IRLF 
 
FRED M. DEW ITT 
 
 BOOKSELLKU 
 
 1000 TKI.KORAPH AVE. 
 
 OAKI.ANIi. dAL. 
 
STUDIES, 
 
 LITERARY AND SOCIAL: 
 
 BY 
 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
 FIRST SERIES. 
 
 INDIANAPOLIS: 
 
 THE BOWEN-MERRILL CO. 
 
 1891. 
 
Copyright, 1891, 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON. 
 
P: 
 
 WM 
 
 57 
 1811 
 
 PREFACE: 
 
 This volume has been made partly out of selections from a 
 series of Class Lectures at the Peabody Institute, in Balti 
 more, and partly from articles contributed to several Ameri 
 can Reviews during the last twenty years. Written in the 
 intervals of business engrossments, they lay no claim to very 
 earnest thoughtfulness, but are merely running observations 
 upon several subjects of literary and social interest, and are 
 submitted to the public with whatever degree of modesty may 
 be regarded consistent with such submission at all. 
 
 Baltimore y September i8gi. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE SCHOOLMASTER . I 
 
 THE LEGAL PROFESSION 31 
 
 BELISARIUS . * 62 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE .... 106 
 
 LOUISE, BARONNE DE ST^EL-HOLSTEIN . . . 130 
 
 PRE-AMER1CAN PHILOSOPHY ...... 143 
 
 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY 163 
 
 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE . . 184 
 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS . . . . .214 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 PROFESSIONAL men are generally representa 
 tive. The priest and the magistrate, born and 
 reared among the people, are like the constituency 
 which has elevated and which sustains them. To 
 this rule the Schoolmaster is an exception. 
 
 Not but what there are many and we could 
 wish there were more, who truly dignify their 
 calling, grace the society in which they move, and 
 worthily represent its love of knowledge, as the 
 priest does its love of virtue, and the magistrate its 
 love of justice. We are not speaking of these, 
 however, but of the general class; and taking them 
 as a class, it were indeed a pity for society if they 
 did represent it. Rather, it is a pity for society 
 that in this case, as in many others, it will not suf 
 fer itself to be represented, but is ever taking pains 
 to avert such an odium. Whenever the schoolroom 
 has a new accession from society, the latter for a 
 while regards him with whatever of interest there 
 may be in a sort of kindly regret. Not that it is 
 going to cut his acquaintance; but that it foresees 
 and fore-ordains that, if not at once, at some not 
 
2 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 very distant day, he is to take on a new being, dif 
 ferent from its own. Dr. Arnold used to say that a 
 man could not teach successfully more than about 
 fifteen years. This seems strange upon the first view ; 
 but it seemed to him to be allowing full time for a man 
 of good gifts to become disqualified for the very busi 
 ness which he has been arduously pursuing. 
 
 Yet the Schoolmaster is no more independent of 
 society than other men. He is just such an official 
 as society desires him to be, and as it requires him 
 to be. He is the same functionary everywhere, 
 being, in his class representation, contemporary 
 with all times, dwelling in all countries. Freemas 
 onry, with all its traditions of antiquity, is young, 
 compared with the Schoolmaster. For, Freemason 
 ry nobody asserts to be older than Solomon s time; 
 while the Schoolmaster, such as we are considering, 
 was already an old man and set in his ways before 
 Solomon was born. Primitive society made him 
 what he was, and its posterity has kept him such 
 ever since. In this ever-changing world, society 
 has always seemed to desire to keep something 
 which does not and cannot change ; and they have 
 it by their own creation in the Schoolmaster. He is 
 like the Wandering Jew, who, though ever roaming 
 up and down, and ever weary and forlorn, must con 
 tinue to be the same old fellow, from the covering 
 on his head down to the very nails in his shoes. 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 3 
 
 It is too subtle a matter to be determined why 
 society desires in such a case to have itself so mis 
 represented. There is probably no man living, and 
 no man once living, now dead, who could satisfact 
 orily explain this phenomenon. It is to be regretted 
 that Solomon did not leave us a few droppings of 
 his wisdom upon the subject. As, if the claim of 
 Lodge be good, he had time to set up Freemasonry, 
 one would think that he, or at least he and Hiram 
 together, might have founded one good common 
 school. But, so far as we know, he did not venture 
 upon even an opinion at least any written opinion. 
 He may have alluded cursorily to the schools of his 
 time in some witching moment of confidence, and 
 lamented with a few friends the uselessness of any 
 attempts at the reformation of such a specimen of 
 the vanities of life. But he put nothing upon paper. 
 Let us not seek to solve what was too difficult for 
 Solomon, and without considering why society has 
 made the Schoolmaster what he is, let us contemplate 
 him as he is, and, in as good humor as possible, 
 muse upon the hopelessness of his ever changing, 
 without the consent of society, either his character 
 or his ways. Then we may conclude by asking for 
 this consent, and suggesting that if it is ever to be 
 granted, it is high time, for other sakes besides soci 
 ety s, that it were granted now. 
 
 When we consider the length of time for which 
 
4 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 our youths are trusted to this class of persons for 
 the development of their intellects, and very often, 
 especially where they reside with their teachers, for 
 the formation of their characters, we ought, it would 
 seem, to conclude that, if such a thing were possi 
 ble, they should be at least up to the level of ordi 
 nary intelligence, honesty and gentility. In the 
 matter of the first of these qualifications, so far as 
 concerns one of the sources of knowledge, there is 
 no occasion for great complaint, if any person 
 should be inclined, even for reasonable cause, to 
 complain at all. The Schoolmaster is not usually 
 without sufficient acquaintance with books; that is, 
 with text-books, in the ordinary curricula of schools. 
 He knows them, and he knows them by heart. He 
 can tell you the very page, the very number of the 
 problem, or the section. If he have the gift of im 
 parting; and (what is difficult to avoid) if he do 
 not lose that gift by the very habit of using it, a boy 
 may be carried successfully through these text-books 
 in reasonable time. We must, therefore, not fall 
 out with the Schoolmaster for the want of a sufficient 
 intelligence of books. We must do him justice as 
 we go along, and the more especially because, get 
 ting his bad qualities from ourselves, he gets this 
 one good in spite of ourselves. Yes, with his text 
 books, he is entirely at home. Take him in Arith 
 metic. He is perfect. He knows from units, tens, 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 5 
 
 thousands, through and through, past the Men work 
 ing on the Wall, past the Hare and the Greyhound, 
 past the Horseshoe, and down to the very last page 
 where the hunter is pointing his gun with unerring 
 precision at the squirrel that sits so perpendicularly 
 on the tip-top end of the tip-top leaf of the tree. 
 Take him in grammar. He is familiar with every 
 thing from what is your name?, and what is the 
 name of the State in which you live?, to those re 
 mote regions which none but he and the man who 
 made the bock have the temerity to explore. Take 
 him in Geography. He has it all from the Capital 
 of the United States, down to the most nasal or the 
 most sneezy of names borne by the most insignifi 
 cant and squalid of Chinese or Russian villages. A 
 mere man of the world might better not encounter 
 him on Arithmetic, Grammar and Geography. He 
 has been over that ground so many thousands of 
 times that he can go over it by night as well as by 
 day, backwards as well as forwards, walking or 
 running. 
 
 But we are to remember that instruction, to be 
 just and complete, must come from other sources 
 besides books, especially text-books. Let us see 
 how this interesting person will appear now. Not 
 to advantage, we fear. After some years of travel 
 on this beaten track, which, though not large, is 
 endless because it is round, he is apt to lose his 
 
6 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 way, or move in gyrations whenever he gets upon 
 another. He finds it to be thus full soon : besides, 
 he meets so many persons who obstruct yet further 
 his difficult journeyings by smiles or stares, that, 
 being a modest, not to say a sheepish man, he gets 
 himself speedily back again to the old ring where 
 there are no hindrances to walk or run. In process 
 of time his estrangement from society, and his at 
 tachment to his faithful ring increase to such a de 
 gree that, in the last stages of dementation, he may 
 be found sometimes, even upon a Saturday morning, 
 gathering entertainment from reading Mr. Smith s 
 English Grammar. Call upon him on such a morn 
 ing. Suppose you begin a conversation on History. 
 He thinks you mean Mr. Peter Parley, a harmless 
 man in his way, but perhaps somewhat prone (and 
 this is why our friend likes him) to dwell upon such 
 events as the finding of a kettle at a place where 
 some parties had camped over night, or a couple of 
 Plymouth gentlemen passing a night in walking 
 around a forest-tree, embarrassed by apprehensions ot 
 being devoured by the wolves, or having their toes 
 bitten by the frost. As conversation must take a 
 diversion, let it be to literature. He is acquainted 
 with so much eloquence and poetry as he finds in 
 School Readers, and like Omar, he believes all out 
 side of this Koran to be either irrelevant or merely 
 superabundant. Take him into politics. No, do 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 7 
 
 not take him there. We have all, all but he, in one 
 way and another, had enough of them; and they 
 have so nearly ruined us that we will not take him 
 into them at all. He knows who is President of the 
 United States, perhaps who is Vice President. He 
 probably knows or suspects yet further that there 
 are thousands upon thousands of other persons of 
 various complexions who desire, and who hope to 
 be Presidents hereafter; and if he cannot tell who 
 of all these are to have their desires and hopes ful 
 filled, no more can we. So we will leave him alone 
 in politics, and remove ourselves to another point 
 of observation. One more look. There he is with 
 his Arithmetic, his Grammar, his Geography, his 
 Parley and his Reader. How thoughtfully his brow 
 contracts as his eye falls upon the first ! How se 
 renely those eyes smile upon the second! How 
 widely they dilate over the third! How meaningly 
 they close on the fourth! How they brighten into 
 enthusiasm on the fifth ! Ay, these are his treasures, 
 his loves, his household gods. They are all he has. 
 They are all we desire him to have. They are all 
 we allow him to have. There, that will do. Leave 
 him among them. Keep, and caress, and adore 
 them, good man. You are free from molestation, 
 because you are not in the way of envy. 
 
 Let us consider next how the Schoolmaster will 
 exhibit himself in the matter of common honesty. 
 
8 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 Being a mere man, it would seem that in this regard 
 he ought to come to the average of men in other 
 pursuits. Possibly he should rise a little above 
 that average, considering that he is a sort of exem 
 plar in morals, and considering further the trifling 
 sums there are to tempt him. If we would consent, 
 it is probable that the Schoolmaster might grow to 
 be an uncommonly honest person. But as we will 
 not so consent, let us see how he can endure an in 
 vestigation. 
 
 First, it must be conceded that the Schoolmaster 
 must live: that is, he has the right to live if he 
 can. It is a somewhat interesting question whether 
 or not a man has not the right to live at all events 
 until his time come to die, provided he become 
 not guilty of any one of those great crimes for 
 which death comes under sentence of the law. It 
 is certain at least that the Schoolmaster has his 
 needs like other men. There was reason in Shy- 
 lock s interrogatories, and they may well be put by 
 the Schoolmaster. Hath he not eyes? hath he not 
 hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, pas 
 sions, fed with the same food, hurt with the same 
 weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by 
 the same means, warmed and cooled by the same 
 winter and summer as a Christian is? Such argu 
 ments are difficult to refute. We repeat that the 
 Schoolmaster must live, and that he will live if he 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 9 
 
 can. If he have made up his mind not to commit 
 suicide outright, he is going to live in spite of all 
 society s attempts to kill him. Not that society 
 wishes to kill: far from it. On the contrary, it de 
 sires to keep him for many purposes; possibly one 
 being to have a constant reminder of how far econ 
 omy may be carried, and upon how little an adult 
 person may learn to subsist and yet look respect 
 able. But the difficulty here is that he believes so 
 ciety does wish to kill him; and consequently, still 
 like Shylock, he is disposed to take his sufferance 
 by Christian example. 
 
 Now there is no business upon earth, except prob 
 ably that of a plumber, wherein it is so easy to 
 cheat upon a small scale as that of keeping a school 
 especially a boarding school. That one word 
 Incidentals, for instance. Oh how many little pick 
 ings, and artful dodgings and inexplicable items are 
 included in that one word! Broken windows, 
 scratched desks, fuel, brooms, putty, paint, brushes, 
 chalk, nails, andirons, bricks, shovels, brickbats, 
 tongs, scrub-brushes, holes holes in the floor, holes 
 in the benches, holes all over the house, more bricks, 
 more putty, more brick-bats, more holes! Then 
 there is stationery. Perhaps it is best not to enter 
 upon the subject of stationery. It is so extensive, 
 so ramified, so mysterious, so complicated with other 
 matters, and it so complicates the Schoolmaster 
 
10 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 with other persons, that one might get lost in the 
 wanderings of this labyrinth. There is, however, 
 no danger of such a fate to the Schoolmaster. He 
 understands the innumerable meshes of this attenu 
 ated net-work of charges and profits as thoroughly 
 as a spider can traverse, without adhesion or en 
 tanglement, the web that hangs invisible to the 
 world of winged insects. It is amazing to all but 
 him what a multitude of books a boy may find it 
 necessary to purchase in a comparatively brief 
 period. Three or four studies, pursued at the same 
 time, were quite sufficient, one would suppose, for 
 a pupil, even one of the highest capacity. They are 
 too many for an ordinary man. But your school 
 boy will have his six, and his seven, and his eight, 
 and sometimes his nine. Why bless you, he will 
 have within the space of a year three or four differ 
 ent books for every one of these studies. There 
 will be his Primary, his Common School, his First 
 Course, his Second Course, his Third Course. Dis 
 coveries will be constantly made that these books 
 are not as good as they might be, and new ones will 
 be brought in. Or new editions of old ones are is 
 sued with changes appertaining mostly to the paging. 
 We, the parents of such boys, are so easily per 
 suaded that their powers are prodigious, and the 
 velocity of their development immeasurable, that 
 we think it economy to purchase (from the school- 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. II 
 
 master or his friend) every year for our boys of four 
 teen, as many books as are got by an Oxford or a Hei 
 delberg student throughout his whole University 
 course. The profits on these books, being from twenty 
 to forty per cent., a man who is determined to make a 
 living can lay up something which will buy bread and 
 butter for a much longer period than most persons 
 suppose. It is surprising to what an aggregate petty 
 contributions will amount in the lapse of time. The 
 rat, for instance, is but a small beast; but being an in 
 dustrious, and withal determined to live as long and as 
 comfortably as possible, we all know what an ac 
 cumulation of things of all sorts he can store away 
 in his hole by his everlasting thefts, day and night, 
 of the small odds and ends. The scamp will build 
 his house in your house, make his bed from the cot 
 ton and hair taken from your bed, one thread at a 
 time, and in spite of your traps and dead-falls, arse 
 nic, terriers and cats, will make you furnish him, not 
 only with bread and meat, but with sugar and cake, 
 and all the other luxuries and delicacies that you 
 purchase for yourself. 
 
 But incidentals and stationery are not the School 
 master s only, or his greatest speculations. Nobody 
 knows better than he, the art both of saving his 
 labor and of spreading it over a wide surface. So 
 ciety has, somehow, obtained the notion that he does 
 not care much about the amount of work he has to 
 
12 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 do, at least during the time that he is actually en 
 gaged in it. In this, society is simply mistaken. 
 The Schoolmaster has this weakness in common 
 with society. He not only does not love his work, 
 but, like all reasonable men who properly understand 
 the original curse, he hates it. And now, this per 
 son knows how to dodge his work at least as well as 
 any other person, whatever be his occupation or 
 complexion. The way in which this art is practised, 
 makes it appear to be not only the acme of ingenu 
 ity, but if we might be allowed the term of 
 paradoxicality. The hard work in the keeping of a 
 school is mainly expended in the efforts to make 
 every pupil perform his own work. This is the 
 Schoolmaster s chiefest and most arduous task. To 
 go along by the side of every one, the gifted and 
 the dullard, the active and the crippled, to lay off 
 the tasks of all according to their several capabili 
 ties and aptitudes, and to see that the main work in 
 every task is done by him to whom it has been as 
 signed. Yet, these tasks are usually so small on 
 account of the levity and indocility of boys, and 
 they appear so much smaller to the Schoolmaster 
 who has been over them his thousands of times, and 
 then he so well knows the credulity of parents, their 
 pride and their impatience, that he will take upon 
 himself the labor which the majority of boys will 
 not, without compulsion, themselves perform. While 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 13 
 
 there are few things that require more labor than to 
 keep a school and see that all the pupils accomplish 
 their own proper tasks, there is nothing that requires 
 so little as to keep a school and perform those tasks 
 one s self. 
 
 It is a matter of wonder why so many boys of 
 good talents, the sons of men of talents, after hav 
 ing spent five or six years at school, in which time 
 they have been accustomed to bring away, periodi 
 cally, flattering reports of progress, have been found 
 at sixteen years of age, upon a close and first in 
 vestigation by their parents to be disgracefully igno 
 rant. Such a result is owing to this more than to 
 any other reason, that in all this time the labor 
 which should have been done by them has been done 
 by their masters. None know so well as the School 
 master the amount of indolence and stupidity there 
 is in youth, especially in boys. None know so well 
 as he the temptations to conceal these infirmities, 
 not only from the eyes of their parents, but from 
 his own. It requires a man to be in daily fear of 
 the very Devil to avoid answering himself the ques 
 tions which he has propounded so often that it would 
 seem that a fool or even a parrot might know them, 
 and consoling himself with the delusion that after one 
 moment longer they would have been answered by 
 those to whom they were put. Thus it is that after 
 years of flattery and fraud, and when the darkening 
 
14 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 down upon the lip warns that manhood is coming 
 on apace, parents find that their credulity has been 
 betrayed and their money expended in the acquisi 
 tion of the faculty to go through the vain round of 
 answering leading questions. If one of these par 
 ents be a man who is addicted to cursing, he will 
 curse. But cursing, at best, gives only momentary 
 relief, and is a most inadequate compensation for 
 wounded pride and disappointed hopes. Besides, 
 even if curses condone for the past, they surely can 
 avail nothing for the future. After cursing his curse, 
 therefore, he can only look out for another school 
 master, and find possibly that he has jumped from 
 the frying-pan into the fire, where, in good time, 
 all the pride and all the hopes get well con 
 sumed. 
 
 Such trials befall especially the rich. One might 
 suppose that this individual would endeavor to im 
 prove the sons of the rich as faithfully at least as the 
 sons of the poor. That is another mistake. He 
 will not do except upon compulsion of considerations 
 just named the work of the poor man s son. He is 
 not the man to waste his time, and his hardest en 
 deavors upon mere cumberers. They must perform 
 their own tasks; and if they can be fed and clothed 
 the while, they will obtain all the knowledge they 
 seek at the school and which the master is com 
 petent to impart; while the sons of the rich must 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 15 
 
 carry this addition to the burthens which riches im 
 pose, that of being cheated, both out of money 
 and out of education, by as simple, and as inno 
 cent-looking a person as a Schoolmaster. Who has 
 not observed how, in most of the schools, the sons 
 of the poor stand or deserve to stand at the heads 
 of classes? There are more reasons for this than 
 society knows. The chiefest is they have little ot 
 which to be cheated. 
 
 Let us take another point of observation of the 
 Schoolmaster, and consider how he ranks in the scale 
 of respectability. 
 
