rocky floor to enjoy the 
serene picture. Some crystal specks in 
the black ceiling high overhead, reflecting 
the light of a half-hid lamp, yielded this 
magnificent effect. 

I own, I did not like the cave so well 
for eking out its sublimities with this 
theatrical trick. But I have had many 
experiences like it, before and since ; and 
we must be content to be pleased without 
too curiously analyzing the occasions. 
Cur conversation with Nature is not just 
what it seems. The cloud-rack, the sun- 
rise and sunset glories, rainbows and 
northern lights, are not quite so spheral 
as our childhood thought them ; and the 
part our organization plays in them is too 
large. The senses interfere everywhere, 
and mix their own structure with all they 
report of. Once, we fancied the earth a 
plane, and stationary. In admiring the 
sunset, we do not yet deduct the round- 
ing, co-ordinating, pictorial powers of the 
eye. 

1 The same interference from our organ- 
I ization creates the most of our pleasure 
and pain. Our first mistake is the belief 
that the circumstance gives the joy which 
we give to the circumstance. Life is an 
ecstasy. Life Is sweet as nitrous oxide | 



ILLUSIONS. 


and the fisherman dripping all day over 
a cold pond, the switchman at the railway 
intersection, the farmer in the field, the 
negro in the rice-swamp, ^he fop in the 
street, the hunter in the woods, the bar- 
rister with the jury, the belle at the ball, 
all ascribe a certain pleasure to their 
employment, which they themselves give 
it. Health and appetite impart the sweet- 
ness to sugar, bread, and meat. We 
fancy that our civilization has got on far, 
but we still come back to our primers. 

We live by our imaginations, by our 
admirations, by our sentiments. The 
child walks amid heaps of illusions, which 
he does not like to have disturbed. The 
boy, how sweet to him is his fancy ! how 
dear the story of barons and battles I 
What a hero he is, whilst ho feeds on 
his heroes ! What a debt is his to 
imaginative books I Ho has no better 
friend or influence than Scott, Shak- 
speare, Plutarch, and Homer. The man 
lives toother objects, but who dare affirm 
that they are more real ? Even the prose 
of the streets is full of refractions. In the 
life of the dreariest alderman, fancy enters 
into all details, and colours them with 
rosy hue. ilo imitates the air and 
actions of people whom ho admires, and j 
s raised in his own eyes. He pays a ^ 
debt quicker to a rich man than to a poor 
man. He wishes the bow and compli- 
ment of some leader in the state, or in 
society ; weighs what ho says ; perhaps he 
never comes nearer to him for that, but 
dies at last better contented for this 
amusement of his eyes and his fancy. 

The world rolls, the din of life is never 
hushed. In London, in Paris, in Boston, 
in San Francisco, the carnival, the mas- 
querade, is at its height. Nobody drops 
his domino. The unities, the fictions of 
the piece, it would be an impertinence to 
break. The chapter of fascinations is 
very long. Great is paint: nay, God is 
the painter; and we rightly accuse the 
critic who destroys too many illusions. 
Society does not love its unmaskers. It 
was wittily, if somewhat bitterly, said by 
D’Alembert, “ 6tai vapour Halt 

unHat trtsfdcheux, par cequ'il nous faisait 
voir les choses comme tiles sont” I find 
men victims of illusions in all parts of 
life. Children, youths, adults, and old 
men, all are led by one bawble or another. 
Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Pro- 
teus or Momus, or Gylfi’s Mocking — for 
the Power has many names — is stronger 
than the Titans, stronger than Apollo. 
F^w have overheard the gods or surprised 


56Q 

their secret. Life is a succession ot 
lessons which must be lived to bo under- 
stood. All is riddle, and the key to a 
riddle is another riddle. There are as 
many pillows of illusions as flakes in a 
snow-storm. We wake from one dream 
into another dream. The toys, to be sure, 
are various, and are graduated in refine- 
ment to the quality of the dupe. The 
intellectual man requires a fine bait ; the 
sots are easily amused. But everybody 
is drugged with his own frenzy, and the 
pageant marches at all hours, with music 
and banner and badge. 

Amid the joyous troop who give in to 
the charivari comes now and then a sad- 
eyed boy, whose eyes lack the requisite 
refractions to clothe the show in duo 
glory, and who is afflicted with a tendency 
to trace home the glittering miscellany of 
fruits and flowers to one root. Science is 
a search after identity, and the scientific 
whim is lurking in all corners. At the 
State Fair, a friend of mine complained 
that all the varieties of fancy pears in our 
orchards seem to have been selected by 
somebody who had a whim for a particu- 
lar kind of pear, and only cultivated such 
as had that perfume ; they were all alike. 
And I remember the quarrel of another 
youth with the confectioners, that, when 
ho racked his wit to choose the best 
comfits in the shop, in all the endless 
varieties of sweetmeat he could only find 
three flavours, or two. What then ? Pears 
and cakes are good for something ; and 
because you, unluckily, have an eye or 
nose too keen, why need you spoil the 
comfort which the rest of us find in them ? 
I knew a humourist, who, in a good deal 
of rattle, had a grain or two of sense. He 
shocked the company by maintaining that 
the attributes of God were two — power 
and risibility ; and that it was the duty of 
every pious man to keep up the comedy. 
And I have known gentlemen of great 
stake in the community, but whose 
sympathies were cold — presidents of 
colleges, and governors, and senators — • 
who held themselves bound to sign every 
temperance pledge, and act with Bible 
societies, and missions, and peacemakers, 
and cry Hist-a-hoy ! to every good dog. 
We must not carry comity too far, but wo 
all have kind impulses in this direction. 
When the boys come into my yard for 
leave to gather horse-chestnuts, I own I 
enter into Nature’s game, and affect to 
grant the permission reluctantly, fearing 
that any moment they will find out the 
imposture of that showy chaff. But this 



570 CONDUCT 

tenderness is quite tuuiecessary ; the 
enchantments are laid on very thick. 
Their young life is thatched with them. 
Bare and grim to tears is the lot of the 
children in the hovel I saw yesterday ; yet 
not the less they hung it round with 
frippery romance, like the children of the 
happiest fortune, and talked of “ the dear 
cottage where so many joyful hours had 
flown.” Well, this thatching of hovels is 
the custom of the country. Women, 
more than all, are the element and king- 
dom of illusion. Being fascinated, they 
fascinate. They see through Claude-Lor- 
raines. And how dare anyone, if he 
could, pluck away the coulisses, stage 
effects, and ceremonies, by which they 
live ? Too pathetic, too pitiable, is the 
region of affection, and its atmosphere 
always liable to mirage. 

We are not very much to blame for our 
bad marriages. We live amid hallucina- 
tions; and this especial trap is laid to 
trip up our feet with, and all are tripped 
up first or last. But the mighty Mother 
who had been so sly with us, as if she felt 
that she owed us some indemnity, insinu- 
ates into the Pandora-box of marriage 
some deep and serious benefits, and some 
great joys. We find a delight in the 
beauty and happiness of children, that 
makes the heart too big for the body. In 
the worst-assorted connections there is 
ever some mixture of true marriage. 
Teague and his jade get some just relations 
of mutual respect, kindly observation, 
and fostering of each other, learn some- 
thing, and would carry themselves wise- 
lier, if they were now to begin, 

'Tis fine for us to point at one or 
another fine madman, as if there were 
any exempts. The scholar in his library 
is none. I, who have all my life heard 
any number of orations and debates, read 
poems and miscellaneous books, con- 
versed with many geniuses, am still the 
victim of any new page ; and, if Marma- 
dukc, or Hugh, or Moosehead, or any 
other, invent a new style or mythology, I 
fancy that the world will be all brave and 
right, if dressed in these colours, which I 
had not thought of. Then at once I will 
daub with this new paint ; but it will not 
stick. ’Tis like the cement which the 
pedlar sells at the door ; he makes broken 
crockery hold with it, but you can never 
buy of him a bit of the cement which will 
make it hold when he is gone. 

Men who make themselves felt in the 
world avail themselves of a certain fate in 
tbeir constitutioOf which they know how 


OF LIFE. 

to use. But they never deeply interest 
us, unless they fift a corner of the curtain, 
or betray never so slightly their penetra- 
tion of what is behind it. ’Tis the charm 
of practical men, that outside of their 
practicality are a certain poetry and play, 
as if they led the good horse Power by 
the bridle, and preferred to walk, though 
they can ride so fiercely. Bonaparte is 
intellectual, as well as Caesar ; and the 
best soldiers, sea-captains, and railway 
men, have a gentleness, when off duty ; a 
good-natured admission that there are 
illusions, and who shall say that he is not 
their sport ? We stigmatiro the cast-iron 
fellows, who cannot so detach themselves, 
as “dragon-ridden,” “ thunder-stricken,” 
and fools of fate, with whatever powers 
endowed. Since our tuition is through 
emblems and indirections, ’tis well to 
know that there is method in it, a fixed 
scale, and rank above rank in the phan- 
tasms. We begin low with coarse masks, 
and rise to the most subtle and beautiful. 
The red men told Columbus, “they had 
an herb which took away fatigue ; ” but 
he found the allusion of “ arriving from 
the east at the Indies ” more composing 
to his lofty spirit than any tobacco. Is 
not our faith in the impenetrability ot 
matter more sedative than narcotics i 
You play with jack-straws, balls, bowls, 
horse and gun, estates and politics ; but 
there are finer games before you. Is not 
time a pretty toy ? Life will show you 
masks that are worth all your carnivals, 
Yonder mountain must migrate into your 
mind. The fine star-dust and nebulous 
blur in Orion, “ the portentous year oi 
Mizar and Alcor,” must come down and 
be dealt with in your household thought. 
What if you shall come to discern that 
the play and playground of all this pom- 
pous history are radiations from yourself, 
and that the sun borrows his beams ? 
What terrible questions we are learning 
to ask! The former men believed in 
magic, by which temples, cities, and men 
were swallowed up, and all trace of them 
gone. We are coming on the secret of a 
magic which sweeps out of men’s minds 
all vestige of theism and beliefs which 
they and their fathers held and wert 
framed upon. 

There are deceptions of the senses, 
deceptions of the passions, and the struc- 
tural, beneficent illusions of sentiment 
and of the intellect. There is the illusion 
of love, which attributes to the beloved 
person all which that person shares with 
HIS or bov family, sex, age, or condition, 



ILLUSIONS. 


ftay with the human mind itself. 'Tis 
these which the lover l(>ve3, and Anna 
Matilda gets the credit of them. As if 
one shut up always in a tower, with one 
window, through which the face of heaven 
and earth could be seen, should fancy 
that all the marvels he beheld belonged to 
that window. There is the illusion of 
time, which is very deep ; who has dis- 
posed of it ? or come to the conviction 
that what seems the succession of thought 
is only the distribution of wholes into 
causal series ? The intellect sees that 
every atom carries the whole of Nature ; 
that the mind opens to omnipotence ; 
that, in the endless striving and ascents, 
the metamorphosis is entire, so that the 
soul doth not know itself in its own act, 
when that act is perfected. There is 
illusion that shall deceive even the elect. 
There is illusion that shall deceive even 
the performer of the miracle. Though 
he make his body, he denies that he 
makes it. Though the world exist from 
thought, thought is daunted in presence 
of the world. One after the other we 
accept the mental laws, still resisting 
those which follow, which however must 
be accepted. But all our concessions only 
compel us to new profusion. And what 
avails it that science has come to treat 
space and time as simply forms of thought, 
and the material world as hypothetical, 
and withal our pretension of property 
and even of selfhood are fading with the 
rest, if, at last, even our thoughts are not 
finalities ; but the incessant flowing and 
ascension reach these also, and each 
thought which yesterday was a finality, 
to-day is yielding to a larger generaliza- 
tion ? 

With such volatile elements to work in, 
'tis no wonder if our estimates are loose 
and floating. We must work and affirm, 
but we have no guess of the value of what 
we say or do. The cloud is now as big 
as your hand, and now it covers a county. 
That story of Thor, who was set to drain 
the drinking-horn in Asgard, and to 
v/restle with the old woman, and to run 
with the runner Lok, and presently found 
that he had been drinking up the sea, 
and wrestling with Time, and racing with 
Thought, describes us who are contend- 
ing, amid these seeming trifles, with the 
supreme energies of Nature. We fancy 
we have fallen into bad company and 
squalid condition, low debts, shoe-bills, 
broken glass to pay for, pots to buy, 
butcher’s meat, sugar, milk, and coal. 
'* Sol me some great task, ye gods I and I 


57 * 

will show my spirit.” ” Not so,” says the 
good Heaven; "plod and plough, vamp 
your old coats and hats, weave a shoe- 
string ; great affairs and the best wine by 
and by.” Well, 'tis all phantasm; tndf 
if we weave a yard of tape in all humflity, 
and as well as we can, long hereafter we 
shall see it was no cotton tape at all, but 
some galaxy which we braided, and that 
the threads were Time and Nature. 

We cannot write the order of the vari . 
able winds. How can we penetrate the 
law of our shifting moods and suscepti- 
bility ? Yet they differ as all and nothing. 
Instead of the firmament of yesterday, 
which our eyes require, it is to-day an 
eggshell which coops us in ; we cannot 
even see what or where our stars of 
destiny are. From day to day, the capital 
facts of human life are hidden from our 
eyes. Suddenly the mist rolls up, and re- 
veals them, and we think how much good 
time is gone, that might have been saved, 
had any hint of these things been shown. 
A sudden rise in the road shows us the 
system of mountains, and all the summits, 
which have been just as near us all the 
year, but quite out of mind. But these 
alternations are not without their order, 
and we are parties to our various fortune. 
If life seem a succesision of dreams, yet 
poetic justice is done in dreams also. 
The visions of good men are good ; it is 
the undisciplined will that is whipped 
with bad thoughts and bad fortunes. 
When we break the laws, we lose our 
hold on the central reality, Like sick 
men in hospitals, wo change only from 
bed to bed, from one folly to another ; 
and it cannot signify much what becomes 
of such castaways — wailing, stupid, coma- 
tose creatures — lifted from bed to bed, 
from the nothing of life to the nothing of 
death. 

In this kingdom of illusions we gropa 
eagerly for stays and foundations. There 
is none but a strict and faithful dealing 
at home, and a severe barring out of all 
duplicity or illusion there. Whatever 
games are played with us, we must play 
no games with ourselves, but deal in our 
privacy with the last honesty and truth. 
I look upon the simple and childish 
virtues of veracity and honesty as the 
root of all that is sublime in character. 
Speak as you think, be what you are, pay 
your debts of all kinds. I preferred to bo 
owned as sound and solvent, and my 
word as good as my bond, and to be what 
cannot be skipped, or dissipated, or un- 
dermined, to ^1 the iclat in the universa* 



572 CX)NDUCT 

This reality is the foundation of friend- 
ship, religion, poetry, and art. At the 
top or at the bottom of all illusions, I set 
the cheat which still leads us to work and 
live for appearances, in spite of our con- 
viction, in all sane hours, that it is what 
we really are that avails with friends, 
with strangers, and with fate or fortune. 

One would think from the talk of men, 
that riches and poverty were a great 
matter ; and our civilization mainly 
respects it. But the Indians say, that 
they do not think the white man with his 
brow of care, always toiling, afraid of heat 
and cold, and keeping within doors, has 
any advantage of them.^ The permanent 
interest of every man, is never to be in a 
false position, but to have the weight of 
Nature to back him in all that he does. 
Riches and poverty are a thick or thin 
costume ; and our life — the life of all of 
us — identical. For we transcend the cir- 
cumstance continually, and taste the real 
quality of existence ; as in our employ- | 
ments, which only differ in the manipula- 
tions, but express the same laws ; or in 
our thoughts, which wear no silks, and 
taste no ice-creams. We see God face 
to face every hour, and know the savor 
of Nature. 

The early Greek philosophers Hera- 
clitus and Xenophanes measured their 
force on this problem of identity. 
Diogenes of Apollonia said; that unless 
the atoms were made of one stuff, they 
could never blend and act with one 
another. But the Hindoos, in their 
sacred writings, express the liveliest feel- 
ing, both of the essential identity, and of 
that illusion which they conceive variety 
to be. “ The notions, ‘ I am,' and ‘ This 
is mine,' which influence mankind, are 
but delusions of the mother of the world. 
Dispel, O Lord of all creatures I the con- 
ceit of knowledge which proceeds from 
Ignorance.' And the beatitude of man 


OF LIFE. 

they hold to lie in being freed from fasci- 
nation. t. 

The intellect is stimulated by the state- 
ment of truth in a trope, and the wtU by 
clothing the laws of life in illusions. But 
the unities of Truth and of Right are not 
broken by the disguise. iThere need 
never be any confusion in these. In a 
crowded life of many parts and perform- 
ers, on a stage of nations, or in the ob- 
scurest hamlet in Maine or California, the 
same elements offer the same choices to 
each new-comer, and, according to his 
election, he fixes his fortune in absolute 
Nature. It would be hard to put more 
mental and moral philosophy than the 
Persians have thrown into a sentence 

“ Fooled thou must be, though wisest of tha 

Then be the fool of virtue, not of vice.” 

There is no chance, and no anarchy, in 
the universe. All is system and grada- 
tion. Every god is there sitting in his 
sphere. The young mortal enters the 
hall of the firmament ; there is he alone 
with them alone, they pouring on him 
benedictions and gifts, and beckoning 
him up to their thrones. On the instant, 
and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illu- 
sions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd 
which sways this way and that, and 
whose movement and doings he must 
obey ••he fancies himself poor, orphaned, 
insignificant. The mad crowd drives 
hither and thither, now furiously com- 
manding this thing to be done, now that. 
What is ho that he should resist their 
will, and think or act for himself? Every 
moment, new changes, and new showers 
of deceptions, to baffle and distract him. 
And when, by and by, for an instant, the 
air clears, and the clouds lift a little, 
there are the gods still sitting around 
him on their thrones— they alone with 
him alone. 



LETTERS AND SOCIAL AIMS. 


POETRY AND IMAGINATION. 


The perception of matter is made the 
common-sense, and for cause. This was 
the cradle, this the go-cart, of the human 
child. We must learn the homely laws of 
fire and water ; we must feed, wash, plant, 
build. These are ends of necessity, and 
first in the order of nature. Poverty, frost, 
famine, disease, debt, are the beadles and 
guardsmen that hold us to common-sense. 
The intellect, yielded up to itself, cannot 
supersede this tyrannic necessity. The 
restraining grace of common-sense is the 
mark of all the valid minds — of JEsop, 
Aristotle, Alfred, Luther, Shakspeare, 
Cervantes, Franklin, Napoleon. The 
common-sense which does not meddle 
with the absolute, but takes things at their 
word — things as they appear— believes in 
the existence of matter, not because we 
ian touch it, or conceive of it, but because 
It agrees with ourselves, and the universe 
3oes not jest with us, but is in earnest — 
is the bouse of health and life. In spite 
of all the joys of poets and the joys of 
saints, the most imaginative and abstracted 
person never makes, with impunity, the 
least mistake in this particular — never 
tries to kindle his oven with water, nor 
carries a torch into a powder-mill, nor 
seizes his wild charger by the tail. We 
should not pardon the blunder in another, 
nor endure it in ourselves. 

But whilst we deal with this as finality, 
early hints are given that we are not to 
stay here ; that wo must be making ready 
to go ; a warning that this magnificent 
hotel and conveniency we call Nature is 
not final. First innuendoes, then broad 
hints, then smart taps, are given, suggest- 
ing that nothing stands still in nature but 
death ; that the creation is on wheels, in 
transit, always passing into something 
else, streaming into something higher; 
that matter is not what it appears— that 
chemistry can blow it all into gas. Fara- 
day, the most exact of natural philoso- 
phers, taught that when we should arrive 
at the monads, or primordial elements 
(the supposed little cubes or prisms of 


which all matter was built up), wa 
should not find cubes, or prisms, or 
atoms, at all, but spherules of force. It 
was whispered that the globes of the 
universe were precipitates of something 
more subtle ; nay, somewhat was mur- 
mured in our ear that dwindled astronomy 
into a toy ; that too was no finality ; 
only provisional — a makeshift ; that under 
chemistry was power and purpose : power 
and purpose ride on matter to the last 
atom. It was steeped in thought — did 
everywhere express thought ; that, as 
great conquerors have burned their ships 
when once they were landed on the 
wished-for shore, so the noble house of 
Nature we inhabit has temporary uses, 
and we can afford to leave it one day. The 
ends of all are moral, and therefore the 
beginnings are such. Thin or solid, 
everything is in flight. I believe this con- 
viction makes the charm of chemistry — 
that we have the same avoirdupois matter 
in an alembic, without a vestige of the 
old form ; and in animal transformation 
not less, as in grub and fly, in egg and 
bird, in embryo and man ; everything un- 
dressing and stealing away from its old 
into new form, and nothing fast but thoso 
invisible cords which we call laws, on 
which all is strung, Then we see tliat 
things wear different names and faces, 
but belong to one family ; that the secret 
cords, or laws, show their well-known 
virtue through every variety — be it animal, 
or plant, or planet— and the interest is 
gradually transferred from the forms to 
the lurking method. 

This hint, however conveyed, upsets 
our politics, trade, customs, marriages, 
nay, the common-sense side of religion 
and literature, which are all founded on 
low nature, on the clearest and most 
economical mode of administering the 
material world, considered as final. The 
admission, never so covertly, that this is 
a makeshift, sets the dullest brain in fer- 
I ment ; our little sir, from his first tottering 
1 steps— as soon as he can crow— does not 



574 


POETRY AND IMAGINATION. 


like to be practised upon, suspects that 
some one is “ doing " him, and, at this 
alarm, everything Is compromised ; gun- 
po'wder is laid under every man’s break- 
fast-table. 

But whilst the man is startled by this 
closer inspection of the laws of matter, 
his attention is called to the independent 
action of the mind — its strange sugges- 
tions and laws — a certain tyranny which 
springs up in his own thoughts, which 
have an order, method, and beliefs of 
their own, very different from the order 
which this common-sense uses. 

Suppose there were in the ocean certain 
strong currents which drove a ship, caught 
in them, with a force that no skill of sail- 
ing with the best wind, and no strength of 
oars, or sails, or steam, could make any 
head against, any more than against the 
current of Niagara: such currents — so 
tyrannical — exist in thoughts, those fin- 
est and subtilest of all waters — that, as 
soon as once thought begins, it refuses 
to remember whose brain it belongs to 
— what country, tradition, or religion — 
and goes whirling off — swim we merrily — 
in a direction self-chosen, by law of 
thought, and not by law of kitchen clock 
or county committee. It has its own 
polarity. One of these vortices or self- 
directions of thought is the impulse to 
search resemblance, affinity, identity, in 
all its objects, and hence our science, 
from its rudest to its most refined theories. 

The electric word pronounced by John 
Hunter a hundred years ago — arrested 
and progressive developement — indicating 
the way upward from the invisible proto- 
plasm to the highest organisms — gave the 
poetic key to Natural Science — of which 
the theories of Geoffrey St. Hilaire, of 
Oken, of Goethe, of Agassiz, and Owen, 
and Darwin, in zoology and botany, are 
the fruits~a hint whose power is not yet 
exhausted, showing unity and perfect 
order in physics. 

The hardest chemist, the severest ana- 
lyzer, scornful of all but dryest fact, is 
forced to keep the poetic curve of nature, 
and his result is like a myth of Theocritus. 
All multiplicity rushes to be resolved into 
unity. Anatomy, osteology, exhibit 
arrested or progressive ascent in each 
kind ; the lower pointing to the higher 
forms, the higher to the highest, from the 
fluid in an elastic sack, from radiate, 
mollusk, articulate, vertebrate — up to 
man; as if the whole animal world were 
only a Hunterian museum to exhibit the 
genesis of mankind, 


Identity of law, perfect order in physics, 
perfect parallelism between the laws of 
Nature and the laws of thought exist. In 
botany we have the like, the poetic per- 
ception of metamorphosis — that the same 
vegetable point or eye which is the unit of 
the plant can be transformed at pleasure 
into every part, as bract, leaf, petal, sta- 
men, pistil, or seed. 

In geology, what a useful hint was given 
to the early inquirers on seeing in the 
possession of Professor Playfair a bough 
of a fossil tree which was perfect wood at 
one end, and perfect mineral coal at the 
other. Natural objects, if individually 
described, and out of connection, are not 
yet known, since they are really parts of 
a symmetrical universe, like words of a 
sentence; and if their true order is found, 
the poet can read their divine significance 
orderly as in a Bible. Each animal or 
vegetable form remembers the next 'In- 
ferior, and predicts the next higher. 

There is one animal, one plant, one 
matter, and one force. The laws of light 
and of heat translate each other; — so do 
the laws of sound and of colour; and so 
galvanism, electricity, and magnetism are 
varied forms of the selfsame energy. 
While the student ponders this immense 
unity, he observes that all things in na- 
ture, the animals, the mountain, the river, 
the .seasons, woed, iron, stone, vapour — 
have a mysterious relation to his thoughts 
and his life : their growths, decays, qual- 
ity, and use so curiously resemble himself, 
in parts and in wholes, that he is com- 
pelled to speak by means of them. His 
words and his thoughts are framed by 
their help. Every noun is an image. 
Nature gives him, sometimes in a flattered 
likeness, sometimes in caricature, a copy 
of every humour and shade in his charac- 
ter and mind. The world is an immense 
picture-book of every passage in human 
life. Every object he beholds is the mask 
of a man. 

*The privates of man’s heart 
They speken and sound in his ear 
As tho’ they loud winds were ; ” 

for the universe is full of their echoes. 

Every correspondence we observe in 
mind and matter suggests a substance 
older and deeper than either of these old 
nobilities. We see the law gleaming 
through, like the sense of a half-translated 
ode of Hafiz. The poet who plays with it 
with most boldness best justifies himself— 
is most profound and most devout. Pas- 
sion adds eyes — is a magnifying-glass# 



POETRY. 


575 


Sonnets of lovers are i^ad enough, but 
are valuable to the philosopher, as are 
prayers of saints, for their potent symbo- 
lism. 

Science was false by being unpoetical. 
It assumed to explain a reptile or mollusk, 
and isolated it — which is hunting for life 
in graveyards. Reptile or mollusk or man 
or angel only exists in system, in relation. 
The metaphysician, the poet, only sees 
each animal form as an inevitable step in 
the path of the creating mind. The Indian, 
the hunter, the boy with his pets, have 
sweeter knowledge of these than the 
savant. We use semblances of logic until 
experience puts us in possession of real 
logic. The poet knows the missing link 
by the joy it gives. The poet gives us the 
eminent experiences only — a god stepping 
from peak to peak, nor planting his foot 
but on a mountain. 

Science does not know its debt to ima- 
gination. Goethe did not believe that a 
great naturalist could exist without this 
faculty. He was himself conscious of its 
help, which made him a prophet among 
the doctors. From this vision he gave 
brave hints to the zoologist, the botanist, 
and the optician, 

Poetry , — The primary use of a fact is 
low ; the secondary use, as it is a figure 
or illustration of my thought, is the real 
worth. First, the fact ; second its impres- 
sion, or what I think of it. Hence Nature 
was called “ a kind of adulterated reason." 
Seas, forests, metals, diamonds, and fos- 
sils interest the eye, but ’tis only with 
some preparatory or predicting charm. 
Their value to the intellect appears only 
when I hear their meaning made plain in 
the spiritual truth they cover. The mind, 
penetrated with its sentiment or its 
thought, projects it outward on whatever 
it beholds. The lover sees reminders of 
his mistress in every beautiful object ; the 
saint, an argument for devotion in every 
natural process ; and the facility with 
which Nature lends itself to the 
thoughts of man, the aptness with which 
a river, a flower, a bird, fire, day, or night, 
can express his fortunes, is as if the world 
were only a disguised man, and, with a 
change of form, rendered to him all his 
experience. We cannot utter a sentence 
in sprightly conversation without a simili- 
tude. Note our incessant use of the word 
like fire, like a rock, like thunder, 
like a bee, like a year without a spring." 
Conversation is not permitted without 
tropes ; nothing but great weight in things 


can afford a quite literal Speech. It is 
ever enlivened by inversion and trope. 
God himself does not speak prose, but 
communicates with us by hints, omens, 
inference, and dark resembla ices in cb- 
jects lying all around us. 

Nothing so marks a man as imagina- 
tive expressions. A figurative statement 
arrests attention, and is ren; ^mbereu and 
repeated. How often has a phrase of this 
kind made a reputation. Pythagoras’s 
Golden Sayings were such, and Socrates’s, 
and Mirabeau’s, and Burke’s, and Bona- 
parte’s. Genius thus makes the transfer 
from one part of Nature to a remote part, 
and betrays the rhymes and echoes that 
pole makes with pole. Imaginative minds 
cling to their images, and do not wish 
them rashly rendered into prose reality, 
as children resent your showing them that 
their doll Cinderella is nothing but pino 
wood and rags ; and my young scholar 
does not wish to know what the leopard, 

I the wolf, or Lucia, signify in Dante’s 
Inferno, but prefers to keep their veils on. 
I Mark the delight of an audience in an 
! image. When some familiar truth or 
fact appears in a new dress, mounted as 
on a fine horse, equipped with a grand pair 
of ballooning wings, we cannot enough 
testify our surprise and pleasure. It is 
like the new virtue shown in some un- 
prized old property, as when a boy finds 
that his pocket-knife will attract steel 
filings and take up a needle ; or when the 
old horse-block in the yard is found to be 
a Torso Hercules of the Phidian age. 
Vivacity of expression may indicate this 
high gift, even when the thought is of no 
great scope, as when Michel Angelo, 
praising the terra cottas, said, “ If this 
earth were to become marble, woe to the 
antiques ! " A happy symbol is a sort of 
evidence that your thought is just. I had 
rather have a good symbol of my thought, 
or a good analogy, than the suffrage of 
Kant or Plato. If you agree with me, or 
if Locke or Montesquieu agree, I may yet 
be wrong ; but if the elm-tree thinks the 
same thing, if running water, if burning 
coal, if crystals, if alkalies, in their several 
fashions, say what I say, it must be true. 
Thus, a good symbol is the best argument, 
and is a missionary to persuade thou- 
sands. The Vedas, the Edda, the Koran, 
are each remembered by their happiest 
figure. There is no more welcome gift 
to men than a new symbol. That satiates, 
transports, converts them. They assimi- 
late themselves to it— deal with it in all 
ways, and it will last a hundred years. 



576 POETRY AND 

Then comes a new genius, and brings 
another. Thus the Greek mythology 
called the sea “ the tear of Saturn.” The 
return of the soul to God was described 
as “a flask of water broken in the sea.” 
St. John gave us the Christian figure of 
“ souls washed in the blood of Christ.” 
The aged Michel Angelo indicates his per- 
petual study as in boyhood — ” I carry my 
satchel still.” Machiavel described the 
papacy as ‘‘ a stone inserted in the body 
of Italy to keep the wound open.” To the 
Parliament debating how to tax America, 
Burke exclaimed, ” Shear the wolf.” Our 
Kentuckian orator said of his dissent 
from his companion, “I showed him the 
back of my hand.” And our proverb 
of the courteous soldier reads : ” An iron 
hand in a velvet glove.” 

This belief that the higher use of the 
material world is to furnish us types or 
pictures to express the thoughts of the 
mind is carried to its logical extreme by 
the Hindoos, who, following Buddha, have 
made it the central doctrine of their reli- 
gion, that what we call Nature, the external 
world, has no real existence — is only 
phenomenal. Youth, age, property, con- 
dition, events, persons — self, even — are 
successive maias (deceptions) through 
which Vishnu mocks and instructs the 
soul. I think Hindoo books the best 
gymnastics for the mind, as showing 
treatment. All European libraries might 
almost be read without the swing of this 
gigantic arm being suspected. But these 
Orientals deal with worlds and pebbles 
freely. 

For the value of a trope is that the 
hearer is one ; and indeed Nature itself is 
a vast trope, and all particular natures 
are tropes. As the bird alights on the 
bough, then plunges into the air again, 
so the thoughts of God pause but for a 
moment in any form. All thinking is ana- 
logizing, and ’tis the use of life to learn 
metonymy. The endless passing of one 
element into new forms, the incessant 
metamorphosis, explains the rank which 
the imagination holds in our catalo^e of 
mental powers. The imagination is the 
reader of these forms. The poet accounts 
all productions and changes of Nature as 
the nouns of language, uses them repre- 
sentatively, too well pleased with their 
ulterior to value much their primary 
meaning. Every new object so seen gives 
a shock of agreeable surprise. The im- 
pressions on the imagination make the 
great days of life : the book, the landscape, 
or the ^rsonalty which did not stay on 


IMAGINATION. 

the surface of the eye or ear, but penetra- 
ted to the inwaf'd sense, agitates us, and 
is not forgotten. Walking, working, or 
talking, the sole question is how many 
strokes vibrate on this;mystic string — how 
many diameters are drawn quit^ throtgh 
from matter to spirit ; for, wher^ever you 
enunciate a natural law, you discover that 
you have enunciated a law of the mind. 
Chemistry, geology, hydraulics, are sec- 
ondary science. The atomic theory is 
only an interior process produced, as 
geometers say, or the effect of a foregone 
metaphysical theory. Swedenborg saw 
gravity to be only an external of the irre- 
sistible attractions of affection and faith. 
Mountains and oceans we think we under- 
stand : yes, so long as they are contented 
to be such, and are safe with the geologist, 
but when they are melted in Promethean 
alembics, and come out men, and then 
melted again, come out words, without 
any abatement, but with an exaltation of 
power ! 

In poetry we say we require the miracle. 
The bee flies among the ilowers, and gets 
mint and majoram, and generates a new 
product, which is not mint and majoram, 
but honey ; the chemist mixes hydrogen 
and oxygen to yield a new product, which 
is not these, but water: and the poet liS' 
tens to conversation, and beholds all 
objects in nature, to give back, not them, 
but a new and transcendent whole. 

Poetry is the perpetual endeavour to 
express the spirit of the thing, to pass tho 
j brute body, and search the life and reason 
which causes it to exist ; to see that tho 
object is always flowing away, whilst tho 
spirit or necessity which causes it subsists. 
Its essential mark is that it betrays in 
every word instant activity of mind, shown 
in new uses of every fact and image — in 
preternatural quickness or perception of 
relations. All its words are poems. It is 
a presence of mind that gives a mira- 
culous command of all means of uttering 
the thought and feeling of tlio moment. 
The poet squanders on the hour an 
amount of life that would more than fur- 
nish the seventy years of the man that 
stands next him. 

The term genius, when used with 
emphasis, implies imagination ; use of 
symbols, figurative speech. A deep in- 
sight will always, like Nature, oltimate its 
thought in a thing. As soon as a man 
masters a principle, and sees his facts in 
relation to it, fields, waters, skies, offer to 
clothe his thoughts in images. Then all 
men understand him: Prrthian, Mede# 



IMAGINATION. 


Chinese, Spaniard, and Indian bear their 
own tongue. For he cau now find sym- 
bols of universal significance, which are 
readily rendered into any dialect ; as a 
painter, a sculptor, a musician, can in 
their several ways express the same senti- 
ment of anger, or love, or religion. 

The thoughts are few ; the forms many ; 
the large vocabulary or many-coloured 
coat of the indigent unity. The savans 
are chatty and vain, but hold them hard 
to principle and definition, and they be- 
come mute and near-sighted. What is 
motion ? what is beauty ? what is matter ? 
what is life ? what is force ? Push them 
hard, and they will not be loquacious. 
They will come to Plato, Proclus, and 
Swedenborg. The invisible and impondera- 
ble is the sole fact. “ Why changes not the 
violet earth into musk ? ’ ' What is the 
term of the everflowing metamorphosis ? 
I do not know what are the stoppages, but 
I see that a devouring unity changes all 
into that which changes not. 

The act of imagination is ever attended 
by pure delight. It infuses a certain 
volatility and intoxication into all nature. 
It has a flute which sets the atoms of our 
frame in a dance. Our indeterminate 
size is a delicious secret which it reveals 
to us. Trio mountains begin to dislimn, 
and float in the air. In the presence and 
conversation of a true poet, teeming with 
images to express his enlarging thought, 
his person, his form, grows larger to our 
fascinated eyes. And thus begins that 
deification which all nations have made of 
their heroes in every kind— saints, poets, 
lawgivers, and warriors. 

Imagination. — Whilst common-sense 
looks at things or visible nature as real 
and final facts, poetry, or the imagination 
which dictates it, is a second sight, look- 
ing through these, and using them as 
types or words for thoughts which they 
signify. Or is this belief a metaphysical 
whim of modern times, and quite too 
refined ? On the contrary, it is old as the 
human mind. Our best definition of 
poetry is one of the oldest sentences, and 
claims to come down to us from the Chal- 
daean Zoroaster, who wrote it thus: 
“ Poets are standing transporters, whose 
employment consists in speaking to the 
Father and to matter ; in producing 
apparent imitations of unapparent natures, 
and inscribing things unapparent in the 
apparent fabrication of the world ; ’* in 
other words, the world exists for thought ; 
It ia to make appear things which hide : 


577 

mountains, crystals, plants, animals, are 
seen ; that which makes them is not seen : 
these, then, are “ apparent copies of un- 
apparent natures.” Bacon expressed 
the same sense in his definition, “Poetry 
accommodates the shows of things to the 
desires of the mind and Swedenborg, 
when he said, “ There is nothing existing 
in human thought, even though related to 
the most mysterious tenet of faith, but 
has combined with it a natural and sen- 
sous image.” And again: “ Names, coun- 
tries, nations, and the like are not at all 
known to those who are in heavei? ] they 
have no idea of such things, but of the 
realites signified thereby.” A symbol 
always stimulates the intellect ; therefore 
is poetry ever the best reading. The very 
design of imagination is to domesticate 
us in another, in a celestial, nature. 

This power is in the image because this 
power is in nature. It so effects, because 
it so is. All that Is wondrous in Sweden- 
borg is not his invention, but his extra- 
ordinary perception ; that he was necessi- 
tated so to see. The world realizes the mind. 
Better than images is seen through them. 
The selection of the image is no more 
arbitrary than the power and significance 
of the imago. The selection must follow 
fate. ^ Poetry, if perfected, is the only ver- 
ity : is ' the speech of man after the real, 
and not after the apparent. 

Or, shall we say that the imagination 
exists by sharing the ethereal currents ? 
The poet contemplates the central identi- 
ty, sees it undulate and roll this way 
and that, with divine flowings, through 
remotest things; and, following it, can 
detect essential resemblances in natures 
never before compared. He can class 
them so audaciously, because he is sen- 
sible of the sweep of the celestial stream, 
from which nothing is exempt. His own 
body is a fleeing apparition, his person- 
ality as fugitive as the trope he employs. 
In certain hours we can almost pass our 
hand through our own body. I think the 
use or value of poetry to be the suggestion 
it affords of the flux or fugaciousness of 
the poet. The mind delights in measuring 
itself thus ;with matter, with history, and 
flouting both. A thought, any thought, 
pressed, followed, opened, dwarfs matter, 
custom, and all but itself. But this ^cond 
sight does not necessarily impair the 
primary or common sense. Pindar and 
Dante, yes, and the gray and timeworn 
sentences of Zoroaster, may all be parsed, 
though we do not parse them. The poet 
has a logic, though it be subtile. He 



578 


POETRY AND IMAGINATION. 


observes higher laws than he transgresses. 
“ Poetry must first be good sense, though 
it is something better." 

This union of first and second sight 
reads nature to the end of delight and 
of moral use. Men are imaginative, 
but not overpowered by it to the extent of 
confounding its suggestions with ex- 
ternal facts. We live in both speres, and 
must not mix them. Genius certifies its 
entire possession of its thought, by trans- 
lating it into a fact which perfectly repre- 
sents it, and is hereby education. Charles 
James Fox thought " Poetry the great re- 
freshment of the human mind — the only 
tiling, after all : that men first found out they 
had minds, by making and tasting poetry." 

Man runs about restless and in pain 
when his condition or the objects about him 
do not fully match his thought. He 
wishes to be rich, to be old, to be young, 
that things may obey him. In the ocean, 
in fire, in the sky, in the forest, he finds 
facts adequate and as large as he. As his 
thoughts are deeper than he can fathom, 
so also are these. ’Tis easier to read 
Sanscrit, to decipher the arrowhead char- 
acter, than to interpret these familiar 
sights. ’Tis even much to name them. 
Thus Thomson’s " Seasons " and the best 
parts of many old and many new poets 
are simply enumerations by a person who 
felt the beauty of the common sights and 
sounds, without any attempt to draw a 
moral or affix a meaning. 

The poet discovers that what men value 
as substances have a higher value as 
symbols ; that Nature is the immense 
shadow of man. A man's action is only a 
picture-book of his creed. He does after 
what he believes. Your condition, your 
employment, is the fable of you. The 
world is thoroughly anthropomorphized, 
as if it had passed through the body and 
mind of man, and taken his mould and 
form. Indeed, good poetry is always per- 
sonification, and heightens every species 
of force in nature by giving it a human 
volition. We are advertised that there is 
nothing to which he is not related ; that 
everything is convertible into every other. 
The staff in this hand is the radius vector 
of the sun. The chemistry of this is the 
chemistry of that. Whatever one act we 
do, whatever one thing we learn, we are 
doing and learning all things— marching 
in the direction of universal power. Every 
healthy mind is a true Alexander or 
Sesostris, building a universal monarchy. 

The senses imprison us, and we help 
them with metres as limitary, with a pair 


of scales and a foot-rule, and a clock. 
How long it tofi'k to find out what n. day 
was, or what this sun, that makes lays! 
It cost thousands of years only to make 
the motion of the earth suspected. Slowly, 
by comparing thousands of observations, 
there dawned on some mind a theory of 
the sun — and we found the astronomical 
fact. But the astronomy is in the mind : 
the senses affirm that the earth stands 
still and the sun moves. The senses 
collect the surface facts of matter. The 
intellect acts on these brute reports, 
and obtains from them results which are 
the essence or intellectual form of the 
experiences. It compares, distributes, 
generalizes, and uplifts them int,'^ its own 
sphere. It knows that these transfigured 
results are not the brute experiences, just 
as souls in heaven are not the red bodies 
they once animated. Many transfigura- 
tions have befallen them. The atoms of 
the body were once nebulie, then rock, 
then loam, then corn, then chyme, then 
chyle, then blood ; and now the beholding 
and co-energizing mind sees the same re- 
fining and ascent to the third, the seventh, 
or the tenth power of the daily accidents 
which the senses report, and which make 
the raw material of knowledge. It was sen- 
sation ; when memory came, it was experi- 
ence ; when mind acted, it was knowledge ; 
when mind acted on it as knowledge, it 
was thought. 

This metonymy, or seeing the same 
sense in things so diverse, gives a pure 
pleasure. Every one of a million times 
wo find a charm in the metamorphosis. 
It makes us dance and sing. All men 
are so far poets. When people tell me 
they do not relish poetry, and bring mo 
Shelley, or Aikin’s Poets, or I know not 
what volumes of rhymed English, to show 
that it has no charm, I am quite of their 
mind. But this dislike of the books only 
proves their liking of poetry. For they 
relish ^sop— cannot forget him, or not 
use him ; bring them Homer’s Iliad, and 
they like that ; or tho Cid, and that rings 
well : read to them from Chaucer, and 
they reckon him an honest fellow. " Lear " 
and Macbeth " and " Richard III." they 
know pretty well without guide. Give 
them Robin Hood’s ballads, or " Griselda," 
or " Sir Andrew Barton," or *' Sir Patrick 
Spens,” or " Chevy Chase,*' or *' Tam 
O’Shanter," and they like these well 
enough. They like to see statues ; they 
like to name the stars ; they like to talk 
and hear of Jove, Apollo, Minerva, Venus, 
and the Nine, See bow tenacious we are 



VERACITY. 




ti the old names. They like poetry with- 
out knowing it as such, ^hey like to go 
to the theatre and bo made to weep ; to 
Faneuil Hall, and be taught by Otis, 
Webster, or Kossuth, or Phillips, what 
great hearts they have, what tears, what 
new possible enlargements to their narrow 
horizons. They like to see sunsets on the 
hills or on a lake shore. Now, a cow 
does not gaze at the rainbow, or show or 
affect any interest in the landscape, or a 
peacock, or the song of thrushes. 

Nature is the true idealist. When she i 
serves us best, when, on rare days, she 
speaks to the imagination, we feel that 
the huge heaven and earth are but a web 
drawn around us, that the light, skies, 
and mountains are but the painted vicissi- 
tudes of the soul. Who has heard our 
hymn in the churches without accepting 
the truth — 

** As o’er our heads the seasons roll. 

And soothe with change of bliss the soul?” 

Of course, when we describe man as 
poet, and credit him with the triumphs of 
the art, we speak of the potential or ideal 
jftian — not found now in any one person. 
You must go through a city or a nation, 
and find one faculty here, one there, to 
build the true poet withal. Yet all men 
know the portrait when it is drawn, and it 
is part of religion to believe its possible 
incarnation. 

He is the healthy, the wise, the funda- 
mental, the manly man, seer of the secret ; 
against all the appearance, he sees and 
reports the truth, namely, that the soul 
generates matter. And poetry is the only 
verity — the expression of a sound mind 
speaking after the ideal, and not after the 
apparent. As a power, it is the percep- 
tion of the symbolic character of things, 
and the treating them as representative ; 
as a talent, it is a magnetic tenaciousness 
of an image, and by the treatment demon- 
strating that this pigment of thought is as 
palpable and objective to the poet as is the 
ground on which he stands, or the walls of 
houses about him. And this power ap- 
pears in Dante and Shakespeare. In 
some individuals this insight, or second 
sight, has an extraordinary reacli which 
compels our wonder, as in Hehmen, Swe- 
denborg, and William Blake, the painter. 

V/illiani Blake, whose abnormal genius, 
Wordsworth said, interested him more 
than the conversation of Scott or of Byron, 
writes thus : “ He who does not imagine 
in stronger and better lineaments, and in 
itronger ^nd better light than his perish- 


ing mortal eye can see, does not imagine 
at all. The painter of this work asserts 
that all his imaginations appear to him 
infinitely more perfect and more minutely 
organized, than anything seen by his 

mortal eye I assert for myself 

that I do not behold the outward creation 
and that to me it would be a hindrance, 
and not action. I question not my cor- 
poreal eye any more than I would question 
a window concerning a sight. I look 
through it, and not with it." 

'Tis a problem of metaphysics to define 
the province of Fancy and Imagination. 
The words are often used, and the things 
confounded. Imagination respects the 
cause. It is the vision of an inspired soul 
reading arguments and affirmations in all 
nature of that which it is driven to say. 
But as soon as this soul is released a little 
from its passion, and at leisure plays with 
the resemblances and types for amuse- 
ment and not for its moral end, we call 
its action Fancy. Lear, mad with his 
affliction, thinks every man who suffers 
must have the like cause with his own. 
“ What, have his daughters brought him 
to this pass ? " But when, his attention 
being diverted, his mind rests from this 
thought, he becomes fanciful with Tom, 
playing with the superficial resemblances 
of objects. Bunyan, in pain for his soul, 
wrote ” Pilgrims’s Progress ; ’’ Quarles, 
after he was quite cool, wrote “ Emblems." 

Imagination is central ; fancy, super- 
ficial. Fancy relates to surface, in which 
a great part of life lies. The lover is 
riglitly said to fancy the hair, eyes, com- 
plexion of the maid. Fancy is a wilful, 
imagination a spontaneous act; fancy, a 
play as with dolls and puppets which wo 
choose to call men and women ; imagina- 
tion, a perception and affirming of a real 
relation between a thought and some ma- 
terial fact. Fancy amuses ; imagination 
expands and exalts us. Imagination uses 
anorganic classification. Fancy joins by 
accidental resemblance, surprises and 
amuses tho idle, but is silent in the pres- 
ence of great passion and action. Fancy 
aggregates ; imagination animates. Fancy 
is related to colour ; imagination, to form. 
Fancy paints ; imagination sculptures. 

Veracity . — I do not wish, therefore, to 
find that my poet is not partaker of tha 
feast he spreads, or that he would kindle 
or amuse me with that which does not 
kindle or amuse him. He must believe 
in bis poetry, Homer, Milton, Hafiz 



POETRY AND IMAGINATION. 


