Title: The Oxford Book of American Essays
Author: Eliot, Charles William, 1834-1926 [Contributor], Whitman, Walt, 1819-1892 [Contributor], Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920 [Contributor], Crothers, Samuel McChord, 1857-1927 [Contributor], Poe, Edgar Allan, 1809-1849 [Contributor], Curtis, George William, 1824-1892 [Contributor], Warner, Charles Dudley, 1829-1900 [Contributor], Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 1809-1894 [Contributor], Winthrop, Theodore, 1828-1861 [Contributor], Irving, Washington, 1783-1859 [Contributor], Mabie, Hamilton Wright, 1846-1916 [Contributor], Burroughs, John, 1837-1921 [Contributor], Martin, Edward Sanford, 1856-1939 [Contributor], Lowell, James Russell, 1819-1891 [Contributor], Franklin, Benjamin, 1706-1790 [Contributor], Trent, William Peterfield, 1862-1939 [Contributor], Roosevelt, Theodore, 1858-1919 [Contributor], Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882 [Contributor], Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864 [Contributor], Lodge, Henry Cabot, 1850-1924 [Contributor], Butler, Nicholas Murray, 1862-1947 [Contributor], Thoreau, Henry David, 1817-1862 [Contributor], Brownell, W. C. (William Crary), 1851-1928 [Contributor], Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 1823-1911 [Contributor], James, Henry, 1843-1916 [Contributor], Dana, Richard Henry, 1815-1882 [Contributor], Matthews, Brander, 1852-1929 [Contributor], King, Clarence, 1842-1901 [Contributor]
Language: English
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/*
THE OXFORD BOOK OF
AMERICAN ESSAYS


CHOSEN BY

BRANDER MATTHEWS

Professor in Columbia University
Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters

NEW YORK

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 WEST 32ND STREET

LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE, AND BOMBAY
HUMPHREY MILFORD

1914

_ALL RIGHTS RESERVED_

_Copyright_, 1914

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

AMERICAN BRANCH
*/



/*
CONTENTS
                                                                    PAGE


INTRODUCTION                                                           v

THE EPHEMERA: AN EMBLEM OF HUMAN LIFE                                  1

    Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790).

THE WHISTLE                                                            4

    Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790).

DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANKLIN AND THE GOUT                                 7

    Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790).

CONSOLATION FOR THE OLD BACHELOR                                      15

    Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791).

JOHN BULL                                                             21

    Washington Irving (1783-1859).

THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE                                          34

    Washington Irving (1783-1859).

KEAN'S ACTING                                                         47

    Richard Henry Dana (1787-1879).

GIFTS                                                                 62

    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882).

USES OF GREAT MEN                                                     67

    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882).

BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES                                                  88

    Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864).

THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION                                         99

    Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).

BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER                                              114

    Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809-1894).

WALKING                                                              128

    Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).

ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS                             166

    James Russell Lowell (1819-1891).

PREFACE TO "LEAVES OF GRASS"                                         194

    Walt Whitman (1819-1892).

AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE                                            213
    Thomas Wentworth Higginson (1823-1911).

THACKERAY IN AMERICA                                                 229
    George William Curtis (1824-1892).

OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON                                              241
    Theodore Winthrop (1828-1861).

CALVIN (A Study of Character)                                        268
    Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900).

FIVE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILIZATION                          280
Charles William Eliot (1834-    ).

I TALK OF DREAMS                                                     308
    William Dean Howells (1837-    ).

AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE                                             331
    John Burroughs (1837-    ).

CUT-OFF COPPLES'S                                                    351
    Clarence King (1842-1901).

THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS                                                 368
    Henry James (1843-    ).

THEOCRITUS ON CAPE COD                                               394
    Hamilton Wright Mabie (1846-    ).

COLONIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES                                     410
    Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-    ).

NEW YORK AFTER PARIS                                                 440
    William Crary Brownell (1851-    ).

THE TYRANNY OF THINGS                                                467
    Edward Sandford Martin (1856-    ).

FREE TRADE VS. PROTECTION IN LITERATURE                              475
    Samuel McChord Crothers (1857-    ).

DANTE AND THE BOWERY                                                 480
    Theodore Roosevelt (1858-    ).

THE REVOLT OF THE UNFIT                                              489
    Nicholas Murray Butler (1862-    ).

ON TRANSLATING THE ODES OF HORACE                                    497
    William Peterfield Trent (1862-    ).
*/



INTRODUCTION


The customary antithesis between "American" literature and "English"
literature is unfortunate and misleading in that it seems to exclude
American authors from the noble roll of those who have contributed to
the literature of our mother-tongue. Of course, when we consider it
carefully we cannot fail to see that the literature of a language is one
and indivisible and that the nativity or the domicile of those who make
it matters nothing. Just as Alexandrian literature is Greek, so American
literature is English; and as Theocritus demands inclusion in any
account of Greek literature, so Thoreau cannot be omitted from any
history of English literature as a whole. The works of Anthony Hamilton
and Rousseau, Mme. de Staël and M. Maeterlinck are not more indisputably
a part of the literature of the French language than the works of
Franklin and Emerson, of Hawthorne and Poe are part of the literature of
the English language. Theocritus may never have set foot on the soil of
Greece, and Thoreau never adventured himself on the Atlantic to visit
the island-home of his ancestors; yet the former expressed himself in
Greek and the latter in English,--and how can either be neglected in any
comprehensive survey of the literature of his own tongue?

None the less is it undeniable that there is in Franklin and Emerson, in
Walt Whitman and Mark Twain, whatever their mastery of the idiom they
inherited in common with Steele and Carlyle, with Browning and Lamb, an
indefinable and intangible flavor which distinguishes the first group
from the second. The men who have set down the feelings and the
thoughts, the words and the deeds of the inhabitants of the United
States have not quite the same outlook on life that we find in the men
who have made a similar record in the British Isles. The social
atmosphere is not the same on the opposite shores of the Western ocean;
and the social organization is different in many particulars. For all
that American literature is,--in the apt phrase of Mr. Howells,--"a
condition of English literature," nevertheless it is also distinctively
American. American writers are as loyal to the finer traditions of
English literature as British writers are; they take an equal pride that
they are also heirs of Chaucer and Dryden and subjects of King
Shakspere; yet they cannot help having the note of their own
nationality.

Green, when he came to the Fourth of July, 1776, declared that
thereafter the history of the English-speaking people flowed in two
currents; and it is equally obvious that the stream of English
literature has now two channels. The younger and the smaller is
American--and what can we call the older and the ampler except British?
A century ago there were published collections entitled the _British
Poets_, the _British Novelists_, and the _British Essayists_; and the
adjective was probably then chosen to indicate that these gatherings
included the work of Scotch and Irish writers. Whatever the reason, the
choice was happy; and the same adjective would serve to indicate now
that the selections excluded the work of American writers. The British
branch of English literature is the richer and the more various; yet the
American branch has its own richness and its own variety, even if these
qualities have revealed themselves only in the past hundred years.

It may be noted also that although American literature has not been
adorned by so great a galaxy of brilliant names as illumined British
literature in the nineteenth century, it has had the good fortune to
possess more authors of cosmopolitan fame than can be found in the
German literature of the past hundred years, in the Italian, or in the
Spanish. A forgotten American essayist once asserted that "foreign
nations are a contemporaneous posterity," and even if this smart saying
is not to be taken too literally, it has its significance. There is
therefore food for thought in the fact that at least half a dozen, not
to say half a score, of American authors have won wide popularity
outside the limits of their own language,--a statement which could not
be made of as many German or Italian or Spanish authors of the
nineteenth century. From the death of Goethe to the arrival of the
playwrights of the present generation, perhaps Heine is the sole German
writer either of prose or of verse who has established his reputation
broadly among the readers of other tongues than his own. And not more
than one or two Spanish or Italian authors have been received even by
their fellow Latins, as warmly as the French and the Germans have
welcomed Cooper and Poe, Emerson and Mark Twain.

It is to present typical and characteristic examples of the American
contribution to English literature in the essay-form that this volume
has been prepared. Perhaps the term "essay-form" is not happily chosen
since the charm of the essay lies in the fact that it is not formal,
that it may be whimsical in its point of departure, and capricious in
its ramblings after it has got itself under way. Even the Essay is
itself a chameleon, changing color while we study it. There is little in
common between Locke's austere _Essay on the Human Understanding_ and
Lamb's fantastic and frolicsome essay on _Roast Pig_. He would be bold
indeed who should take compass and chain to measure off the precise
territory of the Essay and to mark with scientific exactness the
boundaries which separate it from the Address on the one side and from
the Letter on the other.

"Some (there are) that turn over all books and are equally searching in
all papers," said Ben Jonson; "that write out of what they presently
find or meet, without choice.... Such are all the Essayists, ever their
master Montaigne." Bacon and Emerson followed in the footsteps of
Montaigne, and present us with the results of their browsings among
books and of their own dispersed meditations. In their hands the essay
lacks cohesion and unity; it is essentially discursive. Montaigne never
stuck to his text, when he had one; and the paragraphs of any of
Emerson's essays might be shuffled without increasing their fortuitous
discontinuity.

After Montaigne and Bacon came Steele and Addison, in whose hands the
essay broadened its scope and took on a new aspect. The eighteenth
century essay is so various that it may be accepted as the forerunner of
the nineteenth century magazine, with its character-sketches and its
brief tales, its literary and dramatic criticism, its obituary
commemorations and its serial stories--for what but a serial story is
the succession of papers devoted to the sayings and doings of Sir Roger?
It was a new departure, although the writers of the _Tatler_ and of the
_Spectator_ had profited by the _Conversations_ of Walton and by the
_Characters_ of La Bruyère, by the epistles of Horace and by the
comedies of Molière. (Has it ever been pointed out that the method of
Steele and Addison in depicting Sir Roger is curiously akin to the
method of Molière in presenting M. Jourdain?)

The delightful form of poetry which we call by a French name, _vers de
société,_ (although it has flourished more abundantly in English
literature than in French) and which Mr. Austin Dobson, one of its
supreme masters, prefers to call by Cowper's term, "familiar verse," may
be accepted as the metrical equivalent of the prose essay as this was
developed and expanded by the English writers of the eighteenth century.
And as the familiar verse of our language is ampler and richer than that
of any other tongue, so also is the familiar essay. Indeed, the essay is
one of the most characteristic expressions of the quality of our race.
In its ease and its lightness and its variety, it is almost unthinkable
in German; and even in French it is far less frequent than in English
and far less assiduously cultivated.

As Emerson trod in the footsteps of Bacon so Washington Irving walked in
the trail blazed by Steele and Addison and Goldsmith; and Franklin
earlier, although his essays are in fact only letters, had revealed his
possession of the special quality the essay demands,--the playful wisdom
of a man of the world who is also a man of letters. Indeed, Dr. Franklin
was far better fitted to shine as an essayist than his more ponderous
contemporary, Dr. Johnson; certainly Franklin would never have "made
little fishes talk like whales." And in the nineteenth century the
American branch of English literature has had a group of essayists less
numerous than that which adorned the British branch, but not less
interesting or less important to their own people.

Among these American essayists we may find all sorts and conditions of
writers,--poets adventuring themselves in prose, novelists eschewing
story-telling, statesmen turning for a moment to matters of less weight,
men of science and men of affairs chatting about themselves and airing
their opinions at large. In their hands, as in the hands of their
British contemporaries, the essay remains infinitely various, refusing
to conform to any single type, and insisting on being itself and on
expressing its author. We find in the best of these American essayists
the familiar style and the everyday vocabulary, the apparent simplicity
and the seeming absence of effort, the horror of pedantry and the scorn
of affectation, which are the abiding characteristics of the true essay.
We find also the flavor of good talk, of the sprightly conversation that
may sparkle in front of a wood fire and that often vanishes with the
curling blue smoke.

It is the bounden duty of every maker of an anthology to set forth the
principles that have guided him in the choice of the examples he is
proffering to the public. The present editor has excluded purely
literary criticism, as not quite falling within the boundaries of the
essay, properly so-called. Then he has avoided all set orations,
although he has not hesitated to include more than one paper originally
prepared to be read aloud by its writer, because these examples seemed
to him to fall within the boundaries of the essay. (Nearly all of
Emerson's essays, it may be noted, had been lectures in an early stage
of their existence.) Furthermore he has omitted all fiction, strictly to
be so termed, although he would gladly have welcomed an apologue like
Mark Twain's "Traveling with a Reformer," which is essentially an essay
despite its use of dialogue. He has included also Franklin's "Dialogue
with the Gout," which is instinct with the true spirit of the essay; and
he has accepted as essays Franklin's "Ephemera" and "The Whistle,"
although they were both of them letters to the same lady. As the essay
flowers out of leisure and out of culture, and as there has been in the
United States no long background of easy tranquillity, there is in the
American branch of English literature a relative deficiency in certain
of the lighter forms of the essay more abundantly represented in the
British branch; and therefore the less frequent examples of these
lighter forms have here been companioned by graver discussions, never
grave enough, however, to be described as disquisitions. Finally, every
selection is presented entire, except that Dana's paper on Kean's acting
has been shorn of a needless preparatory note.

/*
BRANDER MATTHEWS.
*/

/#
     [The essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oliver
     Wendell Holmes, Henry D. Thoreau, Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
     Charles Dudley Warner, and John Burroughs, are used by permission
     of, and by arrangement with, The Houghton Mifflin Company, the
     authorized publishers of their works. The essays by George William
     Curtis and by William Dean Howells are used by permission of Harper
     and Brothers. The essays by William Crary Brownell, Edward Sanford
     Martin, Nicholas Murray Butler, and Theodore Roosevelt are printed
     by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, the essay by Charles
     William Eliot by permission of The Century Company, and that by
     Henry James by permission of The Macmillan Company.]
#/



THE EPHEMERA: AN EMBLEM OF HUMAN LIFE

TO MADAME BRILLON, OF PASSY

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN


You may remember, my dear friend, that when we lately spent that happy
day in the delightful garden and sweet society of the Moulin Joly, I
stopped a little in one of our walks, and stayed some time behind the
company. We had been shown numberless skeletons of a kind of little fly,
called an ephemera, whose successive generations, we were told, were
bred and expired within the day. I happened to see a living company of
them on a leaf, who appeared to be engaged in conversation. You know I
understand all the inferior animal tongues. My too great application to
the study of them is the best excuse I can give for the little progress
I have made in your charming language. I listened through curiosity to
the discourse of these little creatures; but as they, in their national
vivacity, spoke three or four together, I could make but little of their
conversation. I found, however, by some broken expressions that I heard
now and then, they were disputing warmly on the merit of two foreign
musicians, one a _cousin_, the other a _moscheto_; in which dispute they
spent their time, seemingly as regardless of the shortness of life as if
they had been sure of living a month. Happy people! thought I; you are
certainly under a wise, just, and mild government, since you have no
public grievances to complain of, nor any subject of contention but the
perfections and imperfections of foreign music. I turned my head from
them to an old gray-headed one, who was single on another leaf, and
talking to himself. Being amused with his soliloquy, I put it down in
writing, in hopes it will likewise amuse her to whom I am so much
indebted for the most pleasing of all amusements, her delicious company
and heavenly harmony.

"It was," said he, "the opinion of learned philosophers of our race, who
lived and flourished long before my time, that this vast world, the
Moulin Joly, could not itself subsist more than eighteen hours; and I
think there was some foundation for that opinion, since, by the apparent
motion of the great luminary that gives life to all nature, and which in
my time has evidently declined considerably towards the ocean at the end
of our earth, it must then finish its course, be extinguished in the
waters that surround us, and leave the world in cold and darkness,
necessarily producing universal death and destruction. I have lived
seven of those hours, a great age, being no less than four hundred and
twenty minutes of time. How very few of us continue so long! I have seen
generations born, flourish, and expire. My present friends are the
children and grandchildren of the friends of my youth, who are now,
alas, no more! And I must soon follow them; for, by the course of
nature, though still in health, I cannot expect to live above seven or
eight minutes longer. What now avails all my toil and labor in amassing
honey-dew on this leaf, which I cannot live to enjoy! What the political
struggles I have been engaged in for the good of my compatriot
inhabitants of this bush, or my philosophical studies for the benefit of
our race in general! for in politics what can laws do without morals?
Our present race of ephemeræ will in a course of minutes become
corrupt, like those of other and older bushes, and consequently as
wretched. And in philosophy how small our progress! Alas! art is long,
and life is short! My friends would comfort me with the idea of a name
they say I shall leave behind me; and they tell me I have lived long
enough to nature and to glory. But what will fame be to an ephemera who
no longer exists? And what will become of all history in the eighteenth
hour, when the world itself, even the whole Moulin Joly, shall come to
its end and be buried in universal ruin?"

To me, after all my eager pursuits, no solid pleasures now remain, but
the reflection of a long life spent in meaning well, the sensible
conversation of a few good lady ephemeræ, and now and then a kind smile
and a tune from the ever amiable _Brillante_.



THE WHISTLE

TO MADAME BRILLON

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN


I received my dear friend's two letters, one for Wednesday and one for
Saturday. This is again Wednesday. I do not deserve one for to-day,
because I have not answered the former. But, indolent as I am, and
averse to writing, the fear of having no more of your pleasing epistles,
if I do not contribute to the correspondence, obliges me to take up my
pen; and as Mr. B. has kindly sent me word that he sets out to-morrow to
see you, instead of spending this Wednesday evening, as I have done its
namesakes, in your delightful company, I sit down to spend it in
thinking of you, in writing to you, and in reading over and over again
your letters.

I am charmed with your description of Paradise, and with your plan of
living there; and I approve much of your conclusion, that, in the
meantime, we should draw all the good we can from this world. In my
opinion we might all draw more good from it than we do, and suffer less
evil, if we would take care not to give too much for _whistles_. For to
me it seems that most of the unhappy people we meet with are become so
by neglect of that caution.

You ask what I mean? You love stories, and will excuse my telling one of
myself.

When I was a child of seven years old, my friends, on a holiday, filled
my pocket with coppers. I went directly to a shop where they sold toys
for children; and being charmed with the sound of a _whistle_, that I
met by the way in the hands of another boy, I voluntarily offered and
gave all my money for one. I then came home, and went whistling all over
the house, much pleased with my _whistle_, but disturbing all the
family. My brothers, and sisters, and cousins, understanding the bargain
I had made, told me I had given four times as much for it as it was
worth; put me in mind what good things I might have bought with the rest
of the money; and laughed at me so much for my folly, that I cried with
vexation; and the reflection gave me more chagrin than the _whistle_
gave me pleasure.

This, however, was afterwards of use to me, the impression continuing on
my mind; so that often, when I was tempted to buy some unnecessary
thing, I said to myself, _Don't give too much for the whistle_; and I
saved my money.

As I grew up, came into the world, and observed the actions of men, I
thought I met with many, very many, _who gave too much for the whistle_.

When I saw one too ambitious of court favor, sacrificing his time in
attendance on levees, his repose, his liberty, his virtue, and perhaps
his friends, to attain it, I have said to myself, _This man gives too
much for his whistle_.

When I saw another fond of popularity, constantly employing himself in
political bustles, neglecting his own affairs, and ruining them by that
neglect, _He pays, indeed_, said I, _too much for his whistle_.

If I knew a miser, who gave up every kind of comfortable living, all the
pleasure of doing good to others, all the esteem of his fellow-citizens,
and the joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumulating
wealth, _Poor man_, said I, _you pay too much for your whistle_.

When I met with a man of pleasure, sacrificing every laudable
improvement of the mind, or of his fortune, to mere corporeal
sensations, and ruining his health in their pursuit, _Mistaken man_,
said I, _you are providing pain for yourself, instead of pleasure; you
give too much for your whistle_.

If I see one fond of appearance, or fine clothes, fine houses, fine
furniture, fine equipages, all above his fortune, for which he contracts
debts, and ends his career in a prison, _Alas!_ say I, _he has paid
dear, very dear, for his whistle_.

When I see a beautiful sweet-tempered girl married to an ill-natured
brute of a husband, _What a pity_, say I, _that she should pay so much
for a whistle_!

In short, I conceive that great part of the miseries of mankind are
brought upon them by the false estimates they have made of the value of
things, and by their _giving too much for their whistles_.

Yet I ought to have charity for these unhappy people, when I consider
that, with all this wisdom of which I am boasting, there are certain
things in the world so tempting, for example, the apples of King John,
which happily are not to be bought; for if they were put to sale by
auction, I might very easily be led to ruin myself in the purchase, and
find that I had once more given too much for the _whistle_.

Adieu, my dear friend, and believe me ever yours very sincerely and with
unalterable affection.



DIALOGUE BETWEEN FRANKLIN AND THE GOUT


/*
Midnight, 22 October, 1780.
*/

FRANKLIN. Eh! Oh! eh! What have I done to merit these cruel sufferings?

GOUT. Many things; you have ate and drank too freely, and too much
indulged those legs of yours in their indolence.

FRANKLIN. Who is it that accuses me?

GOUT. It is I, even I, the Gout.

FRANKLIN. What! my enemy in person?

GOUT. No, not your enemy.

FRANKLIN. I repeat it, my enemy; for you would not only torment my body
to death, but ruin my good name; you reproach me as a glutton and a
tippler; now all the world, that knows me, will allow that I am neither
the one nor the other.

GOUT. The world may think as it pleases; it is always very complaisant
to itself, and sometimes to its friends; but I very well know that the
quantity of meat and drink proper for a man, who takes a reasonable
degree of exercise, would be too much for another, who never takes any.

FRANKLIN. I take--eh! oh!--as much exercise--eh!--as I can, Madam Gout.
You know my sedentary state, and on that account, it would seem, Madam
Gout, as if you might spare me a little, seeing it is not altogether my
own fault.

GOUT. Not a jot; your rhetoric and your politeness are thrown away; your
apology avails nothing. If your situation in life is a sedentary one,
your amusements, your recreation, at least, should be active. You ought
to walk or ride; or, if the weather prevents that, play at billiards.
But let us examine your course of life. While the mornings are long, and
you have leisure to go abroad, what do you do? Why, instead of gaining
an appetite for breakfast, by salutary exercise, you amuse yourself with
books, pamphlets, or newspapers, which commonly are not worth the
reading. Yet you eat an inordinate breakfast, four dishes of tea, with
cream, and one or two buttered toasts, with slices of hung beef, which I
fancy are not things the most easily digested. Immediately afterwards
you sit down to write at your desk, or converse with persons who apply
to you on business. Thus the time passes till one, without any kind of
bodily exercise. But all this I could pardon, in regard, as you say, to
your sedentary condition. But what is your practice after dinner?
Walking in the beautiful gardens of those friends with whom you have
dined would be the choice of men of sense; yours is to be fixed down to
chess, where you are found engaged for two or three hours! This is your
perpetual recreation, which is the least eligible of any for a sedentary
man, because, instead of accelerating the motion of the fluids, the
rigid attention it requires helps to retard the circulation and obstruct
internal secretions. Wrapt in the speculations of this wretched game,
you destroy your constitution. What can be expected from such a course
of living, but a body replete with stagnant humors, ready to fall prey
to all kinds of dangerous maladies, if I, the Gout, did not occasionally
bring you relief by agitating those humors, and so purifying or
dissipating them? If it was in some nook or alley in Paris, deprived of
walks, that you played awhile at chess after dinner, this might be
excusable; but the same taste prevails with you in Passy, Auteuil,
Montmartre, or Sanoy, places where there are the finest gardens and
walks, a pure air, beautiful women, and most agreeable and instructive
conversation; all which you might enjoy by frequenting the walks. But
these are rejected for this abominable game of chess. Fie, then, Mr.
Franklin! But amidst my instructions, I had almost forgot to administer
my wholesome corrections; so take that twinge,--and that.

FRANKLIN. Oh! eh! oh! Ohhh! As much instruction as you please, Madam
Gout, and as many reproaches; but pray, Madam, a truce with your
corrections!

GOUT. No, Sir, no,--I will not abate a particle of what is so much for
your good,--therefore----

FRANKLIN. Oh! ehhh!--It is not fair to say I take no exercise, when I do
very often, going out to dine and returning in my carriage.

GOUT. That, of all imaginable exercises, is the most slight and
insignificant, if you allude to the motion of a carriage suspended on
springs. By observing the degree of heat obtained by different kinds of
motion, we may form an estimate of the quantity of exercise given by
each. Thus, for example, if you turn out to walk in winter with cold
feet, in an hour's time you will be in a glow all over; ride on
horseback, the same effect will scarcely be perceived by four hours'
round trotting; but if you loll in a carriage, such as you have
mentioned, you may travel all day and gladly enter the last inn to warm
your feet by a fire. Flatter yourself then no longer, that half an
hour's airing in your carriage deserves the name of exercise. Providence
has appointed few to roll in carriages, while he has given to all a pair
of legs, which are machines infinitely more commodious and serviceable.
Be grateful, then, and make a proper use of yours. Would you know how
they forward the circulation of your fluids, in the very action of
transporting you from place to place; observe when you walk, that all
your weight is alternately thrown from one leg to the other; this
occasions a great pressure on the vessels of the foot, and repels their
contents; when relieved, by the weight being thrown on the other foot,
the vessels of the first are allowed to replenish, and, by a return of
this weight, this repulsion again succeeds; thus accelerating the
circulation of the blood. The heat produced in any given time depends on
the degree of this acceleration; the fluids are shaken, the humors
attenuated, the secretions facilitated, and all goes well; the cheeks
are ruddy, and health is established. Behold your fair friend at
Auteuil; a lady who received from bounteous nature more really useful
science than half a dozen such pretenders to philosophy as you have been
able to extract from all your books. When she honors you with a visit,
it is on foot. She walks all hours of the day, and leaves indolence, and
its concomitant maladies, to be endured by her horses. In this, see at
once the preservative of her health and personal charms. But when you go
to Auteuil, you must have your carriage, though it is no farther from
Passy to Auteuil than from Auteuil to Passy.

FRANKLIN. Your reasonings grow very tiresome.

GOUT. I stand corrected. I will be silent and continue my office; take
that, and that.

FRANKLIN. Oh! Ohh! Talk on, I pray you.

GOUT. No, no; I have a good number of twinges for you to-night, and you
may be sure of some more to-morrow.

FRANKLIN. What, with such a fever! I shall go distracted. Oh! eh! Can no
one bear it for me?

GOUT. Ask that of your horses; they have served you faithfully.

FRANKLIN. How can you so cruelly sport with my torments?

GOUT. Sport! I am very serious. I have here a list of offenses against
your own health distinctly written, and can justify every stroke
inflicted on you.

FRANKLIN. Read it then.

GOUT. It is too long a detail; but I will briefly mention some
particulars.

FRANKLIN. Proceed. I am all attention.

GOUT. Do you remember how often you have promised yourself, the
following morning, a walk in the grove of Boulogne, in the garden de la
Muette, or in your own garden, and have violated your promise, alleging,
at one time, it was too cold, at another too warm, too windy, too moist,
or what else you pleased; when in truth it was too nothing, but your
insuperable love of ease?

FRANKLIN. That I confess may have happened occasionally, probably ten
times in a year.

GOUT. Your confession is very far short of the truth; the gross amount
is one hundred and ninety-nine times.

FRANKLIN. Is it possible?

GOUT. So possible, that it is fact; you may rely on the accuracy of my
statement. You know M. Brillon's gardens, and what fine walks they
contain; you know the handsome flight of an hundred steps, which lead
from the terrace above to the lawn below. You have been in the practice
of visiting this amiable family twice a week, after dinner, and it is a
maxim of your own, that "a man may take as much exercise in walking a
mile, up and down stairs, as in ten on level ground." What an
opportunity was here for you to have had exercise in both these ways!
Did you embrace it, and how often?

FRANKLIN. I cannot immediately answer that question.

GOUT. I will do it for you; not once.

FRANKLIN. Not once?

GOUT. Even so. During the summer you went there at six o'clock. You
found the charming lady, with her lovely children and friends, eager to
walk with you, and entertain you with their agreeable conversation; and
what has been your choice? Why, to sit on the terrace, satisfy yourself
with the fine prospect, and passing your eye over the beauties of the
garden below, without taking one step to descend and walk about in them.
On the contrary, you call for tea and the chess-board; and lo! you are
occupied in your seat till nine o'clock, and that besides two hours'
play after dinner; and then, instead of walking home, which would have
bestirred you a little, you step into your carriage. How absurd to
suppose that all this carelessness can be reconcilable with health,
without my interposition!

FRANKLIN. I am convinced now of the justness of Poor Richard's remark,
that "Our debts and our sins are always greater than we think for."

GOUT. So it is. You philosophers are sages in your maxims, and fools in
your conduct.

FRANKLIN. But do you charge among my crimes, that I return in a carriage
from M. Brillon's?

GOUT. Certainly; for, having been seated all the while, you cannot
object the fatigue of the day, and cannot want therefore the relief of a
carriage.

FRANKLIN. What then would you have me do with my carriage?

GOUT. Burn it if you choose; you would at least get heat out of it once
in this way; or, if you dislike that proposal, here's another for you;
observe the poor peasants, who work in the vineyards and grounds about
the villages of Passy, Auteuil, Chaillot, etc.; you may find every day
among these deserving creatures, four or five old men and women, bent
and perhaps crippled by weight of years, and too long and too great
labor. After a most fatiguing day, these people have to trudge a mile or
two to their smoky huts. Order your coachman to set them down. This is
an act that will be good for your soul; and, at the same time, after
your visit to the Brillons, if you return on foot, that will be good for
your body.

FRANKLIN. Ah! how tiresome you are!

GOUT. Well, then, to my office; it should not be forgotten that I am
your physician. There.

FRANKLIN. Ohhh! what a devil of a physician!

GOUT. How ungrateful you are to say so! Is it not I who, in the
character of your physician, have saved you from the palsy, dropsy, and
apoplexy? one or other of which would have done for you long ago, but
for me.

FRANKLIN. I submit, and thank you for the past, but entreat the
discontinuance of your visits for the future; for, in my mind, one had
better die than be cured so dolefully. Permit me just to hint, that I
have also not been unfriendly to _you_. I never feed physician or quack
of any kind, to enter the list against you; if then you do not leave me
to my repose, it may be said you are ungrateful too.

GOUT. I can scarcely acknowledge that as any objection. As to quacks, I
despise them; they may kill you indeed, but cannot injure me. And, as to
regular physicians, they are at last convinced that the gout, in such a
subject as you are, is no disease, but a remedy; and wherefore cure a
remedy?--but to our business,--there.

FRANKLIN. Oh! oh!--for Heaven's sake leave me! and I promise faithfully
never more to play at chess, but to take exercise daily, and live
temperately.

GOUT. I know you too well. You promise fair; but, after a few months of
good health, you will return to your old habits; your fine promises will
be forgotten like the forms of the last year's clouds. Let us then
finish the account, and I will go. But I leave you with an assurance of
visiting you again at a proper time and place; for my object is your
good, and you are sensible now that I am your _real friend_.



CONSOLATION FOR THE OLD BACHELOR

FRANCIS HOPKINSON


MR. AITKEN: Your Old Bachelor having pathetically represented the
miseries of his solitary situation, severely reproaching himself for
having neglected to marry in his younger days, I would fain alleviate
his distress, by showing that it is possible he might have been as
unhappy--even in the honorable state of matrimony.

I am a shoemaker in this city, and by my industry and attention have
been enabled to maintain my wife and a daughter, now six years old, in
comfort and respect; and to lay by a little at the year's end, against a
rainy day.

My good wife had long teased me to take her to New York, in order to
visit Mrs. Snip, the lady of an eminent taylor in that city, and her
cousin; from whom she had received many pressing invitations.

This jaunt had been the daily subject of discussion at breakfast,
dinner, and supper for a month before the time fixed upon for putting it
in execution. As our daughter Jenny could by no means be left at home,
many and great were the preparations to equip Miss and her Mamma for
this important journey; and yet, as my wife assured me, there was
nothing provided but what was _absolutely necessary_, and which we could
not possibly do without. My purse sweat at every pore.

At last, the long-expected day arrived, preceded by a very restless
night. For, as my wife could not sleep for thinking on the approaching
jaunt, neither would she suffer me to repose in quiet. If I happened
through wearisomeness to fall into a slumber, she immediately roused me
by some unseasonable question or remark: frequently asking if I was sure
the apprentice had greased the chair-wheels, and seen that the harness
was clean and in good order; often observing how surprised her cousin
_Snip_ would be to see us; and as often wondering how poor dear Miss
_Jenny_ would bear the fatigue of the journey. Thus past the night in
delightful discourse, if that can with propriety be called a discourse,
wherein my wife was the only speaker--my replies never exceeding the
monosyllables _yes_ or _no_, murmured between sleeping and waking.

No sooner was it fair daylight, but up started my notable wife, and soon
roused the whole family. The little trunk was stuffed with baggage, even
to bursting, and tied behind the chair, and the chair-box was crammed
with trumpery which _we could not possibly do without_. Miss _Jenny_ was
drest, and breakfast devoured in haste: the old negro wench was called
in, and the charge of the house committed to her care; and the two
apprentices and the hired maid received many wholesome cautions and
instructions for their conduct during our absence, all which they most
liberally promised to observe; whilst I attended, with infinite
patience, the adjustment of these preliminaries.

At length, however, we set off, and, turning the first corner, lost
sight of our habitation, with great regret on my part, and no less joy
on the part of Miss _Jenny_ and her Mamma.

When we got to Poole's Bridge, there happened to be a great concourse of
wagons, carts, &c., so that we could not pass for some time--Miss
_Jenny_ frightened--my wife very impatient and uneasy--wondered I did
not call out to those impudent fellows to make way for us; observing
that I had not the spirit of a louse. Having got through this
difficulty, we proceeded without obstruction--my wife in good-humor
again--Miss _Jenny_ in high spirits. At _Kensington_ fresh troubles
arise. "Bless me, Miss _Jenny_," says my wife, "where is the bandbox?"
"I don't know, Mamma; the last time I saw it, it was on the table in
your room." What's to be done? The bandbox is left behind--it contains
Miss _Jenny_'s new wire-cap--there is no possibility of doing without
it--as well no New York as no wire-cap--there is no alternative, we must
e'en go back for it. Teased and mortified as I was, my good wife
administered consolation by observing, "That it was my business to see
that everything was put into the chair that ought to be, but there was
no depending upon me for anything; and that she plainly saw I undertook
this journey with an ill-will, merely because she had set her heart upon
it." Silent patience was my only remedy. An hour and a half restored to
us this essential requisite--the wire-cap--and brought us back to the
place where we first missed it.

After innumerable difficulties and unparalleled dangers, occasioned by
ruts, stumps, and tremendous bridges, we arrived at Neshamony ferry: but
how to cross it was the question. My wife protested that neither she nor
_Jenny_ would go over in the boat with the horse. I assured her that
there was not the least danger; that the horse was as quiet as a dog,
and that I would hold him by the bridle all the way. These assurances
had little weight: the most forcible argument was that she must go that
way or not at all, for there was no other boat to be had. Thus
persuaded, she ventured in--the flies were troublesome--the horse
kicked--my wife in panics--Miss _Jenny_ in tears. _Ditto_ at
_Trenton-ferry_.

As we started pretty early, and as the days were long, we reached
Trenton by two o'clock. Here we dined. My wife found fault with
everything; and whilst she disposed of what I thought a tolerable
hearty meal, declared there was nothing fit to eat. Matters, however,
would have gone on pretty well, but Miss _Jenny_ began to cry with the
toothache--sad lamentations over Miss _Jenny_--all my fault because I
had not made the glazier replace a broken pane in her chamber window. N.
B. I had been twice for him, and he promised to come, but was not so
good as his word.

After dinner we again entered upon our journey--my wife in
good-humor--Miss _Jenny's_ toothache much easier--various chat--I
acknowledge everything my wife says for fear of discomposing her. We
arrive in good time at Princetown. My wife and daughter admire the
College. We refresh ourselves with tea, and go to bed early, in order to
be up by times for the next day's expedition.

In the morning we set off again in tolerable good-humor, and proceeded
happily as far as _Rocky-hill_. Here my wife's fears and terrors
returned with great force. I drove as carefully as possible; but coming
to a place where one of the wheels must unavoidably go over the point of
a small rock, my wife, in a great fright, seized hold of one of the
reins, which happening to be the wrong one, she pulled the horse so as
to force the wheel higher up the rock than it would otherwise have gone,
and overset the chair. We were all tumbled hickledy-pickledy, into the
road--Miss _Jenny's_ face all bloody--the woods echo to her cries--my
wife in a fainting-fit--and I in great misery; secretly and most
devoutly wishing cousin _Snip_ at the devil. Matters begin to mend--my
wife recovers--Miss _Jenny_ has only received a slight scratch on one of
her cheeks--the horse stands quite still, and none of the harness broke.
Matters grew worse again; the twine with which the bandbox was tied had
broke in the fall, and the aforesaid wire-cap lay soaking in a nasty
mudpuddle--grievous lamentations over the wire-cap--all my fault because
I did not tie it better--no remedy--no wire-caps to be bought at
_Rocky-hill_. At night my wife discovered a small bruise on her hip--was
apprehensive it might mortify--did not know but the bone might be broken
or splintered--many instances of mortifications occasioned by small
injuries.

After passing unhurt over the imminent dangers of _Passayack_ and
_Hackensack_ rivers, and the yet more tremendous horrors of
_Pawlas-hook_ ferry, we arrived, at the close of the third day, at
cousin _Snip's_ in the city of New York.

Here we sojourned a tedious week; my wife spent as much money as would
have maintained my family for a month at home, in purchasing a hundred
useless articles _which we could not possibly do without_; and every
night when we went to bed fatigued me with encomiums on her cousin
_Snip_; leading to a history of the former grandeur of her family, and
concluding with insinuations that I did not treat her with the attention
and respect I ought.

On the seventh day my wife and cousin _Snip_ had a pretty warm
altercation respecting the comparative elegancies and advantages of New
York and Philadelphia. The dispute ran high, and many aggravating words
past between the two advocates. The next morning my wife declared that
my business would not admit of a longer absence from home--and so after
much ceremonious complaisance--in which my wife was by no means exceeded
by her very polite cousin--we left the famous city of New York; and I
with heart-felt satisfaction looked forward to the happy period of our
safe arrival in Water-street, Philadelphia.

But this blessing was not to be obtained without much vexation and
trouble. But lest I should seem tedious I shall not recount the
adventures of our return--how we were caught in a thunderstorm--how our
horse failed, by which we were benighted three miles from our
stage--how my wife's panics returned--how Miss _Jenny_ howled, and how
very miserable I was made. Suffice it to say, that, after many
distressing disasters, we arrived at the door of our own habitation in
Water-street.

No sooner had we entered the house than we were informed that one of my
apprentices had run away with the hired-maid, nobody knew where; the old
negro had got drunk, fallen into the fire, and burnt out one of her
eyes; and our best china-bowl was broken.

My good wife contrived, with her usual ingenuity, to throw the blame of
all these misfortunes upon me. As this was a consolation to which I had
been long accustomed in all untoward cases, I had recourse to my usual
remedy, viz., silent patience. After sincerely praying that I might
never more see cousin _Snip_, I sat industriously down to my trade, in
order to retrieve my manifold losses.

This is only a miniature picture of the married state, which I present
to your _Old Bachelor_, in hopes it may abate his choler, and reconcile
him to a single life. But, if this opiate should not be sufficient to
give him some ease, I may, perhaps, send him a stronger dose hereafter.



JOHN BULL

WASHINGTON IRVING


/p
    "An old song, made by an aged old pate,
     Of an old worshipful gentleman who had a great estate,
     That kept a brave old house at a bountiful rate,
     And an old porter to relieve the poor at his gate.
     With an old study fill'd full of learned old books,
     With an old reverend chaplain, you might know him by his looks,
     With an old buttery hatch worn quite off the hooks,
     And an old kitchen that maintained half-a-dozen old cooks.
                                 Like an old courtier, etc."
                                                --OLD SONG.
p/

There is no species of humor in which the English more excel, than that
which consists in caricaturing and giving ludicrous appellations, or
nicknames. In this way they have whimsically designated, not merely
individuals, but nations; and, in their fondness for pushing a joke,
they have not spared even themselves. One would think that, in
personifying itself, a nation would be apt to picture something grand,
heroic and imposing, but it is characteristic of the peculiar humor of
the English, and of their love for what is blunt, comic, and familiar,
that they have embodied their national oddities in the figure of a
sturdy, corpulent old fellow, with a three-cornered hat, red waistcoat,
leather breeches, and stout oaken cudgel. Thus they have taken a
singular delight in exhibiting their most private foibles in a laughable
point of view; and have been so successful in their delineations, that
there is scarcely a being in actual existence more absolutely present to
the public mind than that eccentric personage, John Bull.

Perhaps the continual contemplation of the character thus drawn of them
has contributed to fix it upon the nation; and thus to give reality to
what at first may have been painted in a great measure from the
imagination. Men are apt to acquire peculiarities that are continually
ascribed to them. The common orders of English seem wonderfully
captivated with the _beau ideal_ which they have formed of John Bull,
and endeavor to act up to the broad caricature that is perpetually
before their eyes. Unluckily, they sometimes make their boasted Bull-ism
an apology for their prejudice or grossness; and this I have especially
noticed among those truly homebred and genuine sons of the soil who have
never migrated beyond the sound of Bow-bells. If one of these should be
a little uncouth in speech, and apt to utter impertinent truths, he
confesses that he is a real John Bull, and always speaks his mind. If he
now and then flies into an unreasonable burst of passion about trifles,
he observes, that John Bull is a choleric old blade, but then his
passion is over in a moment, and he bears no malice. If he betrays a
coarseness of taste, and an insensibility to foreign refinements, he
thanks heaven for his ignorance--he is a plain John Bull, and has no
relish for frippery and nicknacks. His very proneness to be gulled by
strangers, and to pay extravagantly for absurdities, is excused under
the plea of munificence--for John is always more generous than wise.

Thus, under the name of John Bull, he will contrive to argue every fault
into a merit, and will frankly convict himself of being the honestest
fellow in existence.

However little, therefore, the character may have suited in the first
instance, it has gradually adapted itself to the nation, or rather they
have adapted themselves to each other; and a stranger who wishes to
study English peculiarities, may gather much valuable information from
the innumerable portraits of John Bull, as exhibited in the windows of
the caricature-shops. Still, however, he is one of those fertile
humorists, that are continually throwing out new portraits, and
presenting different aspects from different points of view; and, often
as he has been described, I cannot resist the temptation to give a
slight sketch of him, such as he has met my eye.

John Bull, to all appearance, is a plain downright matter-of-fact
fellow, with much less of poetry about him than rich prose. There is
little of romance in his nature, but a vast deal of strong natural
feeling. He excels in humor more than in wit; is jolly rather than gay;
melancholy rather than morose; can easily be moved to a sudden tear, or
surprised into a broad laugh; but he loathes sentiment, and has no turn
for light pleasantry. He is a boon companion, if you allow him to have
his humor, and to talk about himself; and he will stand by a friend in a
quarrel, with life and purse, however soundly he may be cudgeled.

In this last respect, to tell the truth, he has a propensity to be
somewhat too ready. He is a busy-minded personage, who thinks not merely
for himself and family, but for all the country round, and is most
generously disposed to be everybody's champion. He is continually
volunteering his services to settle his neighbors' affairs, and takes it
in great dudgeon if they engage in any matter of consequence without
asking his advice; though he seldom engages in any friendly office of
the kind without finishing by getting into a squabble with all parties,
and then railing bitterly at their ingratitude. He unluckily took
lessons in his youth in the noble science of defense, and having
accomplished himself in the use of his limbs and his weapons, and become
a perfect master at boxing and cudgel-play, he has had a troublesome
life of it ever since. He cannot hear of a quarrel between the most
distant of his neighbors, but he begins incontinently to fumble with
the head of his cudgel, and consider whether his interest or honor does
not require that he should meddle in the broil. Indeed he has extended
his relations of pride and policy so completely over the whole country,
that no event can take place, without infringing some of his finely-spun
rights and dignities. Couched in his little domain, with these filaments
stretching forth in every direction, he is like some choleric,
bottle-bellied old spider, who has woven his web over a whole chamber,
so that a fly cannot buzz, nor a breeze blow, without startling his
repose, and causing him to sally forth wrathfully from his den.

Though really a good-hearted, good-tempered old fellow at bottom, yet he
is singularly fond of being in the midst of contention. It is one of his
peculiarities, however, that he only relishes the beginning of an
affray; he always goes into a fight with alacrity, but comes out of it
grumbling even when victorious; and though no one fights with more
obstinacy to carry a contested point, yet, when the battle is over, and
he comes to the reconciliation, he is so much taken up with the mere
shaking of hands, that he is apt to let his antagonist pocket all that
they have been quarreling about. It is not, therefore, fighting that he
ought so much to be on his guard against, as making friends. It is
difficult to cudgel him out of a farthing; but put him in a good humor,
and you may bargain him out of all the money in his pocket. He is like a
stout ship, which will weather the roughest storm uninjured, but roll
its masts overboard in the succeeding calm.

He is a little fond of playing the magnifico abroad; of pulling out a
long purse; flinging his money bravely about at boxing matches, horse
races, cock fights, and carrying a high head among "gentlemen of the
fancy:" but immediately after one of these fits of extravagance, he will
be taken with violent qualms of economy; stop short at the most trivial
expenditure; talk desperately of being ruined and brought upon the
parish; and, in such moods, will not pay the smallest tradesman's bill,
without violent altercation. He is in fact the most punctual and
discontented paymaster in the world; drawing his coin out of his
breeches pocket with infinite reluctance; paying to the uttermost
farthing, but accompanying every guinea with a growl.

With all his talk of economy, however, he is a bountiful provider, and a
hospitable housekeeper. His economy is of a whimsical kind, its chief
object being to devise how he may afford to be extravagant; for he will
begrudge himself a beefsteak and pint of port one day, that he may roast
an ox whole, broach a hogshead of ale, and treat all his neighbors on
the next.

His domestic establishment is enormously expensive: not so much from any
great outward parade, as from the great consumption of solid beef and
pudding; the vast number of followers he feeds and clothes; and his
singular disposition to pay hugely for small services. He is a most kind
and indulgent master, and, provided his servants humor his
peculiarities, flatter his vanity a little now and then, and do not
peculate grossly on him before his face, they may manage him to
perfection. Everything that lives on him seems to thrive and grow fat.
His house-servants are well paid, and pampered, and have little to do.
His horses are sleek and lazy, and prance slowly before his state
carriage; and his house-dogs sleep quietly about the door, and will
hardly bark at a housebreaker.

His family mansion is an old castellated manor-house, gray with age, and
of a most venerable, though weather-beaten appearance. It has been built
upon no regular plan, but is a vast accumulation of parts, erected in
various tastes and ages. The center bears evident traces of Saxon
architecture, and is as solid as ponderous stone and old English oak can
make it. Like all the relics of that style, it is full of obscure
passages, intricate mazes, and dusky chambers; and though these have
been partially lighted up in modern days, yet there are many places
where you must still grope in the dark. Additions have been made to the
original edifice from time to time, and great alterations have taken
place; towers and battlements have been erected during wars and tumults:
wings built in time of peace; and out-houses, lodges, and offices, run
up according to the whim or convenience of different generations, until
it has become one of the most spacious, rambling tenements imaginable.
An entire wing is taken up with the family chapel, a reverend pile, that
must have been exceedingly sumptuous, and, indeed, in spite of having
been altered and simplified at various periods, has still a look of
solemn religious pomp. Its walls within are stored with the monuments of
John's ancestors; and it is snugly fitted up with soft cushions and
well-lined chairs, where such of his family as are inclined to church
services, may doze comfortably in the discharge of their duties.

To keep up this chapel has cost John much money; but he is stanch in his
religion, and piqued in his zeal, from the circumstance that many
dissenting chapels have been erected in his vicinity, and several of his
neighbors, with whom he has had quarrels, are strong papists.

To do the duties of the chapel he maintains, at a large expense, a pious
and portly family chaplain. He is a most learned and decorous personage,
and a truly well-bred Christian, who always backs the old gentleman in
his opinions, winks discreetly at his little peccadilloes, rebukes the
children when refractory, and is of great use in exhorting the tenants
to read their Bibles, say their prayers, and, above all, to pay their
rents punctually, and without grumbling.

The family apartments are in a very antiquated taste, somewhat heavy,
and often inconvenient, but full of the solemn magnificence of former
times; fitted up with rich, though faded tapestry, unwieldy furniture,
and loads of massy gorgeous old plate. The vast fireplaces, ample
kitchens, extensive cellars, and sumptuous banqueting halls, all speak
of the roaring hospitality of days of yore, of which the modern
festivity at the manor-house is but a shadow. There are, however,
complete suites of rooms apparently deserted and time-worn; and towers
and turrets that are tottering to decay; so that in high winds there is
danger of their tumbling about the ears of the household.

John has frequently been advised to have the old edifice thoroughly
overhauled; and to have some of the useless parts pulled down, and the
others strengthened with their materials; but the old gentleman always
grows testy on this subject. He swears the house is an excellent
house--that it is tight and weather proof, and not to be shaken by
tempests--that it has stood for several hundred years, and, therefore,
is not likely to tumble down now--that as to its being inconvenient, his
family is accustomed to the inconveniences, and would not be comfortable
without them--that as to its unwieldy size and irregular construction,
these result from its being the growth of centuries, and being improved
by the wisdom of every generation--that an old family, like his,
requires a large house to dwell in; new, upstart families may live in
modern cottages and snug boxes; but an old English family should inhabit
an old English manor-house. If you point out any part of the building as
superfluous, he insists that it is material to the strength or
decoration of the rest, and the harmony of the whole; and swears that
the parts are so built into each other, that if you pull down one, you
run the risk of having the whole about your ears.

The secret of the matter is, that John has a great disposition to
protect and patronize. He thinks it indispensable to the dignity of an
ancient and honorable family, to be bounteous in its appointments, and
to be eaten up by dependents; and so, partly from pride, and partly from
kind-heartedness, he makes it a rule always to give shelter and
maintenance to his superannuated servants.

The consequence is, that, like many other venerable family
establishments, his manor is encumbered by old retainers whom he cannot
turn off, and an old style which he cannot lay down. His mansion is like
a great hospital of invalids, and, with all its magnitude, is not a whit
too large for its inhabitants. Not a nook or corner but is of use in
housing some useless personage. Groups of veteran beefeaters, gouty
pensioners, and retired heroes of the buttery and the larder, are seen
lolling about its walls, crawling over its lawns, dozing under its
trees, or sunning themselves upon the benches at its doors. Every office
and outhouse is garrisoned by these supernumeraries and their families;
for they are amazingly prolific, and when they die off, are sure to
leave John a legacy of hungry mouths to be provided for. A mattock
cannot be struck against the most mouldering tumble-down tower, but out
pops, from some cranny or loop-hole, the gray pate of some superannuated
hanger-on, who has lived at John's expense all his life, and makes the
most grievous outcry at their pulling down the roof from over the head
of a worn-out servant of the family. This is an appeal that John's
honest heart never can withstand; so that a man, who has faithfully
eaten his beef and pudding all his life, is sure to be rewarded with a
pipe and tankard in his old days.

A great part of his park, also, is turned into paddocks, where his
broken-down chargers are turned loose to graze undisturbed for the
remainder of their existence--a worthy example of grateful recollection,
which if some of his neighbors were to imitate, would not be to their
discredit. Indeed, it is one of his great pleasures to point out these
old steeds to his visitors, to dwell on their good qualities, extol
their past services, and boast, with some little vainglory, of the
perilous adventures and hardy exploits through which they have carried
him.

He is given, however, to indulge his veneration for family usages, and
family encumbrances, to a whimsical extent. His manor is infested by
gangs of gipsies; yet he will not suffer them to be driven off, because
they have infested the place time out of mind, and been regular poachers
upon every generation of the family. He will scarcely permit a dry
branch to be lopped from the great trees that surround the house, lest
it should molest the rooks, that have bred there for centuries. Owls
have taken possession of the dovecote; but they are hereditary owls, and
must not be disturbed. Swallows have nearly choked up every chimney with
their nests; martins build in every frieze and cornice; crows flutter
about the towers, and perch on every weathercock; and old gray-headed
rats may be seen in every quarter of the house, running in and out of
their holes undauntedly in broad daylight. In short, John has such a
reverence for everything that has been long in the family, that he will
not hear even of abuses being reformed, because they are good old family
abuses.

All those whims and habits have concurred woefully to drain the old
gentleman's purse; and as he prides himself on punctuality in money
matters, and wishes to maintain his credit in the neighborhood, they
have caused him great perplexity in meeting his engagements. This, too,
has been increased by the altercations and heart-burnings which are
continually taking place in his family. His children have been brought
up to different callings, and are of different ways of thinking; and as
they have always been allowed to speak their minds freely, they do not
fail to exercise the privilege most clamorously in the present posture
of his affairs. Some stand up for the honor of the race, and are clear
that the old establishment should be kept up in all its state, whatever
may be the cost; others, who are more prudent and considerate, entreat
the old gentleman to retrench his expenses, and to put his whole system
of housekeeping on a more moderate footing. He has, indeed, at times,
seemed inclined to listen to their opinions, but their wholesome advice
has been completely defeated by the obstreperous conduct of one of his
sons. This is a noisy, rattle-pated fellow, of rather low habits, who
neglects his business to frequent ale-houses--is the orator of village
clubs, and a complete oracle among the poorest of his father's tenants.
No sooner does he hear any of his brothers mention reform or
retrenchment, than up he jumps, takes the words out of their mouths, and
roars out for an overturn. When his tongue is once going nothing can
stop it. He rants about the room; hectors the old man about his
spendthrift practices; ridicules his tastes and pursuits; insists that
he shall turn the old servants out of doors; give the broken-down horses
to the hounds; send the fat chaplain packing, and take a field-preacher
in his place--nay, that the whole family mansion shall be leveled with
the ground, and a plain one of brick and mortar built in its place. He
rails at every social entertainment and family festivity, and skulks
away growling to the ale-house whenever an equipage drives up to the
door. Though constantly complaining of the emptiness of his purse, yet
he scruples not to spend all his pocket-money in these tavern
convocations, and even runs up scores for the liquor over which he
preaches about his father's extravagance.

It may readily be imagined how little such thwarting agrees with the old
cavalier's fiery temperament. He has become so irritable, from repeated
crossings, that the mere mention of retrenchment or reform is a signal
for a brawl between him and the tavern oracle. As the latter is too
sturdy and refractory for paternal discipline, having grown out of all
fear of the cudgel, they have frequent scenes of wordy warfare, which at
times run so high, that John is fain to call in the aid of his son Tom,
an officer who has served abroad, but is at present living at home, on
half-pay. This last is sure to stand by the old gentleman, right or
wrong; likes nothing so much as a racketing, roystering life; and is
ready at a wink or nod, to out saber, and flourish it over the orator's
head, if he dares to array himself against paternal authority.

These family dissensions, as usual, have got abroad, and are rare food
for scandal in John's neighborhood. People begin to look wise, and shake
their heads, whenever his affairs are mentioned. They all "hope that
matters are not so bad with him as represented; but when a man's own
children begin to rail at his extravagance, things must be badly
managed. They understand he is mortgaged over head and ears, and is
continually dabbling with money lenders. He is certainly an open-handed
old gentleman, but they fear he has lived too fast; indeed, they never
knew any good come of this fondness for hunting, racing, reveling and
prize-fighting. In short, Mr. Bull's estate is a very fine one, and has
been in the family a long time; but, for all that, they have known many
finer estates come to the hammer."

What is worst of all, is the effect which these pecuniary embarrassments
and domestic feuds have had on the poor man himself. Instead of that
jolly round corporation, and smug rosy face, which he used to present,
he has of late become as shriveled and shrunk as a frost-bitten apple.
His scarlet gold-laced waistcoat, which bellied out so bravely in those
prosperous days when he sailed before the wind, now hangs loosely about
him like a mainsail in a calm. His leather breeches are all in folds and
wrinkles, and apparently have much ado to hold up the boots that yawn on
both sides of his once sturdy legs.

Instead of strutting about as formerly, with his three-cornered hat on
one side; flourishing his cudgel, and bringing it down every moment with
a hearty thump upon the ground; looking everyone sturdily in the face,
and trolling out a stave of a catch or a drinking song; he now goes
about whistling thoughtfully to himself, with his head drooping down,
his cudgel tucked under his arm, and his hands thrust to the bottom of
his breeches pockets, which are evidently empty.

Such is the plight of honest John Bull at present; yet for all this the
old fellow's spirit is as tall and as gallant as ever. If you drop the
least expression of sympathy or concern, he takes fire in an instant;
swears that he is the richest and stoutest fellow in the country; talks
of laying out large sums to adorn his house or buy another estate; and
with a valiant swagger and grasping of his cudgel, longs exceedingly to
have another bout at quarter-staff.

Though there may be something rather whimsical in all this, yet I
confess I cannot look upon John's situation without strong feelings of
interest. With all his odd humors and obstinate prejudices, he is a
sterling-hearted old blade. He may not be so wonderfully fine a fellow
as he thinks himself, but he is at least twice as good as his neighbors
represent him. His virtues are all his own; all plain, homebred, and
unaffected. His very faults smack of the raciness of his good qualities.
His extravagance savors of his generosity; his quarrelsomeness of his
courage; his credulity of his open faith; his vanity of his pride; and
his bluntness of his sincerity. They are all the redundancies of a rich
and liberal character. He is like his own oak, rough without, but sound
and solid within; whose bark abounds with excrescences in proportion to
the growth and grandeur of the timber; and whose branches make a fearful
groaning and murmuring in the least storm, from their very magnitude and
luxuriance. There is something, too, in the appearance of his old family
mansion that is extremely poetical and picturesque; and, as long as it
can be rendered comfortably habitable, I should almost tremble to see it
meddled with, during the present conflict of tastes and opinions. Some
of his advisers are no doubt good architects, that might be of service;
but many, I fear, are mere levelers, who, when they had once got to work
with their mattocks on this venerable edifice, would never stop until
they had brought it to the ground, and perhaps buried themselves among
the ruins. All that I wish is, that John's present troubles may teach
him more prudence in future. That he may cease to distress his mind
about other people's affairs; that he may give up the fruitless attempt
to promote the good of his neighbors, and the peace and happiness of the
world, by dint of the cudgel; that he may remain quietly at home;
gradually get his house into repair; cultivate his rich estate according
to his fancy; husband his income--if he thinks proper; bring his unruly
children into order--if he can; renew the jovial scenes of ancient
prosperity; and long enjoy, on his paternal lands, a green, an
honorable, and a merry old age.



THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE

A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY

WASHINGTON IRVING

/p
      "I know that all beneath the moon decays,
    And what by mortals in this world is brought,
    In time's great period shall return to nought.
      I know that all the muse's heavenly lays,
    With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought,
    As idle sounds, of few or none are sought,
      That there is nothing lighter than mere praise."
                                    --DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.
p/


There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind, in which we naturally
steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt, where we may
indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed. In such a
mood I was loitering about the old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey,
enjoying that luxury of wandering thought which one is apt to dignify
with the name of reflection; when suddenly an interruption of madcap
boys from Westminster School, playing at football, broke in upon the
monastic stillness of the place, making the vaulted passages and
mouldering tombs echo with their merriment. I sought to take refuge from
their noise by penetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile,
and applied to one of the vergers for admission to the library. He
conducted me through a portal rich with the crumbling sculpture of
former ages, which opened upon a gloomy passage leading to the
chapter-house and the chamber in which doomsday book is deposited. Just
within the passage is a small door on the left. To this the verger
applied a key; it was double locked, and opened with some difficulty, as
if seldom used. We now ascended a dark narrow staircase, and, passing
through a second door, entered the library.

I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof supported by massive
joists of old English oak. It was soberly lighted by a row of Gothic
windows at a considerable height from the floor, and which apparently
opened upon the roofs of the cloisters. An ancient picture of some
reverend dignitary of the church in his robes hung over the fireplace.
Around the hall and in a small gallery were the books, arranged in
carved oaken cases. They consisted principally of old polemical writers,
and were much more worn by time than use. In the center of the library
was a solitary table with two or three books on it, an inkstand without
ink, and a few pens parched by long disuse. The place seemed fitted for
quiet study and profound meditation. It was buried deep among the
massive walls of the abbey, and shut up from the tumult of the world. I
could only hear now and then the shouts of the school-boys faintly
swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of a bell tolling for
prayers, echoing soberly along the roofs of the abbey. By degrees the
shouts of merriment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died away;
the bell ceased to toll, and a profound silence reigned through the
dusky hall.

I had taken down a little thick quarto, curiously bound in parchment,
with brass clasps, and seated myself at the table in a venerable
elbow-chair. Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled by the solemn
monastic air, and lifeless quiet of the place, into a train of musing.
As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus
ranged on the shelves, and apparently never disturbed in their repose, I
could not but consider the library a kind of literary catacomb, where
authors, like mummies, are piously entombed, and left to blacken and
moulder in dusty oblivion.

How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, now thrust aside with
such indifference, cost some aching head! how many weary days! how many
sleepless nights! How have their authors buried themselves in the
solitude of cells and cloisters; shut themselves up from the face of
man, and the still more blessed face of nature; and devoted themselves
to painful research and intense reflection! And all for what? to occupy
an inch of dusty shelf--to have the title of their works read now and
then in a future age, by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler like
myself; and in another age to be lost, even to remembrance. Such is the
amount of this boasted immortality. A mere temporary rumor, a local
sound; like the tone of that bell which has just tolled among these
towers, filling the ear for a moment--lingering transiently in echo--and
then passing away like a thing that was not.

While I sat half murmuring, half meditating these unprofitable
speculations with my head resting on my hand, I was thrumming with the
other hand upon the quarto, until I accidentally loosened the clasps;
when, to my utter astonishment, the little book gave two or three yawns,
like one awaking from a deep sleep; then a husky hem; and at length
began to talk. At first its voice was very hoarse and broken, being much
troubled by a cobweb which some studious spider had woven across it; and
having probably contracted a cold from long exposure to the chills and
damps of the abbey. In a short time, however, it became more distinct,
and I soon found it an exceedingly fluent conversable little tome. Its
language, to be sure, was rather quaint and obsolete, and its
pronunciation, what, in the present day, would be deemed barbarous; but
I shall endeavor, as far as I am able, to render it in modern parlance.

It began with railings about the neglect of the world--about merit being
suffered to languish in obscurity, and other such commonplace topics of
literary repining, and complained bitterly that it had not been opened
for more than two centuries; that the dean only looked now and then into
the library, sometimes took down a volume or two, trifled with them for
a few moments, and then returned them to their shelves. "What a plague
do they mean," said the little quarto, which I began to perceive was
somewhat choleric, "what a plague do they mean by keeping several
thousand volumes of us shut up here, and watched by a set of old
vergers, like so many beauties in a harem, merely to be looked at now
and then by the dean? Books were written to give pleasure and to be
enjoyed; and I would have a rule passed that the dean should pay each of
us a visit at least once a year; or if he is not equal to the task, let
them once in a while turn loose the whole school of Westminster among
us, that at any rate we may now and then have an airing."

"Softly, my worthy friend," replied I, "you are not aware how much
better you are off than most books of your generation. By being stored
away in this ancient library, you are like the treasured remains of
those saints and monarchs, which lie enshrined in the adjoining chapels;
while the remains of your contemporary mortals, left to the ordinary
course of nature, have long since returned to dust."

"Sir," said the little tome, ruffling his leaves and looking big, "I was
written for all the world, not for the bookworms of an abbey. I was
intended to circulate from hand to hand, like other great contemporary
works; but here have I been clasped up for more than two centuries, and
might have silently fallen a prey to these worms that are playing the
very vengeance with my intestines, if you had not by chance given me an
opportunity of uttering a few last words before I go to pieces."

"My good friend," rejoined I, "had you been left to the circulation of
which you speak, you would long ere this have been no more. To judge
from your physiognomy, you are now well stricken in years: very few of
your contemporaries can be at present in existence; and those few owe
their longevity to being immured like yourself in old libraries; which,
suffer me to add, instead of likening to harems, you might more properly
and gratefully have compared to those infirmaries attached to religious
establishments, for the benefit of the old and decrepit, and where, by
quiet fostering and no employment, they often endure to an amazingly
good-for-nothing old age. You talk of your contemporaries as if in
circulation--where do we meet with their works? what do we hear of
Robert Groteste, of Lincoln? No one could have toiled harder than he for
immortality. He is said to have written nearly two hundred volumes. He
built, as it were, a pyramid of books to perpetuate his name: but, alas!
the pyramid has long since fallen, and only a few fragments are
scattered in various libraries, where they are scarcely disturbed even
by the antiquarian. What do we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis, the
historian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and poet? He declined two
bishoprics, that he might shut himself up and write for posterity; but
posterity never inquires after his labors. What of Henry of Huntingdon,
who, besides a learned history of England, wrote a treatise on the
contempt of the world, which the world has revenged by forgetting him?
What is quoted of Joseph of Exeter, styled the miracle of his age in
classical composition? Of his three great heroic poems one is lost
forever, excepting a mere fragment; the others are known only to a few
of the curious in literature; and as to his love verses and epigrams,
they have entirely disappeared. What is in current use of John Wallis,
the Franciscan, who acquired the name of the tree of life? Of William of
Malmsbury;--of Simeon of Durham;--of Benedict of Peterborough;--of John
Hanvill of St. Albans;--of----"

"Prithee, friend," cried the quarto, in a testy tone, "how old do you
think me? You are talking of authors that lived long before my time, and
wrote either in Latin or French, so that they in a manner expatriated
themselves, and deserved to be forgotten;[1] but I, sir, was ushered
into the world from the press of the renowned Wynkyn de Worde. I was
written in my own native tongue, at a time when the language had become
fixed; and indeed I was considered a model of pure and elegant English."

(I should observe that these remarks were couched in such intolerably
antiquated terms, that I have had infinite difficulty in rendering them
into modern phraseology.)

"I cry your mercy," said I, "for mistaking your age; but it matters
little: almost all the writers of your time have likewise passed into
forgetfulness; and De Worde's publications are mere literary rarities
among book-collectors. The purity and stability of language, too, on
which you found your claims to perpetuity, have been the fallacious
dependence of authors of every age, even back to the times of the worthy
Robert of Gloucester, who wrote his history in rhymes of mongrel
Saxon.[2] Even now many talk of Spenser's 'well of pure English
undefiled,' as if the language ever sprang from a well or fountain-head,
and was not rather a mere confluence of various tongues, perpetually
subject to changes and intermixtures. It is this which has made English
literature so extremely mutable, and the reputation built upon it so
fleeting. Unless thought can be committed to something more permanent
and unchangeable than such a medium, even thought must share the fate of
everything else, and fall into decay. This should serve as a check upon
the vanity and exultation of the most popular writer. He finds the
language in which he has embarked his fame gradually altering, and
subject to the dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion. He
looks back and beholds the early authors of his country, once the
favorites of their day, supplanted by modern writers. A few short ages
have covered them with obscurity, and their merits can only be relished
by the quaint taste of the bookworm. And such, he anticipates, will be
the fate of his own work, which, however it may be admired in its day,
and held up as a model of purity, will in the course of years grow
antiquated and obsolete; until it shall become almost as unintelligible
in its native land as an Egyptian obelisk, or one of those Runic
inscriptions said to exist in the deserts of Tartary. I declare," added
I, with some emotion, "when I contemplate a modern library, filled with
new works, in all the bravery of rich gilding and binding, I feel
disposed to sit down and weep; like the good Xerxes, when he surveyed
his army, pranked out in all the splendor of military array, and
reflected that in one hundred years not one of them would be in
existence!"

"Ah," said the little quarto, with a heavy sigh, "I see how it is; these
modern scribblers have superseded all the good old authors. I suppose
nothing is read now-a-days but Sir Philip Sydney's _Arcadia_,
Sackville's stately plays, and Mirror for Magistrates, or the fine-spun
euphuisms of the 'unparalleled John Lyly.'"

"There you are again mistaken," said I; "the writers whom you suppose in
vogue, because they happened to be so when you were last in circulation,
have long since had their day. Sir Philip Sydney's _Arcadia_, the
immortality of which was so fondly predicted by his admirers,[3] and
which, in truth, is full of noble thoughts, delicate images, and
graceful turns of language, is now scarcely ever mentioned. Sackville
has strutted into obscurity; and even Lyly, though his writings were
once the delight of a court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, is
now scarcely known even by name. A whole crowd of authors who wrote and
wrangled at the time, have likewise gone down, with all their writings
and their controversies. Wave after wave of succeeding literature has
rolled over them, until they are buried so deep, that it is only now and
then that some industrious diver after fragments of antiquity brings up
a specimen for the gratification of the curious.

"For my part," I continued, "I consider this mutability of language a
wise precaution of Providence for the benefit of the world at large, and
of authors in particular. To reason from analogy, we daily behold the
varied and beautiful tribes of vegetables springing up, flourishing,
adorning the fields for a short time, and then fading into dust, to make
way for their successors. Were not this the case, the fecundity of
nature would be a grievance instead of a blessing. The earth would groan
with rank and excessive vegetation, and its surface become a tangled
wilderness. In like manner the works of genius and learning decline, and
make way for subsequent productions. Language gradually varies, and with
it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted
time; otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the
world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes
of literature. Formerly there were some restraints on this excessive
multiplication. Works had to be transcribed by hand, which was a slow
and laborious operation; they were written either on parchment, which
was expensive, so that one work was often erased to make way for
another; or on papyrus, which was fragile and extremely perishable.
Authorship was a limited and unprofitable craft, pursued chiefly by
monks in the leisure and solitude of their cloisters. The accumulation
of manuscripts was slow and costly, and confined almost entirely to
monasteries. To these circumstances it may, in some measure, be owing
that we have not been inundated by the intellect of antiquity; that the
fountains of thought have not been broken up, and modern genius drowned
in the deluge. But the inventions of paper and the press have put an end
to all these restraints. They have made everyone a writer, and enabled
every mind to pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the whole
intellectual world. The consequences are alarming. The stream of
literature has swollen into a torrent--augmented into a river--expanded
into a sea. A few centuries since, five or six hundred manuscripts
constituted a great library; but what would you say to libraries such as
actually exist, containing three or four hundred thousand volumes;
legions of authors at the same time busy; and the press going on with
fearfully increasing activity, to double and quadruple the number?
Unless some unforeseen mortality should break out among the progeny of
the muse, now that she has become so prolific, I tremble for posterity.
I fear the mere fluctuation of language will not be sufficient.
Criticism may do much. It increases with the increase of literature, and
resembles one of those salutary checks on population spoken of by
economists. All possible encouragement, therefore, should be given to
the growth of critics, good or bad. But I fear all will be in vain; let
criticism do what it may, writers will write, printers will print, and
the world will inevitably be overstocked with good books. It will soon
be the employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names. Many a man
of passable information, at the present day, reads scarcely anything but
reviews; and before long a man of erudition will be little better than a
mere walking catalogue."

"My very good sir," said the little quarto, yawning most drearily in my
face, "excuse my interrupting you, but I perceive you are rather given
to prose. I would ask the fate of an author who was making some noise
just as I left the world. His reputation, however, was considered quite
temporary. The learned shook their heads at him, for he was a poor
half-educated varlet, that knew little of Latin, and nothing of Greek,
and had been obliged to run the country for deer-stealing. I think his
name was Shakspeare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion."

"On the contrary," said I, "it is owing to that very man that the
literature of his period has experienced a duration beyond the ordinary
term of English literature. There rise authors now and then, who seem
proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted
themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature. They are like
gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the banks of a stream; which, by
their vast and deep roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and
laying hold on the very foundations of the earth, preserve the soil
around them from being swept away by the ever-flowing current, and hold
up many a neighboring plant, and perhaps worthless weed, to perpetuity.
Such is the case with Shakspeare, whom we behold defying the
encroachments of time, retaining in modern use the language and
literature of his day, and giving duration to many an indifferent
author, merely from having flourished in his vicinity. But even he, I
grieve to say, is gradually assuming the tint of age, and his whole form
is overrun by a profusion of commentators, who, like clambering vines
and creepers, almost bury the noble plant that upholds them."

Here the little quarto began to heave his sides and chuckle, until at
length he broke out in a plethoric fit of laughter that had well nigh
choked him, by reason of his excessive corpulency. "Mighty well!" cried
he, as soon as he could recover breath, "mighty well! and so you would
persuade me that the literature of an age is to be perpetuated by a
vagabond deer-stealer! by a man without learning; by a poet, forsooth--a
poet!" And here he wheezed forth another fit of laughter.

I confess that I felt somewhat nettled at this rudeness, which, however,
I pardoned on account of his having flourished in a less polished age. I
determined, nevertheless, not to give up my point.

"Yes," resumed I, positively, "a poet; for of all writers he has the
best chance for immortality. Others may write from the head, but he
writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him. He is
the faithful portrayer of nature, whose features are always the same and
always interesting. Prose writers are voluminous and unwieldy; their
pages are crowded with commonplaces, and their thoughts expanded into
tediousness. But with the true poet everything is terse, touching, or
brilliant. He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest language. He
illustrates them by everything that he sees most striking in nature and
art. He enriches them by pictures of human life, such as it is passing
before him. His writings, therefore, contain the spirit, the aroma, if I
may use the phrase, of the age in which he lives. They are caskets which
inclose within a small compass the wealth of the language--its family
jewels, which are thus transmitted in a portable form to posterity. The
setting may occasionally be antiquated, and require now and then to be
renewed, as in the case of Chaucer; but the brilliancy and intrinsic
value of the gems continue unaltered. Cast a look back over the long
reach of literary history. What vast valleys of dullness, filled with
monkish legends and academical controversies! what bogs of theological
speculations! what dreary wastes of metaphysics! Here and there only do
we behold the heaven-illuminated bards, elevated like beacons on their
widely-separate heights, to transmit the pure light of poetical
intelligence from age to age."[4]

I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums upon the poets of the
day, when the sudden opening of the door caused me to turn my head. It
was the verger, who came to inform me that it was time to close the
library. I sought to have a parting word with the quarto, but the worthy
little tome was silent; the clasps were closed: and it looked perfectly
unconscious of all that had passed. I have been to the library two or
three times since, and have endeavored to draw it into further
conversation, but in vain; and whether all this rambling colloquy
actually took place, or whether it was another of those odd day-dreams
to which I am subject, I have never to this moment been able to
discover.



KEAN'S ACTING

RICHARD HENRY DANA


/#
     "For, doubtless, that indeed according to art is most eloquent,
     which turns and approaches nearest to nature, from whence it came."
#/

/*
--MILTON.
*/

/p
    "_Professed diversions!_ cannot these escape?
.....
     We ransack tombs for _pastime_; from the dust
     Call up the sleeping hero; bid him tread
     The scene for our amusement: How like Gods
     We sit; and, wrapt in immortality,
     Shed generous tears on wretches born to die;
     Their fate deploring, to forget _our own!_"

           --YOUNG.
p/

I had scarcely thought of the theater for some years, when Kean arrived
in this country; and it was more from curiosity than from any other
motive, that I went to see, for the first time, the great actor of the
age. I was soon lost to the recollection of being in a theater, or
looking upon a great display of the "mimic art." The simplicity,
earnestness, and sincerity of his acting made me forgetful of the
fiction, and bore me away with the power of reality and truth. If this
be acting, said I, as I returned home, I may as well make the theater my
school, and henceforward study nature at second hand.

How can I describe one who is almost as full of beauties as nature
itself,--who grows upon us the more we become acquainted with him, and
makes us sensible that the first time we saw him in any part, however
much he may have moved us, we had but a partial apprehension of the
many excellences of his acting? We cease to consider it as a mere
amusement. It is an intellectual feast; and he who goes to it with a
disposition and capacity to relish it, will receive from it more
nourishment for his mind, than he would be likely to do in many other
ways in twice the time. Our faculties are opened and enlivened by it;
our reflections and recollections are of an elevated kind; and the voice
which is sounding in our ears, long after we have left him, creates an
inward harmony which is for our good.

Kean, in truth, stands very much in that relation to other players whom
we have seen, that Shakspeare does to other dramatists. One player is
called classical; another makes fine points here, and another there;
Kean makes more fine points than all of them together; but in him these
are only little prominences, showing their bright heads above a
beautifully undulated surface. A continual change is going on in him,
partaking of the nature of the varying scenes he is passing through, and
the many thoughts and feelings which are shifting within him.

In a clear autumnal day we may see, here and there, a massed white cloud
edged with a blazing brightness against a blue sky, and now and then a
dark pine swinging its top in the wind, with the melancholy sound of the
sea; but who can note the shifting and untiring play of the leaves of
the wood, and their passing hues, when each seems a living thing full of
sensations, and happy in its rich attire? A sound, too, of universal
harmony is in our ears, and a wide-spread beauty before our eyes, which
we cannot define; yet a joy is in our hearts. Our delight increases in
these, day after day, the longer we give ourselves to them, till at last
we become, as it were, a part of the existence without us. So it is with
natural characters. They grow upon us imperceptibly, till we become
bound up in them, we scarce know when or how. So, in its degree, it
will fare with the actor who is deeply filled with nature, and is
perpetually throwing off her beautiful evanescences. Instead of becoming
tired of him, as we do, after a time, of others, he will go on giving
something which will be new to the observing mind, and will keep the
feelings alive, because their action will be natural. I have no doubt,
that, excepting those who go to a play as children look into a show-box,
to admire and exclaim at distorted figures, and raw, unharmonious
colors, there is no man of a moderately warm temperament, and with a
tolerable share of insight into human nature, who would not find his
interest in Kean increasing with a study of him. It is very possible
that the excitement would lessen, but there would be a quieter pleasure,
instead of it, stealing upon him, as he became familiar with the
character of the acting.

Taken within his range of characters, the versatility of his playing is
striking. He seems not the same being, now representing Richard, and,
again, Hamlet; but the two characters alone appear before you, and as
distinct individuals who had never known or heard of each other. So does
he become the character he is to represent, that we have sometimes
thought it a reason why he was not universally better liked here, in
Richard; and that because the player did not make himself a little more
visible, he must needs bear a share of our dislike of the cruel king.
And this may be still more the case, as his construction of the
character, whether right or wrong, creates in us an unmixed dislike of
Richard, till the anguish of his mind makes him the object of pity; from
which time, to the close, all allow that he plays the part better than
anyone has done before him.

In his highest-wrought passion, when the limbs and muscles are alive and
quivering, and his gestures hurried and vehement, nothing appears
ranted or overacted; because he makes us feel, that, with all this,
there is something still within him struggling for utterance. The very
breaking and harshness of his voice, in these parts, help to this
impression, and make up, in a good degree, for this defect, if it be a
defect here.

Though he is on the very verge of truth in his passionate parts, he does
not fall into extravagance; but runs along the dizzy edge of the roaring
and beating sea, with feet as sure as we walk our parlors. We feel that
he is safe, for some preternatural spirit upholds him as it hurries him
onward; and while all is uptorn and tossing in the whirl of the
passions, we see that there is a power and order over the whole.

A man has feelings sometimes which can only be breathed out; there is no
utterance for them in words. I had hardly written this when the terrible
"Ha!" with which Kean makes Lear hail Cornwall and Regan as they enter
in the fourth scene of the second act, came to my mind. That cry seemed
at the time to take me up and sweep me along in its wild swell. No
description in the world could give a tolerably clear notion of it;--it
must be formed, as well as it may be, from what is here said of its
effect.

Kean's playing is sometimes but the outbreaking of inarticulate
sounds;--the throttled struggle of rage, and the choking of grief,--the
broken laugh of extreme suffering, when the mind is ready to deliver
itself over to an insane joy,--the utterance of over-full love, which
cannot and would not speak in express words, and that of wildering
grief, which blanks all the faculties of man.

No other player whom I have heard has attempted these, except now and
then; and should anyone have made the trial in the various ways in which
Kean gives them, probably he would have failed. Kean thrills us with
them, as if they were wrung from him in his agony. They have not the
appearance of study or artifice. The truth is, that the labor of a mind
of his genius constitutes its existence and delight. It is not like the
toil of ordinary men at their task-work. What shows effort in them comes
from him with the freedom and force of nature.

Some object to the frequent use of such sounds, and to others they are
quite shocking. But those who permit themselves to consider that there
are really violent passions in man's nature, and that they utter
themselves a little differently from our ordinary feelings, understand
and feel their language as they speak to us in Kean. Probably no actor
has conceived passion with the intenseness and life that he does. It
seems to enter into him and possess him, as evil spirits possessed men
of old. It is curious to observe how some, who have sat very
contentedly, year after year, and called the face-making, which they
have seen, expression, and the stage-stride, dignity, and the noisy
declamation, and all the rhodomontade of acting, energy and passion,
complain that Kean is apt to be extravagant; when in truth he seems to
be little more than a simple personation of the feeling or passion to be
expressed at the time.

It has been so common a saying, that Lear is the most difficult of
characters to personate, that we had taken it for granted no man could
play it so as to satisfy us. Perhaps it is the hardest to represent. Yet
the part which has generally been supposed the most difficult, the
insanity of Lear, is scarcely more so than that of the choleric old
king. Inefficient rage is almost always ridiculous; and an old man, with
a broken-down body and a mind falling in pieces from the violence of its
uncontrolled passions, is in constant danger of exciting, along with our
pity, a feeling of contempt. It is a chance matter to which we may be
most moved. And this it is which makes the opening of _Lear_ so
difficult.

We may as well notice here the objection which some make to the abrupt
violence with which Kean begins in Lear. If this be a fault, it is
Shakspeare, and not Kean, who is to blame; for, no doubt, he has
conceived it according to his author. Perhaps, however, the mistake lies
in this case, where it does in most others, with those who put
themselves into the seat of judgment to pass upon great men.

In most instances, Shakspeare has given us the gradual growth of a
passion, with such little accompaniments as agree with it, and go to
make up the whole man. In Lear, his object being to represent the
beginning and course of insanity, he has properly enough gone but a
little back of it, and introduced to us an old man of good feelings
enough, but one who had lived without any true principle of conduct, and
whose unruled passions had grown strong with age, and were ready, upon a
disappointment, to make shipwreck of an intellect never strong. To bring
this about, he begins with an abruptness rather unusual; and the old
king rushes in before us, with his passions at their height, and tearing
him like fiends.

Kean gives this as soon as the fitting occasion offers itself. Had he
put more of melancholy and depression and less of rage into the
character, we should have been much puzzled at his so suddenly going
mad. It would have required the change to have been slower; and besides,
his insanity must have been of another kind. It must have been
monotonous and complaining, instead of continually varying; at one time
full of grief, at another playful, and then wild as the winds that
roared about him, and fiery and sharp as the lightning that shot by him.
The truth with which he conceived this was not finer than his execution
of it. Not for a moment, in his utmost violence, did he suffer the
imbecility of the old man's anger to touch upon the ludicrous, when
nothing but the justest conception and feeling of the character could
have saved him from it.

It has been said that Lear is a study for one who would make himself
acquainted with the workings of an insane mind. And it is hardly less
true, that the acting of Kean was an embodying of these workings. His
eye, when his senses are first forsaking him, giving an inquiring look
at what he saw, as if all before him was undergoing a strange and
bewildering change which confused his brain,--the wandering, lost
motions of his hands, which seemed feeling for something familiar to
them, on which they might take hold and be assured of a safe
reality,--the under monotone of his voice, as if he was questioning his
own being, and what surrounded him,--the continuous, but slight,
oscillating motion of the body,--all these expressed, with fearful
truth, the bewildered state of a mind fast unsettling, and making vain
and weak efforts to find its way back to its wonted reason. There was a
childish, feeble gladness in the eye, and a half-piteous smile about the
mouth at times, which one could scarce look upon without tears. As the
derangement increased upon him, his eye lost its notice of objects about
him, wandering over things as if he saw them not, and fastening upon the
creatures of his crazed brain. The helpless and delighted fondness with
which he clings to Edgar, as an insane brother, is another instance of
the justness of Kean's conceptions. Nor does he lose the air of
insanity, even in the fine moralizing parts, and where he inveighs
against the corruptions of the world. There is a madness even in his
reason.

The violent and immediate changes of the passions in Lear, so difficult
to manage without jarring upon us, are given by Kean with a spirit and
with a fitness to nature which we had hardly thought possible. These
are equally well done both before and after the loss of reason. The most
difficult scene, in this respect, is the last interview between Lear and
his daughters, Goneril and Regan,--(and how wonderfully does Kean carry
it through!)--the scene which ends with the horrid shout and cry with
which he runs out mad from their presence, as if the very brain had
taken fire.

The last scene which we are allowed to have of Shakspeare's Lear, for
the simply pathetic, was played by Kean with unmatched power. We sink
down helpless under the oppressive grief. It lies like a dead weight
upon our hearts. We are denied even the relief of tears; and are
thankful for the shudder that seizes us when he kneels to his daughter
in the deploring weakness of his crazed grief.

It is lamentable that Kean should not be allowed to show his unequaled
powers in the last scene of Lear, as Shakspeare wrote it; and that this
mighty work of genius should be profaned by the miserable, mawkish sort
of by-play of Edgar's and Cordelia's loves. Nothing can surpass the
impertinence of the man who made the change, but the folly of those who
sanctioned it.

       *       *       *       *       *

When I began, I had no other intention than that of giving a few general
impressions made upon me by Kean's acting; but, falling accidentally
upon his Lear, I have been led, unawares, into particulars. It is only
to take these as some of the instances of his powers in Lear, and then
to think of him as not inferior in his other characters, and some notion
may be formed of the effect of Kean's playing upon those who understand
and like him. Neither this, nor anything I might add, would be likely to
reach his great and various powers.

If it could be said of anyone, it might be said of Kean, that he does
not fall behind his author, but stands forward, the living
representative of the character he has drawn. When he is not playing in
Shakspeare, he fills up where his author is wanting; and when in
Shakspeare, he gives not only what is set down, but whatever the
situation and circumstances attendant upon the being he personates would
naturally call forth. He seems, at the time, to have possessed himself
of Shakspeare's imagination, and to have given it body and form. Read
any scene in Shakspeare,--for instance, the last of _Lear_ that is
played,--and see how few words are there set down, and then remember how
Kean fills out with varied and multiplied expression and circumstances,
and the truth of this remark will be obvious enough. There are few men,
I believe, let them have studied the plays of Shakspeare ever so
attentively, who can see Kean in them without confessing that he has
helped them to a truer and fuller conception of the author,
notwithstanding what their own labors had done for them.

It is not easy to say in what character Kean plays best. He so fits
himself to each in turn, that if the effect he produces at one time is
less than at another, it is because of some inferiority in stage-effect
in the character. Othello is probably the character best adapted to
stage-effect, and Kean has an uninterrupted power over us in playing it.
When he commands, we are awed; when his face is sensitive with love and
love thrills in his soft tones, all that our imaginations had pictured
to us is realized. His jealousy, his hate, his fixed purposes, are
terrific and deadly; and the groans wrung from him in his grief have the
pathos and anguish of Esau's, when he stood before his old, blind
father, and sent up "an exceeding bitter cry."

Again, in Richard, how does he hurry forward to his object, sweeping
away all between him and it! The world and its affairs are nothing to
him, till he gains his end. He is all life, and action, and haste,--he
fills every part of the stage, and seems to do all that is done.

I have before said that his voice is harsh and breaking in his high
tones, in his rage, but that this defect is of little consequence in
such places. Nor is it well suited to the more declamatory parts. This,
again, is scarce worth considering; for how very little is there of mere
declamation in good English plays! But it is one of the finest voices in
the world for all the passions and feelings which can be uttered in the
middle and lower tones. In Lear,--

/p
    "If you have poison for me, I will drink it."
p/

And again,--

/p
    "You do me wrong to take me out o' the grave.
    Thou art a soul in bliss."
p/

Why should I cite passages? Can any man open upon the scene in which
these are contained, without Kean's piteous looks and tones being
present to him? And does not the mere remembrance of them, as he reads,
bring tears into his eyes? Yet, once more, in Othello,--

/p
        "Had it pleased Heaven
    To try me with affliction," &c.
p/

In the passage beginning with

/p
                          "O, now for ever
    Farewell the tranquil mind,"--
p/

there was "a mysterious confluence of sounds" passing off into infinite
distance, and every thought and feeling within him seemed traveling with
them.

How graceful he is in Othello! It is not a practiced, educated grace,
but the "unbought grace" of his genius, uttering itself in its beauty
and grandeur in the movements of the outward man. When he says to Iago
so touchingly, "Leave me, leave me, Iago," and, turning from him, walks
to the back of the stage, raising his hands, and bringing them down upon
his head, with clasped fingers, and stands thus with his back to us,
there is a grace and majesty in his figure which we look on with
admiration.

Talking of these things in Kean is something like reading the _Beauties
of Shakspeare_; for he is as true in the subordinate as in the great
parts. But he must be content to share with other men of genius, and
think himself fortunate if one in a hundred sees his lesser beauties,
and marks the truth and delicacy of his under-playing. For instance,
when he has no share in the action going on, he is not busy in putting
himself into attitudes to draw attention, but stands or sits in a simple
posture, like one with an engaged mind. His countenance, too, is in a
state of ordinary repose, with but a slight, general expression of the
character of his thoughts; for this is all the face shows, when the mind
is taken up in silence with its own reflections. It does not assume
marked or violent expressions, as in soliloquy. When a man gives
utterance to his thoughts, though alone, the charmed rest of the body is
broken; he speaks in his gestures too, and the countenance is put into a
sympathizing action.

I was first struck with this in his Hamlet; for the deep and quiet
interest, so marked in Hamlet, made the justness of Kean's playing, in
this respect, the more obvious. And since then, I have observed him
attentively, and have found the same true acting in his other
characters.

This right conception of situation and its general effect seems to
require almost as much genius as his conceptions of his characters, and,
indeed, may be considered as one with them. He deserves praise for it;
for there is so much of the subtilty of nature in it, if one may so
speak, that while a few are able, with his help, to put themselves into
the situation, and perceive the justness of his acting in it, the rest,
both those who like him upon the whole, as well as those who profess to
see little in him, will be apt to let it pass by without observing it.

Like most men, however, Kean receives a partial reward, at least, for
his sacrifice of the praise of the many to what he feels to be the
truth. For when he passes from the state of natural repose, even into
that of gentle motion and ordinary discourse, he is immediately filled
with a spirit and life, which he makes everyone feel who is not
armor-proof against him. This helps to the sparkling brightness and
warmth of his playing, the grand secret of which, like that of colors in
a picture, lies in a just contrast. We can all speculate concerning the
general rules upon this; but when the man of genius gives us their
results, how few are there who can trace them out with an observant eye,
or look with a discerning satisfaction upon the great whole. Perhaps
this very beauty in Kean has helped to an opinion, which, no doubt, is
true, that he is, at times, too sharp and abrupt. I well remember, while
once looking at a picture in which the shadow of a mountain fell, in
strong outline, upon a part of a stream, I overheard some quite sensible
people expressing their wonder that the artist should have made the
water of two colors, seeing it was all one and the same thing.