 One of the highest felicities in personal deport 
 ment is to be able to avoid the exhibition of those 
 peculiarities with which all professions are apt to 
 signalize their followers. It is a detraction from any 
 man s claim to our admiration, if in his conversation 
 we can easily determine the nature of his occupa 
 tion. A thorough breeding tends to remove all such 
 indications, and there is a charm in the very effort 
 to guess what may be the manner of living which is 
 led by a perfectly well-bred man who is a stranger 
 to us. How can the Schoolmaster stand this test? 
 Less satisfactorily we fear than those of intelligence 
 and honesty. Of all men he is the most distinguish 
 able. All generations have not been able to efface 
 the marks that are upon the class; and we recog 
 nize him in whatever places and at whatever dis- 
 
1 6 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 tances we observe him ; whether he be in the crowd 
 ed street, on the highway, in the shop, in the salon, 
 or in the woods. There is a combination of bold 
 ness and sheepishness, of pluck and timidity, of 
 imperiousness and servility, of conceit and humility, 
 which, in slightly varying relative quantities, distin 
 guishes the individual of the kind I am trying to 
 describe, everywhere, north and south, east and 
 west. Even the varying fashions in the matter 
 of dress, make no difference in him. If you 
 look into his hat of the very latest style, you will 
 see what he is by the very way of his writing his 
 name in it. Yes, we know him by his hat, and 
 even by his umbrella whenever he has one. 
 
 A character made up of so many different ele 
 ments, can scarcely be interesting except solely up 
 on the sportive side of social life. Since we do not 
 wish to be always laughing, we avoid such a School 
 master on all occasions of our serious, which, with 
 us all, are and of right ought to be, our most fre 
 quent moods. It must happen rather seldom in our 
 visiting and being visited that we like to be with a 
 man whose memory, while he is in our presence, 
 seems to be away back in the school-room, or en 
 deavoring to find its way there, and who seems to 
 be in a state of most vague uncertainty as to wheth 
 er or not he ought to repeat upon us the despotism 
 that he is accustomed to employ in the school-room, 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. I ^ 
 
 or to receive at our hands his long-expected retri 
 bution. Or, if he be neither given to great pugnac 
 ity nor unusually apprehensive of personal chastise 
 ment, we can at least find higher entertainment than 
 in being very often in the society of a man who is all 
 the time carrying on an examination by trying to 
 teach us, or be taught by us, throughout the whole 
 range of the science of platitudes. 
 
 We would not go so far as to say that the School 
 master is not a person who has a notion of the value 
 of being polite. Of all men, his notions upon this 
 subject are extreme. He is never more serious or 
 consequential than when he is giving lessons in man 
 ners, which he does with the same rigor and form 
 ality that he employs in teaching Arithmetic or 
 Algebra. But the difficulty in this regard is, that, 
 being so entirely supreme in the school-room, being 
 obeyed and bowed to so everlastingly there, when 
 he comes out of that sphere and into society, he 
 seems at a loss to understand where the bowing 
 ought to be and who is to do it. Apparently, he 
 remembers that he is not in the schoolroom ; but he 
 has confused notions of wherever else he is. At 
 one and the same moment his physical deportment 
 is partly that of a man who is bowing, and partly 
 that of a man who is being bowed to. At one instant, 
 we see the frown with which he awes and warns his 
 subjects, and at the next that frown is gone, and 
 
1 8 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 seeming to feel that he has lost his crown and his 
 throne, and been taken captive, he must needs fawn 
 and cajole, and make the best terms possible with 
 defeat and captivity. In these circumstances, such 
 a man never knows how long he ought to remain in 
 our presence. He usually looks as if he preferred 
 to go home, and that he would go home if he were 
 sure of being able to find his hat. But he appar 
 ently has a notion that somebody may have hidden 
 it, and that he had better wait until the joke is over, 
 and it is returned. So he lingers and lingers, until 
 when he at last makes a start, he takes abrupt leave 
 and rushes off with surprising velocity. One might 
 suppose this was because he is afraid of the dogs. 
 That is another mistake. He is not more afraid of 
 dogs than other men. It is only his way. 
 
 There is no pursuit which, from long persistence 
 in the way in which it is often practised, so dis 
 qualifies a man for good society as that of keeping 
 a school. Recurring to the remark of Dr. Arnold, 
 that a man could not teach successfully more than 
 about fifteen years, we must make this one as its 
 corollary: according to the system of keeping 
 schools, man ywheres in vogue a system which soci 
 ety, for the most incomprehensible reasons, will not 
 consent to have changed if we turn the School 
 master out of his business after that period, there is 
 no place for him in human society. The domination 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 19 
 
 which for so long time he has been practising in 
 the school-room, the domination which he has been 
 experiencing in the same time from the outer world, 
 have created a duplicity of being, the parts of which, 
 though the most repugnant to each other, are so 
 doubled, and twisted, and plaited among themselves 
 that they become ever afterwards indissoluble by 
 any sort of experience or discipline. He becomes 
 as double as Eng and Chang, and as indivisible. If 
 economy and the public morals did not forbid, he 
 ought, in justice to his amphibious nature, to be 
 allowed, like Eng and Chang, two suits of clothes, 
 two hats, two pairs of shoes, two chairs to sit in, 
 and two wives to live with. But as both economy 
 and the public morals forbid these, he must stick to 
 his profession, and consequently must blunder about 
 more and ever more, with his eyes crossed, doubling 
 all objects of his desire or attention, and missing 
 them in his search by going, sometimes to the right, 
 sometimes to the left, or more frequently still, all 
 around them. For this habit of mind, acquired in 
 the routine of his daily life, makes him move in 
 circles, which, though small, would be as round as 
 the moon, but that those objects not being them 
 selves always stationary, his motions, like those of 
 the moon, are epicycloidal, and as infinite as are his 
 wants. What use has such a man for society, or 
 society for such a man? From the very character 
 
20 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 of his living with his pupils, he becomes unfitted for 
 living with anybody. If in the beginning he had 
 any acquaintance with the temper and the disposi 
 tion, and the general character of youth, he comes 
 at last to lose even that. His experience having 
 been made up of tyranny and espionage on the one 
 hand, and trickery and falsehood on the other, him 
 self never having been the recipient of either love 
 or fidelity, he comes at last to the point of failing 
 to recognize these precious things whenever he sees 
 them in society; and if he could recognize them, 
 he would fail to appreciate them at their just value, 
 because of such recognition coming too late. No. 
 \7c had better let him stay thenceforth in the school- 
 house. By this time, he is unendurable elsewhere, 
 and by this time, or very soon thereafter, his des 
 potism has relaxed, and though perhaps not yet old 
 in years, he has subsided into the fondness and the 
 twattle of dotage, and will thenceforth make less 
 harm and less trouble within that old and small cir 
 cumference than outside of it. 
 
 Here then is society s favorite Schoolmaster, with 
 his little satchel of text-books, his little supple 
 mental bill of Incidentals and Stationery, and his 
 eternal dodgings, and blunderings, and rotations. 
 
 And now, let us reason a little with society. Let 
 us inquire what is its purpose in this creation. Does 
 it prefer to be cheated of its money rather than to 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 2 1 
 
 pay it out for a valuable consideration? Is there 
 any special purpose wherefore it chooses to remove 
 its youth, during the most critical years of their 
 being, from beneath its own control, and place them 
 under the absolute domination of a man who is so 
 far inferior to even a reasonable standard of man 
 hood? If society will consider a very little, it will 
 agree with us that a boy whose father is a gentle 
 man, and whose mother is a gentlewoman, has been, 
 up to the time of his leaving home, the recipient of 
 great, even of unspeakable blessings. It might ad 
 mit further, that when the necessity arrives for leav 
 ing home (and an unfortunate necessity that is) to 
 receive instruction in such things as his parents 
 have not the ability or the leisure to teach, it would 
 seem to be desirable that he should be transferred, 
 if possible, to a family the heads of which were as 
 much a gentleman and a gentlewoman as the parents 
 whom he must leave. No one ought to deny that when 
 the discipline at home has been such as a gentle 
 man s son should receive, that discipline ought to 
 be changed as little as possible in the place to which 
 he has been transferred. That, in these forming 
 years, his young eyes should still behold the same 
 fair sights of integrity, and courage, and dignity, and 
 courteousness in the man, and of purity, and gentle 
 ness and grace in the woman who are to stand related 
 to him as the parents whom he has left under the roof 
 
22 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 tree at home. In fine, that it is most desirable that 
 such a boy should not be made to lose all the good 
 impressions which have been made upon his young 
 and docile mind by constant indoctrination inspired 
 by natural affection and the consciousness of ac 
 countability to God. 
 
 All this society would admit; though perchance 
 there are some who might contend (for reasons 
 which Heaven alone knows) that such a boy ought 
 to find at a boarding-school as few things as possible 
 to remind him of his home. Indeed, judging from 
 what may be observed in the opinions that generally 
 obtain concerning schools and schoolmasters, most 
 men seem to desire that the whole training around 
 the native hearthstone should be dispensed with, at the 
 boarding school and especially that all which made the 
 boy rejoice in the consciousness of being loved, and 
 trusted, and honored, must be removed out of his reach 
 and out of his sight, and that hostility must now begin 
 between him and the very man who has been selected 
 by his father to perform his own unfinished work in 
 preparing his son for the destinies of his existence. 
 Let us select out of society one of its members, 
 and let him be a good man and a just, but neverthe 
 less one who has such ideas as we have been de 
 scribing. How do we usually approach the man in 
 whose family we propose to place our sons? It is 
 in a style which shows that we do not regard him as 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 23 
 
 entitled to the same consideration at our hands 
 which we would expect and exact from him upon 
 his application to us for a service in the line of our 
 occupation: in other words, that we do not regard 
 him as a gentleman. And this proves that we do 
 not feel a solicitude that he should be such. We 
 sometimes dispense with the formality which is al 
 ways recognized as a most becoming one in the 
 intercourse of gentlemen, that of an introduction by 
 a common acquaintance, even when it is entirely 
 convenient to obtain it. By this conduct we seem 
 to forget that we inflict what, if he were a gentle 
 man, he would consider an insult upon his feelings, 
 in the assurance we thus give that so far from the 
 possibility of his rejecting our application to receive 
 our sons, he must necessarily be delighted by the 
 compliment. And when we have approached him, 
 the inquiries we propound regarding his terms, al 
 though we have seen them advertised, our disposi 
 tion to make our own inspection of the way in which 
 the affairs of his household are ordered by his wife, 
 show that we do not consider him a gentleman to 
 allow such things. But the worst of all our treat 
 ment is, that we show that we desire him to be any 
 thing else than a gentleman in the government cf 
 our sons, by subjecting them to restraints which we 
 never threw around them, not so much because such 
 restraints were troublesome, as because they were 
 
24 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 odious. At our own houses, we are never accus 
 tomed to play the part of the spy or the hound upon 
 our families. We are accustomed to a general and 
 prudent oversight in which is to be seen some of the 
 confidence which every boy must have extended to 
 him if he be desired to develope what is good and 
 to repress what is evil in his being. Yet we inti 
 mate, or we avow, our desire that the Schoolmaster 
 should take upon himself the task of espionage 
 which we should be ashamed for our sons to suspect 
 us of being capable of performing. He must as 
 sume all the odium of restraints that bar all sym 
 pathy with the griefs and all interest in the 
 enjoyments of youth, and must refuse to extend 
 any of the confidence under which, at the home of 
 his childhood, the boy has learned to despise 
 falsehood and cowardice, and to feel the incipient 
 promptings, and give the joyous promise, of an ex 
 alted manhood. The most reasonable and speedy 
 consequence of such a discipline is that our sons 
 come soon to hate the despot to whose heartless 
 sway we have subjected them, and to lose the deli 
 cate sense of honor and truth in the fatal mistake 
 that meanness may be met by meanness, or that the 
 assaults of the Devil may be opposed by fire. 
 
 It is most wonderful that so many good men 
 seem to think that youth should be rudely 
 treated while it is growing into manhood. How 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 25 
 
 comes on that young nobleman who entered the 
 school last week? enquired old Dr. Parr of one of 
 his ushers. Very well sir, was the answer; ; he is 
 a boy of fine promise. Is he indeed? Then whip 
 him every morning, sir. Do you hear, sir? Every 
 morning, sir. That is the way. Youth must be 
 caged and watched, and hounded and herded with 
 vulgarity, and beaten with rods, and wallowed in 
 filth and lies, and all this as a sort of ordeal through 
 which it must pass in order to be able in after years 
 to look back to it with shuddering. Alas! that no 
 better means can be found of lifting it up through 
 these beautiful years to places whence it may see 
 more and more of the value of all that is good in 
 the nature of man, and thus become the more able 
 to comprehend and appreciate the goodness of the 
 Almighty. 
 
 Well, there is no service so vile and so meanly 
 paid for that we may not find those who are compe 
 tent to perform it. Scullions for the kitchen may be 
 had even without advertisement. They will clean 
 our pots for small wages, partly because this is the 
 only service they know, and partly because they 
 understand the value of the perquisites which come 
 out of pilferings from even the skimmings and the 
 leavings. So, Legion is the name of those who, for 
 a pitiful compensation, will receive our sons into 
 their families, and afterwards persistently eradicate 
 
26 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 every sentiment of honor and gentility by adminis 
 tering to them the discipline due to felons, and then 
 send them back with a contempt for things that are 
 sacred, with a hatred for all just authority, and with 
 the total loss of that foundation and beginning of 
 all good education the fear of God. These are 
 the sorts of men whom society in general selects to 
 lead up its young generations. And what a leading 
 is there ! The old fellow of Falerii led out his school 
 and would deliver them over to Camillus; but, 
 shocked by the enormity of the crime, the honest 
 Roman sent him back bound and driven with rods 
 by the youths whom he would have betrayed. We 
 suppose, however, that the Falerians loosed him and 
 let him go. Having made him what he was, they 
 had no right, and possibly they had no disposition, 
 to destroy their own creation. Having a mean ser 
 vice to be performed, they selected a mean agent; 
 and though the betrayal of their children to the 
 public enemy was most probably not nominated in 
 the bond of their contracting, yet, as greater ras 
 calities were, he should have been discharged from 
 punishment beyond that which the boys themselves 
 inflicted. But the Personage to whom the youth of 
 this and all other known countries are being led by 
 many of the schoolmasters will not be so abhorrent 
 of crime. That great Enemy fully intends to 
 keep all he gets, both the betrayed and the be. 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 27 
 
 trayers, and to burn them in fire and brimstone. 
 
 Now how can the greater part of this folly and 
 crime and ruin be prevented? All indeed cannot 
 be; for folly and crime are the lot of humanity. 
 It is melancholy to see that the sons of the very 
 best men may, and sometimes do, become ruined 
 even in the houses and under the eyes of their own 
 parents. But the greater part of that ruin which 
 comes to the youth in schools, and which is by far 
 the most abundant source of their demoralization, 
 might be prevented, if society would take the same 
 pains in the selection of teachers as it takes in that 
 of its agents in all the other businesses of life. 
 Society needs but to do one thing. It must allow 
 the schoolmaster to improve himself if he will, as 
 most probably he will do if permission be granted. 
 He must be allowed to give up those old ways. Those 
 old ways have too long already excited the merri 
 ment and the derision of the world. They afford a 
 species of fun that is too costly to be indulged in. 
 Men must seek amusement in ways that do not lead 
 so surely to the destruction of their best hopes 
 for those who are in time to take their places 
 and perpetuate their names. It is a serious thing 
 to provide for these hopes, implanted in our 
 hearts by Heaven in the first instant of pater 
 nity, never to be eradicated in this world, and in 
 
28 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 the next to yield only to perfect realization or to 
 the will of God. 
 
 Now does any one of our readers care to inquire 
 what course we think he should pursue, provided the 
 old schoolmaster cannot or will not change his ways? 
 If so, we answer that in our opinion, he should look 
 out for a new man for this business. And there is 
 but one qualification that we should insist upon. 
 That like himself, he be a gentleman. For a gentle 
 man is one who lives justly and considerately among 
 men and humbly before God. Be assured that a gen 
 tleman is competent to do what he professes to be 
 competent to do. The mere knowledge of school 
 books any gentleman has who says he has it. The 
 gift of impartation of that knowledge any gentleman 
 has who says he has it. Having then selected a gen 
 tleman, inasmuch as we are henceforth to feel secure 
 against theft on his part, we should be willing to pay 
 a fair price for the service he is to render. That ser 
 vice is worth perhaps more than, without reflection, 
 we might suppose. If we all knew the amount of dull 
 ness, and indolence, and selfishness, and wasteful 
 ness, and indocility, there is even among the sons 
 of gentlemen, and the wearisomeness of the work 
 which they impose upon the hands, and the head, 
 and the heart of a gentleman, we should feel that we 
 are not in great danger of paying too dearly for it. 
 With such a man we may indeed feel secure, and 
 
THE SCHOOLMASTER. 29 
 
 for this, as much as for any other reason that he 
 is our equal in all the essentials of manhood; that 
 he can neither be ridiculed with justice, nor insulted 
 with impunity, and consequently that our sons will 
 be as safe with him as his son would be with us. 
 For such a man will no more play the part of spy or 
 hound upon our sons than we would descend to this 
 practise with his. He will endeavor to lift our sons 
 to as high a place as we would endeavor to lift his 
 son, in order to see and understand the whole range 
 of his relations with this world and with the next, 
 \yith man and with God. All this will be very pleas 
 ant. And yet one more pleasure will be added to 
 the list. We shall see that in this relation of teacher 
 and pupil, a relation not dishonored by despotism 
 or servility, by suspicion or falsehood, there is grow 
 ing a friendship, which, when it is between two per 
 sons who trust each other and are worthy to be 
 trusted, is inferior in value to no blessing which Heav 
 en has sent upon the earth. Do we doubt that such 
 a man, in such a relation, may form such a friendship 
 with our sons? If so, let us try sometime to form a 
 friendship with his son, or with the son of such an 
 other gentleman. We shall then see how often he 
 will be touched by ur kindness and respond to our 
 confidence. We shall find that in many a boy of 
 fourteen there may be found, by diligent search and 
 careful cultivation, sentiments of honor and friend 
 
30 THE SCHOOLMASTER. 
 
 ship, which sometimes grow even into enthusiasm. 
 If society would consent to such a change, how 
 fortunate it would be for all; for itself, for youth 
 and for teachers. Fortunate society, in the ele 
 vation of another profession by accessions from 
 its own high ranks, and in the security it would 
 thenceforth give to the future of the rising gener 
 ations. Fortunate the rising generations, in the 
 possession and the impartation of the blessings that 
 come when the heart gets its education along with 
 the intellect. Fortunate the profession thus exalted, 
 in the enjoyment not only of the common friend 
 ships of life, but in the continued renewal of friend 
 ships down to its very goal. Laelius, after the death 
 of Scipio, consoled himself with the friendship of 
 the youths Fannius, and Mucius, and Tubero. l Vi- 
 cissim said he, when now an old man, i vicissim au- 
 tem senes in adolescentium caritate acquiescimus? 
 Acquiescimus ! HOAV expressive! we repose. A 
 fitting place for the rest of an old man whose best 
 years have been spent in the service of the young, 
 the love of those among them who are to survive 
 him. 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 IT is interesting to study the peculiar sentiments 
 with which the members of the Bar are regarded 
 by the rest of mankind. The dullest understanding 
 can perceive and admit the necessity of laws, of 
 judges to expound and of inferior officers to execute 
 them. But when the necessity of practising lawyers 
 is suggested, such admission, even from understand 
 ings that have been highly cultivated by study, and 
 observation, and reflection, comes sometimes with 
 reluctance and for the most part with allowance. 
 Even men of letters, even poets, whom we have 
 been taught to regard as our best teachers, are fond 
 to fling their pleasant satires at the lawyers. That 
 seemed to be a most unhappy stress of difficulties 
 upon one of Lord Byron s heroes when 
 
 * No choice was left his feelings or his pride, 
 Save death or Doctors Commons so he died. 
 
 We have read of the Gammons and Keeps, the Buz- 
 fuzzes and Tulkinghorns, and we smile at the absurd 
 ities and shudder at the iniquities of such a class of 
 fools and rascals. 
 