580 

Herbert, Swedenborg, Wordsworth, are 
heartily enamoured of their sweet thoughts. 
Moreover, they know that this correspon- 
dence of things to thoughts is far deeper 
than tliey can penetrate-^-defying adequate 
expression ; that it is elemental, or in the 
core of things. Veracity, therefore, is that 
which we require in poets — that they shall 
say how it was with them, and not what 
might be said. And the fault of our pop- 
ular poetry is that it is not sincere. 

“What news?” asks man of man 
everywhere. The only teller of news is 
the poet. When he sings, the world 
listens with the assurance that now a 
secret of God is to be spoken. The right 
poetic mood is or makes a mere complete 
sensibility — piercing the outward fact to 
the meaning of the fact ; shows a sharper 
insight: and the perception creates tlie 
strong expression of it, as the man who 
sees his way walks in it. 

’Tis a rule in eloquence, that the mo- 
ment the orator loses command of his 
audience, the audience commands him. 
So, in poetry, the master rushes to deliver 
his thought, and the words and images fly 
to him to express it ; whilst colder moods 
are forced to respect the ways of saying it, 
and insinuate, or, as it were, muffle the 
fact, to suit the poverty or caprice of their 
expression, so that they only hint the 
matter, or allude to it, being unable to fuse 
and mould their words and images to 
fluid obedience. See how Shakspeare 
grapples at once with the main problem 
of the tragedy, as in “ Lear ’’ and “ Mac- 
beth,” and the opening of “ The Merchant 
of Venice.” 

Ail writings must bo in a degree ex- 
oteric, written to a human should or would, 
instead of to the fatal is : this holds even 
of the bravest and sincerest writers. 
Every writer is a skater, and must go 
partly where he would, and partly 
where the skates carry him ; or a sailor, 
who can only land where sails can bo 
blown. And yet it is to bo added, that 
high poetry exceeds the fact, or nature 
itself, just as skates allow the good skater 
far more grace than his best walking 
would show, or sails more than riding. 
The poet writes from a real experience, 
the amateur feigns one. Of course, one 
draws the bow with his fingers, and the 
other with the strength of his body ; one 
speaks with his lips, and the other with a 
chest voice. Talent amuses, but if your 
verse has not a necessary and autobi- 
graphic basis, though under whatever gay 
poetic veils, it shall not waste my time. 


For poe^ is faith. To the poet the 
world is virgin^ soil: all is practicable; 
the men are ready for virtue ; it is always 
time to do right. He is a true re-com- 
mencer, or Adam in the garden again, He 
affirms the applicability of the ideal law 
to this moment and the present knot of 
affairs. Parties, lawyers, and men of the 
world will invariably dispute such an 
application as romantic and dangerous: 
they admit the general truth, but they and 
their affair always constitute a case in bar 
of the statute. Free-trade, they concede, 
is very well as a principle, but it is never 
quite the time for its adoption without 
prejudicing actual interests. Chastity, 

I they admit, is very well — but then think 
of Mirabeau’s passion and temperament ! 
Eternal laws are very well, which admit 
no violation — but so extreme were the 
times and manners of mankind, that you 
must admit miracles, for the times con- 
stituted a case. Of course, we know what 
you say, that legends are found in al/ 
tribes — but this legend is different. And 
so, throughout, the poet affirms the laws ; 
prose busies itself with exceptions — with 
the local and individual. 

I require that the poem should impress 
me, so tliat after I have shut the book, it 
shall recall me to itself, or that passages 
should. And inestimable is the criticism 
of memory as a corrective to first impres- 
sions. We are dazzled at first by new 
words and brilliancy of colour, which 
occupy the fancy and deceive the judg- 
ment. But all this is easily forgotten. 
Later, the thought, the happy imago which 
expressed it, and which was a true ex- 
perience of the poet, recurs to mind, and 
sends me back in search of the book. 
And I wish that the poet should forsee 
this habit of readers, and omit all but the 
important passages. Shakspeare is made 
up of important passages, like Damascus 
steel made up of old nails. Homer has 
his own — 

“ One omen is good, to die for one’s country j” 
and again— 

They heal their griefs, for curable are the 
hearts of the noble.’* 

Write, that I may know yon. Style 
betrays you, as your eyes do. Wo detect 
at once by it whether the writer has a firm 
grasp on his fact or thought — exists at the 
moment for that alone, or whether he has 
one eye apologizing, deprecatory, turned 
on his reader. In proportion alwayu to 
his possession of bis thought is his de* 



VERACITY 


fiance of his readers. There is no choice 
of words for him who clharly sees the 
truth. That provides him with the best 
word. 

Great design belongs to a poem, and is 
better than any skill of execution— but 
how rare! I find it in the poems of 
Wordsworth—" Laodamia," and the "Ode 
to Dion," and the plan of " The Recluse." 
We want design, and do not forgive the 
bards if they have only the art of en- 
amelling. We want an architect, and 
they bring us an upholsterer. 

If your subject do not appear to you the 
flower of the world at this moment, you 
have not rightly chosen it. No matter 
what it is, grand or gay, national or pri- 
vate, if it has a natur^ prominence to 
you, work away until you come to the 
heart of it: then it will, though it were a 
sparrow or a spider-web, as fully represent 
the central law, and draw all tragic or 
joyful illustration, as if it were the book of 
Genesis or the book of Doom. The sub- 
ject— we must so often say it — is indif- 
ferent. Any word, every word in language, 
every circumstance, becomes poetic in the 
hands of a higher thought. 

The test or measuresof poetic genius 
is the power to read the poetry of affairs 
—to fuse the circumstance of to-day ; not 
to use Scott’s antique superstitions, or 
Shakspeare’s, but to convert those of the 
nineteenth century, and of the existing 
nations, into universal symbols. 'Tis 
easy to repaint the mythology of the 
Greeks, or of the Catholic church, the 
feudal castle, the crusade, the martyrdoms 
of mediaeval Europe ; but to point out 
where the same creative force is now 
working in our own houses and public 
assemblies, to convert the vivid energies 
acting at this hour, in New York and 
Chicago and San Francisco, into universal 
symbols, requires a subtile and com- 
manding thought. 'Tis boyish in Sweden- 
borg to cumber himself with the dead 
scurf of Hebrew antiquity, as if the 
Divine creative energy had fainted in his 
own century. American life storms about 
us daily, and is slow to find a tongue. 
This contemporary insight is transubstan- 
tiation, the conversion of daily bread into 
the holiest symbols ; and eve^ man would 
be a poet, if his intellectual digestion were 
perfect. The test of the poet is the power 
to take the passing day, with its news, its 
cares, its fears, as he shares them, and 
hold it up to a divine reason, till he sees 
it to have a purpose and beauty, and to 
be related to astronomy and history, and 


581 

the eternal order of the world. Thet the 
dry twig blossoms in his hand. Ha is 
calmed and elevated. 

The use of " occasional poems ** is to 
give leave to originality. Every one de- 
lights in the felicity frequently shown in 
our drawing-rooms. In a game-party or 
picnic poem each writer is released from 
the solemn rhythmic traditions which 
alarm and suffocate his fancy, and the 
result is that one of the partners offers 
a poem in a new style that hints at a new 
literature. Yet the writer holds it cheap, 
and could do the like all day. On the 
stage, the farce is commonly far better 
given than the tragedy, as the stock actors 
understand the farce, and do not under- 
stand the tragedy. The writer in the 
parlour has more presence of mind, more 
wit and fancy, more play of thought, on 
the incidents that occur at table, or about 
the house, than in the politics of Germany 
or Rome. Many of the fine poems of 
Herrick, Jonson, and their contemporaries 
had this casual origin. 

I know there is entertainment and room 
for talent in the artist’s selection of ancient 
or remote subjects ; as when the poet goes 
to India, or to Rome, or Persia, for his 
fable. But I believe nobody knows better 
than he, that herein he consults his ease, 
rather than his strength or his desire. Ho 
is very well convinced that the great mo- 
ments of life are those in which his own 
house, his own body , the tritest and nearest 
ways and words and things, have been 
illuminated into prophets and teachers. 
What else is it to be a poet ? What are 
his garland and singing robes ? What 
but a sensibility so keen that the scent of 
an elder-blow, or the timber-yard and 
corporation works of a nest of pismires is 
event enough for him— all emblems and 
personal appeals to him. His wreath and 
robe is to do what he enjoys ; emancipa- 
tion from other men’s questions, and glad 
study of his own ; escape from the gossip 
and routine of society, and the allowed 
right and practice of making better. Ho 
does not give his hand, but in sign of 
giving his heart; he is not affable with all, 
but silent, uncommitted, or in love, as his 
heart leads him. There is no subject that 
does not belong to him — politics, econ- 
omy, manufactures, and stock-brokerage, 
as much as sunsets and souls ; only, these 
things, placed in their true order, are 
poetry ; displaced, or put in kitchen order, 
they are unpoetic. Malthus is the right 
order of the English proprietors ; but we 
shall never understand political economy, 



POETRY AND IMAGINATION. 


582 

until Burns or B6ranger or some poet 
shall teach it in songs, and he will not 
teach Malthusianism. 

Poetry is the gai science. The trait and 
test of the poet is that he builds, adds, 
and affirms. The critic destroys; the 
poet says nothing but what helps some- 
body ; let others be distracted with cares, 
he is exempt. All their pleasures are 
tinged with pain. All his pains are edged 
with pleasure. The gladness ho imparts 
he shares. As one of the old Minne- 
singers sung— 

“ Oft have I heard, and now believe it true, 

Whom man delights in, God delights in too.** 

Poetry is the consolation of mortal men. 
They live cabined, cribbed, confined, in a 
narrow and trivial lot — in wants, pains, 
anxieties, and superstitions, in profligate 
politics, in personal animosities, in mean 
employments — and victims of these ; and 
the nobler powers untried, unknown. A 
poet comes, who lifts the veil; gives them 
glimpses of the laws of the universe; 
shows them the circumstance as illusion ; 
shows that nature is only a language to 
express tlie laws, which are grand and 
beautiful— and lets them, by his songs, 
»nto some of the realities. Socrates; the 
Indian teachers of the Maia ; the Bibles 
of the nations ; Shakspeare, Milton, Hafiz, 
Ossian, the VVelsh Bards — these all deal 
with nature and history as means and 
symbols, and not as ends. With such 
guides they begin to see that what they 
had called pictures are realities, and the 
mean life is pictures. And this is achieved 
by words ; for it is a few oracles spoken 
by perceiving men that are the texts on 
which religions and states are founded. 
And this perception has at once its moral 
sequence. Ben Jonson said, “The prin- 
cipal end of poetry is to inform men in 
the just reason of living." 

Creation — But there is a third step 
which poetry takes, and which seems 
higher than the others, namely, creation, 
or ideas taking forms of their OAm— when 
the poet invents the fable, and invents the 
language which his heroes speak. He 
reads in tne word or action of the man its 
yet untold results. His inspiration is 
power to carry out and complete the 
metamorphosis, which, in the imperfect 
kinds, arrested for ages — in the perfecter, | 
proceeds rapidly in the same individual. 
For poetry is science, and the poet a 
truer logician. Men in the courts or in 
the street think themselves logical, and 


the poet whimsical. Do they think there 
is chance or wilf»ilness in what he sees and 
tells ? To be sure, we demand of him 
what he demands of himself— veracity, 
first of all. But with that, he is the law- 
giver, as being an exact reporter of the 
essential law. He knows that he did not 
make his thought — no, his thought made 
him, and made the sun and the stars. Is 
the solar system good art and architec- 
ture ? the same wise achievement is in 
the human brain also, can you only wile it 
from interference and marring. We can- 
not look at works of art but they teach us 
how near man is to creating. Michel 
I Angelo is largely filled with the Creator 
that made and makes men. How much 
of the original craft remains in him, and 
he a mortal man ! In him and the like 
perfecter brains the instinct is resistless, 
knows the right way, is melodious, and at 
all points divine. The reason we set so high 
a value on any poetry — as often on a lino 
or a phrase as on a poem — is, that it is a 
new work of Nature, as a man is. It 
must be as new as foam and as old as tho 
rock. But a new verse comes once in a 
hundred years; therefore Pindar, Hafiz, 
Dante, speak so proudly of what seems to 
the clown a jingle. 

The writer, like tho priest, must bo 
exempted from secular labour. His work 
needs a frolic health; he must be at the 
top of his condition. In that prosperity 
he is sometimes caught up into a percep- 
tion of means and materials, of feats and 
fine arts, of fairy machineries and funds 
of power hitherto utterly unknown to him, 
whereby ho can transfer his visions to 
mortal canvas, or reduce them into iambic 
or irociiaic, into lyric or, heroic rhyme. 
These successes are not less admirable 
and astonishing to the poet than they are 
to his audience. He has seen something 
which all the mathematics and the best 
industry could never bring him unto 
Now at this rare elevation above his usual 
sphere, he has come into new calcula- 
tions ; the marrow of the world is in his 
bones, the opulence of forms begins to 
pour into his intellect, and he is per- 
mitted to dip his brush into the old paint- 
pot with which birds, flowers, tho human 
cheek, the living rock, tho broad land- 
scape, the ocean, and tho eternal sky were 
painted. 

These fine fruits of judgment, poesy, 
and sentiment, when once their hour is 
struck, and the world is ripe for them, 
know as well as coarser how to feed and 
replenish themselves, and maintain their 



CREATION. 


Stock alive, and multiply ; for roses and 
violets renew their rac^ like oaks, and 
flights of painted moths are as old as 
the Alleghanies. The balance of the world 
is kept, and dewdrop and haze and the 
pencil of light are as long-lived as chaos 
and darkness. 

Our science is always abreast of our 
self-knowledge. Poetry begins, or all be- 
comes poetry, when we look from the 
centre outward, and are using all as if the 
mind made it. That only can we see 
which we arc, and which we make. The 
weaver sees gingham ; the broker sees the 
stock-list ; the politician, the ward and 
county votes ; the poet sees the horizon, 
and the shores of matter lying on the sky, 
the interaction of the elements — the large 
effect of laws which correspond to the 
inward laws which he knows, and so are 
but a kind of extension of himself. “ The 
attractions are proportional to the des- 
tinies.” Events or things are only the 
fulfilment of the prediction of the facul- 
ties. Better men saw heavens and earths ; 
saw noble instruments of noble souls. 
We see railroads, mills, and banks, and 
we pity the poverty of these dreaming 
I 3 udLlhists. There was as much creative 
force then as now, but it made globes, and 
astronomic heavens, instead of broad- 
cloth and wine-glasses. 

The poet is enamoured of thoughts and 
laws. These know their way, and, guided 
by them, he is ascending from an interest 
In visible things to an interest in that 
which they signify, and from the part 
of a spectator to the part of a maker. 
And as everything streams and advances, 
as every faculty and every desire is pro- 
creant, and every perception is a destiny, 
there is no limit to his hope. ” Anything, 
child, that the mind covets, from the milk 
of a cocoa to the throne of the three 
worlds, thou mayest obtain, by keeping 
the law of thy members and the law of thy 
mind.” It suggests that there is higher 
poetry than we write or read. 

Rightly, poetry is organic. We cannot 
know things by words and writing, but 
only by taking a central position in the 
imiverse, and living in its forms. We sink 
to rise. 

** None any work can frame, 

Unless himself become the same." 

All the parts and forms of nature are the 
expression or production of divine facul- 
ties, and the same are in us. And the 
fascination of genius for us is this awful 
oearoesa to Nature’^ oreatioog. 


I have heard that the Germans think 
the creator of Trim and Uncle Toby, 
though he never wrote a verse, a greater 
poet than Cowper, and that Goldsmith’s 
title to the name is not from his ” Deserted 
Village,” but derived from the ” Vicar oi 
Wakefield.” Better examples are Shaks- 
peare’s Ariel, his Caliban, and his fairies 
in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream. 
Barthold Niebuhr said well, “There is 
little merit in inventing a happy idea, or 
attractive situation, so long as it is only 
the author’s voice which we hear. As a 
being whom we have called into life by 
magic arts, as soon as it has received 
existence acts independently of the 
master’s impulse, so the poet creates his 
persons, and then watches and relates 
what they do and say. Such creation is 
poetry, in the literal sense of the term, 
and its possibility is an unfathomable 
enigma. The gushing fulness of speech 
belongs to the poet, and it flows from the 
lips of each of his magic beings in the 
thoughts and words peculiar to its 
nature.”* 

This force of representation so plants 
his figures before him that he treats them 
as real ; talks to them as if they were 
bodily there ; puts words in their mouth 
such as they should have spoken, and is 
affected by them as by persons. Vast is 
the difference between writing clean verses 
for magazines, and creating these new 
persons and situations — new language 
with emphasis and reality. The humour 
of Falstaff, the terror of Macbeth, have 
each their swarm of fit thoughts and 
images, as if Shakspeare had known and 
reported the men, instead of inventing 
them at his desk. This power appears 
not only in the outline or portrait of his 
actors, but also in the bearing and be- 
haviour and style of each individual. Ben 
Jonson told Drummond “that Sidney did 
not keep a decorum in making every one 
speak as well as himself.” 

This reminds me that we all have one 
key to this miracle of the poet, and the 
dunce has experiences that may explain 
Shakspeare to him — one key, namely, 
dreams. In dreams we are true poets ; 
we create the persons of the drama ; we 
give them appropiate figures, faces, cos- 
tume : they are perfect in their organs, at- 
titude, manners; moreover, they speak 
after their own characters, not ours ; they 
speak to us, and we listen with surprise to 
what they say. Indeed, I doubt if th« 

* )|fbuhr, ^UerSf Vol III., p. 196. 

Z V 



POETRY AND IMAGINATION^ 


584 


best poet has yet written any five-act play 
that can compare in thoroughness of in- 
vention with this unwritten play in fifty 
acts, composed by the dullest snorer on 
the floor of the watch-house. 

Melody^ Rhyme, Form . — Music and 
rhyme are among the earliest pleasures 
of the child, and, in the history of litera- 
ture, poetry precedes prose. Every one 
may see, as he rides on the highway 
through an uninteresting landscape, how a 
little water instantly relieves the mono- 
tony : no matter what objects are near it — 
a grey rock, a grass-patch, an alder-bush, 
or a stake~they become beautiful by 
being reflected. It is rhyme to the eye, 
and explains the charm of rhyme to the 
ear. Shadows please us as still finer 
rhymes. Architecture gives the like plea- 
sure by the repetition of equal parts in a 
colonnade, in a row of windows, or in 
wings; gardens, by the symmetric con- 
trasts of the beds and walks. In society, 
you have this figure in a bridal company, 
where a choir of white-robed maidens 
give the charm of living statues ; in a 
funeral procession, where all wear black ; 
in a regiment of soldiers in uniform. 

The universality of this taste is proved 
by our habit of casting our facts into 
rhyme to remember them better, as so 
many proverbs may show. Who would 
hold the order of the almanac so fast but 
for the ding-dong, 

*' Thirty days hath September,*’ &c. ; 
or of the Zodiac, but for 

The Ram, the Bull, the heavenly twins,*’ &c. ? 

We are lovers of rhyme and return, 
period and musical reflection. The babe 
is lulled to sleep by the nurse’s song. 
Sailors can work better for their yo-heave-o. 
Soldiers can march better and fight better 
for the drum and trumpet. Metre begins 
with pulse-beat, and the length of lines in 
songs and poems is determined by the in- 
halation and exhalation of the lungs. If 
you hum or whistle the rhythm of the com- 
mon English metres — of the decasyllabic 
quatrain, or the octosyllabic with alternate 
sexisyllabic, or other rhythms, you can 
easily believe these metres to be organic, 
derived from the human pulse, and to be 
therefore not proper to one nation, but to 
mankind. I think you will also find a 
charm heroic, plaintive, pathetic, in these 
cadences, and be at once set on searching 
for the words that can rightly fill these 


vacant beats. Young people like rhyme, 
drum-beat, tune? things in pairs ani alter- 
natives ; and, in higher degrees, wo know 
the instant power of music upon our tem- 
peraments to change our mood, and give 
U2 its own : and human passion, seizing 
these constitutional tunes, aims to fill 
them with appropriate \^*ords, or marry 
music to thought, believing, as we believe 
of all marriage, that matches are made in 
heaven, and that for every thought its 
proper melody or rhyme exists, though 
the odds are immense against our finding 
it, and only genius can rightly say the 
banns. 

Another form of rhyme is iterations of 
phrase, as the record of the death of 
Sisera : — 

“ At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down : 
at her feet he bowed, he fell; where he bowed, 
there he fell down dead.” 

The fact is made conspicuous, nay, 
colossal, by this simple rhetoric. 

” They shall perish, but thou shall endure; 
yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment ; 
as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they 
shall be changed: but thou art the same, and 
thy years shall have no end.’* 

Milton delights in these iterations 

“ Though fallen on evil days, 

On evil days though fallen, and evil tongiKts '* 

“ Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud 
Turn forth its silver lining on the nigtii? 

I did not err, there does a sable cloud 
Turn forth its silver lining on *he night,** 

Comos, 

“ A little onward lend thy guiding hand, 

To these dark steps a little farther on.’* 
Samsun, 

So in our songs and ballads the refrain 
skilfully used, and deriving some novelty or 
better sense in each of many verses : — 

” Busk thee, busk thee, my bonny bonny bride. 

Busk thee, busk thee, my winsom marrow.” 

Hamilton, 

Of course rhyme soars and refines with 
the growth of the mind. The boy liked 
the drum, the people liked an overpower- 
ing jewsharp tune. Later they like to trans- 
fer that rhyme to life, and to detect a 
melody as prompt and perfect in their 
daily affairs. Omen and coincidence show 
the rhythmical structure of man; hence 
the taste for signs, sortilege, prophecy and 
fulfilment, anniversaries, &c. By and 
by, when they apprehend real rhymes, 
namely, tlie corhespondence of parts in 
nature— acid and alkali, body and mind, 



MELODY, RHYME, FORM. 585 


man and maid, character and history, 
action and reaction— thd^ do not longer 
value rattles and ding-dongs, or barbaric 
word-jingle. Astronomy, Botany, Chemis- 
try, Hydraulics, and the elemental forces 
have their own periods and returns, their 
own grand strains of harmony not less 
exact, up to the primeval apothegm ** that 
there is nothing on earth which is not in 
the heavens in a heavenly form, and no- 
thing in the heavens which is not on the 
earth in an earthly form.” They furnish 
the poet with grander pairs and alterna- 
tions, and will require an equal expansion 
in his metres. 

There is under the seeming poverty of 
metres an infinite variety, as every artist 
knows. A right ode (however nearly it 
may adopt conventional metre, as the 
Spenserian, or the heroic blank-verse, or 
one of the fixed lyric metres) will by any 
sprightliness be at once lifted out of con- 
ventionality, and will modify the metre. 
Every good poem that I know I recall 
by its rhythm also. Rhyme is a pretty 
good measure of the latitude and opulence 
of a writer. If unskilful, he is at once 
detected by the poverty of his chimes. 
A small, well-worn, sprucely brushed vo- 
cabulary serves him. Now try Spenser, 
Marlow, Chapman, and see how wide they 
fly for weapons, and how rich and 
lavish their profusion. In their rhythm is 
no manufacture, but a vortex, or musical 
tornado, which falling on words and the 
experience of a learned mind, whirls these 
materials into the same grand order as 
planets and moons obey, and seasons, and 
monsoons. 

There are also prose poets. Thomas 
Taylor, the Platonist, for instance, is really 
a better man of imagination, a better 
poet, or perhaps I should say a better 
feeder to a poet, than any man between 
Milton and Wordsworth. Thomas Moore 
had the magnanimity to say, “ If Burke 
and Bacon were not. poets (measured 
lines not being necessary to constitute 
ine), he did not know what poetry meant.” 
And every good reader will easily recall 
expressions or passages in works of pure 
science, which have given him the same 
pleasure which he seeks in professed poets. 
Richard Owen, the eminent paleontologist, 
said : 

** All hitherto observed causes of extirpation 
point either to continuous slowly operating 
geologic changes, or to no greater sudden cause 
than the, so to speak, spectral appearance of 
mankind on a limited tract of land not before 
nhabited.” 


St Augustine complains to God of his 
friends offering him the books of the phil- 
osophers ; 

“ And these were the dishes in which they 
brought to me, beiftg hungry, the Sun and the 
Moon instead of Thee.” 

It would not bo easy to refuse to Sir 
Thomas Browne’s ” Fragment on Mum- 
mies ” the claim of poetry : 

** Of their living habitations they made little 
account, conceiving of them but as hospitia, or 
inns, while they adorned the sepulchres of the 
dead, and, planting thereon lasting bases, 
defied the crumbling touches of time, and the 
misty vaporousness of oblivion. Yet all were 
but Babel vanities. Time sadly overcometh 
all things, and is now dominant, and sitteth 
upon a Sphinx, and looketli unto Memphis and 
old Thebes, while his sister Oblivion rcclineth 
semi-sornnous on a pyramid, gloriously tri- 
umphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, 
and turning old glories into dreams. History 
sinkoth beneath her cloud. The traveller a3 
he paceth through those deserts asketh of her, 
Who biiilded them? and she miimbleth some- 
thing, but what it is he heareth not.” 

Rhyme, being a kind of music, shared 
this advantage with music, that it has a 
privilege of speaking truth which all 
Philistia is unable to challenge. Music is 
the poor man’s Parnassus. With the first 
note of the flute or horn, or the first strain 
of a song, we quit the world of common- 
sense, and launch on the sea of ideas and 
emotions : we pour contempt on the prose 
you so magnify ; yet the sturdiest Philis- 
tine is silent. The like allowance is the 
prescriptive right of poetry. You shall not 
speak ideal truth in prose uncontradicted : 
you may in verse. The best thoughts 
run into the best words ; imaginative and 
affectionate thoughts into music and 
metre. We ask for food and fire, wa talk 
of our work, our tools, and material neces- 
sities in prose, that is, without any eleva- 
tion or aim at beauty, but when we rise 
into the world of thought, and think of 
these things gnly for what they signify, 
speech refines into order and harmony^ 
I know what you say of mediaeval barbar- 
ism and sleigh-bell rhyme, but we have 
not done with music, no, nor with rhyme, 
nor must console ourselves with prose 
poets so long as boys whistle and girls 
sing. 

Let Poetry then pass, if it will, into 
music and rhyme. That is the form which 
itself puts on. We do not enclose watches 
in wooden, but in crystal cases, and 
rhyme is the transparent frame that 
allows almost the pure architecture gl 



POETRY AND IMAGINATION. 


586 

thought to become visible to the mental 
eye. Substance is much, but so are mode 
and form much. The poet, like a de- 
lighted boy, brings you heaps of rainbow 
bubbles, opoline, air-bprne, spherical as 
the world instead of a few drops of soap 
and water. Victor Hugo says well, “ An 
idea steeped in verse becomes suddenly 
more incisive and more brilliant: the 
iron becomes steel." Lord Bacon, we are 
told, " loved not to see poesy go on other 
feet than poetical dactyls and spondees ; " 
and Ben Jonson said, "that Donne, for 
not keeping of accent, deserved hanging.” 

Poetry being an attempt to express *, 
not the common-sense, as the avoirdupois 
of the hero, or his structure in feet and 
inches, but the beauty and soul in his as- 
pect as it shines to fancy and feeling — 
and so of all other objects in nature — 
iruns into fable, personifies every fact : — 
" the clouds clapped their hands " — " the 
hills skipped " — " the sky spoke.’’ This i 
is the substance, and this treatment al- 
ways attempts a metrical grace. Outside 
of the nursery the beginning of literature 
is the prayers of a people, and they are 
always hymns, poetic— the mind allowing 
itself range, and therewith is ever a cor- 
responding freedom in the style which be- 
comes lyrical. The prayers of nations are 
rh)rthmic — have iterations and allitera- 
tions, like the marriage-service and burial- 
service in our liturgies. 

Poetry will never be a simple means, as 
when history or philosophy is rhymed, or 
laureate odes on state occasions are 
written. Itself must be its own end, or it 
is nothing. The difference between poetry 
and stock-poetry is this, that in the latter 
the rhythm is given, and the sense adapted 
to it ; while in the former the sense dic- 
tates the rhythm. I might even say that 
the rhythm is there in the theme, thought, 
and image themselves. Ask the fact for 
the form. For a verse is not a vehicle to 
carry a sentence as a jewel is carried in a 
case ; the verse must be alive, and insep- 
arable from its contents, as the soul of 
man inspires and directs the body ; and 
we measure the inspiration by the music. 
In reading prose, I am sensitive as soon 
as a sentence drags ; but in poetry as soon 
as one word drags. Ever as the thought 
mounts, the expression mounts. 'Tis 
cumulative also ; the poem is made up of 
lines each of which filled the ear of the 
poet in its turn, so that mere synthesis 
produces a work quite superhuman. 

Indeed, the masters sometimes rise 
above themselves to strains which cherm 


their readers, and which neither any com- 
petitor could outdo, nor the bard himself 
again equal. Try this strain of Beaumont 
and Fletcher;— 

“ Hence, all ye vain delightai 
As short as are the nights 
In which you spend your foI!f I 
There’s naught in this life sweeti 
If men were wise to see’t, 

But only melancholy. 

Oh ! sweetest melancholy ! 

Welcome, folded arms and fixed eyes, 

A sigh that piercing mortifies, 

A look that’s fastened to the ground, 

A tongue chained up, without a sound ; 
Fountain-heads and pathless groves, 

Places which pale Passion loves, 

Midnight walks, when all the fowls 
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls ; 

A midnight bell, a passing groan, 

These are the sounds we feed upon, 

Then stretch our bones in a still, gloomy 
valley. 

Nothing’s so dainty sweet as lovely melan- 
choly." 

Keats disclosed by certain lines in hi# 
" Hyperion ’’ this inward skill ; and Cole 
ridge showed at least his love and appe- 
tency for it. It appears in Ben Jonson’s 
songs, including certainly " The faery 
beam upon you," &c., Waller’s "Go, 
lovely rose!" Herbert’s "Virtue" and 
"Easter," and Lovelace’s lines "To 
Althea " and “ To Lucasta,” and Collins’s 
" Ode to Evening," all but the last verse, 
which is academical. Perhaps this dainty 
style of poetry is not producible to-day, 
any more than a right Gothic cathedral. 
It belonged to a time and taste which is 
not in the world. 

! As the imagination is not a talent of 
some men, but is the health of every nan, 
so also is this joy of musical expression. 

I know the pride of mathematicians and 
materialists, but they cannot conceal from 
me their capital want. The critic, tho 
philosopher, is a failed poet. Gray avowi 
" that he thinks even a bad verse as good 
a thing or better than the best observation 
that was ever made on it." I honour the 
naturalist ; I honour the geometer, but he 
has before him higher power and happiness 
than he knows. Yet we will leave to the 
masters their own forms. Newton may 
be permitted to cull Terence a play-book, 
and to wonder at the frivolous taste for 
rhymers ; he only predicts, one would say, 
a grander poetry : he only shows that he 
is not yet rear:hed ; that the poetry which 
satisfies more youthful souls is not such to 
a mind like his, accustomed to grander 
barmoQies ; tfeia b«ing a ct)ii4’8 wbistle to 



MELODY, RHYME, EORM. 5^7 


bl8 ear; that the music must rise to a 
loftier strain, up to Hansel, up to Beet- 
hoven, up to the thorough-bass of the sea- 
shore, up to the largeness of astronomy : 
at last that great heart will hear in the 
music beats like its own: the waves of 
melody will wash and float him also, and 
set him into concert and harmony. 


Bards and Trouveurs, — The metallic 
force of primitive words makes the supe- 
riority of the remains of the rude ages. 
It costs the early bard little talent to chant 
more impressively than the later, more 
cultivated poets. His advantage is that 
his words are things, each the lucky sound 
which described the fact, and we listen to 
him as we do to the Indian, or the hunter, 
or miner, each of whom represents his 
facts as accurately as the cry of the wolf 
or the eagle tells of the forest or the air 
they inhabit. The original force, the 
direct smell of the earth or the sea, is in 
these ancient poems, the Sagas of the 
North, theNibelungen Lied, thesongs and 
ballads of the English and Scotch. 

I find or fancy more true poetry, the 
love of the vast and the ideal, in the Welsh 
and bardic fragments of Taliessin and 
his successors than in many volumes of 
British Classics. An intrepid magnilo- 
quence appears in all the bards, as : 


" The whole ocean flamed as one wound." 

King Regner Lodbtok. 

" God himself cannot procure good for the 
wicked," 

Welsh Triad, 


A favourable spcjcimen Is Taliessin’s 
"Invocation of the Wind " at the door of 
Castle Teganwy. 

*• Discover thou what it Is — 

The strong creature from before the flood, 
Without flesh, without bone, without head, 
without feet, 

It will neither be younger nor older than at 
the beginning; 

It has no fear, nor the rude wants of created 
things. 

Great God! how the sea whitens when it 

comes 1 

It is in the field, it is in the wood. 

Without hand, without foot, 

Without age, without season, 

It is always of the same age with the ages of 
ages. 

And of equal breadth with the surface of the 
earth. 

It was not born, it sees not. 

And is not seen; It does EOt come when 
desired ; 

It has no form. It bears no bnrdeoi 
For It is void of sin. 


It makes no perturbation In the place where 
God wills it, 

On the sea, on the land." 

In one of his poems he asks : 

" Is there but one*course to the wind ? 

But one to the water of the sea? 

Is there but one spark in the tire of bound- 
less energy ? " 

He says of his hero, Cunedda— 

** He will assimilate, he will agree with ths 
deep and the shallow.*' 

To another — 

** When I lapse to a sinful word, 

May neither you nor others hear*" 

Of an enemy — 

" The caldron of the sea was bordered round 
by bis land, but it would not boil the food of a 
coward.’* 

To an exile on an island he saya— 

" The heavy blue chain of the sea didst thou, 
O just man, endure.** 

Another bard in like tone says — 

" I am possessed of songs such as no son of 
man can repeat; one of them is called tho 
* Helper; * it will help thee at thy need in sick- 
ness, grief, and all adversities. I know a song 
which I need only to sing when men have 
loaded me with bonds: when I sing it, my 
chains fall in pieces and 1 walk forth at 
liberty." 

The Norsemen have no less faith in 
poetry and its power, when they describe 
it thus : 

“Odin spoke everything in rhyme. He and 
his temple-gods were called song-smiths. He 
could make his enemies in battle blind or deaf, 
and their weapons so blunt that they could no 
more cut than a willow-twig. Odin taught 
these arts in runes or songs, which are called 
incantations." * 

The Crusades brought out the genius of 
France, in the twelfth century, when 
Pierre d’Auvergne said — 

“ I will sing a new song which resounds in 
my breast : never was a song good or beautiful 
which resembled any other.** 

And Pons de Capdeuil declares— 

“ Since the air renews itself and softeni^, so 
must my heart renew itself, and what buds in 
it buds and grows outside of it." 

There is in every poem a height which 
attracts more than other parts, and is best 

* Hsimikringla, Vol. I», p. tsx« 



5S^ POETRY AUD IMAOmATlON. 


remembered. Thus, in “ Morte d’ Arthur,’* 
I remember nothing so well as Sir Gawain’s 
parley with Merlin in his wonderful 
prison : 

“After the disappearance of Merlin from 
King Arthur’s court he was seriously missed, 
and many knights set out in search of him. 
Among others was Sir Gawain, who pursued 
his search till it was time to return to the 
court. He came into the forest of Broceliande, 
lamenting as he went along. Presently, he 
heard the voice of one moaning on his right 
hand ; looking that way, he could see nothing 
save a kind of smoke which seemed like air, 
and through which he could not pass; and 
this impediment made him so wrathful that it 
deprived him of speech. Presently he heard a 
voice which saicl, ‘Gawain, Gawain, be not 
out of heart, for everything which must 
happen will come to pass.* And when he 
heard the voice which thus called him by his 
right name, he replied, * Who can this be 
who hath spoken to me?’ ‘How,’ said the 
voice, ‘Sir Gawain, know you me not? You 
were wont to know me well, but thus things 
are interwovan and thu» the proverb says 
true, “ Leave the court and the court will 
leave you.” So is it with me. Whilst I served 
King Arthur, I was well known by you and 
by other barons, but because I have left the 
court, I am known no longer, and put in for- 
getfulness, which I ought not to he if faith 
reigned in the world.’ When Sir Gawain 
heard the voice which spoke to him thus, he 
thought it was Merlin, and he answered, * Sir, 
certes I ought to know you well, for many 
times 1 have heard your words. I pray you 
appear before me so that I may be able to 
recognize you.’ ‘ Ah, sir,* said Merlin, ‘ you 
will never see me more, and that grieves me, 
but I cannot remedy it, and when you shall 
have departed from this place, I shall never- 
more speak to you nor to any other person, 
save only my mistress ; for never other person 
will be able to discover this place for anything 
which may befall ; neither shall I ever go out 
from hence, for in the world there is no such 
strong tower as this wherein I am confined ; 
and it is neither of wood, nor of iron, nor of 
stone, but of air, without anything else ; and 
made by enchantment so strong, that it can 
never be demolished while the world lasts, 
neither can I go out, nor can any one come in, 
save she who hath enclosed me here, and who 
keeps me company when it pleaselh her: she 
cometh when she listeth, for her will is here.’ 

* How, Merlin, my good friend,’ said Sir Ga- 
wain, * are you restrained so strongly that you 
cannot deliver yourself nor make yourself 
visible unto me; now can this happen, seeing 
that you are the wisest man in the world?’ 
•Rather,’ said Merlin, ‘ the greatest fool ; for I 
well knew that all this would befall me, and I 
have been fool enough to love another more 
than myself, for I taught my mistress that 
whereby she hath imprisoned me in such 
manner that none can set me free.* * Certes, 
Merlin,* replied Sir Gawain, ‘of that 1 am 
right sorrowful, and so will King Arthur, my 
uncle, be, when he shall know it, as one who 
If making search after you throughout all 


countries.' ‘Well,* said Merlin, *it must lA 
borne, for never will he see me, nor I him ; 
neither will any o'de speak with me again after 
you, it would be vain to attempt it; for you 
yourself, when you have turned away, will 
never be able to find the place ; but salute lor 
me the king and the queen, and all the barons, 
and tell them of my condition. You will find 
the king at Carduel in Wales ; and when you 
arrive tnere you will find there all the com- 
panions who departed with you, and who at 
this day will return. Now then go in the name 
of Goa, who will protect and save the King 
Arthur, and the realm of Logres, and you also, 
as the best knights who are in the world. 
With that Sir Gawain departed joyful and 
sorrowful ; joyful because of what Merlin had 
assured him should happen to him, and sorrow- 
ful that Merlin had thus been lost.” 

Morals. — We are sometimes apprised 
that there is a mental power and creation 
more excellent than anything which is 
commonly called philosophy and litera- 
ture ; that the high poets — that Homer, 
Milton, Shakspeare, do not fully content 
us. How rarely they offer us the heavenly 
bread 1 The most they have done is to 
intoxicate us once and again with its taste, 
They have touched this heaven and retain 
afterwards some sparkle of it: they be- 
tray their belief that such discourse is 
possible. Thera is something — our 
brothers on this or that side of the sea 
do not know it or own it ; the eminent 
scholars of England, historians and re- 
viewers, romancers and poets included, 
might deny and blaspheme it — which is 
setting us and them aside and the whole 
world also, and planting itself. To true 
poetry we shall sit down as the result and 
justification of the age in which it appears, 
and think lightly of histories and statutes. 
None of your parlour or piano verse — none 
of your carpet poets, who are content to 
amuse, will satisfy us. Power, new power, 
is the good which the soul seeks. The 
poetic gift we want, as the health and 
supremacy of man— not rhymes and son- 
neteering, not bookmaking and booksel- 
ling ; surely not cold spying and author- 
ship. 

Is not poetry the liale chamber in the 
brain where is generated the explosive 
force which, by gentle shocks, sets in ac- 
tion the intellectual world ? Bring us th® 
bards who shall sing all our old ideas out 
of our heads, and new ones in ; men-mak- 
ing poets ; poetry which, like the verses 
inscribed on Balder’s columns in Breida- 
blik, is capable of restoring the dead to 
life ; poetry like that verse of Saadi, 
which the angels testified “ met the appro- 
bation of Allah in Ueaven ; ” poetry which 



MORALS, 


finds its rhymes and cadences in the 
rhymes and iterations of nature, and is 
the gift to men of new images and symbols, 
each the ensign and oracle of an age ; 
that shall assimilate men to it, mould 
itself into religions and mythologies, and 
impart its quality to centuries; poetry 
which tastes the world and reports of it, 
upbuilding the world again in the thought ; 

“Not with tickling rhymes, 

But high and noble matter, such as flies 
From brains entranced, and filled with 
ecstasies.” 

Poetry must be affirmative. It is the 
piety of the intellect. “ Thus saith the 
Lord,” should begin the song. The poet 
who shall use nature as his hieroglyphic 
must have an adequate message to convey 
thereby. Therefore, when we speak of 
the Poet in any high sense, we are driven 
to such examples as Zoroaster and Plato, 
St. John and Menu, with their moral bur- 
dens. The muse shall be the counterpart 
of Nature, and equally rich, I find her 
not often in books. We know Nature, 
and figure her exuberant, tranquil, mag- 
nificent in her fertility, coherent ; so that 
every creation is omen of every other. 
She is not proud of the sea, of the stars, 
of space or time, or man or woman. All 
her kinds share the attributes of the select- 
est extremes. But in current literature I 
do not find her. Literature warps away 
from life, though at first it seems to bind 
it. In the world of letters how few com- 
manding oracles ! Homer did what he 
could-' Pindar, ^Eschylus, and the Greek 
Gnomic poets and the tragedians. Dante 
was faithful when not carried away by 
his fierce hatreds. But in so many alcoves 
of English poetry I can count only nine 
or ten authors who are still inspirers 
and lawgivers to their race. 

The supreme value of poetry is to edu- 
cate us to a height beyond itself, or which 
it rarely reaches ; the subduing mankind 
to order and virtue. He is the true 
Orpheus who writes his ode, not with 
syllables, but men. ” In poetry," said 
Goethe, ” only the really great and pure 
advances us, and this exists as a second 
nature, either elevating us to itself, or 
rejecting us.” The poet must let Human- 
ity sit with the Muse in his head, as the 
charioteer sits with the hero in the Iliad. 
“Show me,” said Sarona in the novel, 
“ one wicked man who has written poetry, 
and I will show you where his poetry is 
not poetry ; or rather, I will show you in 
his poetry no poetry at all.” ♦ 

• Mist Shepard’s " Counterparts,” Vol, I. p. Cy. 


I have heard that there is a hope wb' .h 
precedes and must precede all scienc of 
the visible or the invisible world ; and 
that science is the realization of that hope 
in either region. I count the genius of 
Swedenborg and Wordsworth as the 
agents of a reform in philosophy, the 
bringing poetry back to nature — to the 
marrying of nature and mind, undoing the 
old divorce in which poetry had been 
famished and false, and nature had been 
suspected and pagan. The philosophy 
which a nation receives, rules its religion, 
poetry, politics, arts, trades, and whole his- 
tory. A good poem— say f Shakspeare’s 
” Macbeth,” or ” Hamlet,” or the ” Tem- 
pest ” — goes about the world offering itsell 
to reasonable men, who read it with joy and 
carry it to their reasonable neighbours. 
Thus it draws to it the wise and generoui 
souls, confirming their secret thoughts, and 
through their sympathy, really publishing 
itself. It affects the characters of its 
readers by formulating their opinions and 
feelings, and inevitably prompting their 
daily action. If they build ships, they 
write “Ariel ” or “ Prospero ” or “ Ophe- 
lia ” on the ship’s stern, and impart a 
tenderness and mystery to matters of fact. 
The ballad and romance work on the 
hearts of boys, who recite the rhymes to 
their hoops or their skates if alone, and 
these heroic songs or lines are remem- 
bered and determine many practical 
choices which they make later. Do you 
think Burns has had no influence on the 
life of men and women in Scotland — has 
opened no eyes and ears to the face of 
nature and the dignity of man and the 
charm and excellence of woman ? 

We are a little civil, it must be owned, 
to Homer and ^Eschylus, to Dante and 
Shakspeare, and give them the benefit of 
the largest interpretation. We must be a 
little strict also, and ask whether, if we 
sit down at home, and do not go to 
Hamlet, Hamlet will come to us ? whether 
we shall find our tragedy written in his 
— our hopes, wants, pains, disgraces, 
described to the life — and the way 
opened to the paradise which ever in the 
best hour beckons us ? But our over- 
praise and idealization of famous masters 
is not in its origin a poor Boswellism.but 
an impatience of mediocrity. The praise 
we now give to our heroes we shall unsay 
when we make larger demands. How fast 
we outgrow the books of the nursery- 
then those that satisfied our youth* 
What we once admired as poetry hat long 
since come to be a sound of tin pans ; ana 



POETRY Al^D IMAGINATION. 


S^o 

many of our later books iwe have out- 
grown. Perhaps Homer and Milton will 
be tin pans yet. Better not to be easily 
leased. The poet should rejoice if he 
as taught us to despise his song ; if he 
has so moved us as to lift us — to open the 
©ye of the intellect to see farther and better. 

In proportion as a man’s life comes into 
union with truth, his thoughts approach to 
a parallelism with the currents of natural 
laws, so that he easily expresses his mean- 
ing by natural symbols, or uses the ec- 
static or poetic speech. By successive , 
states of mind all the facts of nature are 
for the first time interpreted. In propor- 
tion as his life departs from this simpli- 
city, he uses circumlocution — by many 
words hoping to suggest what he 
cannot say. Vexatious to find poets, 
who are by excellence the thinking and 
feeling of the world, deficient in truth 
of intellect and affection. Then is con- 
science unfaithful, and thought unwise. 
To know the merit of Shakspeare, read 
“Faust.” I find “Faust” a little too 
modern and intelligible. We can find 
such a fabric at several mills, though a 
little inferior. “Faust” abounds in the 
disagreeable. The vice is prurient, learned, 
Parisian. In the presence of Jove, Priapus 
may be allowed as an offset, but here he 
is an equal hero. The egotism, the wit, is 
calculated. The book is undeniably writ- 
ten by a master, and stands unhappily 
related to the whole modern world ; but it 
is a very disagreeable chapter of litera- 
ture, and accuses the author as well as the 
times. Shakspeare could, no doubt, have 
been disagreeable, had he less genius, and 
if ugliness had attracted him. In short, 
our English nature and genius has made 
us the worst critics of Goethe, 

** We, who speak the tongue 
That Shakspeare spake, tho. faith and 
morals hold 
Which Milton held.” 

It is not style br rhymes, or a new image 
more or less, that imports, but sanity ; 
that life should not bo mean ; that life 
should be an image in every part beau- 
tiful : that the old forgotten splendours 
of the universe should glow again for us ; 
that we should lose our wit, but gain our 
reason, i^nd when life i.*? true to the 
poles of nature, the streams of truth wiU 
toll through us in song. 

Transcendency. ^In a cotillon some per- 
sons dance and others await their turn 
when the music and the figure come to 
them. In the dance of God there is not 


one of the chofus but can and will begitl 
to spin, monumt3ntal as he now looks, 
whenever the music and figure reach hitf 
place and duty. O celestial Bacchus I 
drive them mad, — this multitude of vaga- 
bonds, hungry for eloquence, hungry for 
poetry, starving for symbols, perishing for 
want of electricity to vitalize this too 
much pasture, and in the long delay 
indemnifying themselves with the false 
wine of alcohol, of politics, or of money. 