Instances of Kean's keeping of situations were striking in the opening
of the trial scene in _The Iron Chest_, and in _Hamlet_, when the
father's ghost tells the story of his death.

The composure to which he is bent up, in the former, must be present
with all who saw him. And, though from the immediate purpose, shall I
pass by the startling and appalling change, when madness seized upon his
brain, with the swiftness and power of a fanged monster? Wonderfully as
this last part was played, we cannot well imagine how much the previous
calm, and the suddenness of the unlooked-for change from it, added to
the terror of the scene. The temple stood fixed on its foundations; the
earthquake shook it, and it was a heap. Is this one of Kean's violent
contrasts?

While Kean listened, in Hamlet, to the father's story, the entire man
was absorbed in deep attention, mingled with a tempered awe. His posture
was simple, with a slight inclination forward. The spirit was the spirit
of his father, whom he had loved and reverenced, and who was to that
moment ever present in his thoughts. The first superstitious terror at
meeting him had passed off. The account of his father's appearance given
him by Horatio and the watch, and his having followed him some distance,
had, in a degree, familiarized him to the sight, and he stood before us
in the stillness of one who was to hear, then or never, what was to be
told, but without that eager reaching forward which other players give,
and which would be right, perhaps, in any character but that of Hamlet,
who connects the past and what is to come with the present, and mingles
reflection with his immediate feelings, however deep.

As an instance of Kean's familiar, and, if I may be allowed to term,
domestic acting, the first scene in the fourth act of his Sir Giles
Overreach may be taken. His manner at meeting Lovell and through the
conversation with him, the way in which he turns his chair and leans
upon it, were as easy and natural as they could have been in real life,
had Sir Giles been actually existing, and engaged at that moment in
conversation in Lovell's room.

It is in these things, scarcely less than in the more prominent parts of
his playing, that Kean shows himself the great actor. He must always
make a deep impression; but to suppose the world at large capable of a
right estimate of his different powers, would be forming a judgment
against every-day proof. The gradual manner in which the character of
his playing has opened upon me satisfies me, that in acting, as in
everything else, however deep may be the first effect of genius upon us,
we come slowly, and through study, to a perception of its minute
beauties and delicate characteristics. After all, the greater part of
men seldom get beyond the first general impression.

As there must needs go a _modicum_ of fault-finding along with
commendation, it may be well to remark, that Kean plays his hands too
much at times, and moves about the dress over his breast and neck too
frequently in his hurried and impatient passages, and that he does not
always adhere with sufficient accuracy to the received readings of
Shakspeare, and that the effect would be greater, upon the whole, were
he to be more sparing of sudden changes from violent voice and
gesticulation to a low conversation-tone and subdued manner.

His frequent use of these in Sir Giles Overreach is with good effect,
for Sir Giles is playing his part; so, too, in Lear, for Lear's passions
are gusty and shifting; but, in the main, it is a kind of playing too
marked and striking to bear so frequent repetition, and had better
sometimes be spared, where, considered alone, it might be properly
enough used, for the sake of bringing it in at some other place with
greater effect.

It is well to speak of these defects, for though the little faults of
genius, in themselves considered, but slightly affect those who can
enter into its true character, yet such are made impatient at the
thought, that an opportunity is given those to carp who know not how to
commend.

Though I have taken up a good deal of room, I must end without speaking
of many things which occur to me. Some will be of the opinion that I
have already said enough. Thinking of Kean as I do, I could not honestly
have said less; for I hold it to be a low and wicked thing to keep back
from merit of any kind its due,--and, with Steele, that "there is
something wonderful in the narrowness of those minds which can be
pleased, and be barren of bounty to those who please them."

Although the self-important, out of self-concern, give praise sparingly,
and the mean measure theirs by their likings or dislikings of a man, and
the good even are often slow to allow the talents of the faulty their
due, lest they bring the evil to repute; yet it is the wiser as well as
the honester course, not to disparage an excellence because it neighbors
upon a fault, nor to take away from another what is his of right, with a
view to our own name, nor to rest our character for discernment upon the
promptings of an unkind heart. Where God has not feared to bestow great
powers, we may not fear giving them their due; nor need we be
parsimonious of commendation, as if there were but a certain quantity
for distribution, and our liberality would be to our loss; nor should we
hold it safe to detract from another's merit, as if we could always keep
the world blind, lest we live to see him whom we disparaged, praised,
and whom we hated, loved.

Whatever be his failings, give every man a full and ready commendation
for that in which he excels; it will do good to our own hearts, while it
cheers his. Nor will it bring our judgment into question with the
discerning; for enthusiasm for what is great does not argue such an
unhappy want of discrimination as that measured and cold approval, which
is bestowed alike upon men of mediocrity and upon those of gifted
minds.



GIFTS

RALPH WALDO EMERSON

/p
    "Gifts of one who loved me,--
    Twas high time they came;
    When he ceased to love me,
    Time they stopped for shame."
p/


It is said that the world is in a state of bankruptcy, that the world
owes the world more than the world can pay, and ought to go into
chancery, and be sold. I do not think this general insolvency, which
involves in some sort all the population, to be the reason of the
difficulty experienced at Christmas and New Year, and other times, in
bestowing gifts; since it is always so pleasant to be generous, though
very vexatious to pay debts. But the impediment lies in the choosing.
If, at any time, it comes into my head that a present is due from me to
somebody, I am puzzled what to give until the opportunity is gone.
Flowers and fruits are always fit presents; flowers, because they are a
proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the
world. These gay natures contrast with the somewhat stern countenance of
ordinary nature; they are like music heard out of a workhouse. Nature
does not cocker us: we are children, not pets: she is not fond:
everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal
laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interference
of love and beauty. Men used to tell us that we love flattery, even
though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of
importance enough to be courted. Something like that pleasure the
flowers give us: what am I to whom these sweet hints are addressed?
Fruits are acceptable gifts because they are the flower of commodities,
and admit of fantastic values being attached to them. If a man should
send to me to come a hundred miles to visit him, and should set before
me a basket of fine summer fruit, I should think there was some
proportion between the labor and the reward.

For common gifts, necessity makes pertinences and beauty every day, and
one is glad when an imperative leaves him no option, since if the man at
the door have no shoes, you have not to consider whether you could
procure him a paint-box. And as it is always pleasing to see a man eat
bread, or drink water, in the house or out of doors, so it is always a
great satisfaction to supply these first wants. Necessity does
everything well. In our condition of universal dependence, it seems
heroic to let the petitioner be the judge of his necessity, and to give
all that is asked, though at great inconvenience. If it be a fantastic
desire, it is better to leave to others the office of punishing him. I
can think of many parts I should prefer playing to that of the Furies.
Next to things of necessity, the rule for a gift which one of my friends
prescribed is, that we might convey to some person that which properly
belonged to his character, and was easily associated with him in
thought. But our tokens of compliment and love are for the most part
barbarous. Rings and other jewels are not gifts, but apologies for
gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. Thou must bleed for me.
Therefore the poet brings his poem; the shepherd, his lamb; the farmer,
corn; the miner, a gem; the sailor, coral and shells; the painter, his
picture; the girl, a handkerchief of her own sewing. This is right and
pleasing, for it restores society in so far to the primary basis, when a
man's biography is conveyed in his gift, and every man's wealth is an
index of his merit. But it is a cold, lifeless business when you go to
the shops to buy me something, which does not represent your life and
talent, but a goldsmith's. This is fit for kings, and rich men who
represent kings, and a false state of property, to make presents of gold
and silver stuffs, as a kind of symbolical sin-offering, or payment of
blackmail.

The law of benefits is a difficult channel, which requires careful
sailing, or rude boats. It is not the office of a man to receive gifts.
How dare you give them? We wish to be self-sustained. We do not quite
forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being
bitten. We can receive anything from love, for that is a way of
receiving it from ourselves; but not from anyone who assumes to bestow.
We sometimes hate the meat which we eat, because there seems something
of degrading dependence in living by it.

/p
    "Brother, if Jove to thee a present make,
    Take heed that from his hands thou nothing take."
p/

We ask the whole. Nothing less will content us. We arraign society if it
do not give us besides earth, and fire, and water, opportunity, love,
reverence, and objects of veneration.

He is a good man who can receive a gift well. We are either glad or
sorry at a gift, and both emotions are unbecoming. Some violence, I
think, is done, some degradation borne, when I rejoice or grieve at a
gift. I am sorry when my independence is invaded, or when a gift comes
from such as do not know my spirit, and so the act is not supported; and
if the gift pleases me overmuch, then I should be ashamed that the donor
should read my heart, and see that I love his commodity, and not him.
The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me,
correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level,
then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine
his. I say to him, How can you give me this pot of oil, or this flagon
of wine, when all your oil and wine is mine, which belief of mine this
gift seems to deny? Hence the fitness of beautiful, not useful things
for gifts. This giving is flat usurpation, and therefore when the
beneficiary is ungrateful, as all beneficiaries hate all Timons, not at
all considering the value of the gift, but looking back to the greater
store it was taken from, I rather sympathize with the beneficiary than
with the anger of my lord Timon. For, the expectation of gratitude is
mean, and is continually punished by the total insensibility of the
obliged person. It is a great happiness to get off without injury and
heart-burning, from one who has had the ill-luck to be served by you. It
is a very onerous business, this of being served, and the debtor
naturally wishes to give you a slap. A golden text for these gentlemen
is that which I so admire in the Buddhist, who never thanks, and who
says, "Do not flatter your benefactors."

The reason for these discords I conceive to be that there is no
commensurability between a man and any gift. You cannot give anything to
a magnanimous person. After you have served him he at once puts you in
debt by his magnanimity. The service a man renders his friend is trivial
and selfish, compared with the service he knows his friend stood in
readiness to yield him, alike before he had begun to serve his friend,
and now also. Compared with that good-will I bear my friend, the benefit
it is in my power to render him seems small. Besides, our action on each
other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can
seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a
benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a
direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have
the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly
received. But rectitude scatters favors on every side without knowing
it, and receives with wonder the thanks of all people.

I fear to breathe any treason against the majesty of love, which is the
genius and god of gifts, and to whom we must not affect to prescribe.
Let him give kingdoms or flower-leaves indifferently. There are persons
from whom we always expect fairy-tokens; let us not cease to expect
them. This is prerogative, and not to be limited by our municipal rules.
For the rest, I like to see that we cannot be bought and sold. The best
of hospitality and of generosity is also not in the will, but in fate. I
find that I am not much to you; you do not need me; you do not feel me;
then am I thrust out of doors, though you proffer me house and lands. No
services are of any value, but only likeness. When I have attempted to
join myself to others by services, it proved an intellectual trick,--no
more. They eat your service like apples, and leave you out. But love
them, and they feel you, and delight in you all the time.



USES OF GREAT MEN

RALPH WALDO EMERSON


It is natural to believe in great men. If the companions of our
childhood should turn out to be heroes, and their condition regal, it
would not surprise us. All mythology opens with demigods, and the
circumstance is high and poetic; that is, their genius is paramount. In
the legends of the Gautama, the first men ate the earth, and found it
deliciously sweet.

Nature seems to exist for the excellent. The world is upheld by the
veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome. They who lived with
them found life glad and nutritious. Life is sweet and tolerable only in
our belief in such society; and actually or ideally we manage to live
with superiors. We call our children and our lands by their names. Their
names are wrought into the verbs of language, their works and effigies
are in our houses, and every circumstance of the day recalls an anecdote
of them.

The search after the great is the dream of youth and the most serious
occupation of manhood. We travel into foreign parts to find his
works--if possible, to get a glimpse of him. But we are put off with
fortune instead. You say the English are practical; the Germans are
hospitable; in Valencia the climate is delicious; and in the hills of
the Sacramento there is gold for the gathering. Yes, but I do not travel
to find comfortable, rich, and hospitable people, or clear sky, or
ingots that cost too much. But if there were any magnet that would point
to the countries and houses where are the persons who are intrinsically
rich and powerful, I would sell all, and buy it, and put myself on the
road to-day.

The race goes with us on their credit. The knowledge that in the city is
a man who invented the railroad raises the credit of all the citizens.
But enormous populations, if they be beggars, are disgusting, like
moving cheese, like hills of ants or of fleas--the more, the worse.

Our religion is the love and cherishing of these patrons. The gods of
fable are the shining moments of great men. We run all our vessels into
one mould. Our colossal theologies of Judaism, Christism, Buddhism,
Mahometism, are the necessary and structural action of the human mind.
The student of history is like a man going into a warehouse to buy
cloths or carpets. He fancies he has a new article. If he go to the
factory, he shall find that his new stuff still repeats the scrolls and
rosettes which are found on the interior walls of the pyramids of
Thebes. Our theism is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint,
or make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great material
elements had their origin from his thought. And our philosophy finds one
essence collected or distributed.

If now we proceed to inquire into the kinds of service we derive from
others, let us be warned of the danger of modern studies, and begin low
enough. We must not contend against love, or deny the substantial
existence of other people. I know not what would happen to us. We have
social strengths. Our affection towards others creates a sort of vantage
or purchase which nothing will supply. I can do that by another which I
cannot do alone. I can say to you what I cannot first say to myself.
Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks
those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their
kind; that is, he seeks other men, and the _otherest_. The stronger the
nature, the more it is reactive. Let us have the quality pure. A little
genius let us leave alone. A main difference betwixt men is, whether
they attend their own affair or not. Man is that noble endogenous plant
which grows, like the palm, from within outward. His own affair, though
impossible to others, he can open with celerity and in sport. It is easy
to sugar to be sweet, and to nitre to be salt. We take a great deal of
pains to waylay and entrap that which of itself will fall into our
hands. I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought,
into which other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but to open
his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst
they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many
sources of error. His service to us is of like sort. It costs a
beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how
splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his
quality to other men. And everyone can do his best thing easiest. "_Peu
de moyens, beaucoup d'effét._" He is great who is what he is from
nature, and who never reminds us of others.

But he must be related to us, and our life receive from him some promise
of explanation. I cannot tell what I would know; but I have observed
there are persons who, in their character and actions, answer questions
which I have not skill to put. One man answers some questions which none
of his contemporaries put, and is isolated. The past and passing
religions and philosophies answer some other question. Certain men
affect us as rich possibilities, but helpless to themselves and to their
times,--the sport perhaps, of some instinct that rules in the air,--they
do not speak to our want. But the great are near; we know them at sight.
They satisfy expectation, and fall into place. What is good is
effective, generative; makes for itself room, food, and allies. A sound
apple produces seed--a hybrid does not. Is a man in his place, he is
constructive, fertile, magnetic, inundating armies with his purpose,
which is thus executed. The river makes its own shores, and each
legitimate idea makes its own channels and welcome--harvests for food,
institutions for expression, weapons to fight with, and disciples to
explain it. The true artist has the planet for his pedestal; the
adventurer, after years of strife, has nothing broader than his own
shoes.

Our common discourse respects two kinds of use or service from superior
men. Direct giving is agreeable to the early belief of men; direct
giving of material or metaphysical aid, as of health, eternal youth,
fine senses, arts of healing, magical power, and prophecy. The boy
believes there is a teacher who can sell him wisdom. Churches believe in
imputed merit. But, in strictness, we are not much cognizant of direct
serving. Man is endogenous, and education is his unfolding. The aid we
have from others is mechanical, compared with the discoveries of nature
in us. What is thus learned is delightful in the doing, and the effect
remains. Right ethics are central, and go from the soul outward. Gift is
contrary to the law of the universe. Serving others is serving us. I
must absolve me to myself. "Mind thy affair," says the spirit; "coxcomb,
would you meddle with the skies, or with other people?" Indirect service
is left. Men have a pictorial or representative quality, and serve us in
the intellect. Behmen and Swedenborg saw that things were
representative. Men are also representative; first, of things, and
secondly, of ideas.

As plants convert the minerals into food for animals, so each man
converts some raw material in nature to human use. The inventors of
fire, electricity, magnetism, iron, lead, glass, linen, silk, cotton;
the makers of tools; the inventor of decimal notation; the geometer;
the engineer; the musician, severally make an easy way for all through
unknown and impossible confusions. Each man is, by secret liking,
connected with some district of nature, whose agent and interpreter he
is, as Linnæus, of plants; Huber, of bees; Fries, of lichens; Van Mons,
of pears; Dalton, of atomic forms; Euclid, of lines; Newton, of
fluxions.

A man is a center for nature, running out threads of relation through
everything, fluid and solid, material and elemental. The earth rolls;
every clod and stone comes to the meridian; so every organ, function,
acid, crystal, grain of dust, has its relation to the brain. It waits
long, but its turn comes. Each plant has its parasite, and each created
thing its lover and poet. Justice has already been done to steam, to
iron, to wood, to coal, to loadstone, to iodine, to corn and cotton; but
how few materials are yet used by our arts! The mass of creatures and of
qualities are still hid and expectant. It would seem as if each waited,
like the enchanted princess in fairy tales, for a destined human
deliverer. Each must be disenchanted, and walk forth to the day in human
shape. In the history of discovery, the ripe and latent truth seems to
have fashioned a brain for itself. A magnet must be made man, in some
Gilbert, or Swedenborg, or Oersted, before the general mind can come to
entertain its powers.

If we limit ourselves to the first advantages: a sober grace adheres to
the mineral and botanic kingdoms, which in the highest moments comes up
as the charm of nature, the glitter of the spar, the sureness of
affinity, the veracity of angles. Light and darkness, heat and cold,
hunger and food, sweet and sour, solid, liquid, and gas, circle us round
in a wreath of pleasures, and, by their agreeable quarrel, beguile the
day of life. The eye repeats every day the first eulogy on things--"He
saw that they were good." We know where to find them; and these
performers are relished all the more after a little experience of the
pretending races. We are entitled, also, to higher advantages. Something
is wanting to science, until it has been humanized. The table of
logarithms is one thing, and its vital play, in botany, music, optics,
and architecture, another. There are advancements to numbers, anatomy,
architecture, astronomy, little suspected at first, when, by union with
intellect and will, they ascend into the life, and reappear in
conversation, character, and politics.

But this comes later. We speak now only of our acquaintance with them in
their own sphere, and the way in which they seem to fascinate and draw
to them some genius who occupies himself with one thing all his life
long. The possibility of interpretation lies in the identity of the
observer with the observed. Each material thing has its celestial side;
has its translation, through humanity, into the spiritual and necessary
sphere, where it plays a part as indestructible as any other. And to
these, their ends, all things continually ascend. The gases gather to
the solid firmament; the chemic lump arrives at the plant, and grows;
arrives at the quadruped, and walks; arrives at the man, and thinks. But
also the constituency determines the vote of the representative. He is
not only representative, but participant. Like can only be known by
like. The reason why he knows about them is, that he is of them; he has
just come out of nature, or from being a part of that thing. Animated
chlorine knows of chlorine, and incarnate zinc, of zinc. Their quality
makes his career; and he can variously publish their virtues, because
they compose him. Man, made of the dust of the world, does not forget
his origin; and all that is yet inanimate will one day speak and reason.
Unpublished nature will have its whole secret told. Shall we say that
quartz mountains will pulverize into innumerable Werners, Von Buchs,
and Beaumonts; and the laboratory of the atmosphere holds in solution I
know not what Berzeliuses and Davys?

Thus we sit by the fire, and take hold on the poles of the earth. This
_quasi_ omnipresence supplies the imbecility of our condition. In one of
those celestial days, when heaven and earth meet and adorn each other,
it seems a poverty that we can only spend it once: we wish for a
thousand heads, a thousand bodies, that we might celebrate its immense
beauty in many ways and places. Is this fancy? Well, in good faith, we
are multiplied by our proxies. How easily we adopt their labors. Every
ship that comes to America got its chart from Columbus. Every novel is a
debtor to Homer. Every carpenter who shaves with a foreplane borrows the
genius of a forgotten inventor. Life is girt all round with a zodiac of
sciences, the contributions of men who have perished to add their point
of light to our sky. Engineer, broker, jurist, physician, moralist,
theologian, and every man, inasmuch as he has any science, is a definer
and map-maker of the latitudes and longitudes of our condition. These
road-makers on every hand enrich us. We must extend the area of life,
and multiply our relations. We are as much gainers by finding a new
property in the old earth as by acquiring a new planet.

We are too passive in the reception of these material or semi-material
aids. We must not be sacks and stomachs. To ascend one step--we are
better served through our sympathy. Activity is contagious. Looking
where others look, and conversing with the same things, we catch the
charm which lured them. Napoleon said, "You must not fight too often
with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war." Talk much
with any man of vigorous mind, and we acquire very fast the habit of
looking at things in the same light, and, on each occurrence, we
anticipate his thought.

Men are helpful through the intellect and the affections. Other help, I
find a false appearance. If you affect to give me bread and fire, I
perceive that I pay for it the full price, and at last it leaves me as
it found me, neither better nor worse; but all mental and moral force is
a positive good. It goes out from you, whether you will or not, and
profits me whom you never thought of. I cannot even hear of personal
vigor of any kind, great power of performance, without fresh resolution.
We are emulous of all that man can do. Cecil's saying of Sir Walter
Raleigh, "I know that he can toil terribly," is an electric touch. So
are Clarendon's portraits--of Hampden: "who was of an industry and
vigilance not to be tired out or wearied by the most laborious, and of
parts not to be imposed on by the most subtle and sharp, and of a
personal courage equal to his best parts;"--of Falkland: "who was so
severe an adorer of truth that he could as easily have given himself
leave to steal as to dissemble." We cannot read Plutarch without a
tingling of the blood; and I accept the saying of the Chinese Mencius:
"A sage is the instructor of a hundred ages. When the manners of Loo are
heard of, the stupid become intelligent, and the wavering, determined."

This is the moral of biography; yet it is hard for departed men to touch
the quick like our own companions, whose names may not last as long.
What is he whom I never think of? whilst in every solitude are those who
succor our genius, and stimulate us in wonderful manners. There is a
power in love to divine another's destiny better than that other can,
and, by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task. What has friendship
so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us? We will
never more think cheaply of ourselves, or of life. We are piqued to
some purpose, and the industry of the diggers on the railroad will not
again shame us.

Under this head, too, falls that homage, very pure, as I think, which
all ranks pay to the hero of the day, from Coriolanus and Gracchus, down
to Pitt, Lafayette, Wellington, Webster, Lamartine. Hear the shouts in
the street! The people cannot see him enough. They delight in a man.
Here is a head and a trunk! What a front! What eyes! Atlantean
shoulders, and the whole carriage heroic, with equal inward force to
guide the great machine! This pleasure of full expression to that which,
in their private experience, is usually cramped and obstructed, runs,
also, much higher, and is the secret of the reader's joy in literary
genius. Nothing is kept back. There is fire enough to fuse the mountain
of ore. Shakspeare's principal merit may be conveyed in saying that he,
of all men, best understands the English language, and can say what he
will. Yet these unchoked channels and floodgates of expression are only
health or fortunate constitution. Shakspeare's name suggests other and
purely intellectual benefits.

Senates and sovereigns have no compliment, with their medals, swords,
and armorial coats, like the addressing to a human being thoughts out of
a certain height, and presupposing his intelligence. This honor, which
is possible in personal intercourse scarcely twice in a lifetime, genius
perpetually pays; contented, if now and then, in a century, the proffer
is accepted. The indicators of the values of matter are degraded to a
sort of cooks and confectioners, on the appearance of the indicators of
ideas. Genius is the naturalist or geographer of the supersensible
regions, and draws their map; and, by acquainting us with new fields of
activity, cools our affection for the old. These are at once accepted as
the reality, of which the world we have conversed with is the show.

We go to the gymnasium and the swimming-school to see the power and
beauty of the body; there is the like pleasure, and higher benefit, from
witnessing intellectual feats of all kinds; as feats of memory, of
mathematical combination, great power of abstraction, the transmutings
of the imagination, even versatility and concentration, as these acts
expose the invisible organs and members of the mind, which respond,
member for member, to the parts of the body. For we thus enter a new
gymnasium, and learn to choose men by their truest marks, taught, with
Plato, "to choose those who can, without aid from the eyes or any other
sense, proceed to truth and to being." Foremost among these activities
are the summersaults, spells, and resurrections wrought by the
imagination. When this wakes, a man seems to multiply ten times or a
thousand times his force. It opens the delicious sense of indeterminate
size, and inspires an audacious mental habit. We are as elastic as the
gas of gunpowder, and a sentence in a book or a word dropped in
conversation sets free our fancy, and instantly our heads are bathed
with galaxies, and our feet tread the floor of the pit. And this benefit
is real, because we are entitled to these enlargements, and, once having
passed the bounds, shall never again be quite the miserable pedants we
were.

The high functions of the intellect are so allied that some imaginative
power usually appears in all eminent minds, even in arithmeticians of
the first class, but especially in meditative men of an intuitive habit
of thought. This class serve us, so that they have the perception of
identity and the perception of reaction. The eyes of Plato, Shakspeare,
Swedenborg, Goethe, never shut on either of these laws. The perception
of these laws is a kind of meter of the mind. Little minds are little,
through failure to see them.

Even these feasts have their surfeit. Our delight in reason degenerates
into idolatry of the herald. Especially when a mind of powerful method
has instructed men, we find the examples of oppression. The dominion of
Aristotle, the Ptolemaic astronomy, the credit of Luther, of Bacon, of
Locke,--in religion, the history of hierarchies, of saints, and the
sects which have taken the name of each founder,--are in point. Alas!
every man is such a victim. The imbecility of men is always inviting the
impudence of power. It is the delight of vulgar talent to dazzle and to
blind the beholder. But true genius seeks to defend us from itself. True
genius will not impoverish, but will liberate, and add new senses. If a
wise man should appear in our village, he would create, in those who
conversed with him, a new consciousness of wealth, by opening their eyes
to unobserved advantages; he would establish a sense of immovable
equality, calm us with assurances that we could not be cheated; as
everyone would discern the checks and guaranties of condition. The rich
would see their mistakes and poverty, the poor their escapes and their
resources.

But nature brings all this about in due time. Rotation is her remedy.
The soul is impatient of masters, and eager for change. Housekeepers say
of a domestic who has been valuable, "She had lived with me long
enough." We are tendencies, or rather symptoms, and none of us complete.
We touch and go, and sip the foam of many lives. Rotation is the law of
nature. When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for
a successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extinguished
with him. In some other and quite different field, the next man will
appear; not Jefferson, not Franklin, but now a great salesman; than a
road-contractor; then a student of fishes; then a buffalo-hunting
explorer, or a semi-savage Western general. Thus we make a stand against
our rougher masters; but against the best there is a finer remedy. The
power which they communicate is not theirs. When we are exalted by
ideas, we do not owe this to Plato, but to the idea, to which, also,
Plato was debtor.

I must not forget that we have a special debt to a single class. Life is
a scale of degrees. Between rank and rank of our great men are wide
intervals. Mankind have, in all ages, attached themselves to a few
persons, who, either by the quality of that idea they embodied, or by
the largeness of their reception, were entitled to the position of
leaders and law-givers. These teach us the qualities of primary
nature--admit us to the constitution of things. We swim, day by day, on
a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns
in the air, of which the men about us are dupes. But life is a
sincerity. In lucid intervals we say, "Let there be an entrance opened
for me into realties; I have worn the fool's cap too long." We will know
the meaning of our economies and politics. Give us the cipher, and, if
persons and things are scores of a celestial music, let us read off the
strains. We have been cheated of our reason; yet there have been sane
men who enjoyed a rich and related existence. What they know they know
for us. With each new mind, a new secret of nature transpires; nor can
the Bible be closed until the last great man is born. These men correct
the delirium of the animal spirits, make us considerate, and engage us
to new aims and powers. The veneration of mankind selects these for the
highest place. Witness the multitude of statues, pictures, and memorials
which recall their genius in every city, village, house, and ship:

/p
    "Ever their phantoms arise before us,
      Our loftier brothers, but one in blood;
    At bed and table they lord it o'er us,
      With looks of beauty, and words of good."
p/

How to illustrate the distinctive benefit of ideas, the service
rendered by those who introduce moral truths into the general mind?--I
am plagued, in all my living, with a perpetual tariff of prices. If I
work in my garden and prune an apple-tree, I am well enough entertained,
and could continue indefinitely in the like occupation. But it comes to
mind that a day is gone, and I have got this precious nothing done. I go
to Boston or New York, and run up and down on my affairs: they are sped,
but so is the day. I am vexed by the recollection of this price I have
paid for a trifling advantage. I remember the _peau d'âne_, on which
whoso sat should have his desire, but a piece of the skin was gone for
every wish. I go to a convention of philanthropists. Do what I can, I
cannot keep my eyes off the clock. But if there should appear in the
company some gentle soul who knows little of persons or parties, of
Carolina or Cuba, but who announces a law that disposes these
particulars, and so certifies me of the equity which checkmates every
false player, bankrupts every self-seeker, and apprises me of my
independence on any conditions of country, or time, or human body, that
man liberates me; I forget the clock. I pass out of the sore relation to
persons. I am healed of my hurts. I am made immortal by apprehending my
possession of incorruptible goods. Here is great competition of rich and
poor. We live in a market, where is only so much wheat, or wool, or
land; and if I have so much more, every other must have so much less. I
seem to have no good, without breach of good manners. Nobody is glad in
the gladness of another, and our system is one of war, of an injurious
superiority. Every child of the Saxon race is educated to wish to be
first. It is our system; and a man comes to measure his greatness by the
regrets, envies, and hatreds of his competitors. But in these new fields
there is room: here are no self-esteems, no exclusions.

I admire great men of all classes, those who stand for facts and for
thoughts; I like rough and smooth, "scourges of God" and "darlings of
the human race." I like the first Cæsar; and Charles V, of Spain; and
Charles XII, of Sweden; Richard Plantagenet; and Bonaparte, in France. I
applaud a sufficient man, an officer equal to his office; captains,
ministers, senators. I like a master standing firm on legs of iron,
well-born, rich, handsome, eloquent, loaded with advantages, drawing all
men by fascination into tributaries and supports of his power. Sword and
staff, or talents sword-like or staff-like, carry on the work of the
world. But I find him greater when he can abolish himself, and all
heroes, by letting in this element of reason, irrespective of persons;
this subtilizer, and irresistible upward force, into our thought,
destroying individualism; the power so great that the potentate is
nothing. Then he is a monarch who gives a constitution to his people; a
pontiff who preaches the equality of souls, and releases his servants
from their barbarous homages; an emperor who can spare his empire.

But I intended to specify, with a little minuteness, two or three points
of service. Nature never spares the opium or nepenthe; but, wherever she
mars her creature with some deformity or defect, lays her poppies
plentifully on the bruise, and the sufferer goes joyfully through life,
ignorant of the ruin, and incapable of seeing it, though all the world
point their finger at it every day. The worthless and offensive members
of society, whose existence is a social pest, invariably think
themselves the most ill-used people alive, and never get over their
astonishment at the ingratitude and selfishness of their contemporaries.
Our globe discovers its hidden virtues, not only in heroes and
archangels, but in gossips and nurses. Is it not a rare contrivance that
lodged the due inertia in every creature, the conserving, resisting
energy, the anger at being waked or changed? Altogether independent of
the intellectual force in each is the pride of opinion, the security
that we are right. Not the feeblest grandame, not a mowing idiot, but
uses what spark of perception and faculty is left, to chuckle and
triumph in his or her opinion over the absurdities of all the rest.
Difference from me is the measure of absurdity. Not one has a misgiving
of being wrong. Was it not a bright thought that made things cohere with
this bitumen, fastest of cements? But, in the midst of this chuckle of
self-gratulation, some figure goes by which Thersites too can love and
admire. This is he that should marshal us the way we were going. There
is no end to his aid. Without Plato, we should almost lose our faith in
the possibility of a reasonable book. We seem to want but one, but we
want one. We love to associate with heroic persons, since our
receptivity is unlimited; and, with the great, our thoughts and manners
easily become great. We are all wise in capacity, though so few in
energy. There needs but one wise man in a company, and all are wise, so
rapid is the contagion.

Great men are thus a collyrium to clear our eyes from egotism, and
enable us to see other people and their works. But there are vices and
follies incident to whole populations and ages. Men resemble their
contemporaries, even more than their progenitors. It is observed in old
couples, or in persons who have been housemates for a course of years,
that they grow like; and if they should live long enough, we should not
be able to know them apart. Nature abhors these complaisances, which
threaten to melt the world into a lump, and hastens to break up such
maudlin agglutinations. The like assimilation goes on between men of one
town, of one sect, of one political party; and the ideas of the time are
in the air, and infect all who breathe it. Viewed from any high point,
this city of New York, yonder city of London, the western civilization,
would seem a bundle of insanities. We keep each other in countenance,
and exasperate by emulation the frenzy of the time. The shield against
the stingings of conscience is the universal practice, or our
contemporaries. Again: it is very easy to be as wise and good as your
companions. We learn of our contemporaries what they know, without
effort, and almost through the pores of the skin. We catch it by
sympathy, or as a wife arrives at the intellectual and moral elevations
of her husband. But we stop where they stop. Very hardly can we take
another step. The great, or such as hold of nature, and transcend
fashions, by their fidelity to universal ideas, are saviors from these
federal errors, and defend us from our contemporaries. They are the
exceptions which we want, where all grows alike. A foreign greatness is
the antidote for cabalism.

Thus we feed on genius, and refresh ourselves from too much conversation
with our mates, and exult in the depth of nature in that direction in
which he leads us. What indemnification is one great man for populations
of pygmies! Every mother wishes one son a genius, though all the rest
should be mediocre. But a new danger appears in the excess of influence
of the great man. His attractions warp us from our place. We have become
underlings and intellectual suicides. Ah! yonder in the horizon is our
help: other great men, new qualities, counterweights and checks on each
other. We cloy of the honey of each peculiar greatness. Every hero
becomes a bore at last. Perhaps Voltaire was not bad-hearted, yet he
said of the good Jesus, even, "I pray you, let me never hear that man's
name again." They cry up the virtues of George Washington--"Damn George
Washington!" is the poor Jacobin's whole speech and confutation. But it
is human nature's indispensable defense. The centripetence augments the
centrifugence. We balance one man with his opposite, and the health of
the State depends on the see-saw.

There is, however, a speedy limit to the use of heroes. Every genius is
defended from approach by quantities of unavailableness. They are very
attractive, and seem at a distance our own; but we are hindered on all
sides from approach. The more we are drawn, the more we are repelled.
There is something not solid in the good that is done for us. The best
discovery the discoverer makes for himself. It has something unreal for
his companion, until he too has substantiated it. It seems as if the
Deity dressed each soul which he sends into nature in certain virtues
and powers not communicable to other men, and, sending it to perform one
more turn through the circle of beings, wrote, "_Not transferable_," and
"_Good for this trip only_," on these garments of the soul. There is
somewhat deceptive about the intercourse of minds. The boundaries are
invisible, but they are never crossed. There is such good will to
impart, and such good will to receive, that each threatens to become the
other; but the law of individuality collects its secret strength: you
are you, and I am I, and so we remain.

For Nature wishes everything to remain itself; and whilst every
individual strives to grow and exclude, and to exclude and grow, to the
extremities of the universe, and to impose the law of its being on every
other creature, Nature steadily aims to protect each against every
other. Each is self-defended. Nothing is more marked than the power by
which individuals are guarded from individuals, in a world where every
benefactor becomes so easily a malefactor, only by continuation of his
activity into places where it is not due; where children seem so much at
the mercy of their foolish parents, and where almost all men are too
social and interfering. We rightly speak of the guardian angels of
children. How superior in their security from infusions of evil persons,
from vulgarity and second thought! They shed their own abundant beauty
on the objects they behold. Therefore, they are not at the mercy of such
poor educators as we adults. If we huff and chide them, they soon come
not to mind it, and get a self-reliance; and if we indulge them to
folly, they learn the limitation elsewhere.

We need not fear excessive influence. A more generous trust is
permitted. Serve the great. Stick at no humiliation. Grudge no office
thou canst render. Be the limb of their body, the breath of their mouth.
Compromise thy egotism. Who cares for that, so thou gain aught wider and
nobler? Never mind the taunt of Boswellism: the devotion may easily be
greater than the wretched pride which is guarding its own skirts. Be
another--not thyself, but a Platonist; not a soul, but a Christian; not
a naturalist, but a Cartesian; not a poet, but a Shaksperian. In vain;
the wheels of tendency will not stop, nor will all the forces of
inertia, fear, or of love itself, hold thee there. On, and forever
onward! The microscope observes a monad or wheel-insect among the
infusories circulating in water. Presently a dot appears on the animal,
which enlarges to a slit, and it becomes two perfect animals. The
ever-proceeding detachment appears not less in all thought, and in
society. Children think they cannot live without their parents. But long
before they are aware of it, the black dot has appeared, and the
detachment taken place. Any accident will now reveal to them their
independence.

But _great men_--the word is injurious. Is there caste? Is there fate?
What becomes of the promise to virtue? The thoughtful youth laments the
superfœtation of nature. "Generous and handsome," he says, "is your
hero; but look at yonder poor Paddy, whose country is his wheelbarrow;
look at his whole nation of Paddies." Why are the masses, from the dawn
of history down, food for knives and powder? The idea dignifies a few
leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love, self-devotion; and they make
war and death sacred; but what for the wretches whom they hire and kill?
The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. It is as real a loss that
others should be low as that we should be low; for we must have society.

Is it a reply to these suggestions, to say society is a Pestalozzian
school; all are teachers and pupils in turn. We are equally served by
receiving and by imparting. Men who know the same things are not long
the best company for each other. But bring to each an intelligent person
of another experience, and it is as if you let off water from a lake, by
cutting a lower basin. It seems a mechanical advantage, and great
benefit it is to each speaker, as he can now paint out his thought to
himself. We pass very fast, in our personal moods, from dignity to
dependence. And if any appear never to assume the chair, but always to
stand and serve, it is because we do not see the company in a
sufficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to come about.
As to what we call the masses and common men--there are no common men.
All men are at last of a size; and true art is only possible on the
conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair play,
and an open field, and freshest laurels to all who have won them! But
heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature. Each is uneasy until
he has produced his private ray unto the concave sphere, and beheld his
talent also in its last nobility and exaltation.

The heroes of the hour are relatively great--of a faster growth; or they
are such, in whom, at the moment of success, a quality is ripe which is
then in request. Other days will demand other qualities. Some rays
escape the common observer, and want a finely adapted eye. Ask the great
man if there be none greater. His companions are; and not the less
great, but the more, that society cannot see them. Nature never sends a
great man into the planet without confiding the secret to another soul.

One gracious fact emerges from these studies--that there is true
ascension in our love. The reputations of the nineteenth century will
one day be quoted to prove its barbarism. The genius of humanity is the
real subject whose biography is written in our annals. We must infer
much, and supply many chasms in the record. The history of the universe
is symptomatic, and life is mnemonical. No man, in all the procession of
famous men, is reason or illumination, or that essence we were looking
for, but is an exhibition, in some quarter, of new possibilities. Could
we one day complete the immense figure which these flagrant points
compose! The study of many individuals leads us to an elemental region
wherein the individual is lost, or wherein all touch by their summits.
Thought and feeling, that break out there, cannot be impounded by any
fence of personality. This is the key to the power of the greatest
men--their spirit diffuses itself. A new quality of mind travels by
night and by day, in concentric circles from its origin, and publishes
itself by unknown methods; the union of all minds appears intimate; what
gets admission to one cannot be kept out of any other; the smallest
acquisition of truth or of energy, in any quarter, is so much good to
the commonwealth of souls. If the disparities of talent and position
vanish when the individuals are seen in the duration which is necessary
to complete the career of each, even more swiftly the seeming injustice
disappears when we ascend to the central identity of all the
individuals, and know that they are made of the substance which
ordaineth and doeth.

The genius of humanity is the right point of view of history. The
qualities abide; the men who exhibit them have now more, now less, and
pass away; the qualities remain on another brow. No experience is more
familiar. Once you saw phœnixes: they are gone; the world is not
therefore disenchanted. The vessels on which you read sacred emblems
turn out to be common pottery; but the sense of the pictures is sacred,
and you may still read them transferred to the walls of the world. For a
time our teachers serve us personally, as meters or milestones of
progress. Once they were angels of knowledge, and their figures touched
the sky. Then we drew near, saw their means, culture, and limits; and
they yielded their place to other geniuses. Happy, if a few names remain
so high that we have not been able to read them nearer, and age and
comparison have not robbed them of a ray. But, at last, we shall cease
to look in men for completeness, and shall content ourselves with their
social and delegated quality. All that respects the individual is
temporary and prospective, like the individual himself, who is ascending
out of his limits into a catholic existence. We have never come at the
true and best benefit of any genius, so long as we believe him an
original force. In the moment when he ceases to help us as a cause, he
begins to help us more as an effect. Then he appears as an exponent of a
vaster mind and will. The opaque self becomes transparent with the light
of the First Cause.

Yet, within the limits of human education and agency, we may say great
men exist that there may be greater men. The destiny of organized nature
is amelioration, and who can tell its limits? It is for man to tame the
chaos; on every side, whilst he lives, to scatter the seeds of science
and of song, that climate, corn, animals, men, may be milder, and the
germs of love and benefit may be multiplied.



BUDS AND BIRD-VOICES

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE


Balmy Spring--weeks later than we expected, and months later than we
longed for her--comes at last to revive the moss on the roof and walls
of our old mansion. She peeps brightly into my study window, inviting me
to throw it open and create a summer atmosphere by the intermixture of
her genial breath with the black and cheerless comfort of the stove. As
the casement ascends, forth into infinite space fly the innumerable
forms of thought or fancy that have kept me company in the retirement of
this little chamber during the sluggish lapse of wintry weather--visions
gay, grotesque and sad, pictures of real life tinted with nature's
homely gray and russet, scenes in dreamland bedizened with rainbow-hues
which faded before they were well laid on. All these may vanish now, and
leave me to mold a fresh existence out of sunshine. Brooding Meditation
may flap her dusky wings and take her owl-like flight, blinking amid the
cheerfulness of noontide. Such companions befit the season of frosted
window-panes and crackling fires, when the blast howls through the
black-ash trees of our avenue, and the drifting snowstorm chokes up the
wood paths and fills the highway from stone wall to stone wall. In the
spring and summer time all somber thoughts should follow the winter
northward with the somber and thoughtful crows. The old paradisiacal
economy of life is again in force: we live, not to think nor to labor,
but for the simple end of being happy; nothing for the present hour is
worthy of man's infinite capacity save to imbibe the warm smile of
heaven and sympathize with the reviving earth.

The present Spring comes onward with fleeter footsteps because Winter
lingered so unconscionably long that with her best diligence she can
hardly retrieve half the allotted period of her reign. It is but a
fortnight since I stood on the brink of our swollen river and beheld the
accumulated ice of four frozen months go down the stream. Except in
streaks here and there upon the hillsides, the whole visible universe
was then covered with deep snow the nethermost layer of which had been
deposited by an early December storm. It was a sight to make the
beholder torpid, in the impossibility of imagining how this vast white
napkin was to be removed from the face of the corpse-like world in less
time than had been required to spread it there. But who can estimate the
power of gentle influences, whether amid material desolation or the
moral winter of man's heart? There have been no tempestuous rains--even
no sultry days--but a constant breath of southern winds, with now a day
of kindly sunshine, and now a no less kindly mist, or a soft descent of
showers, in which a smile and a blessing seemed to have been steeped.
The snow has vanished as if by magic; whatever heaps may be hidden in
the woods and deep gorges of the hills, only two solitary specks remain
in the landscape, and those I shall almost regret to miss when to-morrow
I look for them in vain. Never before, methinks, has spring pressed so
closely on the footsteps of retreating winter. Along the roadside the
green blades of grass have sprouted on the very edge of the snowdrifts.
The pastures and mowing fields have not yet assumed a general aspect of
verdure, but neither have they the cheerless brown tint which they wear
in later autumn, when vegetation has entirely ceased; there is now a
faint shadow of life, gradually brightening into the warm reality. Some
tracts in a happy exposure--as, for instance, yonder southwestern slope
of an orchard, in front of that old red farmhouse beyond the river--such
patches of land already wear a beautiful and tender green to which no
future luxuriance can add a charm. It looks unreal--a prophecy, a hope,
a transitory effect of some peculiar light, which will vanish with the
slightest motion of the eye. But beauty is never a delusion; not these
verdant tracts but the dark and barren landscape all around them is a
shadow and a dream. Each moment wins some portion of the earth from
death to life; a sudden gleam of verdure brightens along the sunny slope
of a bank which an instant ago was brown and bare. You look again, and,
behold an apparition of green grass!

The trees in our orchard and elsewhere are as yet naked, but already
appear full of life and vegetable blood. It seems as if by one magic
touch they might instantaneously burst into full foliage, and that the
wind which now sighs through their naked branches might make sudden
music amid innumerable leaves. The moss-grown willow tree which for
forty years past has overshadowed these western windows will be among
the first to put on its green attire. There are some objections to the
willow: it is not a dry and cleanly tree, and impresses the beholder
with an association of sliminess. No trees, I think, are perfectly
agreeable as companions unless they have glossy leaves, dry bark, and a
firm and hard texture of trunk and branches. But the willow is almost
the earliest to gladden us with the promise and reality of beauty in its
graceful and delicate foliage, and the last to scatter its yellow, yet
scarcely-withered, leaves upon the ground. All through the winter, too,
its yellow twigs give it a sunny aspect which is not without a cheering
influence even in the grayest and gloomiest day. Beneath a clouded sky
it faithfully remembers the sunshine. Our old house would lose a charm
were the willow to be cut down, with its golden crown over the
snow-covered roof, and its heap of summer verdure.

The lilac shrubs under my study windows are likewise almost in leaf; in
two or three days more I may put forth my hand and pluck the topmost
bough in its freshest green. These lilacs are very aged, and have lost
the luxuriant foliage of their prime. The heart or the judgment or the
moral sense or the taste is dissatisfied with their present aspect. Old
age is not venerable when it embodies itself in lilacs, rose-bushes, or
any other ornamental shrubs; it seems as if such plants, as they grow
only for beauty, ought to flourish only in immortal youth--or, at least,
to die before their sad decrepitude. Trees of beauty are trees of
paradise, and therefore not subject to decay by their original nature,
though they have lost that precious birthright by being transplanted to
an earthly soil. There is a kind of ludicrous unfitness in the idea of a
time-stricken and grandfatherly lilac-bush. The analogy holds good in
human life. Persons who can only be graceful and ornamental--who can
give the world nothing but flowers--should die young, and never be seen
with gray hair and wrinkles, any more than the flower-shrubs with mossy
bark and blighted foliage, like the lilacs under my window. Not that
beauty is worthy of less than immortality. No; the beautiful should live
forever, and thence, perhaps, the sense of impropriety when we see it
triumphed over by time. Apple trees, on the other hand, grow old without
reproach. Let them live as long as they may, and contort themselves into
whatever perversity of shape they please, and deck their withered limbs
with a springtime gaudiness of pink-blossoms, still they are
respectable, even if they afford us only an apple or two in a season.
Those few apples--or, at all events, the remembrance of apples in
bygone years--are the atonement which utilitarianism inexorably demands
for the privilege of lengthened life. Human flower shrubs, if they will
grow old on earth, should, besides their lovely blossoms, bear some kind
of fruit that will satisfy earthly appetites, else neither man nor the
decorum of nature will deem it fit that the moss should gather on them.

One of the first things that strikes the attention when the white sheet
of winter is withdrawn is the neglect and disarray that lay hidden
beneath it. Nature is not cleanly, according to our prejudices. The
beauty of preceding years, now transformed to brown and blighted
deformity, obstructs the brightening loveliness of the present hour. Our
avenue is strewn with the whole crop of autumn's withered leaves. There
are quantities of decayed branches which one tempest after another has
flung down, black and rotten, and one or two with the ruin of a bird's
nest clinging to them. In the garden are the dried bean-vines, the brown
stalks of the asparagus-bed, and melancholy old cabbages which were
frozen into the soil before their unthrifty cultivator could find time
to gather them. How invariable throughout all the forms of life do we
find these intermingled memorials of death! On the soil of thought and
in the garden of the heart, as well as in the sensual world, lie
withered leaves--the ideas and feelings that we have done with. There is
no wind strong enough to sweep them away; infinite space will not garner
them from our sight. What mean they? Why may we not be permitted to live
and enjoy as if this were the first life and our own the primal
enjoyment, instead of treading always on these dry bones and mouldering
relics from the aged accumulation of which springs all that now appears
so young and new? Sweet must have been the spring-time of Eden, when no
earlier year had strewn its decay upon the virgin turf, and no former
experience had ripened into summer and faded into autumn in the hearts
of its inhabitants! That was a world worth living in.--Oh, thou
murmurer, it is out of the very wantonness of such a life that thou
feignest these idle lamentations. There is no decay. Each human soul is
the first created inhabitant of its own Eden.--We dwell in an old
moss-covered mansion and tread in the worn footprints of the past and
have a gray clergyman's ghost for our daily and nightly inmate, yet all
these outward circumstances are made less than visionary by the renewing
power of the spirit. Should the spirit ever lose this power--should the
withered leaves and the rotten branches and the moss-covered house and
the ghost of the gray past ever become its realities, and the verdure
and the freshness merely its faint dream--then let it pray to be
released from earth. It will need the air of heaven to revive its
pristine energies.

What an unlooked for flight was this from our shadowy avenue of
black-ash and balm-of-gilead trees into the infinite! Now we have our
feet again upon the turf. Nowhere does the grass spring up so
industriously as in this homely yard, along the base of the stone wall
and in the sheltered nooks of the buildings, and especially around the
southern door-step--a locality which seems particularly favorable to its
growth, for it is already tall enough to bend over and wave in the wind.
I observe that several weeds--and, most frequently, a plant that stains
the fingers with its yellow juice--have survived and retained their
freshness and sap throughout the winter. One knows not how they have
deserved such an exception from the common lot of their race. They are
now the patriarchs of the departed year, and may preach mortality to the
present generation of flowers and weeds.

Among the delights of spring, how is it possible to forget the birds?
Even the crows were welcome, as the sable harbingers of a brighter and
livelier race. They visited us before the snow was off, but seem mostly
to have betaken themselves to remote depths of the woods, which they
haunt all summer long. Many a time shall I disturb them there, and feel
as if I had intruded among a company of silent worshipers as they sit in
Sabbath stillness among the treetops. Their voices, when they speak, are
in admirable accordance with the tranquil solitude of a summer
afternoon, and, resounding so far above the head, their loud clamor
increases the religious quiet of the scene instead of breaking it. A
crow, however, has no real pretensions to religion, in spite of his
gravity of mien and black attire; he is certainly a thief, and probably
an infidel. The gulls are far more respectable, in a moral point of
view. These denizens of sea-beaten rocks and haunters of the lonely
beach come up our inland river at this season, and soar high overhead,
flapping their broad wings in the upper sunshine. They are among the
most picturesque of birds, because they so float and rest upon the air
as to become almost stationary parts of the landscape. The imagination
has time to grow acquainted with them; they have not flitted away in a
moment. You go up among the clouds and greet these lofty-flighted gulls,
and repose confidently with them upon the sustaining atmosphere. Ducks
have their haunts along the solitary places of the river, and alight in
flocks upon the broad bosom of the overflowed meadows. Their flight is
too rapid and determined for the eye to catch enjoyment from it,
although it never fails to stir up the heart with the sportsman's
ineradicable instinct. They have now gone farther northward, but will
visit us again in autumn.

The smaller birds--the little songsters of the woods, and those that
haunt man's dwellings and claim human friendship by building their nests
under the sheltering eaves or among the orchard trees--these require a
touch more delicate and a gentler heart than mine to do them justice.
Their outburst of melody is like a brook let loose from wintry chains.
We need not deem it a too high and solemn word to call it a hymn of
praise to the Creator, since Nature, who pictures the reviving year in
so many sights of beauty, has expressed the sentiment of renewed life in
no other sound save the notes of these blessed birds. Their music,
however, just now seems to be incidental, and not the result of a set
purpose. They are discussing the economy of life and love and the site
and architecture of their summer residences, and have no time to sit on
a twig and pour forth solemn hymns or overtures, operas, symphonies and
waltzes. Anxious questions are asked, grave subjects are settled in
quick and animated debate, and only by occasional accident, as from pure
ecstasy, does a rich warble roll its tiny waves of golden sound through
the atmosphere. Their little bodies are as busy as their voices; they
are in a constant flutter and restlessness. Even when two or three
retreat to a tree-top to hold council, they wag their tails and heads
all the time with the irrepressible activity of their nature, which
perhaps renders their brief span of life in reality as long as the
patriarchal age of sluggish man. The blackbirds--three species of which
consort together--are the noisiest of all our feathered citizens. Great
companies of them--more than the famous "four-and-twenty" whom Mother
Goose has immortalized--congregate in contiguous tree-tops and
vociferate with all the clamor and confusion of a turbulent political
meeting. Politics, certainly, must be the occasion of such tumultuous
debates, but still, unlike all other politicians, they instill melody
into their individual utterances and produce harmony as a general
effect. Of all bird-voices, none are more sweet and cheerful to my ear
than those of swallows in the dim, sun-streaked interior of a lofty
barn; they address the heart with even a closer sympathy than Robin
Redbreast. But, indeed, all these winged people that dwell in the
vicinity of homesteads seem to partake of human nature and possess the
germ, if not the development, of immortal souls. We hear them saying
their melodious prayers at morning's blush and eventide. A little while
ago, in the deep of night, there came the lively thrill of a bird's note
from a neighboring tree--a real song such as greets the purple dawn or
mingles with the yellow sunshine. What could the little bird mean by
pouring it forth at midnight? Probably the music gushed out of the midst
of a dream in which he fancied himself in paradise with his mate, but
suddenly awoke on a cold, leafless bough with a New England mist
penetrating through his feathers. That was a sad exchange of imagination
for reality.

Insects are among the earliest births of spring. Multitudes, of I know
not what species, appeared long ago on the surface of the snow. Clouds
of them almost too minute for sight hover in a beam of sunshine, and
vanish as if annihilated when they pass into the shade. A mosquito has
already been heard to sound the small horror of his bugle-horn. Wasps
infest the sunny windows of the house. A bee entered one of the chambers
with a prophecy of flowers. Rare butterflies came before the snow was
off, flaunting in the chill breeze, and looking forlorn and all astray
in spite of the magnificence of their dark velvet cloaks with golden
borders.

The fields and wood-paths have as yet few charms to entice the wanderer.
In a walk the other day I found no violets nor anemones, nor anything in
the likeness of a flower. It was worth while, however, to ascend our
opposite hill for the sake of gaining a general idea of the advance of
spring, which I had hitherto been studying in its minute developments.
The river lay round me in a semi-circle, overflowing all the meadows
which give it its Indian name, and offering a noble breadth to sparkle
in the sunbeams. Along the hither shore a row of trees stood up to their
knees in water, and afar off, on the surface of the stream, tufts of
bushes thrust up their heads, as it were, to breathe. The most striking
objects were great solitary trees here and there with a mile-wide waste
of water all around them. The curtailment of the trunk by its immersion
in the river quite destroys the fair proportions of the tree, and thus
makes us sensible of a regularity and propriety in the usual forms of
nature. The flood of the present season, though it never amounts to a
freshet on our quiet stream, has encroached farther upon the land than
any previous one for at least a score of years. It has overflowed stone
fences, and even rendered a portion of the highway navigable for boats.
The waters, however, are now gradually subsiding; islands become annexed
to the mainland, and other islands emerge like new creations from the
watery waste. The scene supplies an admirable image of the receding of
the Nile--except that there is no deposit of black slime--or of Noah's
flood, only that there is a freshness and novelty in these recovered
portions of the continent which give the impression of a world just made
rather than of one so polluted that a deluge had been requisite to
purify it. These upspringing islands are the greenest spots in the
landscape; the first gleam of sunlight suffices to cover them with
verdure.

Thank Providence for spring! The earth--and man himself, by sympathy
with his birthplace--would be far other than we find them if life toiled
wearily onward without this periodical infusion of the primal spirit.
Will the world ever be so decayed that spring may not renew its
greenness? Can man be so dismally age-stricken that no faintest
sunshine of his youth may revisit him once a year? It is impossible. The
moss on our time-worn mansion brightens into beauty, the good old pastor
who once dwelt here renewed his prime, regained his boyhood, in the
genial breezes of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy soul
if, whether in youth or age, it have outlived its privilege of
springtime sprightliness! From such a soul the world must hope no
reformation of its evil--no sympathy with the lofty faith and gallant
struggles of those who contend in its behalf. Summer works in the
present and thinks not of the future; autumn is a rich conservative;
winter has utterly lost its faith, and clings tremulously to the
remembrance of what has been; but spring, with its outgushing life, is
the true type of the movement.



THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSITION

EDGAR ALLAN POE


CHARLES DICKENS, in a note now lying before me, alluding to an
examination I once made of the mechanism of _Barnaby Rudge_, says--"By
the way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his _Caleb Williams_ backwards?
He first involved his hero in a web of difficulties, forming the second
volume, and then, for the first, cast about him for some mode of
accounting for what had been done."

I cannot think this the _precise_ mode of procedure on the part of
Godwin--and indeed what he himself acknowledges, is not altogether in
accordance with Mr. Dickens' idea--but the author of _Caleb Williams_
was too good an artist not to perceive the advantage derivable from at
least a somewhat similar process. Nothing is more clear than that every
plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to its _dénouement_ before
anything be attempted with the pen. It is only with the _dénouement_
constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of
consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the
tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention.

There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode of constructing a
story. Either history affords a thesis--or one is suggested by an
incident of the day--or, at best, the author sets himself to work in the
combination of striking events to form merely the basis of his
narrative--designing, generally, to fill in with description, dialogue,
or autorial comment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, from
page to page, render themselves apparent.

I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. Keeping
originality _always_ in view--for he is false to himself who ventures to
dispense with so obvious and so easily attainable a source of
interest--I say to myself, in the first place, "Of the innumerable
effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more
generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present
occasion, select?" Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid
effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by incident or
tone--whether by ordinary incidents and peculiar tone, or the converse,
or by peculiarity both of incident and tone--afterward looking about me
(or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall
best aid me in the construction of the effect.

I have often thought how interesting a magazine paper might be written
by any author who would--that is to say, who could--detail, step by
step, the processes by which any one of his compositions attained its
ultimate point of completion. Why such a paper has never been given to
the world, I am much at a loss to say--but, perhaps, the autorial vanity
has had more to do with the omission than any one other cause. Most
writers--poets in especial--prefer having it understood that they
compose by a species of fine frenzy--an ecstatic intuition--and would
positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes,
at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought--at the true
purposes seized only at the last moment--at the innumerable glimpses of
idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view--at the fully matured
fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable--at the cautious selections
and rejections--at the painful erasures and interpolations--in a word,
at the wheels and pinions--the tackle for scene-shifting--the
step-ladders and demon-traps--the cock's feathers, the red paint and the
black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred,
constitute the properties of the literary _histrio_.

I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by no means common, in
which an author is at all in condition to retrace the steps by which his
conclusions have been attained. In general, suggestions, having arisen
pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a similar manner.

For my own part, I have neither sympathy with the repugnance alluded to,
nor, at any time, the least difficulty in recalling to mind the
progressive steps of any of my compositions; and, since the interest of
an analysis, or reconstruction, such as I have considered a
_desideratum_, is quite independent of any real or fancied interest in
the thing analyzed, it will not be regarded as a breach of decorum on my
part to show the _modus operandi_ by which some one of my own works was
put together. I select "The Raven," as the most generally known. It is
my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is
referable either to accident or intuition--that the work proceeded, step
by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a
mathematical problem.

Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, _per se_, the
circumstance--or say the necessity--which, in the first place, gave rise
to the intention of composing _a_ poem that should suit at once the
popular and the critical taste.

We commence, then, with this intention.

The initial consideration was that of extent. If any literary work is
too long to be read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense with
the immensely important effect derivable from unity of impression--for,
if two sittings be required, the affairs of the world interfere, and
everything like totality is at once destroyed. But since, _ceteris
paribus_, no poet can afford to dispense with _anything_ that may
advance his design, it but remains to be seen whether there is, in
extent, any advantage to counterbalance the loss of unity which attends
it. Here I say no, at once. What we term a long poem is, in fact, merely
a succession of brief ones--that is to say, of brief poetical effects.
It is needless to demonstrate that a poem is such, only inasmuch as it
intensely excites, by elevating, the soul; and all intense excitements
are, through a psychal necessity, brief. For this reason, at least
one-half of the _Paradise Lost_ is essentially prose--a succession of
poetical excitements interspersed, _inevitably_, with corresponding
depressions--the whole being deprived, through the extremeness of its
length, of the vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity, of
effect.

It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct limit, as regards
length, to all works of literary art--the limit of a single sitting--and
that, although in certain classes of prose composition, such as
_Robinson Crusoe_, (demanding no unity,) this limit may be
advantageously overpassed, it can never properly be overpassed in a
poem. Within this limit, the extent of a poem may be made to bear
mathematical relation to its merit--in other words, to the excitement or
elevation--again in other words, to the degree of the true poetical
effect which it is capable of inducing; for it is clear that the brevity
must be in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended effect:--this,
with one proviso--that a certain degree of duration is absolutely
requisite for the production of any effect at all.

Holding in view these considerations, as well as that degree of
excitement which I deemed not above the popular, while not below the
critical, taste, I reached at once what I conceived the proper _length_
for my intended poem--a length of about one hundred lines. It is, in
fact, a hundred and eight.

My next thought concerned the choice of an impression, or effect, to be
conveyed: and here I may as well observe that, throughout the
construction, I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work
_universally_ appreciable. I should be carried too far out of my
immediate topic were I to demonstrate a point upon which I have
repeatedly insisted, and which, with the poetical, stands not in the
slightest need of demonstration--the point, I mean, that Beauty is the
sole legitimate province of the poem. A few words, however, in
elucidation of my real meaning, which some of my friends have evinced a
disposition to misrepresent. That pleasure which is at once the most
intense, the most elevating, and the most pure, is, I believe, found in
the contemplation of the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak of Beauty,
they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is supposed, but an effect--they
refer, in short, just to that intense and pure elevation of
_soul_--_not_ of intellect, or of heart--upon which I have commented,
and which is experienced in consequence of contemplating "the
beautiful." Now I designate Beauty as the province of the poem, merely
because it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be made to
spring from direct causes--that objects should be attained through means
best adapted for their attainment--no one as yet having been weak enough
to deny that the peculiar elevation alluded to is _most readily_
attained in the poem. Now the object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the
intellect, and the object Passion, or the excitement of the heart, are,
although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, far more readily
attainable in prose. Truth, in fact, demands a precision, and Passion, a
_homeliness_ (the truly passionate will comprehend me) which are
absolutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I maintain, is the
excitement, or pleasurable elevation, of the soul. It by no means
follows from anything here said, that passion, or even truth, may not
be introduced, and even profitably introduced, into a poem--for they may
serve in elucidation, or aid the general effect, as do discords in
music, by contrast--but the true artist will always contrive, first, to
tone them into proper subservience to the predominant aim, and,
secondly, to enveil them, as far as possible, in that Beauty which is
the atmosphere and the essence of the poem.

Regarding, then, Beauty as my province, my next question referred to the
_tone_ of its highest manifestation--and all experience has shown that
this tone is one of _sadness_. Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme
development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears. Melancholy
is thus the most legitimate of all the poetical tones.

The length, the province, and the tone, being thus determined, I betook
myself to ordinary induction, with the view of obtaining some artistic
piquancy which might serve me as a key-note in the construction of the
poem--some pivot upon which the whole structure might turn. In carefully
thinking over all the usual artistic effects--or more properly _points_,
in the theatrical sense--I did not fail to perceive immediately that no
one had been so universally employed as that of the _refrain_. The
universality of its employment sufficed to assure me of its intrinsic
value, and spared me the necessity of submitting it to analysis. I
considered it, however, with regard to its susceptibility of
improvement, and soon saw it to be in a primitive condition. As commonly
used, the _refrain_, or burden, not only is limited to lyric verse, but
depends for its impression upon the force of monotone--both in sound and
thought. The pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity--of
repetition. I resolved to diversify, and so vastly heighten, the effect,
by adhering, in general, to the monotone of sound, while I continually
varied that of thought: that is to say, I determined to produce
continuously novel effects, by the variation _of the application_ of
the _refrain_--the _refrain_ itself remaining, for the most part,
unvaried.

These points being settled, I next bethought me of the _nature_ of my
_refrain_. Since its application was to be repeatedly varied, it was
clear that the _refrain_ itself must be brief, for there would have been
an insurmountable difficulty in frequent variations of application in
any sentence of length. In proportion to the brevity of the sentence,
would, of course, be the facility of the variation. This led me at once
to a single word as the best _refrain_.

The question now arose as to the _character_ of the word. Having made up
my mind to a _refrain_, the division of the poem into stanzas was, of
course, a corollary: the _refrain_ forming the close to each stanza.
That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous and susceptible of
protracted emphasis, admitted no doubt: and these considerations
inevitably led me to the long _o_ as the most sonorous vowel, in
connection with _r_ as the most producible consonant.

The sound of the _refrain_ being thus determined, it became necessary to
select a word embodying this sound, and at the same time in the fullest
possible keeping with that melancholy which I had predetermined as the
tone of the poem. In such a search it would have been absolutely
impossible to overlook the word "Nevermore." In fact, it was the very
first which presented itself.

The next _desideratum_ was a pretext for the continuous use of the one
word "nevermore." In observing the difficulty which I at once found in
inventing a sufficiently plausible reason for its continuous repetition,
I did not fail to perceive that this difficulty arose solely from the
pre-assumption that the word was to be so continuously or monotonously
spoken by _a human_ being--I did not fail to perceive, in short, that
the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of this monotony with the
exercise of reason on the part of the creature repeating the word. Here,
then, immediately arose the idea of a _non_-reasoning creature capable
of speech; and, very naturally, a parrot, in the first instance,
suggested itself, but was superseded forthwith by a Raven, as equally
capable of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the intended
_tone_.

I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven--the bird of ill
omen--monotonously repeating the one word, "Nevermore," at the
conclusion of each stanza, in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length
about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight of the object
_supremeness_, or perfection, at all points, I asked myself--"Of all
melancholy topics, what, according to the _universal_ understanding of
mankind, is the _most_ melancholy?" Death--was the obvious reply. "And
when," I said, "is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?" From
what I have already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is
obvious--"When it most closely allies itself to _Beauty_: the death,
then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic
in the world--and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited
for such topic are those of a bereaved lover."

I had now to combine the two ideas, of a lover lamenting his deceased
mistress and a Raven continuously repeating the word "Nevermore"--I had
to combine these, bearing in mind my design of varying, at every turn,
the _application_ of the word repeated; but the only intelligible mode
of such combination is that of imagining the Raven employing the word in
answer to the queries of the lover. And here it was that I saw at once
the opportunity afforded for the effect on which I had been
depending--that is to say, the effect of the _variation of application_.
I saw that I could make the first query propounded by the lover--the
first query to which the Raven should reply "Nevermore"--that I could
make this first query a commonplace one--the second less so--the third
still less, and so on--until at length the lover, startled from his
original _nonchalance_ by the melancholy character of the word
itself--by its frequent repetition--and by a consideration of the
ominous reputation of the fowl that uttered it--is at length excited to
superstition, and wildly propounds queries of a far different
character--queries whose solution he has passionately at
heart--propounds them half in superstition and half in that species of
despair which delights, in self-torture--propounds them not altogether
because he believes in the prophetic or demoniac character of the bird
(which, reason assures him, is merely repeating a lesson learned by
rote) but because he experiences a frenzied pleasure in so modeling his
questions as to receive from the _expected_ "Nevermore" the most
delicious because the most intolerable of sorrow. Perceiving the
opportunity thus afforded me--or, more strictly, thus forced upon me in
the progress of the construction--I first established in mind the
climax, or concluding query--that to which "Nevermore" should be in the
last place an answer--that in reply to which this word "Nevermore"
should involve the utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair.

Here then the poem may be said to have its beginning--at the end, where
all works of art should begin--for it was here, at this point of my
preconsiderations, that I first put pen to paper in the composition of
the stanza:

/p
    "'Prophet,' said I, 'thing of evil! prophet still if bird or devil!
      By that heaven that bends above us--by that God we both adore,
      Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn,
      It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore--
      Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.'
                    Quoth the raven 'Nevermore.'"
p/

I composed this stanza, at this point, first that, by establishing the
climax, I might the better vary and graduate, as regards seriousness and
importance, the preceding queries of the lover--and, secondly, that I
might definitely settle the rhythm, the meter, and the length and
general arrangement of the stanza--as well as graduate the stanzas which
were to precede, so that none of them might surpass this in rhythmical
effect. Had I been able, in the subsequent composition, to construct
more vigorous stanzas, I should, without scruple, have purposely
enfeebled them, so as not to interfere with the climacteric effect.

And here I may as well say a few words of the versification. My first
object (as usual) was originality. The extent to which this has been
neglected, in versification, is one of the most unaccountable things in
the world. Admitting that there is little possibility of variety in mere
_rhythm_, it is still clear that the possible varieties of meter and
stanza are absolutely infinite--and yet, _for centuries, no man, in
verse, has ever done, or ever seemed to think of doing, an original
thing_. The fact is, originality (unless in minds of very unusual force)
is by no means a matter, as some suppose, of impulse or intuition. In
general, to be found, it must be elaborately sought, and although a
positive merit of the highest class, demands in its attainment less of
invention than negation.

Of course, I pretend to no originality in either the rhythm or meter of
the "Raven." The former is trochaic--the latter is octameter
acatalectic, alternating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the
_refrain_ of the fifth verse, and terminating with tetrameter
catalectic. Less pedantically--the feet employed throughout (trochees)
consist of a long syllable followed by a short: the first line of the
stanza consists of eight of these feet--the second of seven and a half
(in effect two-thirds)--the third of eight--the fourth of seven and a
half--the fifth the same--the sixth three and a half. Now, each of these
lines, taken individually, has been employed before, and what
originality the "Raven" has, is in their _combination into stanza_;
nothing even remotely approaching this combination has ever been
attempted. The effect of this originality of combination is aided by
other unusual, and some altogether novel effects, arising from an
extension of the application of the principles of rhyme and
alliteration.

The next point to be considered was the mode of bringing together the
lover and the Raven--and the first branch of this consideration was the
_locale_. For this the most natural suggestion might seem to be a
forest, or the fields--but it has always appeared to me that a close
_circumscription of space_ is absolutely necessary to the effect of
insulated incident:--it has the force of a frame to a picture. It has an
indisputable moral power in keeping concentrated the attention, and, of
course, must not be confounded with mere unity of place.

I determined, then, to place the lover in his chamber--in a chamber
rendered sacred to him by memories of her who had frequented it. The
room is represented as richly furnished--this in mere pursuance of the
ideas I have already explained on the subject of Beauty, as the sole
true poetical thesis.

The _locale_ being thus determined, I had now to introduce the bird--and
the thought of introducing him through the window, was inevitable. The
idea of making the lover suppose, in the first instance, that the
flapping of the wings of the bird against the shutter, is a "tapping" at
the door, originated in a wish to increase, by prolonging, the reader's
curiosity, and in a desire to admit the incidental effect arising from
the lover's throwing open the door, finding all dark, and thence
adopting the half-fancy that it was the spirit of his mistress that
knocked.

I made the night tempestuous, first, to account for the Raven's seeking
admission, and secondly, for the effect of contrast with the (physical)
serenity within the chamber.

I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also for the effect of
contrast between the marble and the plumage--it being understood that
the bust was absolutely _suggested_ by the bird--the bust of _Pallas_
being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the scholarship of the
lover, and, secondly, for the sonorousness of the word, Pallas, itself.

About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed myself of the force
of contrast, with a view of deepening the ultimate impression. For
example, an air of the fantastic--approaching as nearly to the ludicrous
as was admissible--is given to the Raven's entrance. He comes in "with
many a flirt and flutter."

/p
    "Not the _least obeisance made he_--not a moment stopped or stayed he,
     _But with mien of lord or lady_, perched above my chamber door."
p/

In the two stanzas which follow, the design is more obviously carried
out:--

/p
    "Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling
     By the _grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore_,
     'Though thy _crest be shorn and shaven_ thou,' I said,
          'art sure no craven,
     Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the nightly shore--
     Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
     Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore.'
p/

/p
    "Much I marveled _this ungainly fowl_ to hear discourse so plainly,
     Though its answer little meaning--little relevancy bore;
     For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
     _Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door_--
     _Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door_,
                       With such name as 'Nevermore.'"
p/

The effect of the _dénouement_ being thus provided for, I immediately
drop the fantastic for a tone of the most profound seriousness:--this
tone commencing in the stanza directly following the one last quoted,
with the line,

/p
    "But the Raven, sitting lonely on that placid bust, spoke only," etc.
p/

From this epoch the lover no longer jests--no longer sees anything even
of the fantastic in the Raven's demeanor. He speaks of him as a "grim,
ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore," and feels the
"fiery eyes" burning into his "bosom's core." This revolution of
thought, or fancy, on the lover's part, is intended to induce a similar
one on the part of the reader--to bring the mind into a proper frame for
the _dénouement_--which is now brought about as rapidly and as
_directly_ as possible.

With the _dénouement_ proper--with the Raven's reply, "Nevermore," to
the lover's final demand if he shall meet his mistress in another
world--the poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple narrative, may
be said to have its completion. So far, everything is within the limits
of the accountable--of the real. A raven, having learned by rote the
single word "Nevermore," and having escaped from the custody of its
owner, is driven at midnight, through the violence of a storm, to seek
admission at a window from which a light still gleams--the
chamber-window of a student, occupied half in poring over a volume, half
in dreaming of a beloved mistress deceased. The casement being thrown
open at the fluttering of the bird's wings, the bird itself perches on
the most convenient seat out of the immediate reach of the student, who,
amused by the incident and the oddity of the visitor's demeanor, demands
of it, in jest and without looking for a reply, its name. The raven
addressed, answers with its customary word, "Nevermore"--a word which
finds immediate echo in the melancholy heart of the student, who,
giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts suggested by the occasion, is
again startled by the fowl's repetition of "Nevermore." The student now
guesses the state of the case, but is impelled, as I have before
explained, by the human thirst for self-torture, and in part by
superstition, to propound such queries to the bird as will bring him,
the lover, the most of the luxury of sorrow, through the anticipated
answer "Nevermore." With the indulgence, to the utmost extreme, of this
self-torture, the narration, in what I have termed its first or obvious
phase, has a natural termination, and so far there has been no
overstepping of the limits of the real.

But in subjects so handled, however skillfully, or with however vivid an
array of incident, there is always a certain hardness or nakedness,
which repels the artistical eye. Two things are invariably
required--first, some amount of complexity, or more properly,
adaptation; and, secondly, some amount of suggestiveness--some
undercurrent, however indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in
especial, which imparts to a work of art so much of that _richness_ (to
borrow from colloquy a forcible term) which we are too fond of
confounding with _the ideal_. It is the _excess_ of the suggested
meaning--it is the rendering this the upper instead of the under current
of the theme--which turns into prose (and that of the very flattest
kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called transcendentalists.

Holding these opinions, I added the two concluding stanzas of the
poem--their suggestiveness being thus made to pervade all the narrative
which has preceded them. The undercurrent of meaning is rendered first
apparent in the lines--

/p
  "'Take thy beak from out _my heart_, and take thy form from off my door!'
                      Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore!'"
p/

It will be observed that the words, "from out my heart," involve the
first metaphorical expression in the poem. They, with the answer,
"Nevermore," dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been
previously narrated. The reader begins now to regard the Raven as
emblematical--but it is not until the very last line of the very last
stanza, that the intention of making him emblematical of _Mournful and
Never-ending Remembrance_ is permitted distinctly to be seen:

/p
    "And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting,
     On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
     And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
     And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
     And my soul _from out that shadow_ that lies floating on the floor
                        Shall be lifted--nevermore."
p/



BREAD AND THE NEWSPAPER

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES


This is the new version of the _Panem et Circenses_ of the Roman
populace. It is our _ultimatum_, as that was theirs. They must have
something to eat, and the circus-shows to look at. We must have
something to eat, and the papers to read.

Everything else we can give up. If we are rich, we can lay down our
carriages, stay away from Newport or Saratoga, and adjourn the trip to
Europe _sine die_. If we live in a small way, there are at least new
dresses and bonnets and every-day luxuries which we can dispense with.
If the young Zouave of the family looks smart in his new uniform, its
respectable head is content, though he himself grow seedy as a
caraway-umbel late in the season. He will cheerfully calm the perturbed
nap of his old beaver by patient brushing in place of buying a new one,
if only the Lieutenant's jaunty cap is what it should be. We all take a
pride in sharing the epidemic economy of the time. Only _bread and the
newspaper_ we must have, whatever else we do without.

How this war is simplifying our mode of being! We live on our emotions,
as the sick man is said in the common speech to be nourished by his
fever. Our ordinary mental food has become distasteful, and what would
have been intellectual luxuries at other times, are now absolutely
repulsive.

All this change in our manner of existence implies that we have
experienced some very profound impression, which will sooner or later
betray itself in permanent effects on the minds and bodies of many among
us. We cannot forget Corvisart's observation of the frequency with which
diseases of the heart were noticed as the consequence of the terrible
emotions produced by the scenes of the great French Revolution. Laennec
tells the story of a convent, of which he was the medical director,
where all the nuns were subjected to the severest penances and schooled
in the most painful doctrines. They all became consumptive soon after
their entrance, so that, in the course of his ten years' attendance, all
the inmates died out two or three times, and were replaced by new ones.
He does not hesitate to attribute the disease from which they suffered
to those depressing moral influences to which they were subjected.

So far we have noticed little more than disturbances of the nervous
system as a consequence of the war excitement in non-combatants. Take
the first trifling example which comes to our recollection. A sad
disaster to the Federal army was told the other day in the presence of
two gentlemen and a lady. Both the gentlemen complained of a sudden
feeling at the _epigastrium_, or, less learnedly, the pit of the
stomach, changed color, and confessed to a slight tremor about the
knees. The lady had a "_grande révolution_," as French patients
say,--went home, and kept her bed for the rest of the day. Perhaps the
reader may smile at the mention of such trivial indispositions, but in
more sensitive natures death itself follows in some cases from no more
serious cause. An old gentleman fell senseless in fatal apoplexy, on
hearing of Napoleon's return from Elba. One of our early friends, who
recently died of the same complaint, was thought to have had his attack
mainly in consequence of the excitements of the time.

We all know what the _war fever_ is in our young men,--what a devouring
passion it becomes in those whom it assails. Patriotism is the fire of
it, no doubt, but this is fed with fuel of all sorts. The love of
adventure, the contagion of example, the fear of losing the chance of
participating in the great events of the time, the desire of personal
distinction, all help to produce those singular transformations which we
often witness, turning the most peaceful of our youth into the most
ardent of our soldiers. But something of the same fever in a different
form reaches a good many non-combatants, who have no thought of losing a
drop of precious blood belonging to themselves or their families. Some
of the symptoms we shall mention are almost universal; they are as plain
in the people we meet everywhere as the marks of an influenza, when that
is prevailing.

The first is a nervous restlessness of a very peculiar character. Men
cannot think, or write, or attend to their ordinary business. They
stroll up and down the streets, or saunter out upon the public places.
We confessed to an illustrious author that we laid down the volume of
his work which we were reading when the war broke out. It was as
interesting as a romance, but the romance of the past grew pale before
the red light of the terrible present. Meeting the same author not long
afterwards, he confessed that he had laid down his pen at the same time
that we had closed his book. He could not write about the sixteenth
century any more than we could read about it, while the nineteenth was
in the very agony and bloody sweat of its great sacrifice.

Another most eminent scholar told us in all simplicity that he had
fallen into such a state that he would read the same telegraphic
dispatches over and over again in different papers, as if they were new,
until he felt as if he were an idiot. Who did not do just the same
thing, and does not often do it still, now that the first flush of the
fever is over? Another person always goes through the side streets on
his way for the noon _extra_,--he is so afraid somebody will meet him
and _tell_ the news he wishes to _read_, first on the bulletin-board,
and then in the great capitals and leaded type of the newspaper.

When any startling piece of war-news comes, it keeps repeating itself in
our minds in spite of all we can do. The same trains of thought go
tramping round in circle through the brain, like the supernumeraries
that make up the grand army of a stage-show. Now, if a thought goes
round through the brain a thousand times in a day, it will have worn as
deep a track as one which has passed through it once a week for twenty
years. This accounts for the ages we seem to have lived since the
twelfth of April last, and, to state it more generally, for that _ex
post facto_ operation of a great calamity, or any very powerful
impression, which we once illustrated by the image of a stain spreading
backwards from the leaf of life open before us through all those which
we have already turned.

Blessed are those who can sleep quietly in times like these! Yet, not
wholly blessed, either: for what is more painful than the awaking from
peaceful unconsciousness to a sense that there is something wrong,--we
cannot at first think what,--and then groping our way about through the
twilight of our thoughts until we come full upon the misery, which, like
some evil bird, seemed to have flown away, but which sits waiting for us
on its perch by our pillow in the gray of the morning?

The converse of this is perhaps still more painful. Many have the
feeling in their waking hours that the trouble they are aching with is,
after all, only a dream,--if they will rub their eyes briskly enough and
shake themselves, they will awake out of it, and find all their supposed
grief is unreal. This attempt to cajole ourselves out of an ugly fact
always reminds us of those unhappy flies who have been indulging in the
dangerous sweets of the paper prepared for their especial use.

Watch one of them. He does not feel quite well,--at least, he suspects
himself of indisposition. Nothing serious,--let us just rub our
fore-feet together, as the enormous creature who provides for us rubs
his hands, and all will be right. He rubs them with that peculiar
twisting movement of his, and pauses for the effect. No! all is not
quite right yet. Ah! it is our head that is not set on just as it ought
to be. Let us settle _that_ where it should be, and _then_ we shall
certainly be in good trim again. So he pulls his head about as an old
lady adjusts her cap, and passes his fore-paw over it like a kitten
washing herself.--Poor fellow! It is not a fancy, but a fact, that he
has to deal with. If he could read the letters at the head of the sheet,
he would see they were _Fly-Paper_.--So with us, when, in our waking
misery, we try to think we dream! Perhaps very young persons may not
understand this; as we grow older, our waking and dreaming life run more
and more into each other.

Another symptom of our excited condition is seen in the breaking up of
old habits. The newspaper is as imperious as a Russian Ukase; it will be
had, and it will be read. To this all else must give place. If we must
go out at unusual hours to get it, we shall go, in spite of after-dinner
nap or evening somnolence. If it finds us in company, it will not stand
on ceremony, but cuts short the compliment and the story by the divine
right of its telegraphic dispatches.

       *       *       *       *       *

War is a very old story, but it is a new one to this generation of
Americans. Our own nearest relation in the ascending line remembers the
Revolution well. How should she forget it? Did she not lose her doll,
which was left behind, when she was carried out of Boston, about that
time growing uncomfortable by reason of cannon-balls dropping in from
the neighboring heights at all hours,--in token of which see the tower
of Brattle Street Church at this very day? War in her memory means '76.
As for the brush of 1812, "we did not think much about that"; and
everybody knows that the Mexican business did not concern us much,
except in its political relations. No! war is a new thing to all of us
who are not in the last quarter of their century. We are learning many
strange matters from our fresh experience. And besides, there are new
conditions of existence which make war as it is with us very different
from war as it has been.

The first and obvious difference consists in the fact that the whole
nation is now penetrated by the ramifications of a network of iron
nerves which flash sensation and volition backward and forward to and
from towns and provinces as if they were organs and limbs of a single
living body. The second is the vast system of iron muscles which, as it
were, move the limbs of the mighty organism one upon another. What was
the railroad-force which put the Sixth Regiment in Baltimore on the 19th
of April but a contraction and extension of the arm of Massachusetts
with a clenched fist full of bayonets at the end of it?

This perpetual intercommunication, joined to the power of instantaneous
action, keeps us always alive with excitement. It is not a breathless
courier who comes back with the report from an army we have lost sight
of for a month, nor a single bulletin which tells us all we are to know
for a week of some great engagement, but almost hourly paragraphs, laden
with truth or falsehood as the case may be, making us restless always
for the last fact or rumor they are telling. And so of the movements of
our armies. Tonight the stout lumbermen of Maine are encamped under
their own fragrant pines. In a score or two of hours they are among the
tobacco-fields and the slave-pens of Virginia. The war passion burned
like scattered coals of fire in the households of Revolutionary times;
now it rushes all through the land like a flame over the prairie. And
this instant diffusion of every fact and feeling produces another
singular effect in the equalizing and steadying of public opinion. We
may not be able to see a month ahead of us; but as to what has passed a
week afterwards it is as thoroughly talked out and judged as it would
have been in a whole season before our national nervous system was
organized.

/p
    "As the wild tempest wakes the slumbering sea,
     Thou only teachest all that man can be!"
p/

We indulged in the above apostrophe to War in a Phi Beta Kappa poem of
long ago, which we liked better before we read Mr. Cutler's beautiful
prolonged lyric delivered at the recent anniversary of that Society.

Oftentimes, in paroxysms of peace and good-will towards all mankind, we
have felt twinges of conscience about the passage,--especially when one
of our orators showed us that a ship of war costs as much to build and
keep as a college, and that every port-hole we could stop would give us
a new professor. Now we begin to think that there was some meaning in
our poor couplet. War has taught us, as nothing else could, what we can
be and are. It has exalted our manhood and our womanhood, and driven us
all back upon our substantial human qualities, for a long time more or
less kept out of sight by the spirit of commerce, the love of art,
science, or literature, or other qualities not belonging to all of us as
men and women.

It is at this very moment doing more to melt away the petty social
distinctions which keep generous souls apart from each other, than the
preaching of the Beloved Disciple himself would do. We are finding out
that not only "patriotism is eloquence," but that heroism is gentility.
All ranks are wonderfully equalized under the fire of a masked battery.
The plain artisan or the rough fireman, who faces the lead and iron like
a man, is the truest representative we can show of the heroes of Crécy
and Agincourt. And if one of our fine gentlemen puts off his
straw-colored kids and stands by the other, shoulder to shoulder, or
leads him on to the attack, he is as honorable in our eyes and in theirs
as if he were ill-dressed and his hands were soiled with labor.

Even our poor "Brahmins,"--whom a critic in ground-glass spectacles (the
same who grasps his statistics by the blade and strikes at his supposed
antagonist with the handle) oddly confounds with the "bloated
aristocracy," whereas they are very commonly pallid, undervitalized,
shy, sensitive creatures, whose only birthright is an aptitude for
learning,--even these poor New England Brahmins of ours, _subvirates_ of
an organizable base as they often are, count as full men, if their
courage is big enough for the uniform which hangs so loosely about their
slender figures.

A young man was drowned not very long ago in the river running under our
windows. A few days afterwards a field-piece was dragged to the water's
edge, and fired many times over the river. We asked a bystander, who
looked like a fisherman, what that was for. It was to "break the gall,"
he said, and so bring the drowned person to the surface. A strange
physiological fancy and a very odd _non sequitur_; but that is not our
present point. A good many extraordinary objects do really come to the
surface when the great guns of war shake the waters, as when they roared
over Charleston harbor.

Treason came up, hideous, fit only to be huddled into its dishonorable
grave. But the wrecks of precious virtues, which had been covered with
the waves of prosperity, came up also. And all sorts of unexpected and
unheard-of things, which had lain unseen during our national life of
fourscore years, came up and are coming up daily, shaken from their bed
by the concussions of the artillery bellowing around us.

It is a shame to own it, but there were persons otherwise respectable
not unwilling to say that they believed the old valor of Revolutionary
times had died out from among us. They talked about our own Northern
people as the English in the last centuries used to talk about the
French,--Goldsmith's old soldier, it may be remembered, called one
Englishman good for five of them. As Napoleon spoke of the English,
again, as a nation of shopkeepers, so these persons affected to consider
the multitude of their countrymen as unwarlike artisans,--forgetting
that Paul Revere taught himself the value of liberty in working upon
gold, and Nathanael Greene fitted himself to shape armies in the labor
of forging iron.

These persons have learned better now. The bravery of our free
working-people was overlaid, but not smothered; sunken, but not drowned.
The hands which had been busy conquering the elements had only to change
their weapons and their adversaries, and they were as ready to conquer
the masses of living force opposed to them as they had been to build
towns, to dam rivers, to hunt whales, to harvest ice, to hammer brute
matter into every shape civilization can ask for.

Another great fact came to the surface, and is coming up every day in
new shapes,--that we are one people. It is easy to say that a man is a
man in Maine or Minnesota, but not so easy to feel it, all through our
bones and marrow. The camp is deprovincializing us very fast. Brave
Winthrop, marching with the city _élégants_, seems to have been a little
startled to find how wonderfully human were the hard-handed men of the
Eighth Massachusetts. It takes all the nonsense out of everybody, or
ought to do it, to see how fairly the real manhood of a country is
distributed over its surface. And then, just as we are beginning to
think our own soil has a monopoly of heroes as well as of cotton, up
turns a regiment of gallant Irishmen, like the Sixty-ninth, to show us
that continental provincialism is as bad as that of Coos County, New
Hampshire, or of Broadway, New York.

Here, too, side by side in the same great camp, are half a dozen
chaplains, representing half a dozen modes of religious belief. When the
masked battery opens, does the "Baptist" Lieutenant believe in his heart
that God takes better care of him than of his "Congregationalist"
Colonel? Does any man really suppose, that, of a score of noble young
fellows who have just laid down their lives for their country, the
_Homoousians_ are received to the mansions of bliss, and the
_Homoiousians_ translated from the battle-field to the abodes of
everlasting woe? War not only teaches what man can be, but it teaches
also what he must not be. He must not be a bigot and a fool in the
presence of that day of judgment proclaimed by the trumpet which calls
to battle, and where a man should have but two thoughts: to do his duty,
and trust his Maker. Let our brave dead come back from the fields where
they have fallen for law and liberty, and if you will follow them to
their graves, you will find out what the Broad Church means; the narrow
church is sparing of its exclusive formulæ over the coffins wrapped in
the flag which the fallen heroes had defended! Very little comparatively
do we hear at such times of the dogmas on which men differ; very much
of the faith and trust in which all sincere Christians can agree. It is
a noble lesson, and nothing less noisy than the voice of cannon can
teach it so that it shall be heard over all the angry cries of
theological disputants.