 Yet lawyers live and prosper. With the increase 
 3 1 
 
32 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 of wealth and the advancement of civilization, they 
 multiply in numbers, they rise to the highest places, 
 and they lead in all the legislation which controls 
 the world. In public they are the framers of laws, 
 international, constitutional, and muncipal : in pri 
 vate they are the counsellors of the people in the 
 ascertainment of their rights of person and prop 
 erty, then they make their last wills and testa 
 ments, and settle and distribute their estates after 
 they are dead. We may have our suspicions and 
 apprehensions, and dislikes of lawyers as a class; 
 but every one of us who has anything which he de 
 sires to keep for himself or for those who are to 
 come after him, knows one among them who receives 
 his most intimate confidence, and in whom he feels 
 that his surest reliance, in such matters whether he 
 himself be to live or to die, may be placed. Him he 
 consults, in the matters of his business and sometimes 
 the matters of his conscience ; and none but lawyers 
 know how much wicked litigation has been avoided, 
 how much meanness has been repressed, how much 
 has justice been wrung for the weak and the innocent 
 out of the hands of the powerful and the guilty all 
 in the secret counsellings of lawyers offices. 
 
 Let us inquire somewhat into these contrary 
 opinions. Why this suspicion in the general, and 
 this confidence in the particular? Why these uni 
 versal warnings against the class, and this life -long 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 33 
 
 resort to the individual in all the most important and 
 secret affairs of life? We cannot undertake to ans 
 wer these questions fully. A Frenchman once said, 
 that every lover has no doubt of the infidelity of all 
 mistresses except his own. Something of this there 
 may be in the relation of lawyers and clients, and 
 indeed in every relation where confidence must be 
 given, because it renders one unhappy and afraid to 
 withhold it. But the better and more substantial 
 causes are other than such as this. We shall men 
 tion one or two. 
 
 We must premise what we have to say about the 
 suspicions concerning this class of professional men 
 wherever it exists, by observing that they attach to 
 them as lawyers. We have sometimes been in 
 tensely amused to notice how many persons have 
 been puzzled by their own conflicting sentiments 
 regarding some of the best men of our acquaintance. 
 While the latter have been known to be perfectly 
 upright in their personal concerns, beloved in their 
 families, and admired by all their neighbors for being 
 kind and liberal, the former have seemed to be 
 touched with an indefinable sort of compassion or 
 regret at being obliged to consider them as un 
 scrupulous in the court-room, mystifiers of the law, 
 perverters of the truth, and the fast friends of knaves 
 of many descriptions. 
 
 The principal reasons for these irreconcilable 
 
34 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 opinions, are such as grow partly out of the law it 
 self, and partly out of some misapprehensions as to 
 the duties of lawyers : misapprehensions that are not 
 confined to outsiders, but are held by not an incon 
 siderable number of the profession itself. Especial 
 ly is this the case with that system of laws by which 
 the people of this country and those in Great Britian 
 are controlled. Our ancestors, so far removed from 
 the ancient seats of European civilization, had the 
 misfortune of failing to obtain the benefits of the 
 Civil Law, that best and noblest monument of genius 
 that was ever erected. Founded upon the teach 
 ings of the wise and good of all nations, * it en 
 joined not only the fullest justice, but it invited to 
 the most delicate and scrupulous honor. It sought 
 to lift mankind out of the fiery struggles, the selfish 
 aims, and the mean desires of life, and present to 
 their view a higher scale, yet fully practicable for 
 this .world, on which justice and honor might journey 
 hand in hand, and all men, great and small, might 
 joy in the sight. To live justly, to hurt no man, to 
 give every one his own, were its leading maxims, 
 and whoever followed them strictly attained as close 
 an approximation to perfection as is in the capacity 
 of human nature. What people were those Romans ! 
 
 * In the year B. C. 452, three Commissioners were sent beyond 
 seas to collect, in Greece especially, such notices of the laws and 
 constitutions of other peoples as might be of service to the wants of 
 Rome. GRAPEL ON THE CIVIL LAW. 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 35 
 
 Great in all things; even in those which time and 
 different civilizations have destroyed or modified; 
 but greatest of all in this, that their laws, the work 
 of all their ages, are yet made to control all the 
 countries over which their rule was extended. 
 
 But our ancestors, separated from the rest of the 
 world by intervening seas, in a bleak region, where 
 to live was difficult, and poverty was a more com 
 mon and a harder misfortune than in the South, in 
 the absence of wise men to think and devise for 
 them, could only find laws for their government in 
 the midst of their dealings among themselves. In 
 the failure of positive legislative enactments, their 
 usages became the standards by which the common 
 disputes were to be composed. Out of these us 
 ages, some of them absurd, some of them atrocious, 
 sprang up that Common Law which, with what 
 modifications it has undergone in the lapse of cent 
 uries, together with such restraints as Equity has 
 been obliged to impose whenever its operation has 
 been grossly unconscionable, is the system under 
 which we live. Less humane than the Civil Law 
 which was founded upon the idea of what mankind 
 ought to be and might be, it has been builded upon 
 the observation of what mankind are. Yet it is a 
 great system, and in the main sufficiently regardful 
 of the rights of those who have it to obey. If it 
 seems sometimes to present temptation to bad men 
 
36 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 to entrap the unwary, its general provisions are de 
 signed to afford abundant protection to the circum 
 spect; and the tendency of recent legislations and 
 recent judicial rulings is, we are gratified to observe, 
 in the direction of that larger and more generous 
 policy which recognizes in humanity the possibili 
 ties of things higher than mere common honesty, 
 and persuades to their exercise. Nor can we for 
 bear to admit that among the Romans there were 
 tricksters who were at once the disgrace of the profes 
 sion, the butt of the satirist s ridicule, and the honor 
 able man s contempt. There were the Leguleius * 
 and the Rabula, t the former a mere man of books, 
 and the latter a mean pettifogger. They had their 
 ways in Rome as their likes have them with us, and 
 as all such characters in all vocations will have their 
 ways until the world becomes many times wiser than 
 it is or has been. 
 
 Yet every system of laws must necessarily fall 
 short of some of its purposes, and thus create in the 
 minds of men unlearned in its mysteries incorrect 
 views of the duties of those who practise it. The 
 law is founded upon general principles, the very 
 universality of which sometimes must operate dis- 
 
 * Qui enim leges, quas memoria tenet, non intelligit, Leguleius 
 vocatur a Cicerone. HEINECCIUS ELEMENTA JURIS. 
 
 j- Qui ergo nulla accuratione juris notitia imbutus, cruda studia in 
 forum propellit, evertendisque aliorum fortunis quaestum facit, Ka- 
 bula vocatur ab eodum Cicerone/ IB. 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 37 
 
 astrously in particular cases, and give to bad men 
 the opportunity to injure the just with impunity. In 
 vain did the Praetor among the Romans, and in 
 vain do Courts of Equity with us interfere by in 
 junction with its strict enforcements, whenever 
 their execution is unconscionably oppressive. There 
 are frauds and other wrongs which no courts can 
 reach, which spring from the very laws which were 
 intended to prevent them, and which do prevent 
 them in general. Thus, the Statute for the preven 
 tion of Frauds, a most wise and beneficient law, 
 offers temptations to the dishonest, of which they 
 too often avail themselves to ensnare the upright. 
 So the maxim, ignorantia legis nou cxcusat] neces 
 sary as it is, operates most injuriously sometimes, 
 and it thus operates most frequently upon those 
 who, being most honest, are least apprehensive of 
 suffering wrong. Neither lawyers nor courts, are re 
 sponsible for these infirmities, which are but evi 
 dences to be added to those furnished by other sys 
 tems of man s devising, that nothing he does can be 
 made perfect. 
 
 Difficulties of the sorts just mentioned, (and we 
 may allude to others as we proceed,) common to 
 all law, and some peculiar to those under which we 
 live, lead to misapprehensions as to what are the 
 duties as well as what are the rights of lawyers. It 
 is worthy of remark, that many men, whose careers, 
 
38 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 
 
 while at the bar, were not very remarkable, whether 
 in the matter of professional ability, or professional 
 deportment, when they have gone upon the bench, 
 have risen in a comparatively brief period into un 
 expected and extravagant credit. The people, from 
 having seen such men practise for a long time those 
 little arts which inferior minds are the quickest to 
 learn, seem often to be thankful to see such a man 
 lay all such arts aside, rule vexed questions without 
 embarrassment, and endeavor, with decent magis 
 terial severity, to repress all unbecoming things in 
 the officers of his court. Now it is much easier to 
 decide a case than to argue it. Some men, though 
 feeble lawyers, make respectable judges not great 
 judges for these can be made only of great law 
 yers. Such a judge, if he preside over an able bar, 
 and if with ordinary understanding he have acquired 
 a fair professional education, may decide most cases 
 aright. Besides, the mere exaltation to office carries 
 to the majority of mankind the credit of deserving 
 it. Lord Jeffreys said to Robert Wright, who was 
 notorious both for his ignorance a.nd his knaveries, 
 As you seem to be unfit for the bar, or any other 
 honest calling, I see nothing for it but that you should 
 become a judge yourself; and in spite of the re 
 monstrances of the Prime Minister, he was knighted, 
 and afterwards made Lord Chief Justice of England. 
 This is an extreme case, we admit, but there was 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 39 
 
 some wisdom (of its kind,) in the magnate who thus 
 elevated him, and who foresaw that much of his un- 
 fitness for office would disappear from the eyes of 
 men on the day of his installation. 
 
 But what is yet more to be noticed in this con 
 nection is this: The duties of a judge are essen 
 tially different from those of a lawyer. Upon the 
 former there is the obligation, formed by his oath 
 and the solemn behests of office, to pursue the truth, 
 singly and always. But the truth in judicial causes 
 has many similitudes, and is difficult to be ascer 
 tained, and varies with every circumstance of life. 
 Out of the innumerable transactions ot mankind, 
 and the multifold and subtle agencies which bring 
 them on and attend and follow them, there must 
 constantly arise, even among the upright, conflicts 
 of opinion regarding the ultimate truth, and the 
 best legal minds will differ as to where it is to be 
 found. The judge himself is often incompetent to 
 its ascertainment until after argumentation between 
 these contending similitudes. It is, therefore, not 
 only the right of the advocate, but it is his duty to 
 present his similitude with whatever ability he can 
 command, to strive for its establishment, provided 
 that he attempt no perversions, either of facts or of 
 laws already ascertained, and feel in his breast 
 throughout the conflict a love for the honor of his 
 profession, and a reverence for the justice, which it 
 
40 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 is his mission to conserve, that are superior to the 
 desire for his client s success, and the reward which 
 is to follow it. A rule of morals which would fix his 
 responsibilities higher than this would be unreason 
 able and impracticable. 
 
 It is after, and by means of, the contests of men 
 like this that the judge, whose understanding mean 
 while has been oscillating between contending sim 
 ilitudes, decides which is the real truth, and which 
 is only its image. When this decision is rendered 
 in the unimpassioned and decorous terms becoming 
 such a tribunal, although it is frequently rendered 
 with hesitation, it is curious to see how submissively 
 bystanders bow to the judgment, and with what ad 
 miration and even reverence they contemplate the 
 calm dignity so unlike the heated combats of the 
 men to whose elaborate endeavors, though unknown 
 to them and too often unacknowledged by the court, 
 he is indebted for the power to decide aright when 
 he does so decide.* 
 
 It is thus that many persons while they condemn 
 the advocate, revere the magistrate. With the 
 
 *Cice*o, whose work on morals is the greatest of all uninspired 
 writings, allows a little more latitude to lawyers. Judicis est, he 
 says, semper in causis verwm sequi; patroni, nonnunquam veri 
 simile, etramsi minus sit verum, defendere. 1 De Officiis, Lib. n, 
 Cap. XIV. But he does so with some hesitation, and only upon the 
 authority of Panaetius. Thus he continues: Quod scribere (pras- 
 sertim cum de philosophia scriberem) non auderem, nisi idem pla- 
 ceret gravissimo stoicorum Panaetio. 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 41 
 
 former they suppose the love of truth to be behind 
 the desire of fame and especially of money. The 
 latter, upon that lofty seat, is regarded as freed from 
 the love of praise and pelf, above all prejudice and 
 passion, and taking an almost holy delight in frown-. 
 ing upon the fierce conflicts of the world and its 
 representatives, in establishing justice, and main 
 taining the peace They seem to regard lawyers as 
 the especial enemies and persecutors of these be 
 nign things, justice and peace, and but for that 
 blessed man on the bench they would be lost in the 
 midst of their subtleties, and quillets, and clamorous 
 contentions. 
 
 It is remarkable that while we can make allow 
 ance for the progress of every other science and 
 every other business of life, we cannot allow for muta 
 tions in that which is at once the most variant and 
 profound and important of all. At every session 
 of every court of extensive jurisdiction, there arise 
 disputes which involve new questions, or variations 
 of old questions, which must be settled anew, and 
 that only by long, ardent, and able argumentation. 
 To wonder at this eternal conflict is as unreason 
 able as to wonder at the various faces, and forms, 
 and dispositions of men. The principles of the 
 law have grown, like the human race, from a few in 
 the beginning up to ever increasing multitudes, 
 generations of the one dying away and generations 
 
42 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 of the other becoming obsolete, yet every genera 
 tion of both inheriting from its predecessors some 
 thing which must be made to conform to the multi 
 plying necessities of the world. These necessities 
 arise in all places where the hands or the under 
 standings of men are wont to labor in order to in 
 crease whatever they may wish to have for any of 
 the purposes of life. They arise day by day, in the 
 field of the farmer, in the shop of the mechanic, in 
 the storehouse of the merchant, in the cloister of 
 the student, everywhere, on the land, upon the wa 
 ters, in the air, wheresoever God has allowed men 
 to abide, or to explore, in order to find and to 
 gather whatever it is lawful to possess. Thus, with 
 the lapsing years, and the changing and multiplying 
 pursuits of men, new principles have to be estab 
 lished, new punishments must be applied to new 
 offences, and sometimes to old ones, when by the 
 changes of manners and tastes they have grown to 
 be inadequate or oppressive. Inasmuch as the laws 
 are general in their terms, and cases arising under 
 them are special in their own particulars, every judge 
 needs new argumentation, long, and able, and ar 
 dent, we repeat it, in order to be enabled to find, 
 in the midst of these accretions from every source, 
 the Truth, which it is his province to dispense. 
 
 What is truth, said jesting Pilate, and would not 
 stay for an answer. Wiser and better men than 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 43 
 
 Pilate ask the same question after long, and patient, 
 and loving search. That truth is difficult to be as 
 certained, the thousands of sects, and parties, and 
 wars, both of books and swords, declare. On the ques 
 tion of what is truth, good and wise men differ even 
 as do bad men and fools. In our degenerate estate, 
 truth seems to assume many shapes, and to vary them 
 in different places and before different beholders. It 
 was a beautiful fancy of the poet, in which the fol 
 lowers of truth are likened to the bereaved Isis and 
 her priesthood in their picas search for the mangled 
 and scattered members of the body of the good 
 Osiris. Philosophers and law-givers admit the im 
 possibility of fixing perfectly just principles of truth 
 even in the general. We have no solid and express 
 effigy of Law, and of Justice, her sister. We can 
 only employ their shadow and their images. These 
 are the words of one who, in our opinion, was as 
 complete a man as has lived in any time 
 Cicero, the lawyer and orator, the consul and phil 
 osopher. Yet, in praising even the golden rule of 
 the Civil Law, that all transactions of business 
 ought to correspond with the good conduct of good 
 men with one another, he sighed to be compelled to 
 add these following: But who are good men? and 
 what is good conduct? These are great questions. * 
 
 * Sed nos veri juris germanaeque justitiae solidam et expressam 
 effigiem nullam tenemus; umbra et imaginibus utimur. Qi.iam ilia 
 
44 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 In the numberless relations of men, good and bad, 
 among the different views which, from their various 
 positions they have of the right, an approximation 
 to its ascertainment is all that can be hoped for, 
 and while we believe that this approximation to all 
 its intentions is closer in the law than in any other 
 science not based upon mathematical demonstrations, 
 this is due mainly to those same forensic conflicts 
 which men are so wont to criticise and to blame. 
 There is nothing, therefore, in the fancied anomaly 
 of an honest man who is a dishonest lawyer. When 
 ever such a man comes to the Bar, there comes a 
 mighty blessing to his neighborhood. If, in the 
 ardor of the devotion which he carries to the causes 
 of his clients, he seems sometimes to combat too 
 zealously for his own similitude before the real right 
 has been ascertained, we shall make a great mistake 
 if we suppose that the real right can be ascertained 
 otherwise than by the combats of him with others 
 like him. And we shall make a greater mistake 
 if we suspect that he has lost, or is apt to lose, the 
 heart to love and adore the truth when, after such 
 combats, it is unveiled before his eyes. 
 
 But the misapprehensions that are most hurtful to 
 the profession are those which are entertained by a 
 
 aurea, UT INTER BONOS BENE AGIER OPORTET ET SINE FRAUDATIONE! 
 Sed, qui sint boni, et quid sit bene agi, magria quaestio est. Cic. 
 DE. OFF., LIB. III., CAP. XVII. 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 45 
 
 considerable number of its own members. For the 
 infirmities of these, in spite of its shining ornaments, 
 it has always suffered and must continue to suffer. 
 A lawyer who is a bad man is the most mischievous 
 and dangerous person with whom one can be con 
 fronted. It is sad to contemplate the annoyance 
 and distress which such a man may inflict, during 
 a lifetime, upon even the good men of society. 
 Such a man may become a spy upon other men, and 
 obtain an incredible amount of acquaintance with 
 all their most important concerns. This is especially 
 the case in agricultural communities, where men are 
 less familiar than those in cities and towns with the 
 forms of business which are necessary to its safe and 
 proper conduct. In the intercourse of the citizens 
 of such communities, the omission of such forms 
 with the best and most honest men render their 
 transactions unintelligible to those who, after lapse 
 of time, come to look upon their records. The con 
 fidence which they have in one another, so beautiful 
 to behold, and so sweet to feel, induces a neglect 
 much beyond what mere ignorance would create ; 
 and the usages of friendship and good neighborhood 
 make them satisfied with settlements which are too 
 often unaccompanied by written memoranda. By 
 and by, some of these good men become alienated 
 from one another. By and by, some of them die. 
 Old frendships seldom descend from one generation 
 
46 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 to another. Besides, it is a sad truth that the 
 greatest robberies are those that are committed by 
 the living upon the dead. All thieves, little and 
 great, from the grave-digger and the coffin-maker 
 upward, understand that. 
 
 Now this especial bad man, who is worse than all 
 other thieves and robbers, and whose wont it has 
 been to prowl about Probates offices, and pore over 
 ancient and imperfect records, and pick news 
 mongers and retailers of old scandals, makes up his 
 record, and to the covetous, and prodigal, and 
 bankrupt, he complains how they have been wronged, 
 and insinuates how, through his means, their wrongs 
 may be redressed; and then a small retainer and a 
 great contingent, are the preliminaries to suits upon 
 Administrators bonds or to Bills in Equity, which 
 charge every form of mismanagement and fraud 
 upon the best men and involve them or their repre 
 sentatives in long and ruinous litigation. We have 
 known very many of such cases, and we have sighed, 
 and could have wept to witness the misery which 
 they have produced. Many a good man, in his ab 
 horrence of courts, though conscious of perfect 
 innocence, and though assured by reliable counsel 
 of eventual release, prefers to buy his peace with a 
 price which enables the mean pettifogger to live in 
 comfort for a long time afterwards. Another, less 
 timid and less averse to strife, elects to fight it out 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 47 
 
 on the line proposed, indulging himself to an oc 
 casional imprecation upon the head captain of his 
 enemies, and in time may have his verdict. But 
 the payment of his own counsel, the charge of sundry 
 items, about which he and all his friends have for 
 gotten, the fees of witnesses, the loss of other 
 interests by his attendance upon courts, all con 
 vince him that his more timid neighbor, who bought 
 himself off, was wiser than he who fought himself 
 out ; and he is denied even the consolation of feel 
 ing that his imprecations have done either harm or 
 good to the man whom he is right in regarding as 
 the worst of all rascals. Cases like these are fre 
 quent in some communities, and they sometimes 
 occur in all. How many miseries they produce, 
 how many alienations of friends and families, how 
 many wrongs of all sorts and forms, only God above 
 knows. Perhaps in this we mistake. Perhaps they 
 are all known to the greal Spirit of Evil below, and 
 he has his antepast of enjoyment. If not now, they 
 will be known in season; for they are done by his 
 inspiration, and upon him will devolve their settle 
 ment at the last. 
 