Every man may be, and at some time 
a man is, lifted to a platform whence he 
looks beyond sense to moral and spiritual 
truth ; and in that mood deals sovereignly 
with matter, and strings worlds like beads 
upon his thought. The success with which 
this is done can alone determine how 
genuine is the inspiration. The poet is 
rare because he must be exquisitely vital 
and sympathetic, and, at the same time, 
immovably centred. In good society, nay. 
among the angels in heaven, is not every 
thing spoken in fine parable, and not so 
servilely as it befell to the sense ? All is 
symbolized. Facts are not foreign, as 
they seem, but related. Wait a little and 
w'e see the return of the remote hyperbolic 
curve. The solid men complain that the 
idealist leaves out the fundamental facts ; 
the poet complains that the solid men 
leave out the sky. To every plant there 
are two powers ; one shoots down as root- 
let, and one upward as tree. You must 
have eyes of science to see in the seed its 
nodes; you must have the vivacity of the 
poet to perceive in the thought its futuri- 
ties. The poet is representative — whole 
man, diamond - merchant, symbolizer, 
emancipator ; in him the world projects 
a scribe’s hand and writes the adequate 
genesis. The nature of things is flowing, 
a metamorphosis. The free spirit sympa- 
thizes not only with the actual form, but 
with the power or possible forms ; but 
for obvious municipal or parietal uses, 
God has given us a bias or a rest on to- 
day’s forms. Hence the shudder of joy 
with which in each clear moment we re- 
cognize the metamorphosis, because it is 
always a conquest, a surprise from the 
heart of things. One would say of the 
force in the works of nature, all depends 
on the battery. If it give one shock, we 
shall get to the fish form, and stop ; if two 
shocks, to the bird ; if three, to tho quad- 
ruped ; if four, to the man. Power of 
generalizing differences men. The num- 
ber of successive saltations the nimble 
thought can make, measures the difference 
between the highest nod lowest of mash 



TRANSCENDENCY. 59 ^ 


kind. The habit of saliency, of not paus- 
ing but going on, is a sort^of importation 
or domestication of the Divine effort in a 
man. After the largest circle has been 
drawn, a larger can be drawn around it. 
The problem of the poet is to unite free- 
dom with precision ; to give the pleasure 
of colour, and be not less the most power- 
ful of sculptors. Music seems to you 
sufficient, or the subtle and delicate scent 
of lavender ; but Dante was free imagina- 
tion—all wings — yet he wrote like Euclid. 
And mark the equality of Shakspeare to 
the comic, the tender and sweet, and to 
the grand and terrible. A little more or 
less skill in whistling is of no account. 
See those weary pentameter tales of Dry- 
den and others. Turnpike is one thing 
and blue sky another. Let the poet, of 
all men, stop with his inspiration. The 
inexorable rule in the muses’ court, either 
inspiration or silence, compels the bard to 
report only his supreme moments. It 
teaches the enormous force of a few words, 
and in proportion to the inspiration checks 
loquacity. Much that we call poetry is 
but polite verso. The high poetry which 
shall thrill and agitate mankind, restore 
youth and health, dissipate the dreams 
under which men reel and stagger, and 
bring in the new thoughts, the sanity and 
heroic aims of nations, is deeper hid and 
longer postponed than was America or 
Australia, or the finding of steam or of 
the galvanic battery. We must not con- 
clude against poetry from the defects of 
poets. They are, m our experience, men 
of every degree of skill — some of them 
only once or twice receivers of an inspira- 
tion, and presently falling back on a low 
life. The drop of ichor that tingles in 
their veins has not yet refined their blood, 
and cannot lift the whole man to the di- 
gestion and function of ichor — that is, to 
godlike nature. Time will be when ichor 
shall be their blood, when what are now 
glimpses and aspirations shall be the  
routine of the day. Yet even partial j 
asceaU to poetry and ideas are forerun- ] 


ners, and announce the dawn. In the 
mire of the sensual life, their religii^n, 
their poets, their admiration of heroes 
and benefactors, even their novel and 
newspaper, nay, their superstitions also, 
are hosts of ideafs — a cordage of ropes 
that hold them up out of the slough. Poetry 
is inestimable as a lonely faith, a lonely 
protest in the uproar of atheism. 

But so many men are ill-born or ill* 
bred — the brains are so marred, so imper- 
fectly formed, unheroically — brains of the 
sons of fallen men — that the doctrine is 
imperfectly received. One man sees a 
spark or shimmer of the truth, and re- 
ports it, and his saying becomes a legend 
or golden proverb for ages, and other men 
report as much, but none wholly and well, 
Poems — we have no poem. Whenever 
that angel shall be organized and appear 
on earth, the Iliad will be reckoned a poor 
ballad-grinding. I doubt never the riches 
of nature, the gifts of the future, ihe im- 
mense wealth of the mind. O yes, poets 
we shall have, mythology, symbols, reli- 
gion, of our own. We, too, shall know 
how to take up all this industry and em- 
pire, this Western civilization, into 
thought, as easily as men did when arts 
were few ; but not by holding it high, 
but by holding it low. The intellect uses 
and is not used— uses London and Paris 
and Berlin, east and west, to its end. 
The only heart that can help us is one that 
draws, not from our society, but from it- 
self, a counterpoise to society. What if 
we find partiality and meanness in us ? 
The grandeur of our life exists in spite of 
us —all over and under and within us, in 
what of us is inevitable and above our con- 
trol. Men are facts as well as persons, 
and the involuntary part of their life so 
much as to fill the mind and leave them 
no countenance to say aught of what is so 
trivial as their selfish thinking and doing. 
Sooner or later that which is now life shall 
be poetry, and every fair and manly trait 
shall add a richer strain to tbo song. 



592 


SOCIAL AIMS. 


SOCIAL AIMS. ' 


Much ill-natured critialsm has been di- 
rected on American manners. I do not 
think it is to be resented. Rather, it we 
are wise, we shall listen and mend. Our 
critics will then be our best friends, though 
they did not mean it. But in every sense 
the subject of manners has a constant 
interest to thoughtful persons. Who does 
not delight in fine manners ? Their charm 
cannot be predicted or overstated. 'Tis 
perpetual promise of more than can be 
fulfilled. It is music and sculpture and 
picture to many who do not pretend to 
appreciation of those arts. It is even 
true that grace is more beautiful than 
beauty. Yet how impossible to overcome 
the obstacle of an unlucky temperament, 
and acquire good manners, unless by 
living with the well-bred from the start ; 
and this makes the value of wise fore- 
thought to give ourselves and our children 
as much as possible the habit of cultivated 
society. 

*Tis an inestimable hint that I owe to a 
few persons of fine manners, that they 
make behaviour the very first sign of 
force — behaviour, and not performance, 
or talent, or, much less, wealth. Whilst 
almost everybody has a supplicating eye 
turned on events and things and other 
persons, a few natures are central and for 
ever unfold, and these alone charm us. 
He whose word or deed you cannot pre- 1 
diet, who answers you without any sup- 
plication in his eye, who draws his deter- 
mination from within, and draws it in- 
stantly —that man rules. 

The staple figure in novels is the man 
of aplomb, who sits, among the young 
aspirants and desperates, quite sure and 
compact, and, never sharing their affec- 
tions or debilities, hurls his word like a 
bullet when occasion requires, knows his 
way, and carries his points. They may 
scream or applaud, he is never engaged 
or heated. Napoleon is the type of this 
class in modem history; Byron’s heroes 
in poetry. But we, for the most part, are 
all drawn into the charivari; we chide, 
lament, cavil, and recriminate. 

I think Hans Andersen’s story of the 
cobweb cloth woven so fine that it was 
invisible — woven for the king’s garment — 
must mean manners, which do really 
clothe a princely nature. Such a one can 
well go in a blanket, if he would. In the 


gymnasium or on the sea-beach his sn* 
periority does not leave him. But he 
who has not this fine garment of be- 
haviour is studious of dress, and then not 
less of house and furniture and pictures 
and gardens, in all which he hopes to lie 
perdu, and not be exposed. 

“ Manners are stronger than laws.” 
Their vast convenience I must always 
admire. The perfect defence and isola- 
tion which they effect makes an insuperable 
protection. Though the person so clothed 
wrestle with you, or swim with you, lodge 
in the same chamber, eat at the same 
table, he is yet a thousand miles off, and 
can at any moment finish with you. 
Manners seem to say, You are you, and I 
am I. In the most delicate natures, fine 
temperament and culture build this im- 
passable wall. Balzac finely said : “ Kings 
themselves cannot force the exquisite 
politeness of distance to capitulate, hid 
behind its shield of bronze.” 

Nature values manners. See how she 
has prepared for them. Who teaches 
manners of majesty, of frankness, of 
grace, of humility— who but the adoring 
aunts and cousins that surround a young 
child ? The babe meets such courting 
and flattery as only kings receive when 
adult; and, trying experiments, and at 
perfect leisure with these posture-masters 
and flatterers all day, he throws himself 
into all the attitudes that correspond to 
theirs. Are they humble ? he is com- 
posed. Are they eager ? he is nonchalant. 
Are they encroaching? he is dignified 
and inexorable. And this scene is daily 
repeated in hovels as well as in high 
houses. 

Nature is the best posture-master. An 
awkward man is graceful when asleep, or 
when hard at work, or agreeably amused, 
The attitudes of children are gentle, per- 
suasive, royal, in their games and in 
their house-talk and in the street, before 
they have learned to cringe. ’Tis impos- 
sible but thought disposes the limbs and 
the walk, and is masterly or secondary. 
No art can contravene it, or conceal it. 
Give me a thought, and my hands and 
legs and voice and face will all go right 
And we are awkward for want of thought. 
The inspiration is scanty, and does not 
arrive at the extremities. 

It is a commonplace of romances tkf 



SOCIAL AIMS. 


•how the ungainly manners of the pedant 
who has lived too long college. Intel- 
lectual men pass for vulgar, and are timid 
and heavy with the elegant. But, if the 
elegant are also intellectual, instantly the 
hesitating scholar is inspired, transformed, 
and exhibits the best style of manners. 
An intellectual man, though of feeble 
spirit, is instantly reinforced by being put 
into the company of scholars, and, to the 
surprise of everybody, becomes a law- 
giver. Wo think a man unable and de- 
sponding. It is only that he is misplaced. 
Put him with new companions, and they 
will find in him excellent qualities, un- 
suspected accomplishments, and the joy 
of life. It is a great point in a gallery, 
how you hang pictures ; and not less in 
society, how you seat your party. The j 
circumstance of circumstance is timing 
and placing. When a man meets his 
accurate mate, society begins, and life is 
delicious. 

What happiness they give — what ties 
they form ? Whilst one man by his 
manners pins me to the wall, with another 
I walk among the stars. One man can, 
by his voice, lead the cheer of a regiment ; 
a;:ol!ier will have no following. Nature 
iiiade us all intelligent of these signs, for 
rur safety and our happiness. Whilst 
certain faces are illumined with intelli- 
gence, decorated with invitation, others 
are marked with warnings : certain voices 
are hoarse and truculent ; sometimes they * 
even bark. There is the same difference 
between heavy and genial manners as 
between the perceptions of octogenarians 
and those of young girls who see every- 
thing in the twinkle of an eye. 

Manners are the revealers of secrets, 
the betrayers of any disproportion or 
want of symmetry in mind and character. 
It is the law of our constitution that every 
change in our experience instantly indi- 
cates itself on our countenance and car- 
riage, as the lapse of time tells itself on 
the face of a clock. We may be too obtuse 
to read it, but the record is there. Some 
men may be too obtuse to read it, but 
some men are not obtuse and do read it. 
In Borrow’s “ Lavengro,” the gypsy in- 
stantly detects, by his companion’s face 
and behaviour, that some good fortune 
has befallen him, and that he has money. 
We say, in these days, that credit is to 
be abolished in trade: is it? When a 
stranger comes to buy goods of you, do 
you not look in his face and answer 
according to what you read there ? Credit 
!• to be abolished ? Can’t you abolish 


S93 

faces and character, of which credii Is the 
reflection? As long as men are born 
babes they will live on credit for the first 
fourteen or eighteen years of their life. 
Every innocent man has in his counten- 
ance a promise ta pay, and hence credit. 
Less credit will there be ? You are mis- 
taken. There will always be more and 
more. Character must be trusted ; and, 
just in proportion to the morality of a 
people, will be the expansion of the credit 
system. 

There is even a little rule of prudence 
for the young experimenter which Dr. 
Franklin omitted to set down, 5'et which 
the youth may find useful — Do not go to 
ask your debtor the payment of a debt on 
the day when you have no other resource. 
He will learn by your air and tone how it 
is with you, and will treat you as a beggar. 
But work and starve a little longer. Wait 
till your affairs go better, and you have 
other means at hand ; you will then ask in 
a different tone, and he will treat your 
claim with entire respect. 

Now, we all wish to be graceful, and do 
justice to ourselves by our manners ; but 
youth in America is wont to be poor and 
hurried, not at ease, or not in society 
where high behaviour could be taught. 
But the sentiment of honour and the wish 
to serve make all our pains superfluous. 
Life is not so short but that there is 
always time enough for courtesy. Self- 
command is the main elegance. " Keep 
cool, and you command everybody,” said 
St. Just ; and the wily old Talleyrand would 
! still say, Surtout, messieurs, pas de z^le — 
” Above all, gentlemen, no heat.” 

Why have you statues in your hall, but 
to teach you that, when the door-bell 
rings, you shall sit like them. ” Eat at 
your table as you would eat at the table of 
the king,” said Confucius, It is an excel- 
lent custom of the Quakers, if only for a 
school of manners~the silent prayer 
before meals. It has the effect to stop 
mirth, and introduce a moment of reflec- 
tion. After the pause all resume their 
usual intercourse from a vantage-ground. 
What a check to the violent manners 
which sometimes come to the table— of 
wrath, and whining, and heat in trifles I 

It is a rule of manners to avoid ex- 
aggeration. A lady loses as soon as she 
admires too easily and too much. In man 
or woman, the face and the person lose 
power when they are on the strain to 
express admiration. A man makes his 
inferiors his superiors by heat Why 
need you, who are not a gossip, talk as a 



594 SOCIAL AIMS. 

gossip, and teil eagerly what the neigh- has not firm nerves, and has keen seosl* 
hours or the journals say ? State your bility, it is perha;ns a wise economy to go 
opinion without apology. The attitude is to a good shop and dress himself irre* 
the main point, assuring your companion proachably. He can then dismiss all care 
that, corne good news or come bad, you from his mind, and may easily find that 
remain in good heart ^nd good mind, performance an addition of confidence a 
which is the best news you can possibly fortification that turns the scale in soc'a] 
communicate. Self-control is the rule, encounters, and allows him to go gaily 
You have in you there a noisy, sensual into conversation where else he had been 
savage which you are to keep down, and dry and embarrassed. I am not ignorant, 
turn all his strength to beauty. For ex- I have heard with admiring submission 
ample, what a seneschal and detective is the experience of the lady who declared 
laughter I It seems to require several “ that the sense of being perfectly well- 
generations of education to train a squeak- dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquil- 
ing or a shouting habit out of a man. lity which religion is powerless to be- 

Sometimes, when in almost all expres- stow." 

sions the Choctaw and the slave have Thus much for manners: but we are 
been worked out of him, a coarse nature not content with pantomime; we say, this 
still betrays itself in his contemptible is only for the eyes. We want real rela- 
squeals of joy. It is necessary for the tions of the mind and the heart ; we 
purification of drawing-rooms, that these want friendship ; we want knowledge ; we 
entertaining explosions should be under want virtue ; a more inward existence to 
strict control.! Lord Chesterfield had early read the history of each other. Welfare 
made this discovery, for he says, "lam requires one or two companies of intelli- 
sure that since I had my reason, no gence, probity, and grace, to wear out life 
human being has ever heard me laugh." with, persons with whom we can speak a 
I know that there go two to this game, few reasonable words every day, by whom 
and in the presence of certain formidable we can measure ourselves, and who shall 
wits, savage nature must sometimes rush hold us fast to good sense and virtue ; 
out in some disorder. and these we are always in search of. He 

To pass to an allied topic, one word or must be inestimable to us to whom we 
two in regard to dress, in which our civili- can say what we cannot say to ourselves, 
zation instantly shows itself. No nation Yet now and then we say things to our 
is dressed with more good sense than mates, or hear things from them, which 
ours. And everybody sees certain moral seem to put it out of the power of the 
benefit in it. When the young European parties to be strangers again. Either 

emigrant, after a summer’s labour, puts death or a friend," is a Persian proverb, 

on for the first time a new coat, he puts I suppose I give the experience of many 
on much more. His good and becoming when I give my own, A few times in my 
clothes put him on thinking that he must life it has happened to me to meet persons 
behave like people who are so dressed; of so good a nature and so good breeding, 
and silently and steadily his behaviour that every topic was opened and discussed 
mends. But quite another class of our without possibility of offence, persons 
own youth, I should remind, of dress in who could not bo shocked. One of my 
general, that some people need it, and friends said in speaking of certain 
others need it not. Thus a king or a gene- associates, " There is not one of them but 
ral does not need a fine coat, and a com- I can offend at any moment." But to the 
nianding person may save himself all company I am now considering, were no 
solicitude on that point. There are terrors, no vulgarity. All topics were 
always slovens in State Street or Wall broached, life, love, marriage, sex, hatred, 
Street, who are not less considered. If suicide, magic, theism, art, poetry, reli- 
a man have manners and talent he may gion, myself, thyself, all selves, and what- 
dress roughly and carelessly. It is only ever else, with a security and vivacity 
when mind and character slumber that which belonged to the nobility of the 
the dress can be seen. If the intellect parties and to their brave truth. The life 
were always awake, and every noble sen- of these persons was conducted in the 
timent, the man might go in huckaback same calm and affirmative manner as 
or mats, and his dress would be admired their discourse. Life with them was an 
and imitated. Remember George Her- experiment continually varied, full ofre- 
bert's maxim, '• This coat with my discre- suits, full of grandeur, and by no means 
ton will be brava," If. however, a mao the hot and hurried buiinesa which 



SOCIAL AIMS, 


passes in the world. The delight in good 
company, in pure, brilli^t, social atmos- 
phere ; the incomparable satisfaction of a 
society in which everything can be safely 
said, in which every member returns a 
true echo, in which a wise freedom, an 
ideal republic of sense, simplicity, know- 
ledge, and thorough good -meaning abide, 
doubles the value'of life. It is this that jus- 
tifies to each the jealousy with which the 
doors are kept. Do not look sourly at the set 
or the club which does not choose you. 
Every highly organised person knows the 
value of the social barriers, since the 
best society has often been spoiled to him 
by the intrusion of bad companions. lie 
of all men would keep the right of choice 
sacred, and feel that the exclusions are in 
the interest of the admissions, though 
they happen at this moment to thwart his 
wishes. 

The hunger for company is keen, but it 
must be discriminating, and must be eco- 
nomized. 'Tis a defect in our manners 
that they have not yet reached the pre- 
scribing a limit to visits. That every 
well-dressed lady or gentleman should be 
at liberty to exceed ten minutes in his or 
her call on serious people, shows a civili- 
zation still rude. A universal etiquette 
should fix an iron limit after which a 
moment should not be allowed without 
explicit leave granted on request of either 
the giver or receiver of the visit. There 
is inconvenience in such strictness, but 
vast inconvenience in the want of it To 
trespass on a public servant is to trespass 
on a nation’s time. Yet Presidents of the 
United States are afllicted by rude Western 
and Southern gossips (I hope it is only by 
them) until the gossip's immeasurable 
legs are tired of sitting; then he strides 
out and the nation is relieved. 

It is very certain that sincere and happy 
conversation doubles our powers ; that, 
in the effort to unfold our thought to a 
friend, we make it clearer to ourselves, 
and surround it with illustrations that 
help and delight us. It may happen that 
each hears {^om the other a better wisdom 
than any one else will ever hear from 
either. But these ties are taken care of 
by Providence to each of us. A wise man 
once said to me that “ all whom he knew, 
met:” — meaning that he need not take 
pains to introduce the persons whom he 
valued to each other: they were sure to 
be drawn together as by gravitation. The 
Boul of a man must be the servant of an- 
other. The true friend must have an 
•ttraetjop tp wbatever virtue ip ue. 


595 

Our chief want in life — is it not somebody 
who can make us do what we can ? And 
we are easily ^eat with the loved and 
honoured associate. We come out of our 
eggshell existence and see tl e great dome 
arching over us ; see the zenith above and 
the nadir under us. 

Speech is power : speech is to persuade, 
to convert, to compel. It is to bring an- 
other out of his bad sense into your good 
sense. You are to be missionary and 
carrier of all that is good and noble. 
Virtues speak to virtues, vices to vices — 
each to their own kind in the people with 
whom we deal. If you are suspiciously 
and dryly on your guard, so is he or she. 
If you rise to frankness and generosity 
they will respect it now or later. 

In this art of conversation. Woman, if 
not the queen and victor, is the lawgiver. 
If every one recalled his experiences, he 
might find the best in the speech of 
superior women — which was better than 
song, and carried ingenuity, character, 
wise counsel, and affection, as easily as 
the wit with which it was adorned. They 
are not only wise themselves, they make 
us wise. No one can be a master in con- 
versation who has not learned much from 
women ; their presence and inspiration 
are essential to its success. Steele said 
of his mistress, that “ to have loved her 
was a liberal education.” Shensiono 
gave no bad account of this influence in 
his description of the French woman : 
” There is a quality in which no woman 
in the world can compete with her— it is 
the power of intellectual irritation. She 
will draw wit out of a fool. She strikes 
with such address the chords of self-love, 
that she gives unexpected vigour and 
agility to fancy, and electrifies a body 
that appeared non-electric.” Coleridge 
esteems cultivated women as the deposi- 
taries and guardians of ” English unde- 
filed ; ” and Luther commends that ac- 
complishment of ” pure German speech ” 
of his wife. 

Madame de Sta6l, by the unanimous 
consent of all who knew her, was the 
most extraordinary converser that was 
known in her time, and it was a time full 
of eminent men and women ; she knew all 
distinguished persons in letters or society, 
in England, Germany, and Italy, as well 
as in France, though she said, with cha- 
racteristic nationality, ” Conversation, lik® 
talent, exists only in France.” Madam® 
de Sta^l valued nothing but conversation. 
When they showed her the beautiful Lak® 
she e^tciaimecli ” O for the gutt^ 



596 SOCIAL AIMS. 


of the Rue de Bad” the street in Paris 
in which her house stood. And she said 
one day, seriously, to M. Mol6, ” If it 
were not for respect to human opinions, I 
would not open my w.ndow to see the 
Bay of Naples for the first time, whilst I 
would go five hundred leagues to talk 
with a man of genius whom I had not 
seen.” Ste. Beuve tells us of the privi- 
leged circle at Coppet, that, after making 
an excursion one day, the party returned 
in two coaches from Chamb^ry to Aix, on 
the way to Coppet. The first coach had 
many rueful accidents to relate — a terrific 
thunderstorm, shocking roads, and danger 
and gloom to the whole company. The 
party in the second coach, on arriving, 
heard this story with surprise — of thunder- 
storm, of steeps, of mud, of danger, they 
knew nothing ; no, they had forgotten 
earth, and breathed a purer air : such a 
conversation between Madame de Stael 
and Madame R^camier and Benjamin 
Constant and Schlegel ! they were all in 
a state of delight. The intoxication of 
the conversation had made them insen- 
sible to all notice of weather or rough 
roads. Madame de Tessd said, ” If I 
were Queen, I should command Madame 
de Stael to talk to me every day,” Con- 
versation fills all gaps, supplies all defici- 
encies. What a good trait is that recorded 
of Madame de Maintenon, that, during 
dinner, the servant slipped to her side, 
” Please, madame, one anecdote more, 
for there is no roast to-day.” 

Politics, war, party, luxury, avarice, fash- 
ion, are all asses with loaded panniers to 
serve the kitchen of Intellect, the king. 
There is nothing that does not pass into 
lever or weapon. 

And yet there are trials enough of nerve 
and character, brave choices enough of 
taking the part of truth and of the op- 
pressed against the oppressor, in privates! , 
circles. A right speech is not well to be 
distinguished from action. Courage to 
ask questions ; courage to expose our ig- 
norance. The great gain is, not to shine, 
not to conquer your companion — then you 
learn nothing but conceit —but to find a 
companion who knows what you do not ; 
to tilt with him and be overthrown, horse 
and foot, with utter destruction of all your 
logic and learning. There is a defeat that 
is useful. Then you can see the real and 
the counterfeit, and will never! accept 
the counterfeit again. You will adopt the 
art of war that has defeated you. You 
will ride to battle horsed on the very logic 
which you found irresistible, You will 


accept the fertile truthi instead of the 
solemn customal^y lie. 

Let nature bear the expense. The 
attitude, the tone, is all. Let our eyes 
not look away, but meet. Let us not look 
east and west for materials of conversa- 
tion, but rest in presence and unity. A 
just feeling will fast enough supply fuel 
for discourse, if speaking be more grat ful 
than silence. When people come to see 
us, v/e foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospi- 
table. But things said for conversation 
are chalk eggs. Don’t say things. What 
you arc stands over you the while, and 
thunders so that I cannot hear what you 
say to the contrary. A lady of my ac- 
quaintance, said, ” I don’t care so much 
for what they say as I do for what makes 
them say it.” 

The main point is to throw yourself on 
the truth, and say with Newton, ” There’s 
no contending against facts.” When 
Molyneux fancied that the observations 
of the nutation of the earth’s axis de- 
stroyed Newton’s theory of gravitation, ha 
tried to break it softly to Sir Isaac, who 
only answered, “It may be so; there’s 
no arguing against facts and experi- 
ments.” 

But there are people who cannot be 
cultivated — people on whom speech makes 
no impression — swainish, morose people, 
who must be kept down and quieted as 
you would those who are a little tipsy ; 
others, who are not only swainish, but are 
prompt to take oath that swainishness is 
the only culture ; and though their odd 
wit may have some salt for you, youi 
friends would not relish it. Bolt these 
out. And I have seen a man of genius 
who made me think that if other men were 
like him co-operation were impossible. 
Must we always talk for victory, and never 
once for truth, for comfort, and joy ? Here 
is centrality and penetration, strong un- 
derstanding, and the higher gifts, the in- 
sight of the real, or from the real, and the 
moral rectitude which belongs to it : but 
all this and all his resources of wit and 
invention are lost to me in every experi- 
ment that I make to hold intercourse with 
his mind ; always some weary, captious 
paradox to fight you with» and the time 
and temper wasted. And beware of jokes ; 
too much temperance cannot be used : in- 
estimable for sauce, but corrupting for 
food : we go away hollow and ashamed. 
As soon as the company give in to this en- 
joyment, we shall have no Olympus, True 
wit never made us laugh. Mahomet 
seems to have borrowed by anticipatioo of 



SOCIAL AIMS. 


597 


sereral centuries a leaf from the mind of 
Swedenborg, when ho •wrote in the 
Koran 

** On the day of resurrection, those who have 
Indulged in ridicule will be called to the door 
of Paradise, and have it shut in their faces 
when they reach it. Again, on their turning 
back, they will be called to another door, and 
again, on reaching it, will see it closed against 
them ; and so on, ad infinitum^ without end.” 

Shun the negative side. Never worry 
people with your contritions, nor with dis- 
mal views of politics or society. Never 
name sickness; even if you could trust 
yourself on that perilous topic, beware of 
unmuzzling a valetudinarian, who will 
soon give you your fill of it. 

The law of the table is Beauty — a re- 
spect to the common soul of all the guests. 
Everything is unseasonable which is 
private to two or three or any portion of 
the company. Tact never violates for a 
moment this law ; never intrudes the orders 
of the house, the vices of the absent, or a 
tariff of expenses, or professional priva- 
cies ; as we say, we never “talk shop" 
before company. Lovers abstain from 
caresses, and haters from insults, whilst 
they sit in one parlour with common 
friends. 

Stay at home in your mind. Don’t 
recite other people’s opinions. See how 
it lies there in you ; and if there is no 
counsel offer none. What we want is, not 
your activity or interference with your 
mind, but your content to be a vehicle of 
the simple truth. The way to have large 
occasional views, as in a political or social 
crisis, is to have large habitual views. 
When men consult you, it is not that they 
wish you to stand tiptoe, and pump your 
brains, but to apply your habitual view, 
your wisdom, to the present question, for- 
bearing all pedantries, and the very name 
of argument: for in good conversation 
parties don’t speak to the words, but to 
the meanings of each other. 

Manners first, then conversation. Later, 
we see that, as life was not in manners, 
so it is not in talk. Manners are external; 
talk is occasional : these require certain 
material conditions, human labour for 
food, clothes, house, tools, and, in short, 
plenty and ease — since only so can certain 
finer and finest powers appear and expand. 
In a whole nation of Hottentots there shall 
not be one valuable man — valuable out of 
his tribe. In every million of Europeans 
or of Americans there shall be thousands 
who would be valuable on any spol oo the 
irlobo. 


The consideration the rich possess In all 
societies is not without meaning or right. 
It is the approval given by the human un- 
derstanding to the act of creating value by 
knowledge and labour. It is the sense of 
every human being, that man should have 
this dominion of nature, should arm him- 
self with tools, and force the elements to 
drudge for him and give him power. 
Every one must seek to secure his inde- 
pendence ; but he need not be rich. The 
old Confucius in China admitted the bene- 
fit, but stated the limitation: "If the 
search for riches were sure to be success- 
ful, though I should become a groom with 
whip in hand to get them, I will do so. As 
the search may not be successful, I will 
follow after that which I love." There is 
in America a general conviction in the 
minds of all mature men, that every young 
man of good faculty and good habits can 
by perseverance attain to an adequate 
estate ; if he have a turn for business, and 
a quick eye for the opportunities which 
are always offering for investment, he can 
come to wealth, and in such good season 
as to enjoy as well as transmit it. 

Every human society wants to be officered 
by tlie best class, who shall be masters in- 
structed in all the great arts of life ; shall 
be wise, temperate, brave, public men, 
adorned with dignity and accomplish- 
ments. Every country wishes this, and 
each has taken its own method to secure 
such service to the State. In Europe, 
ancient and modern, it has been attempted 
to secure the existence of a superior class 
by hereditary nobility, with estates trans- 
mitted by primogeniture and entail. But 
in the last age, this system has been on 
its trial and the verdict of mankind is 
pretty nearly pronounced. That method 
secured permanence of families, firmness 
of customs, a certain externad culture and 
good taste ; gratified the ear with preserv- 
ing historic names : but the heroic father 
did not surely have heroic sons, and still 
less surely heroic grandsons ; wealth and 
ease corrupted the race. 

In America, the necessity of clearing the 
forest, laying out town and street, and 
building every house and barn and fence, 
then church and town house, exhausted 
such means as the Pilgrims brought, and 
made the whole population poor ; and the 
like necessity is still found in each new 
settlement in the Territories. These needs 
gave their character to the public debates 
in every village and State. I have been 
often impressed at our country town* 
meetings with the accumulated virility, in 



‘>98 SOCIAL AIMS. 


each village, of five or six or eight or ten 
men, who speak so well, and so easily 
handle the affairs of the town. I often 
hear the business of a little town (with 
which I am most familiar) discussed with 
a clearness and thoroiighness, and with a 
generosity, too, that would have satisfied 
me had it been in one of the larger capitals. 
I am sure each one of my readers has a 
parallel experience. And every one knows 
that in every town or city is always to be 
found a certain number of public-spirited 
men, who'perform, unpaid, a great amount 
of hard work in the interest of the 
churches, of schools, of public grounds, 
\yorks of taste and refinement. And as in 
civil duties, so in social power and duties. 
Our gentlemen of the old school, that is, 
of the school of Washington, Adams, and 
Hamilton, were bred after English types, 
and that style of breeding furnished fine 
examples in the last generation ; but, 
though some of us have seen such, I 
doubt they are all gone. But nature is 
not poorer to-day. With all our haste, 
and slip-shod ways, and flippant self- 
assertion, I hav^ seen examples of new 
grace and power in address that honour 
the country. It was my fortune not long 
ago, with my eyes directed on this subject, 
to fall in w'ith an American to be proud of. 
I said never was such force, good mean- 
ing, good sense, good action, combined 
with such domestic lovely behaviour, such 
modesty and persistent preference for 
others. Wherever he moved he was the 
benefactor. It is of course that he should 
ride well, shoot well, sail well, keep house 
well, administer affairs well, but he was 
the best talker, also, in the company ; 
what with a perpetual practical wisdom, 
with an e5^e always to the working of the 
thing, what with the multitude and distinc- 
tion of his facts (and one detected con- 
tinually that he had a hand in everything 
that has been done), and in the temperance 
with which he parried ail offence, and 
opened the eyes of the person he talked 
with without contradicting him. Yet I 
said to myself, How little this man sus- 
pects, with his sympathy for men and his 
respect for lettered and scientific people, 
that he is not likely in any company to 
meet a man superior to himself. And I 
think this is a good country, that can bear 
such a creature as he is. 

The young men in America at this mo- 
ment take little thought of what men in 
England are thinking or doing. That is 
the point which decides the welfare of a 
doesifloQhl Utoan^ 


other people, it is not well with them. II 
occupied in it%owii affairs and thoughts 
and men, with a heat which excludes al- 
most the notice of any other people — as 
the Jews, the Greeks, the Persians, the 
Romans, the Arabians, the French, the 
English, at their best times have done — 
they are sublime ; and we know that in 
this abstraction they are executing excel- 
lent work. Amidst the calamities which 
war has brought on our country this ono 
benefit has accrued — that our eyes are 
withdrawn from England, withdrawn from 
France, and look homeward. We have 
come to feel that “ by ourselves our safety 
must be bought ; ” to know the vast re- 
sources of the Continent, the good-will 
that is in the people, their conviction of 
the great moral advantages of freedom, 
social equality, education, and religious 
culture, and their determination to hold 
these fast, and, by them, to hold fast the 
country and penetrate every square mile 
of it with this American civilization. 

The consolation and happy moment of 
life, atoning for all shortcomings, is sen- 
timent ; a flame of affection or delight in 
the heart, burning up suddenly for its 
object— as the love of the mother for her 
child ; of the child for its mate ; of tho 
youth for his friend ; of the scholar for his 
pursuit; of the boy for sea-life, or for 
painting, or in the passion for his country ; 
or in the tender-hearted philanthropist to 
spend and be spent for some romantic 
charity, as Howard for the prisoner, or 
John Brown for tho slave. No matter 
what the object is. so it be good, this llama 
of desire makes life sweet and tolerable. 
It reinforces the heart that feels it, makes 
all its acts and words gracious and inter- 
esting. Now society in towns is infested 
by persons who, seeing that the sentiments 
please, counterfeit the expression of them. 
These we call sentimentalists — talkers who 
mistake the description for the thing, say- 
ing for having. They have, they tell you, 
an intense love of nature ; poetry — O, 
they adore poetry, and roses, and the 
moon, and the cavalry regiment, and the 
governor; they love liberty, “dear li- 
berty 1“ they worship virtue, “dear vir- 
tuol" Yes, they adopt whatever merit 
is in good repute, and almost make it 
hateful with their praise. The warmer 
their expressions, the colder we feel ; we 
shiver witli cold. A little experience ac- 
quaints us with the unconvertibility of the 
sentimentalist, the soul that is lost by 
mimicking soul. Cure the drunkard, head 
the insane, mollify the homicide, ciYilise 



ELOQUENCE. 


the Pawnee, but what lessons can be de- 
vised for the debaucheJto of sentiment? 
Was ever one converted ? The innocence 
and ignorance of the patient is the first 
difficulty : he believes his disease is 
blooming health. A rough realist, or a 
halanx of realists, would be prescribed ; 
ut that is like proposing to mend your 
bad road with diamonds. Then poverty, 
famine, war, imprisonment, might be tried. 
Another cure would be to fight fire with 
fire, to match a sentimentalist with a sen- 
timentalist. I think each might begin to 
suspect something was wrong. 

Would we codify the laws that should 
reign in households, and whoso daily 
transgression annoys and mortifies us, 
and degrades our household life — we 
must learn to adorn every day with sacri- 
fices. Good manners are made up of petty 
sacrifices. Temperance, courage, love, are 
made up of the same jewels. Listen to 
every prompting of honour. “ As soon 
as sacrifice becomes a duty and necessity 
to the man, I see no limit to the horizon 
which opens before him.”* 

♦ Ernest Renan, 


599 

Of course those people, and no otherSj 
interest us who believe in their thought, 
who are absorbed, if you please to say so, 
in their own dream. They only can give 
the key and le§.ding to better society; 
those who delight in each other only be- 
cause both delight in the eternal laws; 
who forgive nothing to each other ; who, 
by their joy and homage to these, are 
made incapable of conceit, which destroys 
almost all the fine wits. Any other affec- 
tion between men than this geometric one 
of relation to the same thing, is a mere 
mush of materialism. 

These are the bases of civiJ and polite 
society; namely, manners, conversation, 
lucrative labour, and public action, whe- 
ther political, or in the leading of social 
institutions. We have much to regret, 
much to mend, in our society; but I 
believe that with all liberal and hopeful 
men there is a firm faith in the beneficent 
results which we really enjoy ; that intel- 
ligence, manly enterprise, good education, 
virtuous life, and elegant manners have 
been and are found here, and, we hope, in 
the next generation will still more abound, 


ELOQUENCE. 


I DO not know any kind of history, except 
the event of a battle, to which people 
listen w'ith more interest than to any anec- 
dote of eloquence ; and the wise think it 
better than a battle. It is a triumph of 
pure power, and it has a beautiful and 
prodigious surprise injit. For all can see 
and understand the means by which a 
battle is gained : they count the armies, 
they see the cannon, the musketry, the 
cavalry, and the character and advantages 
of the ground, so that the result is often 
predicted by the observer with great cer- 
tainty before iho charge is sounded. Not 
so in a court of law, or in a legislature. 
Who knows before the debate begins 
what the preparation, or what the means 
are of the combatants ? The facts, the 
reasons, the logic— above all, the flame of 
passion and the continuous energy of will 
which is presently to be let loose on this 
bench of judges, or on this miscellaneous 
assembly gathered from the streets — are 
all invisible and unknown. Indeed, ranch 
power is to be exhibited which is not yet 
called into existence, but is to be sug- 
gested on the spot by the unexpected turn 
things may take— at the appearance of 


new evidence, or by the exhibition of an 
unlooked-for bias in the judges, or in the 
audience. It is eminently the art which 
only flourishes in free countries. It is an 
old proverb, that “ Every people has 
its prophet ; ” and every class of the 
people has. Our community runs through 
a long scale of mental power, from the 
highest refinement to the borders of 
savage ignorance and rudeness. There 
are not only the wants of the intellectual 
and learned and poetic men and women 
to be met, but also the vast interests of 
property, public and private, of mining, of 
manufactures, of trade, of railroads, etc. 
These 'uust have their advocates of each 
improvement and each interest. Then th« 
political questions, which agitate millions, 
find or form a class of men liy nature and 
habit fit to discuss and deal with these 
measures, and make them intelligible and 
acceptable to the electors. So of educa- 
tion, of art, of philanthropy. 

Eloquence shows the power and possi- 
bility of man. There is one of whom we 
took no note, but on a certain occasion it 
appears that he has a secret virtue never 
suspected— that be can paint what bai 



6oo ELOQUENCE. 


occurred, and what must occur, with such 
clearness to a company, as if they saw it 
done before their eyes. By leading their 
thought he leads their will, and can make 
them do gladly what an hour ago they 
would not believe that they could be led 
to do at all : he makes them glad or 
angry or penitent at his pleasure : of ene- 
mies makes friends, and fills desponding 
men with hope and joy. After Sheridan’s 
speech in the trial of Warren Hastings, 
Mr. Pitt moved an adjournment, that the 
Hoflse might recover from the overpower- 
ing effect of Sheridan’s oratory. Then 
recall the delight that sudden eloquence 
.gives — the surprise that the moment is so 
rich. The orator is the physician. 
Whether he speaks in the Capitol or on 
the cart, he is the benefactor that lifts 
men above themselves, and creates a 
higher appetite than he satisfies. Tire 
orator is he whom every man is seeking 
when he goes into the courts, into the 
conventions, into any popular assembly — 
though often disappointed, yet never giving 
over the hope. He finds himself perhaps 
in the Senate, when the forest has cast 
out some wild, black-browed bantling to 
show the same energy in the crowd of 
officials which he had learned in driving 
cattle to the hills, or in scrambling 
through thickets in a winter forest, or 
through the swamp and river for his game. 
In the folds of his brow, in the majesty of 
his mien, Nature has marked her son ; 
and in that artificial and perhaps un- 
worthy place and company shall remind 
you of the lessons taught him in earlier 
days by the torrent in the gloom of the 
pine-woods, when he was the companion 
of the mountain cattle, of jays and foxes, 
and a hunter of the bear. Or you may 
find him in some lonely Bethel, by the 
r-.easide, where a hard-featured, scarred, 
and wrinkled Methodist becomes the poet 
of the sailor and the fisherman, whilst he 
pours out the abundant streams of his 
thought through a language all glittering 
and fiery witla imagination — a man who 
never knew the looking-glass or tlie critic, 
a man whom college drill or patronage 
never made, and whom praise cannot spoil 
—a man who conquers his audience 
by infusing his soul into them, and 
•peaks by the right of being the person in 
the assembly who has the most to say, 
and so makes all other speakers appear 
little and cowardly before his face. For 
the time, his exceeding life throws all 
other gifts into shade — philosophy specu- 
lating on its own breath, taste, leaining, 


and all— and yet how every listener gladly 
consents to be nothing in his presence, and 
to share this surprising emanation, and 
be steeped and ennobled in the new wine 
of this eloquence ! It instructs in the 
power of man over men ; that a man is a 
mover; to the extent of his being, a 
power ; and, in contrast with the efficiency 
he suggests, our actual life and society 
appears a dormitory. Who can wonder 
at its influence on young and ardent 
minds ? Uncommon boys follow uncom- 
mon men ; and I think every one of us 
can remember when our first experiences 
made us for a time the victim and wor- 
shipper of the first master of thi^ art 
whom we happened to hear in the ccurt- 
houso or in the caucus. We reckon the 
bar, the senate, journalism, and the pulpit 
peaceful professions ; but you cannot 
escape the demand for courage in these, 
and certainly there is no true orator who 
is not a hero. His attitude in the rostrum, 
on the platform, requires that he counter, 
balance his auditory. He is a challenger 
and must answer all comers. The orator 
must ever stand with forward foot, in the 
attitude of advancing. His speech must 
be just ahead of the assembly— ahead of 
the whole human race— or it is superfluous. 
His speech is not to be distinguished from 
action. It is the electricity of action. It 
is action, as the general’s word of com- 
mand, or chart of battle, is action. I must 
feel that the speaker compromises him- 
self to his auditory, comes for something — 
it is a cry on the perilous edge of the 
fight— or let him bo silent. You go to a 
town-meeting where the people are called 
to some disagreeable duty, such as, for 
example, often occurred during the war, 
at the occasion of a new draft. They 
come unwillingly : they have spent their 
money once or twice very freely. They 
have sent their best men : the young and 
ardent, those of a martial temper, went at 
the first draft, or the second, and it is not 
easy to see who else can be spared, or can 
be induced to go. The silence and cold- 
ness after the meeting is opened, and the 
purpose of it stated, are not encourag- 
ing. When a good man rises in the cold 
and malicious assembly, you think, Well, 
sir, it would be more prudent to be silent ; 
why not rest, sir, on your good record ? 
Nobody doubts your talent and power ; 
but for the present business, we know all 
about it, and are tired of being pushed 
Into patriotism by people who stay at 
home. But he, taking no counsel of past 
things, but only of the inspiration of l)if 



BLOQUBNCE. 


t^day’g feeling, surprises them with his 
tidings, with his bett^ knowledge, his 
larger view, his steady gaze at the new 
and future event, whereof they had not 
thought, and they are interested, like so 
many children, and carried off out of all 
recollection of their malignant considera- 
tions, and he gains his victory by pro- 
phecy, where they expected repetition. 
He knew very well beforehand that they 
were looking behind and that he was 
looking ahead, and therefore it was wise 
to speak. Then the observer says, What 
a gfodsend is this manner of man to a 
town! and he, what a faculty I He is 
put together like a Waltham watch, or like 
a locomotive just finished at the Tredegar 
works. 

No act indicates more universal health 
than eloquence. The special ingredients 
of this force are : clear perceptions ; 
memory ; power of statement ; logic ; 
imagination, or the skill to clothe your 
thought in natural images ; passion, which 
is the heat ; and then a grand will, which, 
when legitimate and abiding, we call cha- 
racter, the height of manhood. As soon 
as a man shows rare power of expression, I 
like Chatham, Erskine, Patrick Henry, 
Webster, or Phillips, all the great in- 
terests, whether of State or of property, 
crowd to him to be their spokesman, so 
that he is at once a potentate, a ruler of 
men. A worthy gentleman, Mr. Alexander, 
listening to the debates of the General 
Assembly of the Scottish Kirk, in Edin- 
burgh, and eager to speak to the ques- 
tions, but utterly failing in his endeavours 
— delighted with the talent shown by Dr. 
Hugh Blair, went to him, and offered him 
one thousand pounds sterling if he would 
teach him to speak with propriety in pub- 
lic, If the performance of the advocate 
reaches any high success, it is paid in 
England with dignities in the professions, 
and in the State with seats in the Cabinet, 
earldoms, and woolsacks. And it is easy 
to see that the great and daily growing 
interests at stake in this country must 
pay proportional prices to their spokes- 
men and defenders. It does not surprise 
us, then, to learn from Plutarch what 
great sums were paid at Athens to the 
teachers of rhetoric ; and if the pupils got 
what they paid for, the lessons were 
cheap. 

But this power which so fascinates and 
astonishes and commands is only the 
exaggeration of a talent which is univer- 
sal. All men are competitors in this art. 
Wo have all attended meetings called 


6oi 

for some object in which no one had 
beforehand any warm interest. Every 
speaker rose unwillingly, and even his 
speech was a bad excuse ; but it is only 
the first plunge ^which is formidable, and 
deep interest or sympathy thaws the ice, 
loosens the tongue, and will carry the 
cold and fearful presently into self-posses- 
sion, and possession of the audience. Go 
into an assembly well excited, some angry 
political meeting on the eve of a crisis. 
Then it appears that eloquence is as 
natural as swimming — an art which all 
men might learn, though so few do. It 
only needs that they should be once well 
pushed off into the water, overhead, 
without corks, and, after a mad struggle 
or two, they find their poise and the use 
of their arms, and henceforward they pos- 
sess this new and wonderful element. 

The most hard-fisted, disagreeably rest- 
less, thought-paralyzing companion some- 
times turns out in a public assembly to 
be a fluent, various, and effective orator. 
Now you find what all that excess of 
power which so chafed and fretted you in 
a tete-a-tete with hin¥ w'as for. What is 
I peculiar in it Is a certain creative heat, 
which a man attains to perhaps only once 
in his life. Those whom we admire~the 
great orators— have some habit of heat, 
and, moreover, a certain control of it, an 
art of husbanding it, as if their hand was 
on the organ-stop, and could now use it 
temperately, and now let out all the lengtb 
and breadth of the power. I remember 
that Jenny Lind, when in this country, 
complained of concert-rooms and town- 
halls, that they did not give her room 
enough to unroll her voice, and exulted in 
the opportunity given her in the great 
halls she found sometimes built over a 
railroad depot. And this is quite as true 
of the action of the mind itself, that a 
man of this talent sometimes finds him- 
self cold and slow in private company, 
and perhaps a heavy companion ; but give 
him a commanding occasion, and the in- 
spiration of a great multitude, and ha 
surprises by new and unlooked-for powers. 
Before, he was out of place, and unfitted 
as a cannon in a parlour. To be sure 
there are physical advantages, some enii 
iiently leading to this art. I mentioned 
Jenny Lind’s voice. A good voice has a 
charm in speech as in song ; sometimes 
of itself enchains attention, and indicates 
a rare sensibility, especially when trained 
to wield all its powers. The voice, like 
the face, betrays the nature and disposi- 
tion, and soon indicates what is the raogs 



602 ELOQUENCE. 


of the speaker’s mind. Many people 
have no ear for music, but every one has 
an ear for skilful reading. Every one of 
ns has at some time been the victim of a 
well-toned and cunning voice, and perhaps 
been repelled once for •‘all by a harsh, 
mechanical speaker. The voice, indeed, 
is a delicate index of the state of mind. 
I have heard an eminent preacher say, 
that he learns from the first tones of his 
voice on a Sunday morning whether he is 
to have a successful day. A singer cares 
little for the words of the song ; he will 
make any words glorious. I think the 
like rule holds of the good reader. In 
the church I call him only a good reader 
who can read sense and poetry into any 
hymn in the hymn-book. Plutarch, in his 
enumeration of the ten Greek orators, is 
careful to mention their excellent voices, 
and the pains bestowed by some of them 
in training these. What character, what 
infinite variety, belong to the voice ! 
sometimes it is a flute, sometimes a trip- 
hammer; what range of force! In mo- 
ments of clearer thought or deeper sym- 
pathy, the voice will attain a music and 
penetriition which surprises the speaker 
as much as the auditor: he also is a 
sharer of the higher wind that blows over 
his strings. I believe that some orators 
go to the assembly as to a closet where 
to find their best thoughts. The Persian 
poet Saadi tells us that a person with a 
disagreeable voice was reading the Koran 
aloud, when a holy man, passing by, asked 
what was his monthly stipend. lie an- 
swered, “ Nothing at all.” ” But why then 
do you take so much trouble?” He 
replied, ” I read for the sake of God.” 
The other rejoined, ” For God's sake, do 
not read ; for if you read the Koran in 
this manner you will destroy the splendour 
of Islamism.” Then there are persons 
of natural fascination, with certain frank- 
ness, winning manners, almost endear- 
ments in their style ; like Bouillon, who 
could almost persuade you that a quartan 
ague was wholesome; like Louis XI. of 
P'rance, whom Commines praises for “the 
gift of managing all minds by his acct-nt ; 
and the caresses of his speech;” luce’ 
Galiani, Voltaire, Robert Burns, Barclay, 
Fox, and Henry Clay. What must have 
been the discourse of St, Bernard, when 
mothers hid their s(;ns, wives their hus- 
bands, companions their friends, lest they 
•hould be led fcy his eloquence to join the 
monastery. 