Now, too, we have a chance to test the sagacity of our friends, and to
get at their principles of judgment. Perhaps most of us will agree that
our faith in domestic prophets has been diminished by the experience of
the last six months. We had the notable predictions attributed to the
Secretary of State, which so unpleasantly refused to fulfill themselves.
We were infested at one time with a set of ominous-looking seers, who
shook their heads and muttered obscurely about some mighty preparations
that were making to substitute the rule of the minority for that of the
majority. Organizations were darkly hinted at; some thought our armories
would be seized; and there are not wanting ancient women in the
neighboring University town who consider that the country was saved by
the intrepid band of students who stood guard, night after night, over
the G. R. cannon and the pile of balls in the Cambridge Arsenal.

As a general rule, it is safe to say that the best prophecies are those
which the sages _remember_ after the event prophesied of has come to
pass, and remind us that they have made long ago. Those who are rash
enough to predict publicly beforehand commonly give us what they hope,
or what they fear, or some conclusion from an abstraction of their own,
or some guess founded on private information not half so good as what
everybody gets who reads the papers,--_never_ by any possibility a word
that we can depend on, simply because there are cobwebs of contingency
between every to-day and to-morrow that no field-glass can penetrate
when fifty of them lie woven one over another. Prophesy as much as you
like, but always _hedge_. Say that you think the rebels are weaker than
is commonly supposed, but, on the other hand, that they may prove to be
even stronger than is anticipated. Say what you like,--only don't be too
peremptory and dogmatic; we _know_ that wiser men than you have been
notoriously deceived in their predictions in this very matter.

/p
    _"Ibis et redibis nunquam in bello peribis."_
p/

Let that be your model; and remember, on peril of your reputation as a
prophet, not to put a stop before or after the _nunquam_.

There are two or three facts connected with _time_, besides that already
referred to, which strike us very forcibly in their relation to the
great events passing around us. We spoke of the long period seeming to
have elapsed since this war began. The buds were then swelling which
held the leaves that are still green. It seems as old as Time himself.
We cannot fail to observe how the mind brings together the scenes of
to-day and those of the old Revolution. We shut up eighty years into
each other like the joints of a pocket-telescope. When the young men
from Middlesex dropped in Baltimore the other day, it seemed to bring
Lexington and the other Nineteenth of April close to us. War has always
been the mint in which the world's history has been coined, and now
every day or week or month has a new medal for us. It was Warren that
the first impression bore in the last great coinage; if it is Ellsworth
now, the new face hardly seems fresher than the old. All battle-fields
are alike in their main features. The young fellows who fell in our
earlier struggle seemed like old men to us until within these few
months; now we remember they were like these fiery youth we are cheering
as they go to the fight; it seems as if the grass of our bloody hillside
was crimsoned but yesterday, and the cannon-ball imbedded in the
church-tower would feel warm, if we laid our hand upon it.

Nay, in this our quickened life we feel that all the battles from
earliest time to our own day, where Right and Wrong have grappled, are
but one great battle, varied with brief pauses or hasty bivouacs upon
the field of conflict. The issues seem to vary, but it is always a right
against a claim, and, however the struggle of the hour may go, a
movement onward of the campaign, which uses defeat as well as victory to
serve its mighty ends. The very implements of our warfare change less
than we think. Our bullets and cannon-balls have lengthened into bolts
like those which whistled out of old arbalests. Our soldiers fight with
weapons, such as are pictured on the walls of Theban tombs, wearing a
newly invented head-gear as old as the days of the Pyramids.

Whatever miseries this war brings upon us, it is making us wiser, and,
we trust, better. Wiser, for we are learning our weakness, our
narrowness, our selfishness, our ignorance, in lessons of sorrow and
shame. Better, because all that is noble in men and women is demanded by
the time, and our people are rising to the standard the time calls for.
For this is the question the hour is putting to each of us: Are you
ready, if need be, to sacrifice all that you have and hope for in this
world, that the generations to follow you may inherit a whole country
whose natural conditions shall be peace, and not a broken province which
must live under the perpetual threat, if not in the constant presence,
of war and all that war brings with it? If we are all ready for this
sacrifice, battles may be lost, but the campaign and its grand object
must be won.

Heaven is very kind in its way of putting questions to mortals. We are
not abruptly asked to give up all that we most care for, in view of the
momentous issues before us. Perhaps we shall never be asked to give up
all, but we have already been called upon to part with much that is dear
to us, and should be ready to yield the rest as it is called for. The
time may come when even the cheap public print shall be a burden our
means cannot support, and we can only listen in the square that was once
the market-place to the voices of those who proclaim defeat or victory.
Then there will be only our daily food left. When we have nothing to
read and nothing to eat, it will be a favorable moment to offer a
compromise. At present we have all that nature absolutely demands,--we
can live on bread and the newspaper.



WALKING

HENRY DAVID THOREAU


I wish to speak a word for Nature, for absolute freedom and wildness, as
contrasted with a freedom and culture merely civil,--to regard man as an
inhabitant, or a part and parcel of Nature, rather than a member of
society. I wish to make an extreme statement, if so I may make an
emphatic one, for there are enough champions of civilization: the
minister and the school-committee, and every one of you will take care
of that.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who
understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,--who had a
genius, so to speak, for _sauntering_: which word is beautifully derived
from "idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and
asked charity, under pretense of going _à la Sainte Terre_," to the Holy
Land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a _Sainte-Terrer_," a
Saunterer,--a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their
walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they
who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some,
however, would derive the word from _sans terre_, without land or a
home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no
particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret
of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may
be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is
no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while
sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea. But I prefer the
first, which, indeed, is the most probable derivation. For every walk is
a sort of crusade, preached by some Peter the Hermit in us, to go forth
and reconquer this Holy Land from the hands of the Infidels.

It is true, we are but faint-hearted crusaders, even the walkers,
nowadays, who undertake no persevering, never-ending enterprises. Our
expeditions are but tours, and come round again at evening to the old
hearth-side from which we set out. Half the walk is but retracing our
steps. We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit
of undying adventure, never to return,--prepared to send back our
embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are
ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and
child and friends, and never see them again,--if you have paid your
debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free
man, then you are ready for a walk.

To come down to my own experience, my companion and I, for I sometimes
have a companion, take pleasure in fancying ourselves knights of a new,
or rather an old, order,--not Equestrians or Chevaliers, not Ritters or
riders, but Walkers, a still more ancient and honorable class, I trust.
The chivalric and heroic spirit which once belonged to the Rider seems
now to reside in, or perchance to have subsided into, the Walker,--not
the Knight, but Walker Errant. He is a sort of fourth estate, outside of
Church and State and People.

We have felt that we almost alone hereabouts practiced this noble art;
though, to tell the truth, at least, if their own assertions are to be
received, most of my townsmen would fain walk sometimes, as I do, but
they cannot. No wealth can buy the requisite leisure, freedom, and
independence, which are the capital in this profession. It comes only
by the grace of God. It requires a direct dispensation from Heaven to
become a walker. You must be born into the family of the Walkers.
_Ambulator nascitur, non fit._ Some of my townsmen, it is true, can
remember and have described to me some walks which they took ten years
ago, in which they were so blessed as to lose themselves for half an
hour in the woods; but I know very well that they have confined
themselves to the highway ever since, whatever pretensions they may make
to belong to this select class. No doubt they were elevated for a moment
as by the reminiscence of a previous state of existence, when even they
were foresters and outlaws.

/p
    "When he came to grene wode,
        In a mery mornynge,
      There he herde the notes small
        Of byrdes mery syngynge.

    "It is ferre gone, sayd Robyn,
        That I was last here;
      Me lyste a lytell for to shote
        At the donne dere."
p/

I think that I cannot preserve my health and spirits, unless I spend
four hours a day at least,--and it is commonly more than
that,--sauntering through the woods and over the hills and fields,
absolutely free from all worldly engagements. You may safely say, A
penny for your thoughts, or a thousand pounds. When sometimes I am
reminded that the mechanics and shopkeepers stay in their shops not only
all the forenoon, but all the afternoon too, sitting with crossed legs,
so many of them,--as if the legs were made to sit upon, and not to stand
or walk upon,--I think that they deserve some credit for not having all
committed suicide long ago.

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring
some rust, and when sometimes I have stolen forth for a walk at the
eleventh hour of four o'clock in the afternoon, too late to redeem the
day, when the shades of night were already beginning to be mingled with
the daylight, have felt as if I had committed some sin to be atoned
for,--I confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say
nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine
themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, ay,
and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are
of,--sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were
three o'clock in the morning. Bonaparte may talk of the
three-o'clock-in-the-morning courage, but it is nothing to the courage
which can sit down cheerfully at this hour in the afternoon over against
one's self whom you have known all the morning, to starve out a garrison
to whom you are bound by such strong ties of sympathy. I wonder that
about this time, or say between four and five o'clock in the afternoon,
too late for the morning papers and too early for the evening ones,
there is not a general explosion heard up and down the street,
scattering a legion of antiquated and house-bred notions and whims to
the four winds for an airing,--and so the evil cure itself.

How womankind, who are confined to the house still more than men, stand
it I do not know; but I have ground to suspect that most of them do not
_stand_ it at all. When, early in a summer afternoon, we have been
shaking the dust of the village from the skirts of our garments, making
haste past those houses with purely Doric or Gothic fronts, which have
such an air of repose about them, my companion whispers that probably
about these times their occupants are all gone to bed. Then it is that I
appreciate the beauty and the glory of architecture, which itself never
turns in, but forever stands out and erect, keeping watch over the
slumberers.

No doubt temperament, and, above all, age, have a good deal to do with
it. As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor
occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening
of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before
sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.

But the walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking
exercise, as it is called, as the sick take medicine at stated
hours,--as the swinging of dumb-bells or chairs; but is itself the
enterprise and adventure of the day. If you would get exercise, go in
search of the springs of life. Think of a man's swinging dumb-bells for
his health, when those springs are bubbling up in far-off pastures
unsought by him!

Moreover, you must walk like a camel, which is said to be the only beast
which ruminates when walking. When a traveler asked Wordsworth's servant
to show him her master's study, she answered, "Here is his library, but
his study is out of doors."

Living much out of doors, in the sun and wind, will no doubt produce a
certain roughness of character,--will cause a thicker cuticle to grow
over some of the finer qualities of our nature, as on the face and
hands, or as severe manual labor robs the hands of some of their
delicacy of touch. So staying in the house, on the other hand, may
produce a softness and smoothness, not to say thinness of skin,
accompanied by an increased sensibility to certain impressions. Perhaps
we should be more susceptible to some influences important to our
intellectual and moral growth, if the sun had shone and the wind blown
on us a little less; and no doubt it is a nice matter to proportion
rightly the thick and thin skin. But methinks that is a scurf that will
fall off fast enough,--that the natural remedy is to be found in the
proportion which the night bears to the day, the winter to the summer,
thought to experience. There will be so much the more air and sunshine
in our thoughts. The callous palms of the laborer are conversant with
finer tissues of self-respect and heroism, whose touch thrills the
heart, than the languid fingers of idleness. That is mere sentimentality
that lies abed by day and thinks itself white, far from the tan and
callus of experience.

When we walk, we naturally go to the fields and woods: what would become
of us, if we walked only in a garden or a mall? Even some sects of
philosophers have felt the necessity of importing the woods to
themselves, since they did not go to the woods. "They planted groves and
walks of Platanes," where they took _subdiales ambulationes_ in porticos
open to the air. Of course it is of no use to direct our steps to the
woods, if they do not carry us thither. I am alarmed when it happens
that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there
in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning
occupations and my obligations to society. But it sometimes happens that
I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run
in my head, and I am not where my body is,--I am out of my senses. In my
walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the
woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods? I suspect myself,
and cannot help a shudder, when I find myself so implicated even in what
are called good works,--for this may sometimes happen.

My vicinity affords many good walks; and though for so many years I have
walked almost every day, and sometimes for several days together, I have
not yet exhausted them. An absolutely new prospect is a great happiness,
and I can still get this any afternoon. Two or three hours' walking
will carry me to as strange a country as I expect ever to see. A single
farmhouse which I had not seen before is sometimes as good as the
dominions of the King of Dahomey. There is in fact a sort of harmony
discoverable between the capabilities of the landscape within a circle
of ten miles' radius, or the limits of an afternoon walk, and the
threescore years and ten of human life. It will never become quite
familiar to you.

Nowadays almost all man's improvements, so called, as the building of
houses, and the cutting down of the forest and of all large trees,
simply deform the landscape, and make it more and more tame and cheap. A
people who would begin by burning the fences and let the forest stand! I
saw the fences half consumed, their ends lost in the middle of the
prairie, and some worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his
bounds, while heaven had taken place around him, and he did not see the
angels going to and fro, but was looking for an old post-hole in the
midst of paradise. I looked again, and saw him standing in the middle of
a boggy, stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds
without a doubt, three little stones, where a stake had been driven, and
looking nearer, I saw that the Prince of Darkness was his surveyor.

I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of miles, commencing
at my own door, without going by any house, without crossing a road
except where the fox and the mink do: first along by the river, and then
the brook, and then the meadow and the woodside. There are square miles
in my vicinity which have no inhabitant. From many a hill I can see
civilization and the abodes of man afar. The farmers and their works are
scarcely more obvious than woodchucks and their burrows. Man and his
affairs, church and state and school, trade and commerce, and
manufactures and agriculture, even politics, the most alarming of them
all,--I am pleased to see how little space they occupy in the landscape.
Politics is but a narrow field, and that still narrower highway yonder
leads to it. I sometimes direct the traveler thither. If you would go to
the political world, follow the great road,--follow that market-man,
keep his dust in your eyes, and it will lead you straight to it; for it,
too, has its place merely, and does not occupy all space. I pass from it
as from a bean-field into the forest, and it is forgotten. In one
half-hour I can walk off to some portion of the earth's surface where a
man does not stand from one year's end to another, and there,
consequently, politics are not, for they are but as the cigar-smoke of a
man.

The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of
the highway, as a lake of a river. It is the body of which roads are the
arms and legs,--a trivial or quadrivial place, the thoroughfare and
ordinary of travelers. The word is from the Latin _villa_, which,
together with _via_, a way, or more anciently _ved_ and _vella_, Varro
derives from _veho_, to carry, because the villa is the place to and
from which things are carried. They who got their living by teaming were
said _vellaturam facere_. Hence, too, apparently, the Latin word _vilis_
and our vile; also _villain_. This suggests what kind of degeneracy
villagers are liable to. They are wayworn by the travel that goes by and
over them, without traveling themselves.

Some do not walk at all; others walk in the highways; a few walk across
lots. Roads are made for horses and men of business. I do not travel in
them much, comparatively, because I am not in a hurry to get to any
tavern or grocery or livery-stable or depot to which they lead. I am a
good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The
landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not
make that use of my figure. I walk out into a Nature such as the old
prophets and poets, Menu, Moses, Homer, Chaucer, walked in. You may name
it America, but it is not America: neither Americus Vespucius, nor
Columbus, nor the rest were the discoverers of it. There is a truer
account of it in mythology than in any history of America, so called,
that I have seen.

However, there are a few old roads that may be trodden with profit, as
if they led somewhere now that they are nearly discontinued. There is
the Old Marlborough Road, which does not go to Marlborough now,
methinks, unless that is Marlborough where it carries me. I am the
bolder to speak of it here, because I presume that there are one or two
such roads in every town.


THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD.

/p
    Where they once dug for money,
    But never found any;
    Where sometimes Martial Miles
       Singly files,
       And Elijah Wood,
       I fear for no good:
       No other man,
       Save Elisha Dugan,--
       O man of wild habits,
       Partridges and rabbits,
       Who hast no cares
       Only to set snares,
       Who liv'st all alone,
       Close to the bone,
       And where life is sweetest
       Constantly eatest.
    When the spring stirs my blood
     With the instinct to travel,
     I can get enough gravel
    On the Old Marlborough Road.
       Nobody repairs it,
       For nobody wears it;
       It is a living way,
       As the Christians say.
    Not many there be
      Who enter therein,
    Only the guests of the
      Irishman Quin.
    What is it, what is it,
      But a direction out there,
    And the bare possibility
      Of going somewhere?
        Great guideboards of stone,
        But travelers none;
        Cenotaphs of the towns
        Named on their crowns.
        It is worth going to see
        Where you _might_ be.
        What king
        Did the thing,
        I am still wondering;
        Set up how or when,
        By what selectmen,
        Gourgas or Lee,
        Clark or Darby?
        They're a great endeavor
        To be something forever;
        Blank tablets of stone,
        Where a traveler might groan,
        And in one sentence
        Grave all that is known;
        Which another might read,
        In his extreme need.
        I know one or two
        Lines that would do,
        Literature that might stand
        All over the land,
        Which a man could remember
        Till next December,
        And read again in the spring,
        After the thawing.
    If with fancy unfurled
      You leave your abode,
    You may go round the world
      By the Old Marlborough Road.
p/

At present, in this vicinity, the best part of the land is not private
property; the landscape is not owned, and the walker enjoys comparative
freedom. But possibly the day will come when it will be partitioned off
into so-called pleasure-grounds, in which a few will take a narrow and
exclusive pleasure only,--when fences shall be multiplied, and man-traps
and other engines invented to confine men to the _public_ road, and
walking over the surface of God's earth shall be construed to mean
trespassing on some gentleman's grounds. To enjoy a thing exclusively is
commonly to exclude yourself from the true enjoyment of it. Let us
improve our opportunities, then, before the evil days come.

       *       *       *       *       *

What is it that makes it so hard sometimes to determine whither we will
walk? I believe that there is a subtile magnetism in Nature, which, if
we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright. It is not
indifferent to us which way we walk. There is a right way; but we are
very liable from heedlessness and stupidity to take the wrong one. We
would fain take that walk, never yet taken by us through this actual
world, which is perfectly symbolical of the path which we love to travel
in the interior and ideal world; and sometimes, no doubt, we find it
difficult to choose our direction, because it does not yet exist
distinctly in our idea.

When I go out of the house for a walk, uncertain as yet whither I will
bend my steps, and submit myself to my instinct to decide for me, I
find, strange and whimsical as it may seem, that I finally and
inevitably settle southwest, toward some particular wood or meadow or
deserted pasture or hill in that direction. My needle is slow to
settle,--varies a few degrees, and does not always point due south-west,
it is true, and it has good authority for this variation, but it always
settles between west and south-south-west. The future lies that way to
me, and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side. The
outline which would bound my walks would be, not a circle, but a
parabola, or rather like one of those cometary orbits which have been
thought to be non-returning curves, in this case opening westward, in
which my house occupies the place of the sun. I turn round and round
irresolute sometimes for a quarter of an hour, until I decide, for a
thousandth time, that I will walk into the southwest or west. Eastward I
go only by force; but westward I go free. Thither no business leads me.
It is hard for me to believe that I shall find fair landscapes or
sufficient wildness and freedom behind the eastern horizon. I am not
excited by the prospect of a walk thither; but I believe that the forest
which I see in the western horizon stretches uninterruptedly toward the
setting sun, and there are no towns nor cities in it of enough
consequence to disturb me. Let me live where I will, on this side is the
city, on that the wilderness, and ever I am leaving the city more and
more, and withdrawing into the wilderness. I should not lay so much
stress on this fact, if I did not believe that something like this is
the prevailing tendency of my countrymen. I must walk toward Oregon, and
not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that
mankind progress from east to west. Within a few years we have witnessed
the phenomenon of a southeastward migration, in the settlement of
Australia; but this affects us as a retrograde movement, and judging
from the moral and physical character of the first generation of
Australians, has not yet proved a successful experiment. The eastern
Tartars think that there is nothing west beyond Thibet. "The world ends
there," say they, "beyond there is nothing but a shoreless sea." It is
unmitigated East where they live.

We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and
literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the
future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure. The Atlantic is a
Lethean stream, in our passage over which we have had an opportunity to
forget the Old World and its institutions. If we do not succeed this
time, there is perhaps one more chance for the race left before it
arrives on the banks of the Styx; and that is in the Lethe of the
Pacific, which is three times as wide.

I know not how significant it is, or how far it is an evidence of
singularity, that an individual should thus consent in his pettiest walk
with the general movement of the race; but I know that something akin to
the migratory instinct in birds and quadrupeds,--which, in some
instances, is known to have affected the squirrel tribe, impelling them
to a general and mysterious movement, in which they were seen, say some,
crossing the broadest rivers, each on its particular chip, with its tail
raised for a sail, and bridging narrower streams with their dead,--that
something like the _furor_ which affects the domestic cattle in the
spring, and which is referred to a worm in their tails,--affects both
nations and individuals, either perennially or from time to time. Not a
flock of wild geese cackles over our town, but it to some extent
unsettles the value of real estate here, and, if I were a broker, I
should probably take that disturbance into account.

/p
    "Than longen folk to gon on pilgrimages,
     And palmeres for to seken strange strondes."
p/

Every sunset which I witness inspires me with the desire to go to a West
as distant and as fair as that into which the sun goes down. He appears
to migrate westward daily, and tempt us to follow him. He is the Great
Western Pioneer whom the nations follow. We dream all night of those
mountain-ridges in the horizon, though they may be of vapor only, which
were last gilded by his rays. The island of Atlantis, and the islands
and gardens of the Hesperides, a sort of terrestrial paradise, appear to
have been the Great West of the ancients, enveloped in mystery and
poetry. Who has not seen in imagination, when looking into the sunset
sky, the gardens of the Hesperides, and the foundation of all those
fables?

Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He
obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon. The herd of men
in those days scented fresh pastures from afar.

/p
    "And now the sun had stretched out all the hills,
     And now was dropped into the western bay;
     At last _he_ rose, and twitched his mantle blue;
     To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new."
p/

Where on the globe can there be found an area of equal extent with that
occupied by the bulk of our States, so fertile and so rich and varied in
its productions, and at the same time so habitable by the European, as
this is? Michaux, who knew but part of them, says that "the species of
large trees are much more numerous in North America than in Europe; in
the United States there are more than one hundred and forty species that
exceed thirty feet in height; in France there are but thirty that attain
this size." Later botanists more than confirm his observations. Humboldt
came to America to realize his youthful dreams of a tropical vegetation,
and he beheld it in its greatest perfection in the primitive forests of
the Amazon, the most gigantic wilderness on the earth, which he has so
eloquently described. The geographer Guyot, himself a European, goes
farther,--farther than I am ready to follow him; yet not when he
says,--"As the plant is made for the animal, as the vegetable world is
made for the animal world, America is made for the man of the Old
World.... The man of the Old World sets out upon his way. Leaving the
highlands of Asia, he descends from station to station towards Europe.
Each of his steps is marked by a new civilization superior to the
preceding, by a greater power of development. Arrived at the Atlantic,
he pauses on the shore of this unknown ocean, the bounds of which he
knows not, and turns upon his footprints for an instant." When he has
exhausted the rich soil of Europe, and reinvigorated himself, "then
recommences his adventurous career westward as in the earliest ages." So
far Guyot.

From this western impulse coming in contact with the barrier of the
Atlantic sprang the commerce and enterprise of modern times. The younger
Michaux, in his _Travels West of the Alleghanies in 1802_, says that the
common inquiry in the newly settled West was, "'From what part of the
world have you come?' As if these vast and fertile regions would
naturally be the place of meeting and common country of all the
inhabitants of the globe."

To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say, _Ex Oriente lux; ex
Occidente_ FRUX. From the East light; from the West fruit.

Sir Francis Head, an English traveler and a Governor-General of Canada,
tells us that "in both the northern and southern hemispheres of the New
World, Nature has not only outlined her works on a larger scale, but has
painted the whole picture with brighter and more costly colors than she
used in delineating and in beautifying the Old World.... The heavens of
America appear infinitely higher, the sky is bluer, the air is fresher,
the cold is intenser, the moon looks larger, the stars are brighter, the
thunder is louder, the lightning is vivider, the wind is stronger, the
rain is heavier, the mountains are higher, the rivers longer, the
forests bigger, the plains broader." This statement will do at least to
set against Buffon's account of this part of the world and its
productions.

Linnæus said long ago, "Nescio quæ facies _læta, glabra_ plantis
Americanis: I know not what there is of joyous and smooth in the aspect
of American plants;" and I think that in this country there are no, or
at most very few, _Africanæ bestiæ_, African beasts, as the Romans
called them, and that in this respect also it is peculiarly fitted for
the habitation of man. We are told that within three miles of the center
of the East-Indian city of Singapore, some of the inhabitants are
annually carried off by tigers; but the traveler can lie down in the
woods at night almost anywhere in North America without fear of wild
beasts.

These are encouraging testimonies. If the moon looks larger here than in
Europe, probably the sun looks larger also. If the heavens of America
appear infinitely higher, and the stars brighter, I trust that these
facts are symbolical of the height to which the philosophy and poetry
and religion of her inhabitants may one day soar. At length, perchance,
the immaterial heaven will appear as much higher to the American mind,
and the intimations that star it as much brighter. For I believe that
climate does thus react on man,--as there is something in the
mountain-air that feeds the spirit and inspires. Will not man grow to
greater perfection intellectually as well as physically under these
influences? Or is it unimportant how many foggy days there are in his
life? I trust that we shall be more imaginative, that our thoughts will
be clearer, fresher, and more ethereal, as our sky,--our understanding
more comprehensive and broader, like our plains,--our intellect
generally on a grander scale, like our thunder and lightning, our rivers
and mountains and forests,--and our hearts shall even correspond in
breadth and depth and grandeur to our inland seas. Perchance there will
appear to the traveler something, he knows not what, of _læta_ and
_glabra_, of joyous and serene, in our very faces. Else to what end does
the world go on, and why was America discovered?

To Americans I hardly need to say,--

/p
    "Westward the star of empire takes its way."
p/

As a true patriot, I should be ashamed to think that Adam in paradise
was more favorably situated on the whole than the backwoodsman in this
country.

Our sympathies in Massachusetts are not confined to New England; though
we may be estranged from the South, we sympathize with the West. There
is the home of the younger sons, as among the Scandinavians they took to
the sea for their inheritance. It is too late to be studying Hebrew; it
is more important to understand even the slang of to-day.

Some months ago I went to see a panorama of the Rhine. It was like a
dream of the Middle Ages. I floated down its historic stream in
something more than imagination, under bridges built by the Romans, and
repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose very names were
music to my ears, and each of which was the subject of a legend. There
were Ehrenbreitstein and Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I knew only in
history. They were ruins that interested me chiefly. There seemed to
come up from its waters and its vine-clad hills and valleys a hushed
music as of Crusaders departing for the Holy Land. I floated along under
the spell of enchantment, as if I had been transported to an heroic age,
and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry.

Soon after, I went to see a panorama of the Mississippi, and as I worked
my way up the river in the light of to-day, and saw the steamboats
wooding up, counted the rising cities, gazed on the fresh ruins of
Nauvoo, beheld the Indians moving west across the stream, and, as before
I had looked up the Moselle now looked up the Ohio and the Missouri, and
heard the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona's Cliff,--still thinking more
of the future than of the past or present,--I saw that this was a Rhine
stream of a different kind; that the foundations of castles were yet to
be laid, and the famous bridges were yet to be thrown over the river;
and I felt that _this was the heroic age itself_, though we know it not,
for the hero is commonly the simplest and obscurest of men.

       *       *       *       *       *

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild; and what I
have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of
the World. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The
cities import it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest
and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind. Our
ancestors were savages. The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by
a wolf is not a meaningless fable. The founders of every State which has
risen to eminence have drawn their nourishment and vigor from a similar
wild source. It was because the children of the Empire were not suckled
by the wolf that they were conquered and displaced by the children of
the Northern forests who were.

I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which
the corn grows. We require an infusion of hemlock-spruce or arbor-vitæ
in our tea. There is a difference between eating and drinking for
strength and from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour the
marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw, as a matter of course.
Some of our Northern Indians eat raw the marrow of the Arctic reindeer,
as well as various other parts, including the summits of the antlers, as
long as they are soft. And herein, perchance, they have stolen a match
on the cooks of Paris. They get what usually goes to feed the fire. This
is probably better than stall-fed beef and slaughter-house pork to make
a man of. Give me a wildness whose glance no civilization can
endure,--as if we lived on the marrow of koodoos devoured raw.

There are some intervals which border the strain of the wood-thrush, to
which I would migrate,--wild lands where no settler has squatted; to
which, methinks, I am already acclimated.

The African hunter Cummings tells us that the skin of the eland, as well
as that of most other antelopes just killed, emits the most delicious
perfume of trees and grass. I would have every man so much like a wild
antelope, so much a part and parcel of Nature, that his very person
should thus sweetly advertise our senses of his presence, and remind us
of those parts of Nature which he most haunts. I feel no disposition to
be satirical, when the trapper's coat emits the odor of musquash even;
it is a sweeter scent to me than that which commonly exhales from the
merchant's or the scholar's garments. When I go into their wardrobes and
handle their vestments, I am reminded of no grassy plains and flowery
meads which they have frequented, but of dusty merchants' exchanges and
libraries rather.

A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a
fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. "The pale
white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him. Darwin the
naturalist says, "A white man bathing by the side of a Tahitian was like
a plant bleached by the gardener's art, compared with a fine, dark green
one, growing vigorously in the open fields."

Ben Jonson exclaims,--

/p
    "How near to good is what is fair!"
p/

So I would say,--

/p
    How near to good is what is _wild_!
p/

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet
subdued to man, its presence refreshes him. One who pressed forward
incessantly and never rested from his labors, who grew fast and made
infinite demands on life, would always find himself in a new country or
wilderness, and surrounded by the raw material of life. He would be
climbing over the prostrate stems of primitive forest-trees.

Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not
in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps. When,
formerly, I have analyzed my partiality for some farm which I had
contemplated purchasing, I have frequently found that I was attracted
solely by a few square rods of impermeable and unfathomable bog,--a
natural sink in one corner of it. That was the jewel which dazzled me. I
derive more of my subsistence from the swamps which surround my native
town than from the cultivated gardens in the village. There are no
richer parterres to my eyes than the dense beds of dwarf andromeda
_(Cassandra calyculata)_ which cover these tender places on the earth's
surface. Botany cannot go farther than tell me the names of the shrubs
which grow there,--the high-blueberry, panicled andromeda, lamb-kill,
azalea, and rhodora,--all standing in the quaking sphagnum. I often
think that I should like to have my house front on this mass of dull red
bushes, omitting other flower pots and borders, transplanted spruce and
trim box, even graveled walks,--to have this fertile spot under my
windows, not a few imported barrow-fulls of soil only to cover the sand
which was thrown out in digging the cellar. Why not put my house, my
parlor, behind this plot, instead of behind that meager assemblage of
curiosities, that poor apology for a Nature and Art, which I call my
front-yard? It is an effort to clear up and make a decent appearance
when the carpenter and mason have departed, though done as much for the
passer-by as the dweller within. The most tasteful front-yard fence was
never an agreeable object of study to me; the most elaborate ornaments,
acorn-tops, or what not, soon wearied and disgusted me. Bring your sills
up to the very edge of the swamp, then, (though it may not be the best
place for a dry cellar,) so that there be no access on that side to
citizens. Front-yards are not made to walk in, but, at most, through,
and you could go in the back way.

Yes, though you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to
dwell in the neighborhood of the most beautiful garden that ever human
art contrived, or else of a Dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for
the swamp. How vain, then, have been all your labors, citizens, for me!

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give
me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and
solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveler
Burton says of it,--"Your _morale_ improves; you become frank and
cordial, hospitable and single-minded.... In the desert, spirituous
liquors excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal
existence." They who have been traveling long on the steppes of Tartary
say,--"On reëntering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and
turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to
fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia." When
I would recreate myself, I seek the darkest wood, the thickest and most
interminable, and, to the citizen, most dismal swamp. I enter a swamp as
a sacred place,--a _sanctum sanctorum_. There is the strength, the
marrow of Nature. The wild-wood covers the virgin mold,--and the same
soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many
acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck. There
are the strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not more by the
righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. A
township where one primitive forest waves above, while another primitive
forest rots below,--such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and
potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil
grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness
comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.

To preserve wild animals implies generally the creation of a forest for
them to dwell in or resort to. So it is with man. A hundred years ago
they sold bark in our streets peeled from our own woods. In the very
aspect of those primitive and rugged trees, there was, methinks, a
tanning principle which hardened and consolidated the fibers of men's
thoughts. Ah! already I shudder for these comparatively degenerate days
of my native village, when you cannot collect a load of bark of good
thickness,--and we no longer produce tar and turpentine.

The civilized nations--Greece, Rome, England--have been sustained by the
primitive forests which anciently rotted where they stand. They survive
as long as the soil is not exhausted. Alas for human culture! little is
to be expected of a nation, when the vegetable mould is exhausted, and
it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers. There the
poet sustains himself merely by his own superfluous fat, and the
philosopher comes down on his marrow-bones.

It is said to be the task of the American "to work the virgin soil," and
that "agriculture here already assumes proportions unknown everywhere
else." I think that the farmer displaces the Indian even because he
redeems the meadow, and so makes himself stronger and in some respects
more natural. I was surveying for a man the other day a single straight
line one hundred and thirty-two rods long, through a swamp, at whose
entrance might have been written the words which Dante read over the
entrance to the infernal regions,--"Leave all hope, ye that
enter,"--that is, of ever getting out again; where at one time I saw my
employer actually up to his neck and swimming for his life in his
property, though it was still winter. He had another similar swamp which
I could not survey at all, because it was completely under water, and
nevertheless, with regard to a third swamp, which I did _survey_ from a
distance, he remarked to me, true to his instincts, that he would not
part with it for any consideration, on account of the mud which it
contained. And that man intends to put a girdling ditch round the whole
in the course of forty months, and so redeem it by the magic of his
spade. I refer to him only as the type of a class.

The weapons with which we have gained our most important victories,
which should be handed down as heirlooms from father to son, are not the
sword and the lance, but the bushwhack, the turf-cutter, the spade, and
the bog-hoe, rusted with the blood of many a meadow, and begrimed with
the dust of many a hard-fought field. The very winds blew the Indian's
cornfield into the meadow, and pointed out the way which he had not the
skill to follow. He had no better implement with which to intrench
himself in the land than a clam-shell. But the farmer is armed with plow
and spade.

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but
another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking
in _Hamlet_ and the _Iliad_, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not
learned in the schools, that delights us. As the wild duck is more swift
and beautiful than the tame, so is the wild--the mallard--thought,
which 'mid falling dews wings its way above the fens. A truly good book
is something as natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and
perfect, as a wild flower discovered on the prairies of the West or in
the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness
visible, like the lightning's flash, which perchance shatters the temple
of knowledge itself,--and not a taper lighted at the hearthstone of the
race, which pales before the light of common day.

English literature, from the days of the minstrels to the Lake
Poets,--Chaucer and Spenser and Milton, and even Shakespeare,
included,--breathes no quite fresh and, in this sense, wild strain. It
is an essentially tame and civilized literature, reflecting Greece and
Rome. Her wilderness is a green wood,--her wild man a Robin Hood. There
is plenty of genial love of Nature, but not so much of Nature herself.
Her chronicles inform us when her wild animals, but not when the wild
man in her, became extinct.

The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing. The poet
to-day, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science, and the
accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over Homer.

Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He would be a
poet who could impress the winds and streams into his service, to speak
for him; who nailed words to their primitive senses, as farmers drive
down stakes in the spring, which the frost has heaved; who derived his
words as often as he used them,--transplanted them to his page with
earth adhering to their roots; whose words were so true and fresh and
natural that they would appear to expand like the buds at the approach
of spring, though they lay half-smothered between two musty leaves in a
library,--ay, to bloom and bear fruit there, after their kind,
annually, for the faithful reader, in sympathy with surrounding Nature.

I do not know of any poetry to quote which adequately expresses this
yearning for the Wild. Approached from this side, the best poetry is
tame. I do not know where to find in any literature, ancient or modern,
any account which contents me of that Nature with which even I am
acquainted. You will perceive that I demand something which no Augustan
nor Elizabethan age, which no _culture_, in short, can give. Mythology
comes nearer to it than anything. How much more fertile a Nature, at
least, has Grecian mythology its root in than English literature!
Mythology is the crop which the Old World bore before its soil was
exhausted, before the fancy and imagination were affected with blight;
and which it still bears, wherever its pristine vigor is unabated. All
other literatures endure only as the elms which overshadow our houses;
but this is like the great dragon-tree of the Western Isles, as old as
mankind, and, whether that does or not, will endure as long; for the
decay of other literatures makes the soil in which it thrives.

The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The
valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine, having yielded their
crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate,
the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce.
Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a
fiction of the past,--as it is to some extent a fiction of the
present,--the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology.

The wildest dreams of wild men, even, are not the less true, though they
may not recommend themselves to the sense which is most common among
Englishmen and Americans to-day. It is not every truth that recommends
itself to the common sense. Nature has a place for the wild clematis as
well as for the cabbage. Some expressions of truth are reminiscent,--others
merely _sensible_, as the phrase is,--others prophetic. Some forms of
disease, even, may prophesy forms of health. The geologist has
discovered that the figures of serpents, griffins, flying dragons, and
other fanciful embellishments of heraldry, have their prototypes in the
forms of fossil species which were extinct before man was created, and
hence "indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge of a previous state of
organic existence." The Hindoos dreamed that the earth rested on an
elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise, and the tortoise on a serpent;
and though it may be an unimportant coincidence, it will not be out of
place here to state, that a fossil tortoise has lately been discovered
in Asia large enough to support an elephant. I confess that I am partial
to these wild fancies, which transcend the order of time and
development. They are the sublimest recreation of the intellect. The
partridge loves peas, but not those that go with her into the pot.

In short, all good things are wild and free. There is something in a
strain of music, whether produced by an instrument or by the human
voice,--take the sound of a bugle in a summer night, for
instance,--which by its wildness, to speak without satire, reminds me of
the cries emitted by wild beasts in their native forests. It is so much
of their wildness as I can understand. Give me for my friends and
neighbors wild men, not tame ones. The wildness of the savage is but a
faint symbol of the awful ferity with which good men and lovers meet.

I love even to see the domestic animals reassert their native
rights,--any evidence that they have not wholly lost their original wild
habits and vigor; as when my neighbor's cow breaks out of her pasture
early in the spring and boldly swims the river, a cold, gray tide,
twenty-five or thirty rods wide, swollen by the melted snow. It is the
buffalo crossing the Mississippi. This exploit confers some dignity on
the herd in my eyes,--already dignified. The seeds of instinct are
preserved under the thick hides of cattle and horses, like seeds in the
bowels of the earth, an indefinite period.

Any sportiveness in cattle is unexpected. I saw one day a herd of a
dozen bullocks and cows running about and frisking in unwieldy sport,
like huge rats, even like kittens. They shook their heads, raised their
tails, and rushed up and down a hill, and I perceived by their horns, as
well as by their activity, their relation to the deer tribe. But, alas!
a sudden loud _Whoa!_ would have damped their ardor at once, reduced
them from venison to beef, and stiffened their sides and sinews like the
locomotive. Who but the Evil One has cried, "Whoa!" to mankind? Indeed,
the life of cattle, like that of many men, is but a sort of
locomotiveness; they move a side at a time, and man, by his machinery,
is meeting the horse and the ox half-way. Whatever part the whip has
touched is thenceforth palsied. Who would ever think of a _side_ of any
of the supple cat tribe, as we speak of a _side_ of beef?

I rejoice that horses and steers have to be broken before they can be
made the slaves of men, and that men themselves have some wild oats
still left to sow before they become submissive members of society.
Undoubtedly, all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization; and
because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame by inherited
disposition, this is no reason why the others should have their natures
broken that they may be reduced to the same level. Men are in the main
alike, but they were made several in order that they might be various.
If a low use is to be served, one man will do nearly or quite as well as
another; if a high one, individual excellence is to be regarded. Any
man can stop a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man could serve
so rare a use as the author of this illustration did. Confucius
says,--"The skins of the tiger and the leopard, when they are tanned,
are as the skins of the dog and the sheep tanned." But it is not the
part of a true culture to tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep
ferocious; and tanning their skins for shoes is not the best use to
which they can be put.

       *       *       *       *       *

When looking over a list of men's names in a foreign language, as of
military officers, or of authors who have written on a particular
subject, I am reminded once more that there is nothing in a name. The
name Menschikoff, for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human
than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles
and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been
named by the child's rigmarole,--_Iery wiery ichery van,
tittle-tol-tan_. I see in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over
the earth, and to each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in
his own dialect. The names of men are of course as cheap and meaningless
as _Bose_ and _Tray_, the names of dogs.

Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy, if men were named
merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to
know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual.
We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman
army had a name of his own,--because we have not supposed that he had a
character of his own. At present our only true names are nicknames. I
knew a boy who, from his peculiar energy, was called "Buster" by his
playmates, and this rightly supplanted his Christian name. Some
travelers tell us that an Indian had no name given him at first, but
earned it, and his name was his fame; and among some tribes he acquired
a new name with every new exploit. It is pitiful when a man bears a name
for convenience merely, who has earned neither name nor fame.

I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me, but still see
men in herds for all them. A familiar name cannot make a man less
strange to me. It may be given to a savage who retains in secret his own
wild title earned in the woods. We have a wild savage in us, and a
savage name is perchance somewhere recorded as ours. I see that my
neighbor, who bears the familiar epithet William, or Edwin, takes it off
with his jacket. It does not adhere to him when asleep or in anger, or
aroused by any passion or inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some
of his kin at such a time his original wild name in some jaw-breaking or
else melodious tongue.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all
around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the
leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to
that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,--a sort
of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility,
a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.

In society, in the best institutions of men, it is easy to detect a
certain precocity. When we should still be growing children, we are
already little men. Give me a culture which imports much muck from the
meadows, and deepens the soil,--not that which trusts to heating
manures, and improved implements and modes of culture only!

Many a poor, sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow faster,
both intellectually and physically, if, instead of sitting up so very
late, he honestly slumbered a fool's allowance.

There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce, a Frenchman,
discovered "actinism," that power in the sun's rays which produces a
chemical effect,--that granite rocks, and stone structures, and statues
of metal, "are all alike destructively acted upon during the hours of
sunshine, and, but for provisions of Nature no less wonderful, would
soon perish under the delicate touch of the most subtile of the agencies
of the universe." But he observed that "those bodies which underwent
this change during the daylight possessed the power of restoring
themselves to their original conditions during the hours of night, when
this excitement was no longer influencing them." Hence it has been
inferred that "the hours of darkness are as necessary to the inorganic
creation as we know night and sleep are to the organic kingdom." Not
even does the moon shine every night, but gives place to darkness.

I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more
than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage,
but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an
immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the
annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.

There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus
invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express this wild and dusky
knowledge--_Gramática parda_, tawny grammar,--a kind of mother-wit
derived from that same leopard to which I have referred.

We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. It is
said that knowledge is power; and the like. Methinks there is equal need
of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, what we will call
Beautiful Knowledge, a knowledge useful in a higher sense: for what is
most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know
something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What
we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our
negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and reading of the
newspapers,--for what are the libraries of science but files of
newspapers?--a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays them up in his
memory, and then when in some spring of his life he saunters abroad into
the Great Fields of thought, he, as it were, goes to grass like a horse,
and leaves all his harness behind in the stable. I would say to the
Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, sometimes,--Go to grass.
You have eaten hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop.
The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the end of
May; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who kept his cow in the
barn and fed her on hay all the year round. So, frequently, the Society
for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge treats its cattle.

A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beautiful,--while
his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than useless, besides
being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with,--he who knows nothing
about a subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he knows
nothing, or he who really knows something about it, but thinks that he
knows all?

My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to bathe my head
in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial and constant. The highest
that we can attain to is not Knowledge, but Sympathy with Intelligence.
I do not know that this higher knowledge amounts to anything more
definite than a novel and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the
insufficiency of all that we called Knowledge before,--a discovery that
there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy. It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. Man cannot
know in any higher sense than this, any more than he can look serenely
and with impunity in the face of sun: 'Ως τἱ νοὡν, οὑ κενον νοἡσεις,--"You
will not perceive that, as perceiving a particular thing," say the
Chaldean Oracles.

There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law which we
may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and for our convenience,
but a successful life knows no law. It is an unfortunate discovery
certainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not know before
that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist,--and with respect to
knowledge we are all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty
to live is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the
law-maker. "That is active duty," says the Vishnu Purana, "which is not
for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our liberation: all
other duty is good only unto weariness; all other knowledge is only the
cleverness of an artist."

       *       *       *       *       *

It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in our histories;
how little exercised we have been in our minds; how few experiences we
have had. I would fain be assured that I am growing apace and rankly,
though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity,--though it be with
struggle through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would
be well, if all our lives were a divine tragedy even, instead of this
trivial comedy or farce. Dante, Bunyan, and others, appear to have been
exercised in their minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of
culture such as our district schools and colleges do not contemplate.
Even Mahomet, though many may scream at his name, had a good deal more
to live for, ay, and to die for, than they have commonly.

When, at rare intervals, some thought visits one, as perchance he is
walking on a railroad, then indeed the cars go by without his hearing
them. But soon, by some inexorable law, our life goes by and the cars
return.

/p
    "Gentle breeze, that wanderest unseen,
     And bendest the thistles round Loira of storms,
     Traveler of the windy glens,
     Why hast thou left my ear so soon?"
p/

While almost all men feel an attraction drawing them to society, few are
attracted strongly to Nature. In their relation to Nature men appear to
me for the most part, notwithstanding their arts, lower than the
animals. It is not often a beautiful relation, as in the case of the
animals. How little appreciation of the beauty of the landscape there is
among us! We have to be told that the Greeks called the world Κὁσμος,
Beauty, or Order, but we do not see clearly why they did so, and we
esteem it at best only a curious philological fact.

For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border
life, on the confines of a world into which I make occasional and
transional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance
to the State into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a
moss-trooper. Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow
even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no
moon nor firefly has shown me the causeway to it. Nature is a
personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her
features. The walker in the familiar fields which stretch around my
native town sometimes finds himself in another land than is described in
their owners' deeds, as it were in some far-away field on the confines
of the actual Concord, where her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which
the word Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These farms which I
have myself surveyed, these bounds which I have set up, appear dimly
still as through a mist; but they have no chemistry to fix them; they
fade from the surface of the glass; and the picture which the painter
painted stands out dimly from beneath. The world with which we are
commonly acquainted leaves no trace, and it will have no anniversary.

I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting
sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden
rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I
was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining
family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord,
unknown to me,--to whom the sun was servant,--who had not gone into
society in the village,--who had not been called on. I saw their park,
their pleasure-ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding's
cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew.
Their house was not obvious to vision; the trees grew through it. I do
not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not.
They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters.
They are quite well. The farmer's cart-path, which leads directly
through their hall, does not in the least put them out,--as the muddy
bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They
never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their
neighbor,--notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team
through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their
coat of arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks.
Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics.
There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving
or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done
away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,--as of a distant hive in
May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle
thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry
was not as in knots and excrescences embayed.

But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out of
my mind even now while I speak and endeavor to recall them, and
recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to
recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of their
cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I think I should
move out of Concord.

We are accustomed to say in New England that few and fewer pigeons visit
us every year. Our forests furnish no mast for them. So, it would seem,
few and fewer thoughts visit each growing man from year to year, for the
grove in our minds is laid waste,--sold to feed unnecessary fires of
ambition, or sent to mill, and there is scarcely a twig left for them to
perch on. They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial
season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of the
mind, cast by the _wings_ of some thought in its vernal or autumnal
migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the substance of the
thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned to poultry. They no
longer soar, and they attain only to a Shanghai and Cochin-China
grandeur. Those _gra-a-ate thoughts_, those _gra-a-ate men_ you hear of!

       *       *       *       *       *

We hug the earth,--how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate
ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found my
account in climbing a tree once. It was a tall white pine, on the top of
a hill; and though I got well pitched, I was well paid for it, for I
discovered new mountains in the horizon which I had never seen
before,--so much more of the earth and the heavens. I might have walked
about the foot of the tree for threescore years and ten, and yet I
certainly should never have seen them. But, above all, I discovered
around me,--it was near the end of June,--on the ends of the topmost
branches only, a few minute and delicate red cone-like blossoms, the
fertile flower of the white pine looking heavenward. I carried
straightway to the village the topmost spire, and showed it to stranger
jurymen who walked the streets,--for it was court-week,--and to farmers
and lumber-dealers and wood-choppers and hunters, and not one had ever
seen the like before, but they wondered as at a star dropped down. Tell
of ancient architects finishing their works on the tops of columns as
perfectly as on the lower and more visible parts! Nature has from the
first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the
heavens, above men's heads and unobserved by them. We see only the
flowers that are under our feet in the meadows. The pines have developed
their delicate blossoms on the highest twigs of the wood every summer
for ages, as well over the heads of Nature's red children as of her
white ones; yet scarcely a farmer or hunter in the land has ever seen
them.

       *       *       *       *       *

Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He is blessed
over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering
the past. Unless our philosophy hears the cock crow in every barn-yard
within our horizon, it is belated. That sound commonly reminds us that
we are growing rusty and antique in our employments and habits of
thought. His philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours.
There is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,--the
gospel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has got up
early, and kept up early, and to be where he is to be in season, in the
foremost rank of time. It is an expression of the health and soundness
of Nature, a brag for all the world,--healthiness as of a spring burst
forth, a new fountain of the Muses, to celebrate this last instant of
time. Where he lives no fugitive slave laws are passed. Who has not
betrayed his master many times since last he heard that note?

The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all
plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to laughter,
but where is he who can excite in us a pure morning joy? When, in
doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness of our wooden sidewalk on a
Sunday, or, perchance, a watcher in the house of mourning, I hear a
cockerel crow far or near, I think to myself, "There is one of us well,
at any rate,"--and with a sudden gush return to my senses.

       *       *       *       *       *

We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was walking in a
meadow, the source of a small brook, when the sun at last, just before
setting, after a cold gray day, reached a clear stratum in the horizon,
and the softest, brightest morning sunlight fell on the dry grass and on
the stems of the trees in the opposite horizon, and on the leaves of the
shrub-oaks on the hill-side, while our shadows stretched long over the
meadow eastward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such
a light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the air also
was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to make a paradise of
that meadow. When we reflected that this was not a solitary phenomenon,
never to happen again, but that it would happen forever and ever an
infinite number of evenings, and cheer and reassure the latest child
that walked there, it was more glorious still.

The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is visible, with all
the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities, and perchance, as it
has never set before,--where there is but a solitary marsh-hawk to have
his wings gilded by it, or only a musquash looks out from his cabin, and
there is some little black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just
beginning to meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked
in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and leaves, so
softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a
golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The west side of every
wood and rising ground gleamed like the boundary of Elysium, and the sun
on our backs seemed like a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.

So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun shall shine
more brightly than ever he has done, shall perchance shine into our
minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives with a great awakening
light, as warm and serene and golden as on a bank-side in autumn.



ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS[5]

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL


Walking one day toward the Village, as we used to call it in the good
old days when almost every dweller in the town had been born in it, I
was enjoying that delicious sense of disenthralment from the actual
which the deepening twilight brings with it, giving as it does a sort of
obscure novelty to things familiar. The coolness, the hush, broken only
by the distant bleat of some belated goat, querulous to be disburdened
of her milky load, the few faint stars, more guessed as yet than seen,
the sense that the coming dark would so soon fold me in the secure
privacy of its disguise,--all things combined in a result as near
absolute peace as can be hoped for by a man who knows that there is a
writ out against him in the hands of the printer's devil. For the
moment, I was enjoying the blessed privilege of thinking without being
called on to stand and deliver what I thought to the small public who
are good enough to take any interest therein. I love old ways, and the
path I was walking felt kindly to the feet it had known for almost fifty
years. How many fleeting impressions it had shared with me! How many
times I had lingered to study the shadows of the leaves mezzotinted upon
the turf that edged it by the moon, of the bare boughs etched with a
touch beyond Rembrandt by the same unconscious artist on the smooth page
of snow! If I turned round, through dusky tree-gaps came the first
twinkle of evening lamps in the dear old homestead. On Corey's hill I
could see these tiny pharoses of love and home and sweet domestic
thoughts flash out one by one across the blackening salt-meadow between.
How much has not kerosene added to the cheerfulness of our evening
landscape! A pair of night-herons flapped heavily over me toward the
hidden river. The war was ended. I might walk townward without that
aching dread of bulletins that had darkened the July sunshine and twice
made the scarlet leaves of October seem stained with blood. I remembered
with a pang, half-proud, half-painful, how, so many years ago, I had
walked over the same path and felt round my finger the soft pressure of
a little hand that was one day to harden with faithful grip of saber. On
how many paths, leading to how many homes where proud Memory does all
she can to fill up the fireside gaps with shining shapes, must not men
be walking in just such pensive mood as I? Ah, young heroes, safe in
immortal youth as those of Homer, you at least carried your ideal hence
untarnished! It is locked for you beyond moth or rust in the
treasure-chamber of Death.

Is not a country, I thought, that has had such as they in it, that could
give such as they a brave joy in dying for it, worth something, then?
And as I felt more and more the soothing magic of evening's cool palm
upon my temples, as my fancy came home from its revery, and my senses,
with reawakened curiosity, ran to the front windows again from the
viewless closet of abstraction, and felt a strange charm in finding the
old tree and shabby fence still there under the travesty of falling
night, nay, were conscious of an unsuspected newness in familiar stars
and the fading outlines of hills my earliest horizon, I was conscious of
an immortal soul, and could not but rejoice in the unwaning goodliness
of the world into which I had been born without any merit of my own. I
thought of dear Henry Vaughan's rainbow, "Still young and fine!" I
remembered people who had to go over to the Alps to learn what the
divine silence of snow was, who must run to Italy before they were
conscious of the miracle wrought every day under their very noses by the
sunset, who must call upon the Berkshire hills to teach them what a
painter autumn was, while close at hand the Fresh Pond meadows made all
oriels cheap with hues that showed as if a sunset-cloud had been wrecked
among their maples. One might be worse off than even in America, I
thought. There are some things so elastic that even the heavy roller of
democracy cannot flatten them altogether down. The mind can weave itself
warmly in the cocoon of its own thoughts and dwell a hermit anywhere. A
country without traditions, without ennobling associations, a scramble
of _parvenus_, with a horrible consciousness of shoddy running through
politics, manners, art, literature, nay, religion itself? I confess, it
did not seem so to me there in that illimitable quiet, that serene
self-possession of nature, where Collins might have brooded his "Ode to
Evening," or where those verses on Solitude in Dodsley's Collection,
that Hawthorne liked so much, might have been composed. Traditions?
Granting that we had none, all that is worth having in them is the
common property of the soul,--an estate in gavelkind for all the sons of
Adam,--and, moreover, if a man cannot stand on his two feet (the prime
quality of whoever has left any tradition behind him), were it not
better for him to be honest about it at once, and go down on all fours?
And for associations, if one have not the wit to make them for himself
out of native earth, no ready-made ones of other men will avail much.
Lexington is none the worse to me for not being in Greece, nor
Gettysburg that its name is not Marathon. "Blessed old fields," I was
just exclaiming to myself, like one of Mrs. Radcliffe's heroes, "dear
acres, innocently secure from history, which these eyes first beheld,
may you be also those to which they shall at last slowly darken!" when I
was interrupted by a voice which asked me in German whether I was the
Herr Professor, Doctor, So-and-so? The "Doctor" was by brevet or
vaticination, to make the grade easier to my pocket.

One feels so intimately assured that he is made up, in part, of shreds
and leavings of the past, in part of the interpolations of other people,
that an honest man would be slow in saying _yes_ to such a question. But
"my name is So-and-so" is a safe answer, and I gave it. While I had been
romancing with myself, the street-lamps had been lighted, and it was
under one of these detectives that have robbed the Old Road of its
privilege of sanctuary after nightfall that I was ambushed by my foe.
The inexorable villain had taken my description, it appears, that I
might have the less chance to escape him. Dr. Holmes tells us that we
change our substance, not every seven years, as was once believed, but
with every breath we draw. Why had I not the wit to avail myself of the
subterfuge, and, like Peter, to renounce my identity, especially, as in
certain moods of mind, I have often more than doubted of it myself? When
a man is, as it were, his own front-door, and is thus knocked at, why
may he not assume the right of that sacred wood to make every house a
castle, by denying himself to all visitations? I was truly not at home
when the question was put to me, but had to recall myself from all
out-of-doors, and to piece my self-consciousness hastily together as
well as I could before I answered it.

I knew perfectly well what was coming. It is seldom that debtors or good
Samaritans waylay people under gaslamps in order to force money upon
them, so far as I have seen or heard. I was also aware, from
considerable experience, that every foreigner is persuaded that, by
doing this country the favor of coming to it, he has laid every native
thereof under an obligation, pecuniary or other, as the case may be,
whose discharge he is entitled to on demand duly made in person or by
letter. Too much learning (of this kind) had made me mad in the
provincial sense of the word. I had begun life with the theory of giving
something to every beggar that came along, though sure of never finding
a native-born countryman among them. In a small way, I was resolved to
emulate Hatem Tai's tent, with its three hundred and sixty-five
entrances, one for every day in the year,--I know not whether he was
astronomer enough to add another for leap-years. The beggars were a kind
of German-silver aristocracy; not real plate, to be sure, but better
than nothing. Where everybody was overworked, they supplied the
comfortable equipoise of absolute leisure, so æsthetically needful.
Besides, I was but too conscious of a vagrant fiber in myself, which too
often thrilled me in my solitary walks with the temptation to wander on
into infinite space, and by a single spasm of resolution to emancipate
myself from the drudgery of prosaic serfdom to respectability and the
regular course of things. This prompting has been at times my familiar
demon, and I could not but feel a kind of respectful sympathy for men
who had dared what I had only sketched out to myself as a splendid
possibility. For seven years I helped maintain one heroic man on an
imaginary journey to Portland,--as fine an example as I have ever known
of hopeless loyalty to an ideal. I assisted another so long in a
fruitless attempt to reach Mecklenburg-Schwerin, that at last we grinned
in each other's faces when we met, like a couple of augurs. He was
possessed by this harmless mania as some are by the North Pole, and I
shall never forget his look of regretful compassion (as for one who was
sacrificing his higher life to the fleshpots of Egypt) when I at last
advised him somewhat strenuously to go to the D----, whither the road
was so much traveled that he could not miss it. General Banks, in his
noble zeal for the honor of his country, would confer on the Secretary
of State the power of imprisoning, in case of war, all these seekers of
the unattainable, thus by a stroke of the pen annihilating the single
poetic element in our humdrum life. Alas! not everybody has the genius
to be a Bobbin-Boy, or doubtless all these also would have chosen that
more prosperous line of life! But moralists, sociologists, political
economists, and taxes have slowly convinced me that my beggarly
sympathies were a sin against society. Especially was the Buckle
doctrine of averages (so flattering to our free-will) persuasive with
me; for as there must be in every year a certain number who would bestow
an alms on these abridged editions of the Wandering Jew, the withdrawal
of my quota could make no possible difference, since some destined proxy
must always step forward to fill my gap. Just so many misdirected
letters every year and no more! Would it were as easy to reckon up the
number of men on whose backs fate has written the wrong address, so that
they arrive by mistake in Congress and other places where they do not
belong! May not these wanderers of whom I speak have been sent into the
world without any proper address at all? Where is our Dead-Letter Office
for such? And if wiser social arrangements should furnish us with
something of the sort, fancy (horrible thought!) how many a workingman's
friend (a kind of industry in which the labor is light and the wages
heavy) would be sent thither because not called for in the office where
he at present lies!

But I am leaving my new acquaintance too long under the lamp-post. The
same Gano which had betrayed me to him revealed to me a well-set young
man of about half my own age, as well dressed, so far as I could see,
as I was, and with every natural qualification for getting his own
livelihood as good, if not better, than my own. He had been reduced to
the painful necessity of calling upon me by a series of crosses
beginning with the Baden Revolution (for which, I own, he seemed rather
young,--but perhaps he referred to a kind of revolution practiced every
season at Baden-Baden), continued by repeated failures in business, for
amounts which must convince me of his entire respectability, and ending
with our Civil War. During the latter, he had served with distinction as
a soldier, taking a main part in every important battle, with a rapid
list of which he favored me, and no doubt would have admitted that,
impartial as Jonathan Wild's great ancestor, he had been on both sides,
had I baited him with a few hints of conservative opinions on a subject
so distressing to a gentleman wishing to profit by one's sympathy and
unhappily doubtful as to which way it might lean. For all these reasons,
and, as he seemed to imply, for his merit in consenting to be born in
Germany, he considered himself my natural creditor to the extent of five
dollars, which he would handsomely consent to accept in greenbacks,
though he preferred specie. The offer was certainly a generous one, and
the claim presented with an assurance that carried conviction. But,
unhappily, I had been led to remark a curious natural phenomenon. If I
was ever weak enough to give anything to a petitioner of whatever
nationality, it always rained decayed compatriots of his for a month
after. _Post hoc ergo propter hoc_ may not always be safe logic, but
here I seemed to perceive a natural connection of cause and effect. Now,
a few days before I had been so tickled with a paper (professedly
written by a benevolent American clergyman) certifying that the bearer,
a hard-working German, had long "sofered with rheumatic paints in his
limps," that, after copying the passage into my note-book, I thought it
but fair to pay a trifling _honorarium_ to the author. I had pulled the
string of the shower-bath! It had been running shipwrecked sailors for
some time, but forthwith it began to pour Teutons, redolent of
_lager-bier_. I could not help associating the apparition of my new
friend with this series of otherwise unaccountable phenomena. I
accordingly made up my mind to deny the debt, and modestly did so,
pleading a native bias towards impecuniosity to the full as strong as
his own. He took a high tone with me at once, such as an honest man
would naturally take with a confessed repudiator. He even brought down
his proud stomach so far as to join himself to me for the rest of my
townward walk, that he might give me his views of the American people,
and thus inclusively of myself.

I know not whether it is because I am pigeon-livered and lack gall, or
whether it is from an overmastering sense of drollery, but I am apt to
submit to such bastings with a patience which afterwards surprises me,
being not without my share of warmth in the blood. Perhaps it is because
I so often meet with young persons who know vastly more than I do, and
especially with so many foreigners whose knowledge of this country is
superior to my own. However it may be, I listened for some time with
tolerable composure as my self-appointed lecturer gave me in detail his
opinions of my country and its people. America, he informed me, was
without arts, science, literature, culture, or any native hope of
supplying them. We were a people wholly given to money-getting, and who,
having got it, knew no other use for it than to hold it fast. I am fain
to confess that I felt a sensible itching of the biceps, and that my
fingers closed with such a grip as he had just informed me was one of
the effects of our unhappy climate. But happening just then to be where
I could avoid temptation by dodging down a by-street, I hastily left
him to finish his diatribe to the lamp-post, which could stand it better
than I. That young man will never know how near he came to being
assaulted by a respectable gentleman of middle age, at the corner of
Church Street. I have never felt quite satisfied that I did all my duty
by him in not knocking him down. But perhaps he might have knocked _me_
down, and then?

The capacity of indignation makes an essential part of the outfit of
every honest man, but I am inclined to doubt whether he is a wise one
who allows himself to act upon its first hints. It should be rather, I
suspect, a _latent_ heat in the blood, which makes itself felt in
character, a steady reserve for the brain, warming the ovum of thought
to life, rather than cooking it by a too hasty enthusiasm in reaching
the boiling-point. As my pulse gradually fell back to its normal beat, I
reflected that I had been uncomfortably near making a fool of myself,--a
handy salve of euphuism for our vanity, though it does not always make a
just allowance to Nature for her share in the business. What possible
claim had my Teutonic friend to rob me of my composure? I am not, I
think, specially thin-skinned as to other people's opinions of myself,
having, as I conceive, later and fuller intelligence on that point than
anybody else can give me. Life is continually weighing us in very
sensitive scales, and telling every one of us precisely what his real
weight is to the last grain of dust. Whoever at fifty does not rate
himself quite as low as most of his acquaintance would be likely to put
him, must be either a fool or a great man, and I humbly disclaim being
either. But if I was not smarting in person from any scattering shot of
my late companion's commination, why should I grow hot at any
implication of my country therein? Surely _her_ shoulders are broad
enough, if yours or mine are not, to bear up under a considerable
avalanche of this kind. It is the bit of truth in every slander, the
hint of likeness in every caricature, that makes us smart. "Art thou
_there_, old Truepenny?" How did your blade know its way so well to that
one loose rivet in our armor? I wondered whether Americans were
over-sensitive in this respect, whether they were more touchy than other
folks. On the whole, I thought we were not. Plutarch, who at least had
studied philosophy, if he had not mastered it, could not stomach
something Herodotus had said of Bœotia, and devoted an essay to
showing up the delightful old traveler's malice and ill-breeding. French
editors leave out of Montaigne's "Travels" some remarks of his about
France, for reasons best known to themselves. Pachydermatous
Deutschland, covered with trophies from every field of letters, still
winces under that question which Père Bouhours put two centuries ago,
_Si un Allemand peut être bel-esprit?_ John Bull grew apoplectic with
angry amazement at the audacious persiflage of Pückler-Muskau. To be
sure, he was a prince,--but that was not all of it, for a chance phrase
of gentle Hawthorne sent a spasm through all the journals of England.
Then this tenderness is not peculiar to _us_? Console yourself, dear man
and brother, whatever else you may be sure of, be sure at least of this,
that you are dreadfully like other people. Human nature has a much
greater genius for sameness than for originality, or the world would be
at a sad pass shortly. The surprising thing is that men have such a
taste for this somewhat musty flavor, that an Englishman, for example,
should feel himself defrauded, nay, even outraged, when he comes over
here and finds a people speaking what he admits to be something like
English, and yet so very different from (or, as he would say, to) those
he left at home. Nothing, I am sure, equals _my_ thankfulness when I
meet an Englishman who is _not_ like every other, or, I may add, an
American of the same odd turn.

Certainly it is no shame to a man that he should be as nice about his
country as about his sweetheart, and who ever heard even the friendliest
appreciation of that unexpressive she that did not seem to fall
infinitely short? Yet it would hardly be wise to hold everyone an enemy
who could not see her with our own enchanted eyes. It seems to be the
common opinion of foreigners that Americans are _too_ tender upon this
point. Perhaps we are; and if so, there must be a reason for it. Have we
had fair play? Could the eyes of what is called Good Society (though it
is so seldom true either to the adjective or noun) look upon a nation of
democrats with any chance of receiving an undistorted image? Were not
those, moreover, who found in the old order of things an earthly
paradise, paying them quarterly dividends for the wisdom of their
ancestors, with the punctuality of the seasons, unconsciously bribed to
misunderstand if not to misrepresent us? Whether at war or at peace,
there we were, a standing menace to all earthly paradises of that kind,
fatal underminers of the very credit on which the dividends were based,
all the more hateful and terrible that our destructive agency was so
insidious, working invisible in the elements, as it seemed, active while
they slept, and coming upon them in the darkness like an armed man.
_Could_ Laius have the proper feelings of a father towards Œdipus,
announced as his destined destroyer by infallible oracles, and felt to
be such by every conscious fiber of his soul? For more than a century
the Dutch were the laughing-stock of polite Europe. They were
butter-firkins, swillers of beer and schnaps, and their _vrouws_ from
whom Holbein painted the all-but loveliest of Madonnas, Rembrandt the
graceful girl who sits immortal on his knee in Dresden, and Rubens his
abounding goddesses, were the synonymes of clumsy vulgarity. Even so
late as Irving the ships of the greatest navigators in the world were
represented as sailing equally well stern-foremost. That the
aristocratic Venetians should have

/p
                "Riveted with gigantic piles
    Thorough the center their new-catchëd miles,"
p/

was heroic. But the far more marvelous achievement of the Dutch in the
same kind was ludicrous even to republican Marvell. Meanwhile, during
that very century of scorn, they were the best artists, sailors,
merchants, bankers, printers, scholars, jurisconsults, and statesmen in
Europe, and the genius of Motley has revealed them to us, earning a
right to themselves by the most heroic struggle in human annals. But,
alas! they were not merely simple burghers who had fairly made
themselves High Mightinesses, and could treat on equal terms with
anointed kings, but their commonwealth carried in its bosom the germs of
democracy. They even unmuzzled, at least after dark, that dreadful
mastiff, the Press, whose scent is, or ought to be, so keen for wolves
in sheep's clothing and for certain other animals in lions' skins. They
made fun of Sacred Majesty, and, what was worse, managed uncommonly well
without it. In an age when periwigs made so large a part of the natural
dignity of man, people with such a turn of mind were dangerous. How
could they seem other than vulgar and hateful?

In the natural course of things we succeeded to this unenviable position
of general butt. The Dutch had thriven under it pretty well, and there
was hope that we could at least contrive to worry along. And we
certainly did in a very redoubtable fashion. Perhaps we deserved some of
the sarcasm more than our Dutch predecessors in office. We had nothing
to boast of in arts or letters, and were given to bragging overmuch of
our merely material prosperity, due quite as much to the virtue of our
continent as to our own. There was some truth in Carlyle's sneer, after
all. Till we had succeeded in some higher way than this, we had only the
success of physical growth. Our greatness, like that of enormous Russia,
was greatness on the map,--barbarian mass only; but had we gone down,
like that other Atlantis, in some vast cataclysm, we should have covered
but a pin's point on the chart of memory, compared with those ideal
spaces occupied by tiny Attica and cramped England. At the same time,
our critics somewhat too easily forgot that material must make ready the
foundation for ideal triumphs, that the arts have no chance in poor
countries. And it must be allowed that democracy stood for a great deal
in our shortcoming. The _Edinburgh Review_ never would have thought of
asking, "Who reads a Russian book?" and England was satisfied with iron
from Sweden without being impertinently inquisitive after her painters
and statuaries. Was it that they expected too much from the mere miracle
of Freedom? Is it not the highest art of a Republic to make men of flesh
and blood, and not the marble ideals of such? It may be fairly doubted
whether we have produced this higher type of man yet. Perhaps it is the
collective, not the individual, humanity that is to have a chance of
nobler development among us. We shall see. We have a vast amount of
imported ignorance, and, still worse, of native ready-made knowledge, to
digest before even the preliminaries of such a consummation can be
arranged. We have got to learn that statesmanship is the most
complicated of all arts, and to come back to the apprenticeship-system
too hastily abandoned. At present, we trust a man with making
constitutions on less proof of competence than we should demand before
we gave him our shoe to patch. We have nearly reached the limit of the
reaction from the old notion, which paid too much regard to birth and
station as qualifications for office, and have touched the extreme point
in the opposite direction, putting the highest of human functions up at
auction to be bid for by any creature capable of going upright on two
legs. In some places, we have arrived at a point at which civil society
is no longer possible, and already another reaction has begun, not
backwards to the old system, but towards fitness either from natural
aptitude or special training. But will it always be safe to let evils
work their own cure by becoming unendurable? Every one of them leaves
its taint in the constitution of the body-politic, each in itself,
perhaps, trifling, but all together powerful for evil.

But whatever we might do or leave undone, we were not genteel, and it
was uncomfortable to be continually reminded that, though we should
boast that we were the Great West till we were black in the face, it did
not bring us an inch nearer to the world's West-End. That sacred
inclosure of respectability was tabooed to us. The Holy Alliance did not
inscribe us on its visiting-list. The Old World of wigs and orders and
liveries would shop with us, but we must ring at the area-bell, and not
venture to awaken the more august clamors of the knocker. Our manners,
it must be granted, had none of those graces that stamp the caste of
Vere de Vere, in whatever museum of British antiquities they may be
hidden. In short, we were vulgar.

This was one of those horribly vague accusations, the victim of which
has no defense. An umbrella is of no avail against a Scotch mist. It
envelops you, it penetrates at every pore, it wets you through without
seeming to wet you at all. Vulgarity is an eighth deadly sin, added to
the list in these latter days, and worse than all the others put
together, since it perils your salvation in _this_ world,--far the more
important of the two in the minds of most men. It profits nothing to
draw nice distinctions between essential and conventional, for the
convention in this case is the essence, and you may break every command
of the decalogue with perfect good-breeding, nay, if you are adroit,
without losing caste. We, indeed, had it not to lose, for we had never
gained it. "_How_ am I vulgar?" asks the culprit, shudderingly. "Because
thou art not like unto Us," answers Lucifer, Son of the Morning, and
there is no more to be said. The god of this world may be a fallen
angel, but he has us _there!_ We were as clean,--so far as my
observation goes, I think we were cleaner, morally and physically, than
the English, and therefore, of course, than everybody else. But we did
not pronounce the diphthong _ou_ as they did, and we said _eether_ and
not _eyther_, following therein the fashion of our ancestors, who
unhappily could bring over no English better than Shakespeare's; and we
did not stammer as they had learned to do from the courtiers, who in
this way flattered the Hanoverian king, a foreigner among the people he
had come to reign over. Worse than all, we might have the noblest ideas
and the finest sentiments in the world, but we vented them through that
organ by which men are led rather than leaders, though some
physiologists would persuade us that Nature furnishes her captains with
a fine handle to their faces that Opportunity may get a good purchase on
them for dragging them to the front.

This state of things was so painful that excellent people were not
wanting who gave their whole genius to reproducing here the original
Bull, whether by gaiters, the cut of their whiskers, by a factitious
brutality in their tone, or by an accent that was forever tripping and
falling flat over the tangled roots of our common tongue. Martyrs to a
false ideal, it never occurred to them that nothing is more hateful to
gods and men than a second-rate Englishman, and for the very reason
that this planet never produced a more splendid creature than the
first-rate one, witness Shakespeare and the Indian Mutiny. If we could
contrive to be not too unobtrusively our simple selves, we should be the
most delightful of human beings, and the most original; whereas, when
the plating of Anglicism rubs off, as it always will in points that come
to much wear, we are liable to very unpleasing conjectures about the
quality of the metal underneath. Perhaps one reason why the average
Briton spreads himself here with such an easy air of superiority may be
owing to the fact that he meets with so many bad imitations as to
conclude himself the only real thing in a wilderness of shams. He
fancies himself moving through an endless Bloomsbury, where his mere
apparition confers honor as an avatar of the court-end of the universe.
Not a Bull of them all but is persuaded he bears Europa upon his back.
This is the sort of fellow whose patronage is so divertingly
insufferable. Thank Heaven he is not the only specimen of
cater-cousinship from the dear old Mother Island that is shown to us!
Among genuine things, I know nothing more genuine than the better men
whose limbs were made in England. So manly-tender, so brave, so true, so
warranted to wear, they make us proud to feel that blood is thicker than
water.

But it is not merely the Englishman; every European candidly admits in
himself some right of primogeniture in respect of us, and pats this
shaggy continent on the back with a lively sense of generous unbending.
The German who plays the bass-viol has a well-founded contempt, which he
is not always nice in concealing, for a country so few of whose children
ever take that noble instrument between their knees. His cousin, the
Ph.D. from Göttingen, cannot help despising a people who do not grow
loud and red over Aryans and Turanians, and are indifferent about their
descent from either. The Frenchman feels an easy mastery in speaking
his mother tongue, and attributes it to some native superiority of parts
that lifts him high above us barbarians of the West. The Italian _prima
donna_ sweeps a curtsy of careless pity to the over-facile pit which
unsexes her with the _bravo!_ innocently meant to show a familiarity
with foreign usage. But all without exception make no secret of
regarding us as the goose bound to deliver them a golden egg in return
for _their_ cackle. Such men as Agassiz, Guyot, and Goldwin Smith come
with gifts in their hands; but since it is commonly European failures
who bring hither their remarkable gifts and acquirements, this view of
the case is sometimes just the least bit in the world provoking. To
think what a delicious seclusion of contempt we enjoyed till California
and our own ostentatious _parvenus_, flinging gold away in Europe that
might have endowed libraries at home, gave us the ill repute of riches!
What a shabby downfall from the Arcadia which the French officers of our
Revolutionary War fancied they saw here through Rousseau-tinted
spectacles! Something of Arcadia there really was, something of the Old
Age; and that divine provincialism were cheaply repurchased could we
have it back again in exchange for the tawdry upholstery that has taken
its place.

For some reason or other, the European has rarely been able to see
America except in caricature. Would the first Review of the world have
printed the _niaiseries_ of Mr. Maurice Sand as a picture of society in
any civilized country? Mr. Sand, to be sure, has inherited nothing of
his famous mother's literary outfit, except the pseudonyme. But since
the conductors of the _Revue_ could not have published his story because
it was clever, they must have thought it valuable for its truth. As true
as the last-century Englishman's picture of Jean Crapaud! We do not ask
to be sprinkled with rosewater, but may perhaps fairly protest against
being drenched with the rinsings of an unclean imagination. The next
time the _Revue_ allows such ill-bred persons to throw their slops out
of its first-floor windows, let it honestly preface the discharge with a
_gardez-l'eau!_ that we may run from under in season. And Mr. Duvergier
d'Hauranne, who knows how to be entertaining! I know _le Français est
plutôt indiscret que confiant_, and the pen slides too easily when
indiscretions will fetch so much a page; but should we not have been
_tant-soit-peu_ more cautious had we been writing about people on the
other side of the Channel? But then it is a fact in the natural history
of the American long familiar to Europeans, that he abhors privacy,
knows not the meaning of reserve, lives in hotels because of their
greater publicity, and is never so pleased as when his domestic affairs
(if he may be said to have any) are paraded in the newspapers. Barnum,
it is well known, represents perfectly the average national sentiment in
this respect. However it be, we are not treated like other people, or
perhaps I should say like people who are ever likely to be met with in
society.

Is it in the climate? Either I have a false notion of European manners,
or else the atmosphere affects them strangely when exported hither.
Perhaps they suffer from the sea-voyage like some of the more delicate
wines. During our Civil War an English gentleman of the highest
description was kind enough to call upon me, mainly, as it seemed, to
inform me how entirely he sympathized with the Confederates, and how
sure he felt that we could never subdue them,--"they were the
_gentlemen_ of the country, you know." Another, the first greetings
hardly over, asked me how I accounted for the universal meagerness of my
countrymen. To a thinner man than I, or from a stouter man than he, the
question _might_ have been offensive. The Marquis of Hartington[6] wore
a secession badge at a public ball in New York. In a civilized country
he might have been roughly handled; but here, where the bienséances are
not so well understood, of course nobody minded it. A French traveler
told me he had been a good deal in the British colonies, and had been
astonished to see how soon the people became Americanized. He added,
with delightful _bonhomie_, and as if he were sure it would charm me,
that "they even began to talk through their noses, just like you!" I was
naturally ravished with this testimony to the assimilating power of
democracy, and could only reply that I hoped they would never adopt our
democratic patent-method of seeming to settle one's honest debts, for
they would find it paying through the nose in the long-run. I am a man
of the New World, and do not know precisely the present fashion of
May-Fair, but I have a kind of feeling that if an American (_mutato
nomine, de te_ is always frightfully possible) were to do this kind of
thing under a European roof, it would induce some disagreeable
reflections as to the ethical results of democracy. I read the other day
in print the remark of a British tourist who had eaten large quantities
of our salt, such as it is (I grant it has not the European savor), that
the Americans were hospitable, no doubt, but that it was partly because
they longed for foreign visitors to relieve the tedium of their
dead-level existence, and partly from ostentation. What shall we do?
Shall we close our doors? Not I, for one, if I should so have forfeited
the friendship of L. S., most lovable of men. He somehow seems to find
us human, at least, and so did Clough, whose poetry will one of these
days, perhaps, be found to have been the best utterance in verse of this
generation.

The fine old Tory aversion of former times was not hard to bear. There
was something even refreshing in it, as in a northeaster to a hardy
temperament. When a British parson, traveling in Newfoundland while the
slash of our separation was still raw, after prophesying a glorious
future for an island that continued to dry its fish under the ægis of
Saint George, glances disdainfully over his spectacles in parting at the
U. S. A., and forebodes for them a "speedy relapse into barbarism," now
that they have madly cut themselves off from the humanizing influences
of Britain, I smile with barbarian self-conceit. But this kind of thing
became by degrees an unpleasant anachronism. For meanwhile the young
giant was growing, was beginning indeed to feel tight in his clothes,
was obliged to let in a gore here and there in Texas, in California, in
New Mexico, in Alaska, and had the scissors and needle and thread ready
for Canada when the time came. His shadow loomed like a Brocken-specter
over against Europe,--the shadow of what they were coming to, that was
the unpleasant part of it. Even in such misty image as they had of him,
it was painfully evident that his clothes were not of any cut hitherto
fashionable, nor conceivable by a Bond Street tailor,--and this in an
age, too, when everything depends upon clothes, when, if we do not keep
up appearances, the seeming-solid frame of this universe, nay, your very
God, would slump into himself, like a mockery king of snow, being
nothing, after all, but a prevailing mode. From this moment the young
giant assumed the respectable aspect of a phenomenon, to be got rid of
if possible, but at any rate as legitimate a subject of human study as
the glacial period or the silurian what-d'ye-call-ems. If the man of the
primeval drift-heaps be so absorbingly interesting, why not the man of
the drift that is just beginning, of the drift into whose irresistible
current we are just being sucked whether we will or no? If I were in
their place, I confess I should not be frightened. Man has survived so
much, and contrived to be comfortable on this planet after surviving so
much! I am something of a protestant in matters of government also, and
am willing to get rid of vestments and ceremonies and to come down to
bare benches, if only faith in God take the place of a general agreement
to profess confidence in ritual and sham. Every mortal man of us holds
stock in the only public debt that is absolutely sure of payment, and
that is the debt of the Maker of this Universe to the Universe he has
made. I have no notion of selling out my shares in a panic.

It was something to have advanced even to the dignity of a phenomenon,
and yet I do not know that the relation of the individual American to
the individual European was bettered by it; and that, after all, must
adjust itself comfortably before there can be a right understanding
between the two. We had been a desert, we became a museum. People came
hither for scientific and not social ends. The very cockney could not
complete his education without taking a vacant stare at us in passing.
But the sociologists (I think they call themselves so) were the hardest
to bear. There was no escape. I have even known a professor of this
fearful science to come disguised in petticoats. We were cross-examined
as a chemist cross-examines a new substance. Human? yes, all the
elements are present, though abnormally combined. Civilized? Hm! that
needs a stricter assay. No entomologist could take a more friendly
interest in a strange bug. After a few such experiences, I, for one,
have felt as if I were merely one of those horrid things preserved in
spirits (and very bad spirits, too) in a cabinet. I was not the
fellow-being of these explorers: I was a curiosity; I was a _specimen_.
Hath not an American organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions
even as a European hath? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle
us, do we not laugh? I will not keep on with Shylock to his next
question but one.

Till after our Civil War it never seemed to enter the head of any
foreigner, especially of any Englishman, that an American had what could
be called a country, except as a place to eat, sleep, and trade in. Then
it seemed to strike them suddenly. "By Jove, you know, fellahs don't
fight like that for a shop-till!" No, I rather think not. To Americans
America is something more than a promise and an expectation. It has a
past and traditions of its own. A descent from men who sacrificed
everything and came hither, not to better their fortunes, but to plant
their idea in virgin soil, should be a good pedigree. There was never
colony save this that went forth, not to seek gold, but God. Is it not
as well to have sprung from such as these as from some burly beggar who
came over with Wilhelmus Conquestor, unless, indeed, a line grow better
as it runs farther away from stalwart ancestors? And for our history, it
is dry enough, no doubt, in the books, but, for all that, is of a kind
that tells in the blood. I have admitted that Carlyle's sneer had a show
of truth in it. But what does he himself, like a true Scot, admire in
the Hohenzollerns? First of all, that they were _canny_, a thrifty,
forehanded race. Next, that they made a good fight from generation to
generation with the chaos around them. That is precisely the battle
which the English race on this continent has been carrying doughtily on
for two centuries and a half. Doughtily and silently, for you cannot
hear in Europe "that crash, the death-song of the perfect tree," that
has been going on here from sturdy father to sturdy son, and making this
continent habitable for the weaker Old World breed that has swarmed to
it during the last half-century. If ever men did a good stroke of work
on this planet, it was the forefathers of those whom you are wondering
whether it would not be prudent to acknowledge as far-off cousins. Alas,
man of genius, to whom we owe so much, could you see nothing more than
the burning of a foul chimney in that clash of Michael and Satan which
flamed up under your very eyes?

Before our war we were to Europe but a huge mob of adventurers and
shopkeepers. Leigh Hunt expressed it well enough when he said that he
could never think of America without seeing a gigantic counter stretched
all along the seaboard. Feudalism had by degrees made commerce, the
great civilizer, contemptible. But a tradesman with sword on thigh and
very prompt of stroke was not only redoubtable, he had become
respectable also. Few people, I suspect, alluded twice to a needle in
Sir John Hawkwood's presence, after that doughty fighter had exchanged
it for a more dangerous tool of the same metal. Democracy had been
hitherto only a ludicrous effort to reverse the laws of nature by
thrusting Cleon into the place of Pericles. But a democracy that could
fight for an abstraction, whose members held life and goods cheap
compared with that larger life which we call country, was not merely
unheard of, but portentous. It was the nightmare of the Old World taking
upon itself flesh and blood, turning out to be substance and not dream.
Since the Norman crusader clanged down upon the throne of the
_porphyrogeniti_, carefully-draped appearances had never received such a
shock, had never been so rudely called on to produce their titles to the
empire of the world. Authority has had its periods not unlike those of
geology, and at last comes Man claiming kingship in right of his mere
manhood. The world of the Saurians might be in some respects more
picturesque, but the march of events is inexorable, and it is bygone.

The young giant had certainly got out of long-clothes. He had become the
_enfant terrible_ of the human household. It was not and will not be
easy for the world (especially for our British cousins) to look upon us
as grown up. The youngest of nations, its people must also be young and
to be treated accordingly, was the syllogism. Youth has its good
qualities, as people feel who are losing it, but boyishness is another
thing. We had been somewhat boyish as a nation, a little loud, a little
pushing, a little braggart. But might it not partly have been because we
felt that we had certain claims to respect that were not admitted? The
war which established our position as a vigorous nationality has also
sobered us. A nation, like a man, cannot look death in the eye for four
years without some strange reflections, without arriving at some clearer
consciousness of the stuff it is made of, without some great moral
change. Such a change, or the beginning of it, no observant person can
fail to see here. Our thought and our politics, our bearing as a people,
are assuming a manlier tone. We have been compelled to see what was weak
in democracy as well as what was strong. We have begun obscurely to
recognize that things do not go of themselves, and that popular
government is not in itself a panacea, is no better than any other form
except as the virtue and wisdom of the people make it so, and that when
men undertake to do their own kingship, they enter upon the dangers and
responsibilities as well as the privileges of the function. Above all,
it looks as if we were on the way to be persuaded that no government can
be carried on by declamation. It is noticeable also that facility of
communication has made the best English and French thought far more
directly operative here than ever before. Without being Europeanized,
our discussion of important questions in statesmanship, in political
economy, in æsthetics, is taking a broader scope and a higher tone. It
had certainly been provincial, one might almost say local, to a very
unpleasant extent. Perhaps our experience in soldiership has taught us
to value training more than we have been popularly wont. We may possibly
come to the conclusion, one of these days, that self-made men may not be
always equally skillful in the manufacture of wisdom, may not be
divinely commissioned to fabricate the higher qualities of opinion on
all possible topics of human interest.

So long as we continue to be the most common-schooled and the least
cultivated people in the world, I suppose we must consent to endure this
condescending manner of foreigners toward us. The more friendly they
mean to be the more ludicrously prominent it becomes. They can never
appreciate the immense amount of silent work that has been done here,
making this continent slowly fit for the abode of man, and which will
demonstrate itself, let us hope, in the character of the people.
Outsiders can only be expected to judge a nation by the amount it has
contributed to the civilization of the world; the amount, that is, that
can be seen and handled. A great place in history can only be achieved
by competitive examinations, nay, by a long course of them. How much new
thought have we contributed to the common stock? Till that question can
be triumphantly answered, or needs no answer, we must continue to be
simply interesting as an experiment, to be studied as a problem, and not
respected as an attained result or an accomplished solution. Perhaps, as
I have hinted, their patronizing manner toward us is the fair result of
their failing to see here anything more than a poor imitation, a
plaster-cast of Europe. And are they not partly right? If the tone of
the uncultivated American has too often the arrogance of the barbarian,
is not that of the cultivated as often vulgarly apologetic? In the
American they meet with is there the simplicity, the manliness, the
absence of sham, the sincere human nature, the sensitiveness to duty and
implied obligation, that in any way distinguishes us from what our
orators call "the effete civilization of the Old World"? Is there a
politician among us daring enough (except a Dana here and there) to risk
his future on the chance of our keeping our word with the exactness of
superstitious communities like England? Is it certain that we shall be
ashamed of a bankruptcy of honor, if we can only keep the letter of our
bond? I hope we shall be able to answer all these questions with a frank
_yes_. At any rate, we would advise our visitors that we are not merely
curious creatures, but belong to the family of man, and that, as
individuals, we are not to be always subjected to the competitive
examination above mentioned, even if we acknowledged their competence as
an examining board. Above all, we beg them to remember that America is
not to us, as to them, a mere object of external interest to be
discussed and analyzed, but _in_ us, part of our very marrow. Let them
not suppose that we conceive of ourselves as exiles from the graces and
amenities of an older date than we, though very much at home in a state
of things not yet all it might be or should be, but which we mean to
make so, and which we find both wholesome and pleasant for men (though
perhaps not for _dilettanti_) to live in. "The full tide of human
existence" may be felt here as keenly as Johnson felt it at Charing
Cross, and in a larger sense. I know one person who is singular enough
to think Cambridge the very best spot on the habitable globe.
"Doubtless God _could_ have made a better, but doubtless he never did."