 Much above those who have described is another 
 class whose misapprehensions as to the scope of 
 their duties, are more hurtful to the profession than 
 they are apt to be aware. With this class the 
 standard of professional deportment does fall some- 
 
48 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 what below that which they are in the habit of 
 maintaining in the other relations of life. In the 
 eagerness with which many young men desire noto 
 riety, which they suppose to be necessary to speedy 
 success, they are thrown into cases of doubtful right 
 by the aid of injudicious friends, or by their volun 
 teering; and thus they form habits of asseverating 
 unformed opinions and clamoring for doubtful points 
 which must tend to diminish the love, and even 
 obtund the sense of truth. Some of such men come 
 to believe that it it is not wrong to take any case 
 that presents itself, and having appeared in it, that 
 their duty, or at least their right, is to push it along 
 without considering any question except what may 
 appertain to the interests of their clients. With an 
 able and upright judge these are not wont to do a 
 very great amount of mischief to the public ; but 
 they hurt both themselves and their better brethren. 
 They hurt themselves by failing, through their own 
 fault, to rise as high as different deportment would 
 elevate them; and they hurt their better brethren 
 by carelessly lowering their profession in the eyes of 
 mankind and subjecting it to unjust reproach. And 
 they assuredly do some harm to society in this, that 
 their too frequent and unfair defense of transactions 
 plainly unjust, makes them often appear to disregard 
 the principles both of law and morality. 
 
 It is an unhappy mistake that many lawyers who 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 49 
 
 are net bad men make, in believing that the whole 
 question of conscience resides always with their 
 clients. Every lawyer should feel that it is his duty 
 to be a conservator of those things which the laws 
 enjoin; and while he may rightfully aid a client in 
 obtaining the benefit of any law that is applicable 
 to his case, he ought to counsel against the accept 
 ance of that benefit when it is to operate gross in 
 justice to others. For example: While it is not 
 unprofessional, nor in any degree wrong, to file a 
 plea of usury, a lawyer owes this much to everybody, 
 himself, society, and especially his client, to persuade 
 him, if possible, to refrain from accepting a dishon 
 est release from the fulfilment of his own solemn 
 obligation. The men who refuse to consider such 
 counsel as coming within the intention of their pro 
 fessional duties, may be, and many of them are, 
 upright in their own personal lives, humane, gener 
 ous, social ; but they fall short of conserving, and 
 even of beholding, the great, superior purposes of 
 the law, and they miss that very highest felicity of 
 this lower life, the opportunities of doing good. 
 
 But there is a class of lawyers who do well em 
 ploy these blessed opportunities. Many such there 
 are in many communities. Would that there were 
 more, and that they were in all. To be such men 
 the highest intellectual abilities are not requisite. 
 4 
 
50 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 While in that middle class just described, there are 
 sometimes found men of intellect enough to rise to 
 any eminence by the persistent love and pursuit of 
 justice, it is most pleasing to find in this upper class 
 men in whom such love and pursuit have lifted un 
 derstandings that are less than first-rate up to the 
 power to see and to advocate truth, which is super 
 ior to the genius that, for the want of these virtues, 
 loses in the lapse of time, both the power to see and 
 the power to advocate. For truth, even in this 
 world, rewards her worshippers, while she punishes 
 her enemies. The latter she sometimes blinds in 
 the knowledge of how to come to her shrine, even 
 when they seek to come with serious devotion, but 
 after having been wont to come too seldom and with 
 too reluctant sacrifice. The former, who never bow 
 the knee elsewhere, become so accustomed to her 
 presence and her inspiration, that they seem to par 
 take even of her divine nature. How many men 
 have we known at the bar \vho, although they did 
 not seem at first to be qualified for its successful 
 pursuit, yet, by patient labor and the continuous 
 practice of integrity, have attained to fame; while 
 others, apparently more gifted, by failing to learn 
 or to practise the great duties of the profession, have 
 ended their careers without honor. 
 
 Now while we are far from claiming for such men 
 perfection, we do think that they attain as close 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 51 
 
 an approximation to it as any men in any secular 
 vocation; and that in the matter of usefulness they 
 ascend higher than all others. The science of the 
 law embraces every business of life. Those two 
 things, rights and wrongs, attach themselves every 
 moment of time, to all mankind from the highest to 
 the lowest. They are as interesting to one man as 
 they are to another; the poor as well as the rich. 
 The houseless beggar, the sad lunatic, the raving 
 maniac, the driveling idiot, the infant, the infant not 
 yet escaped from its mother s womb, the outlaw, the 
 felon, yea, the convicted felon who is awaiting in his 
 cell the day of execution, all have their rights and 
 may have their wrongs ; and the law irregular, and 
 desultory, and rambling, and self-contradicting as it 
 seems to be, is ever striving to provide for them all. 
 There is nothing more important, indeed, in the 
 merely human business of life, there is nothing so 
 important as that these rights and wrongs be well 
 understood, in order that the former be faithfully 
 defended, and the latter be adequately redressed. 
 It is a happy thing for society when a young man of 
 the true generous breed applies himself to this good 
 work. In his early years he gives, and he has to 
 give to it his days and his nights. While he is 
 learning it well, his youth is gone. Before he has 
 learned it all, age comes upon him and he retires to 
 die. Yet, by the full ripening of his manhood, he 
 
52 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 has reached a position in which he may safely be 
 trusted by all who need his knowledge and his serv 
 ice. When men come to him for counsel the studies 
 of years enable him, and the habitual practice of 
 honor prompts him, to bestow that counsel wisely 
 and truly. When their rights have been assailed, 
 he defends them against every form of attack. 
 When they are only supposed to be injured, he 
 counsels them to withdraw from the contest, and if 
 he be not hearkened to, he dismisses them to other 
 men who are less scrupulous. When from the 
 peculiar circumstances he be uncertain sometimes 
 whether those rights be assailed or not, then, unless 
 they can be adjusted by compromise, he brings or 
 defends their suits, and maintains his own similitude 
 of the right until judgment is rendered by the 
 courts. 
 
 Now it is just here, in courts, that are to be seen 
 those most common misapprehensions of the public 
 in regard to the duties of lawyers. They think it 
 strange that two men, who claim to be considered 
 upright and sincere, should meet from court to 
 court, from day to day, in constant, ardent antagon 
 isms. But the public does not sufficiently consider 
 that these antagonisms have their inception with 
 parties themselves, and that it rarely, if indeed it 
 ever happens, that the most honest client blames 
 the ardor of his patron s advocacy. Then the public 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 53 
 
 does not reflect that its non-acquaintance with laws, 
 except their most general principles, disqualifies it 
 from recognizing the infinite variety of circum 
 stances which may take, or seem to take, a newly 
 arisen case out of the circle of former precedents, 
 and that judges, notwithstanding their decent 
 deportment and learned looks, are incapable, until 
 after such argumentation, to determine how they 
 ought to adjudicate. Besides, among the different 
 men who have been upon the Bench, rulings, even 
 upon the same points, have been variant according 
 to their capacities, and dispositions, and likings, 
 and prejudices. It makes a vast difference whether 
 Labeo be the magistrate, or Capito; whether Mans 
 field or Kenyon. While the mind of one leans to 
 liberal constructions, and seeks to bring the laws 
 along with the changing conditions of a nation s 
 civilization, that of another is fond to overrule all 
 innovations, and strives to restore every ancient 
 landmark that, from whatever cause, has been, or he 
 believes to have been, removed. 
 
 This reference to the different sorts of judges opens 
 to our view a wide field, if we had the time to 
 speculate upon it. We have said that it was less 
 difficult to adjudicate a case than to argue it. But 
 it must not be understood that we maintain that it 
 is not very difficult to be a good judge. To be a 
 good judge requires a combination of so many gifts 
 
54 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 that it ought to be surprising to consider how many 
 men desire that office, and what kinds of men some 
 times are nominated to it. One of the most difficult 
 questions for statesmen to determine has been, how 
 it is best for judges to be made, and what should be 
 the duration of their incumbency. Many a man 
 has risen from the Bar whose judicial career has 
 widely differed from that which his professional be 
 havior foretold. It is singular what a temptation 
 there seems always to have been to newly-elected 
 judges to distinguish their administrations by unex 
 pected deflections from the ways of former adminis 
 trations. From the impossibility, resulting from the 
 infinitude of its subtleties, of fixing perfectly settled 
 principles of law in all cases, a hazardous amount 
 of discretion must he allowed to every judge which 
 he may hurtfully abuse. It was so much abused in 
 the times of our ancestors, that Lord Camden de 
 signated it the law of tyrants. In its exercise 
 many a fantastic trick has been played by many a 
 magistrate, small and great. In the bewilderment 
 in which juries, unlearned in the law, are wont to 
 be involved by the strivings of opposing counsel, 
 the magistrate has a fair opportunity to exercise that 
 discretion according to his temper, his constitution, 
 his passion, or the expectations that he may 
 found upon the opinions which men may have of his 
 administration. The histories, and the traditions, 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 55 
 
 and our own observations tell us how capricious 
 that exercise has been. In the early struggles be 
 tween liberty and prerogative, it varied little from a 
 decided preponderance in favor of the latter. We 
 shudder to know that the Bench, the most solemn 
 of all places upon earth, except the Pulpit, has been 
 pressed by so ignorant a knave as Wright, so loath 
 some a mass of moral and physical depravity as 
 Saunders, so bloody-minded a villain as Scroggs, so 
 hideous a devil as Jeffreys. Such men passed away 
 with the despotisms that created them, and there is 
 little danger that their likes will be seen again. 
 Yet, under the rule of upright judges, caprice, or 
 some other infirmity, single among many great virtues 
 sometimes hinders that fair and equable dispensation 
 of justice which all good men desire. In one, there 
 is that disposition before mentioned, to distinguish 
 his administration by rulings which overturn past 
 rulings that are sufficiently good precedents. In 
 another, there is an overweening ambition to reform 
 society in impracticable ways, as by indecent harsh 
 ness to defendants in criminal prosecutions, and a 
 too speedy suspicion of frauds in some or other 
 sides in civil suits. The only shade, says Lord 
 Campbell, in the character of Chancellor Osmond 
 was his great severity to penitents, which was caused 
 by his own immaculate life. What a commentary 
 on life! on the life of even a good man! Even Sir 
 
56 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 Matthew Hale, great and good as he was, was so 
 good that he believed it to be a part of his mission 
 to hang poor witches, and, in the nervous apprehen 
 sion of being suspected of selling justice, sometimes 
 hindered or delayed it. It seems almost to be a re 
 quisite in a judge, (at least of a Criminal Court,) 
 that he have some infirmity for which he desires and 
 needs forbearance and forgiveness. A man who 
 leads what is generally styled an immaculate life, 
 when raised to the Bench, is often strangely apt to 
 regard his elevation as a special and blessed inter 
 position of Providence for the good of mankind, 
 and to seek for the culmination of his fame by the 
 attempt of a wholesale clearance of vices as well as 
 crimes. In this country it is especially difficult to 
 obtain able judges, because the salaries are too small 
 to tempt the best lawyers, unless they be already 
 rich, or be ready to retire from the labors of the 
 profession, or they prefer the honors of office to its 
 other rewards. 
 
 In the presence of courts presided over by mag 
 istrates of so various casts, lawyers, who are as good 
 men as the earth ever produced, are made sometimes 
 to appear at a disadvantage that is undeserved. 
 The court being the standard, both of law and every 
 propriety, and having frequent occasions to overrule 
 even its best and ablest advocates, many men feel 
 surprise mingled with reproach, that such men should 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 57 
 
 so often maintain, without blushing, such apparent 
 wrongs and absurdities. Such persons, honest 
 themselves, cannot understand how men, who 
 would like to be considered as honest, can appear 
 at the instance of a mean or bad man against the 
 charge of a good one. But let it be not forgotten, 
 what we have said before, that every human being 
 in society has rights, and that they are as sacred and 
 as dear in one as in another. The good man can 
 no more take from the bad what is his due, than the 
 bad can take from him. If a poor knave have a 
 legal right which a good man, as does sometimes 
 occur, cannot for many reasons recognize, it would 
 be a shame upon the law if he could not find an advo 
 cate among the best and bravest at the bar to aid 
 him in its vindication. Indeed it often requires the 
 best and bravest to vindicate rights which, to good 
 men, seem sometimes to be so strangely located. 
 Therefore, no rule could be made that would fall 
 further short of attaining a just adjudication of 
 causes, than the rule of deciding according to the 
 relative standing of parties in litigation. As the 
 advocate cannot determine by such a standard, no 
 more can the magistrate. Let us imagine one rul 
 ing thus summarily. Let him open his docket and 
 turn to a couple of cases. A against B. By the 
 Court. Let the defendant have his verdict, since 
 he is a good man and A a bad. C against D. By 
 
58 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 the Court. In this case, the plaintiff must have 
 judgment, he being the good man. But, may it 
 please your Honor, who then are good men? Alas! 
 says Cicero, That is a great question. The truth is, 
 unhappy though it be that all men good and bad, some 
 times make mistakes concerning the rights of others, 
 when they seem to conflict with their own. More un 
 happy yet it is, that good men are very often apt to 
 undervalue the rights of the bad. The bad have 
 no friends, and they deserve to have none, save in 
 the laws of the land. These laws cover all. De 
 signed mostly to protect the good from the bad, 
 they must afford also a shelter to the bad whenever 
 they are too rigorously pursued, or whenever the 
 few rights which they have not forfeited, are as 
 sailed. 
 
 From all the considerations hereinbefore men 
 tioned, the nature of municipal laws in general, and 
 the Common Law in particular, the infinite variable 
 ness of its application to the different circumstances 
 of men s lives, the frequent impossibility of its as 
 certainment except by means of public discussions, 
 the habits of some lawyers, and the characteristics 
 of some magistrates, the large number of shining 
 lights of the profession, among whom are to be 
 found some of the kindest and justest men, are un 
 dervalued by the world. Too many of the world 
 regard all lawyers alike as delighting in strifes, as bar- 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 59 
 
 rators, disturbers of peace, and unscrupulously eager 
 for fame and money. Yet, how many of these 
 greater lights are never found in public offices or in 
 the paths that lead to them. How few of them 
 accumulate fortunes. What becomes of the great 
 fees which look so like, what they are sometimes 
 styled, extortions upon the estates of men living 
 and dead? First, these fees are neither so large nor 
 so frequent as it is believed. Then, they go in hu 
 mane benefactions, in liberal allowances to their 
 families, in answerings to charitable claims, in pur 
 chasings of books, and pictures, and objects of virtu, 
 and in other ways that commend themselves to men 
 of generous minds and cultivated tastes. 
 
 Such men as these are the most efficient conserv 
 ators of social tranquillity. Their profession affords 
 them the most frequent opportunities, and their hu 
 manity prompts them ever, to be such. Instead of 
 being the fomenters of useless litigation, their coun 
 sel is mainly given in discouraging it. While they 
 are ever ready to defend the good against the as- 
 saults of the bad, they are as ready for that other 
 ungracious but necessary duty, the defence of the 
 bad against the assaults of the good. And it is 
 their crowning honor that, through their means, a 
 vaster amount of litigation is withheld from the 
 public than is inflicted upon it. 
 
 If we could know all that is said and done in the 
 
60 THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 
 
 offices of this class of men during one year, we 
 should be astonished to find how much distress and 
 anguish have been spared to private men, and how 
 much expense and disgust have been turned away 
 from the public. It is impossible to calculate the 
 good that is done by such men, because it is im 
 possible to know its greatest and noblest part. This 
 part, like all the best charities, is done in secret. 
 It is in the secret chambers of offices, that selfish 
 men are warned from the prosecution of their aims. 
 It is there that the thoughtless are admonished of 
 the laxity in business and in conduct which is to be 
 stayed in order to prevent pecuniary and moral 
 ruin. It is there that just and liberal settlements 
 are wrung from hard parents and mean husbands. 
 It is there that bad men, who come to have unjust 
 testaments executed, are made ashamed and afraid 
 to prolong their injustice beyond the grave and into 
 the eternal world. But it is especially to the up 
 right that blessings come from these secret cham 
 bers. It is there that they are forefended against 
 the evil plots of the vicious, and that they are aided 
 and guided in their benign endeavors for the good 
 of others. It is there that they are comforted in 
 their anxieties regarding the bestowment of the 
 fruits of their labors upon the objects of their love 
 who are to survive them. And then, it is there, 
 sometimes, that mirrors are held before their eyes, 
 
THE LEGAL PROFESSION. 6 1 
 
 in which they are made to behold in their own 
 characters things that surprise and pain them; yet, 
 by the sight of which, they are made humbler and 
 better. This is, indeed, the true charity. To our 
 minds this is the very exaltation of charity. The 
 great fees come not from these silent labors. They 
 come from those loud and fierce antagonisms which 
 these silent labors often prevent, and are intended 
 to prevent. This is the charity that is kind. And 
 it is the more beautiful and blessed, in that it doth 
 not behave itself unseemly, but performs its most 
 benign work unnoticed by the world. 
 
BELISARIUS. 
 
 TT is no wonder that in the absence of a better in- 
 * spiration, mankind should deify Fortune and 
 build temples to her worship. The philosopher and 
 the wit, while they might smile at the vain creduli 
 ties of the multitude, must join in the public as 
 criptions of praise and the public offices of sacrifice. 
 Horace, the gay and worldly-minded, could have 
 his jest at the splendid entertainments of the prime 
 minister; but when he came to speak to the people 
 of the Roman Legions, and their generals in distant 
 wars, he discoursed in language almost too solemn 
 not to be sincere : 
 
 Te Dacus asper, te profugi Scythae, 
 Urbesque gentesque, et Latin m ferox, 
 Regum que matres barbaronim et 
 Purpurei metuunt tyranni. 
 
 The unaccountable vicissitudes in human affairs 
 might well suggest to all who believed that the des 
 tinies of men were shaped or overruled by unseen 
 intelligences, that among these superior beings 
 there was one who loved to confound the calcu 
 lations of the wise and to be entertained by the 
 
 absurd displays of the simple. 
 62 
 
BELISARIUS. 63 
 
 Yet the temple at Antium, the oldest and most 
 magnificent that had been reared by the Romans to 
 Fortune, had received the worship of many gener 
 ations before the most devout worshippers came to 
 look among others than those of gentle blood for 
 such as the divinity might select to become kings, 
 or consuls, or senators. The world has never known 
 a state so great as Rome, while her rulers, regal and 
 republican, were taken from those of ancient here 
 ditary rank. The real glory of that celebrated 
 ROMAN PEOPLE was achieved by the genius and 
 under the rule of Patricians. Conservatism and 
 decency fled before the vulgarity of Marius, and a 
 despotism became necessary to avert the niin that 
 would have ensued from the social wars of such a 
 democracy. 
 