It is said that one of the best readers 
ipbif tim^ was the late President John 


Quincy Adams. I have heard that no man 
could read the Pvble with such powerful 
effect. I can easily believe it, though I 
never heard him speak in public until his 
fine voice was much broken by ago But 
the wonders he could achieve w’ith that 
cracked and disobedient organ showed 
what power might have belonged to it in 
early manhood. If “ indignation makes 
good verses,” as Horace says, it is not 
less true that a good indignation makes an 
excellent spcecli. In the early years of 
this century, Mr. Adams, at that time a 
member of the United States Senate at 
Washington, was elected professor of 
Rhetoric and Oratory in Havard College. 

[ When he read his first lectures in 1806, 

I not only the students heard him with de- 
light, but the hall was crowded by the 
Professors and by unusual visitors. I 
remember when, long after, I entered col- 
lege, hearing the story of the numbers of 
coaches in wliich his friends came from 
Boston to hear him. On his return ’n 
the winter to the Senate at VV^ashington, 
he took such ground in the debates of the 
following session as to lose the sympathy 
of many of his constituents in Boston. 
When, on his return from Washington, ho 
resumed his lectures in Cambridge, his 
class attended, but the coaches from Bos- 
ton did not come, and, indeed, many of 
his political friends deserted him. In 
1809 ho was appointed Minister to Russia, 
and resigned his chair in the University. 
His last lecture, in taking leave of his 
class, contained some nervous allusions 
to the treatment he had received from liis 
old friends, which showed how much it had 
stung him, and which mafle a profound 
impression on the class. Here is the con- 
cluding paragraph, which long resounded 
in Cambridge : 

“At no Iionr ot your life will the love ol 
letters ever oppress you as a huiflcn, or fail 
you as a r‘source. In llie vain and foolish 
exultation of tlie heart, which the brighter 
prospects ot lile will soiiu.tjjues excite*, tiio 
ptaibive {>01 tress of Science sliall call you to 
the sober pleasures of her holy cell. In the 
UKirtifications of disapijoiiuinent, her soothing 
voice siiall whispt.r serenity and peace. In 
social converse with the ini(;hty (h ad of anrieu 
da>s, you will never srn.ut uinlcr the gallina 
sense of dependence ujron the nii;.'hty living ol 
the present age. And in your sti uggles w’ith 
the world, should a crisis ever occur, when 
even friendsiiip may deem it prudent to desert 
you, when even your country may seem ready 
to abandon herself and yon, when priest anl 
Levite shall come and kjck on you and pass 
by on the other side, seek refuge, rny ««lailinif 
friends, and be assured you shall find it, in the 



ELOQUENCE. (Hoi 


friendship of Laelius and Scipio,!n the patriot- 
ism of Cicero, Deiixjsiherifes, and Burke, as 
well as in the precepts and example of Him 
whose law is love, and who taught us to re- 
member injuries only to forgive them.’* 

The orator must command the whole 
scale of the language, from the most 
elegant to the most low and vile. Every 
one has felt how superior in force is the 
language of the street to that of the aca- 
demy. The street must be one of his 
schools. Ought not the scholar to be able 
to convey his meaning in terms as short 
and strong as the porter or truckman uses 
to convey his ? And Lord Chesterfield 
thought “ that without being instructed in 
the dialect of the Halles no man could be a 
complete master of French.” The speech 
of the man in the street is invariably 
strong, nor can you mend it by making it 
what you call parliamentary. You say, 
“ if he could only express himself” ; but 
he does already better than any one can 
for him — can always get the car of an 
audience to the exclusion of everybody 
else. Well, this is an example in point. 
That something which each man was 
created to say and do, he only or he best 
can tell you, and has a right to supreme 
attention so far. The power of their 
speech is, that it is perfectly understood 
by all ; and I believe it to be true, that 
when any orator at the bar or in the Sen- 
ate rises in his thought, he descends in 
his language — that is, when he rises to 
any height of thought or of passion he 
comes down to a language level with the 
ear of all his audience. It is the merit of 
John Brown and of Abraham Lincoln — 
one at Charlestown, one at Gettysburg — 
in the two best specimens of eloquence we 
have had in this country. And observe 
that all poetry is written in the oldest and 
simplest English words. Dr. Johnson 
said, "There is in every nation a style 
wdiich never becomes obsolete, a certain ' 
mode of phraseology so consonant to the 
analogy and principles of its respective 
language as to remain settled and unal- 
tered. This style is to be sought in the 
common intercourse of life among those 
who speak only to be understood, without 
ambition of elegance. The polite are al- 
ways catching modish innovations, and tlie 
learned forsake the vulgar, when the 
vulgar is right ; but there is a conversa- 
tion above grossness and below refine- 
ment, where propriety resides.” 

But all these are the gymnastics, the 
education of eloquence, and not itself. 
They cannot be too much considered and 


practiced as preparation, but the piiwers 
are those I first named, If I should tr aka 
the shortest list of the qualifications of the 
orator, I should begin with manliness: 
and perhaps it ^eans here presence of 
mind. Men differ so much in control of 
their faculties ! You can find in many, 
and indeed in all, a certain fundamental 
equality. Fundamentally all feel alike aad 
think alike, and at a great heat they can all 
express themselves with an almost equal 
force. But it costs a great heat to enable 
a heavy man to come up with those who 
have a quick sensibility. Thus we have 
all of us known men who lose their tal- 
ents, their wit, their fancy, at any sudden 
call. Some men, on such pressure, col- 
lapse, and cannot rally. If they are to 
put a thing in proper shape, fit for the 
occasion and the audience, their mind is 
a blank. Something which any boy would 
tell with colour and vivacity they can only 
stammer out with hard literalness — say it 
in the very words they heard, and no 
other. This fault is very incident to men 
of study— as if the more they had read the 
less they knew. Dv. Charles Chauncy 
was, a hundred years ago, a man of 
marked ability among the clergy of New 
[England. But when once going to preach 
the Thursday lecture in Boston (which in 
those days people walked from Salem to 
hear), on going up the pulpit stairs he was 
informed that a little boy had fallen into 
F'rog Pond on the Common, and was 
drowned, and the doctor was requested to 
improve the sad occasion. The doctor 
was much distressed, and in his prayer ho 
hesitated — he tried to make soft ap- 
proaches — he prayed for Harvard Col- 
lege, he prayed for the schools, he im- 
plored the Divine Being ” to-to-to bless 
to them all the boy that was this morning 
drowned in Frog Pond,” Now this is not 
want of talent or learning, but of manli- 
ness. The doctor, no doubt, shut up in 
his closet and his theology, had lost some 
natural relation to men, and quick appli- 
cation of his thought to the course of 
events, I should add what is told of him 
— that ho so disliked the " sensation ” 
preaching of his time that he had once 
prayed that ” he might never be elo- 
quent; ’’and, it appears, his prayer was 
granted. On the other hand, it would 
be easy to point to many masters whose 
readiness is sure ; as the French say of 
Guizot, that " what Guizot learned thia 
morning he has the air of having known 
from all eternity.” This unmanliness is 
so common a result of our half-edncation 



ELOQUENCE. 


604 

— teaching a srouth Latin and metaphysics 
and history, and ;:'jgtecting to 2;;ve him 
the rough traininjj a bs)y-~allow 5 ng him 
to skulk from the ^litnec of ball and skates 
and coasting down the hills on his sled, 
and whatever else woul6 lead him and 
keep him on even terms with boys, so 
that he can meet them as an equal, and 
lead in his turn— that I wish his guardians 
to consider that they are thus preparing 
him to play a contemptible part when he 
is full-grown. In England they send the 
most delicate and protected child from 
his luxurious home to learn to rough it 
with boys in the public schools. A few 
bruises and scratches will do him no harm 
if he has thereby learned not to be afraid. 
It is this wise mixture of good drill in 
Latin grammar with good drill in cricket, 
boating, and wrestling, that is the boast of 
English education, and of high importance 
to the matter in hand. 

Lord Ashley, in 1606, while the bill for 
regulating trials in cases of high treason 
was pending, attempting to utter a pre- 
meditated speech in Parliament in favour 
^f that clause of the bill which allowed 
the prisoner the benefit of counsel, fell 
into such a disorder that he was not able 
to proceed; but having recovered his 
spirits and the command of his faculties, 
he drew such an argument from his own 
confusion as more advantaged his cause 
than all the powers of eloquence could 
have done. “For,” said he, “If I, who 
had no personal concern in the question, 
was so overpowered with my own appre- 
hensions that I could not find words to 
express myself, what must be the case of 
one whose life depended on his own abili- 
ties to defend it?” This happy turn did 

f reat service in promoting that excellent 
ill. 

These are ascending stairs— a good 
voice, winning mariners, plain speech, 
chastened, however, by the schools into 
correctness ; but we must come to the 
main matter, of power of statement — 
know your fact ; hug your fact. For the 
essential thing is heat, and heat comes of 
sincerity. Speak what you do know and 
believe, and ;are personally in it, and are 
!inswerable for every word. Eloquence is 
ihe por^sr to translate a truth into Ian- 
gtiage perfectly intelligible to the person to 
whom you speak. He who would convince 
the worthy Mr. Dunderhead of any truth 
which Dunderhead does not see, must be 
a master of his art. Declamation is com- 
mon ; but such possession of thought as 
It here required, such practical chemistry 


as the conversion of a truth written in 
God’s language into a truth in Dundtr- 
head’s language, is one of the most beau- 
tiful and cogent weapons that is forged in 
the shop of the Divine Artificer. 

It was said of Robespierre’s audience, 
that though they understood not the word?, 
they understood a fury in the words, and 
caught the contagion. 

I This leads us to the high class, the men 
of character who bring an overpowering 
personality into court, and the cause they 
maintain borrows importance from an 
illustrious advocate. Absoluteness is re- 
quired, and he must have it or sira/jlata 
it. If the cause be unfashionable, he will 
make it fashionable. ’Tis the best man in 
the best training. If he does not know 
your fact, he will show that it is not worth 
the knowing. Indeed, as great generals 
do not fight many battles, but conquer l.'y 
tactics, so all eloquence is a war of posts. 
What is said is the least part of the 
oration. It is the attitude taken, the 
unmistakable sign, never so casually 
given, in tone of voice, or manner, or 
word, that a greater spirit speaks from 
you than is spoken to in him. 

But I say, provided your cause is really 
honest. There is always the previous 
ouestica ; How came you on that side ? 
Your argument is ingenious, your language 
copious, your illustrations brilliant, but 
your major proposition palpably absurd. 
Will you establish a lie ? You are a very 
elegant w'riter, but you can’t write up 
what gravitates down. 

An ingenious metaphysical writer, Dr. 
Stirling of Edinburgh, has noted that intd- 
lectual works in any department breed each 
other by what he calls zymosis, i.e. fermen- 
tation; thus in the Elizabethan Age therr» 
was a dramatic zymosis, v/hen all the ge- 
niusran in that direction, until it culminated 
in Shakspeare ; so in Germany we have 
seen a metaphysical zymosis culminating 
in Kant, Schelling, Schleiermachcr, Scho- 
penhauer Hegel, and so ending. To this 
we might add the great eras not only in 
painters but of orators. The historian 
Paterculus says of Cicero, that only in 
Cicero’s lifetime was any great eloquence 
in Rome ; so it was said that no member 
of either house of the British Parliament 
will he ranked among the orators whom 
Lord North did not see, or who did not 
see Lord North. But I should rather say 
that when a great sentiment, as religion 
or liberty, makes itself deeply felt in at, 
age or country, then great orators appeal 
As the Andes and AUeghanies indicaU t V* 



RESOURCES. 605 

line of the fissufe in the crust of the earth ing, as all good men trust, into a vast 
along which tiicy were lifted, so the great future, and so compelling the best thought 
ideas that suddeniy expand at some mo- and noblest administrative ability that the 
ment the mind of mankind indicate them- citizen can offer. And here are the service 
selves by orators. of science, the demands of art, and the 

If there ever was a country where elo- lessons of religion to be brought home 
quence was a power, it is in the United to the instant practice of thirty millions of 
States. Here is room for every degree of people. Is it not worth the ambition of 
it, on every one of its ascending stages — every generous youth to train and arm 
that of useful speech, in our commercial, his mind with all the resources of , .know- 
manufacturing, railroad, and educational ledge, of method, of grace, and of charac- 
conventions; that of political advice and ter, to serve such a constituency? 
persuasion on the grandest theatre, reach- 


RESOURCES. 

Men are made up of potences. We are give me affirmatives — if you tell me that 
magnates in an iron globe. We have keys there is always life for the living; that 
to all doors. We are all inventors, each what man has done man can do ; that this 
Bailing out on a voyage of discovery, world belongs to the energetic ; that thero 
guided each by a private chart, of which is always a way to everything desirable 
there is no duplicate. The world is all that every man is provided, in the new 
gates, all opportunities, strings of tension bias of his faculty, with a key to Nature, 
waiting to be struck ; the earth sensitive and that man only rightly knows himself 
as iodine to light; the most plastic and as far as he has experimented on things— 
impressionable medium, alive to every I am invigorated, put into genial and 
touch, and, whether searched by the working temper; the horizon opens, and 
plough of Adam, the sword of Cmsar, the we are full of good-will and gratitude to 
toat of Columbus, the telescope of Gali- the Cause of Causes. I like the senti- 
leo, or the surveyor’s chain of Picard, or ment of the poor woman who, coming 
the submarine telegraph, to every one of from a wretched garret in an inland manu- 
these experiments it makes a gracious re- facturing town for the first time to the sea- 
Bponse. I am benefited by every observa- shore, gazing at the ocean, said “ she was 
tion of a victory of man over nature — by glad for once in her life to sea something 
seeing that wisdom is better than strength ; which there was enough of.’’ 
by seeing that every healthy and resolute Our Copernican globe is a great factory 
man is an organizer, a method coming in- or shop of power, with its rotating constel- 
to a confusion and drawing order out it. lations, times, and tides. The machine is 
We are touched and cheered by every such of colossal size ; the diameter of the water- 
example. We like to see the inexhaust- wheel, the arms of the levers, and the 
ible riches of Nature, and the access of volley of the battery, out of all mechanic 
every soul to her magazines. These ex- measure; and it takes long to understand 
amples wake an infinite hope, and call its parts and its workings. This pump 
every man to emulation. A low, hopeless never sucks ; these screws are never 
spirit puts out the eyes ; scepticism is slow loose ; this machine is never out of gear. 
Buicido. A philosophy which sees only The vat, the piston, the wheels and tires, 
the worst ; believes neither in virtue nor never wear out, but are self-repair- 
In genius ; which says 'tis all of no use, ing. Is there any load which water can- 
life is eating us up, ’tis only question who not lift ? If there be, try steam ; or if not 
ehall be last devoured—dispirits us; the that, try electricity. Is there any exhaust- 
Bky shuts down before us. A Schopen- ing of these means ? Measure by barrels 
hauer, with logic and learning and wit, the spending of tlie brook that rum 
teaching pessimism-teaching that this is through your field. Nothing is great but 
the worst of all possible worlds, and infer- the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She 
ring that sleep is better than waking, and shows us only surfaces, but she is millioa 
death than sleep— all the talent in the fathoms deep. What spaces I what dura- 
world cannot save him from being odious, tionsi dealing with races as merely pre- 
But if, instead of these negatives, you parations of somewhat to follow; or in 



6o6 RSSOUkCBS. 


humanity, millions of lives of men to col- 
lect the first observations on which our 
astronomy is built ; millions of lives to add 
only sentiments and guesses, which at 
at last, gathered in by an ear of sensibility, 
make the furniture of thA poet. See how 
children built up a language ; how every 
traveller, every labourer, every impatient 
boss, who sharply shortens the phrase or 
the word to give his order quicker, reduc- 
ing it to the lowest possible terms — and 
there it must stay— improves the national 
tongue. What power does Nature not 
owe to her duration of amassing infin- 
itesimals into cosmical forces ! 

The marked events in history, as the 
emigration of a colony to a new and more 
delightful coast ; the building of a large 
ship ; the discovery of the mariner’s com- 
pass, which perhaps the Phoenicians 
made ; the arrival among an old stationary 
nation of a more instructed race, with new 
arts: each of these events electrifies the 
tribe to which it befalls ; supples the 
tough barbarous sinew, and brings it into 
that state of sensibility which makes the 
transition to civilization possible and sure. 
By his machines man can dive and remain 
under water like a shark ; can liy like a 
hawk in the air; can see atoms like a 
gnat ; can see the system of the universe 
like Uriel, the angel of the sun ; can carry 
whatever loads a ton of coal can lift ; can 
knock down cities with his fist of gun- 
powder; can recover the history of his 
race bj the medals which the deluge, and 
every creature, civil or savage or brute, 
has involuntarily dropped of its existence ; 
and divine the future possibility of the 
planet and its inhabitants by his percep- 
tion of laws of nature. Ah ! what a plastic 
little creature he is! so shifty, so adap- 
tive 1 his body a chest of tools, and he 
making himself comfortable in every cli- 
mate, in every condition. 

Here in America are all the wealth of 
soil, of timber, of mines, and of the sea, 
put into the possession of a people who 
wield all these wonderful machines, have 
the secret of steam, of electricity, and 
have the power and habit of invention in 
their brain. We Americans have got 
suppled into the state of melioration, j 
Life is always rapid here, but what accele- 1 
ration to its pulse in ten years — what in 
the four years of the war I We have seen 
the railroad and telegraph subdue our 
enormous geography ; wo have seen the 
snowy deserts on the northwest, seats of 
Esquimaux, become lands of promise. 
When our population, swarming west, 


had reached the boundary of arable landi 
as if to stimulate* our energy, on the faco 
of the sterile waste beyond, the land was 
suddenly in parts found covered with gold 
and silver, floored with coal. It was 
thought a fable, what Guthrie, a traveller 
in Persia, told us, that “ in Taurida, in 
any piece of ground where springs of 
naphtha (or petroleum) obtain, by merely 
sticking an iron tube izi the earth, and 
applying a light to the upper end, the 
mineral oil will bum till the tube is de- 
composed, or for a vast number of years.’* 
But we have found the Taurida in Penn- 
sylvania and Ohio. If they have not the 
lamp of Aladdin, they have the Aladdin 
oil. Resources of America ! why, one 
thinks of St. Simon’s saying, “ The 
Golden Age is not behind, but before 
you.” Here is a man in the Garden of 
Eden ; here the Genesis and the Exodus. 
We have seen slavery disappear like a 
painted scene in a theatre ; vve have seen 
the most healthful revolution in the politics 
of the nation— the Constitution not only 
amended, but construed in a now spirit 
W'e have seen China opened to European 
and American ambassadors and com- 
merce ; the like in Japan ; our arts and 
productions begin to penetrate both. As 
the walls of a modern house are per- 
forated with water-pipes, sound-pipes, 
gas-pipes, heat-pipes, so geography and 
geology are yielding to man’s con- 
venience, and we begin to perforate 
and mould the old ball, as a car- 
penter does with wood. All is ductile and 
plastic. We are working the new Atlantic 
telegraph. American energy is over- 
riding every venerable maxim of political 
science. America is such a garden of 
plenty, such a magazine of power, that at 
her shores all the common rules of politi- 
cal economy utterly fail. Hero is bread, 
and wealth, and power, and education for 
every man who has the heart to use his 
opportunity. The creation of power had 
never any parallel. It was thought that 
the immense production of gold would 
make gold cheap as pewter. But the 
immense expansion of trade has wanted 
every ounce of gold, and it has not lost its 
valuo. 

See how nations of customers are 
formed. The disgust of California hai 
not been able to drive nor kick the China- 
man back to his home ; and now it turni 
out that he has sent home to China Ameri- 
can food and tools and luxuries, until ha 
has taught his people to use them, and a 
new market has grown up for our com-* 



RESOURCES. 


merce. The emancipation has brought a 
whole nation of negroes jft customers to 
buy all the articles which once their few 
masters bought, and every manufacturer 
and producer in the North has an interest 
in protecting the negro as the consumer 
of his wares. 

The whole history of our civil war is 
rich in a thousand anecdotes attesting the 
fertility of resource, the presence of mind, 
the skilled labour of our people. At 
Annapolis a regiment, hastening to join 
the army, found the locomotives broken, 
the railroad destroyed, and no rails. The 
commander called for men in the ranks 
who could rebuild the road. Many men 
stepped forward, searched in the water, 
found the hidden rails, laid the track, put 
the disabled engine together, and con- 
tinued their journey. The world belongs 
to the energetic man. Ilis will give him 
new eyes. He sees expedients and means 
where we saw none. The invalid sits 
shivering in lamb’s wool and furs ; the 
woodsman knows how to make warm 
garments out of cold and wet themselves. 
The Indian, the sailor, the hunter, only 
these know the power of the hands, feet, 
teeth, eyes, and ears. It is out of the 
obstacles to be encountered that they 
make the means of destroying them. The 
sailor by his boat and sail makes a ford 
out of deepest waters. The hunter, the 
soldier, rolls himself in his blanket, and 
the falling snow, which he did not have to 
bring in his knapsack, is his eider-down, I 
in which he sleeps warm till the morning. 
Nature herself gives the hint and the 
example, if wo have wit to take it. See 
how Nature keeps the lakes warm by 
tucking them up under a blanket of ice, 
and the ground under a cloak of snow. 
The old forester is never far from shelter ; 
no matter how remote from camp or city, 
he carries Bangor with him. A sudden 
shower cannot wet him, if he cares to be 
dry ; he draws his boat ashore, turns it 
over in a twinkling against a clump of 
alders, with cat-briers, wliich keep up the 
lee-sides, crawls under it, witli his com- 
rade, and lies there till the shower is over, 
happy in his stout roof. The boat is full 
of water, and resists all your strength to 
drag it ashore and empty it. The fisher- 
man looks about him, puts a round stick 
of wood underneath, and it rolls as on 
wheels at once. Napoleon says, the Cor- 
sicans at the battle of Golo, not having 
had time to cut down th(3 bridge, which was 
of stone, made use of the bodies of their 
to form an intreachment. Malus, 


6c, 7 

known for his discoveries in the polariza- 
tion of light, was captain of a corps of 
engineers in Bonaparte’s Egyptian cam- 
paign, which was heinously unprovided 
and exposed. “^Wanting a picket to 
which to attach my horse,” he says, “I 
tied him to my leg. I slept, and dreamed 
peaceably of the pleasures of Europe.” 
M. Tissenet had learned among the 
Indians to understand their language, and, 
coming among a wild party of Illinois, 
he overheard them say that they would 
scalp him. He said to them, ‘ Will you 
scalp me ? Here is my scalp,'* and con- 
founded them by lifting a little periwig ha 
wore. He tlien explained to them that he 
was a great medicine-man, and that they 
did great wrong in wishing to harm him, 
who carried them all in his heart. So ha 
opened his shirt a little and showed to 
each of the savages in turn the reflection 
of his own eyeball in a small pocket- 
mirror which he had hung next to his 
skin. He assured them that if they 
should provoke him he would burn up 
their rivers and their forests ; and, taking 
from his portmantea:: ^ small phial of 
white brandy, he poured it into a cup, 
and, lighting a straw at the fire in tho 
wigwam, he kindled the brandy (which 
they believed to be water), and burned it 
up before their eyes. Then taking up a 
chip of dry pine, he drew a burning- 
glass from his pocket and set the chip oa 
fire. 

What a new face courage puts on every- 
thing! A determined man, by his very 
attitude and the tone of his voice, puts a 
slop to defeat, and begins to conquer. 
“ For they can conquer who believe they 
can.” Everyone hears gladly that cheer- 
ful voice. He reveals to us the enormous 
power of one man over masses of men ; 
that oae man whose eye commands the 
end in view, and the means by which it 
can be attained, is not only better than 
ten men or a hundred men, but victor 
I over all mankind who do not see the 
issue and the means. ” When a man is 
I once possessed with fear,” said the old 
j French Marshal Montluc, ” and loses his 
judgment, as all men in a fright do, ho 
knows not what he docs. And it is tho 
principal thing you are to beg at the hands 
of Almighty God, to preserve your 
understanding entire ; for what danger 
soever there may be, there is still ono 
way or other to get off, and perhaps to 
your honour. But when fear has once 
possessed you, God ye good even I You 
think you are flying towards the s>oop 



RESOURCES. 


6e8 

when you are running towards the prow, 
and for one enemy think you have ten 
before your eyes, as drunkards who see a 
thousand candles at once.” 

Against the terrors of the mob, which, 
intoxicated with passioh, and once suffer- 
ed to gain the ascendant, is diabolic and 
chaos come again, good sense has rnany 
arts of prevention and of relief. Disor- 
ganization it confronts with organization, 
with police, with military force. But in 
earlier stages of the disorder it applies 
milder and nobler remedies. The natural 
offset of terror is ridicule. And we have 
noted examples among our orators, who 
have on conspicuous occasions handled 
and controlled, and, best of all, converted 
a malignant mob, by superior manhood, 
and by a wit which disconcerted, and at 
last delighted the ringleaders. What can 
a poor truckman who is hired to groan 
and to hiss do, when the orator shakes 
him into convulsions of laughter so that 
he cannot throw his egg ? If a good story 
will not answer, still milder remedies 
sometimes serve to disperse a mob. Try 
sending round the contribution-box. Mr. 
Marshall, the eminent manufacturer at 
Leeds, was to preside at a Free-Trade 
festival in that city; it was threatened 
that the operatives, who were in bad 
humour, would break up the meeting by a 
mob. Mr. Marshall was a man of peace; 
he had the pipes laid from the water- 
works of his mill, with a stopcock by his 
chair from which he could discharge a 
stream that would knock down an ox, and 
sat down very peacefully to his dinner, 
which was not disturbed. 

See the dexterity of the good aunt in 
keeping the young people all the weary 
holiday busy and diverted without know- 
ing it: the story, the pictures, the ballad, 
the game, the cuckoo-clock, the stereo- 
scope, the rabbits, the mino bird, the pop- 
corn, and Christmas hemlock spurting in 
the fire. The children never suspect how 
much design goes to it, and that this un- 1 
failing fertility has been rehearsed a 
hundred times, when the necessity came 
of finding for the little Asmodeus a rope 
of sand to twist. She relies on the same 
principle that makes the strength of 
Newton — alternation of employment. See 
how he refreshed himself, resting from the 
profound researches of the calculus by 
astronomy : from astronomy by optics ; 
from optics by chronology. ’Tie a law of 
chemistry that every gas is a vacuum to 
every other gas ; and when the mind has 
exhausted its energies for one employ- 


ment, it is still fresh and capable of a 
different task.« We have not a toy or 
trinket for idle amusement, but some- 
where it is the one thing needful for solid 
instruction or to save the ship or army 
In the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky 
the torches which each traveller carries 
I make a dismal funeral procession, and 
serve no purpose but to see the ground. 
When now and then the vaulted roof rises 
high overhead, and hides all its possi- 
bilities in lofty depths, 'tis but gloom on 
gloom. But the guide kindled a Roman 
candle, and held it here and there shoot- 
ing its fireballs successively into each 
crypt of the groined roof, disclosing its 
starry splendour, and showing for the first 
j time what that plaything was good for. 

Whether larger or less, these strokes 
and all exploits rest at last on the won- 
! derful structure of the mind. And wo 
j learn that our doctrine of resources must 
I be carried into higher application, namely, 
j to the intellectual sphere. But every 
power in energy speedily arrives at its 
limits, and requires to be husbanded 
the law of light, which Newton said pro- 
ceeded by ‘‘fits of easy reflection and 
transmission;” the come-and-go of the 
pendulum is the law of mind ; alternation 
of labours is its rest. I should like to 
have the statistics of bold experimenting 
on the husbandry of mental power. 

In England men of letters drink wine ; 
in Scotland, whiskey ; in France, light 
wines ; in Germany, beer. In England 
everybody rides in the saddle ; in France 
the theatre and the ball occupy the night. 
In this country we have not learned how 
to repair the exhaustions of our climate. 
Is not the seaside necessary in summer ? 
Games, fishing, bowling, hunting, gym- 
nastics, dancing — are not these needful to 
you ? The chapter of pastimes is very 
long. There are better games than bil- 
liards and whist. ‘Twas a pleasing trait 
in Goethe’s romance, that Makaria retires 
from society ” to astronomy and her cor- 
respondence.” 

I do not know that the treatise of 
Brillat-Savarin on the Physiology of Taste 
deserves its fame, I know its repute, and 
L have heard it called the France of 
France. But the subject is so large and 
exigent that a few particulars, and those 
the pleasures of epicure, cannot satisfy. 
I know many men of taste whose single 
opinions and practice would interest 
much more. It should be extended to 
gardens and grounds, and mainly one 
thing should be illustrated: that life in 



THE COMIC. 


the countiy wants all things on a low tone 
— wants coarse clothes, old shoes, no fleet 
horse that a man cannot hold, but an old 
horse that will stand tied in a pasture half 
a day without risk, so allowing the picnic- 
party the full freedom of the woods. Nat- 
ural history is, in the country, most 
attractive ; at once elegant, immortal, 
always opening new resorts. The first 
care of a man settling in the country 
should be to open the face of the earth 
to himself, by a little knowledge of nature, 
or a great deal, if he can, of birds, plants, 
rocks, astronomy; in short, the art of 
taking a walk. This will draw the sting 
out of frost, dreariness out of November 
and March, and the drowsiness out of 
August. To know the trees is, as Spenser 
says of the ash, for nothing ill.” Shells, 
too ; how hungry I found myself, the other 
day, at Agassiz's Museum, for their names ! 
But the uses of the woods are many, and 
some of them for the scholar high and 
peremptory. When his task requires the 
wiping out from memory 

” all trivial fond record! 

That youth and observation copied there,” 

he must leave the house, the streets, and 
the club, and go to wooded uplands, to 
the clearing and the brook. Well for him 
if he can say with the old minstrel, ” I 
know where to find a new song.” 

If I go into the woods in winter, and am 
shown the thirteen or fourteen species of 
willow that grow in Massachusetts, I learn 
that they quietly expand in the warmer 
days, or when nobody is looking at them, 
and, though insignificant enough in the 
general bareness of the forest, yet a great 
change takes place in them between fall 
and spring ; in the first relentings of 
March they hasten, and long before any- j 
thing else is ready, these osiers liang out 
their joyful flowers in contrast to all 
the woods. You cannot tell when 
they do bud and blossom, these viva- 


609 

cious trees, so ancient, for they ar« 
almost the oldest of all. Among fossil 
remains, the willow and the pine appear 
with the ferns. They bend all day to 
every wind : the cart-wheel in the road 
may crush them;* every passenger may 
strike off a twig with his cane ; every boy 
cuts them for a whistle ; the cow, the rab- 
bit, the insect, bite the sweet and tender 
bark : yet, in spite of accident and enemy, 
their gentle persistency lives when the 
oak is shattered by storm, and grows in 
the night and snow and cold. When I see 
in these brave plants this vigour and im- 
mortality in weakness, I find a sudden 
relief and pleasure in observing the 
mighty law of vegetation, and I think it 
more grateful and health-giving than any 
news I am likely to find of man in the 
journals, and better than Washington 
politics. 

It is easy to see that there is no limit to 
the chapter of Resources. I have not, in 
all these rambling sketches, gone beyond 
the beginning of my list. Resources of 
Man— it is the inventory of the world, the 
roll of arts and sciences ; it is the whole 
of memory, the whole of invention ; it is 
all the power of passion, the majesty of 
virtue, and the omnipotence of will. 

But the one fact that shines through all 
this plenitude of powers is, tha-t, as is tha 
receiver, so is the gift ; that all these ac- 
quisitions are victories of the good brain 
and brave heart ; that the world belongs 
to the energetic, belongs to the wise. It 
is in vain to make a paradise but for good 
men. The tropics are one vast garden ; 
yet man is more miserably fed and condi- 
tioned there than in the cold and stingy 
zones. The healthy, the civil, the indus- 
trious, the learned, the moral race — 
Nature herself only yields her secret to 
these. And the resources of America and 
its future will be immense only to wise 
and virtuous men. 


THE COMIC. 


A TASTE for fun is all but universal in 
our species, which is the only joker in 
nature. The rocks, the plants, the beasts, 
the birds, neither do anything ridiculous, 
nor betray a perception of anything 
absurd done in their presence. And as 
the lower nature does not jest, neither 
does the highest. The Reason pronounces 


its omniscient yea and nay, but meddles 
never with degrees or fractions ; and it is 
in comparing fractions with essential 
integers or wholes that laughter begins, . 

Aristotle’s definition of the ridiculous 
is, *' what is out of time and place, with- 
out danger.” If there be pain and danger, 
it becomes tragic ; if not, comic. 1 coo 



THE COMIC. 


610 

fess, this definition, though by an admir- 
able definer, does not satisfy me, does not 
say all we know. 

The essence of all jokes, of all comedy, 
seems 10 be an honest or well-intended 
halfness ; a non-performance of what is 
pretended to be performed, at the same 
time that one is giving loud pledges of 
performance. The balking of the intellect, 
the frustrated expectation, the break of 
continuity in the intellect, is comedy ; and 
it announces itself physically in the plea- 
sant spasms we call laughter. 

With the trifling exception of the 
stratagems of a few beasts and birds, 
there is no seeming, no halfness in nature, 
until the appearance of man. Uncon- 
scious creatures do the whole will of 
wisdom. An oak or a chestnut undertakes 
no function it cannot execute ; or if there 
be phenomena in botany which we call 
abortions, the abortion is also a function 
of nature, and assumes to the intellect the 
like completeness with the further func- 
tion, to which in different circumstances 
it had attained. The same rule holds 
true of the animrds. Their activity is 
marked by unerring good-sense. But 
man, through his access to Reason, is 
capable of the perception of a whole and 
a part. Reason is the whole, and whatso- 
ever is not that is a part. The whole of 
nature is agreeable to the whole of 
thought, or to the Reason ; but separate 
any part of nature, and attempt to look 
at it as a whole by itself, and the feeling 
of the ridiculous begins. The perpetual 
game of humour is to look with considerate 
good-nature at every object in existence 
aloof ^ as a man might look at a mouse, 
comparing it with the eternal Whole ; en- 
joying the figure which each self-satisfied 
particular creature cuts in the unrespect- 
ing All, and dismissing it with a benison. 
Separate any object, as a particular bodily 
man, a horse, a turnip, a flour-barrel, an 
umbrella, from the connection of things, 
and contemplate it alone, standing there 
in absolute nature, it becomes at once 
comic; no useful, no respectable qualities 
can rescue it from the ludicrous. In 
virtue of man's access to Reason or the 
Whole, the human form is a pledge of 
wholeness, suggests to our imagination 
the perfection of truth or goodness, and 
exposes by contrast any h^fness or im- 
.perfection. We have a primary associa- 
tion between perfectness and this form. 
But the facts that occur when actual men 
enter do not make good this anticipation ; 
a discrepancy which is at once detected 


by the intellect, and the outward sigfl ii 
the muscular irfitation of laughter. 

Reason does not joke, and men of 
reason do not ; a prophet, in whom the 
moral sentiment’predominates, or a philo- 
sopher, in whom the love of truth predo- 
minates, these do nat joke, but they bring 
the standard, the ideal whole, exposing 
all actual defect ; and hence, the best of 
all jokes, is the sympathetic contemplation 
of things by the understanding from the 
philosopher's point of view. There is no 
joke so true and deep in actual life, as 
when some pure idealist goes up and 
down among the institutions of society, 
attended by a man who knows the world, 
and who, sympathizing with the philoso- 
pher’s scrutiny, sympathizes also with the 
confusion and indignation of the detected 
skulking institutions. His perception of 
disparity, his eye wandering perpetually 
from the rule to the crooked, lying, 
thieving fact, makes the eyes run over 
with laughter. 

This is the radical joke of life and then 
of literature, The pj-esence of the ideal 
of right and of truth in all action makes 
the yawning delinquencies of practice 
remorseful to the conscience, tragic to the 
interests, but droll to the intellect. The 
activity of our sympathies may for a time 
hinder our perceiving the fact intellectu- 
ally, and so deriving mirth from it ; but all 
falsehoods, all vices seen at sufficient dis- 
tance, seen from the point where our moral 
sympathies do not interfere, become 
ludicrous. The comedy is in the intellect’s 
perception of discrepancy. And whilst 
the presence of the ideal discovers the 
difference, the comedy is enhanced when- 
ever that ideal is ernbodied visibly in a 
man. Thus FalstalT, in Shakspeare, is a 
character of the broadest comedy, giving 
himself unreservedly to his senses, coolly 
ignoring the Reason, whilst he invokes its 
name, pretending to patriotism and to 
parentival virtues, not with any intent to 
deceive, but only to make the fun perfect 
by enjoying the confusion betwixt reason 
and the negation of reason - in other w'ords, 
the rank rascaldom he is calling by its 
name. Prince Mai stands by, as the acuta 
understanding, who sees the Right and 
sympathizes with it, and in the hey-day 
of youth feels also the full attractions of 
pleasure, and is thus eminently qualified 
to enjoy the joke. At the same time ho is 
to that degree under the Reason, that it 
does not amuse him as much as it amuses 
another spectator. 

If the essence of the comic be the ooa* 



THE COMIC. 6ii 


traat in the intellect between the idea and 
the false performance, thexe is good reason 
why we should be affected uy the exposure. 
We have no deeper interest than our in- 
tegrity, and that we should be made aware 
by joke and by stroke, of any lie we enter- 
tain. Besides, a perception of the comic 
seems to be a balance-wheel in our meta- 
physical structure. It appears to be an 
essential element in a fine character. 
Wherever the intellect is constructive, it 
will be found. We feel the absence of it 
as a defect in the noblest and most oracu- 
lar soul. The perception of the comic is 
a tie of sympathy with other men, a pledge 
of sanity, and a protection from those per- 
verse tendencies and gloomy insanities in 
which fine intellects sometimes lose them- 
selves. A rogue r live to the ludicrous is 
still convertible. If that sense is lost, his 
fcllow-mcn can do little for him. 

It is true the sensibility to the ludicrous 
may run into excess. Men celebrate 
their perception of halfness and a latent 
lie by the peculiar explosions of laughter. 
So painfully susceptible are some men to 
these impressions, that if a man of wit come 
into the room where they are, it seems to 
take them out of themselves with violent 
convulsions of the face and sides, and ob- 
streperous roarings of the throat. How 
often and with what unfeigned compassion 
we have seen such a person receiving like a 
willing martyr the whispers into his ear of 
a man of wit. The victim who has just 
received the discharge, if in a solemn com- 
pany, has the air very much of a stout vessel 
which has just shipped a heavy sea; and 
though it docs not split it, tlie poor bark is 
for the moment critically staggered. The 
peace of society and the decorum of tables 
seem to require that next to a notable wit 
Bhoiiid always be posted a phlegmatic 
bolt-upright man, able to stand without 
movement of muscle whole broadsides of 
this Greek fire. It is a true shaft of Apollo, 
and traverses the universe, and unless it 
encounter a mystic or a dumpish soul, 
goes everywhere heralded and harbingered 
by smiles and greetings. Wit makes its 
own welcome, and levels all distinctions. 
No dignity, no learning, no force of char- 
acter, c;iii make any stand against good 
wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of 
form, no majesty of carriage, can plead 
any immunity— they must walk gingerly, 
according to the laws of ice, or down they 
must go, dignity and all. “ Dost thou 
think, because thou art virtuous, there 
httail be no more cakes and ale?” Plu- 
tarch happily expresses the value of the 


jest as a legitimate Weapon of the philo- 
sopher. “ Men cannot exercise their 
rhetoric unless they speak, but their philo- 
sophy even whilst they are silent or jest 
merrily ; for as it the highest degree of 
injustice not to bc^ust and yet seem so, so it 
is the top of wisdom to philosophize yet 
not appear to do it, and in mirth to do the 
same with those that are serious and seem 
in earnest ; for as in Euripides, the Bacchae, 
though unprovided of iron weapons and 
unarmed, wounded their invaders with the 
boughs of trees, which they carried, thus 
the very jests and merry talk of true philo- 
sophers move those that are not altogether 
insensible, and unusually reform.” 

In all the parts of life, the occasion of 
laughter is some seeming, some keeping 
of the word to the ear and eye, whilst it is 
broken to the soul. Thus, as the religious 
sentiment is the most vital and sublime of 
all our sentiments, and capable of the 
most prodigious effects, so is it abhorrent 
to our whole nature, when, in the absence 
of the sentiment, the act or word or officer 
volunteers to stand in its stead. To tho 
sympathies this is shocking, and occasions 
grief. But to the intellect the lack of the 
sentiment gives no pain ; it compares in- 
cessantly the sublime idea with the bloated 
nothing which pretends to be it, and the 
sense of the disproportion is comedy. And 
as the religious sentiment is the most real 
and earnest thing in nature, being a meie 
rapture, and excluding, when it appears, 
all other considerations, the vitiating this 
is the greatest lie. Therefore, the oldest 
gibe of literature is the ridicule of false 
religion. This is the joke of jokes. In 
religion, the sentiment is all ; the ritual 
or ceremony indifferent. But the inertia 
of men inclines them, when the sentiment 
sleeps, to imitate that thing it did ; it goes 
through the ceremony omitting only the 
will, makes the mistake of the wig for tho 
head, the clothes for the man. The older 
the mistake and the more overgrown the 
particular form is, the more ridiculous to 
the intellect. Captain John Smith, the 
discoverer of New England, was not want- 
ing in humour. The Society in London 
which had contributed their means to 
convert the savages, hoping doubtless to 
see the Keokuks, Black Hawks, Roaring 
Thunders, and Tustanuggees of that day 
converted into church-wardens and deacons 
at least, pestered the gallant rover with 
frequent solicitations out of England 
touching the conversion of tho Indians, 
and the enlargement of the Church. 
Smith, in his perplexity how to satisfy the 



6i2 


THE COMIC. 


Society, sent out a party into the swamp, 
caught an Indian, and sent him home in 
v^he first ship to London, telling the Society 
they might convert one themselves. 

The satire reaches its climax when the 
actual Church is set in (hrect contradiction 
to the dictates of religious sentiment, as 
in the sketch of our Puritan politics in 
Hudibras : 

•* Our brethren of New En^^Iand use 
Choice malefactors to excuse, 

Anvi hang the guiltless in their stead. 

Of whom the churches have less need ; 

As lately happened, in a town 
Where lived a cobler, and but one, 

That out of doctrine could cut use, 

And mend men’s lives as well as shoei. 

This precious brother having slaini 
In times of peace, an Indian, 

Not out of malice, but mere zeal 
(Because he was an intidel), 

The mighty Tottipottyrnoy 
Sent to our elders an envoy, 

Complaining loudly ot the breech 
Df league held forth by Brother Patch, 
Against the articles in force 
Between both churches, his and ours, 

For which he craved the saints to render 
Into his hands, cv hang the oht nder ; 

But they, maturely having weighed 
They had no more but him o’ th’ tra«le 
(A man that served them in the double 
Capacity to teach and cobble), | 

Resolved to spare him ; yet to do 
The Indian Hoghan Moghan too 
Impartial justice, in his stead did 
Hang an old weaver that was bedrid.'* 

ill science the jest at pedantry is 
analogous to that in religion which lies 
against superstition. A classification or 
nomenclature used by the scholar only as 
a memorandum of his last lesson in the 
laws of nature, and confessedly a make- 
shift, a bivouac for a night, and implying 
a march and a conquest to-morrow, be- 
comes through indolence a barrack and a 
prison, in which the man sits down im- 
movably, and wishes to detain others. 
The physiologist Camper humorously con- 
fesses the effect of his studies in dislocat- 
ing his ordinary associations. I have 
been employed," he says, “ six months on 
the Cetacea ; I understand the osteology 
of the head of all these monsters, and have 
made the combination with the human 
head so well, tliat everybody now appears 
to me narwhale, porpoise, or marsouins. 
Women, the prettiest in society, and those 
whom I find less comely, they are all 
either narwhales or porpoises to my eyes." 

I chanced the other day to fall in with an 
odd illustration of the remark I had heard, 
that the laws of disease are as beautiful as 


the laws of health ; I was hastening to 
visit an old and honoured friend, who, 1 
was informed, was in a dying condition, 
when I met his physician, who accosted 
me in great spirits, with joy sparkling in 
his eyes. " And how is my friend, the 
reverend Doctor?" I inquired. " O, I 
saw him this morning ; it is the most 
correct apoplexy I have ever seen : face 
and hands livid, breathing stertorous, all 
the symptoms perfect." And he rubbed 
his hands with delight, for in the country 
we cannot find every day a case that agrees 
with the diagnosis of the books. I think 
there is malice in a very trifling story 
which goes about, and which I should not 
take any notice of, did I not suspect it to 
contain some satire upon my brothers of 
the Natural History Society. It is of a 
boy who was learning his alphabet. 
“That letter is A," said the teacher; 
" A," drawled the boy. “ That is B," said 
the teacher ; “ B," drawled the boy, and 
so on. " That is W," said the teacher. 
“The devil I" exclaimed the boy, “is 
that W?" 

The pedantry of literature belongs to 
the same category. In both cases there 
is a lie, when the mind, seizing a classifi- 
cation to help it to a sinccrer knowledge 
of the fact, stops in the classification; or 
learning languages, and reading books, to 
the end of a better acquaintance with man, 
stops in the languages and books : in both 
the learner seems to be wise, and is not. 

Tlic same falsehood, the same confusion 
of the sympathies because a pretension.j^s 
not made good, points the perpetual satire 
against poverty, since, according to Latin 
poetry and English doggerel, 

Poverty ]oes nothing worse 

Th.iU to make man ridiculous. 

In this instance the halfiicss lies in the 
pretension of the parties to some con- 
sideration on account of their condition. 
If the man is not ashamed of his poverty, 
there is no joke. Tlie poorest man who 
stands on his manhood destroys the jest. 
The poverty of the saint, of the rapt philo- 
sopher, of the naked Indian, is not 
omic. The lie is in the surrender of thf 
man to his appearance ; as if a man 
should neglect himself and treat his 
shadow on the wall with marks of irfmito 
respect. It affects us oddly, as to sea 
things turned upside down, or to see a 
man in a high wind run after his hat, 
which is always droll. The relation of tha 
parties is inverted— hat being for lb a 
moment master, the by-standers cheering 



THE COMIC, 


the hat The multiplication of artificial 
wants and expenses in cFVilized life, and 
the exaggeration of all trifling forms, j 
present Innumerable occasions for this 
discrepancy to expose itself. Such isj 
the story told of the painter Astley, who, ’ 
going out of Rome one day with a party 
for a ramble in the Campagna, and the 
weather proving hot, refused to take off 
his coat when his companions threw off 
theirs, but sweltered on ; which, exciting 
remark, his comrades playfully forced off 
his coat, and behold on the back of his 
waistcoat a gay cascade was thundering 
down the rocks with foam and rainbow, 
very refreshing in so sultry a day — a pic- 
ture of his own, with which the poor pain- 
ter had been fain to ropairthe shortcomings 
of his wardrobe. The same astonishment 
of the intellect at the disappearance of the 
man out of nature, through some super- 
stition of his house or equipage, as if 
truth and virtue should be bowed out of 
creation by the clothes they wore, is the 
secret of all the fun that circulates con- 
cerning eminent fops and fashionists, and, 
m like manner, of the gay Rameau of 
Diderot, who believes in nothing but 
hunger, and that the sole end of art, 
virtue, and poetry is to put something for 
mastication between the upper and lower 
mandibles. 