It will take England a great while to get over her airs of patronage
toward us, or even passably to conceal them. She cannot help confounding
the people with the country, and regarding us as lusty juveniles. She
has a conviction that whatever good there is in us is wholly English,
when the truth is that we are worth nothing except so far as we have
disinfected ourselves of Anglicism. She is especially condescending just
now, and lavishes sugar-plums on us as if we had not outgrown them. I am
no believer in sudden conversions, especially in sudden conversions to a
favorable opinion of people who have just proved you to be mistaken in
judgment and therefore unwise in policy. I never blamed her for not
wishing well to democracy,--how should she?--but Alabamas are not
wishes. Let her not be too hasty in believing Mr. Reverdy Johnson's
pleasant words. Though there is no thoughtful man in America who would
not consider a war with England the greatest of calamities, yet the
feeling towards her here is very far from cordial, whatever our Minister
may say in the effusion that comes after ample dining. Mr. Adams, with
his famous "My Lord, this means war," perfectly represented his country.
Justly or not, we have a feeling that we have been wronged, not merely
insulted. The only sure way of bringing about a healthy relation between
the two countries is for Englishmen to clear their minds of the notion
that we are always to be treated as a kind of inferior and deported
Englishman whose nature they perfectly understand, and whose back they
accordingly stroke the wrong way of the fur with amazing perseverance.
Let them learn to treat us naturally on our merits as human beings, as
they would a German or a Frenchman, and not as if we were a kind of
counterfeit Briton whose crime appeared in every shade of difference,
and before long there would come that right feeling which we naturally
call a good understanding. The common blood, and still more the common
language, are fatal instruments of misapprehension. Let them give up
_trying_ to understand us, still more thinking that they do, and acting
in various absurd ways as the necessary consequence, for they will never
arrive at that devoutly-to-be-wished consummation, till they learn to
look at us as we are and not as they suppose us to be. Dear old
long-estranged mother-in-law, it is a great many years since we parted.
Since 1660, when you married again, you have been a stepmother to us.
Put on your spectacles, dear madam. Yes, we _have_ grown, and changed
likewise. You would not let us darken your doors, if you could help it.
We know that perfectly well. But pray, when we look to be treated as
men, don't shake that rattle in our faces, nor talk baby to us any
longer.

/p
    "Do, child, go to it grandam, child;
     Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will
     Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig!"
p/



PREFACE TO "LEAVES OF GRASS"

1855

WALT WHITMAN


America does not repel the past, or what the past has produced under its
forms, or amid other politics, or the idea of castes, or the old
religions--accepts the lesson with calmness--is not impatient because
the slough still sticks to opinions and manners in literature, while the
life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the
new forms--perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and
sleeping rooms of the house--perceives that it waits a little while in
the door--that it was fittest for its days--that its action has
descended to the stalwart and well-shaped heir who approaches--and that
he shall be fittest for his days.

The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably
the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are
essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto, the
largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler
largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that
corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is
action untied from strings, necessarily blind to particulars and
details, magnificently moving in masses. Here is the hospitality which
for ever indicates heroes. Here the performance, disdaining the trivial,
unapproach'd in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings, and
the push of its perspective, spreads with crampless and flowing
breadth, and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. One sees it
must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be
bankrupt while corn grows from the ground, or the orchards drop apples,
or the bays contain fish, or men beget children upon women.

Other states indicate themselves in their deputies--but the genius of
the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures,
nor in its ambassadors or authors, or colleges or churches or parlors,
nor even in its newspapers or inventors--but always most in the common
people, south, north, west, east, in all its States, through all its
mighty amplitude. The largeness of the nation, however, were monstrous
without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the
citizen. Not swarming states, nor streets and steamships, nor prosperous
business, nor farms, nor capital, nor learning, may suffice for the
ideal of man--nor suffice the poet. No reminiscences may suffice either.
A live nation can always cut a deep mark, and can have the best
authority the cheapest--namely, from its own soul. This is the sum of
the profitable uses of individuals or states, and of present action and
grandeur, and of the subjects of poets. (As if it were necessary to trot
back generation after generation to the eastern records! As if the
beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the
mythical! As if men do not make their mark out of any times! As if the
opening of the western continent by discovery, and what has transpired
in North and South America, were less than the small theater of the
antique, or the aimless sleep-walking of the middle ages!) The pride of
the United States leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities, and all
returns of commerce and agriculture, and all the magnitude of geography
or shows of exterior victory, to enjoy the sight and realization of
full-sized men, or one full-sized man unconquerable and simple.

The American poets are to inclose old and new, for America is the race
of races. The expression of the American poet is to be transcendent and
new. It is to be indirect, and not direct or descriptive or epic. Its
quality goes through these to much more. Let the age and wars of other
nations be chanted, and their eras and characters be illustrated, and
that finish the verse. Not so the great psalm of the republic. Here the
theme is creative, and has vista. Whatever stagnates in the flat of
custom or obedience or legislation, the great poet never stagnates.
Obedience does not master him, he masters it. High up out of reach he
stands, turning a concentrated light--he turns the pivot with his
finger--he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands, and easily
overtakes and envelopes them. The time straying toward infidelity and
confections and persiflage he withholds by steady faith. Faith is the
antiseptic of the soul--it pervades the common people and preserves
them--they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. There is
that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate
person, that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive
genius. The poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be
just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist.

The power to destroy or remould is freely used by the greatest poet, but
seldom the power of attack. What is past is past. If he does not expose
superior models, and prove himself by every step he takes, he is not
what is wanted. The presence of the great poet conquers--not parleying,
or struggling, or any prepared attempts. Now he has passed that way, see
after him! There is not left any vestige of despair, or misanthropy, or
cunning, or exclusiveness, or the ignominy of a nativity or color, or
delusion of hell or the necessity of hell--and no man thenceforward
shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin. The greatest poet
hardly knows pettiness or triviality. If he breathes into anything that
was before thought small, it dilates with the grandeur and life of the
universe. He is a seer--he is individual--he is complete in himself--the
others are as good as he, only he sees it, and they do not. He is not
one of the chorus--he does not stop for any regulation--he is the
president of regulation. What the eyesight does to the rest, he does to
the rest. Who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight? The other
senses corroborate themselves, but this is removed from any proof but
its own, and foreruns the identities of the spiritual world. A single
glance of it mocks all the investigations of man, and all the
instruments and books of the earth, and all reasoning. What is
marvelous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or
vague--after you have once just open'd the space of a peach-pit, and
given audience to far and near, and to the sunset, and had all things
enter with electric swiftness, softly and duly, without confusion or
jostling or jam?

The land and sea, the animals, fishes and birds, the sky of heaven and
the orbs, the forests, mountains and rivers, are not small themes--but
folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity
which always attach to dumb real objects--they expect him to indicate
the path between reality and their souls. Men and women perceive the
beauty well enough--probably as well as he. The passionate tenacity of
hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and
fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons,
drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old
varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty, and of a residence of
the poetic in out-door people. They can never be assisted by poets to
perceive--some may, but they never can. The poetic quality is not
marshal'd in rhyme or uniformity, or abstract addresses to things, nor
in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and
much else, and is in the soul. The profit of rhyme is that it drops
seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity that it
conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. The rhyme
and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws,
and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and roses on a
bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges,
and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. The
fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or
recitations, are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes from
beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in
conjunction in a man or woman, it is enough--the fact will prevail
through the universe; but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will
not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is
lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals,
despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid
and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue
not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take
off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of
men--go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and
with the mothers of families--re-examine all you have been told in
school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own
soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest
fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and
face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint
of your body. The poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. He
shall know that the ground is already plow'd and manured; others may not
know it, but he shall. He shall go directly to the creation. His trust
shall master the trust of everything he touches--and shall master all
attachment.

The known universe has one complete lover, and that is the greatest
poet. He consumes an eternal passion, and is indifferent which chance
happens, and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune, and
persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. What balks or breaks
others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy.
Other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his
proportions. All expected from heaven or from the highest, he is rapport
with in the sight of the daybreak, or the scenes of the winter woods, or
the presence of children playing, or with his arm round the neck of a
man or woman. His love above all love has leisure and expanse--he leaves
room ahead of himself. He is no irresolute or suspicious lover--he is
sure--he scorns intervals. His experience and the showers and thrills
are not for nothing. Nothing can jar him--suffering and darkness
cannot--death and fear cannot. To him complaint and jealousy and envy
are corpses buried and rotten in the earth--he saw them buried. The sea
is not surer of the shore, or the shore of the sea, than he is of the
fruition of his love, and of all perfection and beauty.

The fruition of beauty is no chance of miss or hit--it is as inevitable
as life--it is exact and plumb as gravitation. From the eyesight
proceeds another eyesight, and from the hearing proceeds another
hearing, and from the voice proceeds another voice, eternally curious of
the harmony of things with man. These understand the law of perfection
in masses and floods--that it is profuse and impartial--that there is
not a minute of the light or dark, nor an acre of the earth and sea,
without it--nor any direction of the sky, nor any trade or employment,
nor any turn of events. This is the reason that about the proper
expression of beauty there is precision and balance. One part does not
need to be thrust above another. The best singer is not the one who has
the most lithe and powerful organ. The pleasure of poems is not in them
that take the handsomest measure and sound.

Without effort, and without exposing in the least how it is done, the
greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and passions and
scenes and persons, some more and some less, to bear on your individual
character as you hear or read. To do this well is to compete with the
laws that pursue and follow Time. What is the purpose must surely be
there, and the clew of it must be there--and the faintest indication is
the indication of the best, and then becomes the clearest indication.
Past and present and future are not disjoin'd but join'd. The greatest
poet forms the consistence of what is to be, from what has been and is.
He drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them again on their
feet. He says to the past, Rise and walk before me that I may realize
you. He learns the lesson--he places himself where the future becomes
present. The greatest poet does not only dazzle his rays over character
and scenes and passions--he finally ascends, and finishes all--he
exhibits the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for, or what
is beyond--he glows a moment on the extremest verge. He is most
wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or frown; by that flash of the
moment of parting the one that sees it shall be encouraged or terrified
afterward for many years. The greatest poet does not moralize or make
applications of morals--he knows the soul. The soul has that measureless
pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons or deductions
but its own. But it has sympathy as measureless as its pride, and the
one balances the other, and neither can stretch too far while it
stretches in company with the other. The inmost secrets of art sleep
with the twain. The greatest poet has lain close betwixt both, and they
are vital in his style and thoughts.

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of
letters, is simplicity. Nothing is better than simplicity--nothing can
make up for excess, or for the lack of definiteness. To carry on the
heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects
their articulations, are powers neither common nor very uncommon. But to
speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the
movements of animals, and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of
trees in the woods and grass by the roadside, is the flawless triumph of
art. If you have look'd on him who has achiev'd it you have look'd on
one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times. You shall
not contemplate the flight of the gray gull over the bay, or the
mettlesome action of the blood horse, or the tall leaning of sunflowers
on their stalk, or the appearance of the sun journeying through heaven,
or the appearance of the moon afterward, with any more satisfaction than
you shall contemplate him. The great poet has less a mark'd style, and
is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or
diminution, and is the free channel of himself. He swears to his art, I
will not be meddlesome, I will not have in my writing any elegance, or
effect, or originality, to hang in the way between me and the rest like
curtains. I will have nothing hang in the way, not the richest curtains.
What I tell I tell for precisely what it is. Let who may exalt or
startle or fascinate or soothe, I will have purposes as health or heat
or snow has, and be as regardless of observation. What I experience or
portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition.
You shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me.

The old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be proved
by their unconstraint. A heroic person walks at his ease through and out
of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not. Of the
traits of the brotherhood of first-class writers, savans, musicians,
inventors and artists, nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing
from new free forms. In the need of poems, philosophy, politics,
mechanism, science, behavior, the craft of art, an appropriate native
grand opera, shipcraft, or any craft, he is greatest for ever and ever
who contributes the greatest original practical example. The cleanest
expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself, and makes
one.

The messages of great poems to each man and woman are, Come to us on
equal terms, only then can you understand us. We are no better than you,
what we inclose you inclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy. Did you
suppose there could be only one Supreme? We affirm there can be
unnumber'd Supremes, and that one does not countervail another any more
than one eyesight countervails another--and that men can be good or
grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them. What do
you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments, and the
deadliest battles and wrecks, and the wildest fury of the elements, and
the power of the sea, and the motion of Nature, and the throes of human
desires, and dignity and hate and love? It is that something in the soul
which says, Rage on, whirl on, I tread master here and everywhere--Master
of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, Master of nature
and passion and death, and of all terror and all pain.

The American bards shall be mark'd for generosity and affection, and for
encouraging competitors. They shall be Kosmos, without monopoly or
secrecy, glad to pass anything to anyone--hungry for equals night and
day. They shall not be careful of riches and privilege--they shall be
riches and privilege--they shall perceive who the most affluent man is.
The most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by
equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. The American bard
shall delineate no class of persons, nor one or two out of the strata of
interests, nor love most nor truth most, nor the soul most, nor the body
most--and not be for the Eastern States more than the Western, or the
Northern States more than the Southern.

Exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the greatest
poet, but always his encouragement and support. The outset and
remembrance are there--there the arms that lifted him first, and braced
him best--there he returns after all his goings and comings. The sailor
and traveler--the anatomist, chemist, astronomer, geologist,
phrenologist, spiritualist, mathematician, historian, and lexicographer,
are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets, and their
construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. No matter
what rises or is utter'd, they sent the seed of the conception of it--of
them and by them stand the visible proofs of souls. If there shall be
love and content between the father and the son, and if the greatness of
the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father, there shall be
love between the poet and the man of demonstrable science. In the beauty
of poems are henceforth the tuft and final applause of science.

Great is the faith of the flush of knowledge, and of the investigation
of the depths of qualities and things. Cleaving and circling here swells
the soul of the poet, yet is president of itself always. The depths are
fathomless, and therefore calm. The innocence and nakedness are
resumed--they are neither modest nor immodest. The whole theory of the
supernatural, and all that was twined with it or educed out of it,
departs as a dream. What has ever happen'd--what happens, and whatever
may or shall happen, the vital laws inclose all. They are sufficient for
any case and for all cases--none to be hurried or retarded--any special
miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme
where every motion and every spear of grass, and the frames and spirits
of men and women and all that concerns them, are unspeakably perfect
miracles, all referring to all, and each distinct and in its place. It
is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there
is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women.

Men and women, and the earth and all upon it, are to be taken as they
are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall be
unintermitted, and shall be done with perfect candor. Upon this basis
philosophy speculates, ever looking towards the poet, ever regarding the
eternal tendencies of all toward happiness, never inconsistent with what
is clear to the senses and to the soul. For the eternal tendencies of
all toward happiness make the only point of sane philosophy. Whatever
comprehends less than that--whatever is less than the laws of light and
of astronomical motion--or less than the laws that follow the thief, the
liar, the glutton and the drunkard, through this life and doubtless
afterward--or less than vast stretches of time, or the slow formation of
density, or the patient upheaving of strata--is of no account. Whatever
would put God in a poem or system of philosophy as contending against
some being or influence, is also of no account. Sanity and ensemble
characterize the great master--spoilt in one principle, all is spoilt.
The great master has nothing to do with miracles. He sees health for
himself in being one of the mass--he sees the hiatus in singular
eminence. To the perfect shape comes common ground. To be under the
general law is great, for that is to correspond with it. The master
knows that he is unspeakably great, and that all are unspeakably
great--that nothing, for instance, is greater than to conceive children,
and bring them up well--that to be is just as great as to perceive or
tell.

In the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is
indispensable. Liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever man and
woman exist--but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest more
than from poets. They are the voice and exposition of liberty. They out
of ages are worthy the grand idea--to them it is confided, and they must
sustain it. Nothing has precedence of it, and nothing can warp or
degrade it.

As the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concenter in the real body,
and in the pleasure of things, they possess the superiority of
genuineness over all fiction and romance. As they emit themselves, facts
are shower'd over with light--the daylight is lit with more volatile
light--the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many
fold. Each precise object or condition or combination or process
exhibits a beauty--the multiplication table its--old age its--the
carpenter's trade its--the grand opera its--the huge-hull'd clean-shap'd
New York clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams with unmatch'd
beauty--the American circles and large harmonies of government gleam
with theirs--and the commonest definite intentions and actions with
theirs. The poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and
coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. They are of
use--they dissolve poverty from its need, and riches from its conceit.
You large proprietor, they say, shall not realize or perceive more than
anyone else. The owner of the library is not he who holds a legal title
to it, having bought and paid for it. Anyone and everyone is owner of
the library, (indeed he or she alone is owner,) who can read the same
through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in
whom they enter with ease, and make supple and powerful and rich and
large.

These American States, strong and healthy and accomplish'd, shall
receive no pleasure from violations of natural models, and must not
permit them. In paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood,
or in the illustrations of books or newspapers, or in the patterns of
woven stuffs, or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or
to put upon cornices or monuments, or on the prows or sterns of ships,
or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which
distorts honest shapes, or which creates unearthly beings or places or
contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. Of the human form especially,
it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. Of ornaments to a work
nothing outre can be allow'd--but those ornaments can be allow'd that
conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the
nature of the work, and come irrepressibly from it, and are necessary to
the completion of the work. Most works are most beautiful without
ornament. Exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology. Clean and
vigorous children are jetted and conceiv'd only in those communities
where the models of natural forms are public every day. Great genius and
the people of these States must never be demean'd to romances. As soon
as histories are properly told, no more need of romances.

The great poets are to be known by the absence in them of tricks, and by
the justification of perfect personal candor. All faults may be forgiven
of him who has perfect candor. Henceforth let no man of us lie, for we
have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world, and that there
is no single exception, and that never since our earth gather'd itself
in a mass have deceit or subterfuge or prevarication attracted its
smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade--and that through the
enveloping wealth and rank of a state, or the whole republic of states,
a sneak or sly person shall be discover'd and despised--and that the
soul has never once been fool'd and never can be fool'd--and thrift
without the loving nod of the soul is only a fœtid puff--and there
never grew up in any of the continents of the globe, nor upon any planet
or satellite, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes,
nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in any stretch of
abeyance or action of vitality, nor in any process of formation or
reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth.

Extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large hope and
comparison and fondness for women and children, large alimentiveness and
destructiveness and causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of
nature, and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs,
are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be parts of the
greatest poet from his birth out of his mother's womb, and from her
birth out of her mother's. Caution seldom goes far enough. It has been
thought that the prudent citizen was the citizen who applied himself to
solid gains, and did well for himself and for his family, and completed
a lawful life without debt or crime. The greatest poet sees and admits
these economies as he sees the economies of food and sleep, but has
higher notions of prudence than to think he gives much when he gives a
few slight attentions at the latch of the gate. The premises of the
prudence of life are not the hospitality of it, or the ripeness and
harvest of it. Beyond the independence of a little sum laid aside for
burial-money, and of a few clap-boards around and shingles overhead on a
lot of American soil own'd, and the easy dollars that supply the year's
plain clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence of the abandonment of
such a great being as a man is, to the toss and pallor of years of
money-making, with all their scorching days and icy nights, and all
their stifling deceits and underhand dodgings, or infinitesimals of
parlors, or shameless stuffing while others starve, and all the loss of
the bloom and odor of the earth, and of the flowers and atmosphere, and
of the sea, and of the true taste of the women and men you pass or have
to do with in youth or middle age, and the issuing sickness and
desperate revolt at the close of a life without elevation or naïveté,
(even if you have achiev'd a secure 10,000 a year, or election to
Congress or the Governorship,) and the ghastly chatter of a death
without serenity or majesty, is the great fraud upon modern civilization
and forethought, blotching the surface and system which civilization
undeniably drafts, and moistening with tears the immense features it
spreads and spreads with such velocity before the reach'd kisses of the
soul.

Ever the right explanation remains to be made about prudence. The
prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteem'd life
appears too faint for the eye to observe at all, when little and large
alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable for
immortality. What is the wisdom that fills the thinness of a year, or
seventy or eighty years--to the wisdom spaced out by ages, and coming
back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents, and
the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can look, in every
direction, running gayly toward you? Only the soul is of itself--all
else has reference to what ensues. All that a person does or thinks is
of consequence. Nor can the push of charity or personal force ever be
anything else than the profoundest reason, whether it brings argument to
hand or no. No specification is necessary--to add or subtract or divide
is in vain. Little or big, learn'd or unlearn'd, white or black, legal
or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the windpipe
to the last expiration out of it, all that a male or female does that is
vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit to him or her
in the unshakable order of the universe, and through the whole scope of
it forever. The prudence of the greatest poet answers at last the
craving and glut of the soul, puts off nothing, permits no let-up for
its own case or any case, has no particular sabbath or judgment day,
divides not the living from the dead, or the righteous from the
unrighteous, is satisfied with the present, matches every thought or act
by its correlative, and knows no possible forgiveness or deputed
atonement.

The direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is to-day. If he
does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic
tides--if he be not himself the age transfigur'd, and if to him is not
open'd the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations
and processes, and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of
time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in
the swimming shapes of to-day, and is held by the ductile anchors of
life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall
be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour,
and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave--let him merge
in the general run, and wait his development.

Still the final test of poems, or any character or work, remains. The
prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead, and judges performer or
performance after the changes of time. Does it live through them? Does
it still hold on untired? Will the same style, and the direction of
genius to similar points, be satisfactory now? Have the marches of tens
and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the right
hand and the left hand for his sake? Is he beloved long and long after
he is buried? Does the young man think often of him? and the young woman
think often of him? and do the middle-aged and the old think of him?

A great poem is for ages and ages in common, and for all degrees and
complexions, and all departments and sects, and for a woman as much as a
man, and a man as much as a woman. A great poem is no finish to a man or
woman, but rather a beginning. Has anyone fancied he could sit at last
under some due authority, and rest satisfied with explanations, and
realize, and be content and full? To no such terminus does the greatest
poet bring--he brings neither cessation nor shelter'd fatness and ease.
The touch of him, like Nature, tells in action. Whom he takes he takes
with firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattain'd--thenceforward
is no rest--they see the space and ineffable sheen that turn the old
spots and lights into dead vacuums. Now there shall be a man cohered out
of tumult and chaos--the elder encourages the younger and shows him
how--they two shall launch off fearlessly together till the new world
fits an orbit for itself, and looks unabash'd on the lesser orbits of
the stars, and sweeps through the ceaseless rings, and shall never be
quiet again.

There will soon be no more priests. Their work is done. A new order
shall arise, and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall
be his own priest. They shall find their inspiration in real objects
to-day, symptoms of the past and future. They shall not deign to defend
immortality or God, or the perfection of things, or liberty, or the
exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. They shall arise in America,
and be responded to from the remainder of the earth.

The English language befriends the grand American expression--it is
brawny enough, and limber and full enough. On the tough stock of a race
who through all change of circumstance was never without the idea of
political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted
the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues. It
is the powerful language of resistance--it is the dialect of common
sense. It is the speech of the proud and melancholy races, and of all
who aspire. It is the chosen tongue to express growth, faith,
self-esteem, freedom, justice, equality, friendliness, amplitude,
prudence, decision, and courage. It is the medium that shall wellnigh
express the inexpressible.

No great literature nor any like style of behavior or oratory, or social
intercourse or household arrangements, or public institutions, or the
treatment by bosses of employ'd people, nor executive detail, or detail
of the army and navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts, or police or
tuition or architecture, or songs or amusements, can long elude the
jealous and passionate instinct of American standards. Whether or no the
sign appears from the mouths of the people, it throbs a live
interrogation in every freeman's and freewoman's heart, after that which
passes by, or this built to remain. Is it uniform with my country? Are
its disposals without ignominious distinctions? Is it for the
ever-growing communes of brothers and lovers, large, well united, proud,
beyond the old models, generous beyond all models? Is it something grown
fresh out of the fields, or drawn from the sea for use to me to-day
here? I know that what answers for me, an American, in Texas, Ohio,
Canada, must answer for any individual or nation that serves for a part
of my materials. Does this answer? Is it for the nursing of the young of
the republic? Does it solve readily with the sweet milk of the nipples
of the breasts of the Mother of Many Children?

America prepares with composure and good-will for the visitors that have
sent word. It is not intellect that is to be their warrant and welcome.
The talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the
erudite, are not unappreciated--they fall in their place and do their
work. The soul of the nation also does its work. It rejects none, it
permits all. Only toward the like of itself will it advance half-way. An
individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make
a superb nation. The soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest
nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets.



AMERICANISM IN LITERATURE

THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON


The voyager from Europe who lands upon our shores perceives a difference
in the sky above his head; the height seems loftier, the zenith more
remote, the horizon-wall more steep; the moon appears to hang in the
middle air, beneath a dome that arches far beyond it. The sense of
natural symbolism is so strong in us, that the mind seeks a spiritual
significance in this glory of the atmosphere. It is not enough to find
the sky enlarged, and not the mind,--_cœlum, non animum_. One wishes
to be convinced that here the intellectual man inhales a deeper breath,
and walks with bolder tread; that philosopher and artist are here more
buoyant, more fresh, more fertile; that the human race has here escaped
at one bound from the despondency of ages, as from their wrongs.

And the true and healthy Americanism is to be found, let us believe, in
this attitude of hope; an attitude not necessarily connected with
culture nor with the absence of culture, but with the consciousness of a
new impulse given to all human progress. The most ignorant man may feel
the full strength and heartiness of the American idea, and so may the
most accomplished scholar. It is a matter of regret if thus far we have
mainly had to look for our Americanism and our scholarship in very
different quarters, and if it has been a rare delight to find the two in
one.

It seems unspeakably important that all persons among us, and especially
the student and the writer, should be pervaded with Americanism.
Americanism includes the faith that national self-government is not a
chimera, but that, with whatever inconsistencies and drawbacks, we are
steadily establishing it here. It includes the faith that to this good
thing all other good things must in time be added. When a man is
heartily imbued with such a national sentiment as this, it is as marrow
in his bones and blood in his veins. He may still need culture, but he
has the basis of all culture. He is entitled to an imperturbable
patience and hopefulness, born of a living faith. All that is scanty in
our intellectual attainments, or poor in our artistic life, may then be
cheerfully endured: if a man sees his house steadily rising on sure
foundations, he can wait or let his children wait for the cornice and
the frieze. But if one happens to be born or bred in America without
this wholesome confidence, there is no happiness for him; he has his
alternative between being unhappy at home and unhappy abroad; it is a
choice of martyrdoms for himself, and a certainty of martyrdom for his
friends.

Happily, there are few among our cultivated men in whom this oxygen of
American life is wholly wanting. Where such exist, for them the path
across the ocean is easy, and the return how hard! Yet our national
character develops slowly; we are aiming at something better than our
English fathers, and we pay for it by greater vacillations and
vibrations of movement. The Englishman's strong point is a vigorous
insularity which he carries with him, portable and sometimes
insupportable. The American's more perilous gift is a certain power of
assimilation, so that he acquires something from every man he meets, but
runs the risk of parting with something in return. For the result,
greater possibilities of culture, balanced by greater extremes of
sycophancy and meanness. Emerson says that the Englishman of all men
stands most firmly on his feet. But it is not the whole of man's
mission to be found standing, even at the most important post. Let him
take one step forward,--and in that advancing figure you have the
American.

We are accustomed to say that the war and its results have made us a
nation, subordinated local distinctions, cleared us of our chief shame,
and given us the pride of a common career. This being the case, we may
afford to treat ourselves to a little modest self-confidence. Those
whose faith in the American people carried them hopefully through the
long contest with slavery will not be daunted before any minor
perplexities of Chinese immigrants or railway brigands or enfranchised
women. We are equal to these things; and we shall also be equal to the
creation of a literature. We need intellectual culture inexpressibly,
but we need a hearty faith still more. "Never yet was there a great
migration that did not result in a new form of national genius." But we
must guard against both croakers and boasters; and above all, we must
look beyond our little Boston or New York or Chicago or San Francisco,
and be willing citizens of the great Republic.

The highest aim of most of our literary journals has thus far been to
appear English, except where some diverging experimentalist has said,
"Let us be German," or "Let us be French." This was inevitable; as
inevitable as a boy's first imitations of Byron or Tennyson. But it
necessarily implied that our literature must, during this epoch, be
second-rate. We need to become national, not by any conscious effort,
such as implies attitudinizing and constraint, but by simply accepting
our own life. It is not desirable to go out of one's way to be original,
but it is to be hoped that it may lie in one's way. Originality is
simply a fresh pair of eyes. If you want to astonish the whole world,
said Rahel, tell the simple truth. It is easier to excuse a thousand
defects in the literary man who proceeds on this faith, than to forgive
the one great defect of imitation in the purist who seeks only to be
English. As Wasson has said, "The Englishman is undoubtedly a wholesome
figure to the mental eye; but will not twenty million copies of him do,
for the present?" We must pardon something to the spirit of liberty. We
must run some risks, as all immature creatures do, in the effort to use
our own limbs. Professor Edward Channing used to say that it was a bad
sign for a college boy to write too well; there should be exuberances
and inequalities. A nation which has but just begun to create a
literature must sow some wild oats. The most tiresome vaingloriousness
may be more hopeful than hypercriticism and spleen. The follies of the
absurdest spread-eagle orator may be far more promising, because they
smack more of the soil, than the neat Londonism of the city editor who
dissects him.

It is but a few years since we have dared to be American in even the
details and accessories of our literary work; to make our allusions to
natural objects real not conventional; to ignore the nightingale and
skylark, and look for the classic and romantic on our own soil. This
change began mainly with Emerson. Some of us can recall the bewilderment
with which his verses on the humblebee, for instance, were received,
when the choice of subject caused as much wonder as the treatment. It
was called "a foolish affectation of the familiar." Happily the
atmosphere of distance forms itself rapidly in a new land, and the poem
has now as serene a place in literature as if Andrew Marvell had written
it. The truly cosmopolitan writer is not he who carefully denudes his
work of everything occasional and temporary, but he who makes his local
coloring forever classic through the fascination of the dream it tells.
Reason, imagination, passion, are universal; but sky, climate, costume,
and even type of human character, belong to some one spot alone till
they find an artist potent enough to stamp their associations on the
memory of all the world. Whether his work be picture or symphony, legend
or lyric, is of little moment. The spirit of the execution is all in
all.

As yet, we Americans have hardly begun to think of the details of
execution in any art. We do not aim at perfection of detail even in
engineering, much less in literature. In the haste of our national life,
most of our intellectual work is done at a rush, is something inserted
in the odd moments of the engrossing pursuit. The popular preacher
becomes a novelist; the editor turns his paste-pot and scissors to the
compilation of a history; the same man must be poet, wit,
philanthropist, and genealogist. We find a sort of pleasure in seeing
this variety of effort, just as the bystanders like to see a
street-musician adjust every joint in his body to a separate instrument,
and play a concerted piece with the whole of himself. To be sure, he
plays each part badly, but it is such a wonder he should play them all!
Thus, in our rather hurried and helter-skelter training, the man is
brilliant, perhaps; his main work is well done; but his secondary work
is slurred. The book sells, no doubt, by reason of the author's
popularity in other fields; it is only the tone of our national
literature that suffers. There is nothing in American life that can make
concentration cease to be a virtue. Let a man choose his pursuit, and
make all else count for recreation only. Goethe's advice to Eckermann is
infinitely more important here than it ever was in Germany: "Beware of
dissipating your powers; strive constantly to concentrate them. Genius
thinks it can do whatever it sees others doing, but it is sure to repent
of every ill-judged outlay."

In one respect, however, this desultory activity is an advantage: it
makes men look in a variety of directions for a standard. As each sect
in religion helps to protect us from some other sect, so every mental
tendency is the limitation of some other. We need the English culture,
but we do not need it more evidently than we need the German, the
French, the Greek, the Oriental. In prose literature, for instance, the
English contemporary models are not enough. There is an admirable vigor
and heartiness, a direct and manly tone; King Richard still lives; but
Saladin also had his fine sword-play; let us see him. There are the
delightful French qualities,--the atmosphere where literary art means
fineness of touch. "Où il n'y a point de délicatesse, il n'y a point de
littérature. Un écrit où ne se recontrent que de la force et un certain
feu sans éclat n'annonce que le caractère." But there is something in
the English climate which seems to turn the fine edge of any very choice
scymitar till it cuts Saladin's own fingers at last.

God forbid that I should disparage this broad Anglo-Saxon manhood which
is the basis of our national life. I knew an American mother who sent
her boy to Rugby School in England, in the certainty, as she said, that
he would there learn two things,--to play cricket and to speak the
truth. He acquired both thoroughly, and she brought him home for what
she deemed, in comparison, the ornamental branches. We cannot spare the
Englishman from our blood, but it is our business to make him more than
an Englishman. That iron must become steel; finer, harder, more elastic,
more polished. For this end the English stock was transferred from an
island to a continent, and mixed with new ingredients, that it might
lose its quality of coarseness, and take a more delicate grain.

As yet, it must be owned, this daring expectation is but feebly
reflected in our books. In looking over any collection of American
poetry, for instance, one is struck with the fact that it is not so much
faulty as inadequate. Emerson set free the poetic intuition of America,
Hawthorne its imagination. Both looked into the realm of passion,
Emerson with distrust, Hawthorne with eager interest; but neither
thrilled with its spell, and the American poet of passion is yet to
come. How tame and manageable are wont to be the emotions of our bards,
how placid and literary their allusions! There is no baptism of fire; no
heat that breeds excess. Yet it is not life that is grown dull, surely;
there are as many secrets in every heart, as many skeletons in every
closet, as in any elder period of the world's career. It is the
interpreters of life who are found wanting, and that not on this soil
alone, but throughout the Anglo-Saxon race. It is not just to say, as
someone has said, that our language has not in this generation produced
a love-song, for it has produced Browning; but was it in England or in
Italy that he learned to sound the depths of all human emotion?

And it is not to verse that this temporary check of ardor applies. It is
often said that prose fiction now occupies the place held by the drama
during the Elizabethan age. Certainly this modern product shows
something of the brilliant profusion of that wondrous flowering of
genius; but here the resemblance ends. Where in our imaginative
literature does one find the concentrated utterance, the intense and
breathing life, the triumphs and despairs, the depth of emotion, the
tragedy, the thrill, that meet one everywhere in those Elizabethan
pages? What impetuous and commanding men are these, what passionate
women; how they love and hate, struggle and endure; how they play with
the world; what a trail of fire they leave behind them as they pass by!
Turn now to recent fiction. Dickens's people are amusing and lovable, no
doubt; Thackeray's are wicked and witty; but how under-sized they look,
and how they loiter on the mere surfaces of life, compared, I will not
say with Shakespeare's, but even with Chapman's and Webster's men. Set
aside Hawthorne in America, with perhaps Charlotte Brontë and George
Eliot in England, and there would scarcely be a fact in prose literature
to show that we modern Anglo-Saxons regard a profound human emotion as a
thing worth the painting. Who now dares delineate a lover, except with
good-natured pitying sarcasm, as in _David Copperfield_ or _Pendennis_?
In the Elizabethan period, with all its unspeakable coarseness, hot
blood still ran in the veins of literature; lovers burned and suffered
and were men. And what was true of love was true of all the passions of
the human soul.

In this respect, as in many others, France has preserved more of the
artistic tradition. The common criticism, however, is, that in modern
French literature, as in the Elizabethan, the play of feeling is too
naked and obvious, and that the Puritan self-restraint is worth more
than all that dissolute wealth. I believe it; and here comes in the
intellectual worth of America. Puritanism was a phase, a discipline, a
hygiene; but we cannot remain always Puritans. The world needed that
moral bracing, even for its art; but after all, life is not impoverished
by being ennobled; and in a happier age, with a larger faith, we may
again enrich ourselves with poetry and passion, while wearing that
heroic girdle still around us. Then the next blossoming of the world's
imagination need not bear within itself, like all the others, the seeds
of an epoch of decay.

I utterly reject the position taken by Matthew Arnold, that the Puritan
spirit in America was essentially hostile to literature and art. Of
course the forest pioneer cannot compose orchestral symphonies, nor the
founder of a state carve statues. But the thoughtful and scholarly men
who created the Massachusetts Colony brought with them the traditions of
their universities, and left these embodied in a college. The Puritan
life was only historically inconsistent with culture; there was no
logical antagonism. Indeed, that life had in it much that was congenial
to art, in its enthusiasm and its truthfulness. Take these Puritan
traits, employ them in a more genial sphere, add intellectual training
and a sunny faith, and you have a soil suited to art above all others.
To deny it is to see in art only something frivolous and insincere. The
American writer in whom the artistic instinct was strongest came of
unmixed Puritan stock. Major John Hathorne, in 1692, put his offenders
on trial, and generally convicted and hanged them all. Nathaniel
Hawthorne held his more spiritual tribunal two centuries later, and his
keener scrutiny found some ground of vindication for each one. The
fidelity, the thoroughness, the conscientious purpose, were the same in
each. Both sought to rest their work, as all art and all law must rest,
upon the absolute truth. The writer kept, no doubt, something of the
somberness of the magistrate; each, doubtless, suffered in the woes he
studied; and as the one "had a knot of pain in his forehead all winter"
while meditating the doom of Arthur Dimmesdale, so may the other have
borne upon his own brow the trace of Martha Corey's grief.

No, it does not seem to me that the obstacle to a new birth of
literature and art in America lies in the Puritan tradition, but rather
in the timid and faithless spirit that lurks in the circles of culture,
and still holds something of literary and academic leadership in the
homes of the Puritans. What are the ghosts of a myriad Blue Laws
compared with the transplanted cynicism of one "Saturday Review"? How
can any noble literature germinate where young men are habitually taught
that there is no such thing as originality, and that nothing remains for
us in this effete epoch of history but the mere recombining of thoughts
which sprang first from braver brains? It is melancholy to see young men
come forth from the college walls with less enthusiasm than they carried
in; trained in a spirit which is in this respect worse than English
toryism--that is, does not even retain a hearty faith in the past. It is
better that a man should have eyes in the back of his head than that he
should be taught to sneer at even a retrospective vision. One may
believe that the golden age is behind us or before us, but alas for the
forlorn wisdom of him who rejects it altogether! It is not the climax of
culture that a college graduate should emulate the obituary praise
bestowed by Cotton Mather on the Rev. John Mitchell of Cambridge, "a
truly aged young man." Better a thousand times train a boy on Scott's
novels or the Border Ballads than educate him to believe, on the one
side, that chivalry was a cheat and the troubadours imbeciles, and on
the other hand, that universal suffrage is an absurdity and the one real
need is to get rid of our voters. A great crisis like a civil war brings
men temporarily to their senses, and the young resume the attitude
natural to their years, in spite of their teachers; but it is a sad
thing when, in seeking for the generous impulses of youth, we have to
turn from the public sentiment of the colleges to that of the workshops
and the farms.

It is a thing not to be forgotten, that for a long series of years the
people of our Northern States were habitually in advance of their
institutions of learning, in courage and comprehensiveness of thought.
There were long years during which the most cultivated scholar, so soon
as he embraced an unpopular opinion, was apt to find the college doors
closed against him, and only the country lyceum--the people's
college--left open. Slavery had to be abolished before the most
accomplished orator of the nation could be invited to address the
graduates of his own university. The first among American scholars was
nominated year after year, only to be rejected, before the academic
societies of his own neighborhood. Yet during all that time the rural
lecture associations showered their invitations on Parker and Phillips;
culture shunned them, but the common people heard them gladly. The home
of real thought was outside, not inside, the college walls. It hardly
embarrassed a professor's position if he defended slavery as a divine
institution; but he risked his place if he denounced the wrong. In those
days, if by any chance a man of bold opinions drifted into a reputable
professorship, we listened sadly to hear his voice grow faint. He
usually began to lose his faith, his courage, his toleration,--in short,
his Americanism,--when he left the ranks of the uninstructed.

That time is past; and the literary class has now come more into
sympathy with the popular heart. It is perhaps fortunate that there is
as yet but little _esprit de corps_ among our writers, so that they
receive their best sympathy, not from each other, but from the people.
Even the memory of our most original authors, as Thoreau, or Margaret
Fuller Ossoli, is apt to receive its sharpest stabs from those of the
same guild. When we American writers find grace to do our best, it is
not so much because we are sustained by each other, as that we are
conscious of a deep popular heart, slowly but surely answering back to
ours, and offering a worthier stimulus than the applause of a coterie.
If we once lose faith in our audience, the muse grows silent. Even the
apparent indifference of this audience to culture and high finish may be
in the end a wholesome influence, recalling us to those more important
things, compared to which these are secondary qualities. The
indifference is only comparative; our public prefers good writing, as it
prefers good elocution; but it values energy, heartiness, and action
more. The public is right; it is the business of the writer, as of the
speaker, to perfect the finer graces without sacrificing things more
vital. "She was not a good singer," says some novelist of his heroine,
"but she sang with an inspiration such as good singers rarely indulge
in." Given those positive qualities, and I think that a fine execution
does not hinder acceptance in America, but rather aids it. Where there
is beauty of execution alone, a popular audience, even in America, very
easily goes to sleep. And in such matters, as the French actor, Samson,
said to the young dramatist, "sleep is an opinion."

It takes more than grammars and dictionaries to make a literature. "It
is the spirit in which we act that is the great matter," Goethe says.
_Der Geist aus dem wir handeln ist das Höchste._ Technical training may
give the negative merits of style, as an elocutionist may help a public
speaker by ridding him of tricks. But the positive force of writing or
of speech must come from positive sources,--ardor, energy, depth of
feeling or of thought. No instruction ever gave these, only the
inspiration of a great soul, a great need, or a great people. We all
know that a vast deal of oxygen may go into the style of a man; we see
in it not merely what books he has read, what company he has kept, but
also the food he eats, the exercise he takes, the air he breathes. And
so there is oxygen in the collective literature of a nation, and this
vital element proceeds, above all else, from liberty. For want of this
wholesome oxygen, the voice of Victor Hugo comes to us uncertain and
spasmodic, as of one in an alien atmosphere where breath is pain; for
want of it, the eloquent English tones that at first sounded so clear
and bell-like now reach us only faint and muffled, and lose their music
day by day. It is by the presence of this oxygen that American
literature is to be made great. We are lost if we permit this
inspiration of our nation's life to sustain only the journalist and the
stump-speaker, while we allow the colleges and the books to be choked
with the dust of dead centuries and to pant for daily breath.

Perhaps it may yet be found that the men who are contributing most to
raise the tone of American literature are the men who have never yet
written a book and have scarcely time to read one, but by their heroic
energy in other spheres are providing exemplars for what our books shall
one day be. The man who constructs a great mechanical work helps
literature, for he gives a model which shall one day inspire us to
construct literary works as great. I do not wish to be forever outdone
by the carpet-machinery of Clinton or the grain-elevators of Chicago. We
have not yet arrived at our literature,--other things must come first;
we are busy with our railroads, perfecting the vast alimentary canal by
which the nation assimilates raw immigrants at the rate of half a
million a year. We are not yet producing, we are digesting: food now,
literary composition by and by: Shakespeare did not write _Hamlet_ at
the dinner-table. It is of course impossible to explain this to
foreigners, and they still talk of convincing, while we talk of dining.

For one, I cannot dispense with the society which we call uncultivated.
Democratic sympathies seem to be mainly a matter of vigor and health. It
seems to be the first symptom of biliousness to think that only one's
self and one's cousins are entitled to consideration and constitute the
world. Every refined person is an aristocrat in his dyspeptic moments;
when hearty and well, he demands a wider range of sympathy. It is so
tedious to live only in one circle and have only a genteel acquaintance!
Mrs. Trench, in her delightful letters, complains of the society in
Dresden, about the year 1800, because of "the impossibility, without
overstepping all bounds of social custom, of associating with any but
_noblesse_." We order that matter otherwise in America. I wish not only
to know my neighbor, the man of fashion, who strolls to his club at
noon, but also my neighbor, the wheelwright, who goes to his dinner at
the same hour. One would not wish to be unacquainted with the fair
maiden who drives by in her basket-wagon in the afternoon; nor with the
other fair maiden, who may be seen at her washtub in the morning. Both
are quite worth knowing; both are good, sensible, dutiful girls: the
young laundress is the better mathematician, because she has gone
through the grammar school; but the other has the better French accent,
because she has spent half her life in Paris. They offer a variety, at
least, and save from that monotony which besets any set of people when
seen alone. There was much reason in Horace Walpole's coachman, who,
having driven the maids of honor all his life, bequeathed his earnings
to his son, on condition that he should never marry a maid of honor.

I affirm that democratic society, the society of the future, enriches
and does not impoverish human life, and gives more, not less, material
for literary art. Distributing culture through all classes, it
diminishes class-distinction and develops individuality. Perhaps it is
the best phenomenon of American life, thus far, that the word
"gentleman," which in England still designates a social order, is here
more apt to refer to personal character. When we describe a person as a
gentleman, we usually refer to his manners, morals, and education, not
to his property or birth; and this change alone is worth the
transplantation across the Atlantic. The use of the word "lady" is yet
more comprehensive, and therefore more honorable still; we sometimes
see, in a shopkeeper's advertisement, "Saleslady wanted." No doubt the
mere fashionable novelist loses terribly by the change: when all
classes may wear the same dress-coat, what is left for him? But he who
aims to depict passion and character gains in proportion; his material
is increased tenfold. The living realities of American life ought to
come in among the tiresome lay-figures of average English fiction like
Steven Lawrence into the London drawing-room: tragedy must resume its
grander shape, and no longer turn on the vexed question whether the
daughter of this or that matchmaker shall marry the baronet. It is the
characteristic of a real book that, though the scene be laid in courts,
their whole machinery might be struck out and the essential interest of
the plot remain the same. In Auerbach's _On the Heights_, for instance,
the social heights might be abolished and the moral elevation would be
enough. The play of human emotion is a thing so absorbing, that the
petty distinctions of cottage and castle become as nothing in its
presence. Why not waive these small matters in advance, then, and go
straight to the real thing?

The greatest transatlantic successes which American novelists have yet
attained--those won by Cooper and Mrs. Stowe--have come through a daring
Americanism of subject, which introduced in each case a new figure to
the European world,--first the Indian, then the negro. Whatever the
merit of the work, it was plainly the theme which conquered. Such
successes are not easily to be repeated, for they were based on
temporary situations never to recur. But they prepare the way for higher
triumphs to be won by a profounder treatment,--the introduction into
literature, not of new tribes alone, but of the American spirit. To
analyze combinations of character that only our national life produces,
to portray dramatic situations that belong to a clearer social
atmosphere,--this is the higher Americanism. Of course, to cope with
such themes in such a spirit is less easy than to describe a foray or a
tournament, or to multiply indefinitely such still-life pictures as the
stereotyped English or French society affords; but the thing when once
done is incomparably nobler. It may be centuries before it is done: no
matter. It will be done, and with it will come a similar advance along
the whole line of literary labor, like the elevation which we have seen
in the whole quality of scientific work in this country within the last
twenty years.

We talk idly about the tyranny of the ancient classics, as if there were
some special peril about it, quite distinct from all other tyrannies.
But if a man is to be stunted by the influence of a master, it makes no
difference whether that master lived before or since the Christian
epoch. One folio volume is as ponderous as another, if it crushes down
the tender germs of thought. There is no great choice between the
volumes of the Encyclopædia. It is not important to know whether a man
reads Homer or Dante: the essential point is whether he believes the
world to be young or old; whether he sees as much scope for his own
inspiration as if never a book had appeared in the world. So long as he
does this, he has the American spirit: no books, no travel, can
overwhelm him, for these will only enlarge his thoughts and raise his
standard of execution. When he loses this faith, he takes rank among the
copyists and the secondary, and no accident can raise him to a place
among the benefactors of mankind. He is like a man who is frightened in
battle: you cannot exactly blame him, for it may be an affair of the
temperament or of the digestion; but you are glad to let him drop to the
rear, and to close up the ranks. Fields are won by those who believe in
the winning.

/#
     [From _Americanism in Literature_. Copyright, 1871, by James R.
     Osgood & Co.]
#/



THACKERAY IN AMERICA

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS


Mr. Thackeray's visit at least demonstrates that if we are unwilling to
pay English authors for their books, we are ready to reward them
handsomely for the opportunity of seeing and hearing them. If Mr.
Dickens, instead of dining at other people's expense, and making
speeches at his own, when he came to see us, had devoted an evening or
two in the week to lecturing, his purse would have been fuller, his
feelings sweeter, and his fame fairer. It was a Quixotic crusade, that
of the Copyright, and the excellent Don has never forgiven the windmill
that broke his spear.

Undoubtedly, when it was ascertained that Mr. Thackeray was coming, the
public feeling on this side of the sea was very much divided as to his
probable reception. "He'll come and humbug us, eat our dinners, pocket
our money, and go home and abuse us, like that unmitigated snob
Dickens," said Jonathan, chafing with the remembrance of that grand ball
at the Park Theater and the Boz tableaux, and the universal wining and
dining, to which the distinguished Dickens was subject while he was our
guest.

"Let him have his say," said others, "and we will have our look. We will
pay a dollar to hear him, if we can see him at the same time; and as for
the abuse, why, it takes even more than two such cubs of the roaring
British Lion to frighten the American Eagle. Let him come, and give him
fair play."

He did come, and had fair play, and returned to England with a
comfortable pot of gold holding $12,000, and with the hope and promise
of seeing us again in September, to discourse of something not less
entertaining than the witty men and sparkling times of Anne. We think
there was no disappointment with his lectures. Those who knew his books
found the author in the lecturer. Those who did not know his books were
charmed in the lecturer by what is charming in the author--the
unaffected humanity, the tenderness, the sweetness, the genial play of
fancy, and the sad touch of truth, with that glancing stroke of satire
which, lightning-like, illumines while it withers. The lectures were
even more delightful than the books, because the tone of the voice and
the appearance of the man, the general personal magnetism, explained and
alleviated so much that would otherwise have seemed doubtful or unfair.
For those who had long felt in the writings of Thackeray a reality quite
inexpressible, there was a secret delight in finding it justified in his
speaking; for he speaks as he writes--simply, directly, without
flourish, without any cant of oratory, commending what he says by its
intrinsic sense, and the sympathetic and humane way in which it was
spoken. Thackeray is the kind of "stump orator" that would have pleased
Carlyle. He never thrusts himself between you and his thought. If his
conception of the time and his estimate of the men differ from your own,
you have at least no doubt what his view is, nor how sincere and
necessary it is to him. Mr. Thackeray considers Swift a misanthrope; he
loves Goldsmith and Steele and Harry Fielding; he has no love for
Sterne, great admiration for Pope, and alleviated admiration for
Addison. How could it be otherwise? How could Thackeray not think Swift
a misanthrope and Sterne a factitious sentimentalist? He is a man of
instincts, not of thoughts: he sees and feels. He would be
Shakespeare's call-boy, rather than dine with the Dean of St. Patrick's.
He would take a pot of ale with Goldsmith, rather than a glass of
burgundy with the "Reverend Mr. Sterne," and that simply because he is
Thackeray. He would have done it as Fielding would have done it, because
he values one genuine emotion above the most dazzling thought; because
he is, in fine, a Bohemian, "a minion of the moon," a great, sweet,
generous heart.

We say this with more unction now that we have personal proof of it in
his public and private intercourse while he was here.

The popular Thackeray-theory, before his arrival, was of a severe
satirist, who concealed scalpels in his sleeves and carried probes in
his waistcoat pockets; a wearer of masks; a scoffer and sneerer, and
general infidel of all high aims and noble character. Certainly we are
justified in saying that his presence among us quite corrected this
idea. We welcomed a friendly, genial man; not at all convinced that
speech is heaven's first law, but willing to be silent when there is
nothing to say; who decidedly refused to be lionized--not by sulking,
but by stepping off the pedestal and challenging the common sympathies
of all he met; a man who, in view of the thirty-odd editions of Martin
Farquhar Tupper, was willing to confess that every author should "think
small-beer of himself." Indeed, he has this rare quality, that his
personal impression deepens, in kind, that of his writings. The quiet
and comprehensive grasp of the fact, and the intellectual impossibility
of holding fast anything but the fact, is as manifest in the essayist
upon the wits as in the author of _Henry Esmond_ and _Vanity Fair_.
Shall we say that this is the sum of his power, and the secret of his
satire? It is not what might be, nor what we or other persons of
well-regulated minds might wish, but it is the actual state of things
that he sees and describes. How, then, can he help what we call satire,
if he accept Mrs. Rawdon Crawley's invitation and describe her party?
There was no more satire in it, so far as he is concerned, than in
painting lilies white. A full-length portrait of the fair Lady Beatrix,
too, must needs show a gay and vivid figure, superbly glittering across
the vista of those stately days. Then, should Dab and Tab, the eminent
critics, step up and demand that her eyes be a pale blue, and her
stomacher higher around the neck? Do Dab and Tab expect to gather pears
from peach-trees? Or, because their theory of dendrology convinces them
that an ideal fruit-tree would supply any fruit desired upon
application, do they denounce the non-pear-bearing peach-tree in the
columns of their valuable journal? This is the drift of the fault found
with Thackeray. He is not Fénelon, he is not Dickens, he is not Scott;
he is not poetical, he is not ideal, he is not humane; he is not Tit, he
is not Tat, complain the eminent Dabs and Tabs. Of course he is not,
because he is Thackeray--a man who describes what he sees, motives as
well as appearances--a man who believes that character is better than
talent--that there is a worldly weakness superior to worldly
wisdom--that Dick Steele may haunt the ale-house and be carried home
muzzy, and yet be a more commendable character than the reverend Dean of
St. Patrick's, who has genius enough to illuminate a century, but not
sympathy enough to sweeten a drop of beer. And he represents this in a
way that makes us see it as he does, and without exaggeration; for
surely nothing could be more simple than his story of the life of
"honest Dick Steele." If he allotted to that gentleman a consideration
disproportioned to the space he occupies in literary history, it only
showed the more strikingly how deeply the writer-lecturer's sympathy was
touched by Steele's honest humanity.

An article in our April number complained that the tendency of his view
of Anne's times was to a social laxity, which might be very exhilarating
but was very dangerous; that the lecturer's warm commendation of
fermented drinks, taken at a very early hour of the morning in
tavern-rooms and club houses, was as deleterious to the moral health of
enthusiastic young readers disposed to the literary life as the beverage
itself to their physical health.

But this is not a charge to be brought against Thackeray. It is a
quarrel with history and with the nature of literary life. Artists and
authors have always been the good fellows of the world. That mental
organization which predisposes a man to the pursuit of literature and
art is made up of talent combined with ardent social sympathy,
geniality, and passion, and leads him to taste every cup and try every
experience. There is certainly no essential necessity that this class
should be a dissipated and disreputable class, but by their very
susceptibility to enjoyment they will always be the pleasure lovers and
seekers. And here is the social compensation to the literary man for the
surrender of those chances of fortune which men of other pursuits enjoy.
If he makes less money, he makes more juice out of what he does make. If
he cannot drink burgundy he can quaff the nut-brown ale; while the most
brilliant wit, the most salient fancy, the sweetest sympathy, the most
genial culture, shall sparkle at his board more radiantly than a silver
service, and give him the spirit of the tropics and the Rhine, whose
fruits are on other tables. The golden light that transfigures talent
and illuminates the world, and which we call genius, is erratic and
erotic; and while in Milton it is austere, and in Wordsworth cool, and
in Southey methodical, in Shakespeare it is fervent, with all the
results of fervor; in Raphael lovely, with all the excesses of love; in
Dante moody, with all the whims of caprice. The old quarrel of Lombard
Street with Grub Street is as profound as that of Osiris and Typho--it
is the difference of sympathy. The Marquis of Westminster will take good
care that no superfluous shilling escapes. Oliver Goldsmith will still
spend his last shilling upon a brave and unnecessary banquet to his
friends.

Whether this be a final fact of human organization or not, it is
certainly a fact of history. Every man instinctively believes that
Shakespeare stole deer, just as he disbelieves that Lord-mayor
Whittington ever told a lie; and the secret of that instinct is the
consciousness of the difference in organization. "Knave, I have the
power to hang ye," says somebody in one of Beaumont and Fletcher's
plays. "And I do be hanged and scorn ye," is the airy answer. "I had a
pleasant hour the other evening," said a friend to us, "over my cigar
and a book." "What book was that?" "A treatise conclusively proving the
awful consequences of smoking." De Quincey came up to London and
declared war upon opium; but during a little amnesty, in which he lapsed
into his old elysium, he wrote his best book depicting its horrors.

Our readers will not imagine that we are advocating the claims of
drunkenness nor defending social excess. We are only recognizing a fact
and stating an obvious tendency. The most brilliant illustrations of
every virtue are to be found in the literary guild, as well as the
saddest beacons of warning; yet it will often occur that the last in
talent and the first in excess of a picked company will be a man around
whom sympathy most kindly lingers. We love Goldsmith more at the head of
an ill-advised feast than Johnson and his friends leaving it, thoughtful
and generous as their conduct was. The heart despises prudence.

In the single-hearted regard we know that pity has a larger share. Yet
it is not so much that pity which is commiseration for misfortune and
deficiency, as that which is recognition of a necessary worldly
ignorance. The literary class is the most innocent of all. The contempt
of practical men for the poets is based upon a consciousness that they
are not bad enough for a bad world. To a practical man nothing is so
absurd as the lack of worldly shrewdness. The very complaint of the
literary life that it does not amass wealth and live in palaces is the
scorn of the practical man, for he cannot understand that intellectual
opacity which prevents the literary man from seeing the necessity of the
different pecuniary condition. It is clear enough to the publisher who
lays up fifty thousand a year why the author ends the year in debt. But
the author is amazed that he who deals in ideas can only dine upon
occasional chops, while the man who merely binds and sells ideas sits
down to perpetual sirloin. If they should change places, fortune would
change with them. The publisher turned author would still lay up his
thousands; the publishing author would still directly lose thousands. It
is simply because it is a matter of prudence, economy, and knowledge of
the world. Thomas Hood made his ten thousand dollars a year, but if he
lived at the rate of fifteen thousand he would hardly die rich. Mr.
Jerdan, a gentleman who, in his _Autobiography_, advises energetic youth
to betake themselves to the highway rather than to literature, was, we
understand, in the receipt of an easy income, and was a welcome guest in
pleasant houses; but living in a careless, shiftless, extravagant way,
he was presently poor, and, instead of giving his memoirs the motto,
_peccavi_, and inditing a warning, he dashes off a truculent defiance.
Practical publishers and practical men of all sorts invest their
earnings in Michigan Central or Cincinnati and Dayton instead, in steady
works and devoted days, and reap a pleasant harvest of dividends. Our
friends the authors invest in prime Havanas, Rhenish, in oyster
suppers, love and leisure, and divide a heavy percentage of headache,
dyspepsia, and debt.

This is as true a view, from another point, as the one we have already
taken. If the literary life has the pleasures of freedom, it has also
its pains. It may be willing to resign the queen's drawing-room, with
the illustrious galaxy of stars and garters, for the chamber with a
party nobler than the nobility. The author's success is of a wholly
different kind from that of the publisher, and he is thoughtless who
demands both. Mr. Roe, who sells sugar, naturally complains that Mr.
Doe, who sells molasses, makes money more rapidly. But Mr. Tennyson, who
writes poems, can hardly make the same complaint of Mr. Moxon, who
publishes them, as was very fairly shown in a number of the _Westminster
Review_, when noticing Mr. Jerdan's book.

What we have said is strictly related to Mr. Thackeray's lectures, which
discuss literature. All the men he commemorated were illustrations and
exponents of the career of letters. They all, in various ways, showed
the various phenomena of the temperament. And when in treating of them
the critic came to Steele, he found one who was one of the most striking
illustrations of one of the most universal aspects of literary life--the
simple-hearted, unsuspicious, gay gallant and genial gentleman; ready
with his sword or his pen, with a smile or a tear, the fair
representative of the social tendency of his life. It seems to us that
the Thackeray theory--the conclusion that he is a man who loves to
depict madness, and has no sensibilities to the finer qualities of
character--crumbled quite away before that lecture upon Steele. We know
that it was not considered the best; we know that many of the delighted
audience were not sufficiently familiar with literary history fully to
understand the position of the man in the lecturer's review; but, as a
key to Thackeray, it was, perhaps, the most valuable of all. We know in
literature of no more gentle treatment; we have not often encountered in
men of the most rigorous and acknowledged virtue such humane tenderness;
we have not often heard from the most clerical lips words of such
genuine Christianity. Steele's was a character which makes weakness
amiable: it was a weakness, if you will, but it was certainly
amiability, and it was a combination more attractive than many
full-panoplied excellences. It was not presented as a model. Captain
Steele in the tap-room was not painted as the ideal of virtuous manhood;
but it certainly was intimated that many admirable things were consonant
with a free use of beer. It was frankly stated that if, in that
character, virtue abounded, cakes and ale did much more abound. Captain
Richard Steele might have behaved much better than he did, but we should
then have never heard of him. A few fine essays do not float a man into
immortality, but the generous character, the heart sweet in all excesses
and under all chances, is a spectacle too beautiful and too rare to be
easily forgotten. A man is better than many books. Even a man who is not
immaculate may have more virtuous influence than the discreetest saint.
Let us remember how fondly the old painters lingered round the story of
Magdalen, and thank Thackeray for his full-length Steele.

We conceive this to be the chief result of Thackeray's visit, that he
convinced us of his intellectual integrity; he showed us how impossible
it is for him to see the world and describe it other than he does. He
does not profess cynicism, nor satirize society with malice; there is no
man more humble, none more simple; his interests are human and concrete,
not abstract. We have already said that he looks through and through at
the fact. It is easy enough, and at some future time it will be done, to
deduce the peculiarity of his writings from the character of his mind.
There is no man who masks so little as he in assuming the author. His
books are his observations reduced to writing. It seems to us as
singular to demand that Dante should be like Shakespeare as to quarrel
with Thackeray's want of what is called ideal portraiture. Even if you
thought, from reading his _Vanity Fair_, that he had no conception of
noble women, certainly after the lecture upon Swift, after all the
lectures, in which every allusion to women was so manly and delicate and
sympathetic, you thought so no longer. It is clear that his sympathy is
attracted to women--to that which is essentially womanly, feminine.
Qualities common to both sexes do not necessarily charm him because he
finds them in women. A certain degree of goodness must always be
assumed. It is only the rare flowering that inspires special praise. You
call Amelia's fondness for George Osborne foolish, fond idolatry.
Thackeray smiles, as if all love were not idolatry of the fondest
foolishness. What was Hero's--what was Francesca da Rimini's--what was
Juliet's? They might have been more brilliant women than Amelia, and
their idols of a larger mold than George, but the love was the same old
foolish, fond idolatry. The passion of love and a profound and sensible
knowledge, regard based upon prodigious knowledge of character and
appreciation of talent, are different things. What is the historic and
poetic splendor of love but the very fact, which constantly appears in
Thackeray's stories, namely, that it is a glory which dazzles and
blinds. Men rarely love the women they ought to love, according to the
ideal standards. It is this that makes the plot and mystery of life. Is
it not the perpetual surprise of all Jane's friends that she should love
Timothy instead of Thomas? and is not the courtly and accomplished
Thomas sure to surrender to some accidental Lucy without position,
wealth, style, worth, culture--without anything but heart? This is the
fact, and it reappears in Thackeray, and it gives his books that air of
reality which they possess beyond all modern story.

And it is this single perception of the fact which, simple as it is, is
the rarest intellectual quality that made his lectures so interesting.
The sun rose again upon the vanished century, and lighted those historic
streets. The wits of Queen Anne ruled the hour, and we were bidden to
their feast. Much reading of history and memoirs had not so sent the
blood into those old English cheeks, and so moved those limbs in proper
measure, as these swift glances through the eyes of genius. It was
because, true to himself, Thackeray gave us his impression of those wits
as men rather than authors. For he loves character more than thought. He
is a man of the world, and not a scholar. He interprets the author by
the man. When you are made intimate with young Swift, Sir William
Temple's saturnine secretary, you more intelligently appreciate the Dean
of St. Patrick's. When the surplice of Mr. Sterne is raised a little,
more is seen than the reverend gentleman intends. Hogarth, the bluff
Londoner, necessarily depicts a bluff, coarse, obvious morality. The
hearty Fielding, the cool Addison, the genial Goldsmith, these are the
figures that remain in memory, and their works are valuable as they
indicate the man.

Mr. Thackeray's success was very great. He did not visit the West, nor
Canada. He went home without seeing Niagara Falls. But wherever he did
go he found a generous and social welcome, and a respectful and
sympathetic hearing. He came to fulfill no mission, but he certainly
knit more closely our sympathy with Englishmen. Heralded by various
romantic memoirs, he smiled at them, stoutly asserted that he had been
always able to command a good dinner, and to pay for it; nor did he seek
to disguise that he hoped his American tour would help him to command
and pay for more. He promised not to write a book about us, but we hope
he will, for we can ill spare the criticism of such an observer. At
least, we may be sure that the material gathered here will be worked up
in some way. He found that we were not savages nor bores. He found that
there were a hundred here for every score in England who knew well and
loved the men of whom he spoke. He found that the same red blood colors
all the lips that speak the language he so nobly praised. He found
friends instead of critics. He found those who, loving the author, loved
the man more. He found a quiet welcome from those who are waiting to
welcome him again and as sincerely.

/#
     [From _Literary and Social Essays_, by George William Curtis.
     Copyright, 1894, by Harper & Brothers.]
#/



OUR MARCH TO WASHINGTON

THEODORE WINTHROP

THROUGH THE CITY


AT three o'clock in the afternoon of Friday, April 19, we took our
peacemaker, a neat twelve-pound brass howitzer, down from the Seventh
Regiment Armory, and stationed it in the rear of the building. The twin
peacemaker is somewhere near us, but entirely hidden by this enormous
crowd.

An enormous crowd! of both sexes, of every age and condition. The men
offer all kinds of truculent and patriotic hopes; the women shed tears,
and say, "God bless you, boys!"

This is a part of the town, where baddish cigars prevail. But good or
bad, I am ordered to keep all away from the gun. So the throng stands
back, peers curiously over the heads of its junior members, and seems to
be taking the measure of my coffin.

After a patient hour of this, the word is given, we fall in, our two
guns find their places at the right of the line of march, we move on
through the thickening crowd.

At a great house on the left, as we pass the Astor Library, I see a
handkerchief waving for me. Yes! it is she who made the sandwiches in my
knapsack. They were a trifle too thick, as I afterwards discovered, but
otherwise perfection. Be these my thanks and the thanks of hungry
comrades who had bites of them!

At the corner of Great Jones Street we halted for half an hour,--then,
everything ready, we marched down Broadway.

It was worth a life, that march. Only one who passed, as we did, through
that tempest of cheers, two miles long, can know the terrible enthusiasm
of the occasion. I could hardly hear the rattle of our own
gun-carriages, and only once or twice the music of our band came to me
muffled and quelled by the uproar. We knew now, if we had not before
divined it, that our great city was with us as one man, utterly united
in the great cause we were marching to sustain.

This grand fact I learned by two senses. If hundreds of thousands roared
it into my ears, thousands slapped it into my back. My fellow-citizens
smote me on the knapsack, as I went by at the gun-rope, and encouraged
me each in his own dialect. "Bully for you!" alternated with
benedictions, in the proportion of two "bullies" to one blessing.

I was not so fortunate as to receive more substantial tokens of
sympathy. But there were parting gifts showered on the regiment, enough
to establish a variety-shop. Handkerchiefs, of course, came floating
down upon us from the windows, like a snow. Pretty little gloves pelted
us with love-taps. The sterner sex forced upon us pocket-knives new and
jagged, combs, soap, slippers, boxes of matches, cigars by the dozen and
the hundred, pipes to smoke shag and pipes to smoke Latakia, fruit,
eggs, and sandwiches. One fellow got a new purse with ten bright
quarter-eagles.

At the corner of Grand Street, or thereabouts, a "bhoy" in red flannel
shirt and black dress pantaloons, leaning back against the crowd with
Herculean shoulders, called me,--"Saäy, bully! take my dorg! he's one of
the kind that holds till he draps." This gentleman, with his animal, was
instantly shoved back by the police, and the Seventh lost the "dorg."

These were the comic incidents of the march, but underlying all was the
tragic sentiment that we might have tragic work presently to do. The
news of the rascal attack in Baltimore on the Massachusetts Sixth had
just come in. Ours might be the same chance. If there were any of us not
in earnest before, the story of the day would steady us. So we said
good-by to Broadway, moved down Cortlandt Street under a bower of flags,
and at half-past six shoved off in the ferry-boat.

Everybody has heard how Jersey City turned out and filled up the
Railroad Station, like an opera-house, to give God-speed to us as a
representative body, a guaranty of the unquestioning loyalty of the
"conservative" class in New York. Everybody has heard how the State of
New Jersey, along the railroad line, stood through the evening and the
night to shout their quota of good wishes. At every station the
Jerseymen were there, uproarious as Jerseymen, to shake our hands and
wish us a happy despatch. I think I did not see a rod of ground without
its man, from dusk till dawn, from the Hudson to the Delaware.

Upon the train we made a jolly night of it. All knew that the more a man
sings, the better he is likely to fight. So we sang more than we slept,
and, in fact, that has been our history ever since.


PHILADELPHIA

At sunrise we were at the station in Philadelphia, and dismissed for an
hour. Some hundreds of us made up Broad Street for the Lapierre House to
breakfast. When I arrived, I found every place at table filled and every
waiter ten deep with orders. So, being an old campaigner, I followed up
the stream of provender to the fountain-head, the kitchen. Half a dozen
other old campaigners were already there, most hospitably entertained by
the cooks. They served us, hot and hot, with the best of their best,
straight from the gridiron and the pan. I hope, if I live to breakfast
again in the Lapierre House, that I may be allowed to help myself and
choose for myself below-stairs.

When we rendezvoused at the train, we found that the orders were for
every man to provide himself three days' rations in the neighborhood,
and be ready for a start at a moment's notice.

A mountain of bread was already piled up in the station. I stuck my
bayonet through a stout loaf, and, with a dozen comrades armed in the
same way, went foraging about for other _vivers_.

It is a poor part of Philadelphia; but whatever they had in the shops or
the houses seemed to be at our disposition.

I stopped at a corner shop to ask for pork, and was amicably assailed by
an earnest dame,--Irish, I am pleased to say. She thrust her last loaf
upon me, and sighed that it was not baked that morning for my "honor's
service."

A little farther on, two kindly Quaker ladies compelled me to step in.
"What could they do?" they asked eagerly. "They had no meat in the
house; but could we eat eggs? They had in the house a dozen and a half,
new-laid." So the pot to the fire, and the eggs boiled, and bagged by
myself and that tall Saxon, my friend E., of the Sixth Company. While
the eggs simmered, the two ladies thee-ed us prayerfully and tearfully,
hoping that God would save our country from blood, unless blood must be
shed to preserve Law and Liberty.

Nothing definite from Baltimore when we returned to the station. We
stood by, waiting orders. About noon the Eighth Massachusetts Regiment
took the train southward. Our regiment was ready to a man to try its
strength with the Plug Uglies. If there had been any voting on the
subject, the plan to follow the straight road to Washington would have
been accepted by acclamation. But the higher powers deemed that "the
longest way round was the shortest way home," and no doubt their
decision was wise. The event proved it.

At two o'clock came the word to "fall in." We handled our howitzers
again, and marched down Jefferson Avenue to the steamer "Boston" to
embark.

To embark for what port? For Washington, of course, finally; but by what
route? That was to remain in doubt to us privates for a day or two.

The "Boston" is a steamer of the outside line from Philadelphia to New
York. She just held our legion. We tramped on board, and were allotted
about the craft from the top to the bottom story. We took tents, traps,
and grub on board, and steamed away down the Delaware in the sweet
afternoon of April. If ever the heavens smiled fair weather on any
campaign, they have done so on ours.


THE "BOSTON"

Soldiers on shipboard are proverbially fish out of water. We could not
be called by the good old nickname of "lobsters" by the crew. Our gray
jackets saved the _sobriquet_. But we floundered about the crowded
vessel like boiling victims in a pot. At last we found our places, and
laid ourselves about the decks to tan or bronze or burn scarlet,
according to complexion. There were plenty of cheeks of lobster-hue
before next evening on the "Boston."

A thousand young fellows turned loose on shipboard were sure to make
themselves merry. Let the reader imagine that! We were like any other
excursionists, except that the stacks of bright guns were always
present to remind us of our errand, and regular guard-mounting and drill
went on all the time. The young citizens growled or laughed at the minor
hardships of the hasty outfit, and toughened rapidly to business.

Sunday, the 21st, was a long and somewhat anxious day. While we were
bowling along in the sweet sunshine and sweeter moonlight of the halcyon
time, Uncle Sam might be dethroned by somebody in buckram, or Baltimore
burnt by the boys from Lynn or Marblehead, revenging the massacre of
their fellows. Everyone begins to comprehend the fiery eagerness of men
who live in historic times. "I wish I had control of chain-lightning for
a few minutes," says O., the droll fellow of our company. "I'd make it
come thick and heavy and knock spots out of Secession."

At early dawn of Monday, the 22d, after feeling along slowly all night,
we see the harbor of Annapolis. A frigate with sails unbent lies at
anchor. She flies the stars and stripes. Hurrah!

A large steamboat is aground farther in. As soon as we can see anything,
we catch the glitter of bayonets on board.

By and by boats come off, and we get news that the steamer is the
"Maryland," a ferry-boat of the Philadelphia and Baltimore Railroad. The
Massachusetts Eighth Regiment had been just in time to seize her on the
north side of the Chesapeake. They learned that she was to be carried
off by the crew and leave them blockaded. So they shot their Zouaves
ahead as skirmishers. The fine fellows rattled on board, and before the
steamboat had time to take a turn or open a valve, she was held by
Massachusetts in trust for Uncle Sam. Hurrah for the most important
prize thus far in the war! It probably saved the "Constitution," "Old
Ironsides," from capture by the traitors. It probably saved Annapolis,
and kept Maryland open without bloodshed.

As soon as the Massachusetts Regiment had made prize of the ferry-boat,
a call was made for engineers to run her. Some twenty men at once
stepped to the front. We of the New York Seventh afterwards concluded
that whatever was needed in the way of skill or handicraft could be
found among those brother Yankees. They were the men to make armies of.
They could tailor for themselves, shoe themselves, do their own
blacksmithing, gun-smithing, and all other work that calls for sturdy
arms and nimble fingers. In fact, I have such profound confidence in the
universal accomplishment of the Massachusetts Eighth, that I have no
doubt, if the order were, "Poets to the front!" "Painters present arms!"
"Sculptors charge bayonets!" a baker's dozen out of every company would
respond.

Well, to go on with their story,--when they had taken their prize, they
drove her straight downstream to Annapolis, the nearest point to
Washington. There they found the Naval Academy in danger of attack, and
"Old Ironsides"--serving as a practice-ship for the future
midshipmen--also exposed. The call was now for seamen to man the old
craft and save her from a worse enemy than her prototype met in the
"Guerrière." Seamen? Of course! They were Marbleheaded men, Gloucester
men, Beverly men, seamen all, _par excellence!_ They clapped on the
frigate to aid the middies, and by and by started her out into the
stream. In doing this their own pilot took the chance to run them
purposely on a shoal in the intricate channel. A great error of judgment
on his part! as he perceived, when he found himself in irons and in
confinement. "The days of trifling with traitors are over!" think the
Eighth Regiment of Massachusetts.

But there they were, hard and fast on the shoal, when we came up.
Nothing to nibble on but knobs of anthracite. Nothing to sleep on softer
or cleaner than coal-dust. Nothing to drink but the brackish water under
their keel. "Rather rough!" so they afterward patiently told us.

Meantime the "Constitution" had got hold of a tug, and was making her
way to an anchorage where her guns commanded everything and everybody.
Good and true men chuckled greatly over this. The stars and stripes also
were still up at the fort at the Naval Academy.

Our dread, that, while we were off at sea, some great and perhaps fatal
harm had been suffered, was greatly lightened by these good omens. If
Annapolis was safe, why not Washington safe also? If treachery had got
head at the capital, would not treachery have reached out its hand and
snatched this doorway? These were our speculations as we began to
discern objects, before we heard news.

But news came presently. Boats pulled off to us. Our officers were put
into communication with the shore. The scanty facts of our position
became known from man to man. We privates have greatly the advantage in
battling with the doubt of such a time. We know that we have nothing to
do with rumors. Orders are what we go by. And orders are Facts.

We lay a long, lingering day, off Annapolis. The air was full of doubt,
and we were eager to be let loose. All this while the "Maryland" stuck
fast on the bar. We could see them, half a mile off, making every effort
to lighten her. The soldiers tramped forward and aft, danced on her
decks, shot overboard a heavy baggage-truck. We saw them start the truck
for the stern with a cheer. It crashed down. One end stuck in the mud.
The other fell back and rested on the boat. They went at it with axes,
and presently it was clear.

As the tide rose, we gave our grounded friends a lift with the hawser.
No go! The "Boston" tugged in vain. We got near enough to see the whites
of the Massachusetts eyes, and their unlucky faces and uniforms all
grimy with their lodgings in the coal-dust. They could not have been
blacker, if they had been breathing battle-smoke and dust all day. That
experience was clear gain to them.

By and by, greatly to the delight of the impatient Seventh, the "Boston"
was headed for shore. Never speak ill of the beast you bestraddle!
Therefore _requiescat_ "Boston"! may her ribs lie light on soft sand
when she goes to pieces! may her engines be cut up into bracelets for
the arms of the patriotic fair! good by to her, dear old, close, dirty,
slow coach! She served her country well in a moment of trial. Who knows
but she saved it? It was a race to see who should first get to
Washington,--and we and the Virginia mob, in alliance with the District
mob, were perhaps nip and tuck for the goal.


ANNAPOLIS

So the Seventh Regiment landed and took Annapolis. We were the first
troops ashore.

The middies of the Naval Academy no doubt believe that they had their
quarters secure. The Massachusetts boys are satisfied that they first
took the town in charge. And so they did.

But the Seventh took it a little more. Not, of course, from its loyal
men, but _for_ its loyal men,--for loyal Maryland, and for the Union.

Has anybody seen Annapolis? It is a picturesque old place, sleepy
enough, and astonished to find itself wide-awaked by a war, and obliged
to take responsibility and share for good and ill in the movement of its
time. The buildings of the Naval Academy stand parallel with the river
Severn, with a green plateau toward the water and a lovely green lawn
toward the town. All the scene was fresh and fair with April, and I
fancied, as the "Boston" touched the wharf, that I discerned the sweet
fragrance of apple-blossoms coming with the spring-time airs.

I hope that the companies of the Seventh, should the day arrive, will
charge upon horrid batteries or serried ranks with as much alacrity as
they marched ashore on the greensward of the Naval Academy. We
disembarked, and were halted in line between the buildings and the
river.

Presently, while we stood at ease, people began to arrive,--some with
smallish fruit to sell, some with smaller news to give. Nobody knew
whether Washington was taken. Nobody knew whether Jeff Davis was now
spitting in the Presidential spittoon, and scribbling his distiches with
the nib of the Presidential goose-quill. We were absolutely in doubt
whether a seemingly inoffensive knot of rustics, on a mound without the
inclosures, might not, at tap of drum, unmask a battery of giant
columbiads, and belch blazes at us, raking our line.

Nothing so entertaining happened. It was a parade, not a battle. At
sunset our band played strains sweet enough to pacify all Secession, if
Secession had music in its soul. Coffee, hot from the coppers of the
Naval School, and biscuit were served out to us; and while we supped, we
talked with our visitors, such as were allowed to approach.

First the boys of the School--fine little blue-jackets--had their story
to tell.

"Do you see that white farm-house, across the river?" says a brave pigmy
of a chap in navy uniform. "That is head-quarters for Secession. They
were going to take the School from us, Sir, and the frigate; but we've
got ahead of 'em, now you and the Massachusetts boys have come
down,"--and he twinkled all over with delight. "We can't study any more.
We are on guard all the time. We've got howitzers, too, and we'd like
you to see, to-morrow, on drill, how we can handle 'em. One of their
boats came by our sentry last night," (a sentry probably five feet
high), "and he blazed away, Sir. So they thought they wouldn't try us
that time."

It was plain that these young souls had been well tried by the treachery
about them. They, too, had felt the pang of the disloyalty of comrades.
Nearly a hundred of the boys had been spoilt by the base example of
their elders in the repudiating States, and had resigned.

After the middies, came anxious citizens from the town. Scared, all of
them. Now that we were come and assured them that persons and property
were to be protected, they ventured to speak of the disgusting tyranny
to which they, American citizens, had been subjected. We came into
contact here with utter social anarchy. No man, unless he was ready to
risk assault, loss of property, exile, dared to act or talk like a
freeman. "This great wrong must be righted," think the Seventh Regiment,
as one man. So we tried to reassure the Annapolitans that we meant to do
our duty as the nation's armed police, and mob-law was to be put down,
so far as we could do it.

Here, too, voices of war met us. The country was stirred up. If the
rural population did not give us a bastard imitation of Lexington and
Concord, as we tried to gain Washington, all Pluguglydom would treat us
_à la_ Plugugly somewhere near the junction of the Annapolis and
Baltimore and Washington Railroad. The Seventh must be ready to shoot.

At dusk we were marched up to the Academy and quartered about in the
buildings,--some in the fort, some in the recitation-halls. We lay down
on our blankets and knapsacks. Up to this time our sleep and diet had
been severely scanty.

We stayed all next day at Annapolis. The "Boston" brought the
Massachusetts Eighth ashore that night. Poor fellows! what a figure they
cut, when we found them bivouacked on the Academy grounds next morning!
To begin: They had come off in hot patriotic haste, half-uniformed and
half-outfitted. Finding that Baltimore had been taken by its own loafers
and traitors, and that the Chesapeake ferry was impracticable, had
obliged them to change line of march. They were out of grub. They were
parched dry for want of water on the ferry-boat. Nobody could decipher
Caucasian, much less Bunker-Hill Yankee, in their grimy visages.

But, hungry, thirsty, grimy, these fellows were GRIT.

Massachusetts ought to be proud of such hardy, cheerful, faithful sons.

We of the Seventh are proud, for our part, that it was our privilege to
share our rations with them, and to begin a fraternization which grows
closer every day and will be _historical_.

But I must make a shorter story. We drilled and were reviewed that
morning on the Academy parade. In the afternoon the Naval School paraded
their last before they gave up their barracks to the coming soldiery. So
ended the 23d of April.

Midnight, 24th. We were rattled up by an alarm,--perhaps a sham one, to
keep us awake and lively. In a moment, the whole regiment was in order
of battle in the moonlight on the parade. It was a most brilliant
spectacle, as company after company rushed forward, with rifles
glittering, to take their places in the array.

After this pretty spirt, we were rationed with pork, beef, and bread for
three days, and ordered to be ready to march on the instant.


WHAT THE MASSACHUSETTS EIGHTH HAD BEEN DOING

MEANTIME General Butler's command, the Massachusetts Eighth, had been
busy knocking disorder in the head.

Presently after their landing, and before they were refreshed, they
pushed companies out to occupy the railroad-track beyond the town.

They found it torn up. No doubt the scamps who did the shabby job
fancied that there would be no more travel that way until
strawberry-time. They fancied the Yankees would sit down on the fences
and begin to whittle white-oak toothpicks, darning the rebels, through
their noses, meanwhile.

I know these men of the Eighth can whittle, and I presume they can say
"Darn it," if occasion requires; but just now track-laying was the
business on hand.

"Wanted, experienced track-layers!" was the word along the files.

All at once the line of the road became densely populated with
experienced track-layers, fresh from Massachusetts.

Presto change! the rails were relaid, spiked, and the roadway leveled
and better ballasted than any road I ever saw south of Mason and Dixon's
line.

"We must leave a good job for these folks to model after," say the
Massachusetts Eighth.

A track without a train is as useless as a gun without a man. Train and
engine must be had. "Uncle Sam's mails and troops cannot be stopped
another minute," our energetic friends conclude. So,--the railroad
company's people being either frightened or false,--in marches
Massachusetts to the station. "We, the People of the United States, want
rolling-stock for the use of the Union," they said, or words to that
effect.

The engine--a frowsy machine at the best--had been purposely disabled.

Here appeared the _deus ex machina_, Charles Homans, Beverly Light
Guard, Company E, Eighth Massachusetts Regiment.

That is the man, name and titles in full, and he deserves well of his
country.

He took a quiet squint at the engine,--it was as helpless as a boned
turkey,--and he found "Charles Homans, his mark," written all over it.

The old rattletrap was an old friend. Charles Homans had had a share in
building it. The machine and the man said, "How d'y' do?" at once.
Homans called for a gang of engine-builders. Of course they swarmed out
of the ranks. They passed their hands over the locomotive a few times,
and presently it was ready to whistle and wheeze and rumble and gallop,
as if no traitor had ever tried to steal the go and the music out of it.

This had all been done during the afternoon of the 23d. During the
night, the renovated engine was kept cruising up and down the track to
see all clear. Guards of the Eighth were also posted to protect passage.

Our commander had, I presume, been co-operating with General Butler in
this business. The Naval Academy authorities had given us every despatch
and assistance, and the middies, frank, personal hospitality. The day
was halcyon, the grass was green and soft, the apple-trees were just in
blossom: it was a day to be remembered.

Many of us will remember it, and show the marks of it for months, as the
day we had our heads cropped. By evening there was hardly one poll in
the Seventh tenable by anybody's grip. Most sat in the shade and were
shorn by a barber. A few were honored with a clip by the artist hand of
the _petit caporal_ of our Engineer Company.

While I rattle off these trifling details, let me not fail to call
attention to the grave service done by our regiment, by its arrival, at
the nick of time, at Annapolis. No clearer special Providence could have
happened. The country-people of the traitor sort were aroused. Baltimore
and its mob were but two hours away. The "Constitution" had been hauled
out of reach of a rush by the Massachusetts men,--first on the
ground,--but was half manned and not fully secure. And there lay the
"Maryland," helpless on the shoal, with six or seven hundred souls on
board, so near the shore that the late Captain Rynders's gun could have
sunk her from some ambush.

Yes! the Seventh Regiment at Annapolis was the Right Man in the Right
Place!


OUR MORNING MARCH

REVEILLE. As nobody pronounces this word _à la française_, as everybody
calls it "Revelee," why not drop it, as an affectation, and translate it
the "Stir your Stumps," the "Peel your Eyes," the "Tumble Up," or
literally the "Wake"?

Our snorers had kept up this call so lustily since midnight, that, when
the drums sounded it, we were all ready.

The Sixth and Second Companies, under Captain Nevers, are detached to
lead the van. I see my brother Billy march off with the Sixth, into the
dusk, half moonlight, half dawn, and hope that no beggar of a
Secessionist will get a pat shot at him, by the roadside, without his
getting a chance to let fly in return. Such little possibilities
intensify the earnest detestation we feel for the treasons we come to
resist and to punish. There will be some bitter work done, if we ever
get to blows in this war,--this needless, reckless, brutal assault upon
the mildest of all governments.

Before the main body of the regiment marches, we learn that the "Baltic"
and other transports came in last night with troops from New York and
New England, enough to hold Annapolis against a square league of Plug
Uglies. We do not go on without having our rear protected and our
communications open. It is strange to be compelled to think of these
things in peaceful America. But we really knew little more of the
country before us than Cortés knew of Mexico. I have since learned from
a high official, that thirteen different messengers were dispatched from
Washington in the interval of anxiety while the Seventh was not
forthcoming, and only one got through.

At half-past seven we take up our line of march, pass out of the
charming grounds of the Academy, and move through the quiet, rusty,
picturesque old town. It has a romantic dullness,--Annapolis,--which
deserves a parting compliment.

Although we deem ourselves a fine-looking set, although our belts are
blanched with pipe-clay and our rifles shine sharp in the sun, yet the
townspeople stare at us in a dismal silence. They have already the air
of men quelled by a despotism. None can trust his neighbor. If he dares
to be loyal, he must take his life into his hands. Most would be loyal,
if they dared. But the system of society which has ended in this present
chaos had gradually eliminated the bravest and best men. They have gone
in search of Freedom and Prosperity; and now the bullies cow the weaker
brothers. "There must be an end of this mean tyranny," think the
Seventh, as they march through old Annapolis and see how sick the town
is with doubt and alarm.

Outside the town, we strike the railroad and move along, the howitzers
in front, bouncing over the sleepers. When our line is fully disengaged
from the town, we halt.

Here the scene is beautiful. The van rests upon a high embankment, with
a pool surrounded by pine-trees on the right, green fields on the left.
Cattle are feeding quietly about. The air sings with birds. The
chestnut-leaves sparkle. Frogs whistle in the warm spring morning. The
regiment groups itself along the bank and the cutting. Several
Marylanders of the half-price age--under twelve--come gaping up to see
us harmless invaders. Each of these young gentry is armed with a dead
spring frog, perhaps by way of tribute. And here--hollo! here comes
Horace Greeley _in propria persona!_ He marches through our groups with
the Greeley walk, the Greeley hat on the back of his head, the Greeley
white coat on his shoulders, his trousers much too short, and an
absorbed, abstracted demeanor. Can it be Horace, reporting for himself?
No; this is a Maryland production, and a little disposed to be sulky.

After a few minutes' halt, we hear the whistle of the engine. This
machine is also an historic character in the war.

Remember it! "J. H. Nicholson" is its name. Charles Holmes drives, and
on either side stands a sentry with fixed bayonet. New spectacles for
America! But it is grand to know that the bayonets are to protect, not
to assail, Liberty and Law.

The train leads off. We follow, by the track. Presently the train
returns. We pass it and trudge on in light marching order, carrying
arms, blankets, haversacks, and canteens. Our knapsacks are upon the
train.

Fortunate for our backs that they do not have to bear any more burden!
For the day grows sultry. It is one of those breezeless baking days
which brew thunder-gusts. We march for some four miles, when, coming
upon the guards of the Massachusetts Eighth, our howitzer is ordered to
fall out and wait for the train. With a comrade of the Artillery, I am
placed on guard over it.


ON GUARD WITH HOWITZER NO. TWO

HENRY BONNELL is my fellow-sentry. He, like myself, is an old campaigner
in such campaigns as our generation has known. So we talk California,
Oregon, Indian life, the Plains, keeping our eyes peeled meanwhile, and
ranging the country. Men that will tear up track are quite capable of
picking off a sentry. A giant chestnut gives us little dots of shade
from its pigmy leaves. The country about us is open and newly plowed.
Some of the worm-fences are new, and ten rails high; but the farming is
careless, and the soil thin.

Two of the Massachusetts men come back to the gun while we are standing
there. One is my friend Stephen Morris, of Marblehead, Sutton Light
Infantry. I had shared my breakfast yesterday with Stephe. So we
refraternize.

His business is,--"I make shoes in winter and fishin' in summer." He
gives me a few facts,--suspicious persons seen about the track, men on
horseback in the distance. One of the Massachusetts guard last night
challenged his captain. Captain replied, "Officer of the night."
Whereupon, says Stephe, "the recruit let squizzle and jest missed his
ear." He then related to me the incident of the railroad station. "The
first thing they know'd," says he, "we bit right into the depot and took
charge." "I don't mind," Stephe remarked,--"I don't mind life, nor yit
death; but whenever I see a Massachusetts boy, I stick by him, and if
them Secessionists attackt us to-night, or any other time, they'll get
in debt."