 It was not very long after the establishment of 
 the Empire, that Fortune seemed to become more 
 strangely fantastic than ever before. Whoever is 
 wont to be amused by her caprices, in the abase 
 ment of the great and the exaltation of the lowly, 
 may find abundant entertainment in the history of 
 the Roman Emperors. What a list of names from Au 
 gustus to Palaeologus ! How various their deeds and 
 destinies! From what variant and distant origins 
 they came to that throne which, though assailed for 
 fifteen hundred years by every hostile agency, by 
 foreign wars, by divisions, and by transfer to one 
 
64 BELISARIUS. 
 
 and another city in Europe and in Asia, was des 
 tined to fall at last only before the sword of a suc 
 cessor to the camel-driver of Mecca! On that long 
 roll of monarchs which began with the decline of 
 its prestige and power, it is curious to consider the 
 number who sprang from ignoble sources. Bar 
 barians, not chiefs, nor nobles, but barbarians who 
 were mean, and who were slaves, arose to divide 
 with the descendants of kings the shame of destroy 
 ing the Empire of Caesar. 
 
 It is the purpose of this article to notice briefly 
 one of these monarchs; but only for the sake of 
 considering the career of a far more interesting 
 man by whose unrewarded services his reign, 
 otherwise insignificant in its foreign policy, was 
 made illustrious, and who seems to have lived but 
 to show how useless are the labors of heroes to a 
 prince or a people who can neither appreciate nor 
 employ them. 
 
 When Maximin and Dioclesian had risen to the 
 throne, it needed no necromancer to persuade an 
 ardent youth far away among the wilds of Dacia, 
 that he might make a high career by joining the 
 armies of the Empire. How the peasant boy Jus 
 tin fled from his home on the banks of the Danube, 
 how he rose in favor with the feeble Anastasius, how 
 by intrigues and murders he obtained the crown and 
 administered the government, and how, at last, he 
 
BELISARIUS. 65 
 
 was compelled to abdicate in favor of his nephew, 
 Justinian, who had waited long, too long already/ 
 we can not here recite. We must even pass over 
 the first years of the new reign in which the wars in 
 the East had accomplished nothing except to de 
 velop the fact that the Empire had a general of 
 capacity great enough for any achievement which a 
 wise monarch might desire. A provincial, though 
 of noble family, Belisarius had left the hills of Thrace, 
 had risen step by step in military offices and held a 
 conspicuous place in the body-guard of Justinian, 
 when the latter, in the forty-fifth year of his age, 
 put on the Imperial purple. In the Persian war, 
 which the Emperor, from various reasons, was in 
 duced to abandon, the Thracian rose to be unques 
 tionably the first general of the Empire. Added to 
 this eminent prestige was the timely service which he 
 had rendered on the occasion of the great insurrec 
 tion of the Nika> when, as Justinian was on the 
 very verge of flight and ruin, he saved him by the 
 instantaneous attack and the terrible massacre of the 
 Hippodrome. The scandal of the times assigned 
 yet another advantage in the beginning of his 
 career to the ardent though inconstant fondness of 
 the Empress for his wife, the beautiful Antonina. 
 If this were true, it was the most praiseworthy con 
 duct that the public could ever find during the long 
 
66 BELISARIUS. 
 
 lives of these illustrious females, whose beauty and 
 wit were the only excuses for innumerable frailties. 
 And now a richer field than could be found in 
 Asia, lay extended and inviting to the armies of 
 Justinian. The imbecility of the later Emperors, 
 the profligacy of ministers and the decline of 
 military discipline, had reduced the vast Roman 
 Empire to the space included within the present 
 limits of Turkey. Fifty years had elapsed since 
 the dismemberment of the West. In Italy, the 
 genius of Theodoric had established the supremacy 
 of the Ostrogoths, and the jealousies of Aetius and 
 Boniface, generals of Valentinian III, had enabled 
 Genseric, the Vandal, to secure for himself and 
 his family the throne of Carthage and the do 
 minion of Africa. Vanity, aimless ambition, and 
 especially the desire of more provinces to plunder 
 for -himself and his minister, the rapacious and pro 
 fligate John of Cappadocia, suggested to his narrow, 
 but cunning and persistent mind, the possibility of 
 recovering some portion of that splendid inherit 
 ance which his predecessors had lost. Superadded 
 to these motives was another a religious intol 
 erance which thought to pacify the Imperial 
 conscience with the design of exterminating 
 by violence, the heresies of the Arians and the 
 Donatists, and restoring the Catholic creed, which, 
 under the reign of the barbarian kings, had been 
 
BELISARIUS. 67 
 
 long languishing in the West. Yet one more mo 
 tive, a great and generous had it been sincere, 
 was the release and restoration of Hilderic, the 
 rightful king of Carthage, who had been dethroned 
 and imprisoned by the crafty and cruel Gelimer. 
 
 A mind less narrow and obstinate would have 
 hesitated long before attempting a project so full of 
 hazard as the reduction of Africa from the power of 
 the Vandals. The obstacles were indeed great. 
 The prestige of Roman arms had long passed away. 
 They had been driven from every province of the 
 West. Rome had been entered and pillaged again and 
 again, and even as the capital city of the barbarians 
 had yielded to Ravenna in the north. The dis 
 graceful failure to extend and even to preserve the 
 ancient conquests in Asia, had been vainly covered 
 by a peace founded upon pecuniary considerations. 
 Besides, this very project had been attempted twice 
 before under the lead, first of Boniface and after 
 wards of Basiliscus, and the degenerate and oft- 
 beaten armies that had long lost, not only the ardor, 
 but the name of legions, remembered with horror the 
 stories which they had heard of the gigantic Vandals 
 and the savage Moors whose multitudes inhabited 
 the vast and fertile region lying north of the African 
 Desert. It is easy to image the universal shuddering 
 which followed the announcement that war was to 
 be renewed in the West. The men of property 
 
68 BELISARIUS. 
 
 dreaded the increase of taxes already too burthen- 
 some under that hated and wicked system, which 
 allowed army officers to supply the rations of the 
 soldiery, and the paymasters to levy the taxes for its 
 maintenance : the minister was appalled at the pros 
 pect of the odium and the disasters that must ensue 
 upon failure that seemed inevitable, and the soldiers, 
 yet fatigued by Persian campaigns, scarcely en 
 deavored to conceal their reluctance to make the 
 dangerous navigation of the ^Egean, Myrtoan, 
 Ionian and Mediterranean Seas, and encounter, in 
 the seasons of Summer and Autumn, as well the 
 pestilential climate, as the warlike hordes of Africa. 
 But Justinian was crafty and a bigot. Through his 
 emissaries he had ascertained and exacerbated the 
 spirit of rebellion among the various hostile factions, 
 both political and religious, in the Vandalic King 
 dom. In the midst of the waverings of his mind 
 how far this spirit might be trusted, the importunate 
 appeals of the Athanasian priesthood, accompanied 
 by recitals of various preternatural visions and 
 admonitions, aroused yet more his pious zeal 
 and his superstitious fears, and the Imperial 
 order went forth stern and irrevocable. One fact, 
 and one alone, could reconcile the nation, citizens 
 and soldiers, to the expedition. That fact was 
 the appointment of Belisarius to the supreme 
 command. 
 
BELISARIUS. 69 
 
 To one who, while reflecting upon the large terri- 
 ritory and the great population that yet remained to 
 the Empire, may not have considered the low estate 
 into which its armies had been reduced and the 
 means by which the reduction had been effected, it 
 may be surprising to be told that the forces for this 
 hazardous undertaking consisted of ten thousand 
 infantry and five thousand cavalry; that of these 
 forces, the most efficient was the cavalry; and that, 
 at last, the only fully sure reliance was the body 
 guard of the commanding general. The heavy 
 arms anciently borne by the foot-soldier had yielded 
 to the bow and quiver; and these, with the decline 
 of patriotism and military ardor, had rendered his 
 retreat more facile than his advance in the face of 
 an enemy. It was evident to all reasoning minds 
 that success required that the leader should possess 
 as high a degree of statesmanship as of military 
 genius. A discretion as unlimited as the power of 
 the Sovereign was granted to him, and, in the last 
 days of the month of June in the year 533, after a 
 brief delay by contrary winds in the passage of the 
 Propontis, his galley with its red banners emerged 
 from the Hellespont followed by the fleet of soldiers 
 and seamen, who, though solemnly bidding adieu 
 to friends and country, were already beginning to 
 share the hopes and heroism of their illustrious gen 
 eral. Safely and rapidly they passed along the nar- 
 
70 BE LI SARI US. 
 
 row passages between the Cyclades and Euboea and 
 Attica, between Cythera and Laconia, around the 
 promontory of T?enarum to Methone in Messina, 
 near to the sandy Pylos of Nestor. Less speedy 
 but not less safe, was the voyage up the western 
 coast of Peloponnesus, by Zacynthus, and thence 
 directly across the Ionian Sea to Sicily. 
 
 Fortunate for the Emperor s hopes and that which 
 constituted their most reasonable foundation, were 
 the short-sighted hostilities of the various nations of 
 barbarians among themselves. But for these, the 
 downfall of the Roman Empire, West and East, long 
 ere this period, would have been effected. Alive to 
 the value of co-operation, the wise Theodoric had 
 wedded the sister of Clovis the Frank, and bestowed 
 his own sister Amalafrida upon a Vandal King. A 
 part of the dowry of the latter were the promontory 
 and the strong fortress of Lilybreum on the western 
 coast of Sicily. The inhuman massacre of her 
 Gothic attendants, nobles and soldiery, to the num 
 ber of six thousand, and the speedy and suspicious 
 death of the Princess herself, aroused in this less 
 savage people a hatred of the Vandals and a desire 
 of revenge, which, after the death of Theodoric, 
 made them commit the fatal mistake of encourag 
 ing Justinian in his projects for their conquest. It 
 was to learn how far their promises in this behalf 
 might be trusted, that Beiisarius had sailed to Sicily, 
 
BELISARIUS. 71 
 
 and lingered in the harbor of Catana. His prompt 
 genius was quick to perceive that the reports of their 
 sentiments had not been exaggerated. Pending that 
 an army of five thousand Vandals, under the com 
 mand of Zano, the brother of Gelimer, had gone to 
 suppress a rebellion in Sardinia, and might be re 
 called upon the news of his invasion, he set sail with 
 alacrity, and as soon as wind and oars could convey 
 him, reached and anchored at the promontory of 
 Caput Vada in Byzacium. A council of war, in ap 
 prehension of being cut off from the ships on a sea- 
 coast destitute of harbors, and where the towns and 
 cities, in pursuance of the established policy of the 
 Vandals, had been bereft of walls and fortifications, 
 had dissuaded from landing at this point, and ad 
 vised the sailing to the spacious harbor that lay 
 unguarded six miles from Carthage. Belisarius 
 overruled this advice. Celerity was of utmost im 
 portance. Zano was in Sicily, and the Vandal 
 King, not expecting the invasion to be made so 
 soon, was enjoying the summer at the city of 
 Hermione. Besides, he was anxious to place his 
 army to the south of those inferior cities which, un 
 fortified by walls, could be more speedily reduced, 
 and being of less resolute loyalty, might, by adroit 
 diplomacy, be brought to assist, instead of obstruct 
 ing, his progress to the capital. 
 
 And now was seen an invading army of fifteen 
 
72 BELISARIUS. 
 
 thousand on the sea shore of a hostile nation, whose 
 fighting force was scarcely less than one hundred 
 thousand warriors. No other than a hero could 
 contemplate the magnitude of the danger without 
 trembling. Courage beyond all susceptibility of 
 fear, yet with no element of rashness; prudence 
 akin to prophetic inspiration; caution that seemed 
 like timidity, yet directing actions of almost im 
 possible celerity; military discipline that sometimes 
 must approximate cruelty, yet preserve the subor 
 dination and even the love of an army composed 
 of many various elements, civilised and barbarian; 
 conciliation of an invaded people, but in ways not 
 inconsistent with the avowed purpose to overthrow 
 their government and established worship; all these, 
 and what was yet more, the control of eleven sub 
 altern generals, all jealous of his superior fame, were 
 demanded of Belisarius, and he had them all at his 
 command. The first disorders of the fierce Heruli, 
 when the fleet had just left the harbor of Constanti 
 nople and were lingering at Perinthus, had been 
 suppressed by suspending the leading malefactors 
 upon a gibbet in full view of the army. Yet, when 
 many soldiers had died at Methone from eating the 
 wretched bread that the avaricious John had supplied, 
 the fatherly sympathy and tenderness of the general, 
 and his indignant rebuke of the minister, more than 
 made amends. So when, upon the landing in Africa, 
 
BELISARIUS. . 73 
 
 an orchard had been pillaged, a speedy punishment 
 and an address representing as well the danger as 
 the injustice of such action, induced a system of 
 regulated traffic between the army and the citizens, 
 which not only gave the latter security in their estates 
 but created a market in which they were enriched 
 by the products of their labor. Belisarius was great 
 enough and virtuous enough not only to see, but to 
 rejoice in seeing, the justice and the policy of pro 
 tecting from the violence of the soldiery the peaceful 
 pursuits in an enemy s, as well as his own country. 
 With him, not as with most military men, warfare 
 had refined and exalted his pity for human suf 
 fering. In the march of his army to the capital, not 
 only was there not a single outrage committed upon 
 private property, but the people and the very land 
 rejoiced in the sense of full protection. It is almost 
 incredible with what celerity the objects of this ex 
 pedition were accomplished. The statesmanship of 
 Belisarius made friends for the Emperor with every 
 advancing step. Sullecte received him with open 
 arms; then Leptis; then Hadrumetum. The hos 
 tile armies met ten miles to the south of Carthage. 
 Though surprised by the suddenness of the invasion, 
 Gelimer counted upon an easy victory from the vast 
 superiority of his numbers. One column under the 
 lead of his brother Ammatas, whom he had left in 
 command in Carthage, met the enemy s advance; 
 
74 BELISARIUS. 
 
 another under his nephew Gibamimd was to assault 
 his left flank, while himself with the heaviest column, 
 in proper time would fall upon his rear. But Gelimer 
 saw that it was not the tardy Basilicus with whom 
 he had to contend, but a general who knew as well 
 as Hannibal or Caesar, the value of every moment 
 of time in a day of battle. Simultaneous with the 
 death of Ammatas and the defeat of his troops by 
 a desperate charge of cavalry under John the Arme 
 nian, the column of Gibamund was scattered by a 
 force of six hundred Huns; and while the Vandal 
 King, who even yet had no expectation of defeat 
 by so inferior forces, was hastily performing the 
 usual rites of his brother s funeral, Belisarius turned 
 upon and overwhelmed him. On the next day, 
 while, in the anguish of grief and shame, he was 
 retreating into Numidia, the Roman army marched 
 through the open gates of Carthage. It was on the 
 day of Cyprian, the holy martyr. Shouts and joyful 
 tears of Catholics welcomed their deliverers, the 
 high festival was celebrated in pious gladness by 
 those who now foresaw the return of their exiled 
 bishops and grew ecstatic in prospect of restoring 
 the creed of Athanasius and revenging the persecu 
 tions of a hundred years. But such was the author 
 ity of Belisarius that not only was there no spoliation 
 of property, but the business of the citizens suffered 
 no interruption except in those hours in which they 
 
BELISARIUS. 75 
 
 came forth to witness the procession of the army 
 and the solemn festival of the Church. 
 
 Another effort must be made for the rescue of the 
 falling dynasty. Zano returned with speed from 
 Sardinia with his forces flushed with recent conquest; 
 great numbers of recruits were obtained among the 
 Moors, and Gelimer, with an army superior to the 
 former and many times more numerous than that of 
 his adversary, advanced to the last struggle for his 
 kingdom. The armies met on the plains of Tri- 
 cameron, twenty miles west of Carthage. The 
 Vandals, until the death of Zano, fought with a 
 courage of which the most desperate chieftain could 
 find nothing to complain. But the fall of this brave 
 and beloved prince filled his brother with grief and 
 dismay, and when he saw the advancing standards 
 of Belisarius, he fled from the field with the last 
 army he was destined to lead. The victors rushed 
 to the pursuit, joined by the fierce but inconstant 
 Huns, (who had been partially reduced by Gelimer 
 and were awaiting the issue of battle,) and this vast 
 host, with their countless treasures, were slain or 
 captured. Gelimer, with a few attendants, escaped 
 to an inaccessible fastness among the Moors, but 
 only, after suffering inconceivable privations, to be 
 taken at last. What a change in six months ! three 
 of which had been spent in reaching the scene of 
 conflict. Within the next three, the power of the 
 
76 BELISARIUS. 
 
 Vandals which a hundred years had helped to confirm, 
 was destroyed. As if all things had conspired to 
 aid the plans of Justinian and bring a success above 
 his expectations, and even above his dreams, the 
 unfortunate Hilderic had been murdered by the 
 orders of Gelimer, and thus Roman supremacy was 
 at once re-established over all the country from the 
 Syrtis Major in the East to the Balearic Islands in 
 the West. 
 
 Such stupendous success, attributable, so far as 
 human calculations might extend, almost entirely to 
 the genius of one man, raised Belisarius to an equal 
 rank with the most renowned generals of former 
 times. A monarch who had risen to power by 
 means illegitimate and cruel, and who was perpet 
 uating it by administration inconsistant with even a 
 wish for the happiness of his people, had not need 
 to look elsewhere but into his own heart and his own 
 experiences, in order to see, or to believe that he 
 saw, the prospect of another, and this time, a rea 
 sonable caprice of fortune. This was the exalta 
 tion of his Thracian subject to the kingdom of 
 Carthage, and perhaps by another and not difficult 
 revolution, to speedy succession to the throne of the 
 Empire. There was much to excite such an appre 
 hension in the mind of such a prince. The victo 
 rious general, to gentle birth and a noble person 
 added the manners and mien of a king : 
 
BELISARIUS. 77 
 
 His looks were full of peaceful majesty; 
 His head by nature framed to wear a crown, 
 His hand to wield a sceptre/ 
 
 Justinian and Theodora, the Empress, both of 
 vulgar extraction, had often heard with pain the ap 
 plause with which he was wont to be saluted by the 
 populace when upon his walks from his residence to 
 the public places of the capital, and their timid 
 minds could never be brought to believe that he 
 could be other than an aspirant for those highest of 
 fices, which it seemed he had been born to inherit. 
 As a part of those imposing solemnisations, the 
 value of which with a conquered people he knew 
 how to estimate, he had occupied the -palace of 
 Gelimer, and for one day, before applying himself 
 to the business of administration, listened to the 
 prayers of suppliants while seated upon the throne, 
 and held a banquet with his officers in all the state 
 of the Vandal kings. The secret reports of these 
 actions by the subaltern generals, who could not en 
 dure to see the star of his fame rise so rapidly, pro 
 duced in the mind of Justinian a strange conflict 
 between elation and apprehension at these triumphs 
 of his army. The shame of appearing reluctant to 
 honor the hero who had already immortalised his 
 reign, and the indispensable need of the continuance 
 ot such a man in the public service for the conduct 
 of other great undertakings, so much embarrassed 
 him in the midst of his fears and jealousies, that his 
 
78 BELISARIUS, 
 
 orders to the general upon the question of his re 
 maining in Africa were intentionally or unavoidably 
 ambiguous. 
 