Alike in all these cases and in the in- 
stance of cowardice, or fear of any sort, 
from the loss of life to the loss of spoons, 
the majesty of man is violated. He, whom 
all things should serve, serves some one 
of his own tools. In fine pictures the 
head sheds on the limbs the expression of 
the face. In Raphael’s Angel driving 
Heliodorus from the Temple, the crest of 
the helmet is so remarkable, that but for 
the extraordinary energy of the face, it 
would draw the eye too much ; but the i 
countenance of the celestial messenger 
subordinates it, and we see it not. In 
poor pictures tlie limbs and trunk degrade 
the face. So among ihe women in the 
street: you sliall see one whose bonnet 
and dress are one thing, and the lady her- 
self quite another, wearing withal an ex- 
pression of meek submission to her bonnet 
and dress ; and another whose dress obey* 
and heightens the expression of her form. 

More food for the comic is afforded 
whenever the personal appearance, the 
face^ form, and manners, are subjects of 
thought with the man himself. No fashion 
Is the best fashion for those mattere which 
will take care of themselves. This is the 
butt of those jokes of the Paris drawingf- 


613 

rooms, which Napoleon reckoned *0 for- 
midable, and which are copiously re- 
counted in the French M(5moires. A lady 
of high rank, but of lean figure, had given 
the Countess Dulauloy the nickname of 
“ Le Grenadier tr!colore,” in allusion to 
her tall figure, as well as to her republi- 
can opinions; the Countess retaliated by 
calling Madame " the Venus of the P^re- 
la-Chaise,” a compliment to her skeleton 
which did not fail to circulate. “ Lord 
C.,” said the Countess of Gordon, “ O, h^» 
is a perfect comb, all teeth and back.’ 
The Persians have a pleasant story of 
Tamerlane which relates to the same 
particulars; “Timur was an ugly man; 
he had a blind eye and a lame foot. One 
day when Chodscha was with him, Timur 
scratched his head, since the hour of the 
barber was come, and commanded that 
the barber should be called. Whilst he 
was shaven, the barber gave him a looking- 
glass in his hand. Timur saw himself in 
the mirror and found his face quite too 
ugly. Therefore he began to weep ; 
Chodscha also set himself to weep, and so 
they wept for two hours. On this, some 
courtiers began to comfort Timur, and 
entertained him with strange stories in 
I order to make him forget all about it. 

1 Timur ceased weeping, but Chodscha 
j ceased not, but began now first to weep 
I amain, and in good earnest. At last said 
Timur to Chodscha, ‘Hearken! I have 
looked in the mirror, and seen myself 
ugly. Thereat I grieved , because, although 
I am Caliph, and have also much wealth, 
and many wives, yet still I am so ugly ; 
therefore have I wept. But thou, why 
weepest thou without ceasing ? * Chodscha 
answered, ' If thou hast only seen thy faca 
once, and at once seeing hast not been 
able to contain thyself, but hast wept, 
what should we do— we who see thy faca 
every day and night ? If we weep not, 
who should weep ? Therefore have I 
wept.’ Timur almost split his sides with 
laughing.” 

Politics also furnish the same mark for 
satire. What is nobler than the expansive 
sentiment of patriotism, which would find 
brothers in a whole nation ? But when 
this enthusiasm is perceived to end in the 
very intelligible maxims of trade, so much 
for so much, the intellect feels again the 
half-man. Or what is fitter than that wa 
should espouse and carry a principle 
against all opposition ? But when the 
men appear who ask our votes as repra* 
sentatives of this ideal, we are sadly ou| 
of countenance. 



§14 QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY, 


But there is no end to this analysis. 
We do nothing that is not laughable when- 
ever we quit our spontaneous sentiment. 
All our plans, managements, houses, 
poems, if compared with the wisdom and 
love which man reproients, are equally 
imperfect and ridiculous. But we cannot 
afford to part with any advantages. We 
must learn by laughter, as well as by tears 
and terrors ; explore the whole of nature — 
the farce and buffoonery in the yard below, 
as well as the lessons of poets and phi- 
losophers upstairs, in the hall — and get 
the rest and refreshment of the shaking of 


the sides. But the comic also has its own 
speedy limits. i Mirth quickly becomes 
intemperate, and the man would soon die 
of inanition, as some persons have been 
tickled to death. The same scourge whips 
the joker and the enjoy er of the joke. 
When Carlini was convulsing Naples with 
laughter, a patient waited on a physician 
in that city, to obtain some remedy for 
excessive melancholy, which was rapidly 
consuming his life. The physician en- 
deavoured to cheer his spirits, and advised 
him to go to the theatre and see Carlinii 
He replied, “ I am Carlini," 


QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY. 


Whoever looks at the insect world, at 
flies, aphides, gnats, and innumerable 
parasites, and even at the infant mam- 
mals, must have remarked the extreme 
content they take in suction, which consti- 
tutes the main business of their life. If 
we go into a library or news-room, we see 
the same function on a higher plane, 
performed with l^ike ardour, with equal 
impatience of interruption, indicating the 
sweetness of the act. In the highest 
civilization the book is still the highest 
delight. He who has once known its 
satisfactions is provided with a resource 
against calamity. Like Plato’s disciple 
who has perceived a truth, "he is pre- 
served from harm until another period." 
In every man’s memory, with the hours 
when life culminated are usually associ- 
ated certain books which met his views. 
Of a large and powerful class we might 
ask with confidence, What is the event j 
they most desire ? what gift ? What but 
the book that shall come, which they have 
sought through all libraries, through all 
languages, that shall be to their mature 
eyes what many a tinsel-covered toy 
pamphlet was to their childhood, and 
shall speak to the imagination ? Our 
high respect for a well-read man is praise 
enough of literature. If we encountered 
a man of rare intellect, we should ask 
him what books he read. We expect a 
great man to be a good reader ; or in pro- 
ortion to the spontaneous power should 
e the assimilating power. And though 
such are a more difficult and exacting 
class, they are not less eager. " He that 
borrows the aid of an equal understand- 
ing," said Burke, " doubles his own ; he 
that usos that of a superior elevates his 
own to the stature of that he (x>iitem« 
plates.*' 


We prize books, and they prize them 
most who are themselves wise. Ouf 
debt to tradition through reading and 
conversation is so massive, our protest or 
private addition so rare and insignificant 
— and this commonly on the ground of 
other reading or hearing — that, in a large 
sense, one would say there is no pure 
originality. All minds quote. Old and 
new make the warp and woof of every 
moment. There is no thread that is not 
a twist of these two strands. By necessity, 
by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote, 
We quote not only books and proverbs, 
but arts, sciences, religion, customs and 
laws ; nay, we quote temples and houses, 
tables and chairs by imitation. The 
Patent-Office Commissioner knows that 
all machines in use have been invented 
and re-invented over and over ; that the 
mariner’s compass, the boat, the pen- 
dulum, glass, movable types, the kaleido- 
scope, the railway, tiito power-loom, etc., 
have been many times found and lost, 
from Pgy[)t, China and Pompeii down ; 
and if we liavo arts which Rome wanted, 
so also Romo had arts wliich we havo 
lost; that the invention of yesterday of 
making wood iiuh^structible by means of 
vapour of coal-oil or paraffine was 
suggested by the Egyptian method which 
has preserved its mummy-cases four 
thousand years. 

The highest statement of new philo- 
sophy complacently caps itself with some 
prophetic maKim from the oldest learn- 
ing. There is something mortifying in 
this perpetual circle. This extreme 
economy argues a very small capital of 
invention. The stream of affection flows 
broad and strong ; the practical activity 
is a river of supply; but the dearth of 
design accuses the penury of intellect. 



QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY. 


How few thoughts I In a hundred years, 
millions of men, add nofea hundred lines 
of poetry, not a theory of philosophy that 
offers a solution of the great problems, 
not an art of education that fulfils the 
conditions. In this delay and vacancy of 
thought we must make the best amends 
we can by seeking the wisdom of others 
to fill the time. 

If we confine ourselves to literature, it 
is easy to see that the debt is immense to 
past thought. None escapes it. The 
originals are not original. There is 
imitation, model, and suggestion, to the 
very archangels, if we knew their history. 
The first book tyranises over the second. 
Read Tasso, and you think of Virgil ; read 
Virgil, and you think of Homer ; and 
Milton forces you to reflect how narrow 
are the limits of human invention. The 
“Paradise Lost” had never existed but 
for these precursors ; and if we find in 
India or Arabia a book out of our horizon 
of thought and tradition, we are soon 
taught by new researches in its native 
country to discover its foregoers, and its 
latent, but real connection with our own 
Bibles. 

Read in Plato, and you shall find 
Christian dogmas, and not only so, but 
stumble on our evangelical phrases. 
Hegel pre-exists in Proclus, and, long 
before, in Heraclitus and Parmenides. 
Whoso knows Plutarch, Lucian, Rabelais, 
Montaigne, and Bayle will have a key to 
many supposed originalities, Rabelais is 
the source of many a proverb, story and 
jest, derived from him into all modern 
languages; and if we knew Rabelais’s 
reading, we should see the rill of the 
Rabelais river, Swedenborg, Behmcn, 
Spinoza, will appear original to unin- 
structed and to thoughtless persons ; their 
originality will disappear to such as are 
either well-read or thoughtful ; for scholars 
will recognise their dogmas as re-appear- 
ing in men of a similar intellectual eleva- 
tion throughout history. Albert, the 
*• wonderful doctor,” St. Buenaventura, 
the “ seraphic doctor,’ Thomas Aquinas, 
the “Angelic doctor” of the thirteenth 
century, whose books made the sufficient 
culture of these ages, Dante absorbed and 
ho survives for us. “ Renard the Fox,” 
a German poem of the thirteenth century, 
was long supposed to be the original 
work, until Grimm found fragments of 
another original a century older. M. Le 
Grand showed that in the old Fabliaux 
were the originals of the tales of Molidre, 
La Fontaine » Boccaccio, and of Voltaire. 


615 

Mythology is no man’s work: bu. what 
we daily observe w regard to the bo^-mot% 
that circulate in society — that every talker 
helps a story in repeating it, until, at last, 
from the slenderest filament of fact a good 
fable is constru\:ted— the same growth 
befalls mythology ; the legend is tossed 
from believer to poet, from poet to 
believer, everybody adding a grace or 
dropping a fault or rounding the form, 
until it gets an ideal truth. 

Religious literature, the psalms and 
liturgies of churches, are of course of this 
slow growth—a fagot of selections gathered 
through ages, leaving the worse, and 
saving the better, until it is at last the 
work of the whole communion of wor- 
shippers. The Bible itself is like an old 
Cremona ; it has been played upon by the 
devotion of thousands of years, until every 
word and particle is public and tunable. 
And whatever undue reverence may have 
been claimed for it by the prestige of 
philonic inspiration, the stronger tendency 
we are describing is likely to undo. What 
divines had assumed as the distinctive 
revelations of Christiaiaity, theologic criti- 
cism has matched by exact parallelisms 
from the Stoics and poets of Greece and 
Rome. Later, when Confucius and the 
Indian scriptures were made known, no 
claim to monopoly of ethical wisdom 
could be thought of; and the surprising 
results of the new researches into the 
history of Egypt have opened to us the 
deep debt of the churches of Rome and 
England to the Egyptian heirology. 

The borrowing is often honest enough, 
and comes of magnanimity and stoutness. 
A great man quotes bravely, and will not 
draw on his invention when his memory 
serves him with a word as good. What 
he quotes, he fills with his own voice and 
humour, and the whole cyclopaedia of his 
table-talk is presently believed to be his 
own. Thirty years ago, when Mr. Webster 
at the bar or in the Senate filled the eyes 
and minds of young men, you might often 
heal cited as Mr. Webster’s three rules ; 
first, never to do to-day what he could 
defer till to-morrow ; secondly, never to 
do himself what he could make another 
do for him ; and, thirdly, never to pay 
any debt to-day. Well, they are none the 
worse for being already told, in the last 
generation, of Sheridan ; and we find in 
Grimm’s Mimoires that Sheridan got them 
from the witty D’Argenson ; who, no 
doubt, if we could consult him, could tell 
of whom he first heard them told. In our 
own college days we remember heating 

3 R 



QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY. 


6x6 

other pieces of Mr. Webster’s advice to 
students— among others, this : that, when 
he opened a new book, he turned to the 
table of contents, took a pen, and sketched 
a sheet of matters and topics — what he 
knew and what he thought — before he read 
the book. But we find in Southey’s 
“ Common-place Book ” this said of the 
Earl of Strafford: " I learned one rule of 
him,” says Sir G. Radcliffe, ” which I 
think worthy to be remembered. When 
he met with a well penned oration or tract 
upon any subject, he framed a speech 
upon the same argument, inventing and 
disposing what seemed fit to be said upon 
that subject, before he read the book ; 
then, reading, compared his own with the 
author’s, and noted his own defects and 
the author’s art and fulness ; whereby he 
drew all that ran in the author more 
strictly, and might better judge of his own i 
wants to supply them.” I remember to 
have heard Mr. Samuel Rogers, in London, 
relate, among other anecdotes of the Duke 
of Wellington, that a lady having ex- 
pressed in his presence a passionate wish 
to witness a grea victory, he replied : 

” Madam, there is nothing so dreadful as 
a great victory — excepting a great defeat.” 
But this speech is also D’Argenson’s, and 
is reported by Grimm. So the sarcasm 
attributed to Lord Eldon upon Brougham, 
his predecessor on the woolsack, ” What j 
a wonderful versatile mind has Brougham 1 1 
he knows politics, Greek, history, science; ! 
if he only knew a little of law, he would 
know a little of everything.” You may 
find the original of this gibe in Grimm, 
w'ho says that Louis XVI., going out of 
chapel after hearing a sermon from the 
Abbd Maury, said ” Si V Abhe nous avail 
parle un peu do religion, il nous aurait 
parle de tout.'^ A pleasantry which ran 
through ail the newspapers a few years 
since, taxing the eccentricities of a gifted 
family connection in New England, was 
only a theft of Lady Mary Wortley 
Montagu’s mot of a hundred years ago. 
that ” the world was made up of men and 
women and Herveys.” 

Many of the historical proverbs have a 
doubtful paternity. Columbus’s egg is 
claimed for Brunelleschi. Rabelais’s dying 
words, “I am going to see the great 
Perhaps” (le grand Peuietre), only repeats 
the ” IF ” inscribed on the portal of the 
temple at Delphi. Goethe’s favourite 
phrase, ” the open secret,” translates 
Aristotle’s answer to Alexander, ** These 
Dooks are published and not published.” 
Madame de Stall's ” Architecture U firoxen 


music ” is borrowed from Goethe’s “dumb 
music,” which ir Vitruvius’s rule, that 
” the architect must not only understand 
drawing, but music.” Wordsworth's hero 
acting “ on the plan which pleaded his 
childish thought,” is Schiller’s “iTell him 
to reverence the dreams of his youth,” and 
earlier. Bacon’s Consilia juventutis plu% 
divinitatis habent," 

In romantic literature examples of this 
vamping abound. The fine verse in the 
old Scotch ballad of ” The Drowned 
Lovers,” 

“ Thou art roaring ower loud, Clyde water, 
Thy streams are ower strang : 

Make me thy wrack when 1 come back. 

But spare me when I gang.” 

is a translation of Martial’s epigram on 
Hero and Leander, where the prayer of 
Leander is the same : — 

“Parcite dum propero, mergite dum redeo.* 

Hafiz furnished Burns with the song of 
” John Barleycorn,” and furnished Moori 
with the original of the piece, 

” When in death I shall calm recline, 

Oh, bear my heart to my mistress dear,” etc. 

There are many fables which, as they 
are found in every language, and betray 
no sign of being borrowed, are said to be 
agreeable to the human mind. Such are 
“The Seven Sleepers,” “Gyges’s Ring,” 
“ The Travelling Cloak,” ” The Wandering 
Jew,” “The Pied Piper,” “Jack and his 
Beanstalk,” the “ Lady Diving in the Lake 
and Rising in the Cave” — whose omnipre- 
sence only indicates how easily a good 
story crosses all frontiers. The popular 
incident of Baron Munchausen, who hung 
his bugle up by the kitchen fire, and the 
frozen tune thawed out, is found in Greece 
in Plato’s time. Antiphancs, one of Plato’s 
friends, laughingly compared his writings 
to a city where the words froze in the air 
as soon as they were pronounced, and the 
next summer, when they were warmed and 
melted by the sun, the people heard what 
had been spoken in the winter. It is only 
within this century that England and 
America discovered that their nuiocry-talci 
w*re old German and Scandinavian stories; 
and now it appears that they came from 
1 India, and are the property of all the 
; nations descended from the Aryan race, 
and have been warbled and babbled be- 
tween nurses and children for unknown 
thousands of years. 

If we observe the tenacity with which 
nations cling to their first types of costume, 
of architecture, of tools and methods in 



QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY. 


tillage, and decoration— if we learn how 
old are the patterns of pur shawls, the 
capitals of our columns, tfle fret, the beads, 
and other ornaments on our walls, the 
alternate lotus-bud and leaf-stem of our 
iron fences — wo shall think very well of 
the first men, or ill of the latest. 

Now shall we say that only the first men 
were well alive, and the existing genera- 
tion is invalided and degenerate ? Is all 
literature eavesdropping, and all art 
Chinese imitation ? our life a custom, and 
our body borrowed, like a beggar’s dinner, 
from a hundred charities ? A more subtle 
and severe criticism might suggest that 
some dislocation has befallen tlie race; 
that men are off their centre ; that multi- 
tudes of men do not live with Nature, but 
behold it as exiles. People go out to look 
at sunrises and sunsets who do no trecog- 
nize their own quietly and happily, but 
know that it is foreign to them. As they 
do by books, so they quote the sunset and 
the star, and do not make them theirs. 
Worse yet, they live as foreigners in the 
world of truth, and quote thoughts, and 
thus disown them, Quotation confesses 
inferiority. In opening a new book we 
of^en discover, from the unguarded devo- 
tion with which the writer gives his motto 
or text, all we have to expect from him. If 
Lord Bacon appears already in the preface, 
I go and read the “ Instauration ” instead 
of the new book. 

The mischief is quickly punished in 
general and in particular. Admirable 
mimics have nothing of their own. In 
every kind of parasite, when Nature has 
finished an aphis, a teredo, or a vampire 
bat — an excellent sucking-pipe to tap 
another animal, or a mistletoe or dodder 
among plants — the self-supplying organs 
wither and dwindle, as being superfluous, j 
In common prudence there is an early 
limit to this leaning on an original. In 
literature quotation is good only when the 
writer whom I follow goes my way, and, 
being better mounted than I, gives me a 
cast, as we say; but if I like the gay 
equipage so well as to go out of my road, I 
had better have gone afoot. 

But it is necessary to remember there 
are certain considerations which go far to 
qualify a reproach too grave. This vast ! 
mental indebtedness has every variety that 
pecuniary debt has — every variety of merit. 
The capitalist of either kind is as hungry , 
to lend as the consumer to borrow ; and ! 
the transaction no more indicates intel- 
lectual turpitude in the borrower than the 
•imple fact of debt involves bankruptcy. 


017 

f On the contrary, in far the ^eater nw mbei 
I of cases the transaction is honourable 
j to both. Can we not help ourselves as 
! discreetly by the force of two In literature ? 

1 Certainly it only needs two well place 1 
and well tempered for co-operation, to get 
somewhat far transcending any privSle 
enterprise 1 Shall we converse as spies ? 
Our very abstaining to repeat and credil 
the fine remark of our friend is thievish. 
Each man of thought is surrounded by 
wiser men than he, if they cannot write as 
well. Cannot he and they combine ? Can- 
not they sink their jealousies in God’s 
love, and call their poem Beaumont and 
Fletcher, or the Theban Phalanx’s ? The 
city will for nine days or nine years m^ka 
differences and sinister comparisons: there 
is a new and more excellent public that 
will bless the friends. Nay, it is an inevita- 
ble fruit of our social nature. The child 
quotes his father, and the man quotes his 
friend. Each man is a hero and an oracle 
to somebody, and to that person whatever 
he says has an enhanced value. Whatever 
we think and say is wonderfully better for 
our spirits and trust in another mouth. 
There is none so emiilfent and wise but he 
knows minds whose opinion confirms or 
qualifies his own : and men of extraordinary 
genius acquire an almost absolute ascen- 
dant over tlieir nearest companioni. The 
Comte de Crillon said one day to M., 
d’AUonville, with French vivacity, *' If the 
universe and I professed one opinion, and 
M. Necker expressed a contrary one, I 
should be at once convinced that the uni- 
verse and I were mistaken." 

Original power is usually accompanied 
with assimilating power, and we value in 
Coleridge his excellent knowledge and 
quotations perhaps as much, possibly 
more, than his original suggestions. If an 
author give us just distinctions, inspiring 
lessons, or imaginative poetry, it is not so 
important to us whose they are. If we are 
fired and guided by these, we know him as 
a benefactor, and shall return to him as 
long as he serves us so well. We may like 
well to know what is Plato’s and what is 
Montesquieu’s or Goethe’s part, and what 
thought was always dear to the writer 
himself; but the worth of the sentences 
consists in their radiancy and equal apti- 
tude to all intelligence. They fit all ouf 
facts like a charm. We respect ourselves 
the more that we know them, 

Next to th^ originator of a good senten#ft 
is the first qtioter of it. Many will read 
the book before one thinks of quoting a 
passage. As soon as ha has done this, thai 



QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY. 


6i8 

line will be quoted east and west. Then 
there are great ways of borrowing. Genius 
borrows nobly. When Shakspeare is 
charged with debts to his authors, Landor 
replies : *' Yet he was more original than 
his originals. He breathed upon dead 
bodies and brought them into life.” And 
we must thank Karl Ottfried Muller for the 
just remark, “ Poesy, drawing within its 
circle all that is glorious and inspiring, 
gave itself but little concern as to where 
its flowers originally grew.” So Voltaire 
usually imitated, but with such superiority 
that Dubuc said : ” He is like the false 
Amphitryon ; although the stranger, it is 
always he who has the air of being master 
of the house.” Wordsworth, as soon as 
he heard a good thing, caught it up, medi- 
tated upon it, and very soon reproduced it 
in his conversation and writing. If De 
Quincey said, "That is what I told you,” 
he replied, " No: that is mine — mine, and 
not yours.” On the whole, we like the 
valour of it. ’Tis on Marmontel’s principle, 
pounce on what is mine, wherever I 
find it ” ; and on Bacon’s broader rule, “I 
take all knowledge to be my province.” It 
betrays the consciciusness that the truth is 
the property of no individual, but is the 
treasure of all men. And inasmuch as any 
writer has ascended to a just view of man’s 
condition, he has adopted this tone. In so 
far as the receiver’s aim is on life, and not 
on literature, will be his indifference to the 
source. The nobler the truth or sentiment, 
the less imports the question of author- 
ship. It never troubles the simple seeker 
from whom he derived such or such a 
sentiment. Whoever expresses to us a 
just thought makes ridiculous the pains of 
the critic who should tell him where such 
a word had been said before. " It is no 
more according to Plato than according to 
me.” Truth is always present; it only 
needs to lift the iron lids of the mind’s eye 
to read its oracles. But the moment there 
is the purpose of display, the fraud is ex- 
posed. In fact, it is as difficult to appro- 
priate the thoughts of others, as it is to 
invent. Always some steep transition, 
some sudden alteration of temperature, of 
point or of view, betrays the foreign inter- 
polation. 

There is, besides, a new charm in such 
intellectual works as, passing through 
long time, have had a multitude of authors 
and improvers. We admire that poetry 
t/hich no man wrote— no poet less than 
the genius of humanity itself— -which is to 
be read in a mythology, in the effect of a I 
^ed or national style of pictures, of] 


sculptures, or drama, or cities, or sciences, 
on us. Such 9 poem also is language. 
Every word in the language has once been 
used happily. The ear, caught by that 
felicity, retains it, and it is used again 
and again, as if the charm belonged to 
the word, and not to the life of thought 
which so enforced it. These profane 
uses, of course, kill it, and it is avoided. 
But a quick wit can at any time reinforce 
it, and it comes into vogue again. Then 
people quote so differently ; one finding 
only what is gaudy and popular ; another, 
the heart of the author ; the report of his 
select and happiest hour ; and the reader 
sometimes giving more to the citation 
than ho owes to it. Most of the clas hcal 
citations you shall hear or read in the 
current journals or speeches were not 
drawn from the originals, but from pre- 
vious quotations in English books ; and 
you can easily pronounce, from the use 
and relevancy of the sentence, whether it 
had not done duty many times before — 
whether your jewel was got from the rniiiQ 
or from an auctioneer, We are as much 
informed of a writer’s genius by what he 
selects as by what he originates. Wo 
read the quotation with his eyes, and find 
a new and fervent sense ; as a passage 
from one of the poets, well recited, bor- 
rows new interest from the rendering. 
As the journals say, " the italics are ours.’* 
The profit of books is according to ilio 
sensibility of the reader. The profouudest 
thought or passion sleeps as in a mine, 
until an equal mind and heart finds and 
publishes it. The passages of Shakspeara 
that we most prize were never quoted 
until within this century; and Milton’s 
prose, and Burke, even, have their best 
feme within it. Every one, too, remem- 
bers his friends by their favourite poetry 
or other reading. 

Observe, also, that a writer appears to 
more advantage in the pages of another 
book than in his own. In his own, |ho 
j waits as a candidate for your approba- 
I tion ; in another’s, he is a lawgiver. 

Then another’s thoughts have a certain 
I advantage with us simply because they 
1 are another's. There is an illusion in 
a new phrase. A man hears a fine sen- 
tence out of Swedenborg, and wonders at 
the wisdom, and is very merry at heart 
that he has now got so fine a thing. 
Translate it out of the new words into 
his own usual phrase, and he will wonder 
again at his own simplicity, such tricks do 
fine words play with us. 

’Tis curious what new interest an ol4 



QUOTATION AND 0RIGINALIT7. 


ijiuthor acquires by oflScial canonization 
In Tiraboschi, or Dr. Johnson, or Von 
Hammer-Purgstall, or Hallam, or other 
historian of literature. Their registra- 
tion of his book, or citation of a passage, 
carries the sentimental value of a college 
diploma. Hallam, though never profound, 
is a fair mind, able to appreciate poetry, 
unless it becomes deep, being always 
blind and deaf to imaginative and analogy- 
loving souls, like the Platonists, like 
Giordano Bruno, like Donne, Herbert, 
Crashaw, and Vaughan ; and Hallam cites 
a sentence from Bacon or Sidney, and 
distinguishes a lyric of Edwards or Vaux, 
and straightway it commends itself to us 
as if it had received the Isthmian crown. 

It is a familiar expedient of brilliant 
writers, and not less of witty talkers, the 
device of ascribing their own sentence to 
an imaginary person, in order to give it 
weight — as Cicero, Cowley, Swift, Landor, 
and Carlyle have done. And Cardinal 
de Retz, at a critical moment in the Par- 
liament of Paris, described himself in an 
extemporary Latin sentence, which he 
pretended to quote from a classic author, 
ind which told admirably well. It is a 
curious reflex effect of this enhancement 
of our thought by citing it from another, 
that many men can write better under a 
mask than for themselves — as Chatterton 
in archaic ballad, Le Sage in Spanish 
costume, Macpherson as “ Ossian ” — and, 
I doubt not, many a young barrister in 
chambers in London, who forges good 
thunder for the Times, but never works 
as well under his own name. This is a 
sort of dramatizing talent ; as it is not rare 
to find great powers of recitation, without 
the least original eloquence — or people 
who copy drawings with admirable skill, I 
but are incapable of any design. j 

In hours of high mental activity we 
sometimes do the book too much honour, 
reading out of it better things than the 
author wrote — reading, as we say, between 
the lines. You have had the like ex- 
perience in conversation ; the wit was in 
what you heard, not in what the speakers 
said. Our best thought came from others. 
We heard in their words a deeper sense 
than the speakers put into them, and 
could express ourselves in other people’s 
phrases to finer purpose than they knew. 
In Moore’s Diary, Mr. Hallam is reported 
as mentioning at dinner one of his friends 
who had said, *' I don’t know how it is, a 
thing that falls flat from me seems quite 
an excellent joke when given second-hand 
by Sheridan. I never like my own both 


mots until he adopts them." Dumont was 
exalted by being used by Mirabeau, by 
Bentham, and by Sir Philip Francis, who, 
again, was less than his own “Junius"; 
and James Hogg (except in his poems 
“ Kilmeny " and • The Witch of File ") is 
but a third-rate author, owing his fame to 
his effigy colossalized through the lens of 
John Wilson— -who, again, writes belter 
under the domino of “ Christopher North " 
than in his proper clothes. The bold 
theory of Delia Bacon, that Shakspeare’s 
plays were written by a society of wits — 
by Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Bacon, and 
others around the Earl of Southampton — 
had plainly for her the charm of the 
superior meaning they would acquire 
when read under this light ; this idea of 
the authorship controlling our apprecia- 
tion of the works themselves. We once 
knew a man overjoyed at the notice of his 
pamphlet in a leading newspaper. What 
range he gave his imagination ! Who 
could have written It ? Was it not Colonel 
Carbine, or Senator Tonitrus, or, at the 
least, Professor Maximilian ? Yes, he 
could detect in the stjile that fine Roman 
hand. How it seemed the very voice of 
the refined and discerning public, inviting 
merit at last to consent to fame, anc. 
come up and take place in the reserved 
and authentic chairs I He carried the 
journal with haste to the sympathizing 
Cousin Matilda, who is so proud of all we 
do. But what dismay, when the good 
Matilda, pleased with his pleasure, con- 
fessed she had written the criticism, and 
carried it with her own hands to the post- 
I office I “ Mr. Wordsworth," said Charles 
Lamb, “ allow me to introduce to you my 
only admirer." 

Swedenborg threw a formidable theory 
into the world, that every soul existed in 
a society of souls, from which all its 
thoughts passed into it, as the blood of 
the mother circulates in her unborn child ; 
and he noticed that, when in his bed — 
alternately sleeping and waking— sleeping, 
he was surrounded by persons disputing 
and offering opinions on the one side and 
on the other side of a proposition ; waking, 
the like suggestions occurred for and 
against the proposition as his own 
thoughts; sleeping again, he saw and 
heard the speakers as before ; and this as 
often as he slept or waked. And if wn 
expand the image, does it not look as 
we men were thinking and talking out of 
an enormous antiquity, as if we stood, 
not in a coterie of prompters that filled a 
sitting-room, but in a circle of intelligencer 



620 QUOTATION AND ORIGINALITY. 

that reached through all thinkers, poets, truth. To all that can be said of the 
inventors, and wits, men and women, preponderance 6i the Past, the single 
English, German, Celt, Aryan, Ninevite, word Genius is a sufficient reply. The 
Copt — back to the first geometer, bard, divine resides in the new. The divine 
mason, carpenter, plainer, shepherd — never quotes, but is, and creates. The 
back to the first negro, who, with more profound apprehension of the Present s 
health or better perception, gave a shriller Genius, which makes the Past forgotten, 
sound or name for the thing he saw and Genius believes its faintest presentiment 
dealt with ? Our benefactors are as many against the testimony of all histcry ; for 
as the children who invented speech, it knows that facts are not ultimates, but 
word by word. Language is a city, to that a state of mind is the ancestor of 
the building of which every human being everything. And what is Originality ? 
brought a stone; yet he is no more to It is being, being one’s self, and reporting 
be credited with the grand result than accurately what we see and are. Genius 
the acaleph which adds a cell to the is, in the first instance, sensibility, the 
coral reef which is the basis of the conti- capacity of receiving just impressions 
nent. ^ from the external world, and the power of 

noKTa pet: all things are in flux. It is co-ordinating these after the laws of 
inevitable that you are indebted to the thought. It implies Will, or original 
past. You are fed and formed by it. The force, for their right distribution and 
old forest is decomposed for the composi- expression. If to this the sentiment of 
tion of the new forest. The old animals piety be added, if the thinker feels that 
have given their bodies to the earth to the thought most strictly his own is not 
furnish through chemistry the forming his own, and recognizes the perpetual 
race, and every individual is only a suggestion of the Supreme Intellect, the 
momentary fixation of what was yesterday oldest thoughts become new and fertile 
another’s, is to-day^ his, and will belong whilst he speaks them, 
to a third to-morrow. So it is in thought. Originals never lose their value. There 
Our knowledge is the amassed thought is always in them a style and weight of 
and experience of innumerable minds: speech, which the immanence of th« 
our language, our science, our religion, oracle bestowed, and which cannot be 
our opinions, our fancies we inherited, counterfeited. Hence the permanence of 
Our country, customs, laws, our ambitions, the high poets. Plato, Cicero, and Plu- 
and our notions of fit and fair — all these tarch cite the poets in the manner in 
we never made; we found them ready- which Scripture is quoted incur churches, 
made ; we but quote them. Goethe frankly A phrase or a single word is adduced, 
^id, “ What would remain to me if this with honouring emphasis, from Pindar, 
art of appropriation were derogatory to Hesiod, or Euripides, as precluding all 
genius ? Every one of my writings has argument, because thus had they said : 
been furnished to me by a thousand dif- importing that the bard spoke not bis 
ferent persons, a thousand things : wise own, but the words of some god. True 
and foolish have brought me, without poets have always ascended to this lofty 
Buspectingit, the offering of their thoughts, platform, and met this expectation, 
faculties, and experience. My work is Shakspeare, Milton, Wordsworth, were 
an aggregation of beings taken from the very conscious of their responsibilities, 
whole of nature ; it bears the name of When a man thinks happily, he finds no 
Goethe.” fool-track in the field he traverses. All 

But there remains the indefeasible per- spontaneous thought is irrespective of all 
•istency of the individual to bo himself, else. Pindar uses this haughty defiance. 
One leaf, one blade of grass, one meri- as if it were impossible to find his 
di^, does not resemble another. Evei^ sources : *' There are many swift darts 
mind is different ; and the more it is within my quiver, which have a voice for 
unfolded, the more pronounced is that those with understanding ; but t* the 
difference. He must draw the elements crowd they need interpreters. He is 
into him for food, and, if they be granite gifted with genius who knoweth much by 
and silex, will prefer them cooked by sun natural talent.” 

a»d rain, by time and art, to his hand. Our pleasure in seeing each mind take 
But, however received, these elements the subject to which it has a proper right 
pass into the substance of his constitution, Is seen in mere fitness in time. He that 
will be assimilated, and tend always to comes second must needs quote him that 
form, not a partisan, but a possessor of comes first* The earliest desoribers ol 



622 


PROGRESS OP CULTURE. 


eavage life as Captain Cook’s account of 
the Society Islands, or iJexander Henry’s 
travels among our Indian tribes, have a 
charm of truth and just point of view. 
Landsmen and sailors freshly come from 
the most civilized countries, and with no 
false expectation, no sentimentality yet 
about wild life, healthily receive and 
report what they saw— seeing what they 
must, and using no choice ; and no man 
.inspects the superior merit of the descrip- 
tion, until Chateaubriand, or Moore, or 
Campbell, or Byron, or the artists arrive, 
and mix so much art with their picture 
that the incomparable advantage of the 
first narrative appears. For the same j 
reason wo dislike that the poet should 
choose an antique or far-fetched subject 
for his muse, as if he avowed want of 
insight. The great deal always with the 
nearest. Only as braveries of too prodi- 
gal power can we pardon it, when the life 
of genius is so redundant that out of 


petulance it flings its fire into some old 
mummy, and, lol it walks and blushes 
again here in the street. 

We cannot overstate our debt to the 
Past, but the moment has the supreme 
claim. The Past is for us ; but the sola 
terms on which it can become ours are 
its subordination to the Present. Only 
an inventor knows ihow to borrow, and 
every man is or should be an inventor. 
We must not tamper with the organic 
motion of the soul. ’Tis certain that 
thought has its own proper motion, and 
the hints which flash from it, the words 
overheard at unawares by the free mind, 
are trustworthy and fertile, when obeyed, 
and not perverted to low and selfish 
account. This vast memory is only raw 
material. The divine gift is ever the 
instant life, which receives and uses and 
creates, and can well bury the old in the 
omnipotency with which Nature decom- 
poses all her harvest fof recomposition, 


PROGRESS OF CULTURE. 

Address read before the B K Society at Cambridge, July i8, 1867. 


We meet to-day under happy omens to 
our ancient society, to the commonwealth 
of letters, to the country, and to mankind. 
Ivo good citizen but shares the wonderful 
prosperity of the Federal Union. The 
heart still beats with the public pulse of 
joy, that the country has withstood the 
rude trial which threatened its existence, 
and thrills with the vast augmentation of 
strength which it draws from this proof. 
The storm which has been resisted is a 
crown of honour and a pledge of strength 
to the ship. We may be well contented 
with our fair inheritance. Was ever such 
coincidence of advantages in time and 
place as in America to-day ? — the fusion 
of races and religions ; the hungry cry for 
men which goes up from the wide con- 
tinent ; the answering facility of immi- 
gration, permitting every wanderer to 
choose his climate and government. Men 
come hither by nations. Science sur- 
passes the old miracles of mythology, to 
fly with them over the sea, and to send 
their messages under it. They come from 
crowded, antiquated kingdoms to the easy 
sharing of our simpler forms, Land 
without price is offered to the settler, 
cheap education to his children. The 
temper of our people delights in this 
whirl of life. Who would live in the stone 


age, or the bronze, or the iron, or the 
lacustrine ? Who does not prefer tlie age 
of steel, of gold, of coal, petroleum, cot- 
ton, steam, electricity, and the spectro- 
scope ? 

•' Prisca juvent alios, ego me nunc denique 
natuin 
Gratulor.” 

All this activity has added to the value of 
life, and to the scope of the intellect. I 
will not say that American institutions 
have given a new enlargement to our idea 
of a finished man, but they have added 
important features to the sketch. 

Observe the marked ethical quality of 
the innovations urged or adopted, The 
new claim of woman to a political status 
is itself an honourable testimony to the 
civilization which has given her a civil 
status new in history. Now that, by the 
increased humanity of law she controls 
her property, she inevitably takes the 
next step to her share in power. The 
war gives us the abolition of slavery, the 
success of the Sanitary Commission and 
of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Add to tj;Lesa 
the new scope of social science; the 
abolition of capital punishment and of 
imprisonment for debt ; the improvement 
of prisons ; the efforts tho buppressioa 



PROGRESS OP CULTURE. 


5aa 

of intemperance ; the search for just rules 
affecting labour ; the co-operative so- 
cieties ; the insurance of life and limb ; 
tlie free-trade league ; the improved alms- 
houses ; the enlarged scale of charities to 
relieve local famine, or Ipurned towns, or 
the suffering Greeks ; the incipient series 
of international congresses—all, one may 
say, in a high degree revolutionary — 
teaching nations the taking of government 
into their own hands, and superseding 
kings. 

The spirit is new. A silent revolution 
has impelled, step by step, all this 
activity. A great many full-blown con- 
ceits have burst. The coxcomb goes to 
the wall. To his astonishment he has 
found that this country and this age belong 
to the most liberal persuasion ; that the 
day of ruling by scorn and sneers is 
past; that good sense is now in power, 
and i/tai resting on a vast constituency of 
intelligent labour, and, better yet, on 
perceptions less and less dim of laws the 
most sublime Men are now to be as- 
tonished by seeir/g acts of good-nature, 
common civility, and Christian charity 
proposed by statesman, and executed by 
justices of the peace — by policemen and 
the constable. The fop is unable to cut 
the patriot in the street ; nay, he lies at 
his mercy in the ballot of the club. 

Mark, too, the largo resources of a 
statesman, of a socialist, of a scholar, in 
this age. When classes are exasperated 
against each other, the peace of the world 
Is always kept by striking a new note. 
Instantly the units part, and form in a 
new order, and those who were opposed 
are now side by side. In this country 
the prodigious mass of work that must be 
done ,has either made new divisions of 
labour or created new professions. Con- 
sider, at this time, what variety of issues, 
of enterprises public and private, what 
genius of science, what of administration, 
what of practical skill, what masters, 
each in his several province, the railroad, 
the telegraph, the mines, the inland and 
marine explorations, the novel and power- 
ful philanthropies, as well as agriculture, 
the foreign trade, and the home trade 
(whose circuits in this country are as 
spacious as the foreign), manufactures, 
the very inventions, all on a national 
scale, too, have evoked I — all implying the 
appearance of gifted men, the rapid ad- 
dition to our society of a class of true 
nobles, by which the self-respect of each 
town and State is enriched. 

Take aa a type the boundleia freedom 


here in Massachusetts. Peop'e have fa 
all countries beej^ burned and stoned for 
saying things which are commonplaces at 
all our breakfast-tables. Every one who 
was in Italy twenty-five years ago will 
remember the caution with which his host 
or guest, in any house looked around him, 
if a political topic were broached. Here 
the tongue is free, and the hand; and the 
freedom of action goes to the brink, if not 
over the brink, of license. 

A controlling influence of the times has 
been the wide and successful study of 
Natural Science. Steffens said, " The re- 
ligious opinions of men rest on their views 
of nature.” Great strides have been made 
within the present century. Geology, 
astronomy, chemistry, optics, have yielded 
grand results. The correlation of forces 
and the polarization of light have carried 
us to sublime generalizations — have ef- 
fected an imaginative race like poetio 
inspirations. We have been taught to 
tread familiarly on giddy heights of 
thought, and to wont ourselves to daring 
conjectures. The narrow sectarian can- 
not read astronomy with impunity. The 
creeds of his church shrivel like dried 
leaves at the door of the observatory, and 
a new and healthful air regenerates the 
human mind, and imparts a sympathetio 
enlargement to its inventions and method. 
That cosmical west-wind which meteoro- 
logists tell us, constitutes by the revolution 
of the globe, the upper current, is alono 
broad enough to carry to every city and 
suburb — tothe farmer’s house, the miner’s 
shanty, and the fisher’s boat — the inspira- 
tions of this new hope of mankind. Now, 
if any one say we have had enough of 
these boastful recitals, then I say, Happy 
is the land wherein benefits like these 
have grown trite and commonplace. 

Wo confess that in America everything 
looks new and recent. Our towns are still 
rude— the make-shifts of emigrants— and 
the whole architecture tent-like, when 
compared with the monumental solidity 
of mediaeval and primeval remains in 
Europe and Asia. But geology has effaced 
these distinctions. Geology, a science of 
forty or fifty summers, has had the effect 
to throw an air of novelty and mushroom 
speed over entire history. The oldest em- 
pires— what we called venerable antiquity 
— now that we have true measures of dura- 
tion, show like creations of yesterday, 
'Tis yet quite too early to draw sound con- 
clusions. The old six thousand years of 
chronology become a kitchen clock — no 
more a measure of time than an hour* 



PROGRESS OP CVLTURR. • 623 


glass Of ftn egg- glass — since the duration 
of geologic periods hascxiome into view. 
Geology itself is only chemistry with the 
element of time added ; and the rocks of 
Nahant or the dykes of the White Hills 
disclose that the world is a crystal, and the 
soil of the valleys and plains a continual 
decomposition and recomposition. No- 
thing is old but the mind. 

But I find not only this equality between 
new and old countries, as seen by the eye 
of science, but also a certain equivalence 
of the ages of history ; and as the child is 
in his playthings working incessantly at 
problems of natural philosophy — working 
as hard and as successfully as Newton — 
BO it were ignorance not to see that each 
nation and period has done its full part to 
make up the result of existing civility. 
We are all agreed that wo have not on the 
instant better men to show than Plutarch’s 
heroes. The world is always equal to 
itself. We cannot yet afford to drop 
Homer, nor ACschylus, nor Plato, nor 
Aristotle, nor Archimedes. Later, each 
European nation, after the breaking up of 
the Roman Empire, had its romantic era, | 
and the productions of that era in each 
rose to about the same height. Take for! 
an example in literature the Romance of \ 
Arthur, in Britain, or in the opposite pro- j 
vince of Brittany : the Chansons dc Roland, 
in France ; the Chronicle of the Cid, in 
Spain ; the Niebelungen Lied, in Germany ; 
the Norse Sagas, in Scandinavia; and, I 
may add, the Arabian Nights on the Afri- 
can coast. But if these works still survive 
and multiply, what shall we say of names 
more distant, or hidden through their very 
superiority to their coevals — names of men 
who have left remains that certify a height 
of genius in their several directions not 
since surpassed, and which men in pro- 
portion to their wisdom still cherish — as 
Zoroaster, Confucius, and the grand scrip- 
tures, only recently known to western 
nations, of the Indian Vedas, the Institutes 
of Menu, the Puranas, the poems of the 
Mahabarat and the Ramayana ? 

In Modern Europe, the Middle Ages 
were called the Dark Ages. Who dares 
to call them so now ? They are seen to 
be the feet on which we walk, the eyes 
with which we see, ’Tis one of our 
triumphs to have reinstated them. Their 
Dante and Alfred and Wickliffe and 
Abelard and Bacon ; their Magna Charta, 
decimal numbers, mariner's compass, gun- 
powder, glass, paper, and clocks ; chemis- 
try, algebra, astronomy ; their Gothic 
architecture, their paiating are the 


delight and tuition of ours. Six hundred 
years ago Roger Bacon explained the 
precession of the equinoxes, and the 
necessity of reform in the calendar ; 
looking over how many horizons as far as 
into Liverpool • and New Yoik, he 
announced that machines can be con- 
structed to drive ships more rapidly than 
a whole galley of roweis could do, nor 
would they need any1:hing but a pilot to 
steer; carriages, to n^ove with incredible 
speed, without aid of animals ; and 
machines to fly into the air like birds. 
Even the races that we still call savage or 
semi-savage, and which preserve their 
arts from immemorial traditions, vindicate 
their faculty by the skill with which they 
make their yam-cloths, pipes, bows, boats, 
and carved war-clubs. The war-praa of 
the Malays in the Japanese waters struck 
Commodore Perry by its close resemblance 
to the yacht " America." 

As we find thus a certain equivalent in 
the ages, there is also an equipollcnce of 
j individual genius to the nation which it 
: represents. It is a curious fact, that a 
certain enormity of ctiture makes a man 
invisible to his contemporaries. 'Tis 
always hard to go beyond your public. 
If they are satisfied with cheap perfor- 
mance, you will not easily arrive at better, 

! If they know what is good, and require it, 
you will aspire and burn until you achieve 
it. But, from time to time, in history, 
men are born a whole age too soon. The 
founders of nations, the wise men and 
inventors, who shine afterwards as their 
gods, were probably martyrs in their own 
time. All the transcendent writers and 
artists of the irorld — 'tis doubtful who 
they were — they are lifted so fast into 
mythology — Homer, Menu, Viasa, Daeda- 
lus, Hermes, Zoroaster, even Sweden- 
borg and Shakspeare. The early names 
are too typical—Homer, or blifid man; 
Menu, or man ; Viasa, compiler ; DasdaluSj 
cunning; Hermes, interpreter: and so 
on. Probably, the men were so great, so 
I self-fed, that the recognition of them by 
others was not necessary to them. And 
everyone has heard the remark (too often, 
I fear, politely made), that the philosopher 
was above his audience. I think I have 
seen two or three great men who, for that 
reason, were of no account among 
scholars. 