Whistle, again! and the train appears. We are ordered to ship our
howitzer on a platform car. The engine pushes us on. This train brings
our light baggage and the rear guard.

A hundred yards farther on is a delicious fresh spring below the bank.
While the train halts, Stephe Morris rushes down to fill my canteen.
"This a'n't like Marblehead," says Stephe, panting up; "but a man that
can shin up _them_ rocks can git right over _this_ sand."

The train goes slowly on, as a rickety train should. At intervals we see
the fresh spots of track just laid by our Yankee friends. Near the sixth
mile, we began to overtake hot and uncomfortable squads of our fellows.
The unseasonable heat of this most breathless day was too much for many
of the younger men, unaccustomed to rough work, and weakened by want of
sleep and irregular food in our hurried movements thus far.

Charles Homans's private carriage was, however, ready to pick up tired
men, hot men, thirsty men, men with corns, or men with blisters. They
tumbled into the train in considerable numbers.

An enemy that dared could have made a moderate bag of stragglers at this
time. But they would not have been allowed to straggle, if any enemy had
been about. By this time we were convinced that no attack was to be
expected in this part of the way.

The main body of the regiment, under Major Shaler, a tall, soldierly
fellow, with a mustache of the fighting color, tramped on their own pins
to the watering-place, eight miles or so from Annapolis. There troops
and train came to a halt, with the news that a bridge over a country
road was broken a mile farther on.

It had been distinctly insisted upon, in the usual Southern style, that
we were not to be allowed to pass through Maryland, and that we were to
be "welcomed to hospitable graves." The broken bridge was a capital
spot for a skirmish. Why not look for it here?

We looked; but got nothing. The rascals could skulk about by night, tear
up rails, and hide them where they might be found by a man with half an
eye, or half destroy a bridge; but there was no shoot in them. They have
not faith enough in their cause to risk their lives for it, even behind
a tree or from one of these thickets, choice spots for ambush.

So we had no battle there, but a battle of the elements. The volcanic
heat of the morning was followed by a furious storm of wind and a smart
shower. The regiment wrapped themselves in their blankets and took their
wetting with more or less satisfaction. They were receiving samples of
all the different little miseries of a campaign.

And here let me say a word to my fellow-volunteers, actual and
prospective, in all the armies of all the States:--

A soldier needs, besides his soldierly drill,

/p[2]
      I. Good Feet.
     II. A good Stomach.
    III. And after these, come the good Head and the good Heart.
p/

But Good Feet are distinctly the first thing. Without them you cannot
get to your duty. If a comrade, or a horse, or a locomotive, takes you
on its back to the field, you are useless there. And when the field is
lost, you cannot retire, run away, and save your bacon.

Good shoes and plenty of walking make good feet. A man who pretends to
belong to an infantry company ought always to keep himself in training,
so that any moment he can march twenty or thirty miles without feeling a
pang or raising a blister. Was this the case with even a decimation of
the army who rushed to defend Washington? Were you so trained, my
comrades of the Seventh?

A captain of a company, who will let his men march with such shoes as I
have seen on the feet of some poor fellows in this war, ought to be
garroted with shoe-strings, or at least compelled to play Pope and wash
the feet of the whole army of the Apostles of Liberty.

If you find a foot-soldier lying beat out by the roadside, desperate as
a sea-sick man, five to one his heels are too high, or his soles too
narrow or too thin, or his shoe is not made straight on the inside, so
the great toe can spread into its place as he treads.

I am an old walker over Alps across the water, and over Cordilleras,
Sierras, Deserts and Prairies at home; I have done my near sixty miles a
day without discomfort,--and speaking from large experience, and with
painful recollections of the suffering and death I have known for want
of good feet on the march, I say to every volunteer:--

Trust in God; BUT KEEP YOUR SHOES EASY!


THE BRIDGE

When the frenzy of the brief tempest was over, it began to be a
question, "What to do about the broken bridge?" The gap was narrow; but
even Charles Homans could not promise to leap the "J. H. Nicholson" over
it. Who was to be our Julius Cæsar in bridge-building? Who but Sergeant
Scott, Armorer of the Regiment, with my fellow-sentry of the morning,
Bonnell, as First Assistant?

Scott called for a working party. There were plenty of handy fellows
among our Engineers and in the Line. Tools were plenty in the Engineers'
chest. We pushed the platform car upon which howitzer No. 1 was mounted
down to the gap, and began operations.

"I wish," says the _petit caporal_ of the Engineer Company, patting his
howitzer gently on the back, "that I could get this Putty Blower
pointed at the enemy, while you fellows are bridge-building."

The inefficient destructives of Maryland had only half spoilt the
bridge. Some of the old timbers could be used,--and for new ones, there
was the forest.

Scott and his party made a good and a quick job of it. Our friends of
the Massachusetts Eighth had now come up. They lent a ready hand, as
usual. The sun set brilliantly. By twilight there was a practicable
bridge. The engine was dispatched back to keep the road open. The two
platform cars, freighted with our howitzers, were rigged with the
gun-ropes for dragging along the rail. We passed through the files of
the Massachusetts men, resting by the way, and eating by the fires of
the evening the suppers we had in great part provided them; and so
begins our night-march.


THE NIGHT-MARCH

O GOTTSCHALK! what a poetic _Marche de Nuit_ we then began to play, with
our heels and toes, on the railroad track!

It was full-moonlight and the night inexpressibly sweet and serene. The
air was cool and vivified by the gust and shower of the afternoon. Fresh
spring was in every breath. Our fellows had forgotten that this morning
they were hot and disgusted. Everyone hugged his rifle as if it were the
arm of the Girl of his Heart, and stepped out gayly for the promenade.
Tired or foot-sore men, or even lazy ones, could mount upon the two
freight-cars we were using for artillery-wagons. There were stout arms
enough to tow the whole.

The scouts went ahead under First Lieutenant Farnham of the Second
Company. We were at school together,--I am afraid to say how many years
ago. He is just the same cool, dry, shrewd fellow he was as a boy, and
a most efficient officer.

It was an original kind of march. I suppose a battery of howitzers never
before found itself mounted upon cars, ready to open fire at once and
bang away into the offing with shrapnel or into the bushes with
canister. Our line extended a half-mile along the track. It was
beautiful to stand on the bank above a cutting, and watch the files
strike from the shadow of a wood into a broad flame of moonlight, every
rifle sparkling up alert as it came forward. A beautiful sight to see
the barrels writing themselves upon the dimness, each a silver flash.

By and by, "Halt!" came, repeated along from the front, company after
company. "Halt! a rail gone."

It was found without difficulty. The imbeciles who took it up probably
supposed we would not wish to wet our feet by searching for it in the
dewy grass of the next field. With incredible doltishness they had also
left the chairs and spikes beside the track. Bonnell took hold, and in a
few minutes had the rail in place and firm enough to pass the engine.
Remember, we were not only hurrying on to succor Washington, but opening
the only convenient and practicable route between it and the loyal
States.

A little farther on, we came to a village,--a rare sight in this
scantily peopled region. Here Sergeant Keeler, of our company, the
tallest man in the regiment, and one of the handiest, suggested that we
should tear up the rails at a turn-out by the station, and so be
prepared for chances. So "Out crowbars!" was the word. We tore up and
bagged half a dozen rails, with chairs and spikes complete. Here too,
some of the engineers found a keg of spikes. This was also bagged and
loaded on our cars. We fought the chaps with their own weapons, since
they would not meet us with ours.

These things made delay, and by and by there was a long halt, while the
Colonel communicated, by orders sounded along the line, with the engine.
Homans's drag was hard after us, bringing our knapsacks and traps.

After I had admired for some time the beauty of our moonlit line, and
listened to the orders as they grew or died along the distance, I began
to want excitement. Bonnell suggested that he and I should scout up the
road and see if any rails were wanting. We traveled along into the quiet
night.

A mile ahead of the line we suddenly caught the gleam of a rifle-barrel.
"Who goes there?" one of our own scouts challenged smartly.

We had arrived at the nick of time. Three rails were up. Two of them
were easily found. The third was discovered by beating the bush
thoroughly. Bonnell and I ran back for tools, and returned at full trot
with crowbar and sledge on our shoulders. There were plenty of willing
hands to help,--too many, indeed,--and with the aid of a huge
Massachusetts man we soon had the rail in place.

From this time on we were constantly interrupted. Not a half-mile passed
without a rail up. Bonnell was always at the front laying track, and I
am proud to say that he accepted me as aide-de-camp. Other fellows,
unknown to me in the dark, gave hearty help. The Seventh showed that it
could do something else than drill.

At one spot, on a high embankment over standing water, the rail was
gone, sunk probably. Here we tried our rails brought from the turn-out.
They were too short. We supplemented with a length of plank from our
stores. We rolled our cars carefully over. They passed safe. But Homans
shook his head. He could not venture a locomotive on that frail stuff.
So we lost the society of the "J. H. Nicholson." Next day the
Massachusetts commander called for someone to dive in the pool for the
lost rail. Plump into the water went a little wiry chap and grappled the
rail. "When I come up," says the brave fellow afterwards to me, "our
officer out with a twenty-dollar gold-piece and wanted me to take it.
'That a'n't what I come for,' says I. 'Take it,' says he, 'and share
with the others.' 'That a'n't what they come for,' says I. But I took a
big cold," the diver continued, "and I'm condemned hoarse yit,"--which
was the fact.

Farther on we found a whole length of track torn up, on both sides,
sleepers and all, and the same thing repeated with alternations of
breaks of single rails. Our howitzer-ropes came into play to hoist and
haul. We were not going to be stopped.

But it was becoming a _Noche Triste_ to some of our comrades. We had now
marched some sixteen miles. The distance was trifling. But the men had
been on their legs pretty much all day and night. Hardly anyone had had
any full or substantial sleep or meal since we started from New York.
They napped off, standing, leaning on their guns, dropping down in their
tracks on the wet ground, at every halt. They were sleepy, but plucky.
As we passed through deep cuttings, places, as it were, built for
defense, there was a general desire that the tedium of the night should
be relieved by a shindy.

During the whole night I saw our officers moving about the line, doing
their duty vigorously, despite exhaustion, hunger and sleeplessness.

About midnight our friends of the Eighth had joined us, and our whole
little army struggled on together. I find that I have been rather
understating the troubles of the march. It seems impossible that such
difficulty could be encountered within twenty miles of the capital of
our nation. But we were making a rush to put ourselves in that capital,
and we could not proceed in the slow, systematic way of an advancing
army. We must take the risk and stand the suffering, whatever it was. So
the Seventh Regiment went through its bloodless _Noche Triste_.


MORNING

At last we issued from the damp woods, two miles below the railroad
junction. Here was an extensive farm. Our vanguard had halted and
borrowed a few rails to make fires. These were, of course, carefully
paid for at their proprietor's own price. The fires were bright in the
gray dawn. About them the whole regiment was now halted. The men tumbled
down to catch forty winks. Some, who were hungrier for food than sleep,
went off foraging among the farm-houses. They returned with appetizing
legends of hot breakfast in hospitable abodes, or scanty fare given
grudgingly in hostile ones. All meals, however, were paid for.

Here, as at other halts below, the country-people came up to talk to us.
The traitors could easily be distinguished by their insolence disguised
as obsequiousness. The loyal men were still timid, but more hopeful at
last. All were very lavish with the monosyllable, Sir. It was an odd
coincidence, that the vanguard, halting off at a farm in the morning,
found it deserted for the moment by its tenants, and protected only by
an engraved portrait of our (former) Colonel Duryea, serenely smiling
over the mantel-piece.

From this point, the railroad was pretty much all gone. But we were
warmed and refreshed by a nap and a bite, and besides had daylight and
open country.

We put our guns on their own wheels, all dropped into ranks as if on
parade, and marched the last two miles to the station. We still had no
certain information. Until we actually saw the train awaiting us, and
the Washington companies, who had come down to escort us, drawn up, we
did not know whether our Uncle Sam was still a resident of the capital.

We packed into the train, and rolled away to Washington.


WASHINGTON

We marched up to the White House, showed ourselves to the President,
made our bow to him as our host, and then marched up to the Capitol, our
grand lodgings.

There we are now, quartered in the Representatives' Chamber.

And here I must hastily end this first sketch of the Great Defense. May
it continue to be as firm and faithful as it is this day!

I have scribbled my story with a thousand men stirring about me. If any
of my sentences miss their aim, accuse my comrades and the bewilderment
of this martial crowd. For here are four or five thousand others on the
same business as ourselves, and drums are beating, guns are clanking,
companies are tramping, all the while. Our friends of the Eighth
Massachusetts are quartered under the dome, and cheer us whenever we
pass.

Desks marked John Covode, John Cochran, and Anson Burlingame have
allowed me to use them as I wrote.



CALVIN

A STUDY OF CHARACTER

CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER


Calvin is dead. His life, long to him, but short for the rest of us, was
not marked by startling adventures, but his character was so uncommon
and his qualities were so worthy of imitation, that I have been asked by
those who personally knew him to set down my recollections of his
career.

His origin and ancestry were shrouded in mystery; even his age was a
matter of pure conjecture. Although he was of the Maltese race, I have
reason to suppose that he was American by birth as he certainly was in
sympathy. Calvin was given to me eight years ago by Mrs. Stowe, but she
knew nothing of his age or origin. He walked into her house one day out
of the great unknown and became at once at home, as if he had been
always a friend of the family. He appeared to have artistic and literary
tastes, and it was as if he had inquired at the door if that was the
residence of the author of _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, and, upon being assured
that it was, had decided to dwell there. This is, of course, fanciful,
for his antecedents were wholly unknown, but in his time he could hardly
have been in any household where he would not have heard _Uncle Tom's
Cabin_ talked about. When he came to Mrs. Stowe, he was as large as he
ever was, and apparently as old as he ever became. Yet there was in him
no appearance of age; he was in the happy maturity of all his powers,
and you would rather have said that in that maturity he had found the
secret of perpetual youth. And it was as difficult to believe that he
would ever be aged as it was to imagine that he had ever been in
immature youth. There was in him a mysterious perpetuity.

After some years, when Mrs. Stowe made her winter home in Florida,
Calvin came to live with us. From the first moment, he fell into the
ways of the house and assumed a recognized position in the family,--I
say recognized, because after he became known he was always inquired for
by visitors, and in the letters to the other members of the family he
always received a message. Although the least obtrusive of beings, his
individuality always made itself felt.

His personal appearance had much to do with this, for he was of royal
mould, and had an air of high breeding. He was large, but he had nothing
of the fat grossness of the celebrated Angora family; though powerful,
he was exquisitely proportioned, and as graceful in every movement as a
young leopard. When he stood up to open a door--he opened all the doors
with old-fashioned latches--he was portentously tall, and when stretched
on the rug before the fire he seemed too long for this world--as indeed
he was. His coat was the finest and softest I have ever seen, a shade of
quiet Maltese; and from his throat downward, underneath, to the white
tips of his feet, he wore the whitest and most delicate ermine; and no
person was ever more fastidiously neat. In his finely formed head you
saw something of his aristocratic character; the ears were small and
cleanly cut, there was a tinge of pink in the nostrils, his face was
handsome, and the expression of his countenance exceedingly
intelligent--I should call it even a sweet expression if the term were
not inconsistent with his look of alertness and sagacity.

It is difficult to convey a just idea of his gayety in connection with
his dignity and gravity, which his name expressed. As we know nothing of
his family, of course it will be understood that Calvin was his
Christian name. He had times of relaxation into utter playfulness,
delighting in a ball of yarn, catching sportively at stray ribbons when
his mistress was at her toilet, and pursuing his own tail, with
hilarity, for lack of anything better. He could amuse himself by the
hour, and he did not care for children; perhaps something in his past
was present to his memory. He had absolutely no bad habits, and his
disposition was perfect. I never saw him exactly angry, though I have
seen his tail grow to an enormous size when a strange cat appeared upon
his lawn. He disliked cats, evidently regarding them as feline and
treacherous, and he had no association with them. Occasionally there
would be heard a night concert in the shrubbery. Calvin would ask to
have the door opened, and then you would hear a rush and a "pestzt," and
the concert would explode, and Calvin would quietly come in and resume
his seat on the hearth. There was no trace of anger in his manner, but
he wouldn't have any of that about the house. He had the rare virtue of
magnanimity. Although he had fixed notions about his own rights, and
extraordinary persistency in getting them, he never showed temper at a
repulse; he simply and firmly persisted till he had what he wanted. His
diet was one point; his idea was that of the scholars about
dictionaries,--to "get the best." He knew as well as anyone what was in
the house, and would refuse beef if turkey was to be had; and if there
were oysters, he would wait over the turkey to see if the oysters would
not be forthcoming. And yet he was not a gross gourmand; he would eat
bread if he saw me eating it, and thought he was not being imposed on.
His habits of feeding, also, were refined; he never used a knife, and
he would put up his hand and draw the fork down to his mouth as
gracefully as a grown person. Unless necessity compelled, he would not
eat in the kitchen, but insisted upon his meals in the dining-room, and
would wait patiently, unless a stranger were present; and then he was
sure to importune the visitor, hoping that the latter was ignorant of
the rule of the house, and would give him something. They used to say
that he preferred as his table-cloth on the floor a certain well-known
church journal; but this was said by an Episcopalian. So far as I know,
he had no religious prejudices, except that he did not like the
association with Romanists. He tolerated the servants, because they
belonged to the house, and would sometimes linger by the kitchen stove;
but the moment visitors came in he arose, opened the door, and marched
into the drawing-room. Yet he enjoyed the company of his equals, and
never withdrew, no matter how many callers--whom he recognized as of his
society--might come into the drawing-room. Calvin was fond of company,
but he wanted to choose it; and I have no doubt that his was an
aristocratic fastidiousness rather than one of faith. It is so with most
people.

The intelligence of Calvin was something phenomenal, in his rank of
life. He established a method of communicating his wants, and even some
of his sentiments; and he could help himself in many things. There was a
furnace register in a retired room, where he used to go when he wished
to be alone, that he always opened when he desired more heat; but never
shut it, any more than he shut the door after himself. He could do
almost everything but speak; and you would declare sometimes that you
could see a pathetic longing to do that in his intelligent face. I have
no desire to overdraw his qualities, but if there was one thing in him
more noticeable than another, it was his fondness for nature. He could
content himself for hours at a low window, looking into the ravine and
at the great trees, noting the smallest stir there; he delighted, above
all things, to accompany me walking about the garden, hearing the birds,
getting the smell of the fresh earth, and rejoicing in the sunshine. He
followed me and gamboled like a dog, rolling over on the turf and
exhibiting his delight in a hundred ways. If I worked, he sat and
watched me, or looked off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the
twitter in the cherry-trees. When it stormed, he was sure to sit at the
window, keenly watching the rain or the snow, glancing up and down at
its falling; and a winter tempest always delighted him. I think he was
genuinely fond of birds, but, so far as I know, he usually confined
himself to one a day; he never killed, as some sportsmen do, for the
sake of killing, but only as civilized people do,--from necessity. He
was intimate with the flying-squirrels who dwell in the
chestnut-trees,--too intimate, for almost every day in the summer he
would bring in one, until he nearly discouraged them. He was, indeed, a
superb hunter, and would have been a devastating one, if his bump of
destructiveness had not been offset by a bump of moderation. There was
very little of the brutality of the lower animals about him; I don't
think he enjoyed rats for themselves, but he knew his business, and for
the first few months of his residence with us he waged an awful campaign
against the horde, and after that his simple presence was sufficient to
deter them from coming on the premises. Mice amused him, but he usually
considered them too small game to be taken seriously; I have seen him
play for an hour with a mouse, and then let him go with a royal
condescension. In this whole matter of "getting a living," Calvin was a
great contrast to the rapacity of the age in which he lived.

I hesitate a little to speak of his capacity for friendship and the
affectionateness of his nature, for I know from his own reserve that he
would not care to have it much talked about. We understood each other
perfectly, but we never made any fuss about it; when I spoke his name
and snapped my fingers, he came to me; when I returned home at night, he
was pretty sure to be waiting for me near the gate, and would rise and
saunter along the walk, as if his being there were purely
accidental,--so shy was he commonly of showing feeling; and when I
opened the door he never rushed in, like a cat, but loitered, and
lounged, as if he had had no intention of going in, but would condescend
to. And yet, the fact was, he knew dinner was ready, and he was bound to
be there. He kept the run of dinnertime. It happened sometimes, during
our absence in the summer, that dinner would be early, and Calvin,
walking about the grounds, missed it and came in late. But he never made
a mistake the second day. There was one thing he never did,--he never
rushed through an open doorway. He never forgot his dignity. If he had
asked to have the door opened, and was eager to go out, he always went
deliberately; I can see him now, standing on the sill, looking about at
the sky as if he was thinking whether it were worth while to take an
umbrella, until he was near having his tail shut in.

His friendship was rather constant than demonstrative. When we returned
from an absence of nearly two years, Calvin welcomed us with evident
pleasure, but showed his satisfaction rather by tranquil happiness than
by fuming about. He had the faculty of making us glad to get home. It
was his constancy that was so attractive. He liked companionship, but he
wouldn't be petted, or fussed over, or sit in anyone's lap a moment; he
always extricated himself from such familiarity with dignity and with no
show of temper. If there was any petting to be done, however, he chose
to do it. Often he would sit looking at me, and then, moved by a
delicate affection, come and pull at my coat and sleeve until he could
touch my face with his nose, and then go away contented. He had a habit
of coming to my study in the morning, sitting quietly by my side or on
the table for hours, watching the pen run over the paper, occasionally
swinging his tail round for a blotter, and then going to sleep among the
papers by the inkstand. Or, more rarely, he would watch the writing from
a perch on my shoulder. Writing always interested him, and, until he
understood it, he wanted to hold the pen.

He always held himself in a kind of reserve with his friend, as if he
had said, "Let us respect our personality, and not make a 'mess' of
friendship." He saw, with Emerson, the risk of degrading it to trivial
conveniency. "Why insist on rash personal relations with your friend?"
"Leave this touching and clawing." Yet I would not give an unfair notion
of his aloofness, his fine sense of the sacredness of the me and the
not-me. And, at the risk of not being believed, I will relate an
incident, which was often repeated. Calvin had the practice of passing a
portion of the night in the contemplation of its beauties, and would
come into our chamber over the roof of the conservatory through the open
window, summer and winter, and go to sleep on the foot of my bed. He
would do this always exactly in this way; he never was content to stay
in the chamber if we compelled him to go upstairs and through the door.
He had the obstinacy of General Grant. But this is by the way. In the
morning, he performed his toilet and went down to breakfast with the
rest of the family. Now, when the mistress was absent from home, and at
no other time, Calvin would come in the morning, when the bell rang, to
the head of the bed, put up his feet and look into my face, follow me
about when I rose, "assist" at the dressing, and in many purring ways
show his fondness, as if he had plainly said, "I know that she has gone
away, but I am here." Such was Calvin in rare moments.

He had his limitations. Whatever passion he had for nature, he had no
conception of art. There was sent to him once a fine and very expressive
cat's head in bronze, by Frémiet. I placed it on the floor. He regarded
it intently, approached it cautiously and crouchingly, touched it with
his nose, perceived the fraud, turned away abruptly, and never would
notice it afterward. On the whole, his life was not only a successful
one, but a happy one. He never had but one fear, so far as I know: he
had a mortal and a reasonable terror of plumbers. He would never stay in
the house when they were here. No coaxing could quiet him. Of course he
didn't share our fear about their charges, but he must have had some
dreadful experience with them in that portion of his life which is
unknown to us. A plumber was to him the devil, and I have no doubt that,
in his scheme, plumbers were foreordained to do him mischief.

In speaking of his worth, it has never occurred to me to estimate Calvin
by the worldly standard. I know that it is customary now, when anyone
dies, to ask how much he was worth, and that no obituary in the
newspapers is considered complete without such an estimate. The plumbers
in our house were one day overheard to say that, "They say that _she_
says that _he_ says that he wouldn't take a hundred dollars for him." It
is unnecessary to say that I never made such a remark, and that, so far
as Calvin was concerned, there was no purchase in money.

As I look back upon it, Calvin's life seems to me a fortunate one, for
it was natural and unforced. He ate when he was hungry, slept when he
was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very tips of his toes and the
end of his expressive and slow-moving tail. He delighted to roam about
the garden, and stroll among the trees, and to lie on the green grass
and luxuriate in all the sweet influences of summer. You could never
accuse him of idleness, and yet he knew the secret of repose. The poet
who wrote so prettily of him that his little life was rounded with a
sleep, understated his felicity; it was rounded with a good many. His
conscience never seemed to interfere with his slumbers. In fact, he had
good habits and a contented mind. I can see him now walk in at the study
door, sit down by my chair, bring his tail artistically about his feet,
and look up at me with unspeakable happiness in his handsome face. I
often thought that he felt the dumb limitation which denied him the
power of language. But since he was denied speech, he scorned the
inarticulate mouthings of the lower animals. The vulgar mewing and
yowling of the cat species was beneath him; he sometimes uttered a sort
of articulate and well-bred ejaculation, when he wished to call
attention to something that he considered remarkable, or to some want of
his, but he never went whining about. He would sit for hours at a closed
window, when he desired to enter, without a murmur, and when it was
opened he never admitted that he had been impatient by "bolting" in.
Though speech he had not, and the unpleasant kind of utterance given to
his race he would not use, he had a mighty power of purr to express his
measureless content with congenial society. There was in him a musical
organ with stops of varied power and expression, upon which I have no
doubt he could have performed Scarlatti's celebrated cat's-fugue.

Whether Calvin died of old age, or was carried off by one of the
diseases incident to youth, it is impossible to say; for his departure
was as quiet as his advent was mysterious. I only know that he appeared
to us in this world in his perfect stature and beauty, and that after a
time, like Lohengrin, he withdrew. In his illness there was nothing
more to be regretted than in all his blameless life. I suppose there
never was an illness that had more of dignity and sweetness and
resignation in it. It came on gradually, in a kind of listlessness and
want of appetite. An alarming symptom was his preference for the warmth
of a furnace-register to the lively sparkle of the open wood-fire.
Whatever pain he suffered, he bore it in silence, and seemed only
anxious not to obtrude his malady. We tempted him with the delicacies of
the season, but it soon became impossible for him to eat, and for two
weeks he ate or drank scarcely anything. Sometimes he made an effort to
take something, but it was evident that he made the effort to please us.
The neighbors--and I am convinced that the advice of neighbors is never
good for anything--suggested catnip. He wouldn't even smell it. We had
the attendance of an amateur practitioner of medicine, whose real office
was the cure of souls, but nothing touched his case. He took what was
offered, but it was with the air of one to whom the time for pellets was
passed. He sat or lay day after day almost motionless, never once making
a display of those vulgar convulsions or contortions of pain which are
so disagreeable to society. His favorite place was on the brightest spot
of a Smyrna rug by the conservatory, where the sunlight fell and he
could hear the fountain play. If we went to him and exhibited our
interest in his condition, he always purred in recognition of our
sympathy. And when I spoke his name, he looked up with an expression
that said, "I understand it, old fellow, but it's no use." He was to all
who came to visit him a model of calmness and patience in affliction.

I was absent from home at the last, but heard by daily postal-card of
his failing condition; and never again saw him alive. One sunny morning,
he rose from his rug, went into the conservatory (he was very thin
then), walked around it deliberately, looking at all the plants he knew,
and then went to the bay-window in the dining-room, and stood a long
time looking out upon the little field, now brown and sere, and toward
the garden, where perhaps the happiest hours of his life had been spent.
It was a last look. He turned and walked away, laid himself down upon
the bright spot in the rug, and quietly died.

It is not too much to say that a little shock went through the
neighborhood when it was known that Calvin was dead, so marked was his
individuality; and his friends, one after another, came in to see him.
There was no sentimental nonsense about his obsequies; it was felt that
any parade would have been distasteful to him. John, who acted as
undertaker, prepared a candle-box for him, and I believe assumed a
professional decorum; but there may have been the usual levity
underneath, for I heard that he remarked in the kitchen that it was the
"dryest wake he ever attended." Everybody, however, felt a fondness for
Calvin, and regarded him with a certain respect. Between him and Bertha
there existed a great friendship, and she apprehended his nature; she
used to say that sometimes she was afraid of him, he looked at her so
intelligently; she was never certain that he was what he appeared to be.

When I returned, they had laid Calvin on a table in an upper chamber by
an open window. It was February. He reposed in a candle-box, lined about
the edge with evergreen, and at his head stood a little wine-glass with
flowers. He lay with his head tucked down in his arms,--a favorite
position of his before the fire,--as if asleep in the comfort of his
soft and exquisite fur. It was the involuntary exclamation of those who
saw him, "How natural he looks!" As for myself, I said nothing. John
buried him under the twin hawthorn-trees,--one white and the other
pink,--in a spot where Calvin was fond of lying and listening to the
hum of summer insects and the twitter of birds.

Perhaps I have failed to make appear the individuality of character that
was so evident to those who knew him. At any rate, I have set down
nothing concerning him but the literal truth. He was always a mystery. I
did not know whence he came; I do not know whither he has gone. I would
not weave one spray of falsehood in the wreath I lay upon his grave.

/#
     [From _My Summer in a Garden_, by Charles Dudley Warner. Copyright,
     1870, by Fields, Osgood & Co. Copyright, 1898, by Charles Dudley
     Warner. Copyright, 1912, by Susan Lee Warner.]
#/



FIVE AMERICAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO CIVILIZATION

CHARLES WILLIAM ELIOT


Looking back over forty centuries of history, we observe that many
nations have made characteristic contributions to the progress of
civilization, the beneficent effects of which have been permanent,
although the races that made them may have lost their national form and
organization, or their relative standing among the nations of the earth.
Thus, the Hebrew race, during many centuries, made supreme contributions
to religious thought; and the Greek, during the brief climax of the
race, to speculative philosophy, architecture, sculpture, and the drama.
The Roman people developed military colonization, aqueducts, roads and
bridges, and a great body of public law, large parts of which still
survive; and the Italians of the middle ages and the Renaissance
developed ecclesiastical organization and the fine arts, as tributary to
the splendor of the church and to municipal luxury. England, for several
centuries, has contributed to the institutional development of
representative government and public justice; the Dutch, in the
sixteenth century, made a superb struggle for free thought and free
government; France, in the eighteenth century, taught the doctrine of
individual freedom and the theory of human rights; and Germany, at two
periods within the nineteenth century, fifty years apart, proved the
vital force of the sentiment of nationality. I ask you to consider with
me what characteristic and durable contributions the American people
have been making to the progress of civilization.

The first and principal contribution to which I shall ask your attention
is the advance made in the United States, not in theory only, but in
practice, toward the abandonment of war as the means of settling
disputes between nations, the substitution of discussion and
arbitration, and the avoidance of armaments. If the intermittent Indian
fighting and the brief contest with the Barbary corsairs be disregarded,
the United States have had only four years and a quarter of
international war in the one hundred and seven years since the adoption
of the Constitution. Within the same period the United States have been
a party to forty-seven arbitrations--being more than half of all that
have taken place in the modern world. The questions settled by these
arbitrations have been just such as have commonly caused wars, namely,
questions of boundary, fisheries, damage caused by war or civil
disturbances, and injuries to commerce. Some of them were of great
magnitude, the four made under the treaty of Washington (May 8, 1871)
being the most important that have ever taken place. Confident in their
strength, and relying on their ability to adjust international
differences, the United States have habitually maintained, by voluntary
enlistment for short terms, a standing army and a fleet which, in
proportion to the population, are insignificant.

The beneficent effects of this American contribution to civilization are
of two sorts: in the first place, the direct evils of war and of
preparations for war have been diminished; and secondly, the influence
of the war spirit on the perennial conflict between the rights of the
single personal unit and the powers of the multitude that constitute
organized society--or, in other words, between individual freedom and
collective authority--has been reduced to the lowest terms. War has
been, and still is, the school of collectivism, the warrant of tyranny.
Century after century, tribes, clans, and nations have sacrificed the
liberty of the individual to the fundamental necessity of being strong
for combined defense or attack in war. Individual freedom is crushed in
war, for the nature of war is inevitably despotic. It says to the
private person: "Obey without a question, even unto death; die in this
ditch, without knowing why; walk into that deadly thicket; mount this
embankment, behind which are men who will try to kill you, lest you
should kill them; make part of an immense machine for blind destruction,
cruelty, rapine, and killing." At this moment every young man in
Continental Europe learns the lesson of absolute military obedience, and
feels himself subject to this crushing power of militant society,
against which no rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness avail anything. This pernicious influence, inherent
in the social organization of all Continental Europe during many
centuries, the American people have for generations escaped, and they
show other nations how to escape it. I ask your attention to the
favorable conditions under which this contribution of the United States
to civilization has been made.

There has been a deal of fighting on the American continent during the
past three centuries; but it has not been of the sort which most
imperils liberty. The first European colonists who occupied portions of
the coast of North America encountered in the Indians men of the Stone
Age, who ultimately had to be resisted and quelled by force. The Indian
races were at a stage of development thousands of years behind that of
the Europeans. They could not be assimilated; for the most part they
could not be taught or even reasoned with; with a few exceptions they
had to be driven away by prolonged fighting, or subdued by force so
that they would live peaceably with the whites. This warfare, however,
always had in it for the whites a large element of self-defense--the
homes and families of the settlers were to be defended against a
stealthy and pitiless foe. Constant exposure to the attacks of savages
was only one of the formidable dangers and difficulties which for a
hundred years the early settlers had to meet, and which developed in
them courage, hardiness, and persistence. The French and English wars on
the North American continent, always more or less mixed with Indian
warfare, were characterized by race hatred and religious animosity--two
of the commonest causes of war in all ages; but they did not tend to
fasten upon the English colonists any objectionable public authority, or
to contract the limits of individual liberty. They furnished a school of
martial qualities at small cost to liberty. In the War of Independence
there was a distinct hope and purpose to enlarge individual liberty. It
made possible a confederation of the colonies, and, ultimately, the
adoption of the Constitution of the United States. It gave to the
thirteen colonies a lesson in collectivism, but it was a needed lesson
on the necessity of combining their forces to resist an oppressive
external authority. The war of 1812 is properly called the Second War of
Independence, for it was truly a fight for liberty and for the rights of
neutrals, in resistance to the impressment of seamen and other
oppressions growing out of European conflicts. The civil war of 1861-65
was waged, on the side of the North, primarily, to prevent the
dismemberment of the country, and, secondarily and incidentally, to
destroy the institution of slavery. On the Northern side it therefore
called forth a generous element of popular ardor in defense of free
institutions; and though it temporarily caused centralization of great
powers in the government, it did as much to promote individual freedom
as it did to strengthen public authority.

In all this series of fightings the main motives were self-defense,
resistance to oppression, the enlargement of liberty, and the
conservation of national acquisitions. The war with Mexico, it is true,
was of a wholly different type. That was a war of conquest, and of
conquest chiefly in the interest of African slavery. It was also an
unjust attack made by a powerful people on a feeble one; but it lasted
less than two years, and the number of men engaged in it was at no time
large. Moreover, by the treaty which ended the war, the conquering
nation agreed to pay the conquered eighteen million dollars in partial
compensation for some of the territory wrested from it, instead of
demanding a huge war-indemnity, as the European way is. Its results
contradicted the anticipations both of those who advocated and of those
who opposed it. It was one of the wrongs which prepared the way for the
great rebellion; but its direct evils were of moderate extent, and it
had no effect on the perennial conflict between individual liberty and
public power.

In the meantime, partly as the results of Indian fighting and the
Mexican war, but chiefly through purchases and arbitrations, the
American people had acquired a territory so extensive, so defended by
oceans, gulfs, and great lakes, and so intersected by those great
natural highways, navigable rivers, that it would obviously be
impossible for any enemy to overrun or subdue it. The civilized nations
of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa have always been liable to
hostile incursions from without. Over and over again barbarous hordes
have overthrown established civilizations; and at this moment there is
not a nation of Europe which does not feel obliged to maintain monstrous
armaments for defense against its neighbors. The American people have
long been exempt from such terrors, and are now absolutely free from
this necessity of keeping in readiness to meet heavy assaults. The
absence of a great standing army and of a large fleet has been a main
characteristic of the United States, in contrast with the other
civilized nations; this has been a great inducement to immigration, and
a prime cause of the country's rapid increase in wealth. The United
States have no formidable neighbor, except Great Britain in Canada. In
April, 1817, by a convention made between Great Britain and the United
States, without much public discussion or observation, these two
powerful nations agreed that each should keep on the Great Lakes only a
few police vessels of insignificant size and armament. This agreement
was made but four years after Perry's naval victory on Lake Erie, and
only three years after the burning of Washington by a British force. It
was one of the first acts of Monroe's first administration, and it would
be difficult to find in all history a more judicious or effectual
agreement between two powerful neighbors. For eighty years this
beneficent convention has helped to keep the peace. The European way
would have been to build competitive fleets, dock-yards, and fortresses,
all of which would have helped to bring on war during the periods of
mutual exasperation which have occurred since 1817. Monroe's second
administration was signalized, six years later, by the declaration that
the United States would consider any attempt on the part of the Holy
Alliance to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as
dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States. This
announcement was designed to prevent the introduction on the American
continent of the horrible European system--with its balance of power,
its alliances offensive and defensive in opposing groups, and its
perpetual armaments on an enormous scale. That a declaration expressly
intended to promote peace and prevent armaments should now be perverted
into an argument for arming and for a belligerent public policy is an
extraordinary perversion of the true American doctrine.

The ordinary causes of war between nation and nation have been lacking
in America for the last century and a quarter. How many wars in the
world's history have been due to contending dynasties; how many of the
most cruel and protracted wars have been due to religious strife; how
many to race hatred! No one of these causes of war has been efficacious
in America since the French were overcome in Canada by the English in
1759. Looking forward into the future, we find it impossible to imagine
circumstances under which any of these common causes of war can take
effect on the North American continent. Therefore, the ordinary motives
for maintaining armaments in time of peace, and concentrating the powers
of government in such a way as to interfere with individual liberty,
have not been in play in the United States as among the nations of
Europe, and are not likely to be.

Such have been the favorable conditions under which America has made its
best contribution to the progress of our race.

There are some people of a perverted sentimentality who occasionally
lament the absence in our country of the ordinary inducements to war, on
the ground that war develops certain noble qualities in some of the
combatants, and gives opportunity for the practice of heroic virtues,
such as courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. It is further said that
prolonged peace makes nations effeminate, luxurious, and materialistic,
and substitutes for the high ideals of the patriot soldier the low
ideals of the farmer, manufacturer, tradesman, and pleasure-seeker. This
view seems to me to err in two opposite ways. In the first place, it
forgets that war, in spite of the fact that it develops some splendid
virtues, is the most horrible occupation that human beings can possibly
engage in. It is cruel, treacherous, and murderous. Defensive warfare,
particularly on the part of a weak nation against powerful invaders or
oppressors, excites a generous sympathy; but for every heroic defense
there must be an attack by a preponderating force, and war, being the
conflict of the two, must be judged by its moral effects not on one
party, but on both parties. Moreover, the weaker party may have the
worse cause. The immediate ill effects of war are bad enough, but its
after effects are generally worse, because indefinitely prolonged and
indefinitely wasting and damaging. At this moment, thirty-one years
after the end of our civil war, there are two great evils afflicting our
country which took their rise in that war, namely, (1) the belief of a
large proportion of our people in money without intrinsic value, or
worth less than its face, and made current solely by act of Congress,
and (2) the payment of immense annual sums in pensions. It is the
paper-money delusion born of the civil war which generated and supports
the silver-money delusion of to-day. As a consequence of the war, the
nation has paid $2,000,000,000 in pensions within thirty-three years. So
far as pensions are paid to disabled persons, they are a just and
inevitable, but unproductive expenditure; so far as they are paid to
persons who are not disabled,--men or women,--they are in the main not
only unproductive but demoralizing; so far as they promote the marriage
of young women to old men, as a pecuniary speculation, they create a
grave social evil. It is impossible to compute or even imagine the
losses and injuries already inflicted by the fiat-money delusion; and we
know that some of the worst evils of the pension system will go on for a
hundred years to come, unless the laws about widows' pensions are
changed for the better. It is a significant fact that of the existing
pensioners of the war of 1812 only twenty-one are surviving soldiers or
sailors, while 3826 are widows.[7]

War gratifies, or used to gratify, the combative instinct of mankind,
but it gratifies also the love of plunder, destruction, cruel
discipline, and arbitrary power. It is doubtful whether fighting with
modern appliances will continue to gratify the savage instinct of
combat; for it is not likely that in the future two opposing lines of
men can ever meet, or any line or column reach an enemy's intrenchments.
The machine-gun can only be compared to the scythe, which cuts off every
blade of grass within its sweep. It has made cavalry charges impossible,
just as the modern ironclad has made impossible the manœuvers of one
of Nelson's fleets. On land, the only mode of approach of one line to
another must hereafter be by concealment, crawling, or surprise. Naval
actions will henceforth be conflicts between opposing machines, guided,
to be sure, by men; but it will be the best machine that wins, and not
necessarily the most enduring men. War will become a contest between
treasuries or war-chests; for now that 10,000 men can fire away a
million dollars' worth of ammunition in an hour, no poor nation can long
resist a rich one, unless there be some extraordinary difference between
the two in mental and moral strength.

The view that war is desirable omits also the consideration that modern
social and industrial life affords ample opportunities for the
courageous and loyal discharge of duty, apart from the barbarities of
warfare. There are many serviceable occupations in civil life which call
for all the courage and fidelity of the best soldier, and for more than
his independent responsibility, because not pursued in masses or under
the immediate command of superiors. Such occupations are those of the
locomotive engineer, the electric lineman, the railroad brakeman, the
city fireman, and the policeman. The occupation of the locomotive
engineer requires constantly a high degree of skill, alertness,
fidelity, and resolution, and at any moment may call for heroic
self-forgetfulness. The occupation of a lineman requires all the courage
and endurance of a soldier, whose lurking foe is mysterious and
invisible. In the two years, 1893 and 1894, there were 34,000 trainmen
killed and wounded on the railroads of the United States, and 25,000
other railroad employés besides. I need not enlarge on the dangers of
the fireman's occupation, or on the disciplined gallantry with which its
risks are habitually incurred. The policeman in large cities needs every
virtue of the best soldier, for in the discharge of many of his most
important duties he is alone. Even the feminine occupation of the
trained nurse illustrates every heroic quality which can possibly be
exhibited in war; for she, simply in the way of duty, without the
stimulus of excitement or companionship, runs risks from which many a
soldier in hot blood would shrink. No one need be anxious about the lack
of opportunities in civilized life for the display of heroic qualities.
New industries demand new forms of fidelity and self-sacrificing
devotion. Every generation develops some new kind of hero. Did it ever
occur to you that the "scab" is a creditable type of nineteenth century
hero? In defense of his rights as an individual, he deliberately incurs
the reprobation of many of his fellows, and runs the immediate risk of
bodily injury, or even of death. He also risks his livelihood for the
future, and thereby the well-being of his family. He steadily asserts in
action his right to work on such conditions as he sees fit to make, and,
in so doing, he exhibits remarkable courage, and renders a great service
to his fellow-men. He is generally a quiet, unpretending, silent person,
who values his personal freedom more than the society and approbation
of his mates. Often he is impelled to work by family affection, but this
fact does not diminish his heroism. There are file-closers behind the
line of battle of the bravest regiment. Another modern personage who
needs heroic endurance, and often exhibits it, is the public servant who
steadily does his duty against the outcry of a party press bent on
perverting his every word and act. Through the telegram, cheap postage,
and the daily newspaper, the forces of hasty public opinion can now be
concentrated and expressed with a rapidity and intensity unknown to
preceding generations. In consequence, the independent thinker or actor,
or the public servant, when his thoughts or acts run counter to
prevailing popular or party opinions, encounters sudden and intense
obloquy, which, to many temperaments, is very formidable. That habit of
submitting to the opinion of the majority which democracy fosters
renders the storm of detraction and calumny all the more difficult to
endure--makes it, indeed, so intolerable to many citizens, that they
will conceal or modify their opinions rather than endure it. Yet the
very breath of life for a democracy is free discussion, and the taking
account, of all opinions honestly held and reasonably expressed. The
unreality of the vilification of public men in the modern press is often
revealed by the sudden change when an eminent public servant retires or
dies. A man for whom no words of derision or condemnation were strong
enough yesterday is recognized to-morrow as an honorable and serviceable
person, and a credit to his country. Nevertheless, this habit of
partizan ridicule and denunciation in the daily reading-matter of
millions of people calls for a new kind of courage and toughness in
public men, and calls for it, not in brief moments of excitement only,
but steadily, year in and year out. Clearly, there is no need of
bringing on wars in order to breed heroes. Civilized life affords
plenty of opportunities for heroes, and for a better kind than war or
any other savagery has ever produced. Moreover, none but lunatics would
set a city on fire in order to give opportunities for heroism to
firemen, or introduce the cholera or yellow fever to give physicians and
nurses opportunity for practicing disinterested devotion, or condemn
thousands of people to extreme poverty in order that some well-to-do
persons might practice a beautiful charity. It is equally crazy to
advocate war on the ground that it is a school for heroes.

Another misleading argument for war needs brief notice. It is said that
war is a school of national development--that a nation, when conducting
a great war, puts forth prodigious exertions to raise money, supply
munitions, enlist troops, and keep them in the field, and often gets a
clearer conception and a better control of its own material and moral
forces while making these unusual exertions. The nation which means to
live in peace necessarily foregoes, it is said, these valuable
opportunities of abnormal activity. Naturally, such a nation's abnormal
activities devoted to destruction would be diminished; but its normal
and abnormal activities devoted to construction and improvement ought to
increase.

One great reason for the rapid development of the United States since
the adoption of the Constitution is the comparative exemption of the
whole people from war, dread of war, and preparations for war. The
energies of the people have been directed into other channels. The
progress of applied science during the present century, and the new
ideals concerning the well-being of human multitudes, have opened great
fields for the useful application of national energy. This immense
territory of ours, stretching from ocean to ocean, and for the most part
but imperfectly developed and sparsely settled, affords a broad field
for the beneficent application of the richest national forces during an
indefinite period. There is no department of national activity in which
we could not advantageously put forth much more force than we now
expend; and there are great fields which we have never cultivated at
all. As examples, I may mention the post-office, national sanitation,
public works, and education. Although great improvements have been made
during the past fifty years in the collection and delivery of mail
matter, much still remains to be done both in city and country, and
particularly in the country. In the mail facilities secured to our
people, we are far behind several European governments, whereas we ought
to be far in advance of every European government except Switzerland,
since the rapid interchange of ideas, and the promotion of family,
friendly, and commercial intercourse, are of more importance to a
democracy than to any other form of political society. Our national
government takes very little pains about the sanitation of the country,
or its deliverance from injurious insects and parasites; yet these are
matters of gravest interest, with which only the general government can
deal, because action by separate States or cities is necessarily
ineffectual. To fight pestilences needs quite as much energy, skill, and
courage as to carry on war; indeed, the foes are more insidious and
awful, and the means of resistance less obvious. On the average and the
large scale, the professions which heal and prevent disease, and
mitigate suffering, call for much more ability, constancy, and devotion
than the professions which inflict wounds and death and all sorts of
human misery. Our government has never touched the important subject of
national roads, by which I mean not railroads, but common highways; yet
here is a great subject for beneficent action through government, in
which we need only go for our lessons to little republican Switzerland.
Inundations and droughts are great enemies of the human race, against
which government ought to create defenses, because private enterprise
cannot cope with such wide-spreading evils. Popular education is another
great field in which public activity should be indefinitely enlarged,
not so much through the action of the Federal government,--though even
there a much more effective supervision should be provided than now
exists,--but through the action of States, cities, and towns. We have
hardly begun to apprehend the fundamental necessity and infinite value
of public education, or to appreciate the immense advantages to be
derived from additional expenditure for it. What prodigious
possibilities of improvement are suggested by the single statement that
the average annual expenditure for the schooling of a child in the
United States is only about eighteen dollars! Here is a cause which
requires from hundreds of thousands of men and women keen intelligence,
hearty devotion to duty, and a steady uplifting and advancement of all
its standards and ideals. The system of public instruction should embody
for coming generations all the virtues of the mediæval church. It should
stand for the brotherhood and unity of all classes and conditions; it
should exalt the joys of the intellectual life above all material
delights; and it should produce the best constituted and most wisely
directed intellectual and moral host that the world has seen. In view of
such unutilized opportunities as these for the beneficent application of
great public forces, does it not seem monstrous that war should be
advocated on the ground that it gives occasion for rallying and using
the national energies?

The second eminent contribution which the United States have made to
civilization is their thorough acceptance, in theory and practice, of
the widest religious toleration. As a means of suppressing individual
liberty, the collective authority of the Church, when elaborately
organized in a hierarchy directed by one head and absolutely devoted in
every rank to its service, comes next in proved efficiency to that
concentration of powers in government which enables it to carry on war
effectively. The Western Christian Church, organized under the Bishop of
Rome, acquired, during the middle ages, a centralized authority which
quite overrode both the temporal ruler and the rising spirit of
nationality. For a time Christian Church and Christian States acted
together, just as in Egypt, during many earlier centuries, the great
powers of civil and religious rule had been united. The Crusades marked
the climax of the power of the Church. Thereafter, Church and State were
often in conflict; and during this prolonged conflict the seeds of
liberty were planted, took root, and made some sturdy growth. We can see
now, as we look back on the history of Europe, how fortunate it was that
the colonization of North America by Europeans was deferred until after
the period of the Reformation, and especially until after the
Elizabethan period in England, the Luther period in Germany, and the
splendid struggle of the Dutch for liberty in Holland. The founders of
New England and New York were men who had imbibed the principles of
resistance both to arbitrary civil power and to universal ecclesiastical
authority. Hence it came about that within the territory now covered by
the United States no single ecclesiastical organization ever obtained a
wide and oppressive control, and that in different parts of this great
region churches very unlike in doctrine and organization were almost
simultaneously established. It has been an inevitable consequence of
this condition of things that the Church, as a whole, in the United
States has not been an effective opponent of any form of human rights.
For generations it has been divided into numerous sects and
denominations, no one of which has been able to claim more than a tenth
of the population as its adherents; and the practices of these numerous
denominations have been profoundly modified by political theories and
practices, and by social customs natural to new communities formed under
the prevailing conditions of free intercourse and rapid growth. The
constitutional prohibition of religious tests as qualifications for
office gave the United States the leadership among the nations in
dissociating theological opinions and political rights. No one
denomination or ecclesiastical organization in the United States has
held great properties, or has had the means of conducting its ritual
with costly pomp or its charitable works with imposing liberality. No
splendid architectural exhibitions of Church power have interested or
overawed the population. On the contrary, there has prevailed in general
a great simplicity in public worship, until very recent years. Some
splendors have been lately developed by religious bodies in the great
cities; but these splendors and luxuries have been almost simultaneously
exhibited by religious bodies of very different, not to say opposite,
kinds. Thus, in New York city, the Jews, the Greek Church, the
Catholics, and the Episcopalians have all erected, or undertaken to
erect, magnificent edifices. But these recent demonstrations of wealth
and zeal are so distributed among differing religious organizations that
they cannot be imagined to indicate a coming centralization of
ecclesiastical influence adverse to individual liberty.

In the United States, the great principle of religious toleration is
better understood and more firmly established than in any other nation
of the earth. It is not only embodied in legislation, but also
completely recognized in the habits and customs of good society.
Elsewhere it may be a long road from legal to social recognition of
religious liberty, as the example of England shows. This recognition
alone would mean, to any competent student of history, that the United
States had made an unexampled contribution to the reconciliation of just
governmental power with just freedom for the individual, inasmuch as the
partial establishment of religious toleration has been the main work of
civilization during the past four centuries. In view of this
characteristic and infinitely beneficent contribution to human happiness
and progress, how pitiable seem the temporary outbursts of bigotry and
fanaticism which have occasionally marred the fair record of our country
in regard to religious toleration! If anyone imagines that this American
contribution to civilization is no longer important,--that the victory
for toleration has been already won,--let him recall the fact that the
last years of the nineteenth century have witnessed two horrible
religious persecutions, one by a Christian nation, the other by a
Moslem--one, of the Jews by Russia, and the other, of the Armenians by
Turkey.

The third characteristic contribution which the United States have made
to civilization has been the safe development of a manhood suffrage
nearly universal. The experience of the United States has brought out
several principles with regard to the suffrage which have not been
clearly apprehended by some eminent political philosophers. In the first
place, American experience has demonstrated the advantages of a gradual
approach to universal suffrage, over a sudden leap. Universal suffrage
is not the first and only means of attaining democratic government;
rather, it is the ultimate goal of successful democracy. It is not a
specific for the cure of all political ills; on the contrary, it may
itself easily be the source of great political evils. The people of the
United States feel its dangers to-day. When constituencies are large, it
aggravates the well-known difficulties of party government; so that many
of the ills which threaten democratic communities at this moment,
whether in Europe or America, proceed from the breakdown of party
government rather than from failures of universal suffrage. The methods
of party government were elaborated where suffrage was limited and
constituencies were small. Manhood suffrage has not worked perfectly
well in the United States, or in any other nation where it has been
adopted, and it is not likely very soon to work perfectly anywhere. It
is like freedom of the will for the individual--the only atmosphere in
which virtue can grow, but an atmosphere in which sin can also grow.
Like freedom of the will, it needs to be surrounded with checks and
safeguards, particularly in the childhood of the nation; but, like
freedom of the will, it is the supreme good, the goal of perfected
democracy. Secondly, like freedom of the will, universal suffrage has an
educational effect, which has been mentioned by many writers, but has
seldom been clearly apprehended or adequately described. This
educational effect is produced in two ways: In the first place, the
combination of individual freedom with social mobility, which a wide
suffrage tends to produce, permits the capable to rise through all
grades of society, even within a single generation; and this freedom to
rise is intensely stimulating to personal ambition. Thus every capable
American, from youth to age, is bent on bettering himself and his
condition. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the
mental condition of an average American belonging to the laborious
classes, but conscious that he can rise to the top of the social scale,
and that of a European mechanic, peasant, or tradesman, who knows that
he cannot rise out of his class, and is content with his hereditary
classification. The state of mind of the American prompts to constant
struggle for self-improvement and the acquisition of all sorts of
property and power. In the second place, it is a direct effect of a
broad suffrage that the voters become periodically interested in the
discussion of grave public problems, which carry their minds away from
the routine of their daily labor and household experience out into
larger fields. The instrumentalities of this prolonged education have
been multiplied and improved enormously within the last fifty years. In
no field of human endeavor have the fruits of the introduction of steam
and electrical power been more striking than in the methods of reaching
multitudes of people with instructive narratives, expositions, and
arguments. The multiplication of newspapers, magazines, and books is
only one of the immense developments in the means of reaching the
people. The advocates of any public cause now have it in their power to
provide hundreds of newspapers with the same copy, or the same plates,
for simultaneous issue. The mails provide the means of circulating
millions of leaflets and pamphlets. The interest in the minds of the
people which prompts to the reading of these multiplied communications
comes from the frequently recurring elections. The more difficult the
intellectual problem presented in any given election, the more educative
the effect of the discussion. Many modern industrial and financial
problems are extremely difficult, even for highly-educated men. As
subjects of earnest thought and discussion on the farm, and in the
work-shop, factory, rolling-mill, and mine, they supply a mental
training for millions of adults, the like of which has never before been
seen in the world.

In these discussions, it is not only the receptive masses that are
benefited; the classes that supply the appeals to the masses are also
benefited in a high degree. There is no better mental exercise for the
most highly trained man than the effort to expound a difficult subject
in so clear a way that the untrained man can understand it. In a
republic in which the final appeal is to manhood suffrage, the educated
minority of the people is constantly stimulated to exertion, by the
instinct of self-preservation as well as by love of country. They see
dangers in proposals made to universal suffrage, and they must exert
themselves to ward off those dangers. The position of the educated and
well-to-do classes is a thoroughly wholesome one in this respect: they
cannot depend for the preservation of their advantages on land-owning,
hereditary privilege, or any legislation not equally applicable to the
poorest and humblest citizen. They must maintain their superiority by
being superior. They cannot live in a too safe corner.

I touch here on a misconception which underlies much of the criticism of
universal suffrage. It is commonly said that the rule of the majority
must be the rule of the most ignorant and incapable, the multitude being
necessarily uninstructed as to taxation, public finance, and foreign
relations, and untrained to active thought on such difficult subjects.
Now, universal suffrage is merely a convention as to where the last
appeal shall lie for the decision of public questions; and it is the
rule of the majority only in this sense. The educated classes are
undoubtedly a minority; but it is not safe to assume that they
monopolize the good sense of the community. On the contrary, it is very
clear that native good judgment and good feeling are not proportional to
education, and that among a multitude of men who have only an elementary
education, a large proportion will possess both good judgment and good
feeling. Indeed, persons who can neither read nor write may possess a
large share of both, as is constantly seen in regions where the
opportunities for education in childhood have been scanty or
inaccessible. It is not to be supposed that the cultivated classes,
under a régime of universal suffrage, are not going to try to make their
cultivation felt in the discussion and disposal of public questions.
Any result under universal suffrage is a complex effect of the
discussion of the public question in hand by the educated classes in the
presence of the comparatively uneducated, when a majority of both
classes taken together is ultimately to settle the question. In
practice, both classes divide on almost every issue. But, in any case,
if the educated classes cannot hold their own with the uneducated, by
means of their superior physical, mental, and moral qualities, they are
obviously unfit to lead society. With education should come better
powers of argument and persuasion, a stricter sense of honor, and a
greater general effectiveness. With these advantages, the educated
classes must undoubtedly appeal to the less educated, and try to convert
them to their way of thinking; but this is a process which is good for
both sets of people. Indeed, it is the best possible process for the
training of freemen, educated or uneducated, rich or poor.

It is often assumed that the educated classes become impotent in a
democracy, because the representatives of those classes are not
exclusively chosen to public office. This argument is a very fallacious
one. It assumes that the public offices are the places of greatest
influence; whereas, in the United States, at least, that is
conspicuously not the case. In a democracy, it is important to
discriminate influence from authority. Rulers and magistrates may or may
not be persons of influence; but many persons of influence never become
rulers, magistrates, or representatives in parliaments or legislatures.
The complex industries of a modern state, and its innumerable
corporation services, offer great fields for administrative talent which
were entirely unknown to preceding generations; and these new activities
attract many ambitious and capable men more strongly than the public
service. These men are not on that account lost to their country or to
society. The present generation has wholly escaped from the conditions
of earlier centuries, when able men who were not great land-owners had
but three outlets for their ambition--the army, the church, or the
national civil service. The national service, whether in an empire, a
limited monarchy, or a republic, is now only one of many fields which
offer to able and patriotic men an honorable and successful career.
Indeed, legislation and public administration necessarily have a very
second-hand quality; and more and more legislators and administrators
become dependent on the researches of scholars, men of science, and
historians, and follow in the footsteps of inventors, economists, and
political philosophers. Political leaders are very seldom leaders of
thought; they are generally trying to induce masses of men to act on
principles thought out long before. Their skill is in the selection of
practicable approximations to the ideal; their arts are arts of
exposition and persuasion; their honor comes from fidelity under trying
circumstances to familiar principles of public duty. The real leaders of
American thought in this century have been preachers, teachers, jurists,
seers, and poets. While it is of the highest importance, under any form
of government, that the public servants should be men of intelligence,
education, and honor, it is no objection to any given form, that under
it large numbers of educated and honorable citizens have no connection
with the public service.

Well-to-do Europeans, when reasoning about the working of democracy,
often assume that under any government the property-holders are
synonymous with the intelligent and educated class. That is not the case
in the American democracy. Anyone who has been connected with a large
American university can testify that democratic institutions produce
plenty of rich people who are not educated and plenty of educated
people who are not rich, just as mediæval society produced illiterate
nobles and cultivated monks.

Persons who object to manhood suffrage as the last resort for the
settlement of public questions are bound to show where, in all the
world, a juster or more practicable regulation or convention has been
arrived at. The objectors ought at least to indicate where the ultimate
decision should, in their judgment, rest--as, for example, with the
land-owners, or the property-holders, or the graduates of secondary
schools, or the professional classes. He would be a bold political
philosopher who, in these days, should propose that the ultimate
tribunal should be constituted in any of these ways. All the experience
of the civilized world fails to indicate a safe personage, a safe class,
or a safe minority, with which to deposit this power of ultimate
decision. On the contrary, the experience of civilization indicates that
no select person or class can be trusted with that power, no matter what
the principle of selection. The convention that the majority of males
shall decide public questions has obviously great recommendations. It is
apparently fairer than the rule of any minority, and it is sure to be
supported by an adequate physical force. Moreover, its decisions are
likely to enforce themselves. Even in matters of doubtful
prognostication, the fact that a majority of the males do the
prophesying tends to the fulfillment of the prophecy. At any rate, the
adoption or partial adoption of universal male suffrage by several
civilized nations is coincident with unexampled ameliorations in the
condition of the least fortunate and most numerous classes of the
population. To this general amelioration many causes have doubtless
contributed; but it is reasonable to suppose that the acquisition of the
power which comes with votes has had something to do with it.

Timid or conservative people often stand aghast at the possible
directions of democratic desire, or at some of the predicted results of
democratic rule; but meantime the actual experience of the American
democracy proves: 1, that property has never been safer under any form
of government; 2, that no people have ever welcomed so ardently new
machinery, and new inventions generally; 3, that religious toleration
was never carried so far, and never so universally accepted; 4, that
nowhere have the power and disposition to read been so general; 5, that
nowhere has governmental power been more adequate, or more freely
exercised, to levy and collect taxes, to raise armies and to disband
them, to maintain public order, and to pay off great public
debts--national, State, and town; 6, that nowhere have property and
well-being been so widely diffused; and 7, that no form of government
ever inspired greater affection and loyalty, or prompted to greater
personal sacrifices in supreme moments. In view of these solid facts,
speculations as to what universal suffrage would have done in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, or may do in the twentieth, seem
futile indeed. The most civilized nations of the world have all either
adopted this final appeal to manhood suffrage, or they are approaching
that adoption by rapid stages. The United States, having no customs or
traditions of an opposite sort to overcome, have led the nations in this
direction, and have had the honor of devising, as a result of practical
experience, the best safeguards for universal suffrage, safeguards
which, in the main, are intended to prevent hasty public action, or
action based on sudden discontents or temporary spasms of public
feeling. These checks are intended to give time for discussion and
deliberation, or, in other words, to secure the enlightenment of the
voters before the vote. If, under new conditions, existing safeguards
prove insufficient, the only wise course is to devise new safeguards.

The United States have made to civilization a fourth contribution of a
very hopeful sort, to which public attention needs to be directed, lest
temporary evils connected therewith should prevent the continuation of
this beneficent action. The United States have furnished a demonstration
that people belonging to a great variety of races or nations are, under
favorable circumstances, fit for political freedom. It is the fashion to
attribute to the enormous immigration of the last fifty years some of
the failures of the American political system, and particularly the
American failure in municipal government, and the introduction in a few
States of the rule of the irresponsible party foremen known as "bosses."
Impatient of these evils, and hastily accepting this improbable
explanation of them, some people wish to depart from the American policy
of welcoming immigrants. In two respects the absorption of large numbers
of immigrants from many nations into the American commonwealth has been
of great service to mankind. In the first place, it has demonstrated
that people who at home have been subject to every sort of aristocratic
or despotic or military oppression become within less than a generation
serviceable citizens of a republic; and, in the second place, the United
States have thus educated to freedom many millions of men. Furthermore,
the comparatively high degree of happiness and prosperity enjoyed by the
people of the United States has been brought home to multitudes in
Europe by friends and relatives who have emigrated to this country, and
has commended free institutions to them in the best possible way. This
is a legitimate propaganda vastly more effective than any annexation or
conquest of unwilling people, or of people unprepared for liberty.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the process of assimilating
foreigners began in this century. The eighteenth century provided the
colonies with a great mixture of peoples, although the English race
predominated then, as now. When the Revolution broke out, there were
already English, Irish, Scotch, Dutch, Germans, French, Portuguese, and
Swedes in the colonies. The French were, to be sure, in small
proportion, and were almost exclusively Huguenot refugees, but they were
a valuable element in the population. The Germans were well diffused,
having established themselves in New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and
Georgia. The Scotch were scattered through all the colonies.
Pennsylvania, especially, was inhabited by an extraordinary mixture of
nationalities and religions. Since steam-navigation on the Atlantic and
railroad transportation on the North American continent became cheap and
easy, the tide of immigration has greatly increased; but it is very
doubtful if the amount of assimilation going on in the nineteenth
century has been any larger, in proportion to the population and wealth
of the country, than it was in the eighteenth. The main difference in
the assimilation going on in the two centuries is this, that in the
eighteenth century the newcomers were almost all Protestants, while in
the nineteenth century a considerable proportion have been Catholics.
One result, however, of the importation of large numbers of Catholics
into the United States has been a profound modification of the Roman
Catholic Church in regard to the manners and customs of both the clergy
and the laity, the scope of the authority of the priest, and the
attitude of the Catholic Church toward public education. This American
modification of the Roman Church has reacted strongly on the Church in
Europe.

Another great contribution to civilization made by the United States is
the diffusion of material well-being among the population. No country in
the world approaches the United States in this respect. It is seen in
that diffused elementary education which implants for life a habit of
reading, and in the habitual optimism which characterizes the common
people. It is seen in the housing of the people and of their domestic
animals, in the comparative costliness of their food, clothing, and
household furniture, in their implements, vehicles, and means of
transportation, and in the substitution, on a prodigious scale, of the
work of machinery for the work of men's hands. This last item in
American well-being is quite as striking in agriculture, mining, and
fishing, as it is in manufactures. The social effects of the manufacture
of power, and of the discovery of means of putting that power just where
it is wanted, have been more striking in the United States than anywhere
else. Manufactured and distributed power needs intelligence to direct
it: the bicycle is a blind horse, and must be steered at every instant;
somebody must show a steam-drill where to strike and how deep to go. So
far as men and women can substitute for the direct expenditure of
muscular strength the more intelligent effort of designing, tending, and
guiding machines, they win promotion in the scale of being, and make
their lives more interesting as well as more productive. It is in the
invention of machinery for producing and distributing power, and at once
economizing and elevating human labor, that American ingenuity has been
most conspicuously manifested. The high price of labor in a
sparsely-settled country has had something to do with this striking
result; but the genius of the people and of their government has had
much more to do with it. As proof of the general proposition, it
suffices merely to mention the telegraph and telephone, the
sewing-machine, the cotton-gin, the mower, reaper, and threshing-machine,
the dish-washing machine, the river steamboat, the sleeping-car, the
boot and shoe machinery, and the watch machinery. The ultimate effects
of these and kindred inventions are quite as much intellectual as
physical, and they are developing and increasing with a portentous
rapidity which sometimes suggests a doubt whether the bodily forces of
men and women are adequate to resist the new mental strains brought upon
them. However this may prove to be in the future, the clear result in
the present is an unexampled diffusion of well-being in the United
States.

These five contributions to civilization--peace-keeping, religious
toleration, the development of manhood suffrage, the welcoming of
newcomers, and the diffusion of well-being--I hold to have been
eminently characteristic of our country, and so important that, in spite
of the qualifications and deductions which every candid citizen would
admit with regard to every one of them, they will ever be held in the
grateful remembrance of mankind. They are reasonable grounds for a
steady, glowing patriotism. They have had much to do, both as causes and
as effects, with the material prosperity of the United States; but they
are all five essentially moral contributions, being triumphs of reason,
enterprise, courage, faith, and justice, over passion, selfishness,
inertness, timidity, and distrust. Beneath each one of these
developments there lies a strong ethical sentiment, a strenuous moral
and social purpose. It is for such work that multitudinous democracies
are fit.

In regard to all five of these contributions, the characteristic policy
of our country has been from time to time threatened with reversal--is
even now so threatened. It is for true patriots to insist on the
maintenance of these historic purposes and policies of the people of the
United States. Our country's future perils, whether already visible or
still unimagined, are to be met with courage and constancy founded
firmly on these popular achievements in the past.



I TALK OF DREAMS

W. D. HOWELLS


But it is mostly my own dreams I talk of, and that will somewhat excuse
me for talking of dreams at all. Everyone knows how delightful the
dreams are that one dreams one's self, and how insipid the dreams of
others are. I had an illustration of the fact, not many evenings ago,
when a company of us got telling dreams. I had by far the best dreams of
any; to be quite frank, mine were the only dreams worth listening to;
they were richly imaginative, delicately fantastic, exquisitely
whimsical, and humorous in the last degree; and I wondered that when the
rest could have listened to them they were always eager to cut in with
some silly, senseless, tasteless thing that made me sorry and ashamed
for them. I shall not be going too far if I say that it was on their
part the grossest betrayal of vanity that I ever witnessed.

But the egotism of some people concerning their dreams is almost
incredible. They will come down to breakfast and bore everybody with a
recital of the nonsense that has passed through their brains in sleep,
as if they were not bad enough when they were awake; they will not spare
the slightest detail; and if, by the mercy of Heaven, they have
forgotten something, they will be sure to recollect it, and go back and
give it all over again with added circumstance. Such people do not
reflect that there is something so purely and intensely personal in
dreams that they can rarely interest anyone but the dreamer, and that to
the dearest friend, the closest relation or connection, they can seldom
be otherwise than tedious and impertinent. The habit husbands and wives
have of making each other listen to their dreams is especially cruel.
They have each other quite helpless, and for this reason they should all
the more carefully guard themselves from abusing their advantage.
Parents should not afflict their offspring with the rehearsal of their
mental maunderings in sleep, and children should learn that one of the
first duties a child owes its parents is to spare them the anguish of
hearing what it has dreamed about overnight. A like forbearance in
regard to the community at large should be taught as the first trait of
good manners in the public schools, if we ever come to teach good
manners there.


I

Certain exceptional dreams, however, are so imperatively significant, so
vitally important, that it would be wrong to withhold them from the
knowledge of those who happened not to dream them, and I feel some such
quality in my own dreams so strongly that I could scarcely forgive
myself if I did not, however briefly, impart them. It was only the last
week, for instance, that I found myself one night in the company of the
Duke of Wellington, the great Duke, the Iron one, in fact; and after a
few moments of agreeable conversation on topics of interest among
gentlemen, his Grace said that now, if I pleased, he would like a couple
of those towels. We had not been speaking of towels, that I remember,
but it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should mention
them in the connection, whatever it was, and I went at once to get them
for him. At the place where they gave out towels, and where I found some
very civil people, they told me that what I wanted was not towels, and
they gave me instead two bath-gowns, of rather scanty measure,
butternut in color and Turkish in texture. The garments made somehow a
very strong impression upon me, so that I could draw them now, if I
could draw anything, as they looked when they were held up to me. At the
same moment, for no reason that I can allege, I passed from a social to
a menial relation to the Duke, and foresaw that when I went back to him
with those bath-gowns he would not thank me as one gentleman would
another, but would offer me a tip as if I were a servant. This gave me
no trouble, for I at once dramatized a little scene between myself and
the Duke, in which I should bring him the bath-gowns, and he should
offer me the tip, and I should refuse it with a low bow, and say that I
was an American. What I did not dramatize, or what seemed to enter into
the dialogue quite without my agency, was the Duke's reply to my proud
speech. It was foreshown me that he would say, He did not see why that
should make any difference. I suppose it was in the hurt I felt at this
wound to our national dignity that I now instantly invented the society
of some ladies, whom I told of my business with those bath-gowns (I
still had them in my hands), and urged them to go with me and call upon
the Duke. They expressed, somehow, that they would rather not, and then
I urged that the Duke was very handsome. This seemed to end the whole
affair, and I passed on to other visions, which I cannot recall.

I have not often had a dream of such international import, in the
offense offered through me to the American character and its well-known
superiority to tips, but I have had others quite as humiliating to me
personally. In fact, I am rather in the habit of having such dreams, and
I think I may not unjustly attribute to them the disciplined modesty
which the reader will hardly fail to detect in the present essay. It has
more than once been my fate to find myself during sleep in battle,
where I behave with so little courage as to bring discredit upon our
flag and shame upon myself. In these circumstances I am not anxious to
make even a showing of courage; my one thought is to get away as rapidly
and safely as possible. It is said that this is really the wish of all
novices under fire, and that the difference between a hero and a coward
is that the hero hides it, with a duplicity which finally does him
honor, and that the coward frankly runs away. I have never really been
in battle, and if it is anything like a battle in dreams I would not
willingly qualify myself to speak by the card on this point. Neither
have I ever really been upon the stage, but in dreams I have often been
there, and always in a great trouble of mind at not knowing my part. It
seems a little odd that I should not sometimes be prepared, but I never
am, and I feel that when the curtain rises I shall be disgraced beyond
all reprieve. I dare say it is the suffering from this that awakens me
in time, or changes the current of my dreams so that I have never yet
been actually hooted from the stage.


II

But I do not so much object to these ordeals as to some social
experiences which I have in dreams. I cannot understand why one should
dream of being slighted or snubbed in society, but this is what I have
done more than once, though never perhaps so signally as in the instance
I am about to give. I found myself in a large room, where people were
sitting at lunch or supper around small tables, as is the custom, I am
told, at parties in the houses of our nobility and gentry. I was feeling
very well; not too proud, I hope, but in harmony with the time and
place. I was very well dressed, for me; and as I stood talking to some
ladies at one of the tables I was saying some rather brilliant things,
for me; I lounged easily on one foot, as I have observed men of fashion
do, and as I talked, I flipped my gloves, which I held in one hand,
across the other; I remember thinking that this was a peculiarly
distinguished action. Upon the whole I comported myself like one in the
habit of such affairs, and I turned to walk away to another table, very
well satisfied with myself and with the effect of my splendor upon the
ladies. But I had got only a few paces off when I perceived (I could not
see with my back turned) one of the ladies lean forward, and heard her
say to the rest in a tone of killing condescension and patronage: "_I_
don't see why that person isn't as well as another."

I say that I do not like this sort of dreams, and I never would have
them if I could help. They make me ask myself if I am really such a snob
when I am waking, and this in itself is very unpleasant. If I am, I
cannot help hoping that it will not be found out; and in my dreams I am
always less sorry for the misdeeds I commit than for their possible
discovery. I have done some very bad things in dreams which I have no
concern for whatever, except as they seem to threaten me with publicity
or bring me within the penalty of the law; and I believe this is the
attitude of most other criminals, remorse being a fiction of the poets,
according to the students of the criminal class. It is not agreeable to
bring this home to one's self, but the fact is not without its
significance in another direction. It implies that both in the case of
the dream-criminal and the deed-criminal there is perhaps the same taint
of insanity; only in the deed-criminal it is active, and in the
dream-criminal it is passive. In both, the inhibitory clause that
forbids evil is off, but the dreamer is not bidden to do evil as the
maniac is, or as the malefactor often seems to be. The dreamer is purely
unmoral; good and bad are the same to his conscience; he has no more to
do with right and wrong than the animals; he is reduced to the state of
the merely natural man; and perhaps the primitive men were really like
what we all are now in our dreams. Perhaps all life to them was merely
dreaming, and they never had anything like our waking consciousness,
which seems to be the offspring of conscience, or else the parent of it.
Until men passed the first stage of being, perhaps that which we call
the soul, for want of a better name, or a worse, could hardly have
existed, and perhaps in dreams the soul is mostly absent now. The soul,
or the principle that we call the soul, is the supernal criticism of the
deeds done in the body, which goes perpetually on in the waking mind.
While this watches, and warns or commands, we go right; but when it is
off duty we go neither right nor wrong, but are as the beasts that
perish.

A common theory is that the dreams which we remember are those we have
in the drowse which precedes sleeping and waking; but I do not
altogether accept this theory. In fact, there is very little proof of
it. We often wake from a dream, literally, but there is no proof that we
did not dream in the middle of the night the dream which is quite as
vividly with us in the morning as the one we wake from. I should think
that the dream which has some color of conscience in it was the
drowse-dream, and that the dream which has none is the sleep-dream; and
I believe that the most of our dreams will be found by this test to be
sleep-dreams. It is in these we may know what we would be without our
souls, without their supernal criticism of the mind; for the mind keeps
on working in them, with the lights of waking knowledge, both experience
and observation, but ruthlessly, remorselessly. By them we may know what
the state of the habitual criminal is, what the state of the lunatic,
the animal, the devil is. In them the personal character ceases; the
dreamer is remanded to his type.


III

It is very strange, in the matter of dreadful dreams, how the body of
the terror is, in the course of often dreaming, reduced to a mere
convention. For a long time I was tormented with a nightmare of
burglars, and at first I used to dramatize the whole affair in detail,
from the time the burglars approached the house till they mounted the
stairs and the light of their dark-lanterns shone under the door into my
room. Now I have blue-penciled all that introductory detail; I have a
light shining in under my door at once; I know that it is my old
burglars; and I have the effect of nightmare without further ceremony.
There are other nightmares that still cost me a great deal of trouble in
their construction, as, for instance, the nightmare of clinging to the
face of a precipice or the eaves of a lofty building; I have to take as
much pains with the arrangement of these as if I were now dreaming them
for the first time and were hardly more than an apprentice in the
business.

Perhaps the most universal dream of all is that disgraceful dream of
appearing in public places and in society with very little or nothing
on. This dream spares neither age nor sex, I believe, and I daresay the
innocency of wordless infancy is abused by it and dotage pursued to the
tomb. I have not the least doubt Adam and Eve had it in Eden; though, up
to the moment the fig-leaf came in, it is difficult to imagine just what
plight they found themselves in that seemed improper; probably there was
some plight. The most amusing thing about this dream is the sort of
defensive process that goes on in the mind in search of
self-justification or explanation. Is there not some peculiar
circumstance or special condition in whose virtue it is wholly right and
proper for one to come to a fashionable assembly clad simply in a
towel, or to go about the street in nothing but a pair of kid gloves, or
of pajamas at the most? This, or something like it, the mind of the
dreamer struggles to establish, with a good deal of anxious appeal to
the bystanders and a final sense of the hopelessness of the cause.

One may easily laugh off this sort of dream in the morning, but there
are other shameful dreams whose inculpation projects itself far into the
day, and whose infamy often lingers about one till lunch-time. Everyone,
nearly, has had them, but it is not the kind of dream that anyone is
fond of telling: the gross vanity of the most besotted dream-teller
keeps that sort back. During the forenoon, at least, the victim goes
about with the dim question whether he is not really that kind of man
harassing him, and a sort of remote fear that he may be. I fancy that as
to his nature and as to his mind he is so, and that but for the supernal
criticism, but for his soul, he might be that kind of man in very act
and deed.

The dreams we sometimes have about other people are not without a
curious suggestion; and the superstitious (of those superstitious who
like to invent their own superstitions) might very well imagine that the
persons dreamed of had a witting complicity in their facts, as well as
the dreamer. This is a conjecture that must, of course, not be forced to
any conclusion. One must not go to one of these persons and ask, however
much one would like to ask: "Sir, have you no recollection of such and
such a thing, at such and such a time and place, which happened to us in
my dream?" Any such person would be fully justified in not answering the
question. It would be, of all interviewing, the most intolerable
species. Yet a singular interest, a curiosity not altogether
indefensible, will attach to these persons in the dreamer's mind, and he
will not be without the sense, ever after, that he and they have a
secret in common. This is dreadful, but the only thing that I can think
to do about it is to urge people to keep out of other people's dreams by
every means in their power.


IV

There are things in dreams very awful, which would not be at all so in
waking--quite witless and aimless things, which at the time were of such
baleful effect that it remains forever. I remember dreaming when I was
quite a small boy, not more than ten years old, a dream which is vivider
in my mind now than anything that happened at the time. I suppose it
came remotely from my reading of certain "Tales of the Grotesque and the
Arabesque," which had just then fallen into my hands; and it involved
simply an action of the fire-company in the little town where I lived.
They were working the brakes of the old fire-engine, which would seldom
respond to their efforts, and as their hands rose and fell they set up
the heart-shaking and soul-desolating cry of "Arms Poe! arms Poe! arms
Poe!" This and nothing more was the body of my horror; and if the reader
is not moved by it the fault is his and not mine; for I can assure him
that nothing in my experience had been more dreadful to me.

I can hardly except the dismaying apparition of a clown whom I once saw,
somewhat later in life, rise through the air in a sitting posture and
float lightly over the house-roof, snapping his fingers and vaguely
smiling, while the antennæ on his forehead, which clowns have in common
with some other insects, nodded elasticity. I do not know why this
portent should have been so terrifying, or indeed that it was a portent
at all, for nothing ever came of it; what I know is that it was to the
last degree threatening and awful. I never got anything but joy out of
the circuses where this dream must have originated, but the pantomime of
"Don Giovanni," which I saw at the theater, was as grewsome to me
waking as it was to me dreaming. The statue of the Commendatore, in
getting down from his horse to pursue the wicked hero (I think that is
what he gets down for), set an example by which a long line of statues
afterward profited in my dreams. For many years, and I do not know but
quite up to the time when I adopted burglars as the theme of my
nightmares, I was almost always chased by a marble statue with an
uplifted arm, and almost always I ran along the verge of a pond to
escape it. I believe that I got this pond out of my remote childhood,
and that it may have been a fish-pond embowered by weeping-willows which
I used to admire in the door-yard of a neighbor. I have somehow a
greater respect for the material of this earlier nightmare than I have
for that of the later ones, and no doubt the reader will agree with me
that it is much more romantic to be pursued by a statue than to be
threatened by burglars. It is but a few hours ago, however, that I saved
myself from these inveterate enemies by waking up just in time for
breakfast. They did not come with that light of the dark-lanterns
shining under the door, or I should have known them at once, and not had
so much bother; but they intimated their presence in the catch of the
lock, which would not close securely, and there was some question at
first whether they were not ghosts. I thought of tying the doorknob on
the inside of my room to my bedpost (a bedpost that has not been in
existence for fifty years), but after suffering awhile I decided to
speak to them from an upper window. By this time they had turned into a
trio of harmless, necessary tramps, and at my appeal to them absolutely
nonsensical as I now believe it to have been, to regard the peculiar
circumstances, whatever they were or were not, they did really get up
from the back porch where they were seated and go quietly away.

Burglars are not always so easily to be entreated. On one occasion, when
I found a party of them digging at the corner of my house on Concord
Avenue in Cambridge, and opened the window over them to expostulate, the
leader looked up at me in well-affected surprise. He lifted his hand,
with a twenty-dollar note in it, toward me, and said: "Oh! Can you
change me a twenty-dollar bill?" I expressed a polite regret that I had
not so much money about me, and then he said to the rest, "Go ahead,
boys," and they went on undermining my house. I do not know what came of
it all.

Of ghosts I have seldom dreamed, so far as I can remember; in fact, I
have never dreamed of the kind of ghosts that we are all more or less
afraid of, though I have dreamed rather often of the spirits of departed
friends. But I once dreamed of dying, and the reader, who has never died
yet, may be interested to know what it is like. According to this
experience of mine, which I do not claim is typical, it is like a fire
kindling in an air-tight stove with paper and shavings; the gathering
smoke and gases suddenly burst into flame and puff the door out, and all
is over.

I have not yet been led to execution for the many crimes I have
committed in my dreams, but I was once in the hands of a barber who
added to the shaving and shampooing business the art of removing his
customers' heads in treatment for headache. As I took my seat in his
chair I had some lingering doubts as to the effect of a treatment so
drastic, and I ventured to mention the case of a friend of mine, a
gentleman somewhat eminent in the law, who after several weeks was still
going about without his head. The barber did not attempt to refute my
position. He merely said: "Oh, well, he had such a very thick sort of a
head, anyway."

This was a sarcasm, but I think it was urged as a reason, though it may
not have been. We rarely bring away from sleep the things that seem so
brilliant to us in our dreams. Verse is especially apt to fade away, or
turn into doggerel in the memory, and the witty sayings which we
contrive to remember will hardly bear the test of daylight. The most
perfect thing of the kind out of my own dreams was something that I
seemed to wake with the very sound of in my ears. It was after a certain
dinner, which had been rather uncommonly gay, with a good deal of very
good talk, which seemed to go on all night, and when I woke in the
morning someone was saying: "Oh, I shouldn't at all mind his robbing
Peter to pay Paul, if I felt sure that Paul would get the money." This I
think really humorous, and an extremely neat bit of characterization; I
feel free to praise it, because it was not I who said it.


V

Apparently the greater part of dreams have no more mirth than sense in
them. This is perhaps because the man is in dreams reduced to the brute
condition, and is the lawless inferior of the waking man intellectually,
as the lawless in waking are always the inferiors of the lawful. Some
loose thinkers suppose that if we give the rein to imagination it will
do great things, but it will really do little things, foolish and
worthless things, as we witness in dreams, where it is quite unbridled.
It must keep close to truth, and it must be under the law if it would
work strongly and sanely. The man in his dreams is really lower than the
lunatic in his deliriums. These have a logic of their own; but the
dreamer has not even a crazy logic.

/p
    "Like a dog, he hunts in dreams,"
p/

and probably his dreams and the dog's are not only alike, but are of the
same quality. In his wicked dreams the man is not only animal, he is
devil, so wholly is he let into his evils, as the Swedenborgians say.
The wrong is indifferent to him until the fear of detection and
punishment steals in upon him. Even then he is not sorry for his
misdeed, as I have said before; he is only anxious to escape its
consequences.

It seems probable that when this fear makes itself felt he is near to
waking; and probably when we dream, as we often do, that the thing is
only a dream, and hope for rescue from it by waking, we are always just
about to wake. This double effect is very strange, but still more
strange is the effect which we are privy to in the minds of others when
they not merely say things to us which are wholly unexpected, but think
things that we know they are thinking, and that they do not express in
words. A great many years ago, when I was young, I dreamed that my
father, who was in another town, came into the room where I was really
lying asleep and stood by my bed. He wished to greet me, after our
separation, but he reasoned that if he did so I should wake, and he
turned and left the room without touching me. This process in his mind,
which I knew as clearly and accurately as if it had apparently gone on
in my own, was apparently confined to his mind as absolutely as anything
could be that was not spoken or in any wise uttered.

Of course, it was of my agency, like any other part of the dream, and it
was something like the operation of the novelist's intention through the
mind of his characters. But in this there is the author's consciousness
that he is doing it all himself, while in my dream this reasoning in the
mind of another was something that I felt myself mere witness of. In
fact, there is no analogy, so far as I can make out, between the process
of literary invention and the process of dreaming. In the invention, the
critical faculty is vividly and constantly alert; in dreaming, it seems
altogether absent. It seems absent, too, in what we call day-dreaming,
or that sort of dramatizing action which perhaps goes on perpetually in
the mind, or some minds. But this day-dreaming is not otherwise any more
like night-dreaming than invention is; for the man is never more
actively and consciously a man, and never has a greater will to be fine
and high and grand than in his day-dreams, while in his night-dreams he
is quite willing to be a miscreant of any worst sort.

It is very remarkable, in view of this fact, that we have now and then,
though ever so much more rarely, dreams that are as angelic as those
others are demoniac. Is it possible that then the dreamer is let into
his goods (the word is Swedenborg's again) instead of his evils? It may
be supposed that in sleep the dreamer lies passive, while his proper
soul is away, and other spirits, celestial and infernal, have free
access to his mind, and abuse it to their own ends in the one case, and
use it in his behalf in the other.

That would be an explanation, but nothing seems quite to hold in regard
to dreams. If it is true, why should the dreamer's state so much oftener
be imbued with evil than with good? It might be answered that the evil
forces are much more positive and aggressive than the good; or that the
love of the dreamer, which is his life, being mainly evil, invites the
wicked spirits oftener. But that is a point which I would rather leave
each dreamer to settle for himself. The greater number of everyone's
dreams, like the romantic novel, I fancy, concern incident rather than
character, and I am not sure, after all, that the dream which convicts
the dreamer of an essential baseness is commoner than the dream that
tells in his favor morally.

I daresay every reader of this book has had dreams so amusing that he
has wakened himself from them by laughing, and then not found them so
very funny, or perhaps not been able to recall them at all. I have had
at least one of this sort, remarkable for other reasons, which remains
perfect in my mind, though it is now some ten years old. One of the
children had been exposed to a very remote chance of scarlet-fever at
the house of a friend, and had been duly scolded for the risk, which was
then quite forgotten. I dreamed that this friend, however, was giving a
ladies' lunch, at which I was unaccountably and invisibly present, and
the talk began to run upon the scarlet-fever cases in her family. She
said that after the last she had fumigated the whole house for
seventy-two hours (the period seemed very significant and important in
my dream), and had burned everything she could lay her hands on.

"And what did the nurse burn?" asked one of the other ladies.

The hostess began to laugh. "The nurse didn't burn a thing!"

Then all the rest burst out laughing at the joke, and the laughter woke
me, to see the boy sitting up in his bed and hear him saying: "Oh, I am
so sick!"

It was the nausea which announces scarlet-fever, and for six weeks after
that we were in quarantine. Very likely the fear of the contagion had
been in my nether mind all the time, but, so far as consciousness could
testify of it, I had wholly forgotten it.


VI

One rarely loses one's personality in dreams; it is rather intensified,
with all the proper circumstances and relations of it, but I have had at
least one dream in which I seemed to transcend my own circumstance and
condition with remarkable completeness. Even my epoch, my precious
present, I left behind (or ahead, rather), and in my unity with the
persons of my dream I became strictly mediæval. In fact, I have always
called it my mediæval dream, to such as I could get to listen to it; and
it had for its scene a feudal tower in some waste place, a tower open at
the top and with a deep, clear pool of water at the bottom, so that it
instantly became known to me, as if I had always known it, for the Pool
Tower. While I stood looking into it, in a mediæval dress and a mediæval
mood, there came flying in at the open door of the ruin beside me the
duke's hunchback, and after him, furious and shrieking maledictions, the
swarthy beauty whom I was aware the duke was tired of. The keeping was
now not only ducal, but thoroughly Italian, and it was suggested somehow
to my own subtle Italian perception that the hunchback had been set on
to tease the girl and provoke her so that she would turn upon him and
try to wreak her fury on him and chase him into the Pool Tower and up
the stone stairs that wound round its hollow to the top, where the
solemn sky showed. The fearful spire of the steps was unguarded, and
when I had lost the pair from sight, with the dwarf's mocking laughter
and the girl's angry cries in my ears, there came fluttering from the
height, like a bird wounded and whirling from a lofty tree, the figure
of the girl, while far aloof the hunchback peered over at her fall.
Midway in her descent her head struck against the edge of the steps,
with a _kish_, such as an egg-shell makes when broken against the edge
of a platter, and then plunged into the dark pool at my feet, where I
could presently see her lying in the clear depths and the blood curling
upward from the wound in her skull like a dark smoke. I was not sensible
of any great pity; I accepted the affair, quite mediævally, as something
that might very well have happened, given the girl, the duke and the
dwarf, and the time and place.