 Sad indeed must have been that great soldier as, 
 from the superior heights to which his genius had 
 exalted him, he looked down upon the rest of man 
 kind and found, even among those who owed him 
 nothing but love and gratitude, no response to the 
 fidelity with which he had devoted his life to their 
 service. To an ordinary man, to any man but Bel- 
 isarius, there was a great temptation. Nothing was 
 more certain than that with such a master, any service 
 however great, must go unrewarded, except that he 
 could accomplish whatever his ambition might 
 suggest. But not only was he without any un 
 lawful ambition, but a more cruel wound than 
 even the ingratitude of his prince could inflict, 
 was in that manly breast. Obedient to the first 
 and only emotion of love, he had wedded Antonina, 
 a charming widow, of whose many lovers he had 
 been both too busy and too pure to know, but 
 whose irregularities found a patroness and an 
 exemplar in the Empress herself, before she had 
 ascended from the arena of the circus to the bed 
 chamber of Justinian. All men except the husband 
 of Antonina, knew of her criminal intimacy with 
 the youth, who, upon his happy conversion from 
 the heresy of the Eunomians, just at the beginning 
 
BELISARIUS. 79 
 
 of the expedition to Africa, had been adopted into 
 the general s family, as their spiritual son. Although 
 the chaste and pious husband could not wholly dis 
 trust the wife whom he so singly loved, yet the bold 
 ness and fierceness of her unlawful passion, which kept 
 the youth by her side too closely and constantly for 
 the credulity of the most uxorious, had raised a 
 doubt; and a doubt on such a subject in the breast 
 of such a man must render him indifferent to what 
 ever might promise to come from the smiles or the 
 frowns of even the Emperor of the East. The in 
 jured husband, henceforth destitute of ambition, 
 and unassailable by any other grief than the one 
 that filled his heart, may well be believed to have 
 indulged a melancholy smile when, to the surprise 
 of all men, he embarked with his captives and spoils, 
 and led them in the ceremonials of a triumph, in 
 which, contrary to the wont of former heroes who 
 rode in splendid chariots, he walked at the head of 
 his guards, and laid all his trophies at the feet of his 
 royal master and his adulterous consort. Vanity 
 of vanities, continually cried the fallen Gelimer, as 
 the vast procession moved on to the Hippodrome, 
 partly deriding and partly preaching on the muta 
 bility of fortune. He knew it not, but he was a 
 happier man than his triumphant captor, because he 
 was going into retirement with his domestic honor 
 unimpeached. 
 
8o BELISARIUS. 
 
 Satisfied as much as a timid monarch could be 
 with such subservient conduct of a spirit that was 
 too great for his comprehension, and in pressing 
 need of his genius in the consummation cf plans 
 which he had cunningly laid for the recovery of 
 Italy from Gothic and Arian rule, he graciously al 
 lowed his general a small share of the praise of his 
 glorious deeds, and invested him with the obsolete 
 honors of the Consulship. With an army of seven 
 thousand men he sent him to Sicily to begin the 
 conquest of a nation whose military force was two 
 hundred thousand men, and whose monarch was a 
 descendant and had inherited the spirit of Theo- 
 doric and Merovaeus. But that monarch was a wo 
 man. According to the customs and laws of her 
 forefathers, which forbade the sceptre to descend to 
 a female, being compelled to govern, first in the 
 name of her son, and after his death, of a husband 
 whom for his pusillanimity she despised, the accom 
 plished Amalasontha became a prey to the arts of 
 Justinian, and having been imprisoned and murdered, 
 the feeble Theodotus reigned in her stead. The di 
 visions created by this family dispute lessened the 
 task which Belisarius had to perform. Already had 
 the promontory of Lilybaeum fallen to the Emperor 
 in right of his conquest of the Vandals, to whom, 
 as before mentioned, it had been yielded by Theo- 
 doric. Scarcely had the rest of Sicily been reduced, 
 
BELISARIUS. 8 1 
 
 when the presence of Belisarius was required in 
 Africa. The judicious administration which, before 
 his recall, he had inaugurated in that country, had 
 been abandoned after his departure. As if the 
 Vandals had been overthrown but to increase the 
 number of Exarchs, whose especial office seemed to 
 be the spoliation of all classes, the people soon 
 groaned under heavier burthens than had ever be 
 fore been imposed. An insurrection arose, to sup 
 press which powers were required very different 
 from those possessed by the minions who knew only 
 how to levy and extort taxes. Belisarius, arriving 
 with a few of his body guard, soon hushed all mur 
 murs, and then returning to Sicily, prepared for the 
 invasion of Italy. When all was ready, and while 
 the crafty Emperor was delaying Theodotus in vain 
 negotiations, Belisarius precipitated his army into 
 Bruttium, overran the whole southern coast where 
 Gothic influence was the weakest, and halted not 
 until he had reached the centre of Campania and 
 stood jbefore the city of Naples. The command 
 ant of this post, which was believed to be impreg 
 nable, viewed with composure the contemptible 
 force of five thousand men that were encamped be 
 fore the walls, while he heard of the preparations at 
 Ravenna for concentrating the whole Gothic forces 
 and marching to annihilate the army of invasion. 
 6 
 
82 BELISARIUS. 
 
 Fortune favored the besiegers. An old and forsaken 
 aqueduct was discovered and found to extend far 
 into the city. The humane general, foreseeing the 
 havoc that must follow from the sudden irruption in 
 the deep of night, of an army hungry and infuriate, for 
 bore to resort to it until he had warned the Nea 
 politans in terms which risked the discovery of his 
 plans. They gave no heed to his warnings, and felt 
 only the more secure until the advancing trumpets 
 of a band of four hundred who had entered through 
 this hazardous passage, announced to their comrades 
 without and the terrified garrison and citizens within, 
 that Naples had fallen. All that a great and humane 
 general could do in the darkness to mitigate the 
 outrages which could not but ensue, was done. By 
 nis entreaties and threats, the carnage was checked 
 at last, and the city was reconciled to its destiny. 
 
 Meanwhile the impotent Theodotus, who had been 
 listening to vague promises from Constantinople and 
 was intent upon plans for securing his own personal 
 safety and aggrandisement, was grossly neglecting 
 the public defence. The Goths, mourning for the 
 murdered queen, and indignant against his pusillan 
 imity, were hesitating whether or not they would 
 drag him from his throne and elevate the valiant 
 Vitiges in his stead. They were not long in decid 
 ing; and while this tragic expedient was being 
 adopted and the nation was occupied in the solemn 
 
BELISARIUS. 83 
 
 inauguration of the new sovereign, the Catholic 
 garrison of Rome voluntarily evacuated the city, 
 and Roman rule was once more established on the 
 Tiber. There is nothing in the history of sieges 
 which exhibits a greater degree of courage, skill, 
 patience, and humanity, than were displayed by 
 Belisarius in the defence of this immense city, 
 against the attacks of one hundred and fifty thousand 
 Goths, throughout all the perils and sufferings of 
 twelve months of beleaguerment. How he availed 
 himself of the interval of the new inauguration and 
 the mustering of the Gothic troops, in gathering 
 stores of corn from Sicily, and from the adjoining 
 districts in Italy; how he succeeded with a few 
 Moorish cavalry in keeping always open a pass to 
 and from the province of Campania; how he made 
 available the waters of the Tiber, when all the aque 
 ducts were obstructed, and its stream was choked 
 and polluted by the bodies of the dead; how, when 
 the supplies of food and drink were nearly exhausted, 
 he removed the non-combatant population to places 
 of safety without the city; how he pitied the suffer 
 ings and suppressed the plots of a dismayed and 
 coward people; how he repulsed the combined and 
 several assaults of that vast and mighty host with 
 skill that has no superior, if it have an equal, in all 
 ancient or modern warfare ; and how, after a siege 
 of twelve months, when fifty thousand of the enemy 
 
84 BELISARIUS. 
 
 had perished, and the disheartened monarch, with 
 forces yet twenty times greater than his own, aban 
 doned the siege in dispair; all these are to be found 
 in the histories of his times. These histories relate 
 further, that in the midst of the labors of his de 
 fense, his fertile genius invented the means to hasten 
 the retreat of Vitiges by inflaming the spirit of re 
 volt in Liguria, and by a masterly employment of the 
 reinforcements which, after long delays, had been 
 sent from Constantinople. In the interval of a truce 
 which had been artfully managed for the sake of 
 delay until these forces could arrive on the opposite 
 shore of Italy, the Goths, who themselves were 
 watching every opportunity to violate it, were con 
 founded by the intelligence that an army, under 
 John the Sanguinary, with such instructions as 
 only Belisarius knew how to frame, was in Picenum, 
 where were their wives and children, and richest 
 treasures. Raising the siege of Rome, they has 
 tened to the attack of Rimini, into which John had 
 retired at their approach. But such was the celerity 
 of Belisarius in effecting a junction with Narses, 
 who had been sent with an additional force to 
 Picenum, that Vitiges again retreated and shut 
 himself behind his last stronghold, the fortress and 
 morasses of Ravenna. 
 
 Jealousies and suspicions were already risen again 
 in the mind of the Emperor, and a man was found 
 
BELISARIUS. 85 
 
 who, with some show of reason, might divide with 
 Belisarius the glory of great achievements. To the 
 invidiousness and cunning ambition of his class, 
 Narses the Etmach united high military genius. It 
 would be difficult to say what Justinian might not 
 have accomplished by a cordial co-operation of 
 these two generals. But co-operation was imprac 
 ticable between two such uncongenial spirits. The 
 slyness and the mean sycophancy of the one were 
 in too constant contrast with the open manliness of 
 the other. But the very qualities which rendered 
 him contemptible in the eyes of such a man as 
 Belisarius, endeared him the more to Justinian. 
 The hero ascertained that the Eunuch had come to 
 watch his movements, and to prevent his too great 
 success. No sooner were the Goths humbled and 
 their power in the South destroyed, and when 
 with the forces in Italy, now raised to twenty thous 
 and men, their dominion might have been annihil 
 ated, Narses, true to his instincts and the equally 
 unworthy innuendoes of his master, withdrew his 
 command. These, with accessions of the discon 
 tented and insubordinate of the regular army, 
 amounted to ten thousand men; and Belisarius was 
 left with a force barely enough to preserve the con 
 quests he had made, and without the power to com 
 plete them. While Narses went upon a useless 
 expedition into the ^Emilian province, and Beli- 
 
86 BELISARIUS. 
 
 sari us was employed in reducing some inferior 
 towns, many months of precious time elapsed. In 
 this interval a new enemy came into the field. It 
 must have been with irrepressible indignation that 
 the great general, in full view of what might have 
 been but for the silly fears of the Emperor and the 
 petty meanness of his favorite, heard descending 
 from the Alps that avalanche of fresh barbarians 
 under Theodebert the Frank. It is yet mournful 
 to contemplate that terrific invasion in which Milan, 
 the second city in Europe, was destroyed, three 
 hundred thousand of its inhabitants were mas 
 sacred, and all Liguria was laid waste. But he was 
 the most patient of mankind. Seizing the oppor 
 tunity when the Franks, satiated with blood and 
 desolation, and now attacked by famine and an 
 epidemical disease, were discontented and mur 
 muring, his powers of diplomacy obtained that 
 which no military genius without an army could 
 enforce, and Theodebert led his hordes away. 
 
 Of all the actions of Belisarius, the grandest and 
 the bravest, the crowning of his many glories, was 
 his conduct in the capture of Ravenna and the 
 closing of the war in Italy. Narses, as if it were 
 supposed that he had sufficiently hindered the ca 
 reer of the general-in-chief, had now been recalled 
 to his old place in the intrigues of the court, and 
 the forces were again reunited under one command. 
 
BELISARIUS. 87 
 
 Ravenna, from its inaccessibility in the midst of its 
 morasses, was considered impregnable by any force 
 or artifice. While the mind of Belisarius was medi 
 tating upon the means for its reduction, and when 
 he had completely invested it by sea and land, he 
 was astounded by the arrival of messengers with a 
 treaty of peace signed by the Emperor, which al 
 lowed the Goths to retain all their possessions to 
 the north of the Po ! One can easily perceive in 
 this treaty the hand of the Eunuch, whose mean 
 but limitless ambition had cast out every generous 
 as well as every patriotic emotion. A general less 
 brave, a citizen less patriotic, a subject less loyal, 
 would not have opposed a policy which the sover 
 eign had adopted and which might be approved by 
 the judgments of every other adviser, military and 
 civil, in the Empire. But Belisarius, contrary to the 
 opinion of all his generals who unanimously voted 
 that Ravenna could not be reduced, refused to con 
 sider the treaty and thus lose the opportunity of 
 signalising his desire for the good of his country 
 and the glory of his sovereign. The Goths were in 
 dismay at this unexpected resolution. Yet in their 
 boundless admiration for the hero, who, in spite of 
 hindrances, had achieved such successes, and with 
 that strange ardor of the mind when from one fond 
 hope which it has been forced to abandon, it turns 
 to a new one sometimes inconsistent and even hos- 
 
88 BELISARIUS. 
 
 tile to the former, they gave up to him their last 
 fortress, and with tears besought that he would allow 
 them to be the voluntary soldiers of him BELISAR 
 IUS, KING OF ITALY. Ravenna was occupied; the 
 crown was refused; and the vanquished Goths, in 
 their inability to understand, believed that they 
 despised a man, who, gifted with the very highest 
 talents, and with adequate inducements and perfect 
 opportunities, had neither ambition nor resentment. 
 Even Justinian could not withhold the praise that 
 was due to such matchless magnanimity. But his 
 newly awakened apprehensions must be relieved 
 again by the presence and renewed submission of 
 his greatest subject. The order for his return was 
 instantly obeyed, the Emperor was soothed, and 
 Italy, as Africa had been, was delivered over to the 
 rapacity of the Exarchs. 
 
 The avowed motive for the recall of Belisarius was 
 the necessity of making a more vigorous resistance 
 than had yet been interposed to the incursions of 
 Nushirvan, the Shah of Persia. The avowal was 
 mainly false. Yet the emergency was greater than 
 Justinian believed. False to the stipulations of the 
 peace which had been solemnly styled the Eternal, 
 the Emperor had attempted to seduce one of the 
 dependencies of Nushirvan and to incite the 
 Northern barbarians to invade his dominions. 
 The latter resented this perfidy by an inroad into 
 
EELISARIUS. 89 
 
 the Asiatic provinces of the Empire, and, among, 
 other acts of devastation, the destruction of Antioch, 
 the most important city east of the Bosporus. The 
 incapacity of the Roman generals in the East had 
 emboldened him in another campaign to attempt the 
 occupation of Colchis, which the wicked and foolish 
 exactions of the Emperor had alienated from his 
 alliance. If this project had succeeded, the Eux- 
 ine would have been opened, and the Persians, with 
 a strong naval armament, could have sailed into the 
 harbor of Constantinople. After a delay of many 
 months in the capital, Belisarius was sent to take 
 command of the forces in Asia. In spite of their 
 great decline both in numbers and discipline, in 
 spite of the insubordination of two of his generals, 
 and the treason and desertion of a third, he man 
 aged, by an adroit movement across the Tigris, to 
 divert Nushirvan from the occupation of Colchis at 
 the very moment of its consummation, and thus 
 bring an end to what was called the Lazic war. 
 
 Ashamed at having been thwarted in so important 
 a project by the superior generalship of Belisarius, 
 Nushirvan, in the following spring, (A. D. 542,) 
 again sallied forth with the largest army which he 
 had yet brought into the field against the Romans. 
 This time his lust for rapine and his pious zeal in 
 duced him to attempt the destruction of Jerusalem, 
 which was yet exceedingly rich in holy offerings. 
 
90 BELISARIUS. 
 
 The Imperial forces were then under the command 
 of Buzes and Justus, a nephew of the Emperor. 
 Upon being again despatched to the East, Belisarius 
 found the army at Hierapolis, and both they and 
 their leaders were in consternation at the immense 
 numbers and the rapid operations of the Persians, 
 and they were unanimously in favor of remaining 
 within that stronghold until Nushirvan, satisfied with 
 plunder, might voluntarily return. Such conduct , 
 answered the general, * would not deserve the mere 
 name of timidity it would be treason. He at 
 once issued his orders and marched the army to Euro- 
 pus on the Euphrates, a position which would enable 
 him to prevent all communication between the king 
 and his dominions. This movement, such was its 
 prodigious boldness, was interpreted as a manoeuvre 
 to intercept his retreat. The astonished invader, 
 believing himself to have been misinformed as to 
 the strength of his enemy, again retreated quickly, 
 availed himself of what was supposed to be an oversight 
 of Belisarius in leaving unguarded one of the passes, 
 and solaced himself with the vain conceit that he 
 had for once outwitted his adversary. These vic 
 tories, though bloodless, must be ranked among 
 the best exploits of military genius. 
 
 By this time the rule of the Exarchs in the West 
 had exhausted all the fruits of conquest. Never 
 was a policy more unlikely to secure the desirable 
 
BELISARIUS. 91 
 
 results of victory than that adopted by the ministers 
 of Justinian in Africa and Italy. We may lament, 
 and it is well we should lament, the sufferings pro 
 duced by an army of invasion. An infuriate soldier 
 who wars for pay and booty, is an object of just ab 
 horrence. But even he is less to be dreaded than 
 those officials taken from the ranks of the cowards 
 who remain at home until the war is over, and then 
 come to the field of conquest, and slowly, and de 
 liberately, and pitilessly, extort, not only the last 
 savings that remain to the vanquished, but the 
 yearly returns of their hopeless toil. The policy 
 of the Exarchs seemed but to contemplate two 
 ends the extirpation of heresy and the plunder of 
 all men. The Arians were hindered even in the 
 private baptism of their children, and the most uri- 
 doubted loyalty and the most unexceptionable re 
 ligious faith of a Roman could not shield him from 
 open spoliation by the civil officers. Deliverance 
 from such exactions was indeed hopeless, since they 
 were countenanced by the Emperor himself, who 
 could never gather money enough for his two only 
 purposes for its employment, the enriching of his 
 queen and favorites, and the erection of costly 
 buildings. . These cruelties produced rebellions 
 among the Moors and the few remaining Vandals 
 in Africa that resulted in slaughters and desolations 
 from which thirteen centuries have not been able to 
 
92 BELISARIUS. 
 
 rescue that once prosperous country, and at the 
 mere description of which even now the mind is 
 appalled. In Italy, the rule of these viceroys was 
 so different from the tolerant and benign administra 
 tion of Theodoric, that when Totila, a brave Goth, 
 essayed the deliverance of the remnant of his peo 
 ple from their oppression, he found friends and allies 
 among all classes of citizens, rich and poor, Arians 
 and Catholics, from the Alps to the Gulf of Tar- 
 entum. No doubt the surprise and chagrin of the 
 Emperor were as great as they were avowed to be, 
 when his deaf ears heard at last that the exactions 
 which he had sanctioned. and encouraged had filled 
 all Italy with horror and hatred, and that Totila, 
 with a large army of Goths and Italians, had marched 
 unmolested from Padua to Naples, had captured the 
 latter and was preparing for another siege of Rome. 
 
 Who but Belisarius could be found to cope with 
 the exigencies of this crisis? And yet, we can 
 scarcely credit the recorded truth that the material 
 support by which this new expedition was to be sus 
 tained, was less than it was in the preceding. But 
 the maladministration of the Imperial war depart 
 ment had reached a point hardly paralleled in his 
 tory. His rapacious and unprincipled ministers, 
 being both tax-assessors and paymasters, not only 
 plundered throughout the Empire for the avowed 
 support of the army, but withheld from the latter 
 
BELISARIUS. 93 
 
 their bounties, and even encouraged the reduction 
 of the rolls by desertions and furloughs in order 
 to pocket the surplus supplies which this reduc 
 tion created. Belisarius, in order to prevent 
 the recurrence of the apprehension which 
 his previous conduct with the Goths had inspired, 
 was deprived of his own guards. Arriving at Ra 
 venna with a handful of men, less than four thousand 
 recruits, whom he had gathered in Illyricum, and 
 seeing at once the impossibility of increasing his 
 force either by forced levies or by voluntary enlist 
 ment in a country which had grown to prefer Gothic 
 to Roman domination, he remonstrated in terms 
 that discovered a sadness such as can be felt only 
 by great minds which, like Cassandra, have the un 
 happy gift to foretell calamities which are fated not 
 to be believed by those who alone have the power 
 to prevent them. After long delays, and not until 
 he had been driven to recross the Adriatic to Dyrr- 
 achium, he received a small additional reinforce 
 ment. With a force so inadequate, Narses, as was 
 afterwards shown, would have refused at all hazards 
 the conduct of the expedition. Belisarius embarked 
 with it, and fearing the attempt to pass through the 
 country, coasted around the Peninsula and landed 
 at the mouth of the Tiber. 
 