But Jove is in his reserves. The trutl^ 
the ho^ of any time, must always bo 
sought in the minorities, Michael Angelo 
was the conscience of Italy. We grow 
free with his name, and find U oraa* 



PROGRESS OP CULTURE. 


624 

mental now; but in his own days, his 
friends were few; and you would need 
to hunt him in a conventicle with the 
Methodists of the era, namely, Savonarola, 
Vittoria Colonna, Contafini, Pole, Occhino 
— superior souls, the religious of that day, 
drawn to each other, and under some 
cloud with the rest of the world — re- 
formers, the radicals of the hour, banded 
against the corruptions of Rome, and as 
lonely and as hated as Dante before them. 

I find the single mind equipollent to a 
multitude of minds, say to a nation of 
minds, as a drop of water balances the 
sea ; and under this view the problem of 
culture assumes wonderful interest. 
Culture implies all which gives the mind 
possession of its own powers ; as language 
to the critic, telescope to the astronomer. 
Culture alters the political status of an 
individual. It raises a rival royalty in a 
monarchy. 'Tis king against king. It is 
ever the romance of history in all dynas- 
ties — the co-presence of the revolutionary 
force in intellect. It creates a personal 
independence which the monarch cannot 
look down, and to which he must often 
succumb. If a man know the laws of 
nature better than other men, his nation 
cannot spare him ; nor if he knows the 
power of numbers, the secret of geometry, 
of algebra, on which the computations of 
astronomy, of navigation, of machinery, 
rest. If he can converse better than any 
other, he rules the minds of men where- 
ever he goes ; if he has imagination, he 
intoxicates men. If he has wit, he 
tempers despotism by epigrams : a song, 
a satire, a sentence, has played its part 
in great events. Eloquence a hundred 
times has turned the scale of war and 
peace at will. The history of Greece is 
at one tinva reduced to two persons — 
Philip, or the successor of Philip, on one 
Bide, and Demosthenes, a private citizen, 
on the other. If he has a military genius, 
like Belisarius, or administrative faculty, 
like Chatham or Bismarck, he is the king’s 
king. If a theologian of deep convictions 
and strong understanding carries his 
country with him, like Luther, the state 
becomes Lutheran, in spite of the Em- 
peror, as Thomas i. Becket overpowered 
the English Henry, Wit has great 
charter. Popes and kings and Councils 
pi Ten are very sharp with their censor- 
fhips and inquisitions, but it is on dull 
people. Some Dante or Angelo, Rabelais, 
Hafiz, Cervantes, Erasmus, Stranger, 
Bettine von Amim, or whatever genuine 
^it of the old iniautable class, is always 


allowed. Kings feel that this IS that 
which they thefiiselves represent ; there 
is no red-kerchiefed, red-shirted rebel, 
but loyalty, kingship. This is real king- 
ship, and their own only titular. Even 
manners are a distinction, which, we 
sometimes see, are nc^t to be overborne 
by rank or official power, or even by other 
eminent talents, since they too proceed 
from a certain deep innate perception of 
fit and fair. 

It is too plain that a cultivated labourer 
is worth many untaught labourers ; that a 
scientific engineer, with instruments and 
steam, is worth many hundred men, many 
thousands ; that Archimedes or Napoleon 
is worth for labour a thousand thousands i 
and that in every wise and genial soul we 
have England, Greece, Italy, walking, and 
can dispense with populations of navvies. 

Literary history and all history is a 
record of the power of minorities, and of 
minorities of one. Every book is written 
with a constant secret reference to the 
few intelligent persons whom the writer 
believes to exist in the million. The 
artist has always the masters in his eye, 
though he affect to flout them. Michael 
Angelo is thinking of Da Vinci, and 
Raffaella is thinking of Michael Angelo* 
Tennyson would give his fame for a ver- 
dict in his favour from Wordsworth. 
Agassiz and Owen and Huxley affect to 
address the American and English people, 
but are really writing to each other, 
Everett dreamed of Webster. McKay, 
the ship-builder, thinks of George Steers ; 
and Steers, of Pook, the naval constructor. 
The names of the masters at the head of 
each department of science, art, or func- 
tion are often little known to the world, 
but are always known to the adepts ; as 
Robert Bro\m in botany, and Gauss in 
mathematics. Often the master is a 
hidden man, Ixit not to the true student ; 
invisible to all the rest, resplendent to 
him. All his own work and culture form 
the eye to see the master. In politics, 
mark the importance of minorities of one, 
as of Phocion, Cato, Lafayette, Arago, 
The importance of the one person who 
lias the truth over nations who have it 
not, is because power obeys reality, and 
not appearance ; according to quality, 
and not quantity. How much more are 
men than. nations! the wise and good 
souls, the stoics in Greece and Romo, 
Socrates in Athens, and saints in Judaea, 
Alfred the king, Shakspearo ,tho poet, 
Newton the philosopher, the perceiver, 
and obeyer of truth--tbaa the foolish and 



PROGRESS 0 . 

lensual millions around them! so that 
wherever a true man appears, everything 
usually reckoned great dwarfs itself; he is 
the only great event, and it is easy to lift 
him into a mythological personage. 

Then the next step in the series is the 
equivalence of the soul to nature. I said 
that one of the distinctions of our cen- 
tury has been the devotion of cultivated 
men to natural science. The benefits 
thence derived to the arts and to civiliza- 
tion are signal and immense. They are 
felt in navigation, in agriculture, in manu- 
factures, in astronomy, in mining, and in 
war. But over all their utilities, I must 
hold their chief value to be metaphysical. 
The chief value is not the useful powers 
he obtained, but the test it has been of 
the scholar. He has accosted this im- 
measurable nature, and got clear answers. 
He understood what he read. He found 
agreement with himself. It taught him 
anew the reach of the human mind, and 
that it was citizen of the universe. 

The first quality we know in matter is 
centrality — we call it gravity — which holds 
the universe together, which remains 
pure and indestructible in each mote, as 
in masses and planets, and from each 
♦torn rays out illimitable influence. To 
this material essence answers Truth, in 
Ihe intellectual world — Truth, whose 
centre is everywhere, and its circum- 
ference nowhere, whose existence we 
cannot disimagine — the soundness and 
health of things, against which no blow 
can be struck but it recoils on the striker 
—Truth, on whose side we always heartily 
are. And the first measure of a mind is 
its centrality, its capacity of truth, and its 
adhesion to it. 

When the correlation of the sciences 
was announced by Oersted and his col- 
leagues, it was no surprise ; we were 
found already prepared for it. The fact 
stated accorded with the auguries or 
divinations of the human mind. Thus, if 
we should analyze Newton’s discovery, 
we should say that if it bad not been 
anticipated by him, it would not have 
been found. We are told that, in posting 
his books, after the French had measured 
on the earth a degree of the meridian, 
when he saw that his theoretic results 
were approximating that empirical one, 
his hand shook, the figures danced, and 
he was so agitated that he was forced to 
call in an assistant to finish the computa- 
tion. Why agitated ? but because, when 
he saw, in the fall of an apple to the 
ground, the fall of the earth to the sun, of 


? CULTURE, 62 % 

the sun and of all suns to the centre, that 
perception was accompanied by the spasm 
of delight by which the intellect greets a 
fact more immense still, a fact really 
universal — holdpg in intellect as in matter 
in morals as in intellect — that atom draws 
to atom throughout nature, and truth to 
truth throughout spirit? His law was 
only a particular of the more universal 
law of centrality. Every law in nature, 
as gravity, centripetence, repulsion; 
polarity, undulation, has a counterpart in 
the intellect. The laws above are sisters 
of the laws below. Shall we study the 
mathematics of the sphere, and not its 
causal essence also ? Nature is a fable, 
whose moral blazes through it. There is 
no use in Copernicus, if the robust perio- 
dicity of the solar system does not show 
its equal perfection in the mental sphere 
— the periodicity, the compensatory 
errors, the grand reactions. I shall never 
believe that centrifugence and centri- 
petence balance, unless mind heats and 
meliorates, as well as the surface and 
soil of the globe. ^ 

On this power, this all-dissolving unity * 
the emphasis of heaven and earth is laid. 
Nature is brute but as this soul quickens 
it ; Nature always the effect, mind the 
flowing cause. Nature, we find, is ever 
as is our sensibility ; it is hostile to igno- 
rance — plastic, transparent, delightful, to 
knowledge. Mind carries the law ; his- 
tory is the slow and atomic unfolding, 
All things admit of this extended sense, 
and the universe at last is only prophetic, 
or, shall we say, symptomatic, of vaster 
interpretation and results. Nature an 
enormous system, but in mass and in 
particle curiously available to the humblest 
need of the little creature that walks on 
the earth I The immeasurableness of 
Nature is not more astounding than his 
power to gather all her omnipotence into 
a manageable rod or wedge, bringing it 
to a hair-point for the eye and hand of 
the philosopher. 

Here stretches out of sight, out of con- 
ception even, this vast Nature, daunting, 
bewildering, but all penetrable, all self- 
similar — an unbroken unity — and the 
mind of man is a key to the whole. Ho 
finds that the universe, as Newton said, 
** was made at one cast ; ” the mass is 
like the atom— the same chemistry, 
gravity, and conditions. The asteroldo 
are the chips of an old star, and a mete^. 
oric stone is a chip of an asteroid. Aa 
language is in the alphabet, so is entire 
Nature—the play of all its laws — in one 



PROGRESS OF CULTURE. 


6^6 

atom. The good wit finds the law from a 
single observation— the law, and its limi- 
tations, and its correspondences — as the 
farmer finds his cattle by a footprint. 

* State the sun, and you state the planets, 
and conversely,” 

Whilst its power is offered to his hand, 
its laws to his science, not less its beauty 
speaks to his taste, imagination, and sen- 
timent. Nature is sanative, refining, 
elevating. How cunningly she hides 
every wrinkle of her inconceivable anti- 
quity under roses, and violets, and morn- 
ing dew ! Every inch of the mountains is 
scarred by unimaginable convulsions, yet 
the new day is purple with the bloom of 
youth and love. Look out into the July 
night, and see the broad belt of silver 
flame which flashes up the half of heaven, 
fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the 
meadow-flies. Yet the powers of num- 
bers cannot compute its enormous age — 
lasting as space and time— embosomed 
in time and space. And time and space 
— what are they ? Our first problems, 
which we ponder all our lives through, 
and leave where wt, found them ; whose 
outrunning immensity, the old Greeks 
believed, astonished the gods themselves ; 
of whose dizzy vastitudes all the worlds of 
God are a mere dot on the margin ; im- 
possible to deny, impossible to believe. 
Yet the moral element in man counter- 
oises this dismaying immensity, and i 
ereaves it of terror. The highest flight 
to which the muse of Horace ascended 
was in that triplet of lines in which he 
described the souls which can calmly 
confront the sublimity of nature : — 

Hunc solem, et Stellas, et dccedentia certis 
Tempora monientis, sunt qui formidine nulla 
Imbuti spectant.” 

The sublime point of experience is the 
value of a sufficient man. Cube this 
value by the meeting of two such — of two 
or more such— who understand and sup- 
port each other, and you have organised 
victory. At any time, it only needs the 
contemporaneous appearance of a few 
superior and attractive men to give a new 
and noble turn to the public mind. 

The benefactors we have indicated 
were exceptional men, and great because 
exceptional. The question which the 
present age urges with increasing em- 
phasis, day by day, is, whether the high 
qualities which distinguish them can be 
Imparted ? The poet Wordsworth asked, 
** What one is, why may not millions be ?” 
Why not? Knowledge exists to be im- 


parted. Curiosity is lying In «rait for 
every secret. Thd inquisitiveness of the 
child to hear runs to meet the eagerness 
of the parent to explain. The air does not 
rush to fill a vacuum with such speed as 
the mind to catch the expected fact 
Every artist was first an amateur. The 
ear outgrows the tongue, is sooner ripe 
and perfect ; but the tonyue is always 
learning to say what the ear has taught it, 
and the hand obeys the same lesson. 

There is anything but humiliation in 
the homage men pay to great men ; it is 
sympathy, love of the same things, effort 
to reach them — the expression of their 
hope of what they shall become, when the 
obstructions of their mal-formation and 
mal-education shall bo trained away. 
Great men shall not impoverish, but en- 
rich us. Great men— the age goes on 
their credit; but all the rest, when their 
wires are continued, and not cut, can do 
as signal things, and in new parts of 
nature. ” No angel in his heart acknow- 
ledges any one superior to himself but 
the Lord alone.” There is not a person 
here present to whom omens that should 
astonish have not predicted his future, 
have not uncovered his past. The dreams 
of the night supplement by their divina- 
tion the imperfect experiments of the 
day. Every soliciting instinct is only a 
hint of a coming fact, as the air and 
water that hang invisibly around us hasten 
to become solid in the oak and the 
animal. Bat the recurrence to high 
sources is rare. In our daily intercourse, 
we go with the crowd, lend ourselves to 
low fears and hopes, become the victims 
of our own arts and implements, and dis- 
use our resort to the Divine oracle. It is 
only in the sleep of the soul that we help 
ourselves by so many ingenious crutches 
and machineries. What is the use of 
telegraphs ? What of newspapers ? To 
know in each social crisis how men feci 
in Kansas, in California, the wise man 
waits for no mails, reads |no telegrams, 
He asks his own heart. If they are made 
as he is, if they breathe the like air, cat 
of the same wheat, have wives and chil- 
dren, he knows that their joy or resent- 
ment rises to the same point as his own. 
The inviolate soul is in perpetual tele- 
graphic communication with the Source 
of events, has earlier information, a 
private despatch, which relieves him of the 
terror which presses on the rest of the 
community. 

The foundaticQ of culture, as of charac- 
ter, is at last the txoral sentiment. This 



PROGRESS OF CULTURE. 


in the fountain of power, preserves its 
eternal newness, draw^ its own rent out 
of every novelty in science. Science cor- 
rects the old creeds ; sweeps away, with 
every new perception, our infantile cate- 
chisms ; and necessitates a faith commen- 
surate with the grander orbits and uni- 
versal laws which it discloses. Yet it 
does not surprise the moral sentiment. 
That was older, and awaited expectant 
these larger insights. 

The affections are the wings by which 
the intellect launches on the void, and is 
borne across it. Great love is the inven- 
tor and expander of the frozen powers, 
the feathers frozen to our sides. It was 
the conviction of Plato, of Van Helmont, 
of Pascal, of Swedenborg, that piety is an 
essential condition of science, that great 
thoughts come from the heart. It happens 
sometimes that poets do not believe their 
own poetry ; they are so much the less 
poets. But great men are sincere. Great 
men are they who see that spiritual is 
stronger than any material force, that 
thoughts rule the world. No hope so 
bright but is the beginning of its own ful- 
filment. Every generalization shows the 
Way to a larger. Men say. Ah I if a man 
could impart his talent, instead of his 
performance, what mountains of guineas 
would be paid ! Yes, but in the measure 
of his absolute veracity he does impart it. 
NVhen he does not play a part, does not 
wish to shine, when he talks to men with 
the unrestrained frankness which children 
use with each other, he communicates 
himself, and not his vanity. All vigour 
is contagious, and when we see creation 
wo also begin to create. Depth of charac- 
ter, height of genius, can only find 
nourishment in this soil. The miracles 
of genius always rest on profound convic- 
tions which refuse to be analyzed. En- 
thusiasm is the leaping lightning, not to 
bo measured by the horse-power of the 
understanding. Hope never spreads her 
golden wings but on unfathomable seas. 
The same law holds for the intellect as 
for the will. When the will is absolutely 
surrendered to the moral sentiment, that 
is virtue ; when the wit is surrendered to 
intellectual truth, that is genius. Talent 
for talent’s sake is a bauble and a show. 
Talent working with joy in the cause of 
universal truth lifts the possessor to new 
power as a benefactor. I know well to 
what assembly of educated, reflecting, 
guccossful, and powerful persons I speak. 
Yours is the part of those who have 
received much« It is an old legend of 


527 

just men, Noblesse oblige; or, superior 
advantages bind you to larger generosity. 
Now I conceive that, in this economical 
world, where every drop and every crumb 
is husbanded, the transcendent powirs of 
mind were not aneant to be misused. The 
Divine Nature carries on its administra- 
tion by good men. Here you are set 
down, scholars and idealists, as in a bar- 
barous age ; amidst insanity, to calm and 
guide it ; amidst fools and blind, to see 
the right done ; among violent proprie- 
tors, to check self-interest, stone-blind 
and stone-deaf, by considerations of 
humanity to the workman and to his 
child ; amongst angry politicians swelling 
with self-esteem, pledged to parties, 
pledged to clients, you are to make valid 
the large considerations of equity and 
good sense ; under bad governments, to 
force on them, by your persistence, goed 
laws. Around that immovable persis- 
tency of yours, statesmen, legislatures, 
must revolve, denying you, but not less 
forced to obey. 

We wish to put the ideal rules into 
practice, to offer libei^y, instead of chains, 
and see whether liberty will not discloso 
its proper checks ; believing that a free 
press will prove safer than the censor- 
ship; to ordain free trade, and believe 
that it will not bankrupt. us; universal 
suffrage, believing that it will not carry 
us to mobs, or back to kings again. I 
believe that the checks are as sure as the 
springs. It is thereby that men are great, 
and have great allies. And who are the 
allies? Rude opposition, apathy, slander 
— even these. Difficulties exist to be 
surmounted. The great heart will no 
more complain of the obstructions that 
make success hard, than of the iron walls 
of the gun which hinder the shot from 
scattering. It was walled round with iron 
tabe with that purpose, to give it irresis- 
tible force in one direction. A strenuous 
soul hates cheap successes. It is the 
ardour of the assailants that makes the 
vigour of the defender. The great are 
not tender at being obscure, despised, 
insulted. Such only feel themselves in 
adverse fortune. Strong men greet war, 
tempest, hard times, which search til! 
they find resistance and bottom. They 
wish, as Pindar said, “ to tread the floors 
of hell, with necessities as hard as iron.” 
Periodicity, reacting, are laws of mind |s 
well as of matter. Bad kings and gover- 
nors help us, if only they are bad enough. 
In England, it was the game laws which 
exasperated the farmers to carry tht* 



628 PERSIAN POETRY. 


Reform Bill. It was what we call planta- 
tion manners which drove peaceable, for- 
giving New England to emancipation 
without phrase. In the Rebellion, who 
were our best allies ? Always the enemy. 
The community of scholars do not know 
their own power, and dishearten each 
other by tolerating political baseness in 
their members. Now, nobody doubts the 
power of manners, or that wherever high 
society exists, it is very well able to 
exclude pretenders. The intruder finds 
himself uncomfortable, and quickly de- 
parts to his own gang. It has been our 
misfortune that the politics of America 
have been often immoral. It has had the 
worst effect on character. We are a 
complaisant, forgiving people, presuming, 
perhaps, on a feeling of strength. But it 
is not by easy virtue, where the public is 
concerned, that heroic results are ob- 
tained. We have suffered our young men 
of ambition to play the game of politics 
and take the immoral side without loss! 
of caste — to come and go without rebuke. 
But that kind of loose association does 
not leave a man his own master. He 
cannot go from the good to the evil at 
pleasure, and then back again to the good. 
There is a text in Swedenborg, wdiich tells 
in figure the plain truth. He saw in vision 
the angels and the devils ; but these two 
companies stood not face to face and hand 
in hand, but foot to foot — these perpen- 
dicular up, and those perpendicular down. 

Brothers, I draw new hope from the 
atmosphere we breathe to-day, from the 


healthy sentiment of th€ American people, 
and from the avowed aims and tenden- 
cies of the educated class. The age has 
new convictions. We know that in cer- 
tain historic periods there have been times 
of negation— a decay of thought, and a 
consequent national decline ; that in 
France, at one time, there was almost a 
repudiation of the moral sentiment, in 
what is called, by distinction, society— 
not a believer within the Church, and 
almost not a theist out of it. In England, 
the like spiritual disease affected the 
upper class in the time of Charles II., and 
down into the reign of the Georges. But 
it honourably distinguishes the educated 
class here, that they believe in the succour 
which the heart yields to the intellect, and 
draw greatness from its inspirations. And 
when I say the educated class, I know 
what a benignant breadth that word has 
I — new in the world — reaching millions 
j instead of hundreds. And more, when 1 
look around me, and consider the sound 
material of which the cultivated class hero 
is made up — what high personal worth, 
what love of men, what hope, is joined 
with rich information and practical 
power, and that the most distinguished 
by genius and culture are in this class of 
benefactors — I cannot distrust this great 
knighthood of virtue, or doubt that the 
interests of science, of letters, of politics 
and humanity, are safe. I think their 
hands are strong enough to hold up the 
Republic. I read the promise of better 
times and of greater men, 


PERSIAN 

To Baron von Hammer Purg stall, who 
died in Vienna in 1856, we owe our best 
knowledge of the Persians. He has 
translated into German, besides the 
“Divan,” of Hafiz, specimens of two 
hundred poets, who wrote during a period 
of five and a half centuries, from a.d. 
050 to 1600. The seven masters of the 
Persian Parnassus — P'irdousi, Enweri, 
Nisami, Dschelaleddin, Saadi, Hafiz, and 
Dschami— have ceased to be empty names ; 
and others, like Ferideddin Attar and 
Omar Chiam, promise to rise in Western 
estimation. That for which mainly books 
exist is communicated in these rich 
extracts. Many qualities go to make a 
good telescope— as the largeness of the 
field, facility of sweeping the meridian, 
icbromatic purity of lenses, and so forth 


POETRY. 

— but the one eminent value is the space- 
penetrating power; and there are many 
virtues in books — but the essential value 
is the adding of knowledge to our stock, 
by the record of new facts, and, better, by 
the record of intuitions, which distribute 
facts, and are the formulas which super- 
sede all histories. 

Oriental life and society, especially in 
the Southern nations, stand in violent 
contrast with the multitudinous detail, 
the secular stability, and the vast average 
of comfort of the Western nations. Life 
in the East is fierce, short, hazardous, 
and in extremes. Its elements are few 
and simple, not exhibiting the long range 
and undulation of European existence, 
but rapidly reaching the best and the 
worst. The rich feed on fruits and gamib 



PERSIAN 

the poor on a watermelon’s peel. All or 
nothing is the genius Oriental life. 
Favour of the Sultan, or his displeasure, 
is a question of Fate. A war is under- 
taken for an epigram or a distich, as in 
Europe for a duchy. The proiinc sun, 
and the sudden and rank plenty which his 
heat engenders, makes subsistence easy. 
On the other side, the desert, the simoom, 
the mirage, the lion, and the plague 
endanger it, and life hangs on the contin- 
gency of a skin of water more or less. 
The very geography of old Persia showed 
these contrasts. “ My father’s empire,” 
said Cyrus to Xenophon, "is so large, 
that people perish with cold, at one 
extremity, whilst they are suffocated with 
heat, at the other.” The temperament 
of the people agrees with this life in 
extremes. Religion and poetry are all 
their civilization. The religion teaches 
an inexorable destiny. It distinguishes 
only two days in each man’s history — his 
birthday, called the Day of the Lot, and 
the Day of Judgment. Courage and 
absolute submission to what is appointed 
him are his virtues. 

The favour of the climate, making sub- 
sistence easy, and encouraging an outdoor 
life, allows to the Eastern nations a highly 
intellectual organisation — leaving out of 
view, at present, the genius of the Hin- 
doos (more Oriental in every sense), whom 
no people have surpassed in the grandeur 
vf their ethical statement. The Persians 
and the Arabs, with great leisure and few 
books, are exquisitely sensible to the 
pleasures of poetry. Layard has given 
some details of the effect which the im~ 
provvisatori produced on the children of 
the desert. " When the bard improvised 
an amatory ditty, the young chief’s 
excitement was almost beyond control. 
The other Bedouins were scarcely less 
moved by these rude measures, whicn 
have the same kind of effect on the wild 
tribes of the Persian mountains. Such 
verses, chanted by their self-taught poets, 
or by the girls of their encampment, will 
drive warriors to the combat, fearless of 
death, or prove an ample reward, on their 
return from the dangers of the ghason, or 
the fight. The excitement they produce 
exceeds that of the grape. He who would 
understand the influence of the Homeric 
ballads in the heroic ages should witness 
the effect which similar compositions 
have upon the wild nomads of the East.” 
Elsewhere he adds, ” Poetry and flowers 
are the wine and spirits of the Arab; a 
eoupiet is equal to a bottle, and a rose 


POETRY. t2i 

to a dram, without the evil effect of 
either.” 

The Persian Poetry rests on a myth- 
ology whose few iegenab are connected 
with the Jewish history, and the anterior 
traditions of the §entateuch. The princi- 
pal figure in tna illusions of Eastern 
poetry is Solomon. Solomon had three 
talismans : first, the signet-ring, by which 
he commanded the spirits, on the stone 
of which was engraven the name of God ; 
second, the glass, in which he saw the 
secrets of his enemies, and all the causes 
of all things, figured ; the third, the east 
wind, which was his horse. His counsellor 
was Simorg, king of birds, the all-wise 
fowl, who had lived ever since the begin- 
ning of the world, and now lives alone on 
the highest summit of Mount Kaf. No 
fowler has taken him, and none nov/ living 
has seen him. By him Solomon was taught 
the language of birds, so that he heard 
secrets whenever he went into his gar- 
dens. When Solomon travelled, his 
throne was placed on a carpet of green 
silk, of a length and breadth sufficient for 
all bis army to stand upon — men placing 
themselves on his right hand, and the 
spirits on his left. When all were in 
order, the east wind, at his command, 
took up the carpet and transported it, 
with all that were upon it, whither ha 
pleased — the army of birds at the same 
time flying overhead, and forming a canop> 
to shade them from the sun. It is related 
that, when the Queen of Sheba came to 
visit Solomon, he had built, against her 
arrival, a palace, of which the floor or 
pavement was of glass, laid over running 
water, in which fish were swimming. The 
Queen of Sheba was deceived thereby, 
and raised her robes, thinking she was to 
pass through the water. On the occasion 
of Solomon’s marriage, all the beasts, 
laden with presents, appeared before his 
throne. Behind them all came the ant 
with a blade of grass : Solomon did not 
despise the gift of the ant. Asaph, the 
vizier, at a certain time, lost the seal of 
Solomon, which one of the Dews, or evil 
spirits, found, and, governing in the name 
of Solomon, deceived the people. 

Firdousi, the Persian Homer, has written 
in the " Shah Nameh” the annals of the 
fabulous and heroic kings of the country t 
of Karun (the Persian Croesus), the im- 
measurably rich gold-maker, who, with 
all his treasures, lies buried not far from 
the Pyramids, in the sea which bears hia 
name ; of Jamschid, the binder of demons, 
whose reign lasted seven hundred years? 



PERSIAN POETRY. 


630 

of Kai Kaus, in whose palace, built by 
demons on Alberz, gold and silver and 
precious stones were used so lavishly 
that, in the brilliancy produced by their 
combined effect, night and day appeared 
the same; of Afrasiyab, strong as an 
elephant, whose shadow extended for 
miles, whose heart was bounteous as the 
ocean, and his hands like the clouds when 
rain falls to gladden the earth. The 
crocodile in the rolling stream had no 
safety from Afrasiyab. Yet when he came 
to fight against the generals of Kaus, he 
was but an insect in the graso of Rustem, 
who seized him by the girdle, and dragged 
him from his horse. Rustem felt such 
anger at the arrogance of the King of 
Mazinderan, that every hair on his body 
started up like a spear. The gripe of his 
hand cracked the sinews of an enemy. 

These legends — with Chiser, the foun- 
tain of life, Tuba, the tree of life — the 
romances of the loves of Leila and Med- 
schum, of Chosru and Schirin, and those 
of the nightingale for the rose— pearl- 
diving, and the virtues of gems — the 
cohol, a cosmetic jby which pearls and 
eyebrows are indelibly stained black — 
the bladder in which musk is brought — 
the down of the lip, the mole on the 
cheek, the eyelash — lilies, roses, tulips, 
and jasmines— make the staple imagery 
of Persian odes. 

The Persians have epics and tales, but, 
for the most part, they affect short poems 
and epigrams. Gnomic verses, rules of 
life conveyed in a lively image, especially 
in an image addressed to the eye, and 
contained in a single stanza, were always 
current in the East ; and if the poem is 
long, it is only a string of unconnected 
verses. They use an inconsecutiveness 
quite alarming to Western logic, and the 
connection between the stanzas of their 
longer odes is much like that between 
the refrain of our old English ballads. 

The sun shines fair on Carlisle wallf" 

or 

“The rain it raineth every day,” 
and the main sto^. 

Take, as specimens of these gnomic 
verses, the following : — 

The secret that should not be blown. 

Not one of thy nation must know j 
You may padlock the gate of a town, 

But never the mouth of a foe." 

Q: this of Omar Chiam : — 

*»On earth’s wide thoroughfares below 

Two only men contented go: 

Who knows what's right and what's forbid, 

And ho from whom is knowledge bid,” 


Here is a poem on a melon by Adsched 
of Meru : — 

** Colour, taste, and smell, smaragdus, sugafi 
and musk— 

Amber for the tongue, for the eye a picture 
rare— 

If you cut the fruit in slices, every slice a 
crescent fair — 

If you leave it whole, the full harvest mooa 
is there,” 

Hafiz is the prince of Persian poets, 
and in his extraordinary gifts adds to soma 
of the attributes of Pindar, Anacreon, 
Horace, and Burns, the insight of a mystic, 
that sometimes affords a deeper glance 
at Nature than belongs to either of tlieso 
bards. He accosts all topics with an 
easy audacity. ” He only,” ho says, "is 
fit for company, who knows how to prize 
earthly happiness at the value of a night- 
cap. Our father Adam sold Paradise for 
two kernels of wheat, then blame me 
not, if I hold it dear at one grapestonc.” 
He says to the Shah, “Thou wlio rulest 
after words and thoughts which no ear 
has heard and no mind has thought, abid4 
firm until thy young destiny tears off his 
blue coat from the old graybeard of the 
sky,” He says : — 

** 1 batter the wheel of heaven 
When it rolls not rightlv by; 

I ani not one of the snivellers 
Who fall thereon and die.” 

The rapidity of his turns is always 
surprising us ; — 

” See how tlie roses burn I 

Bring wine to (jueiich the fire I 
Alas I the flames come up with U8— 

We perish with desire.’* 

After the manner of his nation, he 
abounds in pregnant sentences which 
might be engraved on a sword-blade and 
almost on a ring. 

” In honour dies he to whom the great 
seems ever wonderful.” 

” Here is the sum, that, when one door 
opens, another shuts.” 

” On every side is an ambush laid by 
the robber-troops of circumstance ; hence 
it is that the horseman of life urges on his 
courser at headlong speed.” 

“The earth is a host who murders hia 
guests.” 

“ Good is what goes on the road of 
Nature. On the straight way the travelled 
never misses.” 

“Alas \ till now I had not known 

My guide and Fortune’s guide are one*** 

“The understanding’s copper coin 

Counts DVt with the tjold of love#’* 



PERSIAN POETRY, 


•*Tis writ on Paradise s gate, 

* Woe to the dupe that yields to Fate I • 

'Tho world is a bride superbly dressed— 

Who weds her for dowry must pay his 
soul.’* 

** Loose the knots of the heart ; never think 
on thy fate : 

No Euclid yet has disentangled that snarl.” 

” There resides in the grieving 
A poison to kill ; 

Beware to go near them 
'Tis pestilent still.” 

Harems and wine-shops only give him 
a new ground of observation, whence to 
draw sometimes a deeper moral than 
regulated sober life affords — and this is 
foreseen : — 

'* I will be drunk and down with wine ; 

Treasures we find in a ruined house.” 

Riot, he thinks, can snatch from the deeply 
hidden lot tho veil that covers it 

“To be wise the dull brain so earnestly throbs, 

Bring bands of wine for the stupid head.” 

“ The Builder of heaven 
Hath sundered the earth, 

So that no footway 
Leads out of it forth. 

“On turnpikes of wonder 

Wine leads the mind forth, 

Straight, sidewise, and upward, 

West, southward, and north, 

“ Stands the vault adamantine 
Until the Doomsday; 

The wine-cup shall ferry 
Thee o'er it away.'* 

That hardihood and self-equality of 
every sound nature, which result from 
tlve feeling that the spirit in him is entire 
and as good as the world, which entitle 
the poet to speak with authority, and 
make him an object of interest, and his 
every phrase and syllable significant, are 
in Hafiz, and abundantly fortify and en- 
noble his tone. 

His was the fluent mind in which every 
thought and feeling came readily to the 
lips. ” Loose the knots of the heart,” he 
says. We absorb elements enough, but 
have not leaves and lungs for healthy 
perspiration and growth. An air of 
sterility, of incompetence to their proper 
aims, belongs to many who have both 
experience and wisdom. But a large 
utterance, a river that makes its own 
shores, quick perception and correspond- 
ing expression, a constitution to which | 
every morrow is a new day, which is equal 
to the needs of life, at once tender and 
bold, with great arteries— this generosity 
of ebb and flow satisfies, and we should 


631 

be willing to die when our time comes 
having had our swing and gratification. 
The difference is not so much in the 
quality of men’s thoughts as in the power 
of uttering them. What is pent and 
smouldered in tht> dumb actor is not pent 
in the poet, but passes over into new 
form, at once relief and creation. 

The other merit of Hafiz is his intel- 
lectual liberty, which is a certificate of 
profound thought. We accept the religions 
and politics into which we fall; and it is 
only a few delicate spirits who are sufficient 
to see that the whole web of convention is 
the imbecility of those whom it entangles 
— that the mind buffers no religion and no 
empire but its own. It indicates this 
respect to absolute truth by the use it 
makes of the symbols that are most stable 
I and reverend, and therefore is always pro- 
I Yoking the accusation of irreligion. 

I Hypocrisy is the perpetual butt of hia 
I arrows. 

” Let us draw the cowl through the brook of 
wiue.*’ 

He tells his mistress, ^hat not the dervis, 
or the monk, but the lover, has in his heart 
the spirit which makes the ascetic and the 
saint; and certainly not their cowls and 
mummeries, but her glances, can impart 
to him the fire and virtue needful for such 
self denial. Wrong shall not be wrong to 
Hafiz for the name’s sake. A law or 
statute is to him what a fence is to a 
nimble school-boy— a temptation for a 
jump. *' We would do nothing but good, 
else would shame come to us on the day 
when the soul must hie hence ; and should 
they then deny us Paradise, the Houris 
themselves would forsake that, and coma 
out to us. • 

His complete intellectual emancipation 
he communicates to the reader. There ia 
no example of such facility of allusion, 
such use of all materials. Nothing is too 
high, nothing too low, for his occasion. He 
fears nothing, he stops for nothing. Love 
is a leveller, and Allah becomes a groom, 
and heaven a closet, in his daring hymns 
to his mistress or to his cupbearer. This 
boundless charter is the right of genius. 

We do not wish to strew sugar or bottled 
spiders, or try to make mystical divinity 
out of the song of Solomon, much less out 
of the erotic and bacchanalian songs of 
Hafiz. Hafiz himself is determined to de^ 
all such hypocritical interpretation, ana 
tears off his turban and throws it at tho 
head of the meddling dervis, and throws 
his glass after the turban. But the love ot 

z s 



PERSIAN POETRY. 


63a 

the wine of Hafiz is not to be confounded 
with vulgar debauch. It is the spirit in 
which the song is written that imports, 
and not the topics. Hafiz praises wine, 
roses, maidens, boys, birds, mornings, and 
music, to give vent to his^xmmense hilarity 
and sympathy with every form of beauty 
and joy ; and lays the emphasis on these to 
mark his scorn of sanctimony and base 
prudence. These are the natural topics 
and language of his wit and perception. 
But it is the play of wit and the joy of song 
that he loves ; and if you mistake him for 
a low rioter he turns short on you with 
verses which express the poverty of sensual 
joys, and to ejaculate with equal fire the 
most unpalatable affirmations of heroic 
sentiment and contempt for the world. 
Sometimes it is a glance from the height 
of thought, as thus : — 

“ Bring wine; for, in the audience-hall 
of the soul’s independence, what is sentinel 
or Sultan ? what is the wise man or the 
intoxicated ? ” 

And sometimes his feast, feasters, and 
world are only one pebble more in the 
eternal vortex and r', volution of Fate : — 

I am : what I am 
My dust will be again.** 

A saint might lend an ear to the riotous 
fun of Falstaff ; for it is not created to 
excite the animal appetites, but to vent 
the joy of a supernal intelligence. In all 
poetry Pindar’s rule holds — rui'«T 09 ipoivti, 
it speaks to the intelligent ; and Hafiz is a 
poet for poets, whether he write, as some- 
times, with a parrot’s, or, as at other 
limes, with an eagle’s quill. 

Every song of Hafiz affords new proof of ^ 
the unimportance of your subject to suc- 
ccr>s, provided only the treatment be 
cordial. In general, what is more tedious 
than dedications or panegyrics addressed 
to grandees? Yet in the “Divan” you 
would not skip them, since his muse 
seldom supports him better. 

“ What lovelier forms things wear, 

Now that the Shah comes back 1 ” 

And again ; 

“Thy foes to hunt, thy enviers to strike down* 

Poises Arcturus aloft morning and evening hia 
spear.” 

It is told of Hafiz, that, when he had 
written a compliment to a handsome 
y^uth — 

^ Take my heart in thy band, O beautiful boy 

of Shiraz t 

1 would give for the mole on tby cheek 
Samarcand and Buebara I * 


the verses came to the ears of Timour in 
his palace. Ti.nour taxed Hafiz with 
treating disrespectfully his two cities, to 
raise and adorn which he had conquered 
nations. Hafiz replied, “ Alas, my lord, if 
I had not been so prodigal, I had not been 
so poor I ” 

The Persians had a mode of establishing 
copyright the most secure of any con- 
trivance with which we are acquainted. 
The law of the ghaselle^ or shorter ode, 
requires that the poet insert his name in 
the last stanza. Almost everyone of several 
hundreds of poems of Hafiz contains his 
name thus interwoven more or less closely 
with the subject of the piece. It is itself 
a test of skill, as this self-naming is not 
quite easy. Wo remember but two or 
three examples in English poetry • that 
of Chaucer, in the “House of Fame”; 
Jonson’s epitaph on his son — 

“ Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry ” ( 
and Cowley’s — 

“ The melancholy Cowley lay.” 

But it is easy to Hafiz, It gives him the 
opportunity of the most playful self-asser- 
tion, always gracefully, sometimes almost 
in the fun of Falstaff, sometimes with 
feminine delicacy. He tells us, “The 
angels in heaven were lately learning his 
last pieces.” He says, “ The fishes shod 
their pearls, out of desire and longing as 
soon as the ship of Hafiz swims liie 
deep.” 

“ Out of the East, and out of the West, no man 
understands rne ; 

O, the happier I, who confide to none but tlia 
wind I 

This morning heard I how the lyre of the 
stars resounded, 

* Sweeter tones have we heard from llaliz l’ ” 
Again — 

“ I heard the harp of the planet Venus, 
and it said in the early morning, “ I am tho 
disciple of the sweet-voiced Hafiz 1 ’ ” 

And again — 

“ When Hafiz sings, the angels hearken, 
and Anaitis, the leader of the starry host, 
calls even the Messiah in heaven out to tho 
dance.” 

“ No one has unvailed thoughts liko 
Hafiz, since tho locks of the Word-brido 
were first curled.” 

“Only he despises the verse of Hafu 
who is not himself by nature noble.” 

But wo must try to give some of these 
poetic flourishes tho metrical form which 
they seem to require ; — 

“ Fit for the Pleiads’ azure chord 
Xbe soDg.« 1 snngi tbo pcaiU 1 bored.** 



633 


PERSIAN 

Another 

1 have no hoarded treasnrei 
Yet have 1 rich content; 

The first from Allah to the Shaih, 

The last to Hafiz went.” 

Another : — 

" Hi>»h heart, O Hafiz ! though not thine 
Fine gold and silver ore ; 

More worth to thee the gift of song, 

And the clear insight more.*’ 

Again : — 

“ O Hafiz 1 speak not of thy need: 

Are not these verses thine? 

Then all the poets are agreed, 

No man can less repine,” 

He asserts his dignity as bard and in- 
spired man of his people. To the vizier 
returning from Mecca he says — 

“ Boast not rashly, prince of pilgrims, of 
thy fortune. Thou hast indeed seen the 
temple; but I, the Lord of the temple. 
Nor has any man inhaled from the musk- 
bladder of the merchant, or from the 
musky morning-wind, that sweet air which 
I am permitted to breathe every hour of 
the day.” 

And with still more vigour in the following 
lines : — 

" Oft have I said, I say it once more 
1, a wanderer, do not stray from myself, 
i am a kind of pairot ; the mirror is holden to 
me ; 

What the Eternal says, I stammering say 
again. 

Give rno what you will; I eat thistles as 
roses, 

And according to my food I grow and I give. 
Scorn me not, but know I have the pearl, 

And am only seeking one to receive it.*’ 

And his claim has been admitted from 
the first. The muleteers and camel driverg, 
on their way through the desert, sing 
snatches of his songs, not so much for the 
thought, as for their joyful temper and 
tone ; and the cultivated Persians know his 
poems by heart. Yet Hafiz does not appear 
to have set any great value on his songs, 
since his scholars collected them for the 
first time after his death. 

In the following poem the soul is figured 
as the Phoenix alighting on Tuba, the tree 
of Life : — 

** My phoenix long ago secured 

His nest in the sky-vault’s cope; 

In the body’s cage immured, 

He was weary of lite’s hope. 

** Bound and round this heap of ashes 
Now flies the bird amain, 

But in that odorous niche of beavefi 
Nettles the bird again. 


POETRY. 

'* Once flies he upward, he will perch 
On Tuba’s golden bough ; 

His home is on that fruited arch 
Which cools the blest below. 

If over this world of ours 
His wings r»y phoenix spread, 

How gracious fails on land and sea 
The soul-refreshing shade 1 

“Either world inhabits he 

Sees oft below him planets roll ; 

His body is all of air compact. 

Of Allah’s love his soul.” 

Here is an ode which is said to be a 
favourite with all educated Persians ; — 

“Cornel the palace of heaven rests on aciy 
pillars — 

Come, and bring me wine ; our days arc wind. 

I declare myself the slave of that masculine 
soul 

Which ties and alliance on earth once for- 
ever renounces. 

Told I thee yester-morn how the Iris of 
heaven 

Brought to me in my cup a gospel of joy ? 

0 high-flying falcon 1 the Tree of Life is thy 
peich ; 

This nook of grief fits thee ill for a nest. 
Hearken 1 th^ call to thee down from tb# 
rail) parts ofheaven^ 

1 cannot divine w'hat holds thee here in a net 
I, too, have a counsel foi thee ; O, mark it and 

keep it, 

Since I received the same from the Master 
above ; 

Seek not for faith or for truth in a world of 
light-minded girls; 

A thousand suitors reckons this dangcroua 
bride. 

Cumber thee not tor the world, and this my 
precept forget not, 

'Tis but a toy that a vagabond sweetheart 
has left us. 

Accept whatever befalls ; uncover thy brow 
from thy locks ; 

Never to m© nor to thee was option im- 
parted ; 

Neither endurance nor belongs to the 

laugh of the rose. 

The loving nightingale mourns — cause enow 
for mourning— 

Why envies the bird the streaming verses of 
Hafiz ? 

Know that a god bestowed ou him eloquent 
speech.” 

The cedar, the cypress, the palm, the 
olive, and fig tree, the birds that inhabit 
them, and the garden flowers, are never 
wanting in these musky verses, and are 
always named with effect. “ The willows,' 
he says, ” bow themselves to every wind, 
out of shame for their unfruitfulness.” 
We may open anywhere on a floral cata- 
logue. * 

By breath of beds of roses drawn, 

I found the grove in the morning pure, 
In the concert of the nightingales 
My drunken brain to cure. 



634 PERSIAN 

" With unrelated glance 

1 looked the rose in the eye; 

The rose in the hour of gloaming 
Flamed like a lamp hard-by. 

‘ She was of her beauty proud, 

And prouder of her yputh, 

The while unto her flaming heart 
The bulbul gave his truth. 

•* The sweet narcissus closed 
Its eye, with passion pressed ; 

The tulips out of envy burned 
Moles in their scarlet breast. 

‘‘The lilies white prolonged 

Their sworded tongue to the smell ; 

The clustering anemones 
Their pretty secrets tell.” 

Presently we have, — 

All day the rain 

Bathed the dark hyacinths in vain, 

The flood may pour from morn till night 
Nor wash the pretty Indians white.'* 

And so onward, through many a page. 

This picture of the first days of Spring, 
from Enweri, seems to belong to Hafiz : — 

” O’er the garden water goes the wind alone 
To rasp and to polish the cheek of the 
wave ; 

The fire is quenclfed on the dear hearth- 
stone, 

But it burns again on the tulips brave.*' 

Friendship is a favourite topic of the 
Eastern poets, and they have matched on 
this head the absoluteness of Montaigne. 
Hafiz says — 

“Thou learnest no secret until thou 
knowest friendship ; since to the unsound 
no heavenly knowledge enters,” 

Ibn Jemin writes thus : — 

** Whilst I disdain the populace, 

I find no peer in higher place. 

Friend is a word of royal lone, 

Friend is a poem all alone. 

Wisdom is like the elephant. 

Lofty and rare Inhabitant : 

He dwells in deserts or in courts • 

With hucksters he has no resorts.” 

Dschami says — 

* A friend is he, who, hunted as a foe, 

So much the kindlier shows him than 
before ; 

Throw stones at him, or ruder javelins 
throw, 

He builds with stone and steel a firmer 
floor." 

Of the amatory poetry of Hafiz we must 
be very sparing in our citations, though 
it forms the staple of the ” Divan.” He 
kas run through the whole gamut of pas- 
sion — from the sacred to the borders, and 
over the borders, of the profane. The 
•ame confusion of high and low, the 
celerity of flight and aumion which our 


POETRY. 

colder muses forbid, is habitual to hiiil« 
From the plain ^:ext — 

” The chemist of love 

Will this perishing mould, 

Were it made out of mire. 

Transmute into ;^old 

he proceeds to the celtbration of his pas- 
sion ; and nothing in his religious c/r in 
his scientific traditions is too sacred or 
too remote to afford a token of his mis- 
tress. The Moon thought she knew her 
own orbit well enough ; but when she saw 
the curve on Zuleika’s cheek, she was at 
a loss : — 

” And since round lines are drawn 
My darling’s lips about, 

The very Moon looks puzzled on. 

And hesitates in doubt 
If the sweet curve that rounds thy mouth 
Be not her true way to the South." 

His ingenuity never sleeps : — 

** Ah, could I hide me in my song, 

To kiss thy lips from which it flows I — 

and plays in a thousand pretty court- 
esies : — 

** Fair fall thy soft heart I 

A good work wilt thou do ? 

O, pray for the dead 

Whom thine eyelashes slew I ” 

And what a nest has he found for hia 
bonny bird to take up her abode in ! — 

" They strew in the path of kings and czars 
Jewels and gems of price; 

But for thy head I will plcck down stars, 

[ And pave thy way with eyes, 

” I have sought for thee a costlier dome 
I Than Mahmoud’s palace high, 

And thou, returning, find thy home 
In the apple of Love’s eye.’’ 

Then we have all degrees of passionate 
abandonment - 

” I know this perilous love-lane 
No whither the traveller leads. 

Yet my fancy the sweet scent of 
Thy tangled tresses feeds. 

**In the midnight of thy locks, 

I renounce the day; 

In the ring of thy rose-lips. 

My heart forgets to pray," 

And sometimes his love rises to a re- 
ligious sentiment : — 

** Plunge in ;^on angry waves, 

Renouncing doubt and care; 

The flowing of the seven broad seas 
Shall never wet thy hair. 

” Is Allah’s face on thee 

Bending with love benign, 

And thou not less on Allah’s eye 
O fairest I tumest thine.” 



PERSlAtf 

We to thede fragments of Hafiz a 
few specimens from othe( poets. 

NISAMI. 

• While roses bloomed along the plain. 

The nightingale to the falcon said, 

‘ Why, of all birds, must thou be dumb ? 

With closed mouth thou utterest. 

Though dying, no last word to man. 