I am rather fond of a mediæval setting for those

/p
    "Dreams that wave before the half-shut eye,"
p/

just closing for an afternoon nap. Then I invite to my vision a wide
landscape, with a cold, wintry afternoon light upon it, and over this
plain I have bands and groups of people scurrying, in mediæval hose of
divers colors and mediæval leathern jerkins, hugging themselves against
the frost, and very miserable. They affect me with a profound
compassion; they represent to me, somehow, the vast mass of humanity,
the mass that does the work, and earns the bread, and goes cold and
hungry through all the ages. I should be at a loss to say why this was
the effect, and I am utterly unable to say why these fore-dreams, which
I partially solicit, should have such a tremendous significance as they
seem to have. They are mostly of the most evanescent and intangible
character, but they have one trait in common. They always involve the
attribution of ethical motive and quality to material things, and in
their passage through my brain they promise me a solution of the riddle
of the painful earth in the very instant when they are gone forever.
They are of innumerable multitude, chasing each other with the swiftness
of light, and never staying to be seized by the memory, which seems
already drugged with sleep before their course begins. One of these
dreams, indeed, I did capture, and I found it to be the figure 8, but
lying on its side, and in that posture involving the mystery and the
revelation of the mystery of the universe. I leave the reader to imagine
why.

As we grow older, I think we are less and less able to remember our
dreams. This is perhaps because the experience of youth is less dense,
and the empty spaces of the young consciousness are more hospitable to
these airy visitants. A few dreams of my later life stand out in strong
relief, but for the most part they blend in an indistinguishable mass,
and pass away with the actualities into a common oblivion. I should say
that they were more frequent with me than they used to be; it seems to
me that now I dream whole nights through, and much more about the
business of my waking life than formerly. As I earn my living by weaving
a certain sort of dreams into literary form, it might be supposed that I
would some time dream of the personages in these dreams, but I cannot
remember that I have ever done so. The two kinds of inventing, the
voluntary and the involuntary, seem absolutely and finally distinct.

Of the prophetic dreams which people sometimes have I have mentioned the
only one of mine which had any dramatic interest, but I have verified in
my own experience the theory of Ribot that approaching disease sometimes
intimates itself in dreams of the disorder impending, before it is
otherwise declared in the organism. In actual sickness I think that I
dream rather less than in health. I had a malarial fever when I was a
boy, and I had a sort of continuous dream in it that distressed me
greatly. It was of gliding down the school-house stairs without touching
my feet to the steps, and this was indescribably appalling.

The anguish of mind that one suffers from the imaginary dangers of
dreams is probably of the same quality as that inspired by real peril in
waking. A curious proof of this happened within my knowledge not many
years ago. One of the neighbor's children was coasting down a long hill
with a railroad at the foot of it, and as he neared the bottom an
express-train rushed round the curve. The flag-man ran forward and
shouted to the boy to throw himself off his sled, but he kept on and ran
into the locomotive, and was so hurt that he died. His injuries,
however, were to the spine, and they were of a kind that rendered him
insensible to pain while he lived. He talked very clearly and calmly of
his accident, and when he was asked why he did not throw himself off
his sled, as the flag-man bade him, he said: "_I thought it was a
dream._" The reality had, through the mental stress, no doubt transmuted
itself to the very substance of dreams, and he had felt the same kind
and quality of suffering as he would have done if he had been dreaming.
The Norwegian poet and novelist Björnstjerne Björnson was at my house
shortly after this happened, and he was greatly struck by the
psychological implications of the incident; it seemed to mean for him
all sorts of possibilities in the obscure realm where it cast a fitful
light.

But such a glimmer soon fades, and the darkness thickens round us again.
It is not with the blindfold sense of sleep that we shall ever find out
the secret of life, I fancy, either in the dreams which seem personal to
us each one, or those universal dreams which we apparently share with
the whole race. Of the race-dream, as I may call it, there is one hardly
less common than that dream of going about insufficiently clad, which I
have already mentioned, and that is the dream of suddenly falling from
some height and waking with a start. The experience before the start is
extremely dim, and latterly I have condensed this dread almost as much
as the preliminary passages of my burglar-dream. I am aware of nothing
but an instant of danger, and then comes the jar or jolt that wakens me.
Upon the whole, I find this a great saving of emotion, and I do not know
but there is a tendency, as I grow older, to shorten up the detail of
what may be styled the conventional dream, the dream which we have so
often that it is like a story read before. Indeed, the plots of dreams
are not much more varied than the plots of romantic novels, which are
notoriously stale and hackneyed. It would be interesting, and possibly
important, if some observer would note the recurrence of this sort of
dreams and classify their varieties. I think we should all be
astonished to find how few and slight the variations were.


VII

If I come to speak of dreams concerning the dead, it must be with a
tenderness and awe that all who have had them will share with me.
Nothing is more remarkable in them than the fact that the dead, though
they are dead, yet live, and are, to our commerce with them, quite like
all other living persons. We may recognize, and they may recognize, that
they are no longer in the body, but they are as verily living as we are.
This may be merely an effect from the doctrine of immortality which we
all hold or have held, and yet I would fain believe that it may be
something like proof of it. No one really knows, or can know, but one
may at least hope, without offending science, which indeed no longer
frowns so darkly upon faith. This persistence of life in those whom we
mourn as dead, may not it be a witness of the fact that the
consciousness cannot accept the notion of death at all, and,

/p
    "Whatever crazy sorrow saith,"
p/

that we have never truly felt them lost? Sometimes those who have died
come back in dreams as parts of a common life which seems never to have
been broken; the old circle is restored without a flaw; but whether they
do this, or whether it is acknowledged between them and us that they
have died, and are now disembodied spirits, the effect of life is the
same. Perhaps in those dreams they and we are alike disembodied spirits,
and the soul of the dreamer, which so often seems to abandon the body to
the animal, is then the conscious entity, the thing which the dreamer
feels to be himself, and is mingling with the souls of the departed on
something like the terms which shall hereafter be constant.

I think very few of those who have lost their beloved have failed to
receive some sign or message from them in dreams, and often it is of
deep and abiding consolation. It may be that this is our anguish
compelling the echo of love out of the darkness where nothing is, but it
may be that there is something there which answers to our throe with
pity and with longing like our own. Again, no one knows, but in a matter
impossible of definite solution I will not refuse the comfort which
belief can give. Unbelief can be no gain, and belief no loss. But those
dreams are so dear, so sacred, so interwoven with the finest and
tenderest tissues of our being that one cannot speak of them freely, or
indeed more than most vaguely. It is enough to say that one has had
them, and to know that almost everyone else has had them, too. They seem
to be among the universal dreams, and a strange quality of them is that,
though they deal with a fact of universal doubt, they are, to my
experience at least, not nearly so fantastic or capricious as the dreams
that deal with the facts of every-day life and with the affairs of
people still in this world.

I do not know whether it is common to dream of faces or figures strange
to our waking knowledge, but occasionally I have done this. I suppose it
is much the same kind of invention that causes the person we dream of to
say or do a thing unexpected to us. But this is rather common, and the
creation of a novel aspect, the physiognomy of a stranger, in the person
we dream of, is rather rare. In all my dreams I can recall but one
presence of the kind. I have never dreamed of any sort of monster
foreign to my knowledge, or even of any grotesque thing made up of
elements familiar to it; the grotesqueness has always been in the motive
or circumstance of the dream. I have very seldom dreamed of animals,
though once, when I was a boy, for a time after I had passed a
corn-field where there were some bundles of snakes, writhen and knotted
together in the cold of an early spring day, I had dreams infested by
like images of those loathsome reptiles. I suppose that everyone has had
dreams of finding his way through unnamable filth and of feeding upon
hideous carnage; these are clearly the punishment of gluttony, and are
the fumes of a rebellious stomach.

I have heard people say they have sometimes dreamed of a thing, and
awakened from their dream and then fallen asleep and dreamed of the same
thing; but I believe that this is all one continuous dream; that they
did not really awaken, but only dreamed that they awakened. I have never
had any such dream, but at one time I had a recurrent dream, which was
so singular that I thought no one else had ever had a recurrent dream
till I proved that it was rather common by starting the inquiry in the
Contributors' Club in the _Atlantic Monthly_, when I found that great
numbers of people have recurrent dreams. My own recurrent dreams began
to come during the first year of my consulate at Venice, where I had
hoped to find the same kind of poetic dimness on the phases of American
life, which I wished to treat in literature, as the distance in time
would have given. I should not wish any such dimness now; but those were
my romantic days, and I was sorely baffled by its absence. The
disappointment began to haunt my nights as well as my days, and a dream
repeated itself from week to week for a matter of eight or ten months to
one effect. I dreamed that I had gone home to America, and that people
met me and said, "Why, you have given up your place!" and I always
answered: "Certainly not; I haven't done at all what I mean to do there,
yet. I am only here on my ten days' leave." I meant the ten days which
a consul might take each quarter without applying to the Department of
State; and then I would reflect how impossible it was that I should make
the visit in that time. I saw that I should be found out and dismissed
from my office and publicly disgraced. Then, suddenly, I was not consul
at Venice, and had not been, but consul at Delhi, in India; and the
distress I felt would all end in a splendid Oriental phantasmagory of
elephants and native princes, with their retinues in procession, which I
suppose was mostly out of my reading of De Quincey. This dream, with no
variation that I can recall, persisted till I broke it up by saying, in
the morning after it had recurred, that I had dreamed that dream again;
and so it began to fade away, coming less and less frequently, and at
last ceasing altogether.

I am rather proud of that dream; it is really my battle-horse among
dreams, and I think I will ride away on it.

/#
     [From _Impressions and Experiences_, by W. D. Howells. Copyright,
     1896, by W. D. Howells.]
#/



AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE

JOHN BURROUGHS


There is no creature with which man has surrounded himself that seems so
much like a product of civilization, so much like the result of
development on special lines and in special fields, as the honey-bee.
Indeed, a colony of bees, with their neatness and love of order, their
division of labor, their public-spiritedness, their thrift, their
complex economies, and their inordinate love of gain, seems as far
removed from a condition of rude nature as does a walled city or a
cathedral town. Our native bee, on the other hand, the "burly, dozing
humblebee," affects one more like the rude, untutored savage. He has
learned nothing from experience. He lives from hand to mouth. He
luxuriates in time of plenty, and he starves in times of scarcity. He
lives in a rude nest, or in a hole in the ground, and in small
communities; he builds a few deep cells or sacks in which he stores a
little honey and bee-bread for his young, but as a worker in wax he is
of the most primitive and awkward. The Indian regarded the honey-bee as
an ill-omen. She was the white man's fly. In fact she was the epitome of
the white man himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his industry,
his architectural skill, his neatness and love of system, his foresight;
and, above all, his eager, miserly habits. The honey-bee's great
ambition is to be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet of
every flower that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough will not
satisfy her; she must have all she can get by hook or by crook. She
comes from the oldest country, Asia, and thrives best in the most
fertile and long-settled lands.

Yet the fact remains that the honey-bee is essentially a wild creature,
and never has been and cannot be thoroughly domesticated. Its proper
home is the woods, and thither every new swarm counts on going; and
thither many do go in spite of the care and watchfulness of the
bee-keeper. If the woods in any given locality are deficient in trees
with suitable cavities, the bees resort to all sorts of makeshifts; they
go into chimneys, into barns and out-houses, under stones, into rocks,
and so forth. Several chimneys in my locality with disused flues are
taken possession of by colonies of bees nearly every season. One day,
while bee-hunting, I developed a line that went toward a farmhouse where
I had reason to believe no bees were kept. I followed it up and
questioned the farmer about his bees. He said he kept no bees, but that
a swarm had taken possession of his chimney, and another had gone under
the clapboards in the gable end of his house. He had taken a large lot
of honey out of both places the year before. Another farmer told me that
one day his family had seen a number of bees examining a knothole in the
side of his house; the next day, as they were sitting down to dinner,
their attention was attracted by a loud humming noise, when they
discovered a swarm of bees settling upon the side of the house and
pouring into the knothole. In subsequent years other swarms came to the
same place.

Apparently every swarm of bees, before it leaves the parent hive, sends
out exploring parties to look up the future home. The woods and groves
are searched through and through, and no doubt the privacy of many a
squirrel and many a wood-mouse is intruded upon. What cozy nooks and
retreats they do spy out, so much more attractive than the painted hive
in the garden, so much cooler in summer and so much warmer in winter!

The bee is in the main an honest citizen: she prefers legitimate to
illegitimate business; she is never an outlaw until her proper sources
of supply fail; she will not touch honey as long as honey yielding
flowers can be found; she always prefers to go to the fountain-head, and
dislikes to take her sweets at second hand. But in the fall, after the
flowers have failed, she can be tempted. The bee-hunter takes advantage
of this fact; he betrays her with a little honey. He wants to steal her
stores, and he first encourages her to steal his, then follows the thief
home with her booty. This is the whole trick of the bee-hunter. The bees
never suspect his game, else by taking a circuitous route they could
easily baffle him. But the honey-bee has absolutely no wit or cunning
outside of her special gifts as a gatherer and storer of honey. She is a
simple-minded creature, and can be imposed upon by any novice. Yet it is
not every novice that can find a bee-tree. The sportsman may track his
game to its retreat by the aid of his dog, but in hunting the honey-bee
one must be his own dog, and track his game through an element in which
it leaves no trail. It is a task for a sharp, quick eye, and may test
the resources of the best woodcraft. One autumn, when I devoted much
time to this pursuit, as the best means of getting at nature and the
open-air exhilaration, my eye became so trained that bees were nearly as
easy to it as birds. I saw and heard bees wherever I went. One day,
standing on a street corner in a great city, I saw above the trucks and
the traffic a line of bees carrying off sweets from some grocery or
confectionery shop.

One looks upon the woods with a new interest when he suspects they hold
a colony of bees. What a pleasing secret it is,--a tree with a heart of
comb honey, a decayed oak or maple with a bit of Sicily or Mount
Hymettus stowed away in its trunk or branches; secret chambers where
lies hidden the wealth of ten thousand little freebooters, great nuggets
and wedges of precious ore gathered with risk and labor from every field
and wood about!

But if you would know the delights of bee-hunting, and how many sweets
such a trip yields beside honey, come with me some bright, warm, late
September or early October day. It is the golden season of the year, and
any errand or pursuit that takes us abroad upon the hills or by the
painted woods and along the amber-colored streams at such a time is
enough. So, with haversacks filled with grapes and peaches and apples
and a bottle of milk,--for we shall not be home to dinner,--and armed
with a compass, a hatchet, a pail, and a box with a piece of comb honey
neatly fitted into it,--any box the size of your hand with a lid will do
nearly as well as the elaborate and ingenious contrivance of the regular
bee-hunter,--we sally forth. Our course at first lies along the highway
under great chestnut-trees whose nuts are just dropping, then through an
orchard and across a little creek, thence gently rising through a long
series of cultivated fields toward some high uplying land behind which
rises a rugged wooded ridge or mountain, the most sightly point in all
this section. Behind this ridge for several miles the country is wild,
wooded, and rocky, and is no doubt the home of many wild swarms of bees.
What a gleeful uproar the robins, cedar-birds, high-holes, and cow
blackbirds make amid the black cherry trees as we pass along! The
raccoons, too, have been here after black cherries, and we see their
marks at various points. Several crows are walking about a newly sowed
wheatfield we pass through, and we pause to note their graceful
movements and glossy coats. I have seen no bird walk the ground with
just the same air the crow does. It is not exactly pride; there is no
strut or swagger in it, though perhaps just a little condescension; it
is the contented, complaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over
his domains. All these acres are mine, he says, and all these crops; men
plow and sow for me, and I stay here or go there, and find life sweet
and good wherever I am. The hawk looks awkward and out of place on the
ground; the game-birds hurry and skulk; but the crow is at home, and
treads the earth as if there were none to molest or make him afraid.

The crows we have always with us, but it is not every day or every
season that one sees an eagle. Hence I must preserve the memory of one I
saw the last day I went bee-hunting. As I was laboring up the side of a
mountain at the head of a valley, the noble bird sprang from the top of
a dry tree above me and came sailing directly over my head. I saw him
bend his eye down upon me, and I could hear the low hum of his plumage
as if the web of every quill in his great wings vibrated in his strong,
level flight. I watched him as long as my eye could hold him. When he
was fairly clear of the mountain he began that sweeping spiral movement
in which he climbs the sky. Up and up he went, without once breaking his
majestic poise, till he appeared to sight some far-off alien geography,
when he bent his course thitherward and gradually vanished in the blue
depths. The eagle is a bird of large ideas; he embraces long distances;
the continent is his home. I never look upon one without emotion; I
follow him with my eye as long as I can. I think of Canada, of the Great
Lakes, of the Rocky Mountains, of the wild and sounding seacoast. The
waters are his, and the woods and the inaccessible cliffs. He pierces
behind the veil of the storm, and his joy is height and depth and vast
spaces.

We go out of our way to touch at a spring run in the edge of the woods,
and are lucky to find a single scarlet lobelia lingering there. It seems
almost to light up the gloom with its intense bit of color. Beside a
ditch in a field beyond, we find the great blue lobelia, and near it,
amid the weeds and wild grasses and purple asters, the most beautiful of
our fall flowers, the fringed gentian. What a rare and delicate, almost
aristocratic look the gentian has amid its coarse, unkempt surroundings!
It does not lure the bee, but it lures and holds every passing human
eye. If we strike through the corner of yonder woods, where the ground
is moistened by hidden springs, and where there is a little opening amid
the trees, we shall find the closed gentian, a rare flower in this
locality. I had walked this way many times before I chanced upon its
retreat, and then I was following a line of bees. I lost the bees, but I
got the gentians. How curious this flower looks with its deep blue
petals folded together so tightly,--a bud and yet a blossom! It is the
nun among our wild flowers,--a form closely veiled and cloaked. The
buccaneer bumblebee sometimes tries to rifle it of its sweets. I have
seen the blossom with the bee entombed in it. He had forced his way into
the virgin corolla as if determined to know its secret, but he had never
returned with the knowledge he had gained.

After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we reach a point where we
will make our first trial,--a high stone wall that runs parallel with
the wooded ridge referred to, and separated from it by a broad field.
There are bees at work there on that goldenrod, and it requires but
little manœuvering to sweep one into our box. Almost any other
creature rudely and suddenly arrested in its career, and clapped into a
cage in this way, would show great confusion and alarm. The bee is
alarmed for a moment, but the bee has a passion stronger than its love
of life or fear of death, namely, desire for honey, not simply to eat,
but to carry home as booty. "Such rage of honey in their bosom beats,"
says Virgil. It is quick to catch the scent of honey in the box, and as
quick to fall to filling itself. We now set the box down upon the wall
and gently remove the cover. The bee is head and shoulders in one of the
half-filled cells, and is oblivious to everything else about it. Come
rack, come ruin, it will die at work. We step back a few paces, and sit
down upon the ground so as to bring the box against the blue sky as a
background. In two or three minutes the bee is seen rising slowly and
heavily from the box. It seems loath to leave so much honey behind, and
it marks the place well. It mounts aloft in a rapidly increasing spiral,
surveying the near and minute objects first, then the larger and more
distant, till, having circled above the spot five or six times and taken
all its bearings, it darts away for home. It is a good eye that holds
fast to the bee till it is fairly off. Sometimes one's head will swim
following it, and often one's eyes are put out by the sun. This bee
gradually drifts down the hill, then strikes away toward a farmhouse
half a mile away where I know bees are kept. Then we try another and
another, and the third bee, much to our satisfaction, goes straight
toward the woods. We could see the brown speck against the darker
background for many yards. The regular bee-hunter professes to be able
to tell a wild bee from a tame one by the color, the former, he says,
being lighter. But there is no difference; they are both alike in color
and in manner. Young bees are lighter than old, and that is all there is
of it. If a bee lived many years in the woods it would doubtless come to
have some distinguishing marks, but the life of a bee is only a few
months at the farthest, and no change is wrought in this brief time.

Our bees are all soon back, and more with them, for we have touched the
box here and there with the cork of a bottle of anise oil, and this
fragrant and pungent oil will attract bees half a mile or more. When no
flowers can be found, this is the quickest way to obtain a bee.

It is a singular fact that when the bee first finds the hunter's box,
its first feeling is one of anger; it is as mad as a hornet; its tone
changes, it sounds its shrill war trumpet and darts to and fro, and
gives vent to its rage and indignation in no uncertain manner. It seems
to scent foul play at once. It says, "Here is robbery; here is the spoil
of some hive, may be my own," and its blood is up. But its ruling
passion soon comes to the surface, its avarice gets the better of its
indignation, and it seems to say, "Well, I had better take possession of
this and carry it home." So after many feints and approaches and
dartings off with a loud angry hum as if it would none of it, the bee
settles down and fills itself.

It does not entirely cool off and get soberly to work till it has made
two or three trips home with its booty. When other bees come, even if
all from the same swarm, they quarrel and dispute over the box, and clip
and dart at each other like bantam cocks. Apparently the ill feeling
which the sight of the honey awakens is not one of jealousy or rivalry,
but wrath.

A bee will usually make three or four trips from the hunter's box before
it brings back a companion. I suspect the bee does not tell its fellows
what it has found, but that they smell out the secret; it doubtless
bears some evidence with it upon its feet or proboscis that it has been
upon honeycomb and not upon flowers, and its companions take the hint
and follow, arriving always many seconds behind. Then the quantity and
quality of the booty would also betray it. No doubt, also, there are
plenty of gossips about a hive that note and tell everything. "Oh, did
you see that? Peggy Mel came in a few moments ago in great haste, and
one of the upstairs packers says she was loaded till she groaned with
apple-blossom honey, which she deposited, and then rushed off again like
mad. Apple-blossom honey in October! Fee, fi, fo, fum! I smell
something! Let's after."

In about half an hour we have three well-defined lines of bees
established,--two to farmhouses and one to the woods, and our box is
being rapidly depleted of its honey. About every fourth bee goes to the
woods, and now that they have learned the way thoroughly they do not
make the long preliminary whirl above the box, but start directly from
it. The woods are rough and dense and the hill steep, and we do not like
to follow the line of bees until we have tried at least to settle the
problem as to the distance they go into the woods,--whether the tree is
on this side of the ridge or into the depth of the forest on the other
side. So we shut up the box when it is full of bees and carry it about
three hundred yards along the wall from which we are operating. When
liberated, the bees, as they always will in such cases, go off in the
same directions they have been going; they do not seem to know that they
have been moved. But other bees have followed our scent, and it is not
many minutes before a second line to the woods is established. This is
called cross-lining the bees. The new line makes a sharp angle with the
other line, and we know at once that the tree is only a few rods into
the woods. The two lines we have established form two sides of a
triangle of which the wall is the base; at the apex of the triangle, or
where the two lines meet in the woods, we are sure to find the tree. We
quickly follow up these lines, and where they cross each other on the
side of the hill we scan every tree closely. I pause at the foot of an
oak and examine a hole near the root; now the bees are in this tree and
their entrance is on the upper side near the ground not two feet from
the hole I peer into, and yet so quiet and secret is their going and
coming that I fail to discover them and pass on up the hill. Failing in
this direction I return to the oak again, and then perceive the bees
going out in a small crack in the tree. The bees do not know they are
found out and that the game is in our hands, and are as oblivious of our
presence as if we were ants or crickets. The indications are that the
swarm is a small one, and the store of honey trifling. In "taking up" a
bee-tree it is usual first to kill or stupefy the bees with the fumes of
burning sulphur or with tobacco smoke. But this course is impracticable
on the present occasion, so we boldly and ruthlessly assault the tree
with an ax we have procured. At the first blow the bees set up a loud
buzzing, but we have no mercy, and the side of the cavity is soon cut
away and the interior with its white-yellow mass of comb honey is
exposed, and not a bee strikes a blow in defense of its all. This may
seem singular, but it has nearly always been my experience. When a swarm
of bees are thus rudely assaulted with an ax they evidently think the
end of the world has come, and, like true misers as they are, each one
seizes as much of the treasure as it can hold; in other words, they all
fall to and gorge themselves with honey, and calmly await the issue.
While in this condition they make no defense, and will not sting unless
taken hold of. In fact they are as harmless as flies. Bees are always to
be managed with boldness and decision. Any half-way measures, any timid
poking about, any feeble attempts to reach their honey, are sure to be
quickly resented. The popular notion that bees have a special antipathy
toward certain persons and a liking for certain others has only this
fact at the bottom of it: they will sting a person who is afraid of them
and goes skulking and dodging about, and they will not sting a person
who faces them boldly and has no dread of them. They are like dogs. The
way to disarm a vicious dog is to show him you do not fear him; it is
his turn to be afraid then. I never had any dread of bees and am seldom
stung by them. I have climbed up into a large chestnut that contained a
swarm in one of its cavities and chopped them out with an ax, being
obliged at times to pause and brush the bewildered bees from my hands
and face, and not been stung once. I have chopped a swarm out of an
apple-tree in June, and taken out the cards of honey and arranged them
in a hive, and then dipped out the bees with a dipper, and taken the
whole home with me in pretty good condition, with scarcely any
opposition on the part of the bees. In reaching your hand into the
cavity to detach and remove the comb you are pretty sure to get stung,
for when you touch the "business end" of a bee, it will sting even
though its head be off. But the bee carries the antidote to its own
poison. The best remedy for bee sting is honey, and when your hands are
besmeared with honey, as they are sure to be on such occasions, the
wound is scarcely more painful than the prick of a pin. Assault your
bee-tree, then, boldly with your ax, and you will find that when the
honey is exposed every bee has surrendered and the whole swarm is
cowering in helpless bewilderment and terror. Our tree yields only a few
pounds of honey, not enough to have lasted the swarm till January, but
no matter: we have the less burden to carry.

In the afternoon we go nearly half a mile farther along the ridge to a
cornfield that lies immediately in front of the highest point of the
mountain. The view is superb; the ripe autumn landscape rolls away to
the east, cut through by the great placid river; in the extreme north
the wall of the Catskills stands out clear and strong, while in the
south the mountains of the Highlands bound the view. The day is warm,
and the bees are very busy there in that neglected corner of the field,
rich in asters, fleabane, and goldenrod. The corn has been cut, and upon
a stout but a few rods from the woods, which here drop quickly down from
the precipitous heights, we set up our bee-box, touched again with the
pungent oil. In a few moments a bee has found it; she comes up to
leeward, following the scent. On leaving the box, she goes straight
toward the woods. More bees quickly come, and it is not long before the
line is well established. Now we have recourse to the same tactics we
employed before, and move along the ridge to another field to get our
cross line. But the bees still go in almost the same direction they did
from the corn stout. The tree is then either on the top of the mountain
or on the other or west side of it. We hesitate to make the plunge into
the woods and seek to scale those precipices, for the eye can plainly
see what is before us. As the afternoon sun gets lower, the bees are
seen with wonderful distinctness. They fly toward and under the sun, and
are in a strong light, while the near woods which form the background
are in deep shadow. They look like large luminous motes. Their swiftly
vibrating, transparent wings surround their bodies with a shining nimbus
that makes them visible for a long distance. They seem magnified many
times. We see them bridge the little gulf between us and the woods, then
rise up over the treetops with their burdens, swerving neither to the
right hand nor to the left. It is almost pathetic to see them labor so,
climbing the mountain and unwittingly guiding us to their treasures.
When the sun gets down so that his direction corresponds exactly with
the course of the bees, we make the plunge. It proves even harder
climbing than we had anticipated; the mountain is faced by a broken and
irregular wall of rock, up which we pull ourselves slowly and cautiously
by main strength. In half an hour, the perspiration streaming from
every pore, we reach the summit. The trees here are all small, a second
growth, and we are soon convinced the bees are not here. Then down we go
on the other side, clambering down the rocky stairways till we reach
quite a broad plateau that forms something like the shoulder of the
mountain. On the brink of this there are many large hemlocks, and we
scan them closely and rap upon them with our ax. But not a bee is seen
or heard; we do not seem as near the tree as we were in the fields
below; yet, if some divinity would only whisper the fact to us, we are
within a few rods of the coveted prize, which is not in one of the large
hemlocks or oaks that absorb our attention, but in an old stub or stump
not six feet high, and which we have seen and passed several times
without giving it a thought. We go farther down the mountain and beat
about to the right and left, and get entangled in brush and arrested by
precipices, and finally, as the day is nearly spent, give up the search
and leave the woods quite baffled, but resolved to return on the morrow.
The next day we come back and commence operations in an opening in the
woods well down on the side of the mountain where we gave up the search.
Our box is soon swarming with the eager bees, and they go back toward
the summit we have passed. We follow back and establish a new line,
where the ground will permit; then another and still another, and yet
the riddle is not solved. One time we are south of them, then north,
then the bees get up through the trees and we cannot tell where they go.
But after much searching, and after the mystery seems rather to deepen
than to clear up, we chance to pause beside the old stump. A bee comes
out of a small opening like that made by ants in decayed wood, rubs its
eyes and examines its antennæ, as bees always do before leaving their
hive, then takes flight. At the same instant several bees come by us
loaded with our honey and settle home with that peculiar low, complacent
buzz of the well-filled insect. Here, then, is our idyl, our bit of
Virgil and Theocritus, in a decayed stump of a hemlock-tree. We could
tear it open with our hands, and a bear would find it an easy prize, and
a rich one, too, for we take from it fifty pounds of excellent honey.
The bees have been here many years, and have of course sent out swarm
after swarm into the wilds. They have protected themselves against the
weather and strengthened their shaky habitation by a copious use of wax.

When a bee-tree is thus "taken up" in the middle of the day, of course a
good many bees are away from home and have not heard the news. When they
return and find the ground flowing with honey, and piles of bleeding
combs lying about, they apparently do not recognize the place, and their
first instinct is to fall to and fill themselves; this done, their next
thought is to carry it home, so they rise up slowly through the branches
of the trees till they have attained an altitude that enables them to
survey the scene, when they seem to say, "Why, _this_ is home," and down
they come again; beholding the wreck and ruins once more, they still
think there is some mistake, and get up a second or a third time and
then drop back pitifully as before. It is the most pathetic sight of
all, the surviving and bewildered bees struggling to save a few drops of
their wasted treasures.

Presently, if there is another swarm in the woods, robber bees appear.
You may know them by their saucy, chiding, devil-may-care hum. It is an
ill wind that blows nobody good, and they make the most of the
misfortune of their neighbors, and thereby pave the way for their own
ruin. The hunter marks their course and the next day looks them up. On
this occasion the day was hot and the honey very fragrant, and a line of
bees was soon established S. S. W. Though there was much refuse honey
in the old stub, and though little golden rills trickled down the hill
from it, and the near branches and saplings were besmeared with it where
we wiped our murderous hands, yet not a drop was wasted. It was a feast
to which not only honey-bees came, but bumblebees, wasps, hornets,
flies, ants. The bumblebees, which at this season are hungry vagrants
with no fixed place of abode, would gorge themselves, then creep beneath
the bits of empty comb or fragments of bark and pass the night, and
renew the feast next day. The bumblebee is an insect of which the
bee-hunter sees much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They are
dull and clumsy compared with the honey-bee. Attracted in the fields by
the bee-hunter's box, they will come up the wind on the scent and
blunder into it in the most stupid, lubberly fashion.

The honey-bees that licked up our leavings on the old stub belonged to a
swarm, as it proved, about half a mile farther down the ridge, and a few
days afterward fate overtook them, and their stores in turn became the
prey of another swarm in the vicinity, which also tempted Providence and
were overwhelmed. The first-mentioned swarm I had lined from several
points, and was following up the clew over rocks and through gulleys,
when I came to where a large hemlock had been felled a few years before,
and a swarm taken from a cavity near the top of it; fragments of the old
comb were yet to be seen. A few yards away stood another short, squatty
hemlock, and I said my bees ought to be there. As I paused near it, I
noticed where the tree had been wounded with an ax a couple of feet from
the ground many years before. The wound had partially grown over, but
there was an opening there that I did not see at the first glance. I was
about to pass on when a bee passed me making that peculiar shrill,
discordant hum that a bee makes when besmeared with honey. I saw it
alight in the partially closed wound and crawl home; then came others
and others, little bands and squads of them heavily freighted with honey
from the box. The tree was about twenty inches through and hollow at the
butt, or from the ax-mark down. This space the bees had completely
filled with honey. With an ax we cut away the outer ring of live wood
and exposed the treasure. Despite the utmost care, we wounded the comb
so that little rills of the golden liquid issued from the root of the
tree and trickled down the hill.

The other bee-tree in the vicinity to which I have referred we found one
warm November day in less than half an hour after entering the woods. It
also was a hemlock that stood in a niche in a wall of hoary,
moss-covered rocks thirty feet high. The tree hardly reached to the top
of the precipice. The bees entered a small hole at the root, which was
seven or eight feet from the ground. The position was a striking one.
Never did apiary have a finer outlook or more rugged surroundings. A
black, wood-embraced lake lay at our feet; the long panorama of the
Catskills filled the far distance, and the more broken outlines of the
Shawangunk range filled the rear. On every hand were precipices and a
wild confusion of rocks and trees.

The cavity occupied by the bees was about three feet and a half long and
eight or ten inches in diameter. With an ax we cut away one side of the
tree, and laid bare its curiously wrought heart of honey. It was a most
pleasing sight. What winding and devious ways the bees had through their
palace! What great masses and blocks of snow-white comb there were!
Where it was sealed up, presenting that slightly dented, uneven surface,
it looked like some precious ore. When we carried a large pailful of it
out of the woods it seemed still more like ore.

Your native bee-hunter predicates the distance of the tree by the time
the bee occupies in making its first trip. But this is no certain guide.
You are always safe in calculating that the tree is inside of a mile,
and you need not as a rule look for your bee's return under ten minutes.
One day I picked up a bee in an opening in the woods and gave it honey,
and it made three trips to my box with an interval of about twelve
minutes between them; it returned alone each time; the tree, which I
afterward found, was about half a mile distant.

In lining bees through the woods the tactics of the hunter are to pause
every twenty or thirty rods, lop away the branches or cut down the
trees, and set the bees to work again. If they still go forward, he goes
forward also and repeats his observations till the tree is found, or
till the bees turn and come back upon the trail. Then he knows he has
passed the tree, and he retraces his steps to a convenient distance and
tries again, and thus quickly reduces the space to be looked over till
the swarm is traced home. On one occasion, in a wild rocky wood, where
the surface alternated between deep gulfs and chasms filled with thick,
heavy growths of timber and sharp, precipitous, rocky ridges like a
tempest-tossed sea, I carried my bees directly under their tree, and set
them to work from a high, exposed ledge of rocks not thirty feet
distant. One would have expected them under such circumstances to have
gone straight home, as there were but few branches intervening, but they
did not; they labored up through the trees and attained an altitude
above the woods as if they had miles to travel, and thus baffled me for
hours. Bees will always do this. They are acquainted with the woods only
from the top side, and from the air above; they recognize home only by
landmarks here, and in every instance they rise aloft to take their
bearings. Think how familiar to them the topography of the forest
summits must be,--an umbrageous sea or plain where every mark and point
is known.

Another curious fact is that generally you will get track of a bee-tree
sooner when you are half a mile from it than when you are only a few
yards. Bees, like us human insects, have little faith in the near at
hand; they expect to make their fortune in a distant field, they are
lured by the remote and the difficult, and hence overlook the flower and
the sweet at their very door. On several occasions I have unwittingly
set my box within a few paces of a bee-tree and waited long for bees
without getting them, when, on removing to a distant field or opening in
the woods, I have got a clew at once.

I have a theory that when bees leave the hive, unless there is some
special attraction in some other direction, they generally go against
the wind. They would thus have the wind with them when they returned
home heavily laden, and with these little navigators the difference is
an important one. With a full cargo, a stiff head-wind is a great
hindrance, but fresh and empty-handed they can face it with more ease.
Virgil says bees bear gravel stones as ballast, but their only ballast
is their honey-bag. Hence, when I go bee-hunting, I prefer to get to
windward of the woods in which the swarm is supposed to have refuge.

Bees, like the milkman, like to be near a spring. They do water their
honey, especially in a dry time. The liquid is then of course thicker
and sweeter, and will bear diluting. Hence old bee-hunters look for
bee-trees along creeks and near spring runs in the woods. I once found a
tree a long distance from any water, and the honey had a peculiar bitter
flavor, imparted to it, I was convinced, by rainwater sucked from the
decayed and spongy hemlock-tree in which the swarm was found. In cutting
into the tree, the north side of it was found to be saturated with
water like a spring, which ran out in big drops, and had a bitter
flavor. The bees had thus found a spring or a cistern in their own
house.

Bees are exposed to many hardships and many dangers. Winds and storms
prove as disastrous to them as to other navigators. Black spiders lie in
wait for them as do brigands for travelers. One day, as I was looking
for a bee amid some goldenrod, I spied one partly concealed under a
leaf. Its baskets were full of pollen, and it did not move. On lifting
up the leaf I discovered that a hairy spider was ambushed there and had
the bee by the throat. The vampire was evidently afraid of the bee's
sting, and was holding it by the throat till quite sure of its death.
Virgil speaks of the painted lizard, perhaps a species of salamander, as
an enemy of the honey-bee. We have no lizard that destroys the bee; but
our tree-toad, ambushed among the apple and cherry blossoms, snaps them
up wholesale. Quick as lightning that subtle but clammy tongue darts
forth, and the unsuspecting bee is gone. Virgil also accuses the
titmouse and the woodpecker of preying upon the bees, and our kingbird
has been charged with the like crime, but the latter devours only the
drones. The workers are either too small and quick for it or else it
dreads their sting.

Virgil, by the way, had little more than a child's knowledge of the
honey-bee. There is little fact and much fable in his fourth Georgic. If
he had ever kept bees himself, or even visited an apiary, it is hard to
see how he could have believed that the bee in its flight abroad carried
a gravel stone for ballast.

/p
    "And as when empty barks on billows float,
     With sandy ballast sailors trim the boat;
     So bees bear gravel stones, whose poising weight
     Steers through the whistling winds their steady flight;"
p/

or that, when two colonies made war upon each other, they issued forth
from their hives led by their kings and fought in the air, strewing the
ground with the dead and dying:--

/p
    "Hard hailstones lie not thicker on the plain,
     Nor shaken oaks such show'rs of acorns rain."
p/

It is quite certain he had never been bee-hunting. If he had we should
have had a fifth Georgic. Yet he seems to have known that bees sometimes
escaped to the woods:--

/p
    "Nor bees are lodged in hives alone, but found
     In chambers of their own beneath the ground:
     Their vaulted roofs are hung in pumices,
     And in the rotten trunks of hollow trees."
p/

Wild honey is as near like tame as wild bees are like their brothers in
the hive. The only difference is, that wild honey is flavored with your
adventure, which makes it a little more delectable than the domestic
article.

/#
     [From _Pepacton_, by John Burroughs. Copyright, 1881, 1895, and
     1909, by John Burroughs.]
#/



CUT-OFF COPPLES'S

CLARENCE KING


One October day, as Kaweah and I traveled by ourselves over a lonely
foothill trail, I came to consider myself the friend of woodpeckers.
With rather more reserve as regards the bluejay, let me admit great
interest in his worldly wisdom. As an instance of co-operative living
the partnership of these two birds is rather more hopeful than most
mundane experiments. For many autumn and winter months such food as
their dainty taste chooses is so rare throughout the Sierras that in
default of any climatic temptation to migrate the birds get in harvests
with annual regularity and surprising labor. Oak and pine mingle in open
growth. Acorns from the one are their grain; the soft pine bark is
granary; and this the process:

Armies of woodpeckers drill small, round holes in the bark of standing
pine-trees, sometimes perforating it thickly up to twenty or thirty and
even forty feet above the ground; then about equal numbers of
woodpeckers and jays gather acorns, rejecting always the little cup, and
insert the gland tightly in the pine bark with its tender base outward
and exposed to the air.

A woodpecker, having drilled a hole, has its exact measure in mind, and
after examining a number of acorns makes his selection, and never fails
of a perfect fit. Not so the jolly, careless jay, who picks up any sound
acorn he finds, and, if it is too large for a hole, drops it in the most
off-hand way as if it were an affair of no consequence; utters one of
his dry, chuckling squawks, and either tries another or loafs about,
lazily watching the hard-working woodpeckers.

Thus they live, amicably harvesting, and with this sequel: those acorns
in which grubs form become the sole property of woodpeckers, while all
sound ones fall to the jays. Ordinarily chances are in favor of
woodpeckers, and when there are absolutely no sound nuts the jays sell
short, so to speak, and go over to Nevada and speculate in
juniper-berries.

The monotony of hill and glade failing to interest me, and in default of
other diversion, I all day long watched the birds, recalling how many
gay and successful jays I knew who lived, as these, on the wit and
industry of less ostentatious woodpeckers; thinking, too, what naïvely
dogmatic and richly worded political economy Mr. Ruskin would phrase
from my feathered friends. Thus I came to Ruskin, wishing I might see
the work of his idol, and after that longing for some equal artist who
should arise and choose to paint our Sierras as they are with all their
color-glory, power of innumerable pine and countless pinnacle, gloom of
tempest, or splendor, where rushing light shatters itself upon granite
crag, or burns in dying rose upon far fields of snow.

Had I rubbed Aladdin's lamp? A turn in the trail brought suddenly into
view a man who sat under shadow of oaks, painting upon a large canvas.

As I approached, the artist turned half round upon his stool, rested
palette and brushes upon one knee, and in familiar tone said, "Dern'd if
you ain't just naturally ketched me at it! Get off and set down. You
ain't going for no doctor, I know."

My artist was of short, good-natured, butcher-boy make-up, dressed in
what had formerly been black broadcloth, with an enlivening show of red
flannel shirt about the throat, wrists, and a considerable display of
the same where his waistcoat might once have overlapped a strained but
as yet coherent waistband. The cut of these garments, by length of
coat-tail and voluminous leg, proudly asserted a "Bay" origin. His small
feet were squeezed into tight, short boots, with high, raking heels.

A round face, with small, full mouth, non-committal nose, and black,
protruding eyes, showed no more sign of the ideal temperament than did
the broad daub upon his square yard of canvas.

"Going to Copples's?" inquired my friend.

That was my destination, and I answered, "Yes."

"That's me," he ejaculated. "Right over there, down below those two
oaks! Ever there?"

"No."

"My _studio_'s there now;" giving impressive accent to the word.

All the while these few words were passing he scrutinized me with
unconcealed curiosity, puzzled, as well he might be, by my dress and
equipment. Finally, after I had tied Kaweah to a tree and seated myself
by the easel, and after he had absently rubbed some raw sienna into his
little store of white, he softly ventured: "Was you looking out a
ditch?"

"No," I replied.

He neatly rubbed up the white and sienna with his "blender,"
unconsciously adding a dash of Veronese green, gazed at my leggings,
then at the barometer, and again meeting my eye with a look as if he
feared I might be a disguised duke, said in slow tone, with hyphens of
silence between each two syllables, giving to his language all the
dignity of an unabridged Webster, "I would take pleasure in stating that
my name is Hank G. Smith, artist;" and, seeing me smile, he relaxed a
little, and, giving the blender another vigorous twist, added, "I would
request yours."

Mr. Smith having learned my name, occupation, and that my home was on
the Hudson, near New York, quickly assumed a familiar me-and-you-old-fel'
tone, and rattled on merrily about his winter in New York spent in
"going through the Academy,"--a period of deep moment to one who before
that painted only wagons for his livelihood.

Storing away canvas, stool, and easel in a deserted cabin close by, he
rejoined me, and, leading Kaweah by his lariat, I walked beside Smith
down the trail toward Copples's.

He talked freely, and as if composing his own biography, beginning:

"California-born and mountain-raised, his nature soon drove him into a
painter's career." Then he reverted fondly to New York and his
experience there.

"Oh, no!" he mused in pleasant irony, "he never spread his napkin over
his legs and partook French victuals up to old Delmonico's. 'Twasn't H.
G. which took her to the theater."

In a sort of stage-aside to me, he added, "_She_ was a _model_! Stood
for them sculptors, you know; perfectly virtuous, and built from the
ground up." Then, as if words failed him, made an expressive gesture
with both hands over his shirt-bosom to indicate the topography of her
figure, and, sliding them down sharply against his waistband, he added,
"Anatomical torso!"

Mr. Smith found relief in meeting one so near himself, as he conceived
me to be, in habit and experience. The long-pent-up emotions and
ambitions of his life found ready utterance, and a willing listener.

I learned that his aim was to become a characteristically California
painter, with special designs for making himself famous as the
delineator of mule-trains and ox-wagons; to be, as he expressed it, "the
Pacific Slope Bonheur."

"There," he said, "is old Eastman Johnson; he's made the riffle on
barns, and that everlasting girl with the ears of corn; but it ain't
_life_, it ain't got the real git-up.

"If you want to see _the_ thing, just look at a Gérôme; his Arab folks
and Egyptian dancing-girls, they ain't assuming a pleasant expression
and looking at spots while their likenesses is took.

"H. G. will discount Eastman yet."

He avowed his great admiration of Church, which, with a little leaning
toward Mr. Gifford, seemed his only hearty approval.

"It's all Bierstadt, and Bierstadt, and Bierstadt nowadays! What has he
done but twist and skew and distort and discolor and belittle and
be-pretty this whole dog-gonned country? Why, his mountains are too high
and too slim; they'd blow over in one of our fall winds.

"I've herded colts two summers in Yosemite, and honest now, when I stood
right up in front of his picture, I didn't know it.

"He hasn't what old Ruskin calls for."

By this time the station buildings were in sight, and far down the
cañon, winding in even grade round spur after spur, outlined by a low,
clinging cloud of red dust, we could see the great Sierra
mule-train,--that industrial gulf-stream flowing from California plains
over into arid Nevada, carrying thither materials for life and luxury.
In a vast, perpetual caravan of heavy wagons, drawn by teams of from
eight to fourteen mules, all the supplies of many cities and villages
were hauled across the Sierra at an immense cost, and with such skill of
driving and generalship of mules as the world has never seen before.

Our trail descended toward the grade, quickly bringing us to a high bank
immediately overlooking the trains a few rods below the group of station
buildings.

I had by this time learned that Copples, the former station-proprietor,
had suffered amputation of the leg three times, receiving from the road
men, in consequence, the name of "Cut-off," and that, while his doctors
disagreed as to whether they had better try a fourth, the kindly hand of
death had spared him that pain, and Mrs. Copples an added extortion in
the bill.

The dying "Cut-off" had made his wife promise she would stay by and
carry on the station until all his debts, which were many and heavy,
should be paid, and then do as she chose.

The poor woman, a New Englander of some refinement, lingered, sadly
fulfilling her task, though longing for liberty.

When Smith came to speak of Sarah Jane, her niece, a new light kindled
in my friend's eye.

"You never saw Sarah Jane?" he inquired.

I shook my head.

He went on to tell me that he was living in hope of making her Mrs. H.
G., but that the bar-keeper also indulged a hope, and as this important
functionary was a man of ready cash, and of derringers and few words, it
became a delicate matter to avow open rivalry; but it was evident my
friend's star was ascendant, and, learning that he considered himself to
possess the "dead-wood," and to have "gaited" the bar-keeper, I was more
than amused, even comforted.

It was pleasure to sit there leaning against a vigorous old oak while
Smith opened his heart to me, in easy confidence, and, with quick eye
watching the passing mules, penciled in a little sketch-book a leg, a
head, or such portions of body and harness as seemed to him useful for
future works.

"These are notes," he said, "and I've pretty much made up my mind to
paint my great picture on a _gee-pull_. I'll scumble in a sunset effect,
lighting up the dust, and striking across the backs of team and driver,
and I'll paint a come-up-there-d'n-you look on the old teamster's face,
and the mules will be just a-humping their little selves and laying down
to work like they'd expire. And the wagon! Don't you see what fine
color-material there is in the heavy load and canvas-top with sunlight
and shadow in the folds? And that's what's the matter with H. G. Smith.

"Orders, sir, orders; that's what I'll get then, and I'll take my little
old Sarah Jane and light out for New York, and you'll see _Smith_ on a
studio doorplate, and folks'll say, 'Fine feeling for nature, has
Smith!'"

I let this singular man speak for himself in his own vernacular, pruning
nothing of its idiom or slang, as you shall choose to call it. In this
faithful transcript there are words I could have wished to expunge, but
they are his, not mine, and illustrate his mental construction.

The breath of most Californians is as unconsciously charged with slang
as an Italian's of garlic, and the two, after all, have much the same
function; you touch the bowl or your language, but should never let
either be fairly recognized in salad or conversation. But Smith's
English was the well undefiled when compared with what I every moment
heard from the current of teamsters which set constantly by us in the
direction of Copples's.

Close in front came a huge wagon piled high with cases of freight, and
drawn along by a team of twelve mules, whose heavy breathing and
drenched skins showed them hard-worked and well tired out. The driver
looked anxiously ahead at a soft spot in the road, and on at the
station, as if calculating whether his team had courage left to haul
through.

He called kindly to them, cracked his black-snake whip, and all together
they strained bravely on.

The great van rocked, settled a little on the near side, and stuck fast.

With a look of despair the driver got off and laid the lash freely among
his team; they jumped and jerked, frantically tangled themselves up, and
at last all sulked and became stubbornly immovable. Meanwhile, a mile of
teams behind, unable to pass on the narrow grade, came to an unwilling
halt.

About five wagons back I noticed a tall Pike, dressed in checked shirt,
and pantaloons tucked into jack-boots. A soft felt hat, worn on the back
of his head, displayed long locks of flaxen hair, which hung freely
about a florid pink countenance, noticeable for its pair of violent
little blue eyes, and facial angle rendered acute by a sharp, long nose.

This fellow watched the stoppage with impatience, and at last, when it
was more than he could bear, walked up by the other teams with a look of
wrath absolutely devilish. One would have expected him to blow up with
rage; yet withal his gait and manner were cool and soft in the extreme.
In a bland, almost tender voice, he said to the unfortunate driver, "My
friend, perhaps I can help you;" and his gentle way of disentangling and
patting the leaders as he headed them round in the right direction would
have given him a high office under Mr. Bergh. He leisurely examined the
embedded wheel, and cast an eye along the road ahead. He then began in
rather excited manner to swear, pouring it out louder and more profane,
till he utterly eclipsed the most horrid blasphemies I ever heard,
piling them up thicker and more fiendish till it seemed as if the very
earth must open and engulf him.

I noticed one mule after another give a little squat, bringing their
breasts hard against the collars, and straining traces, till only one
old mule, with ears back and dangling chain, still held out. The Pike
walked up and yelled one gigantic oath; her ears sprang forward, she
squatted in terror, and the iron links grated under her strain. He then
stepped back and took the rein, every trembling mule looking out of the
corner of its eye and listening at qui vive.

With a peculiar air of deliberation and of childlike simplicity, he said
in every-day tones, "Come up there, mules!"

One quick strain, a slight rumble, and the wagon rolled on to Copples's.

Smith and I followed, and as we neared the house he punched me
familiarly and said, as a brown petticoat disappeared in the station
door, "There's Sarah Jane! When I see that girl I feel like I'd reach
out and gather her in;" then clasping her imaginary form as if she was
about to dance with him, he executed a couple of waltz turns, softly
intimating, "That's what's the matter with H. G."

Kaweah being stabled, we betook ourselves to the office, which was of
course bar-room as well. As I entered, the unfortunate teamster was
about paying his liquid compliment to the florid Pike. Their glasses
were filled. "My respects," said the little driver. The whiskey became
lost to view, and went eroding its way through the dust these poor
fellows had swallowed. He added, "Well, Billy, you can swear."

"Swear?" repeated the Pike in a tone of incredulous questioning. "Me
swear?" as if the compliment were greater than his modest desert. "No, I
can't blaspheme worth a cuss. You'd jest orter hear Pete Green. _He can
exhort the impenitent mule._ I've known a ten-mule-team to renounce the
flesh and haul thirty-one thousand through a foot of clay mud under one
of his outpourings."

As a hotel, Copples's is on the Mongolian plan, which means that
dining-room and kitchen are given over to the mercies--never very
tender--of Chinamen; not such Chinamen as learned the art of
pig-roasting that they might be served up by Elia, but the average John,
and a sadly low average that John is. I grant him a certain general air
of thrift, admitting, too, that his lack of sobriety never makes itself
apparent in loud Celtic brawl. But he is, when all is said, and in spite
of timid and fawning obedience, a very poor servant.

Now and then at one friend's house it has happened to me that I dined
upon artistic Chinese cookery, and all they who come home from living in
China smack their lips over the relishing _cuisine_. I wish they had sat
down that day at Copples's. No; on second thought I would spare them.

John may go peacefully to North Adams and make shoes for us, but I shall
not solve the awful domestic problem by bringing him into my kitchen;
certainly so long as Howells's "Mrs. Johnson" lives, nor even while I
can get an Irish lady to torment me, and offer the hospitality of my
home to her cousins.

After the warning bell, fifty or sixty teamsters inserted their dusty
heads in buckets of water, turned their once white neck-handkerchiefs
inside out, producing a sudden effect of clean linen, and made use of
the two mournful wrecks of combs which hung on strings at either side
the Copples's mirror. Many went to the bar and partook of a
"dust-cutter." There was then such clearing of throats, and such loud
and prolonged blowing of noses as may not often be heard upon this
globe.

In the calm which ensued, conversation sprang up on "lead harness," the
"Stockton wagon that had went off the grade," with here and there a
sentiment called out by two framed lithographic belles, who in great
richness of color and scantiness of raiment flanked the bar-mirror;--a
dazzling reflector, chiefly destined to portray the barkeeper's back
hair, which work of art involved much affectionate labor.

A second bell and rolling away of doors revealed a long dining-room,
with three parallel tables, cleanly set and watched over by Chinamen,
whose fresh, white clothes and bright, olive-buff skin made a contrast
of color which was always chief among my yearnings for the Nile.

While I loitered in the background every seat was taken, and I found
myself with a few dilatory teamsters destined to await a second table.

The dinner-room communicated with a kitchen beyond by means of two
square apertures cut in the partition wall. Through these portholes a
glare of red light poured, except when the square framed a Chinese
cook's head, or discharged hundreds of little dishes.

The teamsters sat down in patience; a few of the more elegant sort
cleaned their nails with the three-tine forks, others picked their teeth
with them, and nearly all speared with this implement small specimens
from the dishes before them, securing a pickle or a square inch of pie
or even that luxury, a dried apple; a few, on tilted-back chairs,
drummed upon the bottom of their plates the latest tune of the road.

When fairly under way the scene became active and animated beyond
belief. Waiters, balancing upon their arms twenty or thirty plates,
hurried along and shot them dexterously over the teamsters' heads with
crash and spatter.

Beans swimming in fat, meats slimed with pale, ropy gravy, and over
everything a faint Mongol odor,--the flavor of moral degeneracy and of a
disintegrating race.

Sharks and wolves may no longer be figured as types of prandial haste.
My friends, the teamsters, stuffed and swallowed with a rapidity which
was alarming but for the dexterity they showed, and which could only
have come of long practice.

In fifteen minutes the room was empty, and those fellows who were not
feeding grain to their mules lighted cigars and lingered round the bar.

Just then my artist rushed in, seized me by the arm, and said in my ear,
"We'll have _our_ supper over to Mrs. Copples's. O no, I guess
not--Sarah Jane--arms peeled--cooking up stuff--old woman gone into the
milk-room with a skimmer." He then added that if I wanted to see what I
had been spared, I might follow him.

We went round an angle of the building and came upon a high bank, where,
through wide-open windows, I could look into the Chinese kitchen.

By this time the second table of teamsters were under way, and the
waiters yelled their orders through to the three cooks.

This large, unpainted kitchen was lighted up by kerosene lamps. Through
clouds of smoke and steam dodged and sprang the cooks, dripping with
perspiration and grease, grabbing a steak in the hand and slapping it
down on the gridiron, slipping and sliding around on the damp floor,
dropping a card of biscuits and picking them up again in their fists,
which were garnished by the whole bill of fare. The red papers with
Chinese inscriptions, and little joss-sticks here and there pasted upon
each wall, the spry devils themselves, and that faint, sickening odor of
China which pervaded the room, combined to produce a sense of deep,
sober gratitude that I had not risked their fare.

"Now," demanded Smith, "you see that there little white building
yonder?"

I did.

He struck a contemplative position, leaned against the house, extending
one hand after the manner of the minstrel sentimentalist, and softly
chanted:

/p
    "''Tis, O, 'tis the cottage of me love;'
p/

"and there's where they're getting up as nice a little supper as can be
found on this road or any other. Let's go over!"

So we strolled across an open space where were two giant pines towering
somber against the twilight, a little mountain brooklet, and a few quiet
cows.

"Stop," said Smith, leaning his back against a pine, and encircling my
neck affectionately with an arm; "I told you, as regards Sarah Jane, how
my feelings stand. Well, now, you just bet she's on the reciprocate!
When I told old woman Copples I'd like to invite you over,--Sarah Jane
she passed me in the doorway,--and said she, 'Glad to see _your_
friends.'"

Then _sotto voce_, for we were very near, he sang again:

/p
    "''Tis, O, 'tis the cottage of me love;'
p/

"and C. K.," he continued familiarly, "you're a judge of wimmen,"
chucking his knuckles into my ribs, whereat I jumped; when he added,
"There, I knew you was. Well, Sarah Jane is a derned magnificent female;
number three boot, just the height for me. _Venus de_ Copples, I call
her, and would make the most touching artist's wife in this planet. If I
design to paint a head, or a foot, or an arm, get my little old Sarah
Jane to peel the particular charm, and just whack her in on the
canvas."

We passed in through low doors, turned from a small, dark entry into the
family sitting-room, and were alone there in presence of a cheery log
fire, which good-naturedly bade us welcome, crackling freely and tossing
its sparks out upon floor of pine and coyote-skin rug. A few old framed
prints hung upon dark walls, their faces looking serenely down upon the
scanty, old-fashioned furniture and windows full of flowering plants. A
low-cushioned chair, not long since vacated, was drawn close by the
centre-table, whereon were a lamp and a large, open Bible, with a pair
of silver-bowed spectacles lying upon its lighted page.

Smith made a gesture of silence toward the door, touched the Bible, and
whispered, "_Here's_ where old woman Copples lives, and it is a good
thing; I read it aloud to her evenings, and I can just feel the high,
local lights of it. It'll fetch H. G. yet!"

At this juncture the door opened; a pale, thin, elderly woman entered,
and with tired smile greeted me. While her hard, labor-stiffened,
needle-roughened hand was in mine, I looked into her face and felt
something (it may be, it must be, but little, yet something) of the
sorrow of her life; that of a woman large in sympathy, deep in faith,
eternal in constancy, thrown away on a rough, worthless fellow. All
things she hoped for had failed her; the tenderness which never came,
the hopes years ago in ashes, the whole world of her yearnings long
buried, leaving only the duty of living and the hope of Heaven. As she
sat down, took up her spectacles and knitting, and closed the Bible, she
began pleasantly to talk to us of the warm, bright autumn nights, of
Smith's work, and then of my own profession, and of her niece, Sarah
Jane. Her genuinely sweet spirit and natively gentle manner were very
beautiful, and far overbalanced all traces of rustic birth and mountain
life.

O, that unquenchable Christian fire, how pure the gold of its result! It
needs no practiced elegance, no social greatness, for its success; only
the warm human heart, and out of it shall come a sacred calm and
gentleness, such as no power, no wealth, no culture may ever hope to
win.

No words of mine would outline the beauty of that plain, weary old
woman, the sad, sweet patience of those gray eyes, nor the spirit of
overflowing goodness which cheered and enlivened the half hour we spent
there.

H. G. might perhaps be pardoned for showing an alacrity when the door
again opened and Sarah Jane rolled--I might almost say trundled--in, and
was introduced to me.

Sarah Jane was an essentially Californian product, as much so as one of
those vast potatoes or massive pears; she had a suggestion of State-Fair
in the fullness of her physique, yet withal was pretty and modest.

If I could have rid myself of a fear that her buttons might sooner or
later burst off and go singing by my ear, I think I might have felt as
H. G. did, that she was a "magnificent female," with her smooth,
brilliant skin and ropes of soft brown hair.

H. G., in presence of the ladies, lost something of his original flavor,
and rose into studied elegance, greatly to the comfort of Sarah, whose
glow of pride as his talk ran on came without show of restraint.

The supper was delicious.

But Sarah was quiet, quiet to H. G. and to me, until after tea, when the
old lady said, "You young folks will have to excuse me this evening,"
and withdrew to her chamber.

More logs were then piled on the sitting-room hearth, and we three
gathered in a semi-circle.

Presently H. G. took the poker and twisted it about among coals and
ashes, prying up the oak sticks, as he announced, in a measured,
studied way, "An artist's wife, that is," he explained, "an
Academician's wife orter, well she'd orter _sabe_ the beautiful, and
take her regular æsthetics; and then again," he continued in explanatory
tone, "she'd orter to know how to keep a hotel, derned if she hadn't,
for it's rough like furst off, 'fore a feller gets his name up. But then
when he does, tho', she's got a salubrious old time of it. It's touch a
little bell" (he pressed the andiron-top to show us how the thing was
done), "and 'Brooks, the morning paper!' Open your regular Herald:

       *       *       *       *       *

"'ART NOTES.--Another of H. G. Smith's tender works, entitled, "Off the
Grade," so full of out-of-doors and subtle feeling of nature, is now on
exhibition at Goupil's.'

"Look down a little further:

"'ITALIAN OPERA.--Between the acts all eyes turned to the _distingué_
Mrs. H. G. Smith, who looked,'"--then turning to me, and waving his hand
at Sarah Jane, "I leave it to you if she don't."

Sarah Jane assumed the pleasing color of the sugar-beet, without seeming
inwardly unhappy.

"It's only a question of time with H. G.," continued my friend. "Art is
long, you know--derned long--and it may be a year before I paint my
great picture, but after that Smith works in lead harness."

He used the poker freely, and more and more his flow of hopes turned a
shade of sentiment to Sarah Jane, who smiled broader and broader,
showing teeth of healthy whiteness.

At last I withdrew and sought my room, which was H. G.'s also, and his
studio. I had gone with a candle round the walls whereon were tacked
studies and sketches, finding here and there a bit of real merit among
the profusion of trash, when the door burst open and my friend entered,
kicked off his boots and trousers, and walked up and down at a sort of
quadrille step, singing:

/p
    "'Yes, it's the cottage of me love;
      You bet, it's the cottage of me love,'
p/

"and, what's more, H. G. has just had his genteel goodnight kiss; and
when and where is the good old bar-keep?"

I checked his exuberance as best I might, knowing full well that the
quiet and elegant dispenser of neat and mixed beverages hearing this
inquiry would put in an appearance in person and offer a few remarks
designed to provoke ill-feeling. So I at last got Smith in bed and the
lamp out. All was quiet for a few moments, and when I had almost gotten
asleep I heard my room-mate in low tones say to himself,--

"Married, by the Rev. Gospel, our talented California artist, Mr. H. G.
Smith, to Miss Sarah Jane Copples. No cards."

A pause, and then with more gentle utterance, "and that's what's the
matter with H. G."

Slowly from this atmosphere of art I passed away into the tranquil land
of dreams.

/#
     [From _Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada_, by Clarence King.
     Copyright, 1871, by James R. Osgood & Co. Copyright, 1902, by
     Charles Scribner's Sons.]
#/



THE THÉÂTRE FRANÇAIS

HENRY JAMES


M. Francisque Sarcey, the dramatic critic of the Paris "Temps," and the
gentleman who, of the whole journalistic fraternity, holds the fortune
of a play in the hollow of his hand, has been publishing during the last
year a series of biographical notices of the chief actors and actresses
of the first theater in the world. _Comédiens et Comédiennes: la Comédie
Française_--such is the title of this publication, which appears in
monthly numbers of the "Librairie des Bibliophiles," and is ornamented
on each occasion with a very prettily etched portrait, by M. Gaucherel,
of the artist to whom the number is devoted. By lovers of the stage in
general and of the Théâtre Français in particular the series will be
found most interesting; and I welcome the pretext for saying a few words
about an institution which--if such language be not hyperbolical--I
passionately admire. I must add that the portrait is incomplete, though
for the present occasion it is more than sufficient. The list of M.
Sarcey's biographies is not yet filled up; three or four, those of
Madame Favart and of MM. Fèbvre and Delaunay, are still wanting. Nine
numbers, however, have appeared--the first being entitled _La Maison de
Molière_, and devoted to a general account of the great theater; and the
others treating of its principal _sociétaires_ and _pensionnaires_ in
the following order:

/p[4]
    Regnier,
    Got,
    Sophie Croizette,
    Sarah Bernhardt,
    Coquelin,
    Madeleine Brohan,
    Bressant,
    Madame Plessy.
p/

(This order, by the way, is purely accidental; it is not that of age or
of merit.) It is always entertaining to encounter M. Francisque Sarcey,
and the reader who, during a Paris winter, has been in the habit, of a
Sunday evening, of unfolding his "Temps" immediately after unfolding his
napkin, and glancing down first of all to see what this sturdy
_feuilletoniste_ has found to his hand--such a reader will find him in
great force in the pages before us. It is true that, though I myself
confess to being such a reader, there are moments when I grow rather
weary of M. Sarcey, who has in an eminent degree both the virtues and
the defects which attach to the great French characteristic--the habit
of taking terribly _au sérieux_ anything that you may set about doing.
Of this habit of abounding in one's own sense, of expatiating,
elaborating, reiterating, refining, as if for the hour the fate of
mankind were bound up with one's particular topic, M. Sarcey is a
capital and at times an almost comical representative. He talks about
the theater once a week as if--honestly, between himself and his
reader--the theater were the only thing in this frivolous world that is
worth seriously talking about. He has a religious respect for his theme
and he holds that if a thing is to be done at all it must be done in
detail as well as in the gross.

It is to this serious way of taking the matter, to his thoroughly
businesslike and professional attitude, to his unwearying attention to
detail, that the critic of the "Temps" owes his enviable influence and
the weight of his words. Add to this that he is sternly incorruptible.
He has his admirations, but they are honest and discriminating; and whom
he loveth he very often chasteneth. He is not ashamed to commend Mlle.
X., who has only had a curtsy to make, if her curtsy has been the ideal
curtsy of the situation; and he is not afraid to overhaul M. A., who has
delivered the _tirade_ of the play, if M. A., has failed to hit the
mark. Of course his judgment is good; when I have had occasion to
measure it I have usually found it excellent. He has the scenic
sense--the theatrical eye. He knows at a glance what will do, and what
will not do. He is shrewd and sagacious and almost tiresomely in
earnest, and this is his principal brilliancy. He is homely, familiar
and colloquial; he leans his elbows on his desk and does up his weekly
budget into a parcel the reverse of coquettish. You can fancy him a
grocer retailing tapioca and hominy--full weight for the price; his
style seems a sort of integument of brown paper. But the fact remains
that if M. Sarcey praises a play the play has a run; and that if M.
Sarcey says it will not do it does not do at all. If M. Sarcey devotes
an encouraging line and a half to a young actress, mademoiselle is
immediately _lancée_; she has a career. If he bestows a quiet "bravo" on
an obscure comedian, the gentleman may forthwith renew his engagement.
When you make and unmake fortunes at this rate, what matters it whether
you have a little elegance the more or the less? Elegance is for M. Paul
de St. Victor, who does the theaters in the "Moniteur," and who, though
he writes a style only a trifle less pictorial than that of Théophile
Gautier himself, has never, to the best of my belief, brought clouds or
sunshine to any playhouse. I may add, to finish with M. Sarcey, that he
contributes a daily political article--generally devoted to watching and
showing up the "game" of the clerical party--to Edmond About's journal,
the "XIX^{ième} Siècle"; that he gives a weekly _conférence_ on current
literature; that he "confers" also on those excellent Sunday morning
performances now so common in the French theaters, during which examples
of the classic repertory are presented, accompanied by a light lecture
upon the history and character of the play. As the commentator on these
occasions M. Sarcey is in great demand, and he officiates sometimes in
small provincial towns. Lastly, frequent play-goers in Paris observe
that the very slenderest novelty is sufficient to insure at a theater
the (very considerable) physical presence of the conscientious critic of
the "Temps." If he were remarkable for nothing else he would be
remarkable for the fortitude with which he exposes himself to the
pestiferous climate of the Parisian temples of the drama.

For these agreeable "notices" M. Sarcey appears to have mended his pen
and to have given a fillip to his fancy. They are gracefully and often
lightly turned; occasionally, even, the author grazes the epigrammatic.
They deal, as is proper, with the artistic and not with the private
physiognomy of the ladies and gentlemen whom they commemorate; and
though they occasionally allude to what the French call "intimate"
matters, they contain no satisfaction for the lovers of scandal. The
Théâtre Français, in the face it presents to the world, is an austere
and venerable establishment, and a frivolous tone about its affairs
would be almost as much out of keeping as if applied to the Académie
herself. M. Sarcey touches upon the organization of the theater, and
gives some account of the different phases through which it has passed
during these latter years. Its chief functionary is a general
administrator, or director, appointed by the State, which enjoys this
right in virtue of the considerable subsidy which it pays to the house;
a subsidy amounting, if I am not mistaken (M. Sarcey does not mention
the sum), to 250,000 francs. The director, however, is not an absolute
but a constitutional ruler; for he shares his powers with the society
itself, which has always had a large deliberative voice.

Whence, it may be asked, does the society derive its light and its
inspiration? From the past, from precedent, from tradition--from the
great unwritten body of laws which no one has in his keeping but many
have in their memory, and all in their respect. The principles on which
the Théâtre Français rests are a good deal like the Common Law of
England--a vaguely and inconveniently registered mass of regulations
which time and occasion have welded together and from which the
recurring occasion can usually manage to extract the rightful precedent.
Napoleon I., who had a finger in every pie in his dominion, found time
during his brief and disastrous occupation of Moscow to send down a
decree remodeling and regulating the constitution of the theater. This
document has long been a dead letter, and the society abides by its
older traditions. The _traditions_ of the Comédie Française--that is the
sovereign word, and that is the charm of the place--the charm that one
never ceases to feel, however often one may sit beneath the classic,
dusky dome. One feels this charm with peculiar intensity as a newly
arrived foreigner. The Théâtre Français has had the good fortune to be
able to allow its traditions to accumulate. They have been preserved,
transmitted, respected, cherished, until at last they form the very
atmosphere, the vital air, of the establishment. A stranger feels their
superior influence the first time he sees the great curtain go up; he
feels that he is in a theater that is not as other theaters are. It is
not only better, it is different. It has a peculiar perfection--something
consecrated, historical, academic. This impression is delicious, and he
watches the performance in a sort of tranquil ecstasy.

Never has he seen anything so smooth and harmonious, so artistic and
complete. He has heard all his life of attention to detail, and now, for
the first time, he sees something that deserves the name. He sees
dramatic effort refined to a point with which the English stage is
unacquainted. He sees that there are no limits to possible "finish," and
that so trivial an act as taking a letter from a servant or placing
one's hat on a chair may be made a suggestive and interesting incident.
He sees these things and a great many more besides, but at first he does
not analyze them; he gives himself up to sympathetic contemplation. He
is in an ideal and exemplary world--a world that has managed to attain
all the felicities that the world we live in misses. The people do the
things that we should like to do; they are gifted as we should like to
be; they have mastered the accomplishments that we have had to give up.
The women are not all beautiful--decidedly not, indeed--but they are
graceful, agreeable, sympathetic, ladylike; they have the best manners
possible and they are delightfully well dressed. They have charming
musical voices and they speak with irreproachable purity and sweetness;
they walk with the most elegant grace and when they sit it is a pleasure
to see their attitudes. They go out and come in, they pass across the
stage, they talk, and laugh, and cry, they deliver long _tirades_ or
remain statuesquely mute; they are tender or tragic, they are comic or
conventional; and through it all you never observe an awkwardness, a
roughness, an accident, a crude spot, a false note.

As for the men, they are not handsome either; it must be confessed,
indeed, that at the present hour manly beauty is but scantily
represented at the Théâtre Français. Bressant, I believe, used to be
thought handsome; but Bressant has retired, and among the gentlemen of
the troupe I can think of no one but M. Mounet-Sully who may be
positively commended for his fine person. But M. Mounet-Sully is, from
the scenic point of view, an Adonis of the first magnitude. To be
handsome, however, is for an actor one of the last necessities; and
these gentlemen are mostly handsome enough. They look perfectly what
they are intended to look, and in cases where it is proposed that they
shall seem handsome, they usually succeed. They are as well mannered and
as well dressed as their fairer comrades and their voices are no less
agreeable and effective. They represent gentlemen and they produce the
illusion. In this endeavour they deserve even greater credit than the
actresses, for in modern comedy, of which the repertory of the Théâtre
Français is largely composed, they have nothing in the way of costume to
help to carry it off. Half-a-dozen ugly men, in the periodic coat and
trousers and stove-pipe hat, with blue chins and false mustaches,
strutting before the footlights, and pretending to be interesting,
romantic, pathetic, heroic, certainly play a perilous game. At every
turn they suggest prosaic things and the usual liability to awkwardness
is meantime increased a thousandfold. But the comedians of the Théâtre
Français are never awkward, and when it is necessary they solve
triumphantly the problem of being at once realistic to the eye and
romantic to the imagination.

I am speaking always of one's first impression of them. There are spots
on the sun, and you discover after a while that there are little
irregularities at the Théâtre Français. But the acting is so
incomparably better than any that you have seen that criticism for a
long time is content to lie dormant. I shall never forget how at first I
was under the charm. I liked the very incommodities of the place; I am
not sure that I did not find a certain mystic salubrity in the bad
ventilation. The Théâtre Français, it is known, gives you a good deal
for your money. The performance, which rarely ends before midnight, and
sometimes transgresses it, frequently begins by seven o'clock. The first
hour or two is occupied by secondary performers; but not for the world
at this time would I have missed the first rising of the curtain. No
dinner could be too hastily swallowed to enable me to see, for instance,
Madame Nathalie in Octave Feuillet's charming little comedy of "Le
Village." Madame Nathalie was a plain, stout old woman, who did the
mothers and aunts and elderly wives; I use the past tense because she
retired from the stage a year ago, leaving a most conspicuous vacancy.
She was an admirable actress and a perfect mistress of laughter and
tears. In "Le Village" she played an old provincial bourgeoise whose
husband takes it into his head, one winter night, to start on the tour
of Europe with a roving bachelor friend, who has dropped down on him at
supper-time, after the lapse of years, and has gossiped him into
momentary discontent with his fireside existence. My pleasure was in
Madame Nathalie's figure when she came in dressed to go out to vespers
across the _place_. The two foolish old cronies are over their wine,
talking of the beauty of the women on the Ionian coast; you hear the
church-bell in the distance. It was the quiet felicity of the old lady's
dress that used to charm me; the Comédie Française was in every fold of
it. She wore a large black silk mantilla, of a peculiar cut, which
looked as if she had just taken it tenderly out of some old wardrobe
where it lay folded in lavender, and a large dark bonnet, adorned with
handsome black silk loops and bows. Her big pale face had a softly
frightened look, and in her hand she carried her neatly kept breviary.
The extreme suggestiveness, and yet the taste and temperance of this
costume, seemed to me inimitable; the bonnet alone, with its handsome,
decent, virtuous bows, was worth coming to see. It expressed all the
rest, and you saw the excellent, pious woman go pick her steps
churchward among the puddles, while Jeannette, the cook, in a high white
cap, marched before her in sabots with a lantern.

Such matters are trifles, but they are representative trifles, and they
are not the only ones that I remember. It used to please me, when I had
squeezed into my stall--the stalls at the Français are extremely
uncomfortable--to remember of how great a history the large, dim _salle_
around me could boast; how many great things had happened there; how the
air was thick with associations. Even if I had never seen Rachel, it was
something of a consolation to think that those very footlights had
illumined her finest moments and that the echoes of her mighty voice
were sleeping in that dingy dome. From this to musing upon the
"traditions" of the place, of which I spoke just now, was of course but
a step. How were they kept? by whom, and where? Who trims the undying
lamp and guards the accumulated treasure? I never found out--by sitting
in the stalls; and very soon I ceased to care to know. One may be very
fond of the stage and yet care little for the green-room; just as one
may be very fond of pictures and books and yet be no frequenter of
studios and authors' dens. They might pass on the torch as they would
behind the scenes; so long as during my time they did not let it drop I
made up my mind to be satisfied. And that one could depend upon their
not letting it drop became a part of the customary comfort of Parisian
life. It became certain that the "traditions" were not mere catchwords,
but a most beneficent reality.

Going to the other Parisian theaters helps you to believe in them.
Unless you are a voracious theater-goer you give the others up; you find
they do not "pay"; the Français does for you all that they do and so
much more besides. There are two possible exceptions--the Gymnase and
the Palais Royal. The Gymnase, since the death of Mademoiselle Desclée,
has been under a heavy cloud; but occasionally, when a month's sunshine
rests upon it, there is a savor of excellence in the performance. But
you feel that you are still within the realm of accident; the delightful
security of the Rue de Richelieu is wanting. The young lover is liable
to be common and the beautifully dressed heroine to have an unpleasant
voice. The Palais Royal has always been in its way very perfect; but its
way admits of great imperfection. The actresses are classically bad,
though usually pretty, and the actors are much addicted to taking
liberties. In broad comedy, nevertheless, two or three of the latter are
not to be surpassed, and (counting out the women) there is usually
something masterly in a Palais Royal performance. In its own line it has
what is called style, and it therefore walks, at a distance, in the
footsteps of the Français. The Odéon has never seemed to me in any
degree a rival of the Théâtre Français, though it is a smaller copy of
that establishment. It receives a subsidy from the State, and is obliged
by its contract to play the classic repertory one night in the week. It
is on these nights, listening to Molière or Marivaux, that you may best
measure the superiority of the greater theater. I have seen actors at
the Odéon, in the classic repertory, imperfect in their texts; a
monstrously insupposable case at the Comédie Française. The function of
the Odéon is to operate as a _pépinière_ or nursery for its elder--to
try young talents, shape them, make them flexible and then hand them
over to the upper house. The more especial nursery of the Français,
however, is the Conservatoire Dramatique, an institution dependent upon
the State, through the Ministry of the Fine Arts, whose budget is
charged with the remuneration of its professors. Pupils graduating from
the Conservatoire with a prize have _ipso facto_ the right to _débuter_
at the Théâtre Français, which retains them or lets them go, according
to its discretion. Most of the first subjects of the Français have done
their two years' work at the Conservatoire, and M. Sarcey holds that an
actor who has not had that fundamental training which is only to be
acquired there never obtains a complete mastery of his resources.
Nevertheless some of the best actors of the day have owed nothing to the
Conservatoire--Bressant, for instance, and Aimée Desclée, the latter of
whom, indeed, never arrived at the Français. (Molière and Balzac were
not of the Academy, and so Mlle. Desclée, the first actress after
Rachel, died without acquiring the privilege which M. Sarcey says is the
day-dream of all young theatrical women--that of printing on their
visiting-cards, after their name, _de la Comédie Française_.)

The Théâtre Français has, moreover, the right to do as Molière did--to
claim its property wherever it finds it. It may stretch out its long arm
and break the engagement of a promising actor at any of the other
theaters; of course after a certain amount of notice given. So, last
winter, it notified to the Gymnase its design of appropriating Worms,
the admirable _jeune premier_, who, returning from a long sojourn in
Russia and taking the town by surprise, had begun to retrieve the
shrunken fortunes of that establishment.

On the whole, it may be said that the great talents find their way,
sooner or later, to the Théâtre Français. This is of course not a rule
that works unvaryingly, for there are a great many influences to
interfere with it. Interest as well as merit--especially in the case of
the actresses--weighs in the scale; and the ire that may exist in
celestial minds has been known to manifest itself in the councils of
the Comédie. Moreover, a brilliant actress may prefer to reign supreme
at one of the smaller theaters; at the Français, inevitably, she shares
her dominion. The honor is less, but the comfort is greater.

Nevertheless, at the Français, in a general way, there is in each case a
tolerably obvious artistic reason for membership; and if you see a
clever actor remain outside for years, you may be pretty sure that,
though private reasons count, there are artistic reasons as well. The
first half dozen times I saw Mademoiselle Fargueil, who for years ruled
the roost, as the vulgar saying is, at the Vaudeville, I wondered that
so consummate and accomplished an actress should not have a place on the
first French stage. But I presently grew wiser, and perceived that,
clever as Mademoiselle Fargueil is, she is not for the Rue de Richelieu,
but for the Boulevards; her peculiar, intensely Parisian intonation
would sound out of place in the Maison de Molière. (Of course if
Mademoiselle Fargueil has ever received overtures from the Français, my
sagacity is at fault--I am looking through a millstone. But I suspect
she has not.) Frédéric Lemaître, who died last winter, and who was a
very great actor, had been tried at the Français and found wanting--for
those particular conditions. But it may probably be said that if
Frédéric was wanting, the theater was too, in this case. Frédéric's
great force was his extravagance, his fantasticality; and the stage of
the Rue de Richelieu was a trifle too academic. I have even wondered
whether Desclée, if she had lived, would have trod that stage by right,
and whether it would have seemed her proper element. The negative is not
impossible. It is very possible that in that classic atmosphere her
great charm--her intensely modern quality, her super-subtle
realism--would have appeared an anomaly. I can imagine even that her
strange, touching, nervous voice would not have seemed the voice of the
house. At the Français you must know how to acquit yourself of a
_tirade_; that has always been the touchstone of capacity. It would
probably have proved Desclée's stumbling-block, though she could utter
speeches of six words as no one else surely has ever done. It is true
that Mademoiselle Croizette, and in a certain sense Mademoiselle Sarah
Bernhardt, are rather weak at their _tirades_; but then old
theater-goers will tell you that these young ladies, in spite of a
hundred attractions, have no business at the Français.

In the course of time the susceptible foreigner passes from that
superstitious state of attention which I just now sketched to that
greater enlightenment which enables him to understand such a judgment as
this of the old theater-goers. It is borne in upon him that, as the good
Homer sometimes nods, the Théâtre Français sometimes lapses from its
high standard. He makes various reflections. He thinks that Mademoiselle
Favart rants. He thinks M. Mounet-Sully, in spite of his delicious
voice, insupportable. He thinks that M. Parodi's five-act tragedy, "Rome
Vaincue," presented in the early part of the present winter, was better
done certainly than it would have been done upon any English stage, but
by no means so much better done as might have been expected. (Here, if I
had space, I would open a long parenthesis, in which I should aspire to
demonstrate that the incontestable superiority of average French acting
to English is by no means so strongly marked in tragedy as in comedy--is
indeed sometimes not strongly marked at all. The reason of this is in a
great measure, I think, that we have had Shakespeare to exercise
ourselves upon, and that an inferior dramatic instinct exercised upon
Shakespeare may become more flexible than a superior one exercised upon
Corneille and Racine. When it comes to ranting--ranting even in a
modified and comparatively reasonable sense--we do, I suspect, quite as
well as the French, if not rather better.) Mr. G. H. Lewes, in his
entertaining little book upon _Actors and the Art of Acting_, mentions
M. Talbot, of the Français, as a surprisingly incompetent performer. My
memory assents to his judgment at the same time that it proposes an
amendment. This actor's special line is the buffeted, bemuddled,
besotted old fathers, uncles and guardians of classic comedy, and he
plays them with his face much more than with his tongue. Nature has
endowed him with a visage so admirably adapted, once for all, to his
rôle, that he has only to sit in a chair, with his hands folded on his
stomach, to look like a monument of bewildered senility. After that it
does not matter what he says or how he says it.

The Comédie Française sometimes does weaker things than in keeping M.
Talbot. Last autumn,[8] for instance, it was really depressing to see
Mademoiselle Dudley brought all the way from Brussels (and with not a
little flourish either) to "create" the guilty vestal in "Rome Vaincue."
As far as the interests of art are concerned, Mademoiselle Dudley had
much better have remained in the Flemish capital, of whose language she
is apparently a perfect mistress. It is hard, too, to forgive M. Perrin
(M. Perrin is the present director of the Théâtre Français) for bringing
out "L'Ami Fritz" of M. Erckmann-Chatrian. The two gentlemen who write
under this name have a double claim to kindness. In the first place,
they have produced some delightful little novels; everyone knows and
admires _Le Conscrit de 1813_; everyone admires, indeed, the charming
tale on which the play in question is founded. In the second place, they
were, before the production of their piece, the objects of a scurrilous
attack by the "Figaro" newspaper, which held the authors up to
reprobation for having "insulted the army," and did its best to lay the
train for a hostile manifestation on the first night. (It may be added
that the good sense of the public outbalanced the impudence of the
newspaper, and the play was simply advertised into success.) But neither
the novels nor the persecutions of M. Erckmann-Chatrian avail to render
"L'Ami Fritz," in its would-be dramatic form, worthy of the first French
stage. It is played as well as possible, and upholstered even better;
but it is, according to the vulgar phrase, too "thin" for the locality.
Upholstery has never played such a part at the Théâtre Français as
during the reign of M. Perrin, who came into power, if I mistake not,
after the late war. He proved very early that he was a radical, and he
has introduced a hundred novelties. His administration, however, has
been brilliant, and in his hands the Théâtre Français has made money.
This it had rarely done before, and this, in the conservative view, is
quite beneath its dignity. To the conservative view I should humbly
incline. An institution so closely protected by a rich and powerful
State ought to be able to cultivate art for art.

The first of M. Sarcey's biographies, to which I have been too long in
coming, is devoted to Regnier, a veteran actor, who left the stage four
or five years since, and who now fills the office of oracle to his
younger comrades. It is the indispensable thing, says M. Sarcey, for a
young aspirant to be able to say that he has had lessons of M. Regnier,
or that M. Regnier had advised him, or that he has talked such and such
a point over with M. Regnier. (His comrades always speak of him as M.
Regnier--never as simple Regnier.) I have had the fortune to see him but
once; it was the first time I ever went to the Théâtre Français. He
played Don Annibal in Émile Augier's romantic comedy of "L'Aventurière,"
and I have not forgotten the exquisite humor of the performance. The
part is that of a sort of seventeenth century Captain Costigan, only the
Miss Fotheringay in the case is the gentleman's sister and not his
daughter. This lady is moreover an ambitious and designing person, who
leads her thread-bare braggart of a brother quite by the nose. She has
entrapped a worthy gentleman of Padua, of mature years, and he is on the
eve of making her his wife, when his son, a clever young soldier,
beguiles Don Annibal into supping with him, and makes him drink so deep
that the prating adventurer at last lets the cat out of the bag and
confides to his companion that the fair Clorinde is not the virtuous
gentlewoman she appears, but a poor strolling actress who has had a
lover at every stage of her journey. The scene was played by Bressant
and Regnier, and it has always remained in my mind as one of the most
perfect things I have seen on the stage. The gradual action of the wine
upon Don Annibal, the delicacy with which his deepening tipsiness was
indicated, its intellectual rather than physical manifestation, and, in
the midst of it, the fantastic conceit which made him think that he was
winding his fellow drinker round his fingers--all this was exquisitely
rendered. Drunkenness on the stage is usually both dreary and
disgusting; and I can remember besides this but two really interesting
pictures of intoxication (excepting always, indeed, the immortal
tipsiness of Cassio in "Othello," which a clever actor can always make
touching). One is the beautiful befuddlement of Rip Van Winkle, as Mr.
Joseph Jefferson renders it, and the other (a memory of the Théâtre
Français) the scene in the "Duc Job," in which Got succumbs to mild
inebriation, and dozes in his chair just boosily enough for the young
girl who loves him to make it out.

It is to this admirable Émile Got that M. Sarcey's second notice is
devoted. Got is at the present hour unquestionably the first actor at
the Théâtre Français, and I have personally no hesitation in accepting
him as the first of living actors. His younger comrade, Coquelin, has, I
think, as much talent and as much art; as the older man Got has the
longer and fuller record and may therefore be spoken of as the master.
If I were obliged to rank the half-dozen _premiers sujets_ of the last
few years at the Théâtre Français in their absolute order of talent
(thank Heaven, I am not so obliged!) I think I should make up some such
little list as this: Got, Coquelin, Madame Plessy, Sarah Bernhardt,
Mademoiselle Favart, Delaunay. I confess that I have no sooner written
it than I feel as if I ought to amend it, and wonder whether it is not a
great folly to put Delaunay after Mademoiselle Favart. But this is idle.

As for Got, he is a singularly interesting actor. I have often wondered
whether the best definition of him would not be to say that he is really
a _philosophic_ actor. He is an immense humorist and his comicality is
sometimes colossal; but his most striking quality is the one on which M.
Sarcey dwells--his sobriety and profundity, his underlying element of
manliness and melancholy, the impression he gives you of having a
general conception of human life and of seeing the relativity, as one
may say, of the character he represents. Of all the comic actors I have
seen he is the least trivial--at the same time that for richness of
detail his comic manner is unsurpassed. His repertory is very large and
various, but it may be divided into two equal halves--the parts that
belong to reality and the parts that belong to fantasy. There is of
course a great deal of fantasy in his realistic parts and a great deal
of reality in his fantastic ones, but the general division is just; and
at times, indeed, the two faces of his talent seem to have little in
common. The Duc Job, to which I just now alluded, is one of the things
he does most perfectly. The part, which is that of a young man, is a
serious and tender one. It is amazing that the actor who plays it should
also be able to carry off triumphantly the frantic buffoonery of Maître
Pathelin, or should represent the Sganarelle of the "Médecin Malgré Lui"
with such an unctuous breadth of humor. The two characters, perhaps,
which have given me the liveliest idea of Got's power and fertility are
the Maître Pathelin and the M. Poirier who figures in the title to the
comedy which Émile Augier and Jules Sandeau wrote together. M. Poirier,
the retired shopkeeper who marries his daughter to a marquis and makes
acquaintance with the incommodities incidental to such a piece of luck,
is perhaps the actor's most elaborate creation; it is difficult to see
how the portrayal of a type and an individual can have a larger sweep
and a more minute completeness. The _bonhomme_ Poirier, in Got's hands,
is really great; and half-a-dozen of the actor's modern parts that I
could mention are hardly less brilliant. But when I think of him I
instinctively think first of some rôle in which he wears the cap and
gown of a period as regards which humorous invention may fairly take the
bit in its teeth. This is what Got lets it do in Maître Pathelin, and he
leads the spectator's exhilarated fancy a dance to which the latter's
aching sides on the morrow sufficiently testify.