 Impossible as it seemed, with such a force, to re 
 lieve Rome from the assault of a numerous host led 
 
94 BELISARIUS. 
 
 by an able general who had spent many months in 
 obstructing the channel of the river and guarding 
 its banks, the relief was once on the very verge of 
 being, and would have been, accomplished, but for 
 the baseness of Bessus, the commandant, and the 
 disobedience of one of his subalterns. During the 
 time when the general was confined by illness in 
 his camp, the city was betrayed by the sentinels 
 who guarded the Asinarian gate. Thus Rome once 
 again fell to the possession ot the Goths. And this 
 had been the last day of the city which for ages had 
 been boasting the name of the Eternal, but for the 
 solemn appeal of Belisarius, who, in the name of all 
 mankind, the dead, the living, and the yet unborn, 
 besought him to spare the remains of those mighty 
 monuments of the genius and glory of the past. 
 The letter conveying this appeal is so replete with 
 eloquent and pathetic warning that we quote it 
 entire : 
 
 The most mighty heroes and the wisest statesmen have always 
 considered it their pride to own a city with newly and stately build 
 ings, while on the other hand to destroy those which already exist, 
 has been reserved for the dull ferocity of savages careless of the 
 sentence which posterity will cast upon them. Of all the cities 
 which the sun beholds in his course, none can vie with Rome in size, 
 splendor and renown. It has not been reared by the genius of one 
 man, by the labor of a single age. The august assembly of the re 
 publican Senate, and the long train of magnificent Emperors, by the 
 progressive and accumulated toil of centuries, and by the most lavish 
 expenditure of wealth, have brought this capital to its present high 
 and acknowledged pre-eminence. Every foreign country has fur 
 nished architects for its construction, artists for its ornament; and 
 
BELISARIUS. 95 
 
 the slow results of their joint exertions have bequeathed to us the 
 noblest monument of ancient glory. A blow aimed at this venerable 
 fabric will resound equally through past and future ages. It will 
 rob the illustrious dead of the trophies of their fame; it will rob un 
 born generations of the proud and cheering prospect which these 
 trophies would afford them. Consider also that one of the two 
 events must needs occui. You will in this war obtain a final 
 victory over the Imperial forces, or yourself be subdued. Should your 
 cause prevail, you, by the havoc which you meditate, would over 
 throw not a hostile city but your own; while your present forbear 
 ance would preserve for you the first and fairest possession of your 
 crown. If, on the contrary, fortune should declare against you, your 
 mercy to Rome will be rewarded by the mercy of the conqueror to 
 you; but none could be expected from Justinian after the desolation 
 of his ancient capital. What benefit, therefore, in an} case, can 
 accrue to you from so barbarous an outrage? All mankind have 
 now their eyes turned towards you. Your fame is in the balance, 
 and will incline to one scale or the other, according to your conduct 
 on this decisive occasion; for such as are the deeds of princes, such 
 will be their character in history. 
 
 Totila perused this letter many times, and his 
 gloomy mind brooded, and yearned, and hesitated 
 over the demolition of the city that had nurtured and 
 given its name to the worst enemies of his people. 
 This was, at least, perhaps the noblest of all the 
 achievements of that hero of so many wars, when, 
 in the absence of other means of prevention, he 
 pleaded in so touching and solemn language for these 
 sacred trophies, the common property of all genera 
 tions of mankind, that the barbarian, partly in pity, 
 and partly in awe, forbore to strike. 
 
 In tracing the further conduct of Belisarius in this 
 Italian war, and in comparing the support which he 
 received from Constantinople with that which after- 
 
96 BELISARIUS. 
 
 wards was rendered to Narses, one is almost led to 
 doubt whether the Emperor did not desire the hu 
 miliation of his General, rather than the triumph of 
 his arms. It is impossible by any other supposition 
 inconsistent with the absence of all military or po 
 litical sagacity, to account for his treatment. To- 
 tila, having exiled the citizens, and imprisoned the 
 Senate, stationed a large force at Mt. Algidus in 
 order to watch and threaten his adversary who was 
 at Porto. While he was gone with the rest of his 
 army to reduce the remaining Imperial forces in the 
 south, nothing could have astounded him more than 
 to hear that Belisarius, by a grand and sudden at 
 tack, had overcome the army left for its guard, had 
 recaptured Rome, had removed all his stores from 
 Porto, and was preparing to stand a siege. The 
 furious Goth returned, reunited all his forces, and 
 the defense of the former war was re-enacted by the 
 heroic general. The repeated assaults of the Goths 
 were repulsed with horrible slaughter. After the 
 loss of the flower of their army, they again raised 
 the seige and retired to Tivoli. At this juncture 
 the war could have been ended if any other than 
 Justinian had been at the head of the government. 
 While Belisarius urged with all his zeal the dispatch 
 of re-enforcements which would have enabled him to 
 speedily crush the Gothic power, the Emperor, hav 
 ing been seized by a new ambition, was then en. 
 
BELISARIUS. 97 
 
 gaged in writing a controversial treatise upon the 
 ology, and did not even deign to notice his en 
 treaties. And when they came at last, he was 
 ordered with the forces he could safely withdraw 
 from Rome (and these were less than a thousand 
 men) to repair to Apulia, where he was destined to 
 lose much of the prestige of his previous victories 
 by the uselessness of this expedition and the in 
 efficiency and cowardice of his generals. Several 
 campaigns followed, in which nothing decisive was 
 done by either the Imperial or Gothic forces. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine a position more dis 
 agreeable than that of a great commander, when, in 
 full assurance of complete success to the unmolested 
 operation of his plans, he is continually thwarted by 
 orders from an incompetent government. It can 
 but exasperate the pain in such a case when he feels 
 that such orders are dictated, not less by ignorance, 
 than by malignity and fear. The true patriot thus 
 recognizes in himself the most dangerous citizen of 
 his country and the chief cause of its disasters. 
 Such was the position of Belisarius during all these 
 fruitless campaigns. For the first time in his life 
 he asked to be recalled, and his petition was grant 
 ed. He had accomplished in his long career full 
 enough for the measure of a greater ambition. No 
 man with similar resources and hindrances had ever 
 accomplished nearly so much. He despaired of 
 
 7 
 
98 BELISARIUS. 
 
 being able to exert sufficient influence with the 
 Emperor to obtain the means of doing more for his 
 country. He was growing old. And now weary 
 from many a toil which had been paid with nothing 
 but ingratitude, suspicion, and persecution, having 
 long borne the heaviest burthen that can ever weigh 
 upon a proud and sensitive spirit, the consciousness 
 or the suspicion of domestic dishonor, Belisarius 
 desired to return home, where he might wait for 
 death, and, according to his faith, make preparation 
 for a higher life. 
 
 The neglect that ensued was doubtless not unac 
 ceptable to a man who, in his tread through all the 
 ways of honor/ had seen full well the vanity of de 
 pending upon princes favors, and mingling among 
 the attendants of courts. Yet we can scarcely be 
 lieve that he suppressed a pardonable emotion of 
 triumph when, after some years of solitude, upon a 
 sudden incursion of the Bulgarians, which threatened 
 the seizure of the capital, the terrified monarch and 
 his court turned to him once more for protection. 
 Once more the aged general clothed himself in ar 
 mor, and with fearfully unequal forces went forth to 
 his last battle and won his last victory. Perhaps 
 that emotion fluttered into increased warmth and 
 brightness, when, upon his return and the passing 
 of the danger, the Emperor, hardened in ingratitude, 
 followed by his servile ministers, coldly turned from 
 
BELISARIUS. 99 
 
 their deliverer, and dismissed him to the retirement 
 from which their fears had called him. 
 
 But for the names of Belisarius and Tribonian, 
 the reign of Justinian would have been as inglorious 
 as those of most of the sovereigns who ruled during 
 the years of the decline of the Empire. His name 
 has been and must ever be, associated with that 
 grand system of Civil Law which the wise and just 
 men of former times had created, and which Tri 
 bonian by hi s orders compiled. In thus undeservedly 
 usurping the renown of others, his name has a par 
 allel in that of James the First in the Translation 
 of the Bible a singular coincidence in the lives of 
 two men, who, though living in widely distant ages, 
 were exceedingly alike in many of those character 
 istics which render a man unfit for the government 
 of a great people. There was in the one as in the 
 other the same religious fervor which, instead of 
 being illustrated in the leading of pious lives and 
 the production of good works, was expended in the 
 composition of petty doctrinal tracts and the per 
 secution of their opponents. They had the same 
 childish fondness for power, and in their ignorance 
 how to employ it, were plagued with the same ner 
 vous apprehension of its loss or diminution. Both 
 were fond of notoriety and lacked the ability to ob 
 tain any just renown. Both had their favorites, 
 and the English monarch, had he dared, would have 
 
100 BELISARIUS. 
 
 rewarded them as Justinian rewarded his, to the 
 ruin of thousands of his other subjects. The Rom 
 an did leave one grand work of architectural beauty; 
 but our admiration for the temple of Saint Sophia 
 must be accompanied by the memory of the means 
 by which the money for its erection was wrung 
 from an oppressed people. In the case of Belisa- 
 rius, it is both curious and sad to contemplate how 
 long two such men as he and Justinian could live 
 and labor together, the one for the glory of his 
 country, and the other for its disgrace. The noble 
 monuments that were erected by the one, even at 
 the command of the other, were by that other ruth 
 lessly destroyed. While for thirty years, in heat 
 and cold, in hunger and thirst, in absence from home 
 and country, the one fulfilled and surpassed require 
 ments that seemed impossible except by preternat 
 ural powers; the other, in the undisturbed security 
 of his capital, grew old in forefending every blessed 
 result, and in exhibiting to the world how easily and 
 how soon the hands of the weak may ruin the elabo 
 rate works of the great. 
 
 History furnishes no instance of a man who re 
 ceived less of just reward for his conduct in public 
 and domestic life. It was a misfortune that such a 
 book as the Anecdotes, which purports to be the 
 secret work of Procopius, was ever composed. The 
 most judicious scholars among the moderns wholly 
 
BEUSARIUS. -,;,,;. ior 
 
 reject its authenticity, but more because its reveal- 
 ings were in such discord with his avowed histories 
 and his confidential relationship with Belisarius, 
 than from discredit of any of those revealings ex 
 cept such as were too scandalous, or were related 
 with too great circumstantiality to be believed. 
 The career of Theodora was perhaps more variously 
 eventful than that of any woman in history. The 
 daughter of the Master of the Bears, accustomed 
 from infancy to the ribald language and sanguinary 
 spectacles of the Circus, she was both incontinent 
 and cruel. The men of many cities in the East 
 knew that the lowest trull of the capital was not 
 more shamelessly profligate than she had been from 
 her earliest puberty to the day when she conceived 
 the hope that her marvellous beauty might ensnare 
 the adopted son and destined successor of Justin. 
 When this ambition was gratified, and when she 
 had become a joint sovereign with her husband, the 
 love of power probably excluded every other pass 
 ion that would endanger it. That power she ex 
 erted unceasingly for the exaltation of her favorites, 
 and especially for the punishment of her enemies. 
 The gloomy prisons under the palace seldom re 
 ceived an inmate who was destined ever to emerge 
 into the light of day. No lapse of time could abate 
 her malignity. John of Cappadocia, in the pride 
 of that power which his value to the Emperor had 
 
102 BELISARIUS. 
 
 erected, once provoked her displeasure. She 
 smiled and patiently bided her time. Years after 
 wards the trap was laid, and the minister was 
 caught. He, under whose cruel rapacity every 
 province of the empire had groaned, was hurled 
 from his high estate and scourged into beggary and 
 exile. Antonina, scarcely less fair, was a favorite, 
 partly because she was of similar origin and frail 
 ties, and partly because she was found to be a most 
 facile instrument in the execution of her secret 
 plans. Theodora regarded Belisarius with all the 
 hate that a bad woman is capable of feeling for a 
 great and good man of whom she believes she has 
 reason to be afraid; and she intensely enjoyed her 
 revenge in the infidelities of Antonina, to which 
 she even descended to become the procuress. We 
 can not believe all that has been told of Antonina 
 and Theodosius; but we know that there was 
 enough to cast upon the heart of her husband a 
 shadow which neither more splendid success than 
 he had already attained could remove, nor a grosser 
 ingratitude of the Emperor deepen. He was in 
 deed slow to credit what was evident to all the 
 world, and perhaps even a doubt lingered to the 
 last if he ought not to believe the protestations of 
 one so fair and so well beloved, who had followed 
 him in all his wars but one, and shared in every 
 privation and danger except those of the very battle. 
 
BELISARIUS. 103 
 
 The weakness that could entertain such a doubt is 
 not only compatible with the loftiest genius and the 
 noblest sense of personal honor, but it is associated 
 with them oftener and more naturally than with 
 those inferior natures that look for the infirmities 
 which from experience they know to be possible. A 
 great .and pure mind is easily deceived in the matter 
 of vices, which, in its own exalted way, it meets no 
 temptation to commit. Aurelius was a philosopher 
 and the best of kings; yet he praised the gods for 
 the gift of Faustina. Belisarius was less fortunate: 
 he was made at least to doubt. And then there 
 was their daughter, beloved of them both, Joannina; 
 and then, perhaps, he could only doubt. In this 
 lifelong incertitude, in this eternal shadowing of his 
 heart of hearts, while we can credit even but a small 
 portion of the statements contained in the strange 
 work before mentioned, yet we may feel ourselves 
 competent to account for that extraordinary serenity 
 with which he endured the wrongs of his sovereign, 
 that, without abatement, followed him from an early 
 period in his high career down to the tomb, and even 
 beyond the tomb. The persistent absence of all 
 resentment against ingratitude and persecution, the 
 ready obedience that looked like base servility to 
 the whimsical requirements of a bigoted and malig 
 nant despot, lead us, with what we know of his 
 domestic sorrows, to look for other motives to such 
 
104 BELISARIUS. 
 
 conduct beside the promptings of patriotism and 
 the sacred obligation to honor the king. These, 
 doubtless, were ever present with him, but he had 
 been greater or less than man, as the eloquent Gib 
 bon in such unreasonable connexion exclaims, if, in 
 addition to these motives, there were not others 
 which were not only above the fear of death, but 
 which could spring only from an anguish that could 
 admit no other pain. 
 
 After the repulse of the Bulgarians, there was 
 nothing further for Belisarius to do. Like the 
 prophet, he had stood in his lot, and was waiting 
 for the end of the days. One more blow, the last, 
 must be inflicted. A petty plot against the Em 
 peror was discovered, and although he was soon 
 fully acquitted of the charge of complicity and re 
 leased from imprisonment, yet his estate was for 
 feited, because of the apprehension which he had 
 most innocently raised. A few months more of 
 unmolested contemplation, and all of Belisarius, 
 except his name and memory, passed away. The 
 story of his blindness to which we are indebted for 
 some of the most beautiful creations of music and 
 romance, though with little foundation, has kept its 
 place as a tradition, because of our proneness to be 
 lieve all the worst that can be told of tyrants. Jus 
 tinian, as if the purpose of his living had been to 
 show how disastrous is the rule of an incompetent 
 
BELISARIUS. 105 
 
 prince, and how the ingratitude of the human heart 
 may increase with the powers and opportunities 
 and obligations of reward, did not long survive his 
 great captain. Together they had performed dis 
 tinguished parts in life, and together they left the 
 stage. They were so intimately joined in their 
 lives and in their deaths, that the Plaudite which 
 followed the Thracian was abundant to include the 
 Scythian also, 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED 
 PEOPLE. 
 
 \17ORKS of the imagination get their coloring 
 * * from the lives of their creators. They are 
 concretes formed from individual experiences, par 
 ticularly so when on the side of the suffering or the 
 mainly earnest. Walter Scott must reproduce in 
 one and another form the legends, mostly sad, which 
 when a child, he learned at Sandy Knowe on the 
 border famous for chivalric deeds enacted long be 
 fore. Dickens must recall the Marshalsea and 
 others whereamong his poor childhood had been 
 spent. Thackeray, after the loss of his inherited 
 estate and the comrades who had helped him to 
 squander it, could not but lash society for its de- 
 ceitfulness and other meannesses which were con 
 temptible rather than vicious. 
 
 We are now to speculate about a woman, who, in 
 the matter of genius was not inferior to either of 
 these illustrious men, and who, being a woman, and 
 an intensely unhappy one, revealed her interior being 
 in ways to excite painful compassion for the strug- 
 
 106 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 1 07 
 
 gles, which without support from any outer source, 
 through a life of three score years, she strove to 
 mitigate and endure. Made motherless when a 
 young child, with a father rude, stern, exacting, who 
 had no suspicion of the gifts which ought to have 
 been apparent to even his dull eyes, she must make 
 her way in some sort between his ignorant, servile 
 obedience to established forms, and the independent 
 fiery zeal of her aunts who had revolted and joined 
 the standard of the Methodists, among whom one 
 of these aunts became a zealous preacher. As she 
 grew older, contemplation of this frigidity on one, 
 and what seemed an immoderate unreasoning fervor 
 on the other side of her family, drove her, when 
 come to womanhood, to suspect that ever-continu 
 ing, ever-sustaining religious faith was not to be 
 gotten in either of the forms with which she had 
 become acquainted. In this frame, she went forth 
 into the world to seek, not fame, of which she had 
 never dreamed, but an honorable livelihood. 
 
 It is a sore misfortune to a thoughtful earnest 
 mind to lose the form of religious faith in which 
 during childhood it had humbly trusted, and after 
 wards be unable to find another which satisfies its 
 yearnings. If ever there was a spirit which was in 
 need of an authoritative discipline of religious be 
 lief, a discipline adequate to save from distrust of 
 certain moral obligation and from despair from its 
 
108 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 violation, it was Marian Evans. For her own hap 
 piness, for all the exigencies of her own being, it 
 would have been better if she had been less gifted, 
 or more prone to the tendencies of feebler natures, 
 and with a less ardent charity for the wants of the 
 needy and the losses of the frail. As it was, her 
 aspirations were for the highest attainable good in 
 government, in civil, social, and domestic life; and 
 her charities were so large that they included not 
 only the abject and squalid of the human race, 
 but lesser animals which man sometimes, as if for 
 no other cause but having received the gift of rea 
 son, loves either to wantonly destroy, or whimsically 
 maltreat. Marian Evans not only gave what she 
 could spare for the alleviation of human suffering, 
 but she would have stopped a traveller on the high 
 way, and begged to put her handkerchief or her 
 mantle under the collar that galled the shoulder of 
 his jade; and she would have gone to the woods in 
 order to fetch a green bough, and extend it to a 
 worm which, the wind having blown from its native 
 tree, she might have found writhing its moist, frail 
 body in the sand. Such was she when she went to 
 her first work in the town of Coventry. 
 
 A girl who is poor and who is without personal 
 attractions of any sort, when cast upon the world, 
 is apt to feel that she must take the first offer for 
 work which comes of a kind for which she knows 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 109 
 
 herself to be competent. Yet it was not without 
 some reluctance, if not some shuddering, that she 
 undertook to translate into English the Leben Jesu 
 of Strauss, who, first having adopted the bold teach 
 ing of Hegel and Schleiermacher, went to the audac 
 ity of declaring the Gospels no more than myths 
 of superstitious times. The performance of this 
 work led her to the place which for her was next to 
 the worst in all London town, the editorial rooms 
 of the Westminister Review. These were rooms 
 wherein a man might exist and seem to thrive; but 
 they were no proper or safe resort for a woman, es 
 pecially one with the spirit and what had been and 
 what still were the yearnings of Marian Evans. Yet, 
 she was in need of work and it seemed to her the 
 best opportunity to obtain it, and out of the society 
 of the Positivists whom she met there habitually 
 she must get, what must be gotten from some source, 
 the intellectual and moral sustenance without which 
 such a being must lapse into inanity or plunge into 
 despair. Not but that a habit of free thinking had 
 not already begun, coming forth out of her tumult 
 uous strugglings with many forms of doubt. Some 
 time back while reading Charlotte Bronte s novel, 
 fane Eyre, she had dwelt with a bounding heart 
 upon the recital of the misery and shame of the 
 poor governess when she found that the man who 
 had conquered her heart had a wife who, although 
 
110 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 hopelessly insane, was yet alive. "They had a 
 right to marry in the circumstances!" exclaimed 
 Marian Evans. These bold words showed how far 
 already she had strayed from the faith of her fathers, 
 and even from respect for the social laws of her own 
 and all Christian communities. If she could be 
 lieve thus of the obligations of the marriage bond 
 when one party had been rendered by the act of 
 God unfit for conjugal union, it was to be forseen 
 what her decision would be when such unfitness had 
 been produced by dishonorable action. 
 