Yet sitt’st thou on the hand of princes, 

And feedest on the grouse’s breast, 

Whilst I, who hundred thousand jewels 
Squander in a single tone, 

Lo I I feed myself with worms, 

And my dwelling is the thorn.’ — 

The falcon answered, ‘ Be all ear : 

I, experienced in affairs. 

See nfty things, say never one ; 

But thee the people prizes not, 

Who, doing nothing, say’st a thousand. 

To me, appointed to the chase. 

The king’s hand gives the grouse’s breast; 

Whilst a chatterer like thee 

Must gnaw worms in the thorn. Farewelll"* 

The following passages exhibit the 
strong tendency of the Persian poets to 
contemplative and religious poetry and to 
allegory. 

ENWERI. 

BODY AND SOUL. 

••A painter in China once painted a hall— 

Such a web never hung on an emperor’s 
wall— 

One half from his brush with rich colours 
did run. 

The other he touched with a beam of the sun: 
So that all which delighted the eye in one 
side, 

The same, point for point, in the other re- 
plied. 

•* In thee, friend, that Tyrian chamber is found ; 
Thine the star-pointing roof, and the base on 
the ground : 

Is one half depicted with colours less bright ? 
Beware that the counterpart blazes with 
light I ” 

IBN JEMIN. 

• I read on the porch of a palace bold 

In a purple tablet letters cast — 

'A house though a million winters old, 

A house of earth comes down at last ; 

Then quarry thy stones from the crystal All. 
And build the dome that shall not fall.' ” 

“ What need," cries the mystic Feisi, 
f of palaces and tapestry ? What need 
even of a bed ? ’* 

“ The eternal Watcher who doth wake 
All night in the body’s earthen chest. 

Will of thine arms a pillow make, 

And a bolster of thy breast,” 

Ferideddin Attar wrote the “ Bird Con- 
versations, ’ a mystical tale, in whic!i the 


POEtUY. 63s 

birds, coming together to choose their 
king, resolre on a pilgrimage to Mount 
Kaf, to pay their homage to the Simorg. 
From this poem, written five hundred 
years ago, we cite the following passage, 
as a proof Of the identity of mysticism in 
all periods. The tone is quite modern. 
In the fable, the birds wtre soon weary of 
the length and difficulties of the way, and 
at last almost all gave out. Three only 
persevered, and arrived before the throne 
of the Simorg. 

** The bird-soul was ashamed ; 

Their body was quite annihilated: 

They had cleaned themselves from the dust. 
And were by the light ensouled. 

What was, and was not— the Past— 

Was wiped out from their breast. 

The sun from near-by beamed 
Clearest light into their soul ; 

The resplendence of the Simorg beamed 
As one back from all three. 

They knew not, amazed, if they 
Were either this or that. 

They saw themselves all as Simorg, 
Themselves in the eternal Simorg. 

When to the Simorg up they looked, 

They beheld him among themselves; 

And when they looked on each other. 

They saw themselves the Simorg. 

A single look grouped the two parties, 

The Simorg emerged, the Simorg vanished 
This in that, and that in this, 

As the world has never heard. 

So remained they, sunk in wonder. 
Thoughtless in deepest thinking, 

And quite unconscious of themselves. 
Speechless prayed they to the Highest 
To open this secret, 

And to unlock Thou and We, 

There came an answer without tongue. 

‘The highest is a sun mirror; 

Who comes to Him sees himself therein. 
Sees body and soul, and soul and body ; 
When you came to the Simorg, 

Three therein appeared to you, 

And had fifty of you come, 

So had you seen yourselves as many. 

Him has none of ns yet seen. 

Ants see not the Pleiades. 

Can the gnat grasp with his teeth 
The body of the elephant ? 

What you see is He not ; 

What you hear is He not. 

The Vvolleys which you traverse, 

The actions which you perform, 

They He under our treatment 
And among our properties. 

You as three birds are amazed, 

Impatient, heartless, confused; 

Far over you am I raised, 

Since I am in act Simorg. 

Ye blot out my highest being. 

That yc may find yourselves on my throne | 
For ever ye blot out yourselves, ^ 

As shadows in the sun. Farewell I ' ** 



636 


INSPIRATION. 


INSPIRATION. 


It was Watt who told King George III. 
that he dealt in an article of which kings 
were said to be foncf — Power. 'Tis 
certain that the one thing we wish to 
know is, where power is to be bought. 
But we want a finer kind than that of 
commerce ; and every reasonable man 
would give any price of house and land, 
and future provision, for condensation, 
concentration, and the recalling at will of 
high mental energy. Our money is only 
a second best. We would jump to buy 
power with it, that is, intellectual percep- 
tion moving the will. That is first best. 
But we don’t know where the shop is. If 
Watt knew, he forgot to tell us the 
number of the street, There are times 
when the intellect is so active that every- 
thing seems to run to meet it. Its supplies 
are found without much thought as to 
studies. Knowledge runs to the man, and 
the man runs to knowledge. In spring, 
when the snow melts, the maple-trees 
flow with sugar, anU you cannot get tubs 
fast enough ; but it is only for a few days. 
The hunter on the prairie, at the right 
season, has no need of choosing his 
ground ; east, west, by the river, by the 
timber, he is everywhere near his game. 
But the favourable conditions are rather 
the exception than the rule. 

The aboriginal man in geology, and in 
the dim lights of Darwin's microscope, is 
not an engaging figure. We are very glad 
that he ate his fishes and snails and 
marrow-bones out of our sight and hear- 
ing, and that his doleful experiences were 
got through with so very long ago. They 
combed his mane, they pared his nails, 
ciU off his tail, set him on end, sent him 
to school, and made him pay taxes, before 
he could begin to write his sad story for 
the compassion or the repudiation of his 
descendants, who are all but unanimous 
to disown him. We must take him as we 
And him, pretty well on in his education, 
and, in all our knowledge of him, an 
interesting creature, with a will, an in- 
vention, an imaginatiorv a conscience^ 
and an inextinguishable hope. 

The Hunterian law of arresied develop- 
ment is not confined 'to vegetable and 
animal structure, but reaches the human 
intellect also. In the savage man, thought 
is infantile ; and in the civilised, unequal, 
and ranging up and down a long scale. 
In the best races it is rare and imperfect. 


In happy moments it is reitforced, and 

carries out what were rude suggestioos to 
larger scope, and to clear and grand con- 
clusions. The poet cannot see a natural 
phenomenon which does not express to 
him a correspondent fact in his mental 
experience ; he is made aware of a power 
to carry on and complete the metamor- 
phosis of natural into spiritual facts. 
Everything which we hear for the first 
time was expected by the mind; the 
newest discovery was expected. In the 
mind we call this enlarged power Inspira- 
tion. I believe that nothing great and 
lasting can be done except by inspiration, 
by leaning on the secret augury. The 
man’s insight and power are interrupted 
and occasional ; he can see or do this or 
that cheap task at will, but it steads him 
not beyond. He is fain to make the 
ulterior step by mechanical means. It 
cannot so be done. That ulterior step is 
to be also by inspiration ; if not through 
him, then by another man. Every real 
step is by what a poet called " lyrical 
glances,” by lyrical facility, and never by 
main strength and ignorance. Years of 
mechanic toil will only seem to do it ; it 
will not so be done. 

Inspiration is like yeast. 'Tis no 
matter in which of half a dozen ways 
you procure the infection; you can apply 
one or the other equally well to your 
purpose, and get your loaf of bread. And 
every earnest workman, in whatever kind, 
knows some favourable conditions for his 
task. When I wish to write on any topic, 
'tis of no consequence what kind of book 
or man gives me a hint or a motion, nor 
how far off that is from my topic. 

Power is the first good. Rarey can 
tame a wild horse ; but if he could give 
sp«ed to a dull horse, were not that 
better ? The toper finds, without asking, 
the road to the tavern, but the poet does 
not know the pitcher that holds his nec- 
tar. Every youth should know the way 
to prophecy as surely as the miWer 
uDcltirstands how to let on the water or the 
engineer the steam. A rush of thoughts 
is the only conceivable prosperity tliat 
can come to U3. Fine clothes, equipages, 
villa, park, social consideration, cannot 
cover up real poverty and insignificance 
l^rom my own eyes, or from others like 
mine. 

Thoughts let us into realities. Neither 



INSPIRATION. 


miracle, not magic, nor any religious tra- 
dition, not the immortality of the private 
soul, is incredible, aftftr we have ex- 
perienced an insight, a thought, I think 
it comes to some men but once in their 
h te, sometimes a religious impulse, some- 
times an intellectual insight. But what 
jve want is consecutiveness. 'Tis with us 
a flash of light, then a long darkness, 
then a flash again. The separation of 
our days by sleep almost destroys iden- 
tity. Could we but turn these fugitive 
sparkles into an astronomy of Copernican 
worlds ! With most men, scarce a link of 
memory holds yesterday and to-day 
together. Their house and trade and 
families serve them as ropes to give a 
coarse continuity. But they have forgot- 
ten the thoughts of yesterday; they say 
to-day what occurs to them, and some- 
thing else to-morrow. This insecurity of 
possession, this quick ebb of power — as 
if life were a thunder-storm wherein you 
can see by a flash the horizon, and then 
cannot see your hand— -tantalizes us. We 
cannot make the inspiration consecutive. 
A glimpse, a point of view that by its 
brightness excludes the purview, is 
granted, but no panorama. A fuller in- 
spiration should cause the point to flow 
and become a line, should bend the line 
and complete the circle. To-day the 
electric machine will not work, no spark 
will pass; then presently the world is 
all a cat’s back, all sparkle and shock, | 
Sometimes there is no sea-fire, and again 
the sea is aglow to the horizon. Some- 
times the i-Eolian harp is dumb all day 
in the window, and again it is garrulous, 
and tells all the secrets of the w'orld. In 
June the morning is noisy with birds; in 
August they are already getting old and 
silent. 

Hence arises the question, Ate these 
moods in any degree within control ? If 
W’e knew how to command them 1 But 
where is the Franklin with kite or rod for 
this fluid ?~a Franklin who can draw off 
electricity from Jove himself, and convey 
it into the arts of life, inspire men, take 
them off their feet, withdraw them from 
the life of trifles and gain comfort, and 
make the world traiisparer.t, so that they 
can read the symbols of nature ? What 
metaphysician has undertaken to enu- 
merate the tonics of the torpid mind, the 
rules for the recovery of inspiration? 
That is least within control which is best 
In them. Of the modus of inspiration we 
have DO knowledge. But in the experience 
of meditative men tliere is a certain agree- 


637 

ment as to the conditions of reception. 
Plato, in his seventh Epistle, notes that 
the perception is only accomplished by 
long familiarity with the objects of intel- 
lect, and a life according to the things 
themselves. “ Then a light, as if leaping 
from a fire, will dn a sudden be enkindled 
in the soul, and will then itself nourish 
itself.” 

He said again, “The man who is his 
own master knocks in vain at the doors 
of poetry.” The artists must be sacrificed 
to their art. Like the bees, they must 
put their lives into the sting they give. 
What is a man good for without enthu- 
siasm ? and what is enthusiasm but this 
daring of ruin for its object ? There are 
thoughts beyond the reaches of our souls ; 
we are not the less drawn to them. The 
moth flies into the flame of the lamp ; 
and Swedenborg must solve the problems 
that haunt him, though he be crazed or 
killed. 

There is genius as well in virtue as in 
intellect. ’Tis the doctrine of faith over 
works. The raptures of goodness are 
as old as history and new with this 
morning’s sun. The# legends of Arabia, 
Persia, and India are of the same com- 
plexion as the Christian. Socrates, 
Menu, Confucius, Zertusht — we recognize 
in all of them this ardour to solve the 
hints of thought. 

I hold that ecstasy will be found nor- 
mal, or only an example on a higher plana 
of the same gentle gravitation by which 
stones fall and rivers run. Experience 
identifies. Shakspeare seems to you 
miraculous ; but the wonderful juxta- 
positions, parallelisms, transfers, which 
his genius affected were all to him locked 
together as links of a chain, and the mode 
precisely as conceivable and familiar to 
higher intelligeiica as the index-making 
of the literary hack. The result of the 
hack is inconceivable to the type-setter 
who waits for it. 

We must prize our own youth. Later, 
we want heat to execute our plans : the 
good-will, the knowledge, the whole 
armoury of means, are all present; but 
a certain heat that once used not to fail 
refuses its office, and all is vain until this 
capricious fuel is supplied. It seems a 
semi-animal heat : as if tea, or wine, or 
sea-air, or mountains, or a genial com- 
panion, or a new thought suggested ia 
book or conversation, could fire the tr%n, 
wake the fancy, and the clear perception. 
Pit-coal— where to find it ? ’Tis of no uso 
that your engine is made like a watch^ 



C38 ItfSPlRATION. 


that 70U are a good workman, and know 
how to drive it, if there is no coal. We 
are waiting until some tyrannous idea 
emerging out of heaven shall seize and 
bereave us of this liberty with which we 
are falling abroad. \\^ell, we have the 
same hint or suggestion, day by day. " I 
am not,” says the man, “ at the top of 
my condition to-day, but the favourable 
hour will come when I can command all 
my powers, and when that will be easy to 
do which is at this moment impossible.” 
See how the passions augment our force 
— anger, love, ambition 1 sometimes sym- 
pathy, and the expectation of men. 
Garrick said, that on the stage his great 
paroxysms surprised himself as much as 
his audience. If this is true on this low 
plane, it is true on the higher. Sweden- 
borg’s genius was the perception of the 
doctrine “ that the Lord flows into the 
spirits of angels and of men;”!and all 
poets have signalized their consciousness 
of rare moments when they were superior 
to themselves — when a light, a freedom, 
a power came to them, which lifted them 
to performances far better than they could 
reach at other time^ so that a religious 
poet once told me that ” he valued his 
poems, not because they were his, but 
because they were not.” He thought the 
angels brought them to him. 

Jacob Behmen said : " Art has not 
wrote here, nor was there any time to 
consider how to set it punctually down 
according to the right ufriderstanding of 
the letters, but all was ordered according 
to the direction of the spirit, which often 
went on haste — so that the penman’s 
hand, by reason he was not accustomed 
to it, did often shake. And, though I 
could have written in a more accurate, 
fair, and plain manner, the burning fire 
often forced forward with speed, and the 
hand and pen must hasten directly after 
it, for it comes and goes as a sudden 
shower. In one quarter of an hour I saw 
and knew more, than if I had been many 
years together at an university.” 

The depth of the notes which we acci- 
dentally sound on the strings of nature is 
out of all proportion to our taught and 
ascertained faculty, and might teach us 
what strangers and novices we are, vaga- 
bond in this universe of pure power to 
which we have only tht& smallest key. 
^lerrick said 

not every day that I 
Fitted am to prophesy ; 

No, but when the spirit fills 
The fantastic panicleti 


Full of fire, then I write 
As the Goddess doth indite. 

Thus, enraged*, my lines are hu.led. 

Like the Sibyl’s, through the werid t 
Look how next the holy fire 
Either slakes, or doth retire; 

So the fancy cools— till when 
That brave spirit comes again.” 

Bonaparte said : ” There is no man mors 
pusillanimous than I, when I make a 
military plan. I magnify all the dangers 
and all the possible mischances. I am in 
an agitation utterly painful. That does 
not prevent me from appearing quite 
serene to persons who surround me. I 
am like a woman with child, and when 
my resolution is taken, all is forgot except 
whatever can make it succeed.” 

There are to be sure, certain risks in 
this presentiment of the decisive per- 
ception, at In the use of ether or al- 
cohol. 

** Great wits to madness nearly are allied ; 

Both serve to make our poverty our pride.** 

Aristotle said : “No great genius was 
ever without some mixture of madness, 
nor can anything grand or superior to the 
voice of common mortals be spoken 
except by the agitated soul.” We might 
say of these memorable moments of life, 
that we were in them, not they in us. We 
found ourselves by happy fortune in an 
illuminated portion or meteorous zone, 
and passed out of it again, so aloof was 
it from any will of ours. “ ’Tis a principle 
of war,” said Napoleon, “ that when you 
can use the lightning, ’tis better than 
cannon.” 

How many sources of inspiration can 
we count ?.As many as our affinities. But 
to a practical purpose we may reckon a 
few of these. 

I. Health is the first muse, comprising 
the magical benefits of air, landscape, and 
bodily exercise on the mind. The Arabs 
say that ” Allah does not count from life 
the days spent in the chase,” that is, 
those are thrown in. Plato thought 
“ exercise would almost cure a guilty 
conscience.” Sydney Smith said : ” You 
will never break down in a speech 
on the day when you have walked twelve 
miles.” 

I honour health as the first muse, and 
sleep as the condition of health. Sleep 
benefits mainly by the sound health it 
produces ; incidentally also by dreams, Into 
whose farrago a divine lesson is sometimes 
slipped. Life is in short cycles or periods ; 
we are quickly tired, but we have rapid 
rallies. A man it spent by his worki 



iMSPiRATlOtt. 


itdrved, pr^iStfatd ; hd will not lift his | 
hand to save his life ; h^can never think I 
more. He sinks into deep sleep and wakes | 
with renewed youth, with hope, courage, j 
fertile in resources, and keen tot daring 
adventure. j 

•* Sleep is like death, and after sleep 
The world seems new begun ; 

White thoughts stand luminous and firm, 
Like statues in the sun ; 

Refreshed from supersensuous founts, 

The soul to clearer vision mounts.*’* 

A man must be able to escape from his 
cares and fears, as well as from hunger 
and want of sleep ; so that another Arabian 
proverb has its coarse truth : “ When the 
belly is full, it says to the head, sing, 
fellow ; ’* The perfection of writing is 
when mind and body are both in key; 
when the mind finds perfect obedience in 
the body. And wine, no doubt, and all 
fine food, as of delicate fruits, furnish 
some elemental wisdom. And the fire, 
too, as it burns in the chimney ; for I 
fancy that my logs, which have grown so 
long in sun and wind by Walden, are a 
kind of muses. So of all the particulars 
of health and exercise, and fit nutriment, 
and tonics. Some people will tell you 
there is a great deal of poetry and fine 
sentiment in a chest of tea. 

a. The experience of writing letters is 
one of the keys to the modus of inspiration. 
When we have ceased for a long time to 
have any fulness of thoughts that once 
made a diary a joy as well as a necessity, 
and have come to believe that an image or 
a happy turn of expression is no longer at 
our command, in writing a letter to a 
friend wo may find that we rise to thought 
and to a cordial power of expression that 
costs no effort, and it seems to us that 
this facility may be indefinitely applied 
and resumed. The wealth of the mind in 
this respect of seeing is like that of a 
looking-glass, which is never tired or worn 
by any multitude of objects wnich it re- 
flects. You may carry it all round the 
world, it is ready and perfect as ever for 
pew millions. 

3. Another consideration, though it will 
not so much interest young men, will 
cheer the heart of older scholars, namely, 
that there is diurnal and secular rest. As 
there is this daily renovation of sensi- 
bility, so it sometimes, if rarely, happens 
that after a season of decay or eclipse, 
darkening months or years, the faculties 
revive to their fullest force, One of the 

* AUlnghauit 


6j0 

best facts I know in metaphysical science 
is Niebuhr’s joyful record that, after his 
genius for interpreting history had failed 
him for several years, this divination re- 
turned to him. As this rejoiced me, so 
does Herbert’s pjem “ The Flower.’ His 
health had broken down early, he had lost 
his muse, and in this poem he says : — 

Aud DOW in age 1 bud aga ji, 

After so many deaths I live and write; 

I once more smell the dew and rain. 

And relish versing : O my only lights 
It cannot be 
That 1 am he 

On whom thy tempests fell all night,** 

His poem called “The Forerunners’* 
also has supreme interest. I understand 
“ The Harbingers ’’ to refer to the signs 
of age and decay which he detects in him- 
self, not only in his constitution, but in 
his fancy and his facility and grace in 
writing verse; and he signalises his de- 
light in this skill, and his pain that the 
Herricks, Lovelaces, and Marlows, or who- 
ever else, should use the like genius in 
language to sensual purpose, and consoles 
himself that his own ^ith and the divine 
life in him remain to Sim unchanged, un- 
harmed. 

4. The power of the will is sometimes 
sublime ; and what is will for, if it cannot 
help us in emergencies ? Seneca says of 
an almost fatal sickness that befell him, 
“ The thought of my father, who could not 
have sustained such a blow as my death, 
restrained me; I commanded myself to 
live.'* Goethe said to Eckermann, “ I 
work more easy when the barometer is 
high than when it is low. Since I know 
this, I endeavour, when the barometer is 
low, to counteract the injurious effect by 
greater exertion, and my attempt is suc- 
cessful.’’ 

“To the persevering mortal the blessed 
immortals are swift.’’ Yes, for they know 
how to give you in one moment the solu- 
tion of the riddle you have pondered for 
months. “ Had I not lived with Mirabeau,’’ 
says Dumont, “ 1 never should havefcnown 
all that can be done in one day, or, rather, 
in an interval of twelve hours. A day to 
him was of more value than a week or a 
month to others. To-morrow to him was 
not the same impostor as to most others.” 

5. Plutarch affirms that “ souls are 
naturally endo\^d with the faculty of 
prediction, and the chief cause that excites 
this faculty and virtue is a certain teih- 
perature of air and winds.” My anchorite 
thought it “ sad that atmospheric influ- 
ences should bring to our dust ih% 



^40 INSPIRATION. 


communion of the soul with the Infinite.” 
But I am glad that the atmosphere should 
be an excitant, glad to find the dull rock 
itself to be deluged with Deity — to be 
theist, Christian, poetic. The fine influ- 
ences of the morning few can explain, but 
all will admit, GoetKe acknowledges 
them in the poem in which he dislodges 
the nightingale from her place as Leader 
of the Muses. 

MUSAGETES. 

“Often in deep midnights 
I called on the sweet muses. 

No dawn shines, 

And no day will appear: 

But at the right hour 

The lamp brings me pious light, 

That it, instead of Aurora or Phoebus, 

May enliven my quiet industry. 

But they left me lying in sleep 
Dull and not to be enlivened, 

And alter every late morning 
Followed unprofitable days. 

When now the spring stirred, 

1 said to the nightingales; 

‘ Dear nightingales, trill 
Early, O, early before my lattice, 

Wake me out of the deep sleep 
Which mightily chains the young man.’ 

But the love-filled singers 
Poured by night before my window 
Their sweet melodies. — 

Kept awake my dear soul, 

Roused tender new longings 
In my lately touched bosom, 

And so the night passed. 

And Aurora found me sleeping; 

Yea, hardly did the sun wake me« 

At last it has become summer, 

And at the first glimpse of morning 
The busy early fly stings me 
Out of my sweet slumber. 

Unmerciful she returns again : 

When often the half-awake victim 
Impatiently drives her ofi, 

Siic calls hither the unscrupulous sisters, 

And from my eyelids 
Sweet sleep must depart. 

Vigorous, I spring from my couch. 

Seek the beloved Muses, 

Find them in the beech grove, 

Pleaded to receive uie ; 

And I thank the annoying insect 
For many a golden hour. 

Stand, then, for me, ye tormenting creatures. 
Highly praised by the poet 
As the true Musagetes," 

The French have a proverb to the 
effect that not the day only, but all things 
have their morning—"// ny a qu 6 U 
matin en toutes choses^ * And it is a 
primal rule to defend your morning, to 
k(j^p all its |dews on, and with fine fore- 
sight to relieve it from any jangle of 
affairs, even from the question, Which 
task ? 1 remember a capital prudence of 


old President Quincy, who told me that h« 
never went to bed at night until he had 
laid out the studiGs for the next morning, 

I believe that in our good days a well- 
ordered mind has a new thought awaiting 
it every morning. And hence, eminently 
thoughtful men, from the time of Pyth- 
agoras down, have insisted on an hour of 
solitude every day to meet their own 
mind, and learn what oracle it has to 
impart. If a (new view of life or mind 
gives us joy, so does new arrangement. I 
don’t know but we take as much delight 
in finding the right place for an old 
observation, as in a new thought. 

6. Solitary converse with nature ; for 
thence are ejaculated sweet and dreadful 
words never uttered in libraries. Ah 1 
the spring days, the summer dawns, the 
October woods I I confide that my reader 
knows these delicfous secrets, has per- 
haps. 

‘ Slighted Minerva’s learned tongto. 
But leaped with joy when on the wind the sUelJ 
of Clio rung." 

Are you poetical, impatient of trade^ 
tired of labour and affairs ? Do you want 
Monadnoc, Agiocochook—or Ilelvellyn. 
or Piinlimmon, dear to English song, in 
your closet— Caerleon, Provence, Ossian, 
and Cadwallon ? Tie a couple of strings 
across a board and set it in your window, 
and you have an instrument which no 
artist’s harp can rival. It needs no in- 
structed ear ; if you have sensibility, it 
admits you to sacred interiors ; it has the 
sadness of nature, yet, at the changes, 
tones of triumph and festal notes ringing 
out ail measures of loftiness. " Did you 
never observe," says Gray, " ‘ While rock- 
ing winds are piping loud,' that pause, as 
the gust is recollecting itself, and rising 
upon the ear in a shrill and plaintive 
note like the swell of an Aiolian harp ? I 
do assure you there is nothing in the 
world so like the voice of a spirit," Per- 
haps you can recall a delight like it, which 
spoke to the eye, when you have stood by 
a lake in the woods, in summer, and saw 
where little flaws of wind whip spots or 
patches of still water into fleets of ripple.s, 
so sudden, so slight, so spiritual, that it 
was more like the rippling of the Aurora 
Borealis, at night, than any spectacle of 
day. 

7. But the solitudo of nature is not so 
essential as solitude of habit. 1 have 
found my advantage in going in summer 
to a country inn, in winter to a city hotel, 
with a task which would not prosper at 
home. 1 thus secured a more absolute 



WSPIRATIOS, 


seclusion ; for it is almost impossible for a 
housekeeper, who is in the country a small 
farmer, to exclude interftiptions, and even 
necessary orders, though I bar out by 
system all I can, and resolutely omit, to 
my constant damage, all that can be 
omitted. At home, the day is cut into 
short strips. In the hotel, I have no hours 
to keep, no visits to make or receive, and 
I command an astronomic leisure. I 
forget rain, wind, cold and heat. At home 
I remember in my library the wants of 
the farm, and have all too much sympathy. 
I envy the abstraction of some scholars I 
have known, who could sit on a curbstone 
in vStato Street, put up their back, and 
solve their problem. I have more womanly 
eyes. All the conditions must be right for 
my success, slight as that is. What un- 
tunes is as bad as what cripples or stuns 
me. Novelty, surprise, change of scene, 
refresh the artist — “ break up die tiresome 
old roof of heaven into new forms,” as 
Hafiz said. The sea-shore, and the taste 
of two metals in contact, and our enlarged 
powers in the presence, or rather at the 
approach and at the departure of a friend, 
eirid the mixture of lie in truth, and the 
experience of poetic creativeness which is 
not found in staying at home, nor yet in 
travelling, but in transitions from one to 
die other, which must therefore be 
adroitly managed to present as much 
transitional surface as possible— these 
are the types or conditions of this power. 
” A ride near the sea, a sail near the 
shore,” said the ancient. So Montaigne 
travelled with his books, but did not read 
in them, ‘‘/.a Nature aUnt les croise- 
ments" says Fourier. 

I know there is room for whims here ; 
but in regard to some apparent trifles 
there is great agreement as to their an- 
noyance. And the machine with which we 
are dealing is of such an inconceivable 
delicacy that whims also must be re- 
spected. Fire must lend its aid. Wo not 
only want time, but warm time. George 
Sand says, ” I have no enthusiasm for 
nature which the slightest chill will not 
instantly destroy.” And I remember that 
Thoreau, with his robust will, yet found 
certain trifles disturbing the delicacy of 
that health which composition exacted — 
namely, the slightest irregularity, even to 
the drinking too much water on the pre- 
ceding day. Even a steel pen is a nuisance 
to some writers. Some of us may remem- 
ber, years ago, in the English journals, 
the petition, signed by Carlyle, Browning, 
Tennyson, Dickens, and other writers in 


64X 

London, against the license of the organ- 
grinders, who infested the streets near 
their houses, to levy on them blackmail. 

Certain localities, as n?.ountain tops, the 
sea-side, the shores of rivers and rapid 
brooks, natural parks of oak and pine, 
where the grounct is smooth and unencum- 
bered, are excitants of the muse. Every 
artist knows well some favourite retirement. 
And yet the experience of some good 
artists has taught them to prefer the 
smallest and plainest chamber, with one 
chair and table, and with no outlook, to 
these picturesque liberties. William Blake 
said, ” Natural objects always did and do 
weaken, deaden, and obliterate imagina- 
tion in me.” And Sir Joshua Reynolds 
had no pleasure in Richmond ; he used to 
say ” the human face was his landscape.” 
These indulgencies are to be used with 
great caution. Allston rarely left his 
studio by day. An old friend took him, 
one fine afternoon, a spacious circuit into 
the country, and he painted two or three 
pictures as the fruits of tliat drive. But 
he made it a rule not to go to the city on 
two consecutive days. One was rest: 
more was lost time. •The times of force 
must be well husbanded, and the wise 
student will remember the prudence of 
Sir Tristram in Morie d' Arthur, who 
having received from the fairy an enchant- 
ment of six hours of growing strength 
every day, took care to fight in the hours 
when his strength increased ; since from 
noon to night his strength abated. What 
prudence, again, does every artist, every 
scholar, need in the security of his easel 
or his desk ! These must be remote from 
the work of the house, and from all know- 
ledge of the feet that come and go therein. 
Allston, it is said, had two or three rooms 
in different parts of Boston, where he 
could not be found. For the delicate 
muses lose their head, if their attention is 
once diverted. Perhaps if you were sue 
ccssful abroad in talking and dealing with 
men, you would not come back to your 
book-shelf and your task. When the 
spirit chooses you for its scribe to publish 
some commandment, it makes you odious 
to men, and men odious to you, and you 
shall accept that loathesomeness with joy. 
The moth must fly to the lamp, and you 
must solve those questions though you 
die. ^ 

8. Conversation which, when it is best, 
is a series of intoxications. Not Aristofle, 
Bot Kant or Hegel, but conversation, is the 
right metaphysica professor. This is the 
true school of philosophy — this the college 



64 * WSPlRATiOit. 


where you learn What thoughti are, what 
powers lurk in those fugitive gleams, and 
what becomes of them ; how they make 
history. A wise man goes to this game to 
play upon others, and to be played upon, 
and at least as curious tp know what can 
be drawn from himself as what can be 
drawn from them. For, in discourse with 
a friend, our thought, hitherto wrapped in 
our consciousness, detaches itself, and 
allows itself to be seen as a thought, in a 
manner as new and entertaining to us as 
to our companions. For provoi^ation of 
thought, we use ourselves and use each 
other. Some perceptions — I think the 
best— are granted to the single soul ; they 
come from the depth, and go to the depth, 
and are the permanent and controlling 
ones. Others it takes two to find. We 
must be warmed by the fire of sympathy 
to be brought into the right conditions and 
angles of vision. Conversation ; for in- 
tellectual activity is contagious. We are 
emulous. If the tone of the companion 
is higher than ours, we delight in rising 
to it. ’Tis a historic observation that a 
writer must find an audience up to his 
thought, or he will* no longer care to 
impart it, but will sink to their level, or 
be silent. Homer said, “ When two come 
together, one apprehends before the 
other ; " but it is because one thought 
well that the other thinks better : and two 
men of good mind will excite each other’s 
activity, each attempting still to cap the 
other’s thought. In enlarged conversa- 
tions we have suggestions that require 
new ways of living, new books, new men, 
new arts and sciences. By sympathy, 
each opens to the eloquence, and begins 
to see with the eyes of his mind. We 
were all lonely, thoughtless ; and now a 
principle appears to all : we see new rela- 
tions, many truths ; every mind seizes 
tliem as they pass ; each catches by the 
mane one of these strong coursers like 
horses of the prairie, and rides up and 
down in the world of the intellect. We 
live day by day under the illusion that it 
is the fact or event that imports, whilst 
really it is not that which signifies, but the 
use we put it to, or what we think of it. 
We esteem nations important, until we 
discover that a few individuals much more 
concern us ; then, later, tliat it is not at 
last a few individuals,' or any sacred 
heroes, but the lowliness, the outpouring, 
tht large equality to truth, of a single 
mind— as if in the narrow walla of a 
human heart the whole realm of truth, 
the world of morals, the tribunal by which 


the universe Is Judged, fOuhd room tO 
exist. 

9. New poetry'; by which I mean 
chiefly, old poetry that is new to the 
reader. I have heard from persons who 
had practice in rhyming, that it was 
I sufficient to set them on writing verses, 

I to read any original poetry. What is best 
I in literature is the affirming, prophesying, 
spermatic words of men-making poets. 
Only that is poetry which cleanses and 
mans me. 

Words used in a new sense, and figura- 
tively, dart a delightful lustre ; and every 
word admits a new use, and hints ulterior 
meanings. We have not learned the law 
of the mind — cannot control and domesti- 
cate at will the high states of contempla- 
tion and continuous thought. “ Neither 
by sea nor by land," said Pindar, canst 
thou find the way to the Hyperboreans ; " 
neither by idle wishing, nor by rule of 
three or rule of thumb. Yet I find a 
mitigation or solace by providing always 
a good book for my journeys, as Hoiace 
or Martial, or Goethe — some book which 
lifts me quite out of prosaic surroundings, 
and from which I draw some lasting 
knowledge. A Greek epigram out of the 
anthology, a verse of Herrick or Lovelace, 
are in harmony both with sense and 
spirit. 

You shall not read newspapers, nor 
politics, nor novels, nor Montaigne, nor 
the newest French book. You may read 
Plutarch, Plato, Plotinus, Hindoo my- 
thology, and ethics. You may read 
Chaucer, Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Milton 
— and Milton’s prose as his verse ; read 
Collins and Gray; read Hafiz and the 
Trouveurs; nay, Welsh and British my- 
thology of Arthur, and (in your ear) Ossian ; 
fact-books, which all geniuses prize as 
raw material, and as antidote to verbiage 
and false poetry. Fact-books, if the facts 
be well and thoroughly told, are much 
more nearly allied to poetry than many 
books are that are written in rhyme. 
Only our newest knowledge works as a 
source of inspiration and thought, as only 
the outmost layer of liber on the tree, 
l^coks of natural science, especially those 
written by the ancients — geography, 
botany, agriculture, explorations of the 
sea, of meteors, of astronomy — all the 
better if written without literary aim or 
ambition. Every book is good to read 
which sets the reader in a working mood. 
The deep book, no matter bow remote the 
subject, helps us best. 

Neither are these all the sources, nor 



GREATNESS, 


can 1 name all. The receptivity is rare. 
The occasions or predisposing circum- 
stances I could neeer tabulate ; but now 
one, now another landscape, form, colour, 
or companion, or 4 )erhaps one kind of 
sounding word or syllable, “ strikes the 
electric chain with which we are darkly 
bound,” and it is impossible to detect and 
wilfully repeat the fine conditions to which 
v/e have owed our happiest frames of 
mind. The day is good in which we have 
had the most perceptions. The analysis 
is the more difficult, because poppy-leaves 
are strewn when a generalization is made ; 
for I can never remember the circum- 
stances to which I owe it, so as to repeat 
the experiment or put myself in the con- 
ditions. 

* 'Tis the most difficult of tasks to keep 

Heights which the soul iscompeteut to gain.” 

I value literary biography for the hints 


643 

it furnishes frcm so many scholars, in so 
many countries, of what hygiene, what 
ascetic, what gymnastic, what social prac- 
tices their experience suggested and ap^ 
proved. They are, for the most part, men 
who needed on^ a little wealth. Lai ge 
estates, political relations, great hospitali- 
ties, would have been impediments to 
them. They are men whom a book could 
entertain, a new thought intoxicate, and 
hold them prisoners for years perhaps, 
Aubrey and Burton and Wood tell ma 
incidents which I find not insignificant. 

These are some hints towards what is 
in all education a chief necessity, the 
right government, or, shall I not say, the 
right obedience to the powers of the 
human soul. Itself is the dictator; the 
mind itself the awful oracle. All our 
power, all our happiness, consists in our 
reception of its hints, which ever become 
clearer and grander as they are obeyed, 


GREATNESS. 


There is a prize which we are all aiming 
at, and the more power and goodness we 
have, so much more the energy of that 
aim. Every human being has a right to 
it, and in the pursuit we do not stand in 
^ach other’s way. For it has a long scale 
of degrees, a w’ide variety of views, and 
every aspirant, by his success in the pur- 
suit, does not hinder but helps his com- 
etitors. I might call it completeness, 
ut that is later — perhaps adjourned for 
ages. I prefer to call it Greatness. It is 
the fulfilment of a natural tendency in 
each man. It is a fruitful study. It is 
the best tonic to the young soul. And no 
man is unrelated ; therefore we admire 
eminent men, not for themselves, but as 
representatives. It is very certain that 
we ought not to be, and shall not be con- 
tented with any goal we have reached. 
Our aim is no less than greatness ; that 
which invites all, belongs to us all — to 
which we are all sometimes untrue, 
cowardly, faithless, but of which we never 
quite despair, and which, in every sane 
moment, we resolve to make our own. It 
is also the only platform on which all 
men can meet. What anecdotes of any 
man do we wish to hear or read ? Only 
the best. Certainly not those in which 
he was degraded to the level of dulness or 
vice, but those in which he rose above all 
competition obeying a light that shone 


to him alone. This is the worthiest his- 
tory of the world. 

Greatness — what is it? Is there not 
some injury to us, some insult in the 
word ? What we commonly call great- 
ness is only such in our barbarous or 
infant experience, 'Tis not the soldier, 
not Alexander or Bonaparte or Count 
Moltke surely, who represent the highest 
force of mankind ; not tlie strong hand, 
but wisdom and civility, the creation of 
laws, institutions, letters, and art. These 
we call by distinction the humanities ; 
these, and not the strong arm and brave 
heart, which are also indispensable to 
their defence. For the scholars represent 
the intellect, by which man is man ; the 
intellect and the moral sentiment — which 
in the last analysis can never be sepa- 
rated. Who can doubt the potency of an 
individual mind, who sees the shock given 
to torpid races — torpid for ages — by 
Mahomet ; a vibration propagated over 
Asia and Africa ? What of Menu ? what 
of Buddha ? of Shakspeare ? of Newton ? 
of Franklin ? 

There are cagtain points of identity in 
which these masters agree. Self-respect 
is the early form in which greatness 
appears. The man in the tavern main- 
tains his opinion, though the whole crowd 
takes the other side ; we are at once 
drawn to him. The porter or trackman 



GRBATNESy 


644 

refuses a reward for finding your purse, 
or for pulling you drowning out of the 
river. Thereby, with the service, you 
have got a moral lift. You say of some 
new person, That man will go far — for 
you see in his mariners that the recogr% 
tion of him by others is not necessary to 
him. And what a bitter-sweet sensation 
when we have gone to pour out our ac- 
knowledgment of a man’s nobleness, and 
found him quite indifferent to our good 
opinion ! They may well fear Fate w^ho 
have any infirmity of habit or aim ; but 
he who rests on what he is, has a destiny 
above destiny, and can make mouths at 
Fortune. If a man’s centrality is incom- 
prehensible to us, we may as well snub 
the sun. There is something in Archi- 
medes or in Luther or Samuel Johnson 
that needs no protection. There is some- 
what in the true scholar which he cannot 
be laughed out of, nor bo terrified or 
bought off from. Stick to your own; 
don’t inculpate yourself in the local, 
social, or national crime, but follow the 
path your genius traces like the galaxy of 
heaven, for you to \s«ilk in. 

A sensible person will soon see the 
folly and wickedness of thinking to please. 
Sensible men are very rare. A sensible 
man does not brag, avoids introducing 
the names of his creditable companions, 
omits himself as habitually as another 
man obtrudes himself in the discourse, 
and is content with putting his fact or 
theme simply on its ground. You shall 
not tell me that your commercial house, 
your partners, or yourself are of import- 
ance : you shall not tell mo that you have 
learned to know men ; you shall make me 
feel that ; your saying so unsays it. You 
shall not enumerate your brilliant ac- 
quaintances, nor tell me by their titles 
what books you have read. I am to infer 
that you keep good company by your 
better information and manners, and to 
infer your reading from the wealth and 
accuracy of your conversation. 

Young men think that the manly cha- 
racter requires that they should go to 
California, or to India, or into the array. 
When they have learned that the parlour 
and the college and the counting-room 
demand as much courage as the sea or 
the camp, they will be vihling to consult 
their own strength and education in their 
chpice of place. 

There are to each function and depart- 
ment of nature supplementary men : to 
geology, sinewy, out-of-doors men, with a 
taste for mountains and rocks, a quick 


eye for differences and for chemical 
changes. Give sjcb, first, a course in 
chemistry, and then a geological survey. 
Others find a charm and a profession in 
the natural history of man and the mam- 
malia, or related animals ; others in orni- 
thology, or fishes, or insects; others in 
plants ; others in the elements of which 
the whole world is made. These lately 
have stimulus to their study through the 
extraordinary revelations of the spectro- 
scope that the sun and the planets are 
made in part or in whole of the same 
elements as the earth is. Then there is 
the boy who is born with a taste for the 
sea, and must go thither if he has to run 
away from his father’s house to the fore 
castle; another longs for travel in foreign 
lands; another will be a lawyer; another, 
ac astronomer ; another, a painter, sculp- 
tor, architect, or engineer. Thus there 
is not a piece of nature in any kind, but 
a man is born, who, as his genius opens, 
aims slower or faster to dedicate himself 
to that. Then there is the poet, the 
philosopher, the politician, the orator, 
the clergyman, the physician. 'Tis grati- 
fying to see this adaptation of man to 
the world, and to every part and particle 
of it. 

Many readers remember that Sir 
Humphrey Davy said, when he was praised 
for his important discoveries, My best 
discovery was Michael Faraday,” In 
1848 I had the privilege of hearing Pro- 
fessor Faraday deliver, in the Royal In- 
stitution in London, a lecture on what ho 
called Dianicigiietism — by which he meant 
cross-magnetism ; and ho showed us 
various experiments on certain gases, to 
prove that whilst, ordinarily, magnetism 
of steel is from north to south, in other 
substances, gases, it acts from east to 
west. And further experiments led him 
to the theory that every chemical sub- 
stance would be found to have its own, 
and a different, polarity, I do not know 
how far his experiments and others have 
been pushed in this matter, but one fact 
is clear to mo, that diamagnetism is a law 
of the mind, to the full extent of Faraday’s 
' idea ; namely, that every mind has a new 
compass, a new north, a new direction of 
its own, differencing its genius and aim 
from every other mind — as every man, with 
whatever family resemblances, has a now 
countenance, new manner, new voice, 
new thoughts, and new character. Whilst 
he shares with all mankind the gift of 
reason and the moral sentiment, there is 
a teaching for him from within, which if 



GREATNESS. 


leading him in a new path, and the more 
it is trusted, separates a«d signalises him, 
while it makes him more important and 
necessary to society, We call this spe- 
ciality the bias of each individual. And 
none of us will ever accomplish anything 
excellent or commanding except when he 
listens to this whisper which is heard by 
him alone. Swedenborg called it the 
proprium— not a thought shared with 
others, but constitutional to the man. A 
point of education that I can never too 
much insist upon is this tenet, that every 
individual man has a bias which he must 
obey, and that it is only as he feels and 
obeys this that he rightly develops and 
attains his legitimate power in the world. 
It is his magnetic needle, which points 
always in one direction to his proper 
path, with more or less variation from 
any other man’s. He is never happy nor 
strong until he finds it, keeps it ; learns 
to bo at home with himself : learns to 
watch the delicate hints and insights that; 
come to him, and to have the entire 
assurance of his own mind. And in this 
self-respect, or hearkening to the privates! 
^)racle, he consults his ease, I may say, or 
/leed never be at a loss. In morals this is 
conscience ; in intellect, genius ; in prac- 
tice, talent — not to imitate or surpass a 
particular man in his way, but to bring 
out your own new way; to each bis own 
method, style, wit, eloquence. 'Tis easy 
for a commander to command. Clinging 
to Nature, or to that province of nature 
which he knows, ho makes no mistakes, 
but works after her laws and at her own 
pace, so that his doing, which is perfectly 
natural, appears miraculous to dull 
people. Montluc, the great Marshal of 
France, says of the Genoese admiral, 
Andrew Doria, “ It seemed as if the sea 
stood in awe of this man.” And a kindred 
genius, Nelson, said, ” I feel that I am 
fitter to do the action than to describe it” 
Therefore I will say that another trait of 
greatness is facility. 

This necessity of resting on the real, of 
speaking your private thought and ex- 
perience few young men apprehend. Set 
ten men to write their journal for one 
day, and nine of them will leave out their 
thought, or proper result — that is, their 
net experience — and lose themselves in 
misreporting the supposed experience of 
other people. Indeed, I think it an essen- 
tial caution to young writers, that they 
shall not in their discourse leave out the 
one thing which the discourse was written 
to say, Let that belief which you hoki 


«45 

alone have free course. I have observid 
that in all public speaking, the rule of the 
orator begins, not in the array of his 
facts, but when his deep conviction and 
the right and necessity he feels to convey 
that conviction %to his audience — when 
these shine and burn in his address; 
when the thought which he stands for 
gives its own authority to him— adds to 
him a grander personality, gives liim 
valour, breadth, and new intellectual 
power, so that not he, but mankind, seems 
to speak through his lips. There is a 
certain transfiguration ; all great orators 
have it, and men who wish to be orator? 
simulate it. 

If we should ask ourselves what is this 
self-respect — it would carry us to the 
highest problems. It is our practical 
perception of the Deity in man. It has 
its deep foundations in religion. If you 
have ever known a good mind among 
the Quakers, you will have found that is 
the element of their faith. As they 
express it, it might be thus : “I do not 
pretend to any commandment or large 
revelation, but if at time I form soma 
plan, propose a journey, or a course of 
conduct, I perhaps find a silent obstacle 
in my mind that I cannot account for. 
Very well — I let it lie, thinking it may 
pass away, but if it do not pass away, I 
yield to it, obey it. You ask me to 
describe it. I cannot describe it. It is 
not an oracle, nor an angel, nor a dream, 
nor a law ; it is too simple to be described, 
it is but a grain of mustard seed, but such 
as it is, it is something which the contra- 
diction of all mankind could not shake, 
and which the consent of all mankind 
could not confirm.” 

You are rightly fond of certain books 
or men that you have found to excite 
yo ir reverence and emulation. But none of 
these can compare with the greatness of 
that council which is open to you in happy 
solitude. I mean that there is for you 
the following of an inward leader — a slow 
discrimination that there is for each a 
Best Counsel which enjoins the fit word 
and the fit act for every moment. And 
the path of each pursued leads to great- 
ness. How grateful to find in man or 
woman a new emphasis of their own. 

But if the fiMit rule is to obey your 
native bias, to accept that work for which 
you were inwardly formed, the secemd 
rule is concentration, which doubles us 
force. Thus if you are a scholar, be that. 
The same laws hold for you as for the 
labourer, The shoemaker makes a good 



GREATNESS, 


646 

shoe because he makes nothing else. Let 
the student mind his own charge ; sedu- 
lously wait every morning for the news 
concerning the structure of the world 
which the spirit will give him. 

No way has been foynd for making 
heroism easy, even for the scholar. 
Labour, iron labour, is for him. The 
world was created as an audience for him ; 
the atoms of which it is made are oppor- 
tunities. Read the performance of Bent- 
ley, of Gibbon, of Cuvier, Geoffroy St. 
Hilaire, Laplace. “ He can toil terribly,” 
said Cecil of Sir Walter Raleigh, These 
few words sting and bite and lash us when 
we are frivolous. Let us get out of the 
way of their blows, by making them true 
of ourselves. There is so much to be 
done that w^e ought to begin quickly to * 
bestir ourselves. This day-labour of ours, 
we confess, has hitherto a certain em- 
blematic air, like the annual ploughing 
and sowing of the Emperor of China. Let 
us make it an honest sweat. Let the 
scholar measure his valour by his power 
to cope with intellectual giants. Leave 
others to count voteq^and calculate stocks. 
His courage is to weigh Plato, judge Lap- 
lace, know Newton, Faraday, judge of 
Darwin, criticize Kant and Swedenborg, 
and on all these arouse the central 
courage of insight. The scholar's courage 
should be as terrible as the Cid’s, though 
it grow out of spiritual nature, not out of 
brawn. Nature when she adds difficulty 
adds brain. 