The piece is a _réchauffé_ of a mediæval farce which has the credit of
being the first play not a "mystery" or a miracle-piece in the records
of the French drama. The plot is extremely bald and primitive. It sets
forth how a cunning lawyer undertook to purchase a dozen ells of cloth
for nothing. In the first scene we see him in the market-place,
bargaining and haggling with the draper, and then marching off with the
roll of cloth, with the understanding that the shopman shall call at his
house in the course of an hour for the money. In the next act we have
Maître Pathelin at his fireside with his wife, to whom he relates his
trick and its projected sequel, and who greets them with Homeric
laughter. He gets into bed, and the innocent draper arrives. Then
follows a scene of which the liveliest description must be ineffective.
Pathelin pretends to be out of his head, to be overtaken by a mysterious
malady which has made him delirious, not to know the draper from Adam,
never to have heard of the dozen ells of cloth, and to be altogether an
impossible person to collect a debt from. To carry out this character he
indulges in a series of indescribable antics, out-Bedlams Bedlam,
frolics over the room dressed out in the bed-clothes and chanting the
wildest gibberish, bewilders the poor draper to within an inch of his
own sanity and finally puts him utterly to rout. The spectacle could
only be portentously flat or heroically successful, and in Got's hands
this latter was its fortune. His Sganarelle, in the "Médicin Malgré
Lui," and half-a-dozen of his characters from Molière besides--such a
part, too, as his Tibia, in Alfred de Musset's charming bit of
romanticism, the "Caprices de Marianne"--have a certain generic
resemblance with his treatment of the figure I have sketched. In all
these things the comicality is of the exuberant and tremendous order,
and yet in spite of its richness and flexibility it suggests little
connection with high animal spirits. It seems a matter of invention, of
reflection and irony. You cannot imagine Got representing a fool pure
and simple--or at least a passive and unsuspecting fool. There must
always be an element of shrewdness and even of contempt; he must be the
man who knows and judges--or at least who pretends. It is a compliment,
I take it, to an actor, to say that he prompts you to wonder about his
private personality; and an observant spectator of M. Got is at liberty
to guess that he is both obstinate and proud.

In Coquelin there is perhaps greater spontaneity, and there is a not
inferior mastery of his art. He is a wonderfully brilliant, elastic
actor. He is but thirty-five years old, and yet his record is most
glorious. He too has his "actual" and his classical repertory, and here
also it is hard to choose. As the young _valet de comédie_ in Molière
and Regnard and Marivaux he is incomparable. I shall never forget the
really infernal brilliancy of his Mascarille in "L'Étourdi." His
volubility, his rapidity, his impudence and gayety, his ringing,
penetrating voice and the shrill trumpet-note of his laughter, make him
the ideal of the classic serving-man of the classic young lover--half
rascal and half good fellow. Coquelin has lately had two or three
immense successes in the comedies of the day. His Duc de Sept-Monts, in
the famous "Étrangère" of Alexandre Dumas, last winter, was the capital
creation of the piece; and in the revival, this winter, of Augier's
"Paul Forestier," his Adolphe de Beaubourg, the young man about town,
consciously tainted with _commonness_, and trying to shake off the
incubus, seemed while one watched it and listened to it the last word of
delicately humorous art. Of Coquelin's eminence in the old comedies M.
Sarcey speaks with a certain pictorial force: "No one is better cut out
to represent those bold and magnificent rascals of the old repertory,
with their boisterous gayety, their brilliant fancy and their superb
extravagance, who give to their buffoonery _je ne sais quoi d'épique_.
In these parts one may say of Coquelin that he is incomparable. I prefer
him to Got in such cases, and even to Regnier, his master. I never saw
Monrose, and cannot speak of him. But good judges have assured me that
there was much that was factitious in the manner of this eminent
comedian, and that his vivacity was a trifle mechanical. There is
nothing whatever of this in Coquelin's manner. The eye, the nose, and
the voice--the voice above all--are his most powerful means of action.
He launches his _tirades_ all in one breath, with full lungs, without
troubling himself too much over the shading of details, in large masses,
and he possesses himself only the more strongly of the public, which has
a great sense of _ensemble_. The words that must be detached, the words
that must decisively 'tell,' glitter in this delivery with the sonorous
ring of a brand-new louis d'or. Crispin, Scapin, Figaro, Mascarille have
never found a more valiant and joyous interpreter."

I should say that this was enough about the men at the Théâtre Français,
if I did not remember that I have not spoken of Delaunay. But Delaunay
has plenty of people to speak for him; he has, in especial, the more
eloquent half of humanity--the ladies. I suppose that of all the actors
of the Comédie Française he is the most universally appreciated and
admired; he is the popular favorite. And he has certainly earned this
distinction, for there was never a more amiable and sympathetic genius.
He plays the young lovers of the past and the present, and he acquits
himself of his difficult and delicate task with extraordinary grace and
propriety. The danger I spoke of a while since--the danger, for the
actor of a romantic and sentimental part, of being compromised by the
coat and trousers, the hat and umbrella of the current year--are reduced
by Delaunay to their minimum. He reconciles in a marvelous fashion the
love-sick gallant of the ideal world with the "gentlemanly man" of
to-day; and his passion is as far removed from rant as his propriety is
from stiffness. He has been accused of late years of falling into a
mannerism, and I think there is some truth in the charge. But the fault
in Delaunay's situation is certainly venial. How can a man of fifty, to
whom, as regards face and figure, Nature has been stingy, play an
amorous swain of twenty without taking refuge in a mannerism? His
mannerism is a legitimate device for diverting the spectator's attention
from certain incongruities. Delaunay's juvenility, his ardor, his
passion, his good taste and sense of fitness, have always an
irresistible charm. As he has grown older he has increased his repertory
by parts of greater weight and sobriety--he has played the husbands as
well as the lovers. One of his most recent and brilliant "creations" of
this kind is his Marquis de Presles in "Le Gendre de M. Poirier"--a
piece of acting superb for its lightness and _désinvolture_. It cannot
be better praised than by saying it was worthy of Got's inimitable
rendering of the part opposed to it. But I think I shall remember
Delaunay best in the picturesque and romantic comedies--as the Duc de
Richelieu in "Mlle. De Belle-Isle"; as the joyous, gallant, exuberant
young hero, his plumes and love knots fluttering in the breath of his
gushing improvisation, of Corneille's "Menteur"; or, most of all, as the
melodious swains of those charmingly poetic, faintly, naturally
Shakespearean little comedies of Alfred de Musset.

To speak of Delaunay ought to bring us properly to Mademoiselle Favart,
who for so many years invariably represented the object of his tender
invocations. Mademoiselle Favart at the present time rather lacks what
the French call "actuality." She has recently made an attempt to recover
something of that large measure of it which she once possessed; but I
doubt whether it has been completely successful. M. Sarcey has not yet
put forth his notice of her; and when he does so it will be interesting
to see how he treats her. She is not one of his high admirations. She is
a great talent that has passed into eclipse. I call her a great talent,
although I remember the words in which M. Sarcey somewhere speaks of
her: "Mlle. Favart, who, to happy natural gifts, _soutenus par un
travail acharné_, owed a distinguished place," etc. Her talent is
great, but the impression that she gives of a _travail acharné_ and of
an insatiable ambition is perhaps even greater. For many years she
reigned supreme, and I believe she is accused of not having always
reigned generously. However that may be, there came a day when
Mesdemoiselles Croizette and Sarah Bernhardt passed to the front and the
elder actress receded, if not into the background, at least into what
painters call the middle distance. The private history of these events
has, I believe, been rich in heart-burnings; but it is only with the
public history that we are concerned. Mademoiselle Favart has always
seemed to me a powerful rather than an interesting actress; there is
usually something mechanical and overdone in her manner. In some of her
parts there is a kind of audible creaking of the machinery. If Delaunay
is open to the reproach of having let a mannerism get the better of him,
this accusation is much more fatally true of Mademoiselle Favart. On the
other hand, she knows her trade as no one does--no one, at least, save
Madame Plessy. When she is bad she is extremely bad, and sometimes she
is interruptedly bad for a whole evening. In the revival of Scribe's
clever comedy of "Une Chaine," this winter (which, by the way, though
the cast included both Got and Coquelin, was the nearest approach to
mediocrity I have ever seen at the Théâtre Français), Mademoiselle
Favart was, to my sense, startlingly bad. The part had originally been
played by Madame Plessy; and I remember how M. Sarcey in his
_feuilleton_ treated its actual representative. "Mademoiselle Favart
does Louise. Who does not recall the exquisite delicacy and temperance
with which Mme. Plessy rendered that difficult scene in the second act?"
etc. And nothing more. When, however, Mademoiselle Favart is at her
best, she is remarkably strong. She rises to great occasions. I doubt
whether such parts as the desperate heroine of the "Supplice d'une
Femme," or as Julie in Octave Feuillet's lugubrious drama of that name,
could be more effectively played than she plays them. She can carry a
great weight without flinching; she has what the French call
"authority"; and in declamation she sometimes unrolls her fine voice, as
it were, in long harmonious waves and cadences the sustained power of
which her younger rivals must often envy her.

I am drawing to the close of these rather desultory observations without
having spoken of the four ladies commemorated by M. Sarcey in the
publication which lies before me; and I do not know that I can justify
my tardiness otherwise than by saying that writing and reading about
artists of so extreme a personal brilliancy is poor work, and that the
best the critic can do is to wish his reader may see them, from a quiet
_fauteuil_, as speedily and as often as possible. Of Madeleine Brohan,
indeed, there is little to say. She is a delightful person to listen to,
and she is still delightful to look at, in spite of that redundancy of
contour which time has contributed to her charms. But she has never been
ambitious and her talent has had no particularly original quality. It is
a long time since she created an important part; but in the old
repertory her rich, dense voice, her charming smile, her mellow,
tranquil gayety, always give extreme pleasure. To hear her sit and
_talk_, simply, and laugh and play with her fan, along with Madame
Plessy, in Moliere's "Critique de l'École des Femmes," is an
entertainment to be remembered. For Madame Plessy I should have to mend
my pen and begin a new chapter; and for Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt no
less a ceremony would suffice. I saw Madame Plessy for the first time in
Émile Augier's "Aventurière," when, as I mentioned, I first saw Regnier.
This is considered by many persons her best part, and she certainly
carries it off with a high hand; but I like her better in characters
which afford more scope to her talents for comedy. These characters are
very numerous, for her activity and versatility have been extraordinary.
Her comedy of course is "high"; it is of the highest conceivable kind,
and she has often been accused of being too mincing and too artificial.
I should never make this charge, for, to me, Madame Plessy's
_minauderies_, her grand airs and her arch-refinements, have never been
anything but the odorous swayings and queenly tossings of some splendid
garden flower. Never had an actress grander manners. When Madame Plessy
represents a duchess you have no allowances to make. Her limitations are
on the side of the pathetic. If she is brilliant, she is cold; and I
cannot imagine her touching the source of tears. But she is in the
highest degree accomplished; she gives an impression of intelligence and
intellect which is produced by none of her companions--excepting always
the extremely exceptional Sarah Bernhardt. Madame Plessy's intellect has
sometimes misled her--as, for instance, when it whispered to her, a few
years since, that she could play Agrippine in Racine's "Britannicus," on
that tragedy being presented for the _débuts_ of Mounet-Sully. I was
verdant enough to think her Agrippine very fine. But M. Sarcey reminds
his readers of what he said of it the Monday after the first
performance. "I will not say"--he quotes himself--"that Madame Plessy is
indifferent. With her intelligence, her natural gifts, her great
situation, her immense authority over the public, one cannot be
indifferent in anything. She is therefore not indifferently bad. She is
bad to a point that cannot be expressed and that would be distressing
for dramatic art if it were not that in this great shipwreck there rise
to the surface a few floating fragments of the finest qualities that
nature has ever bestowed upon an artist."

Madame Plessy retired from the stage six months ago and it may be said
that the void produced by this event is irreparable. There is not only
no prospect, but there is no hope of filling it up. The present
conditions of artistic production are directly hostile to the formation
of actresses as consummate and as complete as Madame Plessy. One may not
expect to see her like, any more than one may expect to see a new
manufacture of old lace and old brocade. She carried off with her
something that the younger generation of actresses will consistently
lack--a certain largeness of style and robustness of art. (These
qualities are in a modified degree those of Mademoiselle Favart.) But if
the younger actresses have the success of Mesdemoiselles Croizette and
Sarah Bernhardt, will they greatly care whether they are not "robust"?
These young ladies are children of a later and eminently contemporary
type, according to which an actress undertakes not to interest but to
fascinate. They are charming--"awfully" charming; strange, eccentric,
imaginative. It would be needless to speak specifically of Mademoiselle
Croizette; for although she has very great attractions I think she may
(by the cold impartiality of science) be classified as a secondary, a
less inspired and (to use the great word of the day) a more "brutal"
Sarah Bernhardt. (Mademoiselle Croizette's "brutality" is her great
card.) As for Mademoiselle Sarah Bernhardt, she is simply, at present,
in Paris, one of the great figures of the day. It would be hard to
imagine a more brilliant embodiment of feminine success; she deserves a
chapter for herself.

_December, 1876._



THEOCRITUS ON CAPE COD

HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE


Cape Cod lies at the other end of the world from Sicily not only in
distance, but in the look of it, the lay of it, the way of it. It is so
far off that it offers a base from which one may get a fresh view of
Theocritus.

There are very pleasant villages on the Cape, in the wide shade of
ancient elms, set deep in the old-time New England quiet. For there was
a time before the arrival of the Syrians, the Armenians, and the
automobile, when New England was in a meditative mood. But Cape Cod is
really a ridge of sand with a backbone of soil, rashly thrust into the
Atlantic, and as fluent and volatile, so to speak, as one of those far
Western rivers that are shifting currents sublimely indifferent to
private ownership. The Cape does not lack stability, but it shifts its
lines with easy disregard of charts and boundaries, and remains stable
only at its center; it is always fraying at the edges. It lies, too, on
the western edge of the ocean stream, where the forces of land and sea
are often at war and the palette of colors is limited. The sirocco does
not sift fine sand through every crevice and fill the heart of man with
murderous impulses; but the east wind diffuses a kind of elemental
depression.

Sicily, on the other hand, is high-built on rocky foundations, and is
the wide-spreading reach of a great volcano sloping broadly and
leisurely to the sea. It is often shaken at its center, but the sea does
not take from nor add to its substance at will. It lies in the very
heart of a sea of such ravishing color that by sheer fecundity of
beauty it has given birth to a vast fellowship of gods and divinely
fashioned creatures; its slopes are white with billowy masses of almond
blossoms in that earlier spring which is late winter on Cape Cod; while
gray-green, gnarled, and twisted olive-trees bear witness to the
passionate moods of the Mediterranean, mother of poetry, comedy, and
tragedy, often asleep in a dream of beauty in which the shadowy figures
of the oldest time move, often as violent as the North Atlantic when
March torments it with furious moods. For the Mediterranean is as
seductive, beguiling, and uncertain of temper as Cleopatra, as radiant
as Hera, as voluptuous as Aphrodite. Put in terms of color, it is as
different from the sea round Cape Cod as a picture by Sorolla is
different from a picture by Mauve.

Theocritus is interested in the magic of the island rather than in the
mystery of the many-sounding sea, and to him the familiar look of things
is never edged like a photograph; it is as solid and real as a report of
the Department of Agriculture, but a mist of poetry is spread over it,
in which, as in a Whistler nocturne, many details harmonize in a
landscape at once actual and visionary. There is no example in
literature of the unison of sight and vision more subtly and elusively
harmonious than the report of Sicily in the _Idylls_. In its occupations
the island was as prosaic as Cape Cod, and lacked the far-reaching
consciousness of the great world which is the possession of every
populated sand-bar in the Western world; but it was enveloped in an
atmosphere in which the edges of things were lost in a sense of their
rootage in poetic relations, and of interrelations so elusive and
immaterial that a delicate but persistent charm exhaled from them.

Sicily was a solid and stubborn reality thousands of years before
Theocritus struck his pastoral lyre; but its most obvious quality was
atmospheric. It was compacted of facts, but they were seen not as a
camera sees, but as an artist sees; not in sharp outline and hard
actuality, but softened by a flood of light which melts all hard lines
in a landscape vibrant and shimmering. Our landscape-painters are now
reporting Nature as Theocritus saw her in Sicily; the value of the
overtone matching the value of the under-tone, to quote an artist's
phrase, "apply these tones in right proportions," writes Mr. Harrison,
"and you will find that the sky painted with the perfectly matched tone
will fly away indefinitely, will be bathed in a perfect atmosphere." We
who have for a time lost the poetic mood and strayed from the poet's
standpoint paint the undertones with entire fidelity; but we do not
paint in the overtones, and the landscape loses the luminous and vibrant
quality which comes into it when the sky rains light upon it. We see
with the accuracy of the camera; we do not see with the vision of the
poet, in which reality is not sacrificed, but subdued to larger uses. We
insist on the scientific fact; the poet is intent on the visual fact.
The one gives the bare structure of the landscape; the other gives us
its color, atmosphere, charm. Here, perhaps, is the real difference
between Cape Cod and Sicily. It is not so much a contrast between
encircling seas and the sand-ridge and rock-ridge as between the two
ways of seeing, the scientific and the poetic.

The difference of soils must also be taken into account. The soil of
history on Cape Cod is almost as thin as the physical soil, which is so
light and detached that it is blown about by all the winds of heaven. In
Sicily, on the other hand, the soil is so much a part of the substance
of the island that the sirocco must bring from the shores of Africa the
fine particles with which it tortures men. On Cape Cod there are a few
colonial traditions, many heroic memories of brave deeds in awful seas,
some records of prosperous daring in fishing-ships, and then the advent
of the summer colonists; a creditable history, but of so recent date
that it has not developed the fructifying power of a rich soil, out of
which atmosphere rises like an exhalation. In Sicily, on the other hand,
the soil of history is so deep that the spade of the archæeologist has
not touched bottom, and even the much-toiling Freeman found four octavo
volumes too cramped to tell the whole story, and mercifully stopped at
the death of Agathocles.

Since the beginning of history, which means only the brief time since we
began to remember events, everybody has gone to Sicily, and most people
have stayed there until they were driven on, or driven out, by later
comers; and almost everybody has been determined to keep the island for
himself, and set about it with an ingenuity and energy of slaughter
which make the movement toward universal peace seem pallid and
nerveless. It is safe to say that on no bit of ground of equal area has
more history been enacted than in Sicily; and when Theocritus was young,
Sicily was already venerable with years and experience.

Now, history, using the word as signifying things which have happened,
although enacted on the ground, gets into the air, and one often feels
it before he knows it. In this volatile and pervasive form it is
diffused over the landscape and becomes atmospheric; and atmosphere, it
must be remembered, bears the same relation to air that the countenance
bears to the face: it reveals and expresses what is behind the physical
features. There is hardly a half-mile of Sicily below the upper ridges
of Ætna that has not been fought over; and the localities are few which
cannot show the prints of the feet of the gods or of the heroes who were
their children.

It was a very charming picture on which the curtain was rolled up when
history began, but the island was not a theater in which men sat at
ease and looked at Persephone in the arms of Pluto; it was an arena in
which race followed close upon race, like the waves of the sea, each
rising a little higher and gaining a little wider sweep, and each
leaving behind not only wreckage, but layers of soil potent in vitality.
The island was as full of strange music, of haunting presences, of
far-off memories of tragedy, as the island of the _Tempest_: it bred its
_Calibans_, but it bred also its _Prosperos_. For the imagination is
nourished by rich associations as an artist is fed by a beautiful
landscape; and in Sicily men grew up in an invisible world of memories
that spread a heroic glamor over desolate places and kept Olympus within
view of the mountain pastures where rude shepherds cut their pipes:

/p
    "A pipe discoursing through nine mouths I made, full fair to view;
     The wax is white thereon, the line of this and that edge true."
p/

The soil of history may be so rich that it nourishes all manner of
noxious things side by side with flowers of glorious beauty; this is the
price we pay for fertility. A thin soil, on the other hand, sends a few
flowers of delicate structure and haunting fragrance into the air, like
the arbutus and the witchiana, which express the clean, dry sod of Cape
Cod, and are symbolic of the poverty and purity of its history. Thoreau
reports that in one place he saw advertised, "Fine sand for sale here,"
and he ventures the suggestion that "some of the street" had been
sifted. And, possibly, with a little tinge of malice after his long
fight with winds and shore-drifts, he reports that "in some pictures of
Provincetown the persons of the inhabitants are not drawn below the
ankles, so much being supposed to be buried in the sand."
"Nevertheless," he continues, "natives of Provincetown assured me that
they could walk in the middle of the road without trouble, even in
slippers, for they had learned how to put their feet down and lift them
up without taking in any sand." On a soil so light and porous there is a
plentiful harvesting of health and substantial comfort, but not much
chance of poetry.

In the country of Theocritus there was great chance for poetry; not
because anybody was taught anything, but because everybody was born in
an atmosphere that was a diffused poetry. If this had not been true, the
poet could not have spread a soft mist of poesy over the whole island:
no man works that kind of magic unaided; he compounds his potion out of
simples culled from the fields round him. Theocritus does not disguise
the rudeness of the life he describes; goat-herds and he-goats are not
the conventional properties of the poetic stage. The poet was without a
touch of the drawing-room consciousness of crude things, though he knew
well softness and charm of life in Syracuse under a tyrant who did not
"patronize the arts," but was instructed by them. To him the distinction
between poetic and unpoetic things was not in the appearance, but in the
root. He was not ashamed of Nature as he found her, and he never
apologized for her coarseness by avoiding things not fit for refined
eyes. His shepherds and goat-herds are often gross and unmannerly, and
as stuffed with noisy abuse as Shakespeare's people in "Richard III."
Lacon and Cometas, rival poets of the field, are having a controversy,
and this is the manner of their argument:

/p
                    "LACON

    "When learned I from thy practice or thy preaching aught that's right,
     Thou puppet, thou mis-shapen lump of ugliness and spite?

                    "COMETAS

    "When? When I beat thee, wailing sore; your goats looked on with glee,
     And bleated; and were dealt with e'en as I had dealt with thee."
p/

And then, without a pause, the landscape shines through the noisy talk:

/p
 "Nay, here are oaks and galingale: the hum of housing bees
  Makes the place pleasant, and the birds are piping in the trees,
  And here are two cold streamlets; here deeper shadows fall
  Than yon place owns, and look what cones drop from the pine tree tall."
p/

Thoreau, to press the analogy from painting a little further, lays the
undertones on with a firm hand: "It is a wild, rank place and there is
no flattery in it. Strewn with crabs, horse-shoes, and razor-clams, and
whatever the sea casts up,--a vast _morgue_, where famished dogs may
range in packs, and cows come daily to glean the pittance which the tide
leaves them. The carcasses of men and beasts together lie stately up
upon its shelf, rotting and bleaching in the sun and waves, and each
tide turns them in their beds, and tucks fresh sand under them. There is
naked Nature,--inhumanely sincere, wasting no thought on man, nibbling
at the cliffy shore where gulls wheel amid the spray."

It certainly is naked Nature with a vengeance, and it was hardly fair to
take her portrait in that condition. Theocritus would have shown us
Acteon surprising Artemis, not naked, but nude; and there is all the
difference between nakedness and nudity that yawns between a Greek
statue and a Pompeiian fresco indiscreetly preserved in the museum at
Naples. Theocritus shows Nature nude, but not naked; and it is worth
noting that the difference between the two lies in the presence or
absence of consciousness. In Greek mythology, nudity passes without note
or comment; the moment it begins to be noted and commented upon it
becomes nakedness.

Theocritus sees Nature nude, as did all the Greek poets, but he does
not surprise her when she is naked. He paints the undertones faithfully,
but he always lays on the overtones, and so spreads the effulgence of
the sky-stream over the undertones, and the picture becomes vibrant and
luminous. The fact is never slurred or ignored; it gets full value, but
not as a solitary and detached thing untouched by light, unmodified by
the landscape. Is there a more charming impression of a landscape bathed
in atmosphere, exhaling poetry, breathing in the very presence of
divinity, than this, in Calverley's translation:

/p
    "I ceased. He, smiling sweetly as before,
     Gave me the staff, 'the Muses''
     And leftward sloped toward Pyxa. We the while
     Bent us to Phrasydene's, Eucritus and I,
     And baby-faced Amyntas: there we lay
     Half-buried in a couch of fragrant reed
     And fresh-cut vine leaves, who so glad as we?
     A wealth of elm and poplar shook o'erhead;
     Hard by, a sacred spring flowed gurgling on
     From the Nymphs' grot, and in the somber boughs
     The sweet cicada chirped laboriously.
     Hid in the thick thorn-bushes far away
     The tree frog's note was heard; the crested lark
     Sang with the goldfinch; turtles made their moan;
     And o'er the fountain hung the gilded bee.
     All of rich summer smacked, of autumn all:
     Pears at our feet, and apples at our side
     Rolled in luxuriance; branches on the ground
     Sprawled, overweighted with damsons; while we brushed
     From the cask's head the crust of four long years.
     Say, ye who dwell upon Parnassian peaks,
     Nymphs of Castalia, did old Chiron e'er
     Set before Hercules a cup so brave
     In Pholus' cavern--did as nectarous draughts
     Cause that Anapian shepherd, in whose hand
     Rocks were as pebbles, Polypheme the strong,
     Featly to foot it o'er the cottage lawns:--
     As, ladies, ye bid flow that day for us
     All by Demeter's shrine at harvest-home?
     Beside whose corn-stacks may I oft again
     Plant my broad fan: while she stands by and smiles,
     Poppies and corn-sheaves on each laden arm."
p/

Here is the landscape seen with a poet's eye, and the color and shining
quality of a landscape, it must be remembered, are in the exquisitely
sensitive eye that sees, not in the structure and substance upon which
it rests. The painter and poet create nature as really as they create
art, for in every clear sight of the world we are not passive receivers
of impressions, but partners in that creative work which makes nature as
contemporaneous as the morning newspaper.

It is true, Sicily was poetic in its very structure while Cape Cod is
poetic only in oases, bits of old New England shade and tracery of elms,
the peace of ancient sincerity and content honestly housed, the changing
color of marshes in whose channels the tides are singing or mute; but
the Sicily of Theocritus was seen by the poetic eye. In every complete
vision of a landscape what is behind the eye is as important as what
lies before it, and behind the eyes that looked at Sicily in the third
century, B.C., there were not only the memories of many generations, but
there was also a faith in visible and invisible creatures which peopled
the world with divinities. The text of Theocritus is starred with the
names of gods and goddesses, of heroes and poets: it is like a rich
tapestry, on the surface of which history has been woven in beautiful
colors; the flat surface dissolves in a vast distance, and the dull warp
and woof glows with moving life.

The _Idylls_ are saturated with religion, and as devoid of piety as a
Bernard Shaw play. Gods and men differ only in their power, not at all
in their character. What we call morals were as conspicuously absent
from Olympus as from Sicily. In both places life and the world are taken
in their obvious intention; there was no attempt, apart from the
philosophers, who are always an inquisitive folk, to discover either the
mind or the heart of things. In the Greek Bible, which Homer composed
and recited to crowds of people on festive occasions, the fear of the
gods and their vengeance are set forth in a text of unsurpassed force
and vitality of imagination; but no god in his most dissolute mood
betrays any moral consciousness, and no man repents of sins. That things
often go wrong was as obvious then as now, but there was no sense of
sin. There were Greeks who prayed, but none who put dust on his head and
beat his breast and cried, "Woe unto me, a sinner!" There were disasters
by land and sea, but no newspaper spread them out in shrieking type, and
by skillful omission and selection of topics wore the semblance of an
official report of a madhouse; there were diseases and deaths, but
patent-medicine advertisements had not saturated the common mind with
ominous symptoms; old age was present with its monitions of change and
decay:

/p
                         "Age o'ertakes us all;
    Our tempers first; then on o'er cheek and chin,
    Slowly and surely, creep the frosts of Time.
    Up and go somewhere, ere thy limbs are sere."
p/

Theocritus came late in the classical age, and the shadows had deepened
since Homer's time. The torches on the tombs were inverted, the imagery
of immortality was faint and dim; but the natural world was still
naturally seen, and, if age was coming down the road, the brave man went
bravely forward to meet the shadow.

It was different on Cape Cod. Even Thoreau, who had escaped from the
morasses of theology into the woods and accomplished the reversion to
paganism in the shortest possible manner, never lost the habit of
moralizing, which is a survival of the deep-going consciousness of sin.
Describing the operations of a sloop dragging for anchors and chains, he
gives his text those neat, hard touches of fancy which he had at
command even in his most uncompromising, semi-scientific moments: "To
hunt to-day in pleasant weather for anchors which had been lost,--the
sunken faith and hope of mariners, to which they trusted in vain; now,
perchance it is the rusty one of some old pirate ship or Norman
fisherman, whose cable parted here two hundred years ago, and now the
best bower anchor of a Canton or California ship which has gone about
her business."

And then he drops into the depths of the moral subconsciousness from
which the clear, clean waters of Walden Pond could not wash him: "If the
roadsteads of the spiritual ocean could be thus dragged, what rusty
flukes of hope deceived and parted chain-cables of faith might again be
windlassed aboard! enough to sink the finder's craft, or stock new
navies to the end of time. The bottom of the sea is strewn with anchors,
some deeper and some shallower, and alternately covered and uncovered by
the sand, perchance with a small length of iron cable still attached, to
which where is the other end?... So, if we had diving bells adapted to
the spiritual deeps, we should see anchors with their cables attached,
as thick as eels in vinegar, all wriggling vainly toward their holding
ground. But that is not treasure for us which another man has lost;
rather it is for us to seek what no other man has found or can find."
The tone is light, almost trifling, when one takes into account the
imagery and the idea, and the subconsciousness is wearing thin; but it
is still there.

Thoreau's individual consciousness was a very faint reflection of an
ancestral consciousness of the presence of sin, and of moral obligations
of an intensity almost inconceivable in these degenerate days. There was
a time in a Cape Cod community when corporal punishment was inflicted
on all residents who denied the Scriptures, and all persons who stood
outside the meeting-house during the time of divine service were set in
the stocks. The way of righteousness was not a straight and narrow path,
but a macadamized thoroughfare, and woe to the man who ventured on a
by-path! One is not surprised to learn that "hysteric fits" were very
common, and that congregations were often thrown into the utmost
confusion; for the preaching was far from quieting. "Some think sinning
ends with this life," said a well-known preacher, "but it is a mistake.
The creature is held under an everlasting law; the damned increase in
sin in hell. Possibly, the mention of this may please thee. But,
remember, there shall be no pleasant sins there; no eating, drinking,
singing, dancing; wanton dalliance, and drinking stolen waters; but
damned sins, bitter, hellish sins; sins exasperated by torments; cursing
God, spite, rage, and blasphemy. The guilt of all thy sins shall be laid
upon thy soul, and be made so many heaps of fuel.... He damns sinners
heaps upon heaps."

It is not surprising to learn that as a result of such preaching the
hearers were several times greatly alarmed, and "on one occasion a
comparatively innocent young man was frightened nearly out of his wits."
One wonders in what precise sense the word "comparatively" was used; it
is certain that those who had this sense of the sinfulness of things
driven into them were too thoroughly frightened to see the world with
the poet's eye.

In Sicily nobody was concerned for the safety of his soul; nobody was
aware that he had a soul to be saved. Thoughtful people knew that
certain things gave offense to the gods; that you must not flaunt your
prosperity after the fashion of some American millionaires, who have
discovered in recent years that there is a basis of fact for the Greek
feeling that it is wise to hold great possessions modestly; that
certain family and state relations are sacred, and that the fate of
Œdipus was a warning: but nobody was making observations of his own
frame of mind; there were no thermometers to take the spiritual
temperature.

In his representative capacity as poet, Theocritus, speaking for his
people, might have said with Gautier, "I am a man for whom the visible
world exists." It is as impossible to cut the visible world loose from
the invisible as to see the solid stretch of earth without seeing the
light that streams upon it and makes the landscape; but Gautier came as
near doing the impossible as any man could, and the goat-herds and
pipe-players of Theocritus measurably approached this instable position.
On Cape Cod, it is true, they looked "up and not down," but it is also
true that they "looked in and not out"; in Sicily they looked neither up
nor down, but straight ahead. The inevitable shadows fell across the
fields whence the distracted Demeter sought Persephone, and Enceladus,
uneasily bearing the weight of Ætna, poured out the vials of his wrath
on thriving vineyards and on almond orchards white as with sea-foam; but
the haunting sense of disaster in some other world beyond the dip of the
sea was absent. If the hope of living with the gods was faint and far,
and the forms of vanished heroes were vague and dim, the fear of
retribution beyond the gate of death was a mere blurring of the
landscape by a mist that came and went.

The two workmen whose talk Theocritus overhears and reports in the
_Tenth Idyll_ are not discussing the welfare of their souls; they are
not even awake to the hard conditions of labor, and take no thought
about shorter hours and higher wages: they are interested chiefly in
Bombyca, "lean, dusk, a gypsy,"

/p
                       " ...twinkling dice thy feet,
    Poppies thy lips, thy ways none knows how sweet!"
p/

And they lighten the hard task of the reaper of the stubborn corn in
this fashion:

/p
    "O rich in fruit and corn-blade: be this field
     Tilled well, Demeter, and fair fruitage yield!

    "Bind the sheaves, reapers: lest one, passing, say--
     'A fig for these, they're never worth their pay!'

    "Let the mown swathes look northward, ye who mow,
     Or westward--for the ears grow fattest so.

    "Avoid a noon-tide nap, ye threshing men:
     The chaff flies thickest from the corn-ears then.

    "Wake when the lark wakes; when he slumbers close
     Your work, ye reapers: and at noontide doze.

    "Boys, the frogs' life for me! They need not him
     Who fills the flagon, for in drink they swim.

    "Better boil herbs, thou toiler after gain,
     Than, splitting cummin, split thy hand in twain."
p/

In Sicily no reckoning of the waste of life had been kept, and armies
and fleets had been spent as freely in the tumultuous centuries of
conquest as if, in the over-abundance of life, these losses need not be
entered in the book of account. Theocritus distils this sense of
fertility from the air, and the leaves of the _Idylls_ are fairly astir
with it. The central myth of the island has a meaning quite beyond the
reach of accident; poetic as it is, its symbolism seems almost
scientific. Under skies so full of the light which, in a real sense,
creates the landscape, encircled by a sea which was fecund of gods and
goddesses, Sicily was the teeming mother of flower-strewn fields and
trees heavy with fruit, trunks and boughs made firm by winds as the
fruit grew mellow in the sun. Demeter moved through harvest-fields and
across the grassy slopes where herds are fed, a smiling goddess,

/p
    "Poppies and corn-sheaves on each laden arm."
p/

Forgetfulness of the ills of life, dreams of Olympian beauty and
tempered energy in the fields--are not these the secrets of the fair
world which survives in the _Idylls_?

The corn and wine were food for the gods who gave them as truly as for
the men who plucked the ripened grain and pressed the fragrant grape. If
there was a sense of awe in the presence of the gods, there was no sense
of moral separation, no yawning chasm of unworthiness. The gods obeyed
their impulses not less readily than the men and women they had created;
both had eaten of the fruit of the tree of life, but neither had eaten
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Anybody might happen upon Pan
in some deeply shadowed place, and the danger of surprising Diana at her
bath was not wholly imaginary. Religion was largely the sense of being
neighbor to the gods; they were more prosperous than men and had more
power, but they were different only in degree, and one might be on easy
terms with them. They were created by the poetic mind, and they repaid
it a thousand-fold with the consciousness of a world haunted by near,
familiar, and radiant divinity. The heresy which shattered the unity of
life by dividing it between the religious and the secular had not come
to confuse the souls of the good and put a full half of life in the
hands of sinners; religion was as natural as sunlight and as easy as
breathing.

There was little philosophy and less science in Sicily as Theocritus
reports it. The devastating passion for knowledge had not brought
self-consciousness in like a tide, nor had the desire to know about
things taken the place of knowledge of the things themselves. The beauty
of the world was a matter of experience, not of formal observation, and
was seen directly as artists see a landscape before they bring technical
skill to reproduce it. So far as the men and women who work and sing and
make love in the _Idylls_ were concerned, the age was delightfully
unintellectual and, therefore, normally poetic. The vocabulary of names
for things was made up of descriptive rather than analytical words, and
things were seen in wholes rather than in parts.

From this point of view religion was as universal and all-enfolding as
air, and the gods were as concrete and tangible as trees and rocks and
stars. They were companionable with all sorts and conditions of men, and
if one wished to represent them, he used symbols and images of divinely
fashioned men and women, not philosophical ideas or scientific formulæ.
In this respect the Roman Catholic Church has been both a wise teacher
and a tender guardian of lonely and sorrowful humanity. Homer was not a
formal theologian, but the harvest of the seed of thought he sowed is
not even now fully gathered. He peopled the whole world of imagination.
Christianity is not only concrete but historic, and some day, when the
way of abstraction has been abandoned for that way of vital knowledge,
which is the path of the prophets, the saints, and the artists, it will
again set the imagination aflame. Meantime Theocritus is a charming
companion for those who hunger and thirst for beauty, and who long from
time to time to hang up the trumpet of the reformer, and give themselves
up to the song of the sea and the simple music of the shepherd's pipe.



COLONIALISM IN THE UNITED STATES[9]

HENRY CABOT LODGE


Nothing is more interesting than to trace, through many years and almost
endless wanderings and changes, the fortunes of an idea or habit of
thought. The subject is a much-neglected one, even in these days of
sweeping and minute investigation, because the inherent difficulties are
so great, and the necessary data so multifarious, confused, and
sometimes contradictory, that absolute proof and smooth presentation
seem well-nigh impossible. Yet the ideas, the opinions, even the
prejudices of men, impalpable and indefinite as they are, have at times
a wonderful vitality and force and are not without meaning and
importance when looked at with considerate eyes. The conditions under
which they have been developed may change, or pass utterly away, while
they, mere shadowy creations of the mind, will endure for generations.
Long after the world to which it belonged has vanished, a habit of
thought will live on, indelibly imprinted upon a race or nation, like
the footprint of some extinct beast or bird upon a piece of stone. The
solemn bigotry of the Spaniard is the fossil trace of the fierce
struggle of eight hundred years with the Moors. The theory of the Lord's
day peculiar to the English race all over the world is the deeply
branded sign of the brief reign of Puritanism. A certain fashion of
thought prevailed half a century ago; another is popular to-day. There
is a resemblance between the two, the existence of both is recognized,
and both, without much consideration, are set down as sporadic and
independent, which is by no means a safe conclusion. We have all heard
of those rivers which are suddenly lost to sight in the bowels of the
earth, and, coming as suddenly again to the surface, flow onward to the
sea as before. Or the wandering stream may turn aside into fresh fields,
and, with new shapes and colors, seem to have no connection with the
waters of its source or with those which finally mingle with the ocean.
Yet, despite the disappearances and the changes, it is always the same
river. It is exactly so with some kinds of ideas and modes of
thought,--those that are wholly distinct from the countless host of
opinions which perish utterly, and are forgotten in a few years, or
which are still oftener the creatures of a day, or an hour, and die by
myriads, like the short-lived insects whose course is run between
sunrise and sunset.

The purpose of this essay is to discuss briefly certain opinions which
belong to the more enduring class. They are sufficiently well known.
When they are mentioned everyone will recognize them, and will admit
their existence at the particular period to which they belong. The point
which is overlooked is their connection and relationship. They all have
the same pedigree, a marked resemblance to each other, and they derive
their descent from a common ancestor. My intention is merely to trace
the pedigree and narrate the history of this numerous and interesting
family of ideas and habits of thought. I have entitled them collectively
"Colonialism in the United States," a description which is perhaps more
comprehensive than satisfactory or exact.

In the year of grace 1776, we published to the world our Declaration of
Independence. Six years later, England assented to the separation. These
are tolerably familiar facts. That we have been striving ever since to
make that independence real and complete, and that the work is not yet
entirely finished, are not, perhaps, equally obvious truisms. The hard
fighting by which we severed our connection with the mother-country was
in many ways the least difficult part of the work of building up a great
and independent nation. The decision of the sword may be rude, but it is
pretty sure to be speedy. Armed revolution is quick. A South American,
in the exercise of his constitutional privileges, will rush into the
street and declare a revolution in five minutes. A Frenchman will pull
down one government to-day, and set up another to-morrow, besides giving
new names to all the principal streets of Paris during the intervening
night. We English-speaking people do not move quite so fast. We come
more slowly to the boiling point; we are not fond of violent changes,
and when we make them we consume a considerable time in the operation.
Still, at the best, a revolution by force of arms is an affair of a few
years. We broke with England in 1776, we had won our victory in 1782,
and by the year 1789 we had a new national government fairly started.

But if we are slower than other people in the conduct of revolutions,
owing largely to our love of dogged fighting and inability to recognize
defeat, we are infinitely more deliberate than our neighbors in
altering, or even modifying, our ideas and modes of thought. The slow
mind and ingrained conservatism of the English race are the chief causes
of their marvelous political and material success. After much obstinate
fighting in the field, they have carried through the few revolutions
which they have seen fit to engage in; but when they have undertaken to
extend these revolutions to the domain of thought, there has arisen a
spirit of stubborn and elusive resistance, which has seemed to set every
effort, and even time itself, at defiance.

By the treaty of Paris our independence was acknowledged, and in name
and theory was complete. We then entered upon the second stage in the
conflict, that of ideas and opinions. True to our race and to our
instincts, and with a wisdom which is one of the glories of our history,
we carefully preserved the principles and forms of government and law,
which traced an unbroken descent and growth from the days of the Saxon
invasion. But while we kept so much that was of inestimable worth, we
also retained, inevitably, of course, something which it would have been
well for us to have shaken off together with the rule of George III. and
the British Parliament. This was the colonial spirit in our modes of
thought.

The word "colonial" is preferable to the more obvious word "provincial,"
because the former is absolute, while the latter, by usage, has become
in a great measure relative. We are very apt to call an opinion, a
custom, or a neighbor "provincial," because we do not like the person or
thing in question; and in this way the true value of the word has of
late been frittered away. "Colonialism," moreover, has in this
connection historical point and value, while "provincialism" is general
and meaningless. Colonialism is also susceptible of accurate definition.
A colony is an off-shoot from a parent stock, and its chief
characteristic is dependence. In exact proportion as dependence lessens,
the colony changes its nature and advances toward national existence.
For a hundred and fifty years we were English colonies. Just before the
revolution, in everything but the affairs of practical government, the
precise point at which the break came, we were still colonies in the
fullest sense of the term. Except in matters of food and drink, and of
the wealth which we won from the soil and the ocean, we were in a state
of complete material and intellectual dependence. Every luxury, and
almost every manufactured article, came to us across the water. Our
politics, except those which were purely local, were the politics of
England, and so also were our foreign relations. Our books, our art, our
authors, our commerce, were all English; and this was true of our
colleges, our professions, our learning, our fashions, and our manners.
There is no need here to go into the details which show the absolute
supremacy of the colonial spirit and our entire intellectual dependence.
When we sought to originate, we simply imitated. The conditions of our
life could not be overcome.

The universal prevalence of the colonial spirit at that period is shown
most strongly by one great exception, just as the flash of lightning
makes us realize the intense darkness of a thunder-storm at night. In
the midst of the provincial and barren waste of our intellectual
existence in the eighteenth century there stands out in sharp relief the
luminous genius of Franklin. It is true that Franklin was cosmopolitan
in thought, that his name and fame and achievements in science and
literature belonged to mankind; but he was all this because he was
genuinely and intensely American. His audacity, his fertility, his
adaptability, are all characteristic of America, and not of an English
colony. He moved with an easy and assured step, with a poise and
balance which nothing could shake, among the great men of the world; he
stood before kings and princes and courtiers, unmoved and unawed. He was
strongly averse to breaking with England; but when the war came he was
the one man who could go forth and represent to Europe the new
nationality without a touch of the colonist about him. He met them all,
great ministers and great sovereigns, on a common ground, as if the
colonies of yesterday had been an independent nation for generations.
His autobiography is the corner-stone, the first great work of American
literature. The plain, direct style, almost worthy of Swift, the homely,
forcible language, the humor, the observation, the knowledge of men, the
worldly philosophy of that remarkable book, are familiar to all; but its
best and, considering its date, its most extraordinary quality is its
perfect originality. It is American in feeling, without any taint of
English colonialism. Look at Franklin in the midst of that excellent
Pennsylvania community; compare him and his genius with his
surroundings, and you get a better idea of what the colonial spirit was
in America in those days, and how thoroughly men were saturated with it,
than in any other way.

In general terms it may be said that, outside of politics and the still
latent democratic tendencies, the entire intellectual life of the
colonists was drawn from England, and that to the mother country they
looked for everything pertaining to the domain of thought. The colonists
in the eighteenth century had, in a word, a thoroughly and deeply rooted
habit of mental dependence. The manner in which we have gradually shaken
off this dependence, retaining of the past only that which is good,
constitutes the history of the decline of the colonial spirit in the
United States. As this spirit existed everywhere at the outset, and
brooded over the whole realm of intellect, we can in most cases trace
its history best in the recurring and successful revolts against it,
which, breaking out now here, now there, have at last brought it so near
to final extinction.

In 1789, after the seven years of disorder and demoralization which
followed the close of the war, the United States government was
established. Every visible political tie which bound us to England had
been severed, and we were apparently entirely independent. But the
shackles of the colonial spirit, which had been forging and welding for
a century and a half, were still heavy upon us, and fettered all our
mental action. The work of making our independence real and genuine was
but half done, and the first struggle of the new national spirit with
that of the colonial past was in the field of politics, and consumed
twenty-five years before victory was finally obtained. We still felt
that our fortunes were inextricably interwoven with those of Europe. We
could not realize that what affected us nearly when we were a part of
the British Empire no longer touched us as an independent nation. We can
best understand how strong this feeling was by the effect which was
produced here by the French revolution. That tremendous convulsion, it
may be said, was necessarily felt everywhere; but one much greater might
take place in Europe to-day without producing here anything at all
resembling the excitement of 1790. We had already achieved far more than
the French revolution ever accomplished. We had gone much farther on the
democratic road than any other nation. Yet worthy men in the United
States put on cockades and liberty caps, erected trees of liberty,
called each other "Citizen Brown" and "Citizen Smith," drank confusion
to tyrants, and sang the wild songs of Paris. All this was done in a
country where every privilege and artificial distinction had been swept
away, and where the government was the creation of the people
themselves. These ravings and symbols had a terrific reality in Paris
and in Europe, and so, like colonists, we felt that they must have a
meaning to us, and that the fate and fortunes of our ally were our fate
and fortunes. A part of the people engaged in an imitation that became
here the shallowest nonsense, while the other portion of the community,
which was hostile to French ideas, took up and propagated the notion
that the welfare of civilized society lay with England and with English
opinions. Thus we had two great parties in the United States, working
themselves up to white heat over the politics of England and France. The
first heavy blow to the influence of foreign politics was Washington's
proclamation of neutrality. It seems a very simple and obvious thing
now, this policy of non-interference in the affairs of Europe which that
proclamation inaugurated, and yet at the time men marveled at the step,
and thought it very strange. Parties divided over it. People could not
conceive how we could keep clear of the great stream of European events.
One side disliked the proclamation as hostile to France, while the other
approved it for the same reason. Even the Secretary of State, Thomas
Jefferson, one of the most representative men of American democracy,
resisted the neutrality policy in the genuine spirit of the colonist.
Yet Washington's proclamation was simply the sequel to the Declaration
of Independence. It merely amounted to saying: We have created a new
nation, and England not only cannot govern us, but English and European
politics are none of our business, and we propose to be independent of
them and not meddle in them. The neutrality policy of Washington's
administration was a great advance toward independence and a severe blow
to colonialism in politics. Washington himself exerted a powerful
influence against the colonial spirit. The principle of nationality,
then just entering upon its long struggle with state's rights, was in
its very nature hostile to everything colonial; and Washington, despite
his Virginian traditions, was thoroughly imbued with the national
spirit. He believed himself, and insensibly impressed his belief upon
the people, that true nationality could only be obtained by keeping
ourselves aloof from the conflicts and the politics of the Old World.
Then, too, his splendid personal dignity, which still holds us silent
and respectful after the lapse of a hundred years, communicated itself
to his office, and thence to the nation of which he was the
representative. The colonial spirit withered away in the presence of
Washington.

The only thorough-going nationalist among the leaders of that time was
Alexander Hamilton. He was not born in the States, and was therefore
free from all local influences; and he was by nature imperious in temper
and imperial in his views. The guiding principle of that great man's
public career was the advancement of American nationality. He was called
"British" Hamilton by the very men who wished to throw us into the arms
of the French republic, because he was wedded to the principles and the
forms of constitutional English government and sought to preserve them
here adapted to new conditions. He desired to put our political
inheritance to its proper use, but this was as far removed from the
colonial spirit as possible. Instead of being "British," Hamilton's
intense eagerness for a strong national government made him the
deadliest foe of the colonial spirit, which he did more to strangle and
crush out than any other man of his time. The objects at which he aimed
were continental supremacy, and complete independence in business,
politics, and industry. In all these departments he saw the belittling
effects of dependence, and so he assailed it by his reports and by his
whole policy, foreign and domestic. So much of his work as he carried
through had a far-reaching effect, and did a great deal to weaken the
colonial spirit. But the strength of that spirit was best shown in the
hostility or indifference which was displayed toward his projects. The
great cause of opposition to Hamilton's financial policy proceeded,
undoubtedly, from state jealousy of the central government; but the
resistance to his foreign policy arose from the colonial ignorance which
could not understand the real purpose of neutrality, and which thought
that Hamilton was simply and stupidly endeavoring to force us toward
England as against France.

Washington, Hamilton, and John Adams, notwithstanding his New England
prejudices, all did much while they were in power, as the heads of the
Federalist party, to cherish and increase national self-respect, and
thereby eradicate colonialism from our politics. The lull in Europe,
after the fall of the Federalists, led to a truce in the contests over
foreign affairs in the United States, but with the renewal of war the
old conflict broke out. The years from 1806 to 1812 are among the least
creditable in our history. The Federalists ceased to be a national party
and the fierce reaction against the French revolution drove them into an
unreasoning admiration of England. They looked to England for the
salvation of civilized society. Their chief interest centered in English
politics, and the resources of England formed the subject of their
thoughts and studies, and furnished the theme of conversation at their
dinner tables. It was just as bad on the other side. The Republicans
still clung to their affection for France, notwithstanding the despotism
of the empire. They regarded Napoleon with reverential awe, and shivered
at the idea of plunging into hostilities with anyone. The foreign policy
of Jefferson was that of a thorough colonist. He shrank with horror from
war. He would have had us confine ourselves to agriculture, and to our
flocks and herds, because our commerce, the commerce of a nation, was
something with which other powers were likely to interfere. He wished us
to exist in a state of complete commercial and industrial dependence,
and allow England to carry for us and manufacture for us, as she did
when we were colonies weighed down by the clauses of the navigation
acts. His plans of resistance did not extend beyond the old colonial
scheme of non-importation and non-intercourse agreements. Read the
bitter debates in Congress of those years, and you find them filled with
nothing but the politics of other nations. All the talk is saturated
with colonial feeling. Even the names of opprobrium which the hostile
parties applied to each other were borrowed. The Republicans called the
Federalists "Tories" and a "British faction," while the Federalists
retorted by stigmatizing their opponents as Jacobins. During these sorry
years, however, the last in which our politics bore the colonial
character, a new party was growing up, which may be called the national
party, not as distinguished from the party of state's rights, but as the
opposition to colonial ideas. This new movement was headed and rendered
illustrious by such men as Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, the brilliant
group from South Carolina, comprising Calhoun, Langdon Cheves, and
William Lowndes, and at a later period by Daniel Webster. Clay and the
South Carolinians were the first to push forward the resistance to
colonialism. Their policy was crude and ill-defined. They struck out
blindly against the evil influence which, as they felt, was choking the
current of national life, for they were convinced that, to be truly
independent, the United States must fight somebody. Who that somebody
should be was a secondary question. Of all the nations which had been
kicking and cuffing us, England was, on the whole, the most arrogant,
and offensive; and so the young nationalists dragged the country into
the war of 1812. We were wonderfully successful at sea and at New
Orleans, but in other respects this war was neither very prosperous nor
very creditable, and the treaty of Ghent was absolutely silent as to the
objects for which we had expressly declared war. Nevertheless, the real
purpose of the war was gained, despite the silent and almost meaningless
treaty which concluded it. We had proved to the world and to ourselves
that we existed as a nation. We had demonstrated the fact that we had
ceased to be colonies. We had torn up colonialism in our public affairs
by the roots, and we had crushed out the colonial spirit in our
politics. After the war of 1812 our politics might be good, bad, or
indifferent, but they were our own politics, and not those of Europe.
The wretched colonial spirit which had belittled and warped them for
twenty-five years had perished utterly, and with the treaty of Ghent it
was buried so deeply that not even its ghost has since then crossed our
political pathway.

Besides being the field where the first battle with the colonial spirit
was fought out, politics then offered almost the only intellectual
interest of the country, outside of commerce, which was still largely
dependent in character, and very different in its scope from the great
mercantile combinations of to-day. Religious controversy was of the
past, and except in New England, where the liberal revolt against
Calvinism was in progress, there was no great interest in theological
questions. When the Constitution went into operation the professions of
law and medicine were in their infancy. There was no literature, no art,
no science, none of the multifarious interests which now divide and
absorb the intellectual energies of the community. In the quarter of a
century which closed with the treaty of Ghent we can trace the
development of the legal and medical professions, and their advance
towards independence and originality. But in the literary efforts of the
time we see the colonial spirit displayed more strongly than anywhere
else, and in apparently undiminished vigor.

Our first literature was political, and sprang from the discussions
incident to the adoption of the Constitution. It was, however, devoted
to our own affairs, and aimed at the foundation of a nation, and was
therefore fresh, vigorous, often learned, and thoroughly American in
tone. Its masterpiece was the _Federalist_, which marks an era in the
history of constitutional discussion, and which was the conception of
the thoroughly national mind of Hamilton. After the new government was
established, our political writings, like our politics, drifted back to
provincialism of thought, and were absorbed in the affairs of Europe;
but the first advance on the road to literary independence was made by
the early literature of the Constitution.

It is to this period also, which covers the years from 1789 to 1815,
that Washington Irving, the first of our great writers, belongs. This is
not the place to enter into an analysis of Irving's genius, but it may
be fairly said that while in feeling he was a thorough American, in
literature he was a cosmopolitan. His easy style, the tinge of romance,
and the mingling of the story-teller and the antiquarian remind us of
his great contemporary, Walter Scott. In his quiet humor and gentle
satire, we taste the flavor of Addison. In the charming legends with
which he has consecrated the beauties of the Hudson River valley, and
thrown over that beautiful region the warm light of his imagination, we
find the genuine love of country and of home. In like manner we perceive
his historical taste and his patriotism in the last work of his life,
the biography of his great namesake. But he wrought as well with the
romance of Spain and of England. He was too great to be colonial; he did
not find enough food for his imagination in the America of that day to
be thoroughly American. He stands apart, a notable gift from America to
English literature, but not a type of American literature itself. He had
imitators and friends, whom it has been the fashion to call a school,
but he founded no school, and died as he had lived, alone. He broke
through the narrow trammels of colonialism himself, but the colonial
spirit hung just as heavily upon the feeble literature about him. In
those years also came the first poem of William Cullen Bryant, the first
American poem with the quality of life and which was native and not of
imported origin.

In that same period too there flourished another literary man, who was
far removed in every way from the brilliant editor of Diedrich
Knickerbocker, but who illustrated by his struggle with colonialism the
strength of that influence far better than Irving, who soared so easily
above it. Noah Webster, poor, sturdy, independent, with a rude but
surprising knowledge of philology, revolted in every nerve and fiber of
his being against the enervating influence of the colonial past. The
spirit of nationality had entered into his soul. He felt that the nation
which he saw growing up about him was too great to take its orthography
or its pronunciation blindly and obediently from the mother land. It was
a new country and a new nation, and Webster determined that so far as in
him lay it should have linguistic independence. It was an odd idea, but
it came from his heart, and his national feeling found natural
expression in the study of language, to which he devoted his life. He
went into open rebellion against British tradition. He was snubbed,
laughed at, and abused. He was regarded as little better than a madman
to dare to set himself up against Johnson and his successors. But the
hard-headed New Englander pressed on, and finally brought out his
dictionary,--a great work, which has fitly preserved his name. His
knowledge was crude, his general theory mistaken; his system of changes
has not stood the test of time, and was in itself contradictory; but the
stubborn battle which he fought for literary independence and the hard
blows he struck should never be forgotten, while the odds against which
he contended and the opposition he aroused are admirable illustrations
of the overpowering influence of the colonial spirit in our early
literature.

What the state of our literature was, what the feelings of our few
literary men apart from these few exceptions, and what the spirit with
which Webster did battle, all come out in a few lines written by an
English poet. We can see everything as by a sudden flash of light, and
we do not need to look farther to understand the condition of American
literature in the early years of the century. In the waste of barbarism
called the United States, the only oasis discovered by the delicate
sensibilities of Mr. Thomas Moore was in the society of Mr. Joseph
Dennie, a clever editor and essayist, and his little circle of friends
in Philadelphia. The lines commonly quoted in this connection are those
in the epistle to Spencer, beginning,--

/p
    "Yet, yet, forgive me, O ye sacred few,
     Whom late by Delaware's green banks I knew;"
p/

which describe the poet's feelings toward America, and his delight in
the society of Mr. Dennie and his friends. But the feelings and opinions
of Moore are of no moment. The really important passage describes not
the author, but what Dennie and his companions said and thought, and has
in this way historical if not poetic value. The lines occur among those
addressed to the "Boston frigate" when the author was leaving Halifax:--

/p
    "Farewell to the few I have left with regret;
     May they sometimes recall, what I cannot forget,
     The delight of those evenings,--too brief a delight,
     When in converse and song we have stol'n on the night;
     When they've asked me the manners, the mind, or the mien,
     Of some bard I had known or some chief I had seen,
     Whose glory, though distant, they long had adored,
     Whose name had oft hallowed the wine-cup they poured.
     And still, as with sympathy humble but true
     I have told of each bright son of fame all I knew,
     They have listened, and sighed that the powerful stream
     Of America's empire should pass like a dream,
     Without leaving one relic of genius, to say
     How sublime was the tide which had vanished away!"
p/

The evils apprehended by these excellent gentlemen are much more
strongly set forth in the previous epistle, but here we catch sight of
the men themselves. There they sit adoring Englishmen, and eagerly
inquiring about them of the gracious Mr. Moore, while they are dolefully
sighing that the empire of America is to pass away and leave no relic of
genius. In their small way they were doing what they could toward such a
consummation. It may be said that this frame of mind was perfectly
natural under the circumstances; but it is not to the purpose to inquire
into causes and motives; it is enough to state the fact. Here was a set
of men of more than average talents and education; not men of real
talent and quality, like Irving, but clever men, forming one of the two
or three small groups of literary persons in the United States. They
come before us as true provincials, steeped to the eyes in colonialism,
and they fairly represent the condition of American literature at that
time. They were slaves to the colonial spirit, which bowed before
England and Europe. They have not left a name or a line which is
remembered or read, except to serve as a historical illustration, and
they will ultimately find their fit resting-place in the foot-notes of
the historian.

With the close of the English war the United States entered upon the
second stage of their development. The new era, which began in 1815,
lasted until 1861. It was a period of growth, not simply in the
direction of a vast material prosperity and a rapidly increasing
population, but in national sentiment, which made itself felt
everywhere. Wherever we turn during those years, we discover a steady
decline of the colonial influence. Politics had become wholly national
and independent. The law was illustrated by great names, which take high
rank in the annals of English jurisprudence. Medicine began to have its
schools, and to show practitioners who no longer looked across the sea
for inspiration. The Monroe doctrine bore witness to the strong foreign
policy of an independent people. The tariff gave evidence of the eager
desire for industrial independence, which found practical expression in
the fast-growing native manufactures. Internal improvements were a sign
of the general faith and interest in the development of the national
resources. The rapid multiplication of inventions resulted from the
natural genius of America in that important field, where it took almost
at once a leading place. Science began to have a home at our seats of
learning, and in the land of Franklin found a congenial soil.

But the colonial spirit, cast out from our politics and fast
disappearing from business and the professions, still clung closely to
literature, which must always be the best and last expression of a
national mode of thought. In the admirable _Life of Cooper_, recently
published, by Professor Lounsbury, the condition of our literature in
1820 is described so vividly and so exactly that it cannot be improved.
It is as follows:--

"The intellectual dependence of America upon England at that period is
something that it is now hard to understand. Political supremacy had
been cast off, but the supremacy of opinion remained absolutely
unshaken. Of creative literature there was then very little of any value
produced; and to that little a foreign stamp was necessary, to give
currency outside of the petty circle in which it originated. There was
slight encouragement for the author to write; there was still less for
the publisher to print. It was, indeed, a positive injury, ordinarily,
to the commercial credit of a bookseller to bring out a volume of poetry
or of prose fiction which had been written by an American; for it was
almost certain to fail to pay expenses. A sort of critical literature
was struggling, or rather gasping, for a life that was hardly worth
living; for its most marked characteristic was its servile deference to
English judgment and dread of English censure. It requires a painful and
penitential examination of the reviews of the period to comprehend the
utter abasement of mind with which the men of that day accepted the
foreign estimate upon works written here, which had been read by
themselves, but which it was clear had not been read by the critics
whose opinions they echoed. Even the meekness with which they submitted
to the most depreciatory estimate of themselves was outdone by the
anxiety with which they hurried to assure the world that they, the most
cultivated of the American race, did not presume to have so high an
opinion of the writings of some one of their countrymen as had been
expressed by enthusiasts, whose patriotism had proved too much for their
discernment. Never was any class so eager to free itself from charges
that imputed to it the presumption of holding independent views of its
own. Out of the intellectual character of many of those who at that day
pretended to be the representatives of the highest education in this
country, it almost seemed that the element of manliness had been wholly
eliminated; and that, along with its sturdy democracy, whom no obstacles
thwarted and no dangers daunted, the New World was also to give birth to
a race of literary cowards and parasites."

The case is vigorously stated, but is not at all over-charged. Far
stronger, indeed, than Professor Lounsbury's statement is the
commentary furnished by Cooper's first book. This novel, now utterly
forgotten, was entitled _Precaution_. Its scene was laid wholly in
England; its characters were drawn from English society, chiefly from
the aristocracy of that favored land; its conventional phrases were all
English; worst and most extraordinary of all, it professed to be by an
English author, and was received on that theory without suspicion. In
such a guise did the most popular of American novelists and one of the
most eminent among modern writers of fiction first appear before his
countrymen and the world. If this were not so pitiable, it would be
utterly ludicrous and yet the most melancholy feature of the case is
that Cooper was not in the least to blame, and no one found fault with
him, for his action was regarded by everyone as a matter of course. In
other words, the first step of an American entering upon a literary
career was to pretend to be an Englishman, in order that he might win
the approval, not of Englishmen, but of his own countrymen.

If this preposterous state of public opinion had been a mere passing
fashion it would hardly be worth recording. But it represented a fixed
and settled habit of mind, and is only one example of a long series of
similar phenomena. We look back to the years preceding the revolution,
and there we find this mental condition flourishing and strong. At that
time it hardly calls for comment, because it was so perfectly natural.
It is when we find such opinions existing in the year 1820 that we are
conscious of their significance. They belong to colonists, and yet they
are uttered by the citizens of a great and independent state. The
sorriest part of it is that these views were chiefly held by the best
educated portion of the community. The great body of the American
people, who had cast out the colonial spirit from their politics and
their business, and were fast destroying it in the professions, was
sound and true. The parasitic literature of that day makes the boastful
and rhetorical patriotism then in the exuberance of youth seem actually
noble and fine, because, with all its faults, it was honest, genuine,
and inspired by a real love of country.

Yet it was during this period, between the years 1815 and 1861, that we
began to have a literature of our own, and one in which any people could
take a just pride. Cooper himself was the pioneer. In his second novel,
_The Spy_, he threw off the wretched spirit of the colonist, and the
story, which at once gained a popularity that broke down all barriers,
was read everywhere with delight and approbation. The chief cause of the
difference between the fate of this novel and that of its predecessor
lies in the fact that _The Spy_ was of genuine native origin. Cooper
knew and loved American scenery and life. He understood certain phases
of American character on the prairie and the ocean, and his genius was
no longer smothered by the dead colonialism of the past. _The Spy_, and
those of Cooper's novels which belong to the same class, have lived and
will live, and certain American characters which he drew will likewise
endure. He might have struggled all his life in the limbo of
intellectual servitude to which Moore's friends consigned themselves,
and no one would have cared for him then or remembered him now. But,
with all his foibles, Cooper was inspired by an intense patriotism, and
he had a bold, vigorous, aggressive nature. He freed his talents at a
stroke, and giving them full play attained at once a world-wide
reputation, which no man of colonial mind could ever have dreamed of
reaching. Yet his countrymen, long before his days of strife and
unpopularity, seem to have taken singularly little patriotic pride in
his achievements, and the well bred and well educated shuddered to hear
him called the "American Scott"; not because they thought this truly
colonial description inappropriate and misapplied, but because it was a
piece of irreverent audacity toward a great light of English literature.

Cooper was the first, after the close of the war of 1812, to cast off
the colonial spirit and take up his position as a representative of
genuine American literature; but he soon had companions, who carried
still higher the standard which he had raised. To this period, which
closed with our civil war, belong many of the names which are to-day
among those most cherished by English-speaking people everywhere. We see
the national spirit in Longfellow turning from the themes of the Old
World to those of the New. In the beautiful creations of the sensitive
and delicate imagination of Hawthorne, there was a new tone and a rich
originality, and the same influence may be detected in the remarkable
poems and the wild fancies of Poe. We find a like native strength in the
sparkling verses of Holmes, in the pure and gentle poetry of Whittier,
and in the firm, vigorous work of Lowell. A new leader of independent
thought arises in Emerson, destined to achieve a world-wide reputation.
A new school of historians appears, adorned by the talents of Prescott,
Bancroft, and Motley. Many of these distinguished men were far removed
in point of time from the beginning of the new era, but they all
belonged to and were the result of the national movement, which began
its onward march as soon as we had shaken ourselves clear from the
influence of the colonial spirit upon our public affairs by the struggle
which culminated in "Madison's war," as the Federalists loved to call
it.

These successes in the various departments of intellectual activity were
all due to an instinctive revolt against colonialism. But, nevertheless,
the old and time-worn spirit which made Cooper pretend to be an
Englishman in 1820 was very strong, and continued to impede our progress
toward intellectual independence. We find it clinging to the lesser and
weaker forms of literature. We see it in fashion and society and in
habits of thought, but we find the best proof of its vitality in our
sensitiveness to foreign opinion. This was a universal failing. The body
of the people showed it by bitter resentment; the cultivated and highly
educated by abject submission and deprecation, or by cries of pain.

As was natural in a very young nation, just awakened to its future
destiny, just conscious of its still undeveloped strength, there was at
this time a vast amount of exuberant self-satisfaction, of cheap
rhetoric, and of noisy self-glorification. There was a corresponding
readiness to take offense at the unfavorable opinion of outsiders, and
at the same time an eager and insatiable curiosity to hear foreign
opinions of any kind. We were, of course, very open to satire and
attack. We were young, undeveloped, with a crude, almost raw
civilization, and a great inclination to be boastful and conceited. Our
English cousins, who had failed to conquer us, bore us no good will, and
were quite ready to take all the revenge which books of travel and
criticism could afford. It is to these years that Marryat, Trollope,
Hamilton, Dickens, and a host of others belong. Most of their
productions are quite forgotten now. The only ones which are still read,
probably, are the _American Notes_ and _Martin Chuzzlewit_: the former
preserved by the fame of the author, the latter by its own merit as a
novel. There was abundant truth in what Dickens said, to take the great
novelist as the type of this group of foreign critics. It was an age in
which Elijah Pogram and Jefferson Brick flourished rankly. It is also
true that all that Dickens wrote was poisoned by his utter ingratitude,
and that to describe the United States as populated by nothing but
Bricks and Pograms was one-sided and malicious, and not true to facts.
But the truth or the falsehood, the value or the worthlessness, of these
criticisms are not of importance now. The striking fact, and the one we
are in search of, is the manner in which we bore these censures when
they appeared. We can appreciate contemporary feeling at that time only
by delving in much forgotten literature; and even then we can hardly
comprehend fully what we find, so completely has our habit of mind
altered since those days. We received these strictures with a howl of
anguish and a scream of mortified vanity. We winced and writhed, and
were almost ready to go to war, because English travelers and writers
abused us. It is usual now to refer these ebullitions of feeling to our
youth, probably from analogy with the youth of an individual. But the
analogy is misleading. Sensitiveness to foreign opinion is not
especially characteristic of a youthful nation, or, at least, we have no
cases to prove it, and in the absence of proof the theory falls. On the
other hand, this excessive and almost morbid sensibility is a
characteristic of provincial, colonial, or dependent states, especially
in regard to the mother country. We raged and cried out against adverse
English criticism, whether it was true or false, just or unjust, and we
paid it this unnatural attention because the spirit of the colonist
still lurked in our hearts and affected our mode of thought. We were
advancing fast on the road to intellectual and moral independence, but
we were still far from the goal.

This second period in our history closed, as has been said, with the
struggle generated by a great moral question, which finally absorbed all
the thoughts and passions of the people, and culminated in a terrible
civil war. We fought to preserve the integrity of the Union; we fought
for our national life, and nationality prevailed. The magnitude of the
conflict, the dreadful suffering which it caused for the sake of
principle, the uprising of a great people, elevated and ennobled the
whole country. The flood-gates were opened, and the tremendous tide of
national feeling swept away every meaner emotion. We came out of the
battle, after an experience which brought a sudden maturity with it,
stronger than ever, but much graver and soberer than before. We came out
self-poised and self-reliant, with a true sense of dignity and of our
national greatness, which years of peaceful development could not have
given us. The sensitiveness to foreign opinion which had been the marked
feature of our mental condition before the war had disappeared. It had
vanished in the smoke of battle, as the colonial spirit disappeared from
our politics in the war of 1812. Englishmen and Frenchmen have come and
gone, and written their impressions of us, and made little splashes in
the current of every-day topics, and have been forgotten. Just now it is
the fashion for every Englishman who visits this country, particularly
if he is a man of any note, to go home and tell the world what he thinks
of us. Some of these writers do this without taking the trouble to come
here first. Sometimes we read what they have to say out of curiosity. We
accept what is true, whether unpalatable or not, philosophically, and
smile at what is false. The general feeling is one of wholesome
indifference. We no longer see salvation and happiness in favorable
foreign opinion, or misery in the reverse. The colonial spirit in this
direction also is practically extinct.

But while this is true of the mass of the American people whose mental
health is good, and is also true of the great body of sound public
opinion in the United States, it has some marked exceptions; and these
exceptions constitute the lingering remains of the colonial spirit,
which survives, and shows itself here and there even at the present day,
with a strange vitality.

In the years which followed the close of the war, it seemed as if
colonialism had been utterly extinguished: but, unfortunately, this was
not the case. The multiplication of great fortunes, the growth of a
class rich by inheritance, and the improvement in methods of travel and
communication, all tended to carry large numbers of Americans to Europe.
The luxurious fancies which were born of increased wealth, and the
intellectual tastes which were developed by the advance of the higher
education, and to which an old civilization offers peculiar advantages
and attractions, combined to breed in many persons a love of foreign
life and foreign manners. These tendencies and opportunities have
revived the dying spirit of colonialism. We see it most strongly in the
leisure class, which is gradually increasing in this country. During the
miserable ascendancy of the Second Empire, a band of these persons
formed what was known as the "American colony," in Paris. Perhaps they
still exist; if so, their existence is now less flagrant and more
decent. When they were notorious they presented the melancholy spectacle
of Americans admiring and aping the manners, habits, and vices of
another nation, when that nation was bent and corrupted by the cheap,
meretricious, and rotten system of the third Napoleon. They furnished a
very offensive example of peculiarly mean colonialism. This particular
phase has departed, but the same sort of Americans are, unfortunately,
still common in Europe. I do not mean, of course, those persons who go
abroad to buy social consideration, nor the women who trade on their
beauty or their wits to gain a brief and dishonoring notoriety. These
last are merely adventurers and adventuresses, who are common to all
nations. The people referred to here form that large class, comprising
many excellent men and women, no doubt, who pass their lives in Europe,
mourning over the inferiority of their own country, and who become
thoroughly denationalized. They do not change into Frenchmen or
Englishmen, but are simply disfigured and deformed Americans.

We find the same wretched habit of thought in certain groups among the
rich and idle people of our great eastern cities, especially in New
York, because it is the metropolis. These groups are for the most part
made up of young men who despise everything American and admire
everything English. They talk and dress and walk and ride in certain
ways, because they imagine that the English do these things after that
fashion. They hold their own country in contempt, and lament the hard
fate of their birth. They try to think that they form an aristocracy,
and become at once ludicrous and despicable. The virtues which have made
the upper classes in England what they are, and which take them into
public affairs, into literature and politics, are forgotten, for
Anglo-Americans imitate the vices or the follies of their models, and
stop there. If all this were merely a fleeting fashion, an attack of
Anglo-mania or of Gallo-mania, of which there have been instances enough
everywhere, it would be of no consequence. But it is a recurrence of the
old and deep-seated malady of colonialism. It is a lineal descendant of
the old colonial family. The features are somewhat dim now, and the
vitality is low, but there is no mistaking the hereditary traits. The
people who thus despise their own land, and ape English manners, flatter
themselves with being cosmopolitans, when in truth they are genuine
colonists, petty and provincial to the last degree.

We see a like tendency in the same limited but marked way in our
literature. Some of our cleverest fiction is largely devoted to studying
the character of our countrymen abroad; that is, either denationalized
Americans or Americans with a foreign background. At times this species
of literature resolves itself into an agonized effort to show how
foreigners regard us, and to point out the defects which jar upon
foreign susceptibilities even while it satirizes the denationalized
American. The endeavor to turn ourselves inside out in order to
appreciate the trivialities of life which impress foreigners
unpleasantly is very unprofitable exertion, and the Europeanized
American is not worth either study or satire. Writings of this kind,
again, are intended to be cosmopolitan in tone, and to evince a
knowledge of the world, and yet they are in reality steeped in
colonialism. We cannot but regret the influence of a spirit which wastes
fine powers of mind and keen perceptions in a fruitless striving and a
morbid craving to know how we appear to foreigners, and to show what
they think of us.

We see, also, men and women of talent going abroad to study art and
remaining there. The atmosphere of Europe is more congenial to such
pursuits, and the struggle as nothing to what must be encountered here.
But when it leads to an abandonment of America, the result is wholly
vain. Sometimes these people become tolerably successful French artists,
but their nationality and individuality have departed, and with them
originality and force. The admirable school of etching which has arisen
in New York; the beautiful work of American wood-engraving; the Chelsea
tiles of Low, which have won the highest prizes at English exhibitions;
the silver of Tiffany, specimens of which were bought by the Japanese
commissioners at the Paris Exposition, are all strong, genuine work, and
are doing more for American art, and for all art, than a wilderness of
over-educated and denationalized Americans who are painting pictures and
carving statues and writing music in Europe or in the United States, in
the spirit of colonists, and bowed down by a wretched dependence.

There is abundance of splendid material all about us here for the poet,
the artist, or the novelist. The conditions are not the same as in
Europe, but they are not on that account inferior. They are certainly as
good. They may be better. Our business is not to grumble because they
are different, for that is colonial. We must adapt ourselves to them,
for we alone can use properly our own resources; and no work in art or
literature ever has been, or ever will be, of any real or lasting value
which is not true, original, and independent.

If these remnants of the colonial spirit and influence were, as they
look at first sight, merely trivial accidents, they would not be worth
mentioning. But the range of their influence, although limited, affects
an important class. It appears almost wholly among the rich or the
highly educated in art and literature; that is, to a large extent among
men and women of talent and refined sensibilities. The follies of those
who imitate English habits belong really to but a small portion of even
their own class. But as these follies are contemptible, the wholesome
prejudice which they excite is naturally, but thoughtlessly, extended to
all who have anything in common with those who are guilty of them. In
this busy country of ours, the men of leisure and education, although
increasing in number, are still few, and they have heavier duties and
responsibilities than anywhere else. Public charities, public affairs,
politics, literature, all demand the energies of such men. To the
country which has given them wealth and leisure and education they owe
the duty of faithful service, because they, and they alone, can afford
to do that work which must be done without pay. The few who are imbued
with the colonial spirit not only fail in their duty, and become
contemptible and absurd, but they injure the influence and thwart the
activity of the great majority of those who are similarly situated, and
who are also patriotic and public spirited.

In art and literature the vain struggle to be somebody or something
other than an American, the senseless admiration of everything foreign,
and the morbid anxiety about our appearance before foreigners have the
same deadening effect. Such qualities were bad enough in 1820. They are
a thousand times meaner and more foolish now. They retard the march of
true progress, which here, as elsewhere, must be in the direction of
nationality and independence. This does not mean that we are to expect
or to seek for something utterly different, something new and strange,
in art, literature, or society. Originality is thinking for one's self.
Simply to think differently from other people is eccentricity. Some of
our English cousins, for instance, have undertaken to hold Walt Whitman
up as the herald of the coming literature of American democracy, not
because he was a genius, not for his merits alone, but largely because
he departed from all received forms, and indulged in barbarous
eccentricities. They mistake difference for originality. Whitman was a
true and a great poet, but it was his power and imagination which made
him so, not his eccentricities. When Whitman did best, he was, as a
rule, nearest to the old and well-proved forms. We, like our
contemporaries everywhere, are the heirs of the ages, and we must study
the past, and learn from it, and advance from what has been already
tried and found good. That is the only way to success anywhere, or in
anything. But we cannot enter upon that or any other road until we are
truly national and independent intellectually, and are ready to think
for ourselves, and not look to foreigners in order to find out what they
think.

To those who grumble and sigh over the inferiority of America we may
commend the opinion of a distinguished Englishman, as they prefer such
authority. Mr. Herbert Spencer said, recently, "I think that whatever
difficulties they may have to surmount, and whatever tribulations they
may have to pass through, the Americans may reasonably look forward to a
time when they will have produced a civilization grander than any the
world has known." Even the Englishmen whom our provincials of to-day
adore, even those who are most hostile, pay a serious attention to
America. That keen respect for success and anxious deference to power so
characteristic of Great Britain find expression every day, more and
more, in the English interest in the United States, now that we do not
care in the least about it; and be it said in passing, no people
despises more heartily than the English a man who does not love his
country. To be despised abroad, and regarded with contempt and pity at
home, is not a very lofty result of so much effort on the part of our
lovers of the British. But it is the natural and fit reward of
colonialism. Members of a great nation instinctively patronize
colonists.

It is interesting to examine the sources of the colonial spirit, and to
trace its influence upon our history and its gradual decline. The study
of a habit of mind, with its tenacity of life, is an instructive and
entertaining branch of history. But if we lay history and philosophy
aside, the colonial spirit as it survives to-day, although curious
enough, is a mean and noxious thing, which cannot be too quickly or too
thoroughly stamped out. It is the dying spirit of dependence, and
wherever it still clings it injures, weakens, and degrades. It should be
exorcised rapidly and completely, so that it will never return. I cannot
close more fitly than with the noble words of Emerson:--

"Let the passion for America cast out the passion for Europe. They who
find America insipid, they for whom London and Paris have spoiled their
own homes, can be spared to return to those cities. I not only see a
career at home for more genius than we have, but for more than there is
in the world."



NEW YORK AFTER PARIS

W. C. BROWNELL


No American, not a commercial or otherwise hardened traveler, can have a
soul so dead as to be incapable of emotion when, on his return from a
long trip abroad, he catches sight of the low-lying and insignificant
Long Island coast. One's excitement begins, indeed, with the pilot-boat.
The pilot-boat is the first concrete symbol of those native and normal
relations with one's fellow-men, which one has so long observed in
infinitely varied manifestation abroad, but always as a spectator and a
stranger, and which one is now on the eve of sharing himself. As she
comes up swiftly, white and graceful, drops her pilot, crosses the
steamer's bows, tacks, and picks up her boat in the foaming wake, she
presents a spectacle beside which the most picturesque Mediterranean
craft, with colored sails and lazy evolutions, appear mistily in the
memory as elements of a feeble and conventional ideal. The ununiformed
pilot clambers on board, makes his way to the bridge, and takes command
with an equal lack of French manner and of English affectation
distinctly palpable to the sense, sharpened by long absence into
observing native characteristics as closely as foreign ones. If the
season be right the afternoon is bright, the range of vision apparently
limitless, the sky nearly cloudless and, by contrast with the European
firmament, almost colorless, the July sun such as no Parisian or
Londoner ever saw. The French reproach us for having no word for
"patrie" as distinct from "pays"; we have the thing at all events, and
cherish it, and it needs only the proximity of the foreigner, from whom
in general we are so widely separated, to give our patriotism a tinge of
the veriest chauvinism that exists in France itself.

We fancy the feeling old-fashioned, and imagine ours to be the most
cosmopolitan, the least prejudiced temperament in the world. It is
reasonable that it should be. The extreme sensitiveness noticed in us by
all foreign observers during the antebellum epoch, and ascribed by
Tocqueville to our self-distrust, is naturally inconsistent with our
position and circumstances to-day. A population greater than that of any
of the great nations, isolated by the most enviable geographical
felicity in the world from the narrowing influences of international
jealousy apparent to every American who travels in Europe, is
increasingly less concerned at criticism than a struggling provincial
republic of half its size. And along with our self-confidence and our
carelessness of "abroad," it is only with the grosser element among us
that national conceit has deepened; in general, we are apt to fancy we
have become cosmopolitan in proportion as we have lost our
provincialism. With us surely the individual has not withered, and if
the world has become more and more to him, it is because it is the world
at large and not the pent-up confines of his own country's history and
extent. "La patrie" in danger would be quickly enough rescued--there is
no need to prove that over again, even to our own satisfaction; but in
general "la patrie" not being in any danger, being on the contrary
apparently on the very crest of the wave of the world, it is felt not to
need much of one's active consideration, and passively indeed is viewed
by many people, probably, as a comfortable and gigantic contrivance for
securing a free field in which the individual may expand and develop.
"America," says Emerson, "America is Opportunity." After all, the
average American of the present day says, a country stands or falls by
the number of properly expanded and developed individuals it possesses.
But the happening of any one of a dozen things unexpectedly betrays that
all this cosmopolitanism is in great measure, and so far as sentiment is
concerned, a veneer and a disguise. Such a happening is the very change
from blue water to gray that announces to the returning American the
nearness of that country which he sometimes thinks he prizes more for
what it stands for than for itself. It is not, he then feels with a
sudden flood of emotion, that America is home, but that home is America.
America comes suddenly to mean what it never meant before.

Unhappily for this exaltation, ordinary life is not composed of
emotional crises. It is ordinary life with a vengeance which one
encounters in issuing from the steamer dock and facing again his native
city. Paris never looked so lovely, so exquisite to the sense as it now
appears in the memory. All that Parisian regularity, order, decorum, and
beauty into which, although a stranger, your own activities fitted so
perfectly that you were only half-conscious of its existence, was not,
then, merely normal, wholly a matter of course. Emerging into West
Street, amid the solicitations of hackmen, the tinkling jog-trot of the
most ignoble horse-cars you have seen since leaving home, the dry dust
blowing into your eyes, the gaping black holes of broken pavements, the
unspeakable filth, the line of red brick buildings prematurely decrepit,
the sagging multitude of telegraph wires, the clumsy electric lights
depending before the beer saloon and the groggery, the curious confusion
of spruceness and squalor in the aspect of these latter, which also seem
legion--confronting all this for the first time in three years, say, you
think with wonder of your disappointment at not finding the Tuileries
Gardens a mass of flowers, and with a blush of the times you have told
Frenchmen that New York was very much like Paris. New York is at this
moment the most foreign-looking city you have ever seen; in going abroad
the American discounts the unexpected; returning after the insensible
orientation of Europe, the contrast with things recently familiar is
prodigious, because one is so entirely unprepared for it. One thinks to
be at home, and finds himself at the spectacle. New York is less like
any European city than any European city is like any other. It is
distinguished from them all--even from London--by the ignoble character
of the _res publicæ_, and the refuge of taste, care, wealth, pride,
self-respect even, in private and personal regions. A splendid carriage,
liveried servants without and Paris dresses within, rattling over the
scandalous paving, splashed by the neglected mud, catching the rusty
drippings of the hideous elevated railway, wrenching its axle in the
tram-track in avoiding a mountainous wagon load of commerce on this hand
and a garbage cart on that, caught in a jam of horse-cars and a blockade
of trucks, finally depositing its dainty freight to pick its way across
a sidewalk eloquent of official neglect and private contumely, to a shop
door or a residence stoop--such a contrast as this sets us off from
Europe very definitely and in a very marked degree.

There is no palpable New York in the sense in which there is a Paris, a
Vienna, a Milan. You can touch it at no point. It is not even ocular.
There is instead a Fifth Avenue, a Broadway, a Central Park, a Chatham
Square. How they have dwindled, by the way. Fifth Avenue might be any
one of a dozen London streets in the first impression it makes on the
retina and leaves on the mind. The opposite side of Madison Square is
but a step away. The spacious hall of the Fifth Avenue Hotel has shrunk
to stifling proportions. Thirty-fourth Street is a lane; the City Hall a
bandbox; the Central Park a narrow strip of elegant landscape whose
lateral limitations are constantly forced upon the sense by the Lenox
Library on one side and a monster apartment house on the other. The
American fondness for size--for pure bigness--needs explanation, it
appears; we care for size, but inartistically; we care nothing for
proportion, which is what makes size count. Everything is on the same
scale; there is no play, no movement. An exception should be made in
favor of the big business building and the apartment house which have
arisen within a few years, and which have greatly accentuated the
grotesqueness of the city's sky-line as seen from either the New Jersey
or the Long Island shore. They are perhaps rather high than big; many of
them were built before the authorities noticed them and followed
unequally in the steps of other civilized municipal governments, from
that of ancient Rome down, in prohibiting the passing of a fixed limit.
But bigness has also evidently been one of their architectonic motives,
and it is to be remarked that they are so far out of scale with the
surrounding buildings as to avoid the usual commonplace, only by
creating a positively disagreeable effect. The aspect of Fifty-seventh
Street between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, for example, is certainly
that of the world upside down: a Gothic church utterly concealed, not to
say crushed, by contiguous flats, and confronted by the overwhelming
"Osborne," which towers above anything in the neighborhood, and perhaps
makes the most powerful impression that the returned traveler receives
during his first week or two of strange sensations. Yet the "Osborne's"
dimensions are not very different from those of the Arc de l'Étoile. It
is true it does not face an avenue of majestic buildings a mile and a
half long and two hundred and thirty feet wide, but the association of
these two structures, one a private enterprise and the other a public
monument, together with the obvious suggestions of each, furnish a not
misleading illustration of both the spectacular and the moral contrast
between New York and Paris, as it appears unduly magnified no doubt to
the sense surprised to notice it at all.

Still another reason for the foreign aspect of the New Yorker's native
city is the gradual withdrawing of the American element into certain
quarters, its transformation or essential modification in others, and in
the rest the presence of the lees of Europe. At every step you are
forced to realize that New York is the second Irish and the third or
fourth German city in the world. However great our success in drilling
this foreign contingent of our social army into order and reason and
self-respect--and it is not to be doubted that this success gives us a
distinction wholly new in history--nevertheless our effect upon its
members has been in the direction of development rather than of
assimilation. We have given them our opportunity, permitted them the
expansion denied them in their own several feudalities, made men of
serfs, demonstrated the utility of self-government under the most trying
conditions, proved the efficacy of our elastic institutions on a scale
truly grandiose; but evidently, so far as New York is concerned, we have
done this at the sacrifice of a distinct and obvious nationality. To an
observant sense New York is nearly as little national as Port Said. It
contrasts absolutely in this respect with Paris, whose assimilating
power is prodigious; every foreigner in Paris eagerly seeks
Parisianization.

Ocularly, therefore, the "note" of New York seems that of characterless
individualism. The monotony of the chaotic composition and movement is,
paradoxically, its most abiding impression. And as the whole is
destitute of definiteness, of distinction, the parts are,
correspondingly, individually insignificant. Where in the world are all
the types? one asks one's self in renewing his old walks and desultory
wanderings. Where is the New York counterpart of that astonishing
variety of types which makes Paris what it is morally and pictorially,
the Paris of Balzac as well as the Paris of M. Jean Béraud. Of a sudden
the lack of nationality in our familiar literature and art becomes
luminously explicable. One perceives why Mr. Howells is so successful in
confining himself to the simplest, broadest, most representative
representatives, why Mr. James goes abroad invariably for his
_mise-en-scène_, and often for his characters, why Mr. Reinhart lives in
Paris, and Mr. Abbey in London. New York is this and that, it is
incontestably unlike any other great city, but compared with Paris, its
most impressive trait is its lack of that organic quality which results
from variety of types. Thus compared, it seems to have only the variety
of individuals which results in monotony. It is the difference between
noise and music. Pictorially, the general aspect of New York is such
that the mind speedily takes refuge in insensitiveness. Its
expansiveness seeks exercise in other directions--business, dissipation,
study, æstheticism, politics. The life of the senses is no longer
possible. This is why one's sense for art is so stimulated by going
abroad, and one's sense for art in its freest, frankest, most universal
and least special, intense and enervated development, is especially
exhilarated by going to Paris. It is why, too, on one's return one can
note the gradual decline of his sensitiveness, his severity--the
progressive atrophy of a sense no longer called into exercise. "I had no
conception before," said a Chicago broker to me one day in Paris, with
intelligent eloquence, "of a finished city!" Chicago undoubtedly
presents a greater contrast to Paris than does New York, and so,
perhaps, better prepares one to appreciate the Parisian quality, but the
_returned_ New Yorker cannot fail to be deeply impressed with the
finish, the organic perfection, the elegance, and reserve of the Paris
mirrored in his memory. Is it possible that the uniformity, the monotony
of Paris architecture, the prose note in Parisian taste, should once
have weighed upon his spirit? Riding once on the top of a Paris tramway,
betraying an understanding of English by reading an American newspaper,
that sub-consciousness of moral isolation which the foreigner feels in
Paris as elsewhere, was suddenly and completely destroyed by my next
neighbor, who remarked with contemptuous conviction and a Manhattan
accent: "When you've seen one block of this infernal town you've seen it
all!" He felt sure of sympathy in advance. Probably few New Yorkers
would have differed with him. The universal light stone and brown paint,
the wide sidewalks, the asphalt pavement, the indefinitely multipled
kiosks, the prevalence of a few marked kinds of vehicles, the uniformed
workmen and workwomen, the infinite reduplication, in a word, of easily
recognized types, is at first mistaken by the New Yorker for that dead
level of uniformity which is, of all things in the world, the most
tiresome to him in his own city. After a time, however, he begins to
realize three important facts: In the first place these phenomena, which
so vividly force themselves on his notice that their reduplication
strikes him more than their qualities, are nevertheless of a quality
altogether unexampled in his experience for fitness and agreeableness;
in the second place, they are details of a whole, members of an
organism, and not they, but the city which they compose, the "finished
city" of the acute Chicagoan, is the spectacle; in the third place they
serve as a background for the finest group of monuments in the world. On
his return he perceives these things with a melancholy _a non lucendo_
luminousness. The dead level of Murray Hill uniformity he finds the most
agreeable aspect in the city.