 Among the coterie of Free-thinkers in those 
 rooms was George Henry Lewes. He was gifted 
 with not a single outward charm such as those of 
 Rochester in the novel who, from anguishing 
 thoughts of his maniac wife, turned for relief to the 
 petite governess and dreamed and dreamed, and 
 finally trusted that he might get her to supply the 
 place in a being left so destitute. No. George 
 Henry Lewes was the very ugliest man who had 
 ever been in those rooms. He was the very incar 
 nation of ugliness. Men did not say that he had 
 the horn of a rhinoceros, as Milton seemed to fear, 
 from the abuse of Salmasius, might be believed of 
 him ; but they did say that he had the face of a dog, 
 and that of a Scotch terrier, the ugliest of all dogs. 
 Yet we know that even the Satyrs, like men in one 
 way and another, could win the love of women, and 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. Ill 
 
 George Henry Lewes succeeded in persuading one 
 to be his wife; who, after having borne three chil 
 dren, irretrievably ruined both herself and her hus 
 band. Then he spurned from his bosom and his 
 house her whom he ought never, to have taken to 
 either, and invited Marian Evans to assume the 
 place in both, and she, being now thirty-five years 
 old, consented. At this union were none of the 
 tumultuous conditions which attended the unhappy- 
 Dido when driven by the resistless influences of the 
 goddesses, she fled with the Trojan to the grotto in 
 the forest of Carthage ; but its very deliberation made 
 it indeed a "day of death." 
 
 Yet, be it remembered that this woman, who for 
 tunately was to bear no offspring of her own, if she 
 could not become warmly attached to the children 
 of her predecessor,*made them attached to her with 
 an affection that seemed filial, tended them in health 
 and sickness, and at the dying bed of one of them 
 watched and waited with an assiduity of devotion 
 that the sufferer never had had and never would 
 have had from her who had given him birth. Indeed 
 she seemed to feel as if she was as bound to every 
 behest of wife and mother as those upon whom at 
 the nuptial altar the chain had been laid amid sol- 
 emnest vows and invocations of Heavenly blessing. 
 Marian Evans believed, rather she imagined that 
 she believed, that the bond with which she had 
 
112 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 bound herself to this man was, if possible, of more 
 binding obligation upon her, because it was one 
 which, having neither the sanction of Heaven nor 
 her country s laws had nothing to hold it sacred be 
 yond her own plighted word. Then this companion 
 with all of his ugliness, had the affectionateness of a 
 grateful lover, and, sooner than she did, found out 
 wherein lay the greatest gifts of her who had 
 made such sacrifices to join her being with his 
 own; for he was possessed of extraordinary genius, 
 and it had received the highest culture. 
 
 By this time she had strayed, except in instinct 
 ive feeling, entirely away from the religious faith of 
 her childhood. Such it must have been, otherwise 
 every moment of her waking existence would have 
 been beset by fears which would have gotten little 
 relief from such union with any man however gifted 
 with the graces which win the love of women. 
 Among the fondest of her recollections was that of 
 a sojourn near lake Geneva, whereat she read over 
 and over again that wonderful book, the Confes 
 sions of Rousseau. It was bad to have so loved 
 this work of a man, who, next to Voltaire, and in 
 some respects beyond him, was of all men of gen 
 ius, the most reprobate, not only to religion and 
 morality, but to decency. Not that Marian Evans 
 had a love of foulness; but she drank into her pass 
 ionate being without painful reluctance all the foul- 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 113 
 
 ness because it was in the same cup which contained 
 the voluptuous seductive sentimentality which dis 
 tinguished above all mankind this extraordinary 
 spirit. Such reading had led her, some time before 
 her connection with Lewes, to entertain too inde 
 pendent views of married life, and to the concep 
 tion that there was a felicity to which, without 
 words of priest and sanction of religions or munic 
 ipal law, a brave spirit, striving with full integrity 
 of purpose, might aspire. When five and twenty 
 years of age, while discussing the opinions of 
 Madame de Sable about marriage, she wrote thus : 
 
 "Heaven forbid that we should enter on a defence of French mor 
 als, most of all in reference to marriage! But it is undeniable that 
 unions formed in the maturity of thought and feeling, and grounded 
 only on inherent fitness and mutual attraction, tended to bring wom 
 en into more intelligent sympathy with men and to heighten and 
 complicate their share in the political drama. The quiescence and 
 security of the conjugal relation are doubtless favorable to the man 
 ifestation of the highest qualities by persons who have already at 
 tained a high standard of culture, but rarely foster a passion sufficient 
 to rouse all the faculties to aid in winning or retaining its beloved 
 object, to convert indolence into activity, indifference into ardent 
 partisanship, dullness into perspicuity." 
 
 These were prophetic words destined to fulfillment 
 ten years afterwards. The man who had read this 
 article in the Westminister Review, knew well enough 
 that if his intended proposal were rejected, it would 
 not be because it was regarded immoral, or even 
 dishonorable. 
 
 The Scenes of Clerical Life, which, over the 
 
114 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 name of George Eliot, she wrote for Blackwood s 
 Magazine, excited everybody s attention. It ap 
 peared full soon that the man (as he was thought to 
 be) who wrote them had little admiration for the 
 mild-mannered country clergyman, neither hot or 
 notably cold, who honorably complied with the 
 written demands of his office, got for himself as 
 comfortable, even luxurious living as possible to the 
 amount of his stipend and the liberality of his par 
 ishioners, and in the solitude of his home, whether 
 as a married man or a bachelor, comforted himself 
 with mild harmless dalliance with the flute. One of 
 these clerical gentlemen for a time was taken for the 
 author, and the while upon the strength of such rep 
 utation got many a finer dinner than he could have 
 had at home. 
 
 But the public heard far different words when in 
 Adam Bede, the novelist talked of those spirits 
 who, however fanatical they might be regarded, 
 were believed to be striving for a spiritual life more 
 earnest than that which they saw in their midst. 
 The mind of Marian Evans was passionately ser 
 ious. The exquisite humor that is found with suffi 
 cient frequency in her writings, instead of subtract 
 ing from the evidence that the serious predominated 
 over the sportive in her being, as it does in all great 
 humorists, enhanced it. For humor goes hand in 
 hand with sadness, or in continually iterated se- 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 115 
 
 quence, and such minds are the only ones which are 
 able to create interesting concretes out of the life 
 of mankind. Among the Wesleyans were near rel 
 atives, prominent among whom was her aunt, who, 
 out of resentment to the order excluding women 
 from the pulpit, left the society with hope to make 
 herself as pronounced as possible else\vhere. This 
 aunt had suggested the character of Dinah, in 
 Adam Bede, and thus she wrote to a friend after 
 hearing of the suggestions that those pathetic 
 sermons of Dinah had been copied and without 
 feeling : 
 
 "You see .how my aunt suggested "Dinah;" but it is impossible 
 you should see, as I do, how entirely her individuality differed from 
 "Dinah s." How curious it seems to me that people should think 
 that "Dinah s" sermon, prayers, and speeches were copied, when 
 they were written with hot tears as they surged up in my own 
 mind." 
 
 The pathos in the words of Dinah had their 
 seal in those of her who had been long searching 
 for rest to her spirit and had not been able to 
 find it. 
 
 For the purposes of this article one of the most 
 interesting of George Eliot s novels is The Mill on 
 the Floss. According to the Biography of her 
 friend, Mathilde Blind, it contains a history of the 
 author and her family. In Maggie Tulliver we 
 read the life of Marian Evans childhood and young 
 womanhood, and we suspected to foresee that some- 
 
Il6 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 thing out of the usual course was to attend the ca 
 reer of a girl who was wont to keep in an attic with 
 its worm-eaten floors and rafters a "fetisch which 
 she punished for all her misfortunes" and drove nails 
 into the head of a hideous wooden doll in imita 
 tion of the vengeance of Jael upon the sleeping 
 Sisera. Maggie Tulliver has been styled "the most 
 adorable of George Eliot s women." True to the 
 author s views of matters appertaining to marriage 
 she gave to her a vulgarian for a lover. Of the 
 adorable woman herself she wrote that, with all her 
 charming qualities she had "more affinity with poets 
 and artists than with saints and martyrs" and that 
 she yielded her heart "to an attraction lying entire 
 ly in the magnetism of passion." Strange words 
 for a woman to write about one of her own creation 
 who was to be styled the most adorable of them all ! 
 What would have become of Maggie had she not 
 died we can only conjecture by considering the fate 
 of the girl whom she represented, who, unfortunately 
 for herself, did not die in her youth. 
 
 As to the married experience of the three Dodson 
 girls, Mrs. Tulliver, Maggie s mother, and her two 
 aunts, Mrs. Pullet, and Mrs. Glegg! In all litera 
 ture there is nothing more ludicrous, yet more mel 
 ancholy. In the midst of gushing laughter, it is 
 sad to think on the lesson which we are expected 
 to learn and the moral which we are allowed to de- 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. I 17 
 
 duce from these instances of married life. Mrs. 
 Pullet, who all along had been hoping to find a hus 
 band whose "inherent fitness" would be the very 
 thing to satisfy a woman of extreme gentility, whose 
 claim to it was founded mainly upon the delicacy 
 of her health, found that she had been married to 
 a person who was not very much more than a little 
 spindling old maid, and who had the meanness to 
 be almost as ailing as herself. In this couple there 
 could not be any decisive amount of domestic mis 
 ery, as neither could find in the other much upon 
 which it would have imparted very much satisfaction 
 to prey, or even to pick. So of Mrs. Tulliver, a 
 description of whose character is given briefly on 
 the occasion of a remark made to her husband after 
 the quarrel with Sister Glegg, when, troubled by the 
 fear that he would be called upon to pay the debt 
 owed to her, she was affectionately trying to sug 
 gest a -course more prudent than giving way to re 
 sentment : 
 
 "Mrs. Tulliver had lived thirteen years with her husband, yet she 
 retained with all of the freshness of her early married life a faculty 
 of saying things which drove him in the opposite direction to the 
 one she desired. Some minds are wonderful in keeping their bloom 
 in this way, as a patriarchal gold-fish apparently retains to the last 
 its youthful illusion that it can swim in a straight line beyond the 
 encircling glass. Mrs. Tulliver was an amiable fish of this kind, and, 
 after running her head against the same resisting medium for thir 
 teen years, would go at it again to-day with undulled alacrity." 
 
 But what must we think of Aunt Glegg with her 
 
Il8 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 magisterial ways, her small economies, her anxiety 
 to make, after she was dead many years thereafter, 
 a handsome figure in her will, and her frequent ref 
 erence to "the way in our family?" Yet, Mr. Glegg 
 was not like his brother-in-law, poor Mr. Pullet. He 
 had a salutary sullenness which served well enough 
 the purposes which aggression would not have 
 helped. When the wife of his bosom at a family 
 dinner party at the Tullivers had put upon Mr. 
 Tulliver indignities which he was driven at last to 
 resent, she appealed to her husband, not for sympa 
 thy, but to have his forces joined with hers in order 
 to crush her little insect of a brother-in-law. Now 
 Mr. Glegg had not the heart for such warfare. One 
 may read (twelfth chapter) in a scene at the break 
 fast table a choice specimen of the domestic life of 
 that interesting couple, and learn what precedents 
 this young member of the family believed that she 
 owed it to herself not to follow. 
 
 If the life of Marian Evans was like that of Mag 
 gie Tulliver among these parents and these aunts, 
 it is no wonder that she grew up with the free opin 
 ions which led to her subsequent action. As for 
 her courtship by Stephen Guest, it was much like 
 that of the savage for the unprotected maid whom 
 he chances to find straying too far from home low 
 er indeed, because to the pursued was imparted 
 somewhat of the fierceness of the pursuer which led 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 119 
 
 her to wish as well as fear to be overtaken. She was 
 saved from ruin by accidental death. Perhaps, 
 indeed we may almost suspect, that she who in 
 dited her history sometimes regretted that in her 
 youth she also had not gone down beneath the 
 flood. 
 
 As the lovers of George Eliot grow in intelli 
 gence, in the opportunities of culture, and the oc 
 cupancy of higher social positions, they are made 
 to illustrate seriously, as those which I have de 
 scribed illustrate ludicrously, the author s ideas of 
 the insufficiency of marriage to bring the happiness 
 which it always promises. In Middle-march it 
 makes the heart sick to read the disappointment of 
 Dorothea in the lofty expectations which she had 
 indulged of the felicity to come from the society of 
 such a man as Casaubon, wherein every sweet and 
 every devout aspiration of her heart are made to 
 turn back upon and rend itself. Then the punish 
 ment of Lydgate, who, a gentleman born and bred, 
 took to wife a woman who had nothing to commend 
 herself except physical beauty whose fascination his 
 lower nature could not resist. It seems like cruelty 
 how this woman understood the methods of driving 
 her husband to the brink of despair by her selfish 
 ness, coarseness, and duplicity, and luring him back 
 by presentation in new phases and attitudes the 
 charms which, in spite of his manhood, had won him 
 
120 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 in the outset, and which, though ever trifling with 
 and abusing it, held their sway. 
 
 Now what is mostly notable among the married 
 people of this author is that they are made to refrain 
 from violation of the letter of the bond which has 
 bound them together, even though its spirit has been 
 so long and repeatedly broken that it has become 
 hopeless of amendment. This fact kept her from 
 being one of the evilest teachers of mankind. She 
 did not mean to be a teacher of evil. She was too 
 charitable, and, according to her ideas of innocence, 
 too innocent for that; and so she made her married 
 people faithful to their bonds. In reading Middle- 
 march, we constantly expect, and are made almost 
 to wish for Dorothea, ardent as devout, to leave the 
 pompous autocrat, who, although not bloody-minded 
 like Bluebeard, had no more regard than he for a 
 wife s individuality, or Lydgate to decide that every 
 prompting of his manhood required him to withdraw 
 from one who had repeatedly dishonored it. No : 
 there was that fatal bond which these obligors, un 
 like Shylock, construe against themselves, and wait 
 for death or like event to set them free. 
 
 One of the most affecting scenes illustrating this 
 characteristic is that wherein is told of the meeting 
 between Mrs. Bulstrode and her husband when his 
 early knavery, unsuspected during twenty years of 
 married life, had been detected and the uncovered 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 121 
 
 felon sat in his study and awaited as a murderer 
 awaits the verdict of a jury, the conduct of his 
 wife, who, in her chamber above, had been reflect 
 ing upon the news she had just heard, and upon 
 what sort of bosom her trusting head had been rest 
 ing so long. It is not easy to read without tears 
 how that proud woman, after putting off the finery 
 in which but yesterday she had been flaunting in 
 arrogance among the lesser women of her acquaint 
 ance, and clothing in the plain things which she 
 knew that she was doomed to wear for the rest of her 
 life, descended the stairs, went to her husband bowed 
 down with shame and terror, and. standing over him 
 awhile in silence, at length, calmly said " Nicholas, 
 look up." 
 
 Now, what could have been the motive of this 
 strange woman to treat with such solemn respect an 
 institution at which, in her philosophical writings she 
 had sneered, and whose sacred behests her own life 
 had dishonored? Eagerly fond of the Confessions 
 of Rousseau, admiring these female writers of 
 France, who had exhibited what she styled " the 
 courage of their sex," yet she could not pass to the 
 length whither the boldest among those had dared 
 and make marriage a covert for the resort of un 
 lawful loves, instead of a clean bower for lawful, or 
 at least a shelter for the sorely tempted. She fol 
 lowed such precedents as far as a mind, which, 
 
122 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 though perverted, was yet generous, could follow 
 without doing violence to instincts that were inerad 
 icable, and to traditions of home and country which 
 it was impossible to wholly ignore. Her married 
 lovers are not happy. The most cultured and in 
 teresting among them either are miserable, or they 
 have grown to despise themselves for having had so 
 little forethought as to bind themselves irrevocably 
 to those whom they have found to be entirely unfit 
 for the superior purposes for which union had been 
 sought and consummated. Yet they forbear from 
 violation and separation the possible results ot 
 which are feared to be yet more unhappy. These 
 husbands and these wives are like the lepers who, 
 while seeing death in return to the city from which 
 they were cast out, feared one more terrific among 
 the enemies who were advancing against their whole 
 nation. Shrinking from gross dishonor of marriage 
 vows, they hate them more fiercely for their inad 
 equacy to fulfill their stipulations. These vows 
 were like the oath by the Styx, the dark, slow mov 
 ing river of Hell, which only Fate, not men nor 
 gods, could absolve. Men and women may well 
 pause before taking, and hold on to the freedom 
 from which how perilous it is to part George Eliot 
 has told in pictures which make one sometimes shout 
 with laughter, and sometimes shudder with horror 
 to look upon; but when they have taken, they have 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 123 
 
 gone upon a bourne like that from which no travel 
 ler returns. Therefore it is, in spite of her free- 
 thinking principles, and her own eccentric life, that 
 the creations of her imagination, like the curse of 
 the weak, unfaithful prophet, become a blessing in 
 so far as they tend to evince that in the great heart 
 of humanity the feeling is ineradicable that marriage 
 is an institution of God, and that its bonds by 
 human means are indissoluble. 
 
 We have often suspected that Marian Evans had 
 such purpose among others, in view while engaged 
 in her wonderful work, as if impelled by the in 
 stinctive delicacy of her sex thus to make some 
 compensation for what, in the great deep of her 
 heart, she must sometimes have feared, was a mis 
 take in her own career; and in this view I am con 
 firmed by her marriage after the death of her com 
 panion. That such a woman, had she been young, 
 had married would have been most natural. When 
 such a loss occurs, the more anguishing its recol 
 lection, the more apt a suffering heart is, to look 
 about for some support against despair, and of all 
 these, the surest, most grateful is the diversion to 
 another love. Of all seasons for a lover, if he be 
 both delicate and artful, to approach the object of 
 his pursuit, that is most favorable when the one who 
 is sought is forlorn with the sense of bereavement of 
 a love which has forever gone. 
 
124 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 "The Lady of Ephesus" in the Satyricon of 
 Petronius Arbiter is a satire, but it was founded 
 upon a principle in our being which Heaven im 
 planted there for purposes not less benignant than 
 wise. Man and woman must turn their backs upon 
 graves and their faces to the world. Extravagant 
 as are the things told of the Roman Soldier and 
 the young widow watching by the bier of her hus 
 band, yet some therein described are more natural, 
 more common, and more fit than a lifetime yearning 
 for the dead and refusal to be comforted by the liv 
 ing. Seldom indeed is similar haste to be noted 
 among women, especially those already past the 
 period of youth: for, besides that love with them is 
 a greater part of existence than with men, they 
 dread more the appearance of levity, are usually 
 more constant, more religious-minded, more able to 
 endure misfortune, and more capable to find resig 
 nation. But how often do we see an old man who 
 has been bereft of the loved companion through all 
 the years of his manhood, after a season of wailing 
 for his overwhelming loss, suddenly rise from his 
 ashes, straighten his bent shoulders, trim himself in