With this respect to the bias of the in- 
dividual mind, add, what is consistent 
with it, the most catholic receptivity for 
the genius of others. The day will come 
when no badge, uniform, or medal will be 
worn ; when the eye, which carries in it 
planety influences from all the stars, will in- 
dicate rank fast enough by exerting power. 
For it is true that the stratiflcation of 
crusts in geology is not more precise than 
the degrees of rank in mind, A man will 
say : ” I am born to this position ; I must 
take it, and neither you nor I can help or 
hinder me. Surely, then, I need not fret 
myself to guard my own dignity.” The 
great man loves the conversation or the 
book that convicts him, not that which 
soothes or flatters him. He makes him- 
self of no reputation ; Jpu conceals his 
learning, conceals his cnarity. For the 
highest wisdom does not concern itself 
with particular men, but with man 
enamoured with the law and the Eternal 
Source. Suy with Antoninus, If the pic- 
ture is goad, who cares who made it ? 


What matters it by whom the good is done, 
by yourself or ^jnother ? ” If it is the 
truth, what matters who said it ? If it was 
right, what signifles who did it? All 
greatness is in degree, and there is more 
above than below. Where were your own 
intellect, if greater had not lived ? And 
do you know what the right meaning of 
Fame is ? ’Tis that sympathy, rather 
that fine element by which the good be- 
come partners of the greatness of their 
superiors. 

Extremes meet, and there is no better 
example than the haughtiness of humility. 
No aristocrat, no prince born to the pur- 
ple, can begin to compare with the self- 
respect of the saint. Why he is so lowly, 
but that he knows that he can well afford 
it, resting on the largeness of God in 
him ? I have read in an old book that 
Barcena, the Jesuit, confessed to another 
of his order that when the Devil appeared 
to him in his cell, one night, out of his pro- 
found humility he rose up to meet him, 
and prayed him to sit down on his chair 
for he was more worthy to sit there than 
himself. 

Shall I tell you the secret of the true 
scholar? It is this: Every man I meet 
is my master in some point, and in that I 
learn of him. The populace will say, 
with Horne Tooke, ” If you would be 
powerful, pretend to be powerful.” 1 
prefer to say, with the old Hebrew pro- 
phet, ” Seekest thou great things, seek 
them not ; ” or, what what was said of 
the Spanish prince, ” The more you took 
from him the greater he appeared,” Plus 
on lui ote plus il est grand. 

Scintillations of greatness appear here 
and there in men of unequal character, 
and are by no means confined to the 
cultivated and so-called moral class. 'Tis 
easy to draw traits from Napoleon, who 
was not generous nor just, but was inteL 
lectual, and knew the law of things, 
Napoleon commands our respect by his 
enormous self-trust — the habit of seeing 
with his own eyes, never the surface, but 
to the heart of the matter, whether it was 
a road, a cannon, a character, an officer, 
or a king — and by the speed and security 
of his action in the premises, always now. 
He has left a library of manuscripts, a 
multitude of sayings, every one of widest 
application. He was a man who always 
fell on his feet. When one of his favourite 
schemes missed, he had the faculty of 
taking up his genius, as be said, and ol 
carrying it somewhere else. ** Whatever 
they may tell you, believe ttiat me fights 



GREATNESS, 


647 


With cannon as with fistaj when once the 
fire is begun, the least wkat of ammuni- 
tion renders what you have done already 
useless.” I find it easy to translate all 
his technics into all of mine, and his 
official advices are to me more literary 
and philosophical than the memoirs o£ the 
Academy. His advice to his brother, 
King Joseph of Spain, was : ” I have only 
one counsel for you— Be Master." Depth 
of intellect relieves even the ink of crime 
with a fringe of light. We perhaps look 
on its crimes as experiments of a univer- 
sal student ; as he may read any book who 
reads all books, and as the English judge 
in old times, when learning was rare, for- 
gave a culprit who could read and write. 
*Tis difficult to find greatness pure. Well, 
I please myself with its diffusion — to find 
a spark of true fire amid much corruption. 
It is some guaranty, I hope, for the health 
of the soul which has this generous blood. 
How many men, detested in contemporary 
hostile history, of whom, now that the 
mists have rolled away, we have learned 
to correct our old estimates, and to see 
them as, on the whole, instruments of 
great benefit. Diderot was no model, but 
unclean as the society in which he lived ; 
yet was he the best-natured man in France, 
and would help any wretch at a pinch. 1 
His humanity knew no bounds. A poor 
scribbler who had written a lampoon 
against him, and wished to dedicate it to 
a pious Due d’Orleans, came with it in his 
poverty to Diderot, and Diderot, pitying 
the creature, wrote the dedication for him, 
and so raised five-and-twenty louistosave 
bis famishing lampooner alive. 

Meantime we hate snivelling. I do not 
wish you to surpass others in any narrow i 
Dr professional or monkish way. We like 
the natural greatness of health and wild 
ower. I confess that I am as much taken 
y it in boys, and sometimes in people 
not normal, nor educated, nor present- 
able, nor church-members — even in per- 
sons open to the suspicion of irregular 
and immoral living — in Bohemians — as in 
more orderly examples. For we must 
remember that in the lives of soldiers, 
sailors, and men of large adventure, many 
of the stays and guards of our household 
life are wanting, and yet the opportunities 
and incentives to sublime daring and per- 
formance are often close at hand. We 
must have some charity for the sense of 
the people which admires natural power, 
and will elect it over virtuous men who 
have less. It has this excuse, that natural 
is really allied to moral power and may 


always be expected to approach it by its 
own instincts. Intellect at least is not 
stupid, and will see the force of morads 
over men, if it does not itself obey: 
Henry VII. of England was a wise king. 
When Gerald, Earl of Kildare, who was 
in rebellion against him, was brought to 
London and examined before the Privy 
Council, one said, ” All Ireland cannot 
govern this Earl.” “Then let this Earl 
govern all Ireland,” replied the King. 

'Tis noted of some scholars, like Swift- 
and Gibbon, and Donne, that they pre^ 
tended to vices which they had not, so 
much did they hate hypocrisy, William 
Blake, the artist, frankly says, “ I never 
knew a bad man in whom there was not 
something very good." Bret Harte has 
pleased himself with noting and recording 
the sudden virtue blazing in the wild repro- 
bates of the ranches and mines of Cali- 
fornia. 

Men are ennobled by morals and by 
intellect ; but those two elements know 
each other and always beckon to each 
other, until at last they meet in the man, 
if he is to be truly great. The man who 
sells you a lamp shows you that the dame 
of oil, which contented you ^fore, casts 
a strong shade in the path of the petroleum 
which he lights behind it ; and this again 
casts a shadow in the path of the electric 
light. So does intellect when brought 
into the presence of character ; character 
puts out that light. Goeihe, in his corre- 
spondence with hisGrand Duke of Weimar, 
does not shine. We can see that the Prince 
had the advantage of the Olmypian genius. 
It is more plainly seen in the correspond- 
ence between Voltaire and Frederick of 
Prussia. Voltaire is brilliant, nimble, and 
various, but Frederick has the superior 
tone. But it is curious that Byron writes 
down to Scott ; Scott writes up to him. 
The Greeks surpass all men till they face 
the Romans, when Roman character pre- 
vails over Greek genius. Whilst degrees 
of intellect interest only classes of men 
who pursue the same studies, as chemists 
or astronomers, mathematicians or lin- 
guists, and have no attraction for the 
crowd, there are always men who have a 
more catholic genius, are really great as 
men, and inspim universal enthusiasm, 
A great style of^ero draws equally all 
classes, all the extremes of society, till w 6 
say the* very dogs believe in him. W 
have had such examples in this country, 
in Daniel Webster. Henry Cl^, and tha 
seamen's preacher. Father Taylor; in 
England, Chfirles Jamas Fox ; in ScotiandU 

2 T 



IMMORTALITY. 


648 

Robert Bums ; and in France, though it is 
less intelligible to us, Voltaire. Abraham 
Lincoln is perhaps tiie most remarkable 
example of this class that we have seen— 
a man who was at homo and welcome 
with the humblest, and yyith a spirit and a 
practical vein in the times of terror that 
commanded the admiration of the wisest. 
His heart was as great as the world, but 
there was no room in it to hold the 
memory of a wrong. 

These may serve as local examples to 
indicate a magnetism which is probably 
known better and finer to each scholar in 
the little Olympus of his own favourites, 
and which makes him require geniality 
and humanity in his heroes. What are 
these but the promise and the preparation 
of a day when the air of the world shall 
be purified by nobler society ; when the 
measure of greatness shall be usefulness 
in the highest sense — greatness consisting 
in truth, reference, and good-will ? 

Life is made of illusions, and a very 
common one is the opinion you hear 
expressed in every village; “O yes, if I 
lived in New York ,or Philadelphia, Cam- 
bridge or New Haven or l^oston or 
Andover there might be fit society ; but it 
happens that there are no fine young men, 
no superior women in my town." You may 
hear this every day ; but it is a shallow 
remark. Ah ! have you yet to learn that 
the eye altering alters all ; " that the 
world is an echo which returns to each of 
us what we say ? ” 'Tis not examples of 


greatness, but sensibility to see them, that 
is wanting. Th^. good botanist will find 
flowers between the street pavements, and 
any man filled with an idea or a purpose 
will find exanvples and illustrations and 
coadjutors wherever he goes. Wit is a 
magnet to find wit, and character to find 
character. Do you not know that people 
are as those with whom they converse ? 
And if £dl or any are heavy to me, that 
fact accuses me. Why complain, as if a 
man’s debt to his inferiors were not at 
least equal to his debt to his superiors ? 
If men were equals, the waters would not 
move ; but the difference of level which 
makes Niagara a cataract, makes elo- 
quence, indignation, poetry, in him who 
finds there is much to communicate. 
With self-respect, then, there must be in 
the aspirant the strong fellow-feeling, the 
humanity, which makes men of all classes 
warm to him as their leader and repre- 
sentative. 

We are thus forced to express onr 
instinct of tho truth, by exposing the 
failures of experience. The man whom 
we have not seen, in whom no regard of 
self degraded the adorer of tho laws — who 
by governing himself governed others ! 
sportive in manner, but inexorable in 
act; who sees longevity in his cause; 
whose aim is always distinct to him ; who 
is suffered to be himself in society ; who 
carries fate in his eye — he it is whom wo 
seek, encouraged in every good hour that 
here or hereafter he shall be found, 


IMMORTALITY. 


In the year 636 of our era, when Edwin, | 
the Anglo-Saxon king, was deliberating j 
on receiving the Christian missionaries, 
one of his nobles said to him : " The 
present life of man, O King, compared 
with that space of time beyond, of which 
v/e have no certainty, reminds me of one 
of your winter feasts, where you sit with 
your generals and ministers. The hearth 
blazes in the middle and a grateful he\t 
is spread around, while storms of rain 
and snow are raging without. Driven by 
the chilling tempest, ja little .sparrow 
enters at one door and flies delighted 
around us till it departs through the 
other. Whilst it stays in our mansion it 
feels not the winter storm ; but when 
this short moment of happiness has been 
enjoyed, It is forced again into the same 


I dreary tempest from which it had escaped, 
i and wo behold it no more. Such is tho 
life of man, and we are as ignorant of the 
state which preceded our present exist- 
ence as of that which will follow it. 
Things being so I feel that if this new 
faith can give us more certainty, it de- 
serves to be received," 

In the first records of a nation in any 
degree thoughtful and cultivated, some 
belief in the life beyond life would of 
course be suggested. Tho Egyptian 
people furnish us tho earliest details of 
an established civilization, and I read, in 
tho second book of Herodotus, this 
memorable sentence; "The Eg)mtians 
are the first of mankind who have affirmed 
tho immortality of the soul.” Nor do I 
road it with less interest, that the bit* 



IMMORTALITY. 


torian connects it presently with the doc- 
trine of metempsychosis ; for I know well 
that, where this belief tonce existed, it 
would necessarily take a base form for 
the savage and a pure form for the wise ; 
BO that I only look on the counterfeit as 
a proof that the genuine faith had been 
there. The credence of men, more than 
race or climate, makes their manners and 
customs ; and the history of religion may 
be read in the forms of sepulture. There 
never was a time when the doctrine of a 
future life was not held. Morals must be 
enjoined, but among rude men moral 
judgments were rudely figured under the 
forms of dogs and whips, or of an easier 
and more plentiful life after death. And 
as the savage could not detach in his 
mind the life of the soul from the body, 
he took great care for his body. Thus 
the whole life of man in the first ages was 
ponderously determined on death: and, 
as we know, the polity of the Egyptians, 
the by-laws of towns, of streets and houses, 
respected burial. It made every man an 
undertaker, and the priesthood a senate 
of sextons. Every palace was a door to 
a pyramid ; a king or rich man was a 
py rumidaire. The labour of races was 
spent on the excavation of catacombs. 
Tile chief end of man being to be buried 
well, the arts most in request were ma- 
sonry and embalming, to give imperish- 
ability to the corpse. 

Tile Greek, whh his perfect senses and 
perceptions, had quite another philosophy, 
He loved life and dedighted in beauty. 
He set his wit and taste, like elastic gas, 
under these mountains of stone, and 
lifted them. Ho drove away the em- 
balmcrs ; he built no more of those dole- 
ful mountainous tombs. He adorned 
death, brought wreaths of parsley and 
laurel ; made it bright with games of 
strength and skill, and chariot-races. He 
looked at death only as the distributor of 
imperishable glcry. Nothing can excel 
the beauty of bis sarcophagus. He carried 
bis arts to Home, and built his be.autiful 
tombs at Pompeii. The poet Shcdlcy 
says of these deli lately carved white 
marble cells, " they seem not so much 
tombs, as voluptuous cha nbers for im- 
mortal spirits.” In the same spirit the 
modern Greeks, in their songs, ask that 
they may be buried where the sun can 
see them, and that a little window may 
be cut in the sepulchre, from which the 
Bwallow might be seen when it comes 
back in the spring. 

Christianity brought a new wisdom, 


649 

But learning depends on the learner. 
No more truth can be conveyed than the 
popular mind can bear; and the bar- 
barians who received the cross took the 
doctrine of the resurrection as the Egyp- 
tians took it. It was an affair of the 
body, and narrowed again by the fury of 
sect ; so that grounds were sprinkled with 
holy water to receive only orthodox dust ; 
and to keep the body still more sacredly 
safe for resurrection, it was put into the 
walls of the church : and the churches of 
Europe are really sepulchres. I read at 
Melrose Abbey the inscription on the 
ruined gate : — 

“The Earth goes on the Earth glittering with 
gold; 

The Earth goes to the Earth sooner than it 
should ; 

The Earth builds on the Earth castles and 
towers : 

The Earth says to the Earth, All this is 
ours.” 

Meantime the true disciples saw through 
the letter the doctrine of eternity which 
dissolved the poor corpse and nature 
also, and gave grandeur to the passing 
hour. The most remarkable step in the 
religious history of recent ages is that 
made by the genius of Swedenborg, who 
described the moral faculties and affec- 
tions of man, with the hard realism of an 
astronomer describing the suns and planets 
of our system, and explained his opinion 
of the history and destiny of souls in a 
I narrative form, as of one who had gona 
in a trance into the society of other worlds, 
j Swedenborg described an intelligiblg 
[ heaven, by continuing the like employ- 
ments in the like circumstances as those 
we know —men in societies, in houses, 
towns, trades, entertainments — continua- 
tions of our earthly experience. We shall 
pass to the future existence as we enter 
int-^ an agreeable dream. All nature will 
accompany us there. Milton anticipated 
the leading thought of Swedenborg, when 
he wrote, in •' Paradise Lost ” 

“ What if Earth, 

Be but I’ shadow of Heaven, and things 
th .ein 

Each to the other like mere than on earth is 
thought ?” 

Swedenborg had a vast genius, and 
announced many things true and admir- 
able, though al\^vs clothed in somewhat 
sad and Stygian colour-, These truths 
passing out of his system into general 
circulation, are now met with every dfy, 
qualifying the views and creeds of all 
churches, and of men of no church. And 



650 IMMORTALITY. 


I think we are all aware of a revolution in 
opinion. Sixty years ago, the books read, 
the sermons and prayers heard, the habits 
of thought of religious persons, were all 
directed on death. All were under the 
shadow of Calvinism ryid cf the Roman 
Catholic purgatory, and death was dread- 
ful. The emphasis of all the good books 
given to young people was on death. Wo 
wefe all taught tliat we were born to 
die ; and over that, all the terrors that 
tlieology could gather from savage nations 
were added to increase the gloom. A 
great change has occurred. Death is seen 
as a natural event, and is met with firm- 
ness. A wise man in our time caused to 
be written on his tomb, “ Think on living." 
That inscription describes a progress in 
opinion. Cease from this antedating of 
your experience. Sufficient to to-day are 
the duties of to-day. Don’t waste life in 
doubts and fears; spend yourself on the 
work before you, well assured that the 
right performance of this hour’s duties 
will be the best preparation for the hours 
or ages that follow it. 

“ The name of deat,b was never terrible 
To him that knew to live.” 

A man of thought is willing to die, 
willing to live ; I suppose, because he has 
.seen the thread on which the beads are 
.strung, and perceived that it reaches up 
and down, existing quite independently 
of the present illusions. A man of affairs 
is afraid to die, is pestered with terrors, 
because he has not this vision, and is the 
victim of those who have moulded the 
religious doctrine into some neat and 
plausible system, as Calvinism, Romanism, 
or Swedeuborgism, for household use. 
It is the fear of the young bird to trust its j 
wings. The experiences of the soul will 
fast outgrow this alarm. The saying of 
Marcus Antoninus it were hard to mend: 

“ It were well to die if there be gods, and 
sad to live if there be none." I think all 
sound minds rest on a certain preliminary 
conviction, namely, that if it be best that 
conscious personal life shall continue, it 
will continue ; if not best, then it will not : 
and we, if we saw the whole, should of 
course see that it was better so. Schiller 
said, " What is so universal as death, 
must be benefit.’* A friend of Michael 
Angelo saying to him ►Vat his constant 
labour for art must make him think of 
defth with regret, "By no means," he 
said ; " for if life be a pleasure, yet since 
death also is sent by the hand of the 
same Master, neither should that displease 


us." Plutarch, In Grecie, has a deep 
faith that the da'.trine of the Divine Pro- 
vidence and that of the immortality of the 
soul rest on one and the same basis. 
Hear the opinion of Montesquieu : '* If 
the immortality of the soul were an error, 
I should be sorry not to believe it. I avow 
that I am not so humble as the atheist ; 
I know not how they think, but for me, I 
do not wish to exchange the idea of im- 
mortality against that of the beatitude of 
one day. I delight in believing myself as 
immortal as God himself. Independently 
of revealed ideas, metaphysical ideas give 
me a vigorous hope of my eternal well- 
being, which I would never renounce." * 

I w'as lately told of young children who 
feel a certain terror at the assurance of 
life without end. "What! will it never 
stop?" the child said; "what! never 
die ? never, never ? It makes me feel so 
tired." And I have in mind the expres- 
sion of an older believer, who once said 
to me, " The thought that this frail being 
is never to end is so overwhelming that 
my only shelter is God’s presence." This 
disquietude only marks the transition. 
The healthy state of mind is the love of 
life. What is so good, let it endure. 

I find that what is called great and 
powerful life— the administration of largo 
affairs, in commerce, in the courts, in 
the state— is prone to develop narrow and 
special talent ; but, unless combined with 
a certain contemplative turn, a taste for 
abstract truth, for the moral laws — does 
not build up faith, or lead to content. 
There is a profound melancholy at the 
base of men of active and powerful talent, 
seldom suspected. Many years ago, thera 
were two men in the United States Senate, 
both of whom are now dead. I have seen 
them both ; one of them I personally knew. 
Both were men of distinction, and took 
I an active part in the politics of their day 
and generation. They were men of in- 
tellect, and one of them, at a later period, 
gave to a friend this anecdote: Ho said 
that when he entered the Senate ho be- 
came in a short time intimate with one 
of his colleagues, and, though attentive 
enough to the routine of public duty, they 
daily returned to each other, and spent 
much time in conversation on the im- 
mortality of the soul, and other intellectual 
questions, and cared for little else. When 
my friend at last left Congress, they 
parted, his colleague remaining there, 
and, as their homes were widely distant 

* Pens^s Divertes, p. ms. 



IMMOntALlTlt. 


^rom each other, it chanced that he never 
met him again, until iftventy-five years 
after they saw each other, through open 
doors, at a distance, in a crowded recep- 
tion at the President’s house in Washing- 
ton. Slowly they advanced towards each 
other, as they could, through the brilliant 
company, and at last met said nothing, 
but shook hands long and cordially. At 
last his friend said, “ Any light, Albert ? ” 
“ None,” replied Albert. ” Any light, 
Lewis?” "None,” replied he. They 
looked in each other’s eyes silently, gave 
one more shake each to the hand he held, 
and thus parted for the last time. Now I 
should say that the impulse which drew 
these minds to this inquiry through so 
many years was a better affirmative evi- 
dence than their failure to find a con- 
Crmation was negative. I ought to add 
that, though men of good minds, they 
were both pretty strong materialists in 
their daily aims and way of life. I admit 
that you shall find a good deal of scepti- 
cism in the streets and hotels and places 
of coarse amusement. But that is only 
to say that the practical faculties are 
faster developed than the spiritual. Where 
there is depravity there is a slaughter- 
house style of thinking. One argument 
of future life is the recoil of the mind in 
such company — our pain at every scepti- 
cal statement. The sceptic affirms that 
the universe is a nest of boxes with 
nothing in the last box. All laughter at 
man is bitter, and puts us out of good 
activity. When Bonaparte insisted that 
the heart is one of the entrails ; that it is 
the pit of the stomach that moves the 
world — do we thank him for the gracious 
instruction ? Our disgust is the protest 
of human nature against a lie. 

The ground of hope is in the infinity of 
the world, which infinity reappears in 
every parbclc ; the powers of all society 
in every individual, and of all mind in ! 
every mind. I know against all appear- ! 
ances that the universe can receive no 
detriment ; that there is a remedy for 
every wrong and a satisfaction for every 
soul. Hera is this wonderful thought. 
But whence came it ? Who put it in the 
mind ? It was not I, it was not you ; it is 
elemental — belongs to thought and virtue, 
and whenever wo have either, we see the 
beams of this light. When the Master of 
the universe has points to carry in his 
government he impresses his will in the 
structure of minds. 

But proceeding to the enumeration of 
the few simple elements of the natural 


651 

faith, the first fact that strikes us is our 
delight in permanence. All great natures 
are lovers of stability and permanence, as 
the type of the Eternal. After science 
begins, belief of permanence must follow 
in a healthy minti. Things so attractive, 
designs so wise, the secret workman So 
transcendently skilful that it tasks suc- 
cessive generations of observers onl^ to 
find out, part with part, the delicate con- 
trivance and adjustment of a weed, o la 
moss, to its wants, growth, and perpetua- 
tion, all these adjustments becoming 
perfectly intelligible to our study — and 
the contriver of it all forever hidden I To 
breathe, to sleep, is wonderful. But never 
to know the Cause, the Giver, and infer 
his character and will I Of what import 
this vacant sky, these puffing elements, 
these insignificant lives full of selfish love** 
and quarrels and ennui ? Everything i(j 
prospective, and man is to live hereafter*, 
That the world is for his education is 
the only sane solution of the enigma. 
And I think that the naturalist works not 
for himself, but for the believing mind, 
which turns his discoseries to revelations, 
receives them as private tokens of the 
grand good-will of the Creator. 

The mind delights in immense time; 
delights in rocks, in metals, in mountain- 
chains, and in the evidence of vast geo- 
logic periods which these give; in the 
age of trees, say of the Sequoias, a few of 
which will span the whole history of man- 
kind ; in the noble toughness and imper- 
ishableness of the palm-tree, which thrives 
under abuse ; delights in architecture 
whose building lasts so long — ” a house,” 
says Ruskin, ” is not in its prime until it 
is five hundred years old,” and here are 
the Pyramids, which have as many thou- 
sands, and cromlechs and earth-mounds 
much older than these. 

We delight in stability, and really are 
interested in notliing that ends. What 
lasts a century pleases us in comparison 
with what lasts an hour. But a century, 
when we have once made it familiar and 
compared it with a true antiquity, looks 
dwarfish and recent ; and it does not help 
the matter adding numbers, if we sea 
that it has an end, which it will reach 
just as surely as the shortest. A candle 
a mile long or ^i|undred miles long does 
not help the imagination ; only a self- 
feeding fire, an inextinguishable 
like the sun and the star, that we ha^ 
not yet found date and origin for, But 
the nebular theory threatens their data* 
tion also, bereaves them of this gloffi 



IMMORTALITY, 


652 

and will make a shift to eke out a sort of 
eternity by succession, as plants and 
animals do. 

And what are these delights in the 
vast and permanent and strong, but ap- 
proximations and reseihblances of what 
is entire and sufficing, creative and self- 
sustaining life ? For the Creator keeps 
his V. word with us. These long-lived or 
long-enduring objects are to us, as we see 
them, only symbols of somewhat in us 
far longer-lived. Our passions, our en- 
deavours, have something ridiculous and 
mocking, if we coma to so hasty an end. 
If not to be, how like the bells of a fool is 
the trump of fame 1 Nature does not, 
like the Empress Anno of Russia, call 
together all the architectural genius of 
the Empire to build and finish and furnish 
a palace of snow, to melt again to water 
in the first thaw. Will you, with vast 
cost and pains, educate your children to 
be adepts in their several arts, and, as 
soon as they are ready to produce a 
masterpiece, call out a file of soldiers to 
shoot them down ? We must infer our 
destiny from the preparation. We are 
driven by instinct to hive innumerable 
experiences, which are of no visible value, 
and which we may revolve through many 
lives before we shall assimilate or ex- 
haust them. Now there is nothing in 
nature capricious, or whimsical, or acci- 
dental, or unsupported. Nature never 
moves by jumps, but always in steady 
and supported advances. The implant- 
ing of a desire indicates that the gratifica- 
tion of that desire is in the constitution 
of the creature that feels it; the wish for 
food, the wish for motion, the wi^h for 
sleep, for society, for knowledge, are not 
random whims, but grounded in the 
structure of the creature, and meant to 
be satisfied by food, by motion, by sleep, 
by society, by knowledge. If there is the 
desire to live, and in larger sx:>here, with 
more knowledge and power, it is because 
life and knowledge and power are good 
for 113, and we are the natural depositaries 
of these gifts. The love of life is out of 
all proportion to the value set on a single 
day, and seems to indicate, like all oui 
other experiences, a conviction of im- 
mense resources and possibilities proper 
to us, on which we havef'never drawn. 

All the comfort I have found teaches 
nY» to confide that I shall not have Jess in 
eimes and places that I do not yet know. 
I have knov.^n admirable persons, without 
feeling that they exhaust the possibilities 
of virtue and talent. I have seen what 


glories of climate, of summer mornings 
and evenings, of midnight sky — I have 
enjoyed the benefits of all this complex 
machinery of arts and civilization, and 
its results of comfort. The good Power 
can easily provide me millions more as 
good. Shall I hold on with both hands 
to every paltry possession ? All I have 
seen teaches me to trust the Creator for 
all I have not seen. Whatever it be 
which the great Providence prepares for 
us, it must be something large and 
generous, and in the great style of his 
works. The future must be up to the 
style of our faculties— of memory, of hope, 
of imagination, of reason. I have a house, 
a closet which holds my books, a table, a 
garden, a field : are these, any or all, a 
reason for refusing the angel who beckons 
me away — as if there were no room or 
skill elsewhere that could reproduce for 
me as my like or my enlarging wants may 
require ? We wish to live for what if 
great, not for what is mean. I do not 
wish to live for the sake of my warm 
house, my orchard, or my pictures. I do 
not wish to live to wear out my boots. 

As a hint of endless being, we may 
rank that novelty which perpetually 
attends life. The soul does not age with 
the body. On the borders of the grave, 
the wise man looks forward with equal 
elasticity of mind, or hope ; and why not, 
after millions of years, on the verge of 
still newer exister.co ? — for it is the nature 
of intelligent beings to be for ever new to 
life. Most men are insolvent, or promise 
by their countenance and conversation 
and by their early endeavour much more 
than they ever perform — suggesting a de- 
sign still to be carried out ; the man must 
have new motives, new companions, new 
condition, and another term. Franklin 
said, “ Life is rather a state of embryo, a 
preparation for life. A man is not com- 
pletely born until he has passed through 
death.” Every really able man, in what- 
ever direction he work — a man of large 
affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an 
orator, a poet, a painter —if you talk sin- 
cerely with him, consirlers his work, 
however much admired, as far short of 
what it should bo. What is this P.etter, 
this flying Iileal, but the perpetual pro- 
mise of his Creator ? 

The fable of the Wandering Jew is 
agreeable to men, because they want 
more time and land in which to execute 
their thoughts. But a higher poetic use 
must be made of the legend. Take os 
I as we are, with our experience, and trans- 



IMMORTALItlt. 


fer us to a new planet, and let us digest 
for its inhabitants whai we could of the 
wisdom of this. After we have found our 
depth there, and assimilated what we 
could of the new experience, transfer us 
to a new scene. In each transfer we shall 
have acquired, by seeing them at a dis- 
tance, a new mastery of the old thoughts, 
in which we were too much immersed. 
In short, all our intellectual action, not 
promises, but bestows a feeling of abso- 
lute existence. We are taken out of time 
and breathe a purer air. I know not 
whence we draw the assurance of pro- 
longed life, of a life which shoots that 
gulf we call death, and takes hold of what 
is real and abiding, by so many claims as 
from our intellectual history. Salt is a 
good preserver; cold is: but a truth 
cures the taint of mortality better, and 
“ preserves from harm until another 
period.” A sort of absoluteness attends 
all perception of truth — no smell of age, 
no hint of corruption. It is self-sufficing, 
sound, entire. 

Lord Bacon said : ” Some of the philo- 
sophers who were least divine denied 
generally the immortality of the soul, yet 
came to this point, that whatsoever 
motions the spirit of man could act and 
perform without the organs of the body 
might remain after death, which were 
only those of the understanding, and not 
of the affections ; so immortal and incor- 
ruptible a thing did knowledge seem to 
them to be.” And Van Helmont, the 
philosopher of Holland, drew his sufficient 
proof purely from the action of the intel- 
lect. “ It is my greatest desire,” he said, 
” that it might be granted unto atheists to 
have tasted, at least but one only moment, 
what it is intellectually to understand ; 
whereby they may feel the immortality of 
the mind, as it were, by touching.” A 
farmer, a labourer, a mechanic, is driven 
by his work all day, but it ends at night; 
it has an end. But, as far as the mechanic 
or farmer is also a scholar or thinker, his 
work has no end. That which ho has 
learned is that there is much more to be 
learned. The wiser he is, he feels only 
tlie more his incompetence. ” What wo 
know is a point to what wo do not know.” 
A thousand years — tenfold, a hundred-fold 
his faculties, would not suffice. The de- 
mands of his task are such that it becomes ! 
omnipresent. He studies in his walking, 
at his meals, in his amusements, even in 
his sleep. Montesquieu said, ‘*The love 
of study is in us almost the only eternal 
passion. All the others quit us in pro- 


653 

portion as this miserable machine which 
holds them approaches its ruin.” “ Art 
is long,” says the thinker, “ and life is 
short.” He is but as a fly or a worm to 
this mountain- this continent, which his 
thoughts inhabit^ It is a perception that 
comes by the activity of the intellect; 
never to the lazy or rusty mind. Courage 
comes naturally to those who have the 
habit of facing labour and danger, •and 
who therefore know the power of their 
arms and bodies ; and courage or confix 
dence in the mind comes to those who 
know by use its wonderful forces and 
inspirations and returns. Belief in its 
future is a reward kept only for those 
who use it. ” To me,” said Goethe, “ the 
eternal existence of my soul is proved 
j from my idea of activity. If I work 
' incessantly till my death, nature is bound 
to give me another form of existence, when 
the present can no longer sustain my 
spirit.” 

It is a proverb of the world that good- 
will makes intelligence, that goodness 
itself is an eye ; and the one doctrine in 
which all religions agree, is that new light 
is added to the mind in proportion as it 
uses that which it has. ” He that doeth 
the will of God abideth for ever.” 

Ignorant people confound reverence for 
the intuitions with egotism. There is 
no confusion in the things themselves. 
Health of mind consists in the percep- 
tion of law. Its dignity consists in being 
under the law. Its goodness is the most 
generous extension of our private interests 
to the dignity and generosity of ideas. 
Nothing seems to me so excellent as a 
belief in the laws. It communicates 
nobleness, and, as it wore, an asylum in 
temples to the loyal soul. 

I confess that everything connected with 
our personality fails. Nature never spares 
the individual ; we are always balked of a 
complete success ; no prosperity is pro- 
mised to our self-esteem. We have our 
indemnity only in the moral and intel- 
lectual reality to which we aspire. That 
is immortal, and we only through that. 

The soul stipulates for no private good. 
That which is private I see not to be good. 
** If truth live, I live ; if justice live, I 
live,” said one of the old saints, “and 
these by any n^^'s suffering are enlarged 
and enthroned. 

The moral sentiment measures ittdl 
by sacrifice, It risks or ruins propAtyi 
health, life itself, without hesitation, for 
its thought, and all men justify the man 
by their praise for this act. And Mahomet 



IMMORTALFTT. 


634 

in the same mind declared, “ Not dead 
but living ye are to account all those who 
kre slain in the way of God.” 

On these grounds I think that wherever 
man ripens, this audacious belief pre- 
sently appears — in the savage, savagely; 
in the good, purely. As' soon as thought 
is exercised, this belief is inevitable; as 
soon as virtue glows, this belief confirms 
itsel/. It is a kind of summary or com- 
pletion of man. It cannot rest on a 
legend ; it cannot be quoted from one to 
another: it must have the assurance of a 
man’s faculties that they can fill a larger 
theatre and a longer term than nature 
here allows him. Goethe said : ” It is to 
a thinking being quite impossible to think 
himself non-existent, ceasing to think and 
live ; so far does every one carry in him- 
self the preof of immortality, and quite 
spontaneously. But so soon as the man 
will be objective and go out of himself, so 
soon as he dogmatically will grasp a per- 
sonal duration to bolster up in cockney 
fashion that inward assurance, he is lost 
in contradiction,” The doctrine is not 
sentimental, but is grounded in the neces- 
sities and forces wt possess. Nothing 
will hold but that which we must be and 
must do, 

Man's heart the Almighty to the Future iet 

By secret but inviolable springs.” 

The revelation that is true is written on 
the palms of the hands, the thought of 
our mind, the desire of our heart, or 
nowhere. My idea of heaven is that there 
is no melodrama in it at all; that it is 
wholly real. Here is the emphasis of 
conscience and experience; this is no 
speculation, but the most practical of doc- 
trines. Do you think that the eternal 
chain of cause and effect which pervades 
nature, which threads the globes as beads 
on a string, leaves this out of its circuit — 
leaves out this desire of God and men as 
a waif and a caprice, altogether cheap and 
common, and falling without reason or 
merit ? 

We live by desire to live; we live by 
choice ; by will, by thought, by virtue, by 
the vivacity of the laws which we obey, 
and obeying share their life — or we die by 
sloth, by disobedience, by losing hold of 
life, which ebbs out of us. But whilst I 
find the signatures, the h^ts and sugges- 
tions, noble and wholesome-— whilst I find 
tha^all the ways of virtuous living tlead 
upward and not downward — yet it is not 
my duty to prove to myself the immor- 
lality of the soul. That knowledge ia! 


hidden very cunningly. Perhaps the arck« 
angels cannot find the secret of their exist- 
ence, as the ey^ cannot see itself ; but, 
ending or endless, to live whilst I live. 

There is a drawback to the value of all 
statements of the doctrine ; and I think 
that one abstains from writing or printing 
on the immortality of the soul, because, 
when he comes to the end of his state- 
ment, the hungry eyes that run through it 
will close disappointed ; the listeners say, 
That is not heio which we desife — and I 
shall be as much wronged by their hasty 
conclusion as they feel themselves wronged 
by my omissions. I mean that I am a 
better believer, and all serious souls are 
better believers, in the immortality that 
we can give grounds for. The real evi- 
dence is too subtle, or is higher than we 
can write down in propositions, and there- 
fore Wordsworth’s “Ode” is the best 
modern essay on the subject. 

We cannot prove our faith by syllogisms. 
The argument refuses to form in the mind. 
A conclusion, an inference, a grand augury, 
is ever hovering ; but attempt to ground 
it, and the reasons are all vanishing and 
inadequate. You cannot make a written 
theory or demonstration of this as you can 
an orrery of the Copernican astronomy. 
It must be sacredly treated. Speak of the 
mount in the mount. Not by literature 
or theology, but only by rare integrity, by 
a man permeated and perfumed with airs 
of heaven— with manliest or womanliest 
enduring love — can the vision be clear to 
a use the most sublime. And hence the 
fact that in the minds of men the testi- 
mony of a few inspired souls has had such 
weight and penetration. You shall not 
say, O my bishop, O my pastor, is there 
any resurrection ? What do you think ? 
Did Dr. Channing believe that we should 
know each other ? did Wesley ? did Butler? 
did Fenelon ? ” What questions are these I 
Go read Milton, Shakspearo, or any truly 
ideal poet. Read Plato, or any seer of 
the interior realities. Read St. Augustine, 
Swedenborg, Immanuel Kant. Let any 
meister simply recite to you the substan- 
tial laws of the intellcx:t, and in the pre- 
sence of the laws themselves you will 
never ask such primary-school questions. 

Is immortality only an intellectual qual- 
ity, or, shall I say, only an energy, there 
being no passive ? He has it, and he 
alone, who gives life to all names, persons, 
things, where he cornea. No religion, not 
the wildest mythology, dies for him ; no 
art ia lost. He vivifies what he touches. 
Future state is an illusion for the ever* 



iMMORTALITT. 


present state. It fs not length of life but 
depth of life. It is nof duration, but a 
taking of the soul out of time, as all high 
action of the mind does: when we are 
living in the sentiments we ask no ques- 
tions about time. The spiritual world 
takes place — that which is always the 
same. But see how the sentiment is wise. 
Jesus explained nothing, but the influence 
of him took people out of time, and they 
felt eternal. A great integrity makes us 
immortal ; an admiration, a deep love, a 
strong will, arms us above fear. It makes 
a day memorable. We say we lived years 
in that hour. It is strange that Jesus 
is esteemed by mankind the bringer of 
the doctrine of immortality. He is never 
once weak or sentimental; he is very 
abstemious of explanation, he never 
preaches the personal immortality; whilst 
Plato and Cicero had both allowed them- 
selves to overstep the stem limits of the 
spirit, and gratify the people with that 
picture. 

How ill agrees this majestical immor- 
tality of our religion with the frivolous 
population ! Will you build magnificently 
for mice ? Will you offer empires to such 
as cannot set a house or private affairs in 
order ? Here are people who cannot 
dispose of a day : an hour hangs heavy on 
their hands; and will you offer them 
rolling ages without end ? But this is the 
way we rise. Within every man’s thought 
is a higher thought— within the character 
he exhibits to-day, a higher character. 
The youth puts off the illusions of the 
child, the man puts off the ignorance and 
tumultuous passions of youth ; proceeding 
thence puts off the egotism of manhood, 
and becomes at last a public and uni - 1 
versal soul. He is rising to greater heights, 
but also rising to realities : the outer 
relations and circumstances dying out, 
he entering deeper into God, God into 
him, until the last garment of egotism 
falls, and he is with God — shares the will 
and the immensity of the First Cause. 

It is curious to find the selfsame feeling, 
that it is not immortality, but eternity — 
not duration, but a state of abandonment 
to the Highest, and so the sharing of His 
perfection — appearing in the farthest east 
and west. The human mind takes no ac- 
count of geography, language, or legends, 
but in all utters the same instinct. 

Yama. the Lord of Death, promised 
Nachiketas, the son of Gautama, to grant 
him three boons at his own choice. Nachi- 
ketas, knowing that his father Gautama 
was offended with him. said. O Death I 


655 

let Gautama be appeased In mind, and 
forget his anger against me ; this I choose 
for the first boon.” Yama said, ” Through 
my favour, Gautama will remember thee 
with love as before.” For the second 
boon, Nachiketag asks that the fire by 
which heaven is gained be made known 
to him ; which also Yama allows, and 
says, “Choose the third boon, O Nachi- 
ketas!” Nachiketas said, there is this 
inquiry. Some say the soul exists after 
the death of man ; others say it does not 
exist. This I should like to know, in- 
structed by thee. Such is the third of the 
boons. Yama said, " For this question, 
it was inquired of old, even by the gods ; 
for it is not easy to understand it. Subtle 
is its nature. Choose another boon, O 
Nachiketas 1 Do not compel me to this.” 
Nachiketas said, “ Even by the gods was 
it inquired. And as to what thou sayest, 
O Death, that it is not easy to understand 
it, there is no other speaker to be found 
like thee. There is no other boon like 
this.” Yama said, “Choose sons and 
grandsons who may live a hundred years ; 
choose herds of cattle; choose elephants 
and golden horses ; cnoose the wide ex- 
panded earth, and live thyself as many 
years as thou listeth. Or, if thou knowest 
a boon like this, choose it, together with 
wealth and far-extending life. Be a king, 

0 Nachiketas I On the wide earth I will 
make thee the enjoyer of all desires. All 
those desires that are difl!icult to gain in 
the world of mortals, all those ask thou 
at thy pleasure — those fair nymphs of 
heaven with their chariots, with their 
musical instruments ; for the like of them 

1 are not to be gained by men. I will give 
them to thee, but do not ask the question 
of the state of the soul after death.” 
Nachiketas said, ” All those enjoyments 
are of yesterday. With thee remain thy 
horses and elephants, with thee the dance 
and song. If we should obtain wealth, 
we live only as long as thou pleasest. 
The boon which I choose I have said.” 
Yama said, " One thing is good, another 
is pleasant. Blessed is he who takes the 
good, but he who chooses the pleasant 
loses the object of man. But thou, con- 
sidering the objects of desire, hast aban- 
doned them. These two, ignorance (whose 
object is what i^leasant) and knowledge 
(whose object is what is good), are known 
to be far asunder, and to lead to different 
goals. * Believing this world exists, a»d 
not the other, the careless youth is subject 
to my sway. That knowledge for which 
thou hast Mked is not to be obtained bj 



mMORTALITY. 


CSC, 

argument. I know worldly happiness is 
transient, for that firm one is not to be 
obtained by what is not firm. The wise 
by means of the union of the intellect 
with the soul, thinking him whom it is 
hard to behold, leaves bf th grief and joy. 
Thee, O Nachiketas ! I believe a house 
whose door is open to Brahma. Brahma 
the fupreme, whoever knows him, obtains 
whatever he wishes. The soul is not 
born; it does not die: it was not pro- 
duced from any one. Nor was any pro- 


duced from it. Wnbom, ©tern^, it ii not 
slain, though thi« body is slain; subtler 
than what is subtle, greater than what ii 
great, sitting it goes far, sleeping it goei 
everywhere. Thinking the soul as unbodily 
among bodies, firm among fleeting things, 
the wise man casts off all grief. Thi 
soul cannot be gained by knowledge, 
not by understanding, not by manifold 
science. It can be obtained by the soul 
by which it is desired, It reveal* its own 
truths.” 



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maps, illustrations, and portrait of the Author. 

The Romany Rye, a Sequel to Laven^ro. By George Borrow. 
With introduction by Theodore Watts-Dunton. Illustrated from 
old prints and portraits. 

The French Revolution : A History. By THo^tAs Carlvle, 
With introduction by G. T. Bettany, M.A., B.Sc., and full pa^e 
illustraticnis. 

Sartor Resartus ; Heroes and Hero-Worship; and Past 
and Present. By Thomas Carlyle. With critical introduction. 
Illustrated from photoi^raphs. 

Essays — Bio^^raphical, Critical, and Miscellaneous 
with Poeiiis.. Includinj;^ “1'hc Lays of Ancient Rome.” 

By Lord Macaulay. With notes and introduction. Illustrated 
from photograjdis. 

Society in China. By Rorert K. T)ougt.as, Keeper of Oriental 
Books and Manuscripts in the British Museum, Professor of Chinese 
at King’s College. Illustrated from photograj)hs. 

The Bible in Spain. By Gr.ORfiE Borrow, Author of '* I.a.vengr(>,’" 
etc., etc. Whth bifjgraphical introdiiclioa by G. T. Bettany, M A., 
B.Sc. Illustrated from plu^tographs. 

Oliver CromwelPs Letters and Speeches. With Elucida- 
tions. By 7'homas Carlyle. With introduction and tail page 
illustrations. 

On the Orijjin of Species: By means of Natural Selection. 

I’y Charles Darwin, M.A., B.R.S. llliL'^tratcd ]>>• >gra}^hs. 

Essays, Civil and Moral. The Advancement of l.earniiig: ; 
Novum Or^anum, etc. By I.ord B>acon.^ With biograpliii ;d 
introduction by Ct. T. IhiTTAN., M.A , B.Sc. Illustrated iiaan 
photographs. 

The Manners and^Customs of the Modern Ej 2 :yptians. 

I^y Edward Wili.iam Lane. With biographical introduction and 
* i6 full-page plates. ^ 


London : WARD, LOCK & CO., LTD, 



The 5ale5 of Mr. Keriiahan’s books exceed Half a Million* 



WORKS BY 


Coulson Kernahan.. 



** KKKNAlfAN lias a unique record for literary man 3 ’'sided- 

•4 11%/ ness. Ills detective novels hav^e been scarcely less successful 
tlian Dr Conan I/o^de’s. His rclip(ious booklets have been 
the subject of more sermons than even the works of IVIr. Hall Caine 
and Miss iMarie Corelli ; and his essay's in criticism, reprinted from 
the Nineteenth Ceniurv and the Fortnightly Reviciv, have won the approval 
of critics of the highest stamling, and have rivalled Mr. Augustine 
Dirrell’s in popularity ” 


SCOUNDRELS ^ CO. A Novel. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3/6 

Westminster (iazette : “'They arc more icsi)eratc villains than any we 
hive ever met, and would almost make a dead man's tlcsh creep. 
'Scounditls S: C.).* certainly makes one ‘sit up.’” 

CAPTAIN SHANNON. A Novel. Crown Sw, cloth gilt, 3/6 

Daily News: “ Wc cannot have a better dt tective story than ‘Captain 
^hamu m.’ ’ ’ 

A BOOK OF STRANGE SINS. Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3/6 

The Academy : ” Mis book is a fine one, and we think it will live.’* 

A DEAD JUAN’S DIARY. Crown Svo, cloth gilt, 3/6 

Mr. j. M. I’AKRir, in the Drttieh Weekly: “The vi;;oar of the book is 
and the anonymous author has nn uncommon t;ift of intensity. 
On many readers it will have a mesmeric efiect.” 

GOD AND THE ANT. Cloth gilt, 2/- ; paper covers, 1/- 

Litcrary World: “Speaks as closely to the leligtiou'' cotisciousness t\f 
the Nineteenth Century as lUinyaa’s immortal work did to that of 
the Seventeenth.” 

THE CHILD, THE WISE MAN, AND THE DEVIL. 

Cloth gilt, 2-; paper, 1/- 

.Saturday Review: “There is a tmch of genius about this brilliant and 
(nigirnd boidvU-t.” 

50RR0W AND 50NG. Crown Svo, buckram, 3 '6 

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WISE MEN AND A FOOL. Crown Svo, cloth gilt, 3/6 

The Spectator : “ We wouhl particularly commend tvhat ho has to say. 
• ' ■ Truly as well as linely said.” 

A LITERARY GENT. Cloth, ^/- 

Mr. I. Zanowii.l, in the Pall Mall Mas^azlne : “ Of unsurpassable strcn'gth 
and originality.” 


* 


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