And the reason is that Paris has habituated him to the exquisite, the
rational, pleasure to be derived from that organic spectacle a "finished
city," far more than that Murray Hill is respectable and appropriate,
and that almost any other prospect, except in spots of very limited area
which emphasize the surrounding ugliness, is acutely displeasing. This
latter is certainly very true. We have long frankly reproached ourselves
with having no art commensurate with our distinction in other
activities, resignedly attributing the lack to our hitherto necessary
material preoccupation. But what we are really accounting for in this
way is our lack of Titians and Bramantes. We are for the most part quite
unconscious of the character of the American æsthetic substratum, so to
speak. As a matter of fact, we do far better in the production of
striking artistic personalities than we do in the general medium of
taste and culture. We figure well invariably at the _Salon_. At home the
artist is simply either driven in upon himself, or else awarded by a
_naïve clientèle_, an eminence so far out of perspective as to result
unfortunately both for him and for the community. He pleases himself,
follows his own bent, and prefers salience to conformability for his
work, because his chief aim is to make an effect. This is especially
true of those of our architects who have ideas. But these are the
exceptions, of course, and the general aspect of the city is
characterized by something far less agreeable than mere lack of
symmetry; it is characterized mainly by an all-pervading bad taste in
every detail into which the element of art enters or should enter--that
is to say, nearly everything that meets the eye.

However, on the other hand, Parisian uniformity may depress exuberance,
it is the condition and often the cause of the omnipresent good taste.
Not only is it true that, as Mr. Hamerton remarks, "in the better
quarters of the city a building hardly ever rises from the ground unless
it has been designed by some architect who knows what art is, and
endeavors to apply it to little things as well as great"; but it is
equally true that the national sense of form expresses itself in every
appurtenance of life as well as in the masses and details of
architecture. In New York our noisy diversity not only prevents any
effect of _ensemble_ and makes, as I say, the old commonplace brown
stone regions the most reposeful and rational prospects of the city, but
it precludes also, in a thousand activities and aspects, the operation
of that salutary constraint and conformity without which the most
acutely sensitive individuality inevitably declines to a lower level of
form and taste. _La mode_, for example, seems scarcely to exist at all;
or at any rate to have taken refuge in the chimney-pot hat and the
_tournure_. The dude, it is true, has been developed within a few years,
but his distinguishing trait of personal extinction has had much less
success and is destined to a much shorter life than his appellation,
which has wholly lost its original significance in gaining its present
popularity. Every woman one meets in the street has a different bonnet.
Every street car contains a millinery museum. And the mass of them may
be judged after the circumstance that one of the most fashionable Fifth
Avenue _modistes_ flaunts a sign of enduring brass announcing "English
Round Hats and Bonnets." The enormous establishments of ready-made men's
clothing seem not yet to have made their destined impression in the
direction of uniformity. The contrast in dress of the working classes
with those of Paris is as conspicuously unfortunate æsthetically, as
politically and socially it may be significant; ocularly, it is a
substitution of a cheap, faded, and ragged imitation of _bourgeois_
costume for the marvel of neatness and propriety which composes the
uniform of the Parisian _ouvrier_ and _ouvrière_. Broadway below Tenth
Street is a forest of signs which obscure the thoroughfare, conceal the
buildings, overhang the sidewalks, and exhibit severally and
collectively a taste in harmony with the Teutonic and Semitic enterprise
which, almost exclusively, they attest. The shop-windows' show, which is
one of the great spectacles of Paris, is niggard and shabby; that of
Philadelphia has considerably more interest, that of London nearly as
much. Our clumsy coinage and countrified currency; our eccentric
book-bindings; that class of our furniture and interior decoration which
may be described as American rococo; that multifariously horrible
machinery devised for excluding flies from houses and preventing them
from alighting on dishes, for substituting a draught of air for stifling
heat, for relieving an entire population from that surplusage of
old-fashioned breeding involved in shutting doors, for rolling and
rattling change in shops, for enabling you to "put only the exact fare
in the box"; the racket of pneumatic tubes, of telephones, of aerial
trains; the practice of reticulating pretentious façades with
fire-escapes in lieu of fire-proof construction; the vast mass of our
nickel-plated paraphernalia; our zinc cemetery monuments; our comic
valentines and serious Christmas cards, and grocery labels, and "fancy"
job-printing and theater posters; our conspicuous cuspadores and our
conspicuous need of more of them; the "tone" of many articles in our
most popular journals, their references to each other, their
illustrations; the Sunday panorama of shirt-sleeved ease and the
week-day fatigue costume of curl papers and "Mother Hubbards" general in
some quarters; our sumptuous new bar-rooms, decorated perhaps on the
principle that _le mauvais goût mène au crime_--all these phenomena, the
list of which might be indefinitely extended, are so many witnesses of a
general taste, public and private, which differs cardinally from that
prevalent in Paris.

In fine, the material spectacle of New York is such that at last, with
some anxiety, one turns from the external vileness of every prospect to
seek solace in the pleasure that man affords. But even after the
wholesome American reaction has set in, and your appetite for the life
of the senses is starved into indifference for what begins to seem to
you an unworthy ideal; after you are patriotically readjusted and feel
once more the elation of living in the future owing to the dearth of
sustenance in the present--you are still at the mercy of perceptions too
keenly sharpened by your Paris sojourn to permit blindness to the fact
that Paris and New York contrast as strongly in moral atmosphere as in
material aspect. You become contemplative, and speculate pensively as to
the character and quality of those native and normal conditions, those
Relations, which finally you have definitely resumed. What is it--that
vague and pervasive moral contrast which the American feels so potently
on his return from abroad? How can we define that apparently undefinable
difference which is only the more sensible for being so elusive? Book
after book has been written about Europe from the American
standpoint--about America from the European standpoint. None of them has
specified what everyone has experienced. The spectacular and the
material contrasts are easily enough characterized, and it is only the
unreflecting or the superficial who exaggerate the importance of them.
We are by no means at the mercy of our appreciation of Parisian
spectacle, of the French machinery of life. We miss or we do not miss
the Salon Carré, the view of the south transept of Notre Dame as one
descends the rue St. Jacques, the Théâtre Français, the concerts, the
Luxembourg Gardens, the excursions to the score of charming suburban
places, the library at the corner, the convenient cheap cab, the manners
of the people, the quiet, the climate, the constant entertainment of the
senses. We have in general too much work to do to waste much time in
regretting these things. In general, work is by natural selection so
invariable a concomitant of our unrivaled opportunity to work
profitably, that it absorbs our energies so far as this palpable sphere
is concerned. But what is it that throughout the hours of busiest work
and closest application, as well as in the preceding and following
moments of leisure and the occasional intervals of relaxation, makes
everyone vaguely perceive the vast moral difference between life here at
home and life abroad--notably life in France? What is the subtle
influence pervading the moral atmosphere in New York, which so markedly
distinguishes what we call life here from life in Paris or even in
Pennedepie?

It is, I think, distinctly traceable to the intense individualism which
prevails among us. Magnificent results have followed our devotion to
this force; incontestably, we have spared ourselves both the acute and
the chronic misery for which the tyranny of society over its constituent
parts is directly responsible. We have, moreover, in this way not only
freed ourselves from the tyranny of despotism, such for example as is
exerted socially in England and politically in Russia, but we have
undoubtedly developed a larger number of self-reliant and potentially
capable social units than even a democratic system like that of France,
which sacrifices the unit to the organism, succeeds in producing. We may
truly say that, material as we are accused of being, we turn out more
_men_ than any other nationality. And if some Frenchman points out that
we attach an esoteric sense to the term "man," and that at any rate our
men are not better adapted than some others to a civilized environment
which demands other qualities than honesty, energy, and intelligence, we
may be quite content to leave him his objection, and to prefer what
seems to us manliness, to civilization itself. At the same time we
cannot pretend that individualism has done everything for us that could
be desired. In giving us the man it has robbed us of the _milieu_.
Morally speaking, the _milieu_ with us scarcely exists. Our difference
from Europe does not consist in the difference between the European
_milieu_ and ours; it consists in the fact that, comparatively speaking
of course, we have no _milieu_. If we are individually developed, we are
also individually isolated to a degree elsewhere unknown. Politically we
have parties who, in Cicero's phrase, "think the same things concerning
the republic," but concerning very little else are we agreed in any mass
of any moment. The number of our sauces is growing, but there is no
corresponding diminution in the number of our religions. We have no
communities. Our villages even are apt, rather, to be aggregations.
Politics aside, there is hardly an American view of any phenomenon or
class of phenomena. Every one of us likes, reads, sees, does what he
chooses. Often dissimilarity is affected as adding piquancy of paradox.
The judgment of the ages, the consensus of mankind, exercise no tyranny
over the individual will. Do you believe in this or that, do you like
this or that, are questions which, concerning the most fundamental
matters, nevertheless form the staple of conversation in many circles.
We live all of us apparently in a divine state of flux. The question
asked at dinner by a lady in a neighboring city of a literary stranger,
"What do you think of Shakespeare?" is not exaggeratedly peculiar. We
all think differently of Shakespeare, of Cromwell, of Titian, of
Browning, of George Washington. Concerning matters as to which we must
be fundamentally disinterested, we permit ourselves not only prejudice
but passion. At the most we have here and there groups of personal
acquaintance only, whose members are in accord in regard to some one
thing, and quickly crystallize and precipitate at the mention of
something that is really a corollary of the force which unites them. The
efforts that have been made in New York, within the past twenty years,
to establish various special _milieus_, so to speak, have been pathetic
in their number and resultlessness. Efforts of this sort are of course
doomed to failure, because the essential trait of the _milieu_ is
spontaneous existence, but their failure discloses the mutual repulsion
which keeps the molecules of our society from uniting. How can it be
otherwise when life is so speculative, so experimental, so wholly
dependent on the personal force and idiosyncrasies of the individual?
How shall we accept any general verdict pronounced by persons of no more
authority than ourselves, and arrived at by processes in which we are
equally expert? We have so little consensus as to anything, because we
dread the loss of personality involved in submitting to conventions, and
because personality operates centrifugally alone. We make exceptions in
favor of such matters as the Copernican system and the greatness of our
own future. There _are_ things which we take on the credit of the
consensus of authorities, for which we may not have all the proofs at
hand. But as to conventions of all sorts, our attitude is apt to be one
of suspicion and uncertainty. Mark Twain, for example, first won his way
to the popular American heart by exposing the humbugs of the
Cinque-cento. Specifically the most teachable of people, nervously eager
for information, Americans are nevertheless wholly distrustful of
generalizations made by anyone else, and little disposed to receive
blindly formularies and classifications of phenomena as to which they
have had no experience. And of experience we have necessarily had,
except politically, less than any civilized people in the world.

We are infinitely more at home amid universal mobility. We want to act,
to exert ourselves, to be, as we imagine, nearer to nature. We have our
tastes in painting as in confectionery. Some of us prefer Tintoretto to
Rembrandt, as we do chocolate to cocoanut. In respect of taste it would
be impossible for the gloomiest skeptic to deny that this is an
exceedingly free country. "I don't know anything about the subject
(whatever the subject may be), but I know what I like," is a remark
which is heard on every hand, and which witnesses the sturdiness of our
struggle against the tyranny of conventions and the indomitable nature
of our independent spirit. In criticism the individual spirit fairly
runs a-muck; it takes its lack of concurrence as credentials of
impartiality often. In constructive art everyone is occupied less with
nature than with the point of view. Mr. Howells himself displays more
delight in his naturalistic attitude than zest in his execution, which,
compared with that of the French naturalists, is in general
faint-hearted enough. Everyone writes, paints, models, exclusively the
point of view. Fidelity in following out nature's suggestions, in
depicting the emotions nature arouses, a sympathetic submission to
nature's sentiment, absorption into nature's moods and subtle
enfoldings, are extremely rare. The artist's eye is fixed on the
treatment. He is "creative" by main strength. He is penetrated with a
desire to get away from "the same old thing," to "take it" in a new way,
to draw attention to himself, to shine. One would say that every
American nowadays who handles a brush or designs a building, was
stimulated by the secret ambition of founding a school. We have in art
thus, with a vengeance, that personal element which is indeed its savor,
but which it is fatal to make its substance. We have it still more
conspicuously in life. What do you think of him, or her? is the first
question asked after every introduction. Of every new individual we meet
we form instantly some personal impression. The criticism of character
is nearly the one disinterested activity in which we have become expert.
We have for this a peculiar gift, apparently, which we share with
gypsies and money-lenders, and other people in whom the social instinct
is chiefly latent. Our gossip takes on the character of personal
judgments rather than of tittle-tattle. It concerns not what So-and-So
has done, but what kind of a person So-and-So is. It would hardly be too
much to say that So-and-So never leaves a group of which he is not an
intimate without being immediately, impartially but fundamentally,
discussed. To a degree not at all suspected by the author of the phrase,
he "leaves his character" with them on quitting any assemblage of his
acquaintance.

The great difficulty with our individuality and independence is that
differentiation begins so soon and stops so far short of real
importance. In no department of life has the law of the survival of the
fittest, that principle in virtue of whose operation societies become
distinguished and admirable, had time to work. Our social
characteristics are inventions, discoveries, not survival. Nothing with
us has passed into the stage of instinct. And for this reason some of
our "best people," some of the most "thoughtful" among us, have less of
that quality best characterized as social maturity than a Parisian
washerwoman or _concierge_. Centuries of sifting, ages of gravitation
toward harmony and homogeneity, have resulted for the French in a
delightful immunity from the necessity of "proving all things"
remorselessly laid on every individual of our society. Very many
matters, at any rate, which to the French are matters of course, our
self-respect pledges us to a personal examination of. The idea of
sparing ourselves trouble in thinking occurs to us far more rarely than
to other peoples. We have certainly an insufficient notion of the
superior results reached by economy and system in this respect.

In one of Mr. Henry James's cleverest sketches, _Lady Barberina_, the
English heroine marries an American and comes to live in New York. She
finds it dull. She is homesick without quite knowing why. Mr. James is
at his best in exhibiting at once the intensity of her disgust and the
intangibility of its provocation. We are not all like "Lady Barb." We do
not all like London, whose materialism is only more splendid, not less
uncompromising than our own; but we cannot help perceiving that what
that unfortunate lady missed in New York was the _milieu_--an
environment sufficiently developed to permit spontaneity and free play
of thought and feeling, and a certain domination of shifting merit by
fixed relations which keeps one's mind off that disagreeable subject of
contemplation, one's self. Everyone seems acutely self-conscious; and
the self-consciousness of the unit is fatal, of course, to the composure
of the _ensemble_. The number of people intently minding their P's and
Q's, reforming their orthoepy, practicing new discoveries in etiquette,
making over their names, and in general exhibiting that activity of the
amateur known as "going through the motions" to the end of bringing
themselves up, as it were, is very noticeable in contrast with French
oblivion to this kind of personal exertion. Even our simplicity is apt
to be _simplesse_. And the conscientiousness in educating others
displayed by those who are so fortunate as to have reached perfection
nearly enough to permit relaxation in self-improvement, is only equaled
by the avidity in acquisitiveness displayed by the learners themselves.
Meantime the composure born of equality, as well as that springing from
unconsciousness, suffers. Our society is a kind of Jacob's ladder, to
maintain equilibrium upon which requires an amount of effort on the part
of the personally estimable gymnasts perpetually ascending and
descending, in the highest degree hostile to spontaneity, to serenity,
and stability.

Naturally, thus, everyone is personally preoccupied to a degree unknown
in France. And it is not necessary that this preoccupation should
concern any side of that multifarious monster we know as "business." It
may relate strictly to the paradox of seeking employment for leisure.
Even the latter is a terribly conscious proceeding. We go about it with
a mental deliberateness singularly in contrast with our physical
precipitancy. But it is mainly "business," perhaps, that accentuates our
individualism. The condition of _désœuvrement_ is positively
disreputable. It arouses the suspicion of acquaintance and the anxiety
of friends. Occupation to the end of money-getting is our normal
condition, any variation from which demands explanation, as little
likely to be entirely honorable. Such occupation is, as I said, the
inevitable sequence of the opportunity for it, and is the wiser and more
dignified because of its necessity to the end of securing independence.
What the Frenchman can secure merely by the exercise of economy is with
us only the reward of energy and enterprise in acquisition--so
comparatively speculative and hazardous is the condition of our
business. And whereas with us money is far harder to keep, and is
moreover something which it is far harder to be without than is the case
in France, the ends of self-respect, freedom from mortification, and
getting the most out of life, demand that we should take constant
advantage of the fact that it is easier to get. Consequently everyone
who is, as we say, worth anything, is with us adjusted to the prodigious
dynamic condition which characterizes our existence. And such occupation
is tremendously absorbing. Our opportunity is fatally handicapped by
this remorseless necessity of embracing it. It yields us fruit after its
kind, but it rigorously excludes us from tasting any other. Everyone is
engaged in preparing the working drawings of his own fortune. There is
no co-operation possible, because competition is the life of enterprise.

In the resultant manners the city illustrates Carlyle's "anarchy plus
the constable." Never was the struggle for existence more palpable,
more naked, and more unpictorial. "It is the art of mankind to polish
the world," says Thoreau somewhere, "and everyone who works is scrubbing
in some part." Everyone certainly is here at work, yet was there ever
such scrubbing with so little resultant polish? The disproportion would
be tragic if it were not grotesque. Amid all "the hurry and rush of life
along the sidewalks," as the newspapers say, one might surely expect to
find the unexpected. The spectacle ought certainly to have the interest
of picturesqueness which is inherent in the fortuitous. Unhappily,
though there is hurry and rush enough, it is the bustle of business, not
the dynamics of what is properly to be called life. The elements of the
picture lack dignity--so completely as to leave the _ensemble_ quite
without accent. More incidents in the drama of real life will happen
before midnight to the individuals who compose the orderly Boulevard
procession in Paris than those of its chaotic Broadway counterpart will
experience in a month. The latter are not really more impressive because
they are apparently all running errands and include no _flâneurs_. The
_flâneur_ would fare ill should anything draw him into the stream.
Everything being adjusted to the motive of looking out for one's self,
any of the sidewalk civility and mutual interest which obtain in Paris
would throw the entire machine out of gear. Whoever is not in a hurry is
in the way. A man running after an omnibus at the Madeleine would come
into collision with fewer people and cause less disturbance than one who
should stop on Fourteenth Street to apologize for an inadvertent jostle,
or to give a lady any surplusage of passing room. He would be less
ridiculous. A friend recently returned from Paris told me that, on
several street occasions, his involuntary "Excuse me!" had been mistaken
for a salutation and answered by a "How do you do?" and a stare of
speculation. Apologies of this class sound to us, perhaps, like a
subtle and deprecatory impeachment of our large tolerance and universal
good nature.

In this way our undoubted self-respect undoubtedly loses something of
its bloom. We may prefer being jammed into street-cars and pressed
against the platform rails of the elevated road to the tedious waiting
at Paris 'bus stations--to mention one of the perennial and principal
points of contrast which monopolize the thoughts of the average American
sojourner in the French capital. But it is terribly vulgarizing. The
contact and pressure are abominable. To a Parisian the daily experience
in this respect of those of our women who have no carriages of their
own, would seem as singular as the latter would find the Oriental habit
of regarding the face as more important than other portions of the
female person to keep concealed. But neither men nor women can persist
in blushing at the intimacy of rudeness to which our crowding subjects
them in common. The only resource is in blunted sensibility. And the
manners thus negatively produced we do not quite appreciate in their
enormity because the edge of our appreciation is thus necessarily
dulled. The conductor scarcely ceases whistling to poke you for your
fare. Other whistlers apparently go on forever. Loud talking follows
naturally from the impossibility of personal seclusion in the presence
of others. Our Sundays have lost secular decorum very much in proportion
as they have lost Puritan observance. If we have nothing quite
comparable with a London bank holiday, or with the conduct of the
popular cohorts of the Epsom army; if only in "political picnics" and
the excursions of "gangs" of "toughs" we illustrate absolute barbarism,
it is nevertheless true that, from Central Park to Coney Island, our
people exhibit a conception of the fitting employment of periodical
leisure which would seem indecorous to a crowd of Belleville
_ouvriers_. If we have not the cad, we certainly possess in abundance
the species "hoodlum," which, though morally far more refreshing, is yet
aesthetically intolerable; and the hoodlum is nearly as rare in Paris as
the cad. Owing to his presence and to the atmosphere in which he
thrives, we find ourselves, in spite of the most determined democratic
convictions, shunning crowds whenever it is possible to shun them. The
most robust of us easily get into the frame of mind of a Boston young
woman, to whom the Champs-Élysées looked like a railway station, and who
wished the people would get up from the benches and go home. Our life
becomes a life of the interior; wherefore, in spite of a climate that
permits walks abroad, we confine out-door existence to Newport lawns and
camps in the Adirondacks; and whence proceeds that carelessness of the
exterior which subordinates architecture to "household art," and makes
of our streets such mere thoroughfares lined with "homes."

The manners one encounters in street and shop in Paris are, it is well
known, very different from our own. But no praise of them ever quite
prepares an American for their agreeableness and simplicity. We are
always agreeably surprised at the absence of elaborate manner which
eulogists of French manners in general omit to note; and indeed it is an
extremely elusive quality. Nothing is further removed from that
intrusion of the national _gemüthlichkeit_ into so impersonal a matter
as affairs, large or small, which to an occasional sense makes the
occasional German manner enjoyable. Nothing is farther from the
obsequiousness of the London shopman, which rather dazes the American
than pleases him. Nothing, on the other hand, is farther from our own
bald dispatch. With us every shopper expects, or at any rate is prepared
for, obstruction rather than facilitation on the seller's side. The
drygoods counter, especially when the attendant is of the gentler sex,
is a kind of _chevaux-de-frise_. The retail atmosphere is charged with
an affectation of unconsciousness; not only is every transaction
impersonal, it is mechanical; ere long it must become automatic. In many
cases there is to be encountered a certain defiant attitude to the last
degree unhappy in its effects on the manners involved--a certain
self-assertion which begs the question, else unmooted, of social
equality, with the result for the time being of the most unsocial
relation probably existing among men. Perfect personal equality for the
time being invariably exists between customer and tradesman in France;
the man or woman who serves you is first of all a fellow-creature; a
shop, to be sure, is not a _conversazione_, but if you are in a
loquacious or inquisitive mood you will be deemed neither frivolous nor
familiar--nor yet an inanimate obstacle to the flow of the most
important as well as the most impetuous of the currents of life.

Certainly, in New York, we are too vain of our bustle to realize how
mannerless and motiveless it is. The essence of life is movement, but so
is the essence of epilepsy. Moreover the life of the New Yorker who
chases street-cars, eats at a lunch counter, drinks what will "take
hold" quickly at a bar he can quit instantly, reads only the head-lines
of his newspaper, keeps abreast of the intellectual movement by
inspecting the display of the Elevated Railway newsstands while he fumes
at having to wait two minutes for his train, hastily buys his tardy
ticket of sidewalk speculators, and leaves the theater as if it were on
fire--the life of such a man is, notwithstanding all its futile
activity, varied by long spaces of absolute mental stagnation, of moral
coma. Not only is our hurry not decorous, not decent; it is not real
activity, it is as little as possible like the animated existence of
Paris, where the moral nature is kept in constant operation, intense or
not as the case may be, in spite of the external and material
tranquillity. Owing to this lack of a real, a rational activity, our
individual civilization, which seems when successful a scramble, and
when unlucky a _sauve qui peut_, is, morally as well as spectacularly,
not ill described in so far as its external aspect is concerned by the
epithet _flat_. Enervation seems to menace those whom hyperæsthesia
spares.

       *       *       *       *       *

"We go to Europe to become Americanized," says Emerson, but France
Americanizes us less in this sense than any other country of Europe, and
perhaps Emerson was not thinking so much of her democratic development
into social order and efficiency as of the less American and more feudal
European influences, which do indeed, while we are subject to them,
intensify our affection for our own institutions, our confidence in our
own outlook. One must admit that in France (which nowadays follows our
ideal of liberty perhaps as closely as we do hers of equality and
fraternity, and where consequently our political notions receive few
shocks) not only is the life of the senses more agreeable than it is
with us, but the mutual relations of men are more felicitous also. And
alas! Americans who have savored these sweets cannot avail themselves of
the implication contained in Emerson's further words--words which
approach nearer to petulance than anything in his urbane and placid
utterances--"those who prefer London or Paris to America may be spared
to return to those capitals." "Il faut vivre, combattre, et finir avec
les siens," says Doudan, and no law is more inexorable. The fruits of
foreign gardens are, however delectable, enchanted for us; we may not
touch them; and to pass our lives in covetous inspection of them is as
barren a performance as may be imagined. For this reason the question
"Should you like better to live here or abroad?" is as little practical
as it is frequent. The empty life of the "foreign colonies" in Paris is
its sufficient answer. Not only do most of us _have_ to stay at home,
but for everyone except the inconsiderable few who can better do abroad
the work they have to do, and except those essentially un-American waifs
who can contrive no work for themselves, life abroad is not only less
profitable but less pleasant. The American endeavoring to acclimatize
himself in Paris hardly needs to have cited to him the words of
Epictetus: "Man, thou hast forgotten thine object; thy journey was not
_to_ this, but _through_ this"--he is sure before long to become
dismally persuaded of their truth. More speedily than elsewhere perhaps,
he finds out in Paris the truth of Carlyle's assurance: "It is, after
all, the one unhappiness of a man. That he cannot work; that he cannot
get his destiny as a man fulfilled." For the work which insures the
felicity of the French life of the senses and of French human relations
he cannot share; and, thus, the question of the relative attractiveness
of French and American life--of Paris and New York--becomes the idle and
purely speculative question as to whether one would like to change his
personal and national identity.

And this an American may permit himself the chauvinism of believing a
less rational contradiction of instinct in himself than it would be in
the case of anyone else. And for this reason: that in those elements of
life which tend to the development and perfection of the individual soul
in the work of fulfilling its mysterious destiny, American character and
American conditions are especially rich. Bunyan's genius exhibits its
characteristic felicity in giving the name of Hopeful to the successor
of that Faithful who perished in the town of Vanity. It would be a mark
of that loose complacency in which we are too often offenders, to
associate the scene of Faithful's martyrdom with the Europe from which
definitively we set out afresh a century ago; but it is impossible not
to recognize that on our forward journey to the celestial country of
national and individual success, our conspicuous inspiration and
constant comforter is that hope whose cheering ministrations the "weary
Titans" of Europe enjoy in far narrower measure. Living in the future
has an indisputably tonic effect upon the moral sinews, and contributes
an exhilaration to the spirit which no sense of attainment and achieved
success can give. We are after all the true idealists of the world.
Material as are the details of our preoccupation, our sub-consciousness
is sustained by a general aspiration that is none the less heroic for
being, perhaps, somewhat _naïf_ as well. The times and moods when one's
energy is excited, when something occurs in the continuous drama of life
to bring sharply into relief its vivid interest and one's own intimate
share therein, when nature seems infinitely more real than the societies
she includes, when the missionary, the pioneer, the constructive spirit
is aroused, are far more frequent with us than with other peoples. Our
intense individualism happily modified by our equality, our constant,
active, multiform struggle with the environment, do at least, as I said,
produce men; and if we use the term in an esoteric sense we at least
know its significance. Of our riches in this respect New York alone
certainly gives no exaggerated idea--however it may otherwise epitomize
and typify our national traits. A walk on Pennsylvania Avenue; a drive
among the "homes" of Buffalo or Detroit--or a dozen other true centers
of communal life which have a concrete impressiveness that for the most
part only great capitals in Europe possess; a tour of college
commencements in scores of spots consecrated to the exaltation of the
permanent over the evanescent; contact in any wise with the prodigious
amount of right feeling manifested in a hundred ways throughout a
country whose prosperity stimulates generous impulse, or with the
number of "good fellows" of large, shrewd, humorous views of life,
critical perhaps rather than constructive, but at all events untouched
by cynicism, perfectly competent and admirably confident, with a
livelier interest in everything within their range of vision than can be
felt by anyone mainly occupied with sensuous satisfaction, saved from
boredom by a robust imperviousness, ready to begin life over again after
every reverse with unenfeebled spirit, and finding, in the working out
of their own personal salvation according to the gospel of necessity and
opportunity, that joy which the pursuit of pleasure misses--experiences
of every kind, in fine, that familiarize us with what is especially
American in our civilization, are agreeable as no foreign experiences
can be, because they are above all others animating and sustaining. Life
in America has for everyone, in proportion to his seriousness, the zest
that accompanies the "advance on Chaos and the Dark." Meantime, one's
last word about the America emphasized by contrast with the organic and
_solidaire_ society of France, is that, for insuring order and
efficiency to the lines of this advance, it would be difficult to
conceive too gravely the utility of observing attentively the work in
the modern world of the only other great nation that follows the
democratic standard, and is perennially prepared to make sacrifices for
ideas.

/#
     [From _French Traits_, by W. C. Brownell. Copyright, 1888, 1889, by
     Charles Scribner's Sons.]
#/



THE TYRANNY OF THINGS

EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN


A traveler newly returned from the Pacific Ocean tells pleasant stories
of the Patagonians. As the steamer he was in was passing through
Magellan's Straits some natives came out to her in boats. They wore no
clothes at all, though there was snow in the air. A baby that came along
with them made some demonstration that displeased its mother, who took
it by the foot, as Thetis took Achilles, and soused it over the side of
the boat into the cold seawater. When she pulled it in, it lay a moment
whimpering in the bottom of the boat, and then curled up and went to
sleep. The missionaries there have tried to teach the natives to wear
clothes, and to sleep in huts; but, so far, the traveler says, with very
limited success. The most shelter a Patagonian can endure is a little
heap of rocks or a log to the windward of him; as for clothes, he
despises them, and he is indifferent to ornament.

To many of us, groaning under the oppression of modern conveniences, it
seems lamentably meddlesome to undermine the simplicity of such people,
and enervate them with the luxuries of civilization. To be able to sleep
out-o-doors, and go naked, and take sea-baths on wintry days with
impunity, would seem a most alluring emancipation. No rent to pay, no
tailor, no plumber, no newspaper to be read on pain of getting behind
the times; no regularity in anything, not even meals; nothing to do
except to find food, and no expense for undertakers or physicians, even
if we fail; what a fine, untrammeled life it would be! It takes
occasional contact with such people as the Patagonians to keep us in
mind that civilization is the mere cultivation of our wants, and that
the higher it is the more our necessities are multiplied, until, if we
are rich enough, we get enervated by luxury, and the young men come in
and carry us out.

We want so many, many things, it seems a pity that those simple
Patagonians could not send missionaries to us to show us how to do
without. The comforts of life, at the rate they are increasing, bid fair
to bury us soon, as Tarpeia was buried under the shields of her friends
the Sabines. Mr. Hamerton, in speaking of the increase of comfort in
England, groans at the "trying strain of expense to which our extremely
high standard of living subjects all except the rich." It makes each
individual of us very costly to keep, and constantly tempts people to
concentrate on the maintenance of fewer individuals means that would in
simpler times be divided among many. "My grandfather," said a modern the
other day, "left $200,000. He was considered a rich man in those days;
but, dear me! he supported four or five families--all his needy
relations and all my grandmother's." Think of an income of $10,000 a
year being equal to such a strain, and providing suitably for a rich
man's large family in the bargain! It wouldn't go so far now, and yet
most of the reasonable necessaries of life cost less to-day than they
did two generations ago. The difference is that we need so very many
comforts that were not invented in our grandfather's time.

There is a hospital, in a city large enough to keep a large hospital
busy, that is in straits for money. Its income from contributions last
year was larger by nearly a third than its income ten years ago, but its
expenses were nearly double its income. There were some satisfactory
reasons for the discrepancy--the city had grown, the number of patients
had increased, extraordinary repairs had been made--but at the bottom a
very large expenditure seemed to be due to the struggle of the managers
to keep the institution up to modern standards. The patients are better
cared for than they used to be; the nurses are better taught and more
skillful; "conveniences" have been greatly multiplied; the heating and
cooking and laundry work is all done in the best manner with the most
approved apparatus; the plumbing is as safe as sanitary engineering can
make it; the appliances for antiseptic surgery are fit for a fight for
life; there are detached buildings for contagious diseases, and an
out-patient department, and the whole concern is administered with
wisdom and economy. There is only one distressing circumstance about
this excellent charity, and that is that its expenses exceed its income.
And yet its managers have not been extravagant: they have only done what
the enlightened experience of the day has considered to be necessary. If
the hospital has to shut down and the patients must be turned out, at
least the receiver will find a well-appointed institution of which the
managers have no reason to be ashamed.

The trouble seems to be with very many of us, in contemporary private
life as well as in institutions, that the enlightened experience of the
day invents more necessaries than we can get the money to pay for. Our
opulent friends are constantly demonstrating to us by example how
indispensably convenient the modern necessaries are, and we keep having
them until we either exceed our incomes or miss the higher concerns of
life in the effort to maintain a complete outfit of its creature
comforts.

And the saddest part of all is that it is in such great measure an
American development. We Americans keep inventing new necessaries, and
the people of the effete monarchies gradually adopt such of them as they
can afford. When we go abroad we growl about the inconveniences of
European life--the absence of gas in bedrooms, the scarcity and
sluggishness of elevators, the primitive nature of the plumbing, and a
long list of other things without which life seems to press unreasonably
upon our endurance. Nevertheless, if the _res angustæ domi_ get straiter
than usual, we are always liable to send our families across the water
to spend a season in the practice of economy in some land where it costs
less to live.

Of course it all belongs to Progress, and no one is quite willing to
have it stop, but it does a comfortable sufferer good to get his head
out of his conveniences sometimes and complain.

There was a story in the newspapers the other day about a Massachusetts
minister who resigned his charge because someone had given his parish a
fine house, and his parishioners wanted him to live in it. His salary
was too small, he said, to admit of his living in a big house, and he
would not do it. He was even deaf to the proposal that he should share
the proposed tenement with the sewing societies and clubs of his church,
and when the matter came to a serious issue, he relinquished his charge
and sought a new field of usefulness. The situation was an amusing
instance of the embarrassment of riches. Let no one to whom restricted
quarters may have grown irksome, and who covets larger dimensions of
shelter, be too hasty in deciding that the minister was wrong. Did you
ever see the house that Hawthorne lived in at Lenox? Did you ever see
Emerson's house at Concord? They are good houses for Americans to know
and remember. They permitted thought.

A big house is one of the greediest cormorants which can light upon a
little income. Backs may go threadbare and stomachs may worry along on
indifferent filling, but a house _will_ have things, though its
occupants go without. It is rarely complete, and constantly tempts the
imagination to flights in brick and dreams in lath and plaster. It
develops annual thirsts for paint and wall-paper, at least, if not for
marble and wood-carving. The plumbing in it must be kept in order on
pain of death. Whatever price is put on coal, it has to be heated in
winter; and if it is rural or suburban, the grass about it must be cut
even though funerals in the family have to be put off for the mowing. If
the tenants are not rich enough to hire people to keep their house
clean, they must do it themselves, for there is no excuse that will pass
among housekeepers for a dirty house. The master of a house too big for
him may expect to spend the leisure which might be made intellectually
or spiritually profitable, in acquiring and putting into practice fag
ends of the arts of the plumber, the bell-hanger, the locksmith, the
gasfitter, and the carpenter. Presently he will know how to do
everything that can be done in the house, except enjoy himself. He will
learn about taxes, too, and water-rates, and how such abominations as
sewers or new pavements are always liable to accrue at his expense. As
for the mistress, she will be a slave to carpets and curtains,
wall-paper, painters, and women who come in by the day to clean. She
will be lucky if she gets a chance to say her prayers, and thrice and
four times happy when she can read a book or visit with her friends. To
live in a big house may be a luxury, provided that one has a full set of
money and an enthusiastic housekeeper in one's family; but to scrimp in
a big house is a miserable business. Yet such is human folly, that for a
man to refuse to live in a house because it is too big for him, is such
an exceptional exhibition of sense that it becomes the favorite
paragraph of a day in the newspapers.

An ideal of earthly comfort, so common that every reader must have seen
it, is to get a house so big that it is burdensome to maintain, and fill
it up so full of jimcracks that it is a constant occupation to keep it
in order. Then, when the expense of living in it is so great that you
can't afford to go away and rest from the burden of it, the situation is
complete and boarding-houses and cemeteries begin to yawn for you. How
many Americans, do you suppose, out of the droves that flock annually to
Europe, are running away from oppressive houses?

When nature undertakes to provide a house, it fits the occupant. Animals
which build by instinct build only what they need, but man's building
instinct, if it gets a chance to spread itself at all, is boundless,
just as all his instincts are. For it is man's peculiarity that nature
has filled him with impulses to do things, and left it to his discretion
when to stop. She never tells him when he has finished. And perhaps we
ought not to be surprised that in so many cases it happens that he
doesn't know, but just goes ahead as long as the materials last.

If another _man_ tries to oppress him, he understands that and is ready
to fight to death and sacrifice all he has, rather than submit; but the
tyranny of _things_ is so subtle, so gradual in its approach, and comes
so masked with seeming benefits, that it has him hopelessly bound before
he suspects his fetters. He says from day to day, "I will add thus to my
house;" "I will have one or two more horses;" "I will make a little
greenhouse in my garden;" "I will allow myself the luxury of another
hired man;" and so he goes on having things and imagining that he is
richer for them. Presently he begins to realize that it is the things
that own him. He has piled them up on his shoulders, and there they sit
like Sindbad's Old Man and drive him; and it becomes a daily question
whether he can keep his trembling legs or not.

All of which is not meant to prove that property has no real value, or
to rebut Charles Lamb's scornful denial that enough is as good as a
feast. It is not meant to apply to the rich, who can have things
comfortably, if they are philosophical; but to us poor, who have
constant need to remind ourselves that where the verbs to _have_ and _to
be_ cannot both be completely inflected, the verb _to be_ is the one
that best repays concentration.

Perhaps we would not be so prone to swamp ourselves with luxuries and
vain possessions that we cannot afford, if it were not for our
deep-lying propensity to associate with people who are better off than
we are. It is usually the sight of their appliances that upsets our
little stock of sense, and lures us into an improvident competition.

There is a proverb of Solomon's which prophesies financial wreck or
ultimate misfortune of some sort to people who make gifts to the rich.
Though not expressly stated, it is somehow implied that the proverb is
intended not as a warning to the rich themselves, who may doubtless
exchange presents with impunity, but for persons whose incomes rank
somewhere between "moderate circumstances" and destitution. That such
persons should need to be warned not to spend their substance on the
rich seems odd, but when Solomon was busied with precept he could
usually be trusted not to waste either words or wisdom. Poor people
_are_ constantly spending themselves upon the rich, not only because
they like them, but often from an instinctive conviction that such
expenditure is well invested. I wonder sometimes whether this is true.

To associate with the rich seems pleasant and profitable. They are apt
to be agreeable and well informed, and it is good to play with them and
enjoy the usufruct of all their pleasant apparatus; but, of course, you
can neither hope nor wish to get anything for nothing. Of the cost of
the practice, the expenditure of time still seems to be the item that is
most serious. It takes a great deal of time to cultivate the rich
successfully. If they are working people their time is so much more
valuable than yours, that when you visit with them it is apt to be your
time that is sacrificed. If they are not working people it is worse yet.
Their special outings, when they want your company, always come when you
cannot get away from work except at some great sacrifice, which, under
the stress of temptation, you are too apt to make. Their pleasuring is
on so large a scale that you cannot make it fit your times or
necessities. You can't go yachting for half a day, nor will fifty
dollars take you far on the way to shoot big game in Manitoba. You
simply cannot play with them when they play, because you cannot _reach_;
and when they work you cannot play with them, because their time then is
worth so much a minute that you cannot bear to waste it. And you cannot
play with them when you are working yourself and they are inactively at
leisure, because, cheap as your time is, you can't spare it.

Charming and likeable as they are, and good to know, it must be admitted
that there is a superior convenience about associating most of the time
with people who want to do about what we want to do at about the same
time, and whose abilities to do what they wish approximate to ours. It
is not so much a matter of persons as of times and means. You cannot
make your opportunities concur with the opportunities of people whose
incomes are ten times greater than yours. When you play together it is
at a sacrifice, and one which _you_ have to make. Solomon was right. To
associate with very rich people involves sacrifices. You cannot even be
rich yourself without expense, and you may just as well give over
trying. Count it, then, among the costs of a considerable income that in
enlarging the range of your sports it inevitably contracts the circle of
those who will find it profitable to share them.

/#
     [From _Windfalls of Observation_, by Edward Sandford Martin.
     Copyright, 1893, by Charles Scribner's Sons.]
#/



FREE TRADE VS. PROTECTION IN LITERATURE

SAMUEL MCCHORD CROTHERS


In the old-fashioned text-book we used to be told that the branch of
learning that was treated was at once an art and a science. Literature
is much more than that. It is an art, a science, a profession, a trade,
and an accident. The literature that is of lasting value is an accident.
It is something that happens. After it has happened, the historical
critics busy themselves in explaining it. But they are not able to
predict the next stroke of genius.

Shelley defines poetry as the record of "the best and happiest moments
of the best and happiest minds." When we are fortunate enough to happen
in upon an author at one of these happy moments, then, as the country
newspaper would say, "a very enjoyable time was had." After we have said
all that can be said about art and craftsmanship, we put our hopes upon
a happy chance. Literature cannot be standardized. We never know how the
most painstaking work may turn out. The most that can be said of the
literary life is what Sancho Panza said of the profession of
knight-errantry: "There is something delightful in going about in
expectation of accidents."

After a meeting in behalf of Social Justice, an eager, distraught young
man met me, in the streets of Boston, and asked:

"You believe in the principle of equality?"

"Yes."

"Don't I then have just as much right to be a genius as Shakespeare
had?"

"Yes."

"Then why ain't I?"

I had to confess that I didn't know.

It is with this chastened sense of our limitations that we meet for any
organized attempt at the encouragement of literary productivity. Matthew
Arnold's favorite bit of irreverence in which he seemed to find endless
enjoyment was in twitting the unfortunate Bishop who had said that
"something ought to be done" for the Holy Trinity. It was a
business-like proposition that involved a spiritual incongruity.

A confusion of values is likely to take place when we try to "do
something" for American Literature. It is an object that appeals to the
uplifter who is anxious to "get results." But the difficulty is that if
a piece of writing is literature, it does not need to be uplifted. If it
is not literature, it is likely to be so heavy that you can't lift it.
We have been told that a man by taking thought cannot add a cubit to his
stature. It is certainly true that we cannot add many cubits to our
literary stature. If we could we should all be giants.

When literary men discourse with one another about their art, they often
seem to labor under a weight of responsibility which a friendly outsider
would seek to lighten. They are under the impression that they have left
undone many things which they ought to have done, and that the Public
blames them for their manifold transgressions.

That Great American Novel ought to have been written long ago. There
ought to be more local color and less imitation of European models.
There ought to have been more plain speaking to demonstrate that we are
not squeamish and are not tied to the apron strings of Mrs. Grundy.
There ought to be a literary center and those who are at it ought to
live up to it.

In all this it is assumed that contemporary writers can control the
literary situation.

Let me comfort the over-strained consciences of the members of the
writing fraternity. Your responsibility is not nearly so great as you
imagine.

Literature differs from the other arts in the relation in which the
producer stands to the consumer. Literature can never be made one of the
protected industries. In the Drama the living actor has a complete
monopoly. One might express a preference for Garrick or Booth, but if he
goes to the theater he must take what is set before him. The monopoly of
the singer is not quite so complete as it once was. But until canned
music is improved, most people will prefer to get theirs fresh. In
painting and in sculpture there is more or less competition with the
work of other ages. Yet even here there is a measure of natural
protection. The old masters may be admired, but they are expensive. The
living artist can control a certain market of his own.

There is also a great opportunity for the artist and his friends to
exert pressure. When you go to an exhibition of new paintings, you are
not a free agent. You are aware that the artist or his friends may be in
the vicinity to observe how First Citizen and Second Citizen enjoy the
masterpiece. Conscious of this espionage, you endeavor to look pleased.
You observe a picture which outrages your ideas of the possible. You
mildly remark to a bystander that you have never seen anything like that
before.

"Probably not," he replies, "it is not a picture of any outward scene,
it represents the artist's state of mind."

"O," you reply, "I understand. He is making an exhibition of himself."

It is all so personal that you do not feel like carrying the
investigation further. You take what is set before you and ask no
questions.

But with a book the relation to the producer is altogether different.
You go into your library and shut the door, and you have the same sense
of intellectual freedom that you have when you go into the polling booth
and mark your Australian ballot. You are a sovereign citizen. Nobody can
know what you are reading unless you choose to tell. You snap your
fingers at the critics. In the "tumultuous privacy" of print you enjoy
what you find enjoyable, and let the rest go.

Your mind is a free port. There are no customs house officers to examine
the cargoes that are unladen. The book which has just come from the
press has no advantage over the book that is a century old. In the
matter of legibility the old volume may be preferable, and its price is
less. Whatever choice you make is in the face of the free competition of
all the ages. Literature is the timeless art.

Clever writers who start fashions in the literary world should take
account of this secrecy of the reader's position. It is easy enough to
start a fashion, the difficulty is to get people to follow it. Few
people will follow a fashion except when other people are looking at
them. When they are alone they relapse into something which they enjoy
and which they find comfortable.

The ultimate consumer of literature is therefore inclined to take a
philosophical view of the contentions among literary people, about what
seem to them the violent fluctuations of taste. These fashions come and
go, but the quiet reader is undisturbed. There are enough good books
already printed to last his life-time. Aware of this, he is not alarmed
by the cries of the "calamity howlers" who predict a famine.

From a purely commercial viewpoint, this competition with writers of
all generations is disconcerting. But I do not see that anything can be
done to prevent it. The principle of protection fails. Trades-unionism
offers no remedy. What if all the living authors should join in a
general strike! We tremble to think of the army of strike-breakers that
would rush in from all centuries.

From the literary viewpoint, however, this free competition is very
stimulating and even exciting. To hold our own under free trade
conditions, we must not put all our thought on increasing the output. In
order to meet the free competition to which we are exposed, we must
improve the quality of our work. Perhaps that may be good for us.



DANTE AND THE BOWERY

THEODORE ROOSEVELT


It is the conventional thing to praise Dante because he of set purpose
"used the language of the market-place," so as to be understanded of the
common people; but we do not in practice either admire or understand a
man who writes in the language of our own market-place. It must be the
Florentine market-place of the thirteenth century--not Fulton Market of
to-day. What infinite use Dante would have made of the Bowery! Of
course, he could have done it only because not merely he himself, the
great poet, but his audience also, would have accepted it as natural.
The nineteenth century was more apt than the thirteenth to boast of
itself as being the greatest of the centuries; but, save as regards
purely material objects, ranging from locomotives to bank buildings, it
did not wholly believe in its boasting. A nineteenth-century poet, when
trying to illustrate some point he was making, obviously felt
uncomfortable in mentioning nineteenth-century heroes if he also
referred to those of classic times, lest he should be suspected of
instituting comparisons between them. A thirteenth-century poet was not
in the least troubled by any such misgivings, and quite simply
illustrated his point by allusions to any character in history or
romance, ancient or contemporary, that happened to occur to him.

Of all the poets of the nineteenth century, Walt Whitman was the only
one who dared use the Bowery--that is, use anything that was striking
and vividly typical of the humanity around him--as Dante used the
ordinary humanity of his day; and even Whitman was not quite natural in
doing so, for he always felt that he was defying the conventions and
prejudices of his neighbors, and his self-consciousness made him a
little defiant. Dante was not defiant of conventions: the conventions of
his day did not forbid him to use human nature just as he saw it, no
less than human nature as he read about it. The Bowery is one of the
great highways of humanity, a highway of seething life, of varied
interest, of fun, of work, of sordid and terrible tragedy; and it is
haunted by demons as evil as any that stalk through the pages of the
_Inferno_. But no man of Dante's art and with Dante's soul would write
of it nowadays; and he would hardly be understood if he did. Whitman
wrote of homely things and every-day men, and of their greatness, but
his art was not equal to his power and his purpose; and, even as it was,
he, the poet, by set intention, of the democracy, is not known to the
people as widely as he should be known; and it is only the few--the men
like Edward FitzGerald, John Burroughs, and W. E. Henley--who prize him
as he ought to be prized.

Nowadays, at the outset of the twentieth century, cultivated people
would ridicule the poet who illustrated fundamental truths, as Dante did
six hundred years ago, by examples drawn alike from human nature as he
saw it around him and from human nature as he read of it. I suppose that
this must be partly because we are so self-conscious as always to read a
comparison into any illustration, forgetting the fact that no comparison
is implied between two men, in the sense of estimating their relative
greatness or importance, when the career of each of them is chosen
merely to illustrate some given quality that both possess. It is also
probably due to the fact that an age in which the critical faculty is
greatly developed often tends to develop a certain querulous inability
to understand the fundamental truths which less critical ages accept as
a matter of course. To such critics it seems improper, and indeed
ludicrous, to illustrate human nature by examples chosen alike from the
Brooklyn Navy Yard or Castle Garden and the Piræus, alike from Tammany
and from the Roman mob organized by the foes or friends of Cæsar. To
Dante such feeling itself would have been inexplicable.

Dante dealt with those tremendous qualities of the human soul which
dwarf all differences in outward and visible form and station, and
therefore he illustrated what he meant by any example that seemed to him
apt. Only the great names of antiquity had been handed down, and so,
when he spoke of pride or violence or flattery, and wished to illustrate
his thesis by an appeal to the past, he could speak only of great and
prominent characters; but in the present of his day most of the men he
knew, or knew of, were naturally people of no permanent importance--just
as is the case in the present of our own day. Yet the passions of these
men were the same as those of the heroes of old, godlike or demoniac;
and so he unhesitatingly used his contemporaries, or his immediate
predecessors, to illustrate his points, without regard to their
prominence or lack of prominence. He was not concerned with the
differences in their fortunes and careers, with their heroic proportions
or lack of such proportions; he was a mystic whose imagination soared so
high and whose thoughts plumbed so deeply the far depths of our being
that he was also quite simply a realist; for the eternal mysteries were
ever before his mind, and, compared to them, the differences between the
careers of the mighty masters of mankind and the careers of even very
humble people seemed trivial. If we translate his comparisons into the
terms of our day, we are apt to feel amused over this trait of his,
until we go a little deeper and understand that we are ourselves to
blame, because we have lost the faculty simply and naturally to
recognize that the essential traits of humanity are shown alike by big
men and by little men, in the lives that are now being lived and in
those that are long ended.

Probably no two characters in Dante impress the ordinary reader more
than Farinata and Capaneus: the man who raises himself waist-high from
out his burning sepulcher, unshaken by torment, and the man who, with
scornful disdain, refuses to brush from his body the falling flames; the
great souls--magnanimous, Dante calls them--whom no torture, no
disaster, no failure of the most absolute kind could force to yield or
to bow before the dread powers that had mastered them. Dante has created
these men, has made them permanent additions to the great figures of the
world; they are imaginary only in the sense that Achilles and Ulysses
are imaginary--that is, they are now as real as the figures of any men
that ever lived. One of them was a mythical hero in a mythical feat, the
other a second-rate faction leader in a faction-ridden Italian city of
the thirteenth century, whose deeds have not the slightest importance
aside from what Dante's mention gives. Yet the two men are mentioned as
naturally as Alexander and Cæsar are mentioned. Evidently they are dwelt
upon at length because Dante felt it his duty to express a peculiar
horror for that fierce pride which could defy its overlord, while at the
same time, and perhaps unwillingly, he could not conceal a certain
shuddering admiration for the lofty courage on which this evil pride was
based.

The point I wish to make is the simplicity with which Dante illustrated
one of the principles on which he lays most stress, by the example of a
man who was of consequence only in the history of the parochial politics
of Florence. Farinata will now live forever as a symbol of the soul;
yet as an historical figure he is dwarfed beside any one of hundreds of
the leaders in our own Revolution and Civil War. Tom Benton, of
Missouri, and Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, were opposed to one
another with a bitterness which surpassed that which rived asunder
Guelph from Ghibellin, or black Guelph from white Guelph. They played
mighty parts in a tragedy more tremendous than any which any mediæval
city ever witnessed or could have witnessed. Each possessed an iron will
and undaunted courage, physical and moral; each led a life of varied
interest and danger, and exercised a power not possible in the career of
the Florentine. One, the champion of the Union, fought for his
principles as unyieldingly as the other fought for what he deemed right
in trying to break up the Union. Each was a colossal figure. Each, when
the forces against which he fought overcame him--for in his latter years
Benton saw the cause of disunion triumph in Missouri, just as Jefferson
Davis lived to see the cause of union triumph in the Nation--fronted an
adverse fate with the frowning defiance, the high heart, and the
stubborn will which Dante has commemorated for all time in his hero who
"held hell in great scorn." Yet a modern poet who endeavored to
illustrate such a point by reference to Benton and Davis would be
uncomfortably conscious that his audience would laugh at him. He would
feel ill at ease, and therefore would convey the impression of being ill
at ease, exactly as he would feel that he was posing, was forced and
unnatural, if he referred to the deeds of the evil heroes of the Paris
Commune as he would without hesitation refer to the many similar but
smaller leaders of riots in the Roman forum.

Dante speaks of a couple of French troubadours, or of a local Sicilian
poet, just as he speaks of Euripides; and quite properly, for they
illustrate as well what he has to teach; but we of to-day could not
possibly speak of a couple of recent French poets or German novelists
in the same connection without having an uncomfortable feeling that we
ought to defend ourselves from possible misapprehension; and therefore
we could not speak of them naturally. When Dante wishes to assail those
guilty of crimes of violence, he in one stanza speaks of the torments
inflicted by divine justice on Attila (coupling him with Pyrrhus and
Sextus Pompey--a sufficiently odd conjunction in itself, by the way),
and in the next stanza mentions the names of a couple of local
highwaymen who had made travel unsafe in particular neighborhoods. The
two highwaymen in question were by no means as important as Jesse James
and Billy the Kid; doubtless they were far less formidable fighting men,
and their adventures were less striking and varied. Yet think of the way
we should feel if a great poet should now arise who would incidentally
illustrate the ferocity of the human heart by allusions both to the
terrible Hunnish "scourge of God" and to the outlaws who in our own
times defied justice in Missouri and New Mexico!

When Dante wishes to illustrate the fierce passions of the human heart,
he may speak of Lycurgus, or of Saul; or he may speak of two local
contemporary captains, victor or vanquished in obscure struggles between
Guelph and Ghibellin; men like Jacopo del Cassero or Buonconte, whom he
mentions as naturally as he does Cyrus or Rehoboam. He is entirely
right! What one among our own writers, however, would be able simply and
naturally to mention Ulrich Dahlgren, or Custer, or Morgan, or Raphael
Semmes, or Marion, or Sumter, as illustrating the qualities shown by
Hannibal, or Rameses, or William the Conqueror, or by Moses or Hercules?
Yet the Guelph and Ghibellin captains of whom Dante speaks were in no
way as important as these American soldiers of the second or third rank.
Dante saw nothing incongruous in treating at length of the qualities of
all of them; he was not thinking of comparing the genius of the
unimportant local leader with the genius of the great sovereign
conquerors of the past--he was thinking only of the qualities of courage
and daring and of the awful horror of death; and when we deal with what
is elemental in the human soul it matters but little whose soul we take.
In the same way he mentions a couple of spendthrifts of Padua and Siena,
who come to violent ends, just as in the preceding canto he had dwelt
upon the tortures undergone by Dionysius and Simon de Montfort, guarded
by Nessus and his fellow centaurs. For some reason he hated the
spendthrifts in question as the Whigs of Revolutionary South Carolina
and New York hated Tarleton, Kruger, Saint Leger, and De Lancey; and to
him there was nothing incongruous in drawing a lesson from one couple of
offenders more than from another. (It would, by the way, be outside my
present purpose to speak of the rather puzzling manner in which Dante
confounds his own hatreds, with those of heaven, and, for instance,
shows a vindictive enjoyment in putting his personal opponent Filippo
Argenti in hell, for no clearly adequate reason.)

When he turns from those whom he is glad to see in hell toward those for
whom he cares, he shows the same delightful power of penetrating through
the externals into the essentials. Cato and Manfred illustrate his point
no better than Belacqua, a contemporary Florentine maker of citherns.
Alas! what poet to-day would dare to illustrate his argument by
introducing Steinway in company with Cato and Manfred! Yet again, when
examples of love are needed, he draws them from the wedding-feast at
Cana, from the actions of Pylades and Orestes, and from the life of a
kindly, honest comb-dealer of Siena who had just died. Could we now link
together Peter Cooper and Pylades, without feeling a sense of
incongruity? He couples Priscian with a politician of local note who had
written an encyclopædia and a lawyer of distinction who had lectured at
Bologna and Oxford; we could not now with such fine unconsciousness
bring Evarts and one of the compilers of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_
into a life comparison.

When Dante deals with the crimes which he most abhorred, simony and
barratry, he flails offenders of his age who were of the same type as
those who in our days flourish by political or commercial corruption;
and he names his offenders, both those just dead and those still living,
and puts them, popes and politicians alike, in hell. There have been
trust magnates and politicians and editors and magazine-writers in our
own country whose lives and deeds were no more edifying than those of
the men who lie in the third and the fifth chasm of the eighth circle of
the Inferno; yet for a poet to name those men would be condemned as an
instance of shocking taste.

One age expresses itself naturally in a form that would be unnatural,
and therefore undesirable, in another age. We do not express ourselves
nowadays in epics at all; and we keep the emotions aroused in us by what
is good or evil in the men of the present in a totally different
compartment from that which holds our emotions concerning what was good
or evil in the men of the past. An imitation of the letter of the times
past, when the spirit has wholly altered, would be worse than useless;
and the very qualities that help to make Dante's poem immortal would, if
copied nowadays, make the copyist ridiculous. Nevertheless, it would be
a good thing if we could, in some measure, achieve the mighty
Florentine's high simplicity of soul, at least to the extent of
recognizing in those around us the eternal qualities which we admire or
condemn in the men who wrought good or evil at any stage in the world's
previous history. Dante's masterpiece is one of the supreme works of
art that the ages have witnessed; but he would have been the last to
wish that it should be treated only as a work of art, or worshiped only
for art's sake, without reference to the dread lessons it teaches
mankind.

/#
     [From _History as Literature and Other Essays_, by Theodore
     Roosevelt. Copyright, 1913, by Charles Scribner's Sons.]
#/



THE REVOLT OF THE UNFIT

NICHOLAS MURRAY BUTLER


THERE are wars and rumors of wars in a portion of the territory occupied
by the doctrine of organic evolution. All is not working smoothly and
well and according to formula. It begins to appear that those men of
science who, having derived the doctrine of organic evolution in its
modern form from observations on earthworms, on climbing-plants, and on
brightly colored birds, and who then straightway applied it blithely to
man and his affairs, have made enemies of no small part of the human
race.

It was all well enough to treat some earthworms, some climbing-plants,
and some brightly colored birds as fit, and others as unfit, to survive;
but when this distinction is extended over human beings and their
economic, social, and political affairs, there is a general pricking-up
of ears. The consciously fit look down on the resulting discussions with
complacent scorn. The consciously unfit rage and roar loudly; while the
unconsciously unfit bestir themselves mightily to overturn the whole
theory upon which the distinction between fitness and unfitness rests.
If any law of nature makes so absurd a distinction as that, then the
offending and obnoxious law must be repealed, and that quickly.

The trouble appears to arise primarily from the fact that man does not
like what may be termed his evolutionary poor relations. He is willing
enough to read about earthworms and climbing-plants and brightly colored
birds, but he does not want nature to be making leaps from any of these
to him.

The earthworm, which, not being adapted to its surroundings, soon dies
unhonored and unsung, passes peacefully out of life without either a
coroner's inquest, an indictment for earthworm slaughter, a legislative
proposal for the future protection of earthworms, or even a new society
for the reform of the social and economic state of the earthworms that
are left. Even the quasi-intelligent climbing-plant and the brightly
colored bird, humanly vain, find an equally inconspicuous fate awaiting
them. This is the way nature operates when unimpeded or unchallenged by
the powerful manifestations of human revolt or human revenge. Of course
if man understood the place assigned to him in nature by the doctrine of
organic evolution as well as the earthworm, the climbing-plant, and the
brightly colored bird understand theirs, he, too, like them, would
submit to nature's processes and decrees without a protest. As a matter
of logic, no doubt he ought to; but after all these centuries, it is
still a far cry from logic to life.

In fact, man, unless he is consciously and admittedly fit, revolts
against the implication of the doctrine of evolution, and objects both
to being considered unfit to survive and succeed, and to being forced to
accept the only fate which nature offers to those who are unfit for
survival and success. Indeed, he manifests with amazing pertinacity what
Schopenhauer used to call "the will to live," and considerations and
arguments based on adaptability to environment have no weight with him.
So much the worse for environment, he cries; and straightway sets out to
prove it.

On the other hand, those humans who are classed by the doctrine of
evolution as fit, exhibit a most disconcerting satisfaction with things
as they are. The fit make no conscious struggle for existence. They do
not have to. Being fit, they survive _ipso facto_. Thus does the
doctrine of evolution, like a playful kitten, merrily pursue its tail
with rapturous delight. The fit survive; those survive who are fit.
Nothing could be more simple.

Those who are not adapted to the conditions that surround them, however,
rebel against the fate of the earthworm and the climbing-plant and the
brightly colored bird, and engage in a conscious struggle for existence
and for success in that existence despite their inappropriate
environment. Statutes can be repealed or amended; why not laws of nature
as well? Those human beings who are unfit have, it must be admitted, one
great, though perhaps temporary, advantage over the laws of nature; for
the laws of nature have not yet been granted suffrage, and the organized
unfit can always lead a large majority to the polls. So soon as
knowledge of this fact becomes common property, the laws of nature will
have a bad quarter of an hour in more countries than one.

The revolt of the unfit primarily takes the form of attempts to lessen
and to limit competition, which is instinctively felt, and with reason,
to be part of the struggle for existence and for success. The
inequalities which nature makes, and without which the process of
evolution could not go on, the unfit propose to smooth away and to wipe
out by that magic fiat of collective human will called legislation. The
great struggle between the gods of Olympus and the Titans, which the
ancient sculptors so loved to picture, was child's play compared with
the struggle between the laws of nature and the laws of man which the
civilized world is apparently soon to be invited to witness. This
struggle will bear a little examination, and it may be that the laws of
nature, as the doctrine of evolution conceives and states them, will not
have everything their own way.

Professor Huxley, whose orthodoxy as an evolutionist will hardly be
questioned, made a suggestion of this kind in his Romanes lecture as
long ago as 1893. He called attention then to the fact that there is a
fallacy in the notion that because, on the whole, animals and plants
have advanced in perfection of organization by means of the struggle for
existence and the consequent survival of the fittest, therefore, men as
social and ethical beings must depend upon the same process to help them
to perfection. As Professor Huxley suggests, this fallacy doubtless has
its origin in the ambiguity of the phrase "survival of the fittest." One
jumps to the conclusion that fittest means best; whereas, of course, it
has in it no moral element whatever. The doctrine of evolution uses the
term fitness in a hard and stern sense. Nothing more is meant by it than
a measure of adaptation to surrounding conditions. Into this conception
of fitness there enters no element of beauty, no element of morality, no
element of progress toward an ideal. Fitness is a cold fact
ascertainable with almost mathematical certainty.

We now begin to catch sight of the real significance of this struggle
between the laws of nature and the laws of man. From one point of view
the struggle is hopeless from the start; from another it is full of
promise. If it be true that man really proposes to halt the laws of
nature by his legislation, then the struggle is hopeless. It is only a
question of time when the laws of nature will have their way. If, on the
other hand, the struggle between the laws of nature and the laws of man
is in reality a mock struggle, and the supposed combat merely an
exhibition of evolutionary boxing, then we may find a clew to what is
really going on.

It might be worth while, for example, to follow up the suggestion that
in looking back over the whole series of products of organic evolution,
the real successes and permanences of life are to be found among those
species that have been able to institute something like what we call a
social system. Wherever an individual insists upon treating himself as
an end in himself, and all other individuals as his actual or potential
competitors or enemies, then the fate of the earthworm, the
climbing-plant, and the brightly colored bird is sure to be his; for he
has brought himself under the jurisdiction of one of nature's laws, and
sooner or later he must succumb to that law of nature, and in the
struggle for existence his place will be marked out for him by it with
unerring precision. If, however, he has developed so far as to have
risen to the lofty height of human sympathy, and thereby has learned to
transcend his individuality and to make himself a member of a larger
whole, he may then save himself from the extinction which follows
inevitably upon proved unfitness in the individual struggle for
existence.

So soon as the individual has something to give, there will be those who
have something to give to him, and he elevates himself above this
relentless law with its inexorable punishments for the unfit. At that
point, when individuals begin to give each to the other, then their
mutual co-operation and interdependence build human society, and
participation in that society changes the whole character of the human
struggle. Nevertheless, large numbers of human beings carry with them
into social and political relations the traditions and instincts of the
old individualistic struggle for existence, with the laws of organic
evolution pointing grimly to their several destinies. These are not able
to realize that moral elements, and what we call progress toward an end
or ideal, are not found under the operation of the law of natural
selection, but have to be discovered elsewhere and added to it. Beauty,
morality, progress have other lurking-places than in the struggle for
existence, and they have for their sponsors other laws than that of
natural selection. You will read the pages of Darwin and of Herbert
Spencer in vain for any indication of how the Parthenon was produced,
how the Sistine Madonna, how the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven, how the
_Divine Comedy_, or _Hamlet_ or _Faust_. There are many mysteries left
in the world, thank God, and these are some of them.

The escape of genius from the cloud-covered mountain-tops of the unknown
into human society has not yet been accounted for. Even Rousseau made a
mistake. When he was writing the _Contrat social_ it is recorded that
his attention was favorably attracted by the island of Corsica. He,
being engaged in the process of finding out how to repeal the laws of
man by the laws of nature, spoke of Corsica as the one country in Europe
that seemed to him capable of legislation. This led him to add: "I have
a presentiment that some day this little island will astonish Europe."
It was not long before Corsica did astonish Europe, but not by any
capacity for legislation. As some clever person has said, it let loose
Napoleon. We know nothing more of the origin and advent of genius than
that.

Perhaps we should comprehend these things better were it not for the
persistence of the superstition that human beings habitually think.
There is no more persistent superstition than this. Linnæus helped it on
to an undeserved permanence when he devised the name _Homo sapiens_ for
the highest species of the order primates. That was the quintessence of
complimentary nomenclature. Of course human beings as such do not think.
A real thinker is one of the rarest things in nature. He comes only at
long intervals in human history, and when he does come, he is often
astonishingly unwelcome. Indeed, he is sometimes speedily sent the way
of the unfit and unprotesting earthworm. Emerson understood this, as he
understood so many other of the deep things of life. For he wrote:
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then
all things are at risk."

The plain fact is that man is not ruled by thinking. When man thinks he
thinks, he usually merely feels; and his instincts and feelings are
powerful precisely in proportion as they are irrational. Reason reveals
the other side, and a knowledge of the other side is fatal to the
driving power of a prejudice. Prejudices have their important uses, but
it is well to try not to mix them up with principles.

The underlying principle in the widespread and ominous revolt of the
unfit is that moral considerations must outweigh the mere blind struggle
for existence in human affairs.

It is to this fact that we must hold fast if we would understand the
world of to-day, and still more the world of to-morrow. The purpose of
the revolt of the unfit is to substitute interdependence on a higher
plane for the struggle for existence on a lower one. Who dares attempt
to picture what will happen if this revolt shall not succeed?

These are problems full of fascination. In one form or another they will
persist as long as humanity itself. There is only one way of getting rid
of them, and that is so charmingly and wittily pointed out by Robert
Louis Stevenson in his fable, "The Four Reformers," that I wish to quote
it:

"Four reformers met under a bramble-bush. They were all agreed the world
must be changed. 'We must abolish property,' said one.

"'We must abolish marriage,' said the second.

"'We must abolish God,' said the third.

"'I wish we could abolish work,' said the fourth.

"'Do not let us get beyond practical politics,' said the first. 'The
first thing is to reduce men to a common level.'

"'The first thing,' said the second, 'is to give freedom to the sexes.'

"'The first thing,' said the third, 'is to find out how to do it.'

"'The first step,' said the first, 'is to abolish the Bible.'

"'The first thing,' said the second, 'is to abolish the laws.'

'"The first thing,' said the third, 'is to abolish mankind.'"

/#
     [From _Why Should We Change Our Form of Government_, by Nicholas
     Murray Butler. Copyright, 1912, by Charles Scribner's Sons.]
#/



ON TRANSLATING THE ODES OF HORACE

W. P. TRENT


IN a letter written on August 21, 1703, to Robert Harley, afterward Earl
of Oxford and Prime Minister, by Dr. George Hickes, the famous scholar
and non-juror, there is a reference to "old Dr. Biram Eaton who has read
Horace over, as they tell me, many hundred times, oftener, I fear, than
he has read the Gospels." Dr. Biram Eaton has escaped an article in the
_Dictionary of National Biography_, and, so far as I know, he has never
been reckoned by Horatians among their patron saints. In view of the
slur cast upon him by Dr. Hickes I should like to propose his
canonization, but I should much prefer to lay a wager that he found time
between his readings to try to turn some of the odes of his favorite
writer into English verses, probably into couplets resembling those of
Dryden. And I should also be willing to wager that before and after
making each of his versions, he gave expression, in some form or other,
to the proverbial statement that to attempt to translate Horace is to
attempt the impossible.

Perhaps we owe to this proverbial impossibility the fact that the
translator of Horace is always with us. A living antinomy, he writes a
modest preface; then exclaiming in the words of his master, _"Nil
mortalibus ardui est,"_ he tries to scale very heaven in his folly, to
rush blindly _per vetitum nefas_. But because he has loved much,
therefore is much forgiven him. To love Horace and not attempt to
translate him would be to flout that principle of altruism in which
some modern thinkers have discovered, more poetically perhaps than
philosophically, the motive force of civilization. "We love Horace, and
hence we must try to set him forth in a way to make others love him," is
what all translators, it would seem, say to themselves, consciously or
unconsciously, when they decide to publish their respective renditions.
And who shall blame them? Where is the critic competent to judge their
work, who has not himself listened to the Siren's song, if but for a
moment in his youth, who has not a version of some ode of Horace hid
away among his papers, the memory of which will doubtless forever
prevent him from flinging a stone at any fellow-offender?

It is not only impossible to translate Horace adequately, but it is
impossible to explain satisfactorily the causes of his unbounded
popularity--a popularity illustrated by the fact that when that
well-known group of American book-lovers, the Bibliophile Society, were
seeking to determine what great man of letters they would first honor by
issuing one or more of his works in sumptuous form, they chose--not an
author of their own day or nation or language--but a writer dead nearly
two thousand years, of alien race and tongue, spokesman of a
civilization remote and strange, the Horace of the immortal Odes. Yet
admirers of Lucretius and of Catullus tell us very plainly and
insistently that this Horace of the Odes is not a great poet. We listen
respectfully to the charge and somehow we do not seem greatly to resent
it; we merely read the Odes, if possible, more diligently and
affectionately--not, it is true, in the splendid Bibliophile volumes,
but in some well-worn pocket edition that has accompanied us on our
journeys, or, like one I own, has helped us to while away the hours on a
deer stand, through which the deer, as shy as the fawn with which the
poet compared Chloë, simply would not run. If we own such a pocket
volume, we leave our critical faculties in abeyance when Dante, in the
_Inferno_, introduces Horace to us along with Homer and Ovid and Lucan;
for do not our hearts tell us that in the truest sense of the phrase, he
is worthy to walk with the greatest of this mediævally assorted company?
We feel sure that Virgil must have loved him as a man; we have proof
that Milton admired him as a poet. We deny to him "the grand manner,"
but we attribute to him every charm. When we seek to analyze this charm,
we are left with the suspicion that, after we have pointed out many of
its elements, such as humor, vivacity, kindliness, sententiousness, and
the like, there are as many others, equally potent but more subtle, that
escape us altogether. So we turn the hackneyed saying into "the charm is
the man," and contentedly exchange analysis for enjoyment. And yet we
are persuaded that no author is more worthy of the painstaking, detailed
study characteristic of modern scholarship than is this same Epicurean
poet, who so utterly defies analysis and would be the first, were he not
but "dust and a shade," to smile at our ponderous erudition. We feel
that the scholar who shall devote the best years of his life to studying
the influence of Horace upon subsequent writers in the chief literatures
and to collecting the tributes that have been paid to his genius by the
great and worthy of all lands and ages, will deserve sincere
benedictions. We conclude, in short, that that exquisite epithet, "the
well-beloved," so inappropriately bestowed upon the worthless and
flippant French King, belongs to Horace, and to Horace alone, _jure
divino_.

But this praise of Horace and this defense of his translators fails to
justify or explain the writing of this paper. An honest confession being
good for the soul, I will confess that the remarks that follow were
first employed to introduce some versions of selected Odes I was once
rash enough to publish. It is not a good sportsman that shuts his eyes
and bangs away with both barrels at a flock of birds, and I now doubt
whether I was wise in trying to bring down readers, if not with my
verse-barrel, at least with my prose-barrel. Being older, I use at
present only one barrel at a time and, perhaps for the same reason, I am
wont to try the prose-barrel. And fortunately I can apply to the
comments I intend to make on Horatian translators the quotation I used
in order to mollify irate readers of my own verse renderings. It came
from a once popular, now forgotten poet, the Rev. John Pomfret, and it
ran as follows:--"It will be to little purpose, the Author presumes, to
offer any reasons why the following POEMS appear in public; for it is
ten to one whether he gives the true, and if he does, it is much greater
odds whether the gentle reader is so courteous as to believe him."

So much has been written on the methods of Horace's translators, and so
much remains to be written, that it is hard to determine where to begin;
but perhaps the preface of the late Professor Conington to his
well-known translation of the Odes will furnish a proper point of
departure. Few persons, whether translators or readers, are likely to
object to Conington's first premise that the translator ought to aim at
"some kind of metrical conformity to his original." To reproduce an
original Sapphic or Alcaic stanza in blank verse, or in the couplets of
Pope, is at once to repel the reader who knows Horace well, and to give
the reader who is unacquainted with Latin lyric poetry a totally
erroneous conception of the metrical and rhythmical methods of the poet.
To render a compressed Latin verse by a diffuse English one is to do
injustice, as Conington observes, to the sententiousness for which
Horace is justly celebrated, although the English scholar, had he
written after the appearance of Mr. Gladstone's attempt to render the
Odes, might with propriety have added that the translator should not,
in his avoidance of diffuseness, be seduced by the facility of the
octosyllabic couplet. To translate Horace's odes into anything but
quatrains, except on occasions, is also to offend the meticulous
Horatian and to mislead any reader who seeks to know the poet through an
English rendering. It would seem, however, that when Professor Conington
insisted that an English measure once adopted for the Alcaic must be
used for every ode in which Horace employed the stanza just named, he
went far toward hampering the translator, who, despite his proneness to
offend, has his rights. That such uniformity ought to be aimed at, and
that it will, as a rule, be aimed at, is doubtless true; but there is an
element of the problem with which Conington does not seem sufficiently
to have reckoned.

This is rhyme, which he assumed to be necessary to a successful
rendition of an ode of Horace. A particular stanza not employing rhyme
may probably be used without resulting loss in translating every ode
written in a special form. Yet this may not be the case with a stanza
employing rhymes, if the translator aim, as he should, at a fairly,
though not an awkwardly literal rendering of the language of his
original. There will necessarily be coincidences of sound in a literal
prose version of a Latin stanza that will suggest a definite and
advantageous arrangement of rhymes for a poetical version. To adopt a
certain English stanza in which to render a certain Latin stanza
wherever it occurs, is to do away with this natural advantage, which
presents itself oftener than might at first be supposed.

Concrete examples will serve to make my meaning clear. The third ode of
the first book, the admirable "Sic te diva potens Cypri," is written in
what is called the Second Asclepiad meter; so is the delightful ninth
ode of the third book, the "Donec gratus eram." We will assume that for
the first of these odes the translator has chosen a quatrain with
alternating rhymes (a, b, a, b). Following Professor Conington's rule of
uniformity, he must employ the same stanza for the second of the two
odes, which, by the way, Conington himself did not do, for reasons which
he gave at length. Now the fifth stanza of the "Donec gratus eram" runs
as follows:--

/p
    "Quid si prisca redit Venus
       Diductosque jugo cogit aëneo,
     Si flava excutitur Chloë
       Rejectaeque patet janua Lydiae?"
p/

This may be rendered in prose:--

"What if the former Love return and join with brazen yoke the parted
ones, if yellow-haired Chloë be shaken off, and the door stand open for
rejected Lydia?"

If my memory does not deceive me, it was this stanza, and especially one
word in its last verse, that determined the arrangement of rhymes in a
version I attempted years ago, "Consule Planco." This verse seemed to
run inevitably into

/p
    "And open stand for Lydia the _door_."
p/

It needed but a moment to detect in the first verse of the stanza a
possible rhyme-word. The syllable _re_ of _redit_ furnished _more_, not
the most apt of rhymes with _door_, but still sufficient, as things go
with amateur translators, and with a perhaps pardonable tautology I
wrote

/p
    "What if the former Love once more
     Return--"
p/

Two other rhymes were found with little difficulty in the _di_ of
_diductos_ and in _excutitur_, which suggested _wide_ and _cast aside_,
and the whole stanza, omitting strictly metrical considerations,
appeared, or rather might have appeared, for I have changed it slightly,
as follows:--

/p
    "What if the former Love once more
     Return and yoke the sweethearts parted wide,
     If fair-haired Chloë be cast aside,
     And open stand for Lydia the door?"
p/

This stanza seemed to have the merit of almost complete literalness,
since it omitted only two epithets, and I thought it had no unpardonable
defects of rhythm and diction. So I took it as a model, and with little
difficulty translated the entire ode--with what success I should not say
and others need not inquire.

That rhymes and their position in the stanza are often determined for
the translator by his original or else by a prose rendering of that
original seems also to be shown by the following version of the closing
ode of the first book (Carm. xxxviii)--the graceful "Persicos odi":--

/p
    "I hate your Persian trappings, boy,
     Your linden-woven crowns annoy,
     Cease searching for the spot where blows
        The lingering rose.

    "To simple myrtle nothing add;
     The myrtle misbecomes, my lad,
     Nor thee nor me drinking my wine
       'Neath close-grown vine."
p/

Here "puer," boy, and "Displicent," displease or annoy, seem to
determine, not merely the first rhyme, but the rhyme arrangement (a, a),
and it needs but a glance at the close of the first stanza of the
original to show that another word rhyming with "boy" would be hard to
obtain. It follows that, if we are to have a quatrain, the third and
fourth verses should probably be made to rhyme (b, b), and it is not
difficult to comply with this requirement, or to cast the second stanza
in the mold of the first. It is, alas! too true that no equivalent to
"blows" will be found in Horace, that "Sedulus curo" has been
unceremoniously thrown aside, that the poet does not specifically
mention "wine" as the beverage he liked to drink in his rustic arbor.
But a "rose," which Horace does mention, certainly "blows" or blooms
very often in English verse; it is not too far-fetched to get "nothing
add" and "lad" out of "nihil allabores" and "ministrum"; and "vine"
("vite") has suggested "wine" to many generations of poets. But it is
rhyme suggestions and their influence upon the choice of stanzaic form
that have occasioned this mild protest against Professor Conington's
precepts of rigid stanzaic conformity. I am convinced, from the above
examples and from many more, not only that uniformity of stanza is not
to be strictly insisted upon when one is employing rhymes, but also that
translators should search more diligently than they appear to do for the
rhyme suggestions implicit in so many Horatian stanzas.

Upon other points it is easier to agree with Conington. For most of the
odes the iambic movement natural to English is preferable, as Milton may
be held to have perceived. He abandoned rhyme in his celebrated version
of the "Quis multa gracilis" (i., v.), and hence he had an excellent
opportunity to indulge in experiments in so-called logaœdic verse.
But he clung to the iambic movement, and the fact is significant,
although not to be pressed, since he gave us no other rendering of an
entire ode. Here too, however, I must plead for a careful study of each
ode by the would-be translator, for there seem to be cases in which it
would be almost disastrous to attempt a version in iambics. Such a case
is presented by the beautiful "Diffugere nives" (iv., vii.). The iambic
renderings of Professor Conington and Sir Theodore Martin seem to stray
far from the original movement--as far as the former's "'No 'scaping
death' proclaims the year" does from the diction of Horace or of any
other good poet. It is true that English dactyls are dangerous things,
especially in translations, where the padding or packing which is
natural to the measure when employed in English, is increased by the
padding inevitably introduced into a translation from a synthetic into
an analytic language. Yet the dactylic movement of the First
Archilochian, in which the "Diffugere nives" is written, is hardly
without great loss to be represented by any use of English iambics. It
presents more difficulty than the introduction of something resembling
the movement of dactylic hexameters proper into our blank verse.

When the translator makes up his mind to attempt a close approximation
to the Horatian meter, it would seem that he should eschew the use of
rhyme as likely to operate against that effect of likeness to the
original which he is striving to secure. But, since the use of rhyme in
lyric poetry appears, as Conington held, to be essential at present if
the English version is to be acceptable as poetry, this close
approximation can be desirable in a few special cases only. It will not
do to dogmatize on such matters, but it may be safely said that no poet,
not even Milton or Whitman, has yet accustomed the English or the
American ear to the use of rhymeless verse in lyrical poetry. Here and
there a successful rhymeless lyric, such as Collins's "Ode to Evening"
and Tennyson's "Alcaics" on Milton, shows us that rhymeless stanzas may
occasionally be used for lyric purposes with good effect; but thus far
those translators of Horace who have made a practice of eschewing rhyme
have failed, as a rule, like the first Lord Lytton,[10] to give us
versions that charm. Yet charm is what the translator of Horace should
chiefly endeavor to convey.

I am still more confident that Conington was right when he insisted that
the English rendering should be confined "within the same number of
lines as the Latin." He was surely right when he taxed Sir Theodore
Martin, who so frequently violated this rule, with an exuberance that is
totally at variance with the severity of the classics. Such exuberance
is almost certain to result if the translator abandon the strict number
of the lines into which the Roman poet compressed his thought. It
results, too, from the use of stanzas of over four verses each. There is
no other rule of translating that will so effectively insure a
successful retention of the diction of the original as this of the line
for line rendering, whenever such rendering is possible. And that the
diction and the thought of the poet should be more closely followed than
is usually the case, admits of no manner of doubt. We have already seen
that a close scrutiny of the Latin will often suggest an almost literal
rendering of the thought and diction. Such a rendering is more desired
by the reader who is familiar with Horace than by the reader who is not,
but it will be both pleasing and serviceable to the latter, if the
quality of literalness be not too slavishly obtained. Metrical
considerations and general smoothness ought, as a matter of course, to
weigh with every translator, but surely they ought not to outweigh
accurate rendering of diction and thought, especially the diction and
thought of a poet so felicitous as Horace in his phrasing, and so just
and happy in his observation of life.

In this connection I am not sure but that Conington went too far when
he recommended the Horatian translator to hold by the diction of our own
Augustan period. That the Age of Pope corresponds in many ways with that
of Horace is true enough, and the student of the poetry of the
eighteenth century who cares at all for the poets he studies is almost
sure to be an admirer of the "Roman bard" whom Pope imitated. But the
diction of Horace does not strike one as stilted, while that of Pope
often does; and for a translator of our own days to employ a diction
that seems in any way stilted is fatal not merely to the popularity and
hence to the present effectiveness of his work, but also, in all
probability, to its intrinsic value. There is a good deal of the
commonplace also in the poetry produced in the eighteenth century; but
commonplace the translator of Horace can least afford to be. Horace
himself may approach dangerously near the commonplace, yet he seems
always to miss it by a dexterous and graceful turn. The translator,
running after, will miss this turn sufficiently often, as it is; he
cannot, therefore, afford to steep himself in a literature that has a
tendency to the commonplace. But just as little can he afford to steep
himself in the Romantic Poets from Shelley to Swinburne. A translation,
whether from the Greek or the Latin, imbibing the luxuriance of
imagination and phrasing characteristic of these modern poets, may
satisfy a reader still in his intellectual teens, but the reader who
makes use of a translation of Horace is likely to have passed out of
that period of immaturity. It may be heretical, but I fancy that the
translator of Horace who steeps himself in Keats or Tennyson, will be
even less likely to give us the ideal rendering than the translator who
steeps himself in Pope. Luxuriance and elegance may at times be more
displeasing than excessive polish and point.

To mention the eighteenth century is to bring up the thought of
Horatian paraphrases. A successful paraphrase is sometimes better as
poetry than a good poetical translation, and it not infrequently conveys
a juster idea of the spirit of Horace. It is almost needless to praise
the work in this kind of Mr. Austin Dobson and of the late Eugene Field.
But a paraphrase, however good, can never be entirely satisfying either
to the reader that knows Horace or to the reader that desires to know
him. Nor can a prose version be thoroughly satisfactory. What is wanted
is not merely the drift of the poet's thought, but, as near as may be,
what he actually sang. The paraphrase may sing, and the prose version
may give us the thought in nearly equivalent words, which may carry
along with them not a little of the poet's feeling; but neither answers
all our requirements as well as a good rendering in verse may do--such a
rendering, for example, as that which the late Goldwin Smith gave of the
"Cœlo tonantem" (iii., v.)--yet there is surely room for all these
forms of approach to a poet who is, paradoxically enough, at one and the
same time, the most approachable and the most unapproachable of writers.

But one could write forever upon the topic of poetical translation in
general, and of the translation of Horace's odes in particular. It is a
subject about which people will differ to the end of time; a subject the
principles of which will never be thoroughly exemplified in practice.
Still, it always seems to fascinate those who discuss it, and they have
a way of hoping that what they have said about it will not be without
value to those who want to read about it. "Hope springs eternal in the
human breast," said the poet who also wrote of his great master lines
that have not been surpassed in their kind:--

/p
    "Horace still charms with graceful negligence,
     And without method talks us into sense,
     Will like a friend familiarly convey,
     The truest notions in the easiest way."
p/

       *       *       *       *       *

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

at the rate of half a milion=>at the rate of half a million

cruel discipine, and arbitrary power=>cruel discipline, and arbitrary
power

to to speak=>so to speak

which examples of the classic reportory=>which examples of the classic
repertory

Maitre Pathelin=>Maître Pathelin

Emile Augier=>Émile Augier {2}

       *       *       *       *       *


FOOTNOTES:

[1] "In Latin and French hath many soueraine wittes had great delyte to
endite, and have many noble thinges fulfilde, but certes there ben some
that speaken their poisye in French, of which speche the Frenchmen have
as good a fantasye as we have in hearying of Frenchmen's
Englishe."--_Chaucer's Testament of Love._

[2] "Holinshed, in his Chronicle, observes, 'afterwards, also, by
deligent travell of Geffry Chaucer and of John Gowre, in the time of
Richard the Second, and after them of John Scogan and John Lydgate,
monke of Berrie, our said toong was brought to an excellent passe,
notwithstanding that it never came unto the type of perfection until the
time of Queen Elizabeth, wherein John Jewell, Bishop of Sarum, John Fox,
and sundrie learned and excellent writers, have fully accomplished the
ornature of the same, to their great praise and immortal commendation.'"

[3] "Live ever sweete booke; the simple image of his gentle witt, and
the golden-pillar of his noble courage; and ever notify unto the world
that thy writer was the secretary of eloquence, the breath of the muses,
the honey-bee of the daintyest flowers of witt and arte, the pith of
morale and intellectual virtues, the arme of Bellona in the field, the
tonge of Suada in the chamber, the sprite of Practise in esse, and the
paragon of excellency in print."--_Harvey, Pierce's Supererogation._

[4]

/p
    "Thorow earth and waters deepe,
       The pen by skill doth passe:
     And featly nyps the worldes abuse,
       And shoes us in a glasse,
     The vertu and the vice
       Of every wight alyve;
     The honey comb that bee doth make
       Is not so sweet in hyve,
     As are the golden leves
       That drop from poet's head!
     Which doth surmount our common talke
       As farre as dross doth lead."

     --_Churchyard._
p/


[5] From the _Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1869.

[6] One of Mr. Lincoln's neatest strokes of humor was his treatment of
this gentleman when a laudable curiosity induced him to be presented to
the President of the Broken Bubble. Mr. Lincoln persisted in calling him
Mr. Partington. Surely the refinement of good-breeding could go no
further. Giving the young man his real name (already notorious in the
newspapers) would have made his visit an insult. Had Henri IV. done
this, it would have been famous.

[7] June 30, 1895.

[8] 1876.

[9] This essay appeared originally in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for May,
1883. During the thirty years which have elapsed since it was written
the manifestations of the colonial spirit then apparent in the United
States have not only altered in character but, I am glad to say, have
weakened, diminished, and become less noticeable. Since 1883, also,
there has been much achieved by Americans in Art and Literature, in
painting, in sculpture, in music, and particularly in architecture.
Success in all these fields has, with few exceptions, been won by men
working in the spirit which is not colonial, but which it was the
purpose of this essay to inculcate as the true one to which alone we
could look for fine and enduring achievement. I have called attention to
the date at which the essay was written in order that those who read it
may remember that it applies in certain points to the conditions of
thirty years ago and not to those of the present day.

[10] Just as I am revising these comments, the two volumes of the Earl
of Lytton's admirable biography of his grandfather find themselves on my
table. As was to be expected, they contain several interesting
references to Horace. "He is the model for popular lyrics, and certainly
the greatest lyrist extant." Again--"Observe how wonderfully he
compresses and studies terseness, as if afraid to bore an impatient,
idle audience; secondly, when he selects his picture, how it stands
out--Cleopatra's flight, the speech of Regulus, the vision of Hades in
the ode on his escape from the tree, &c."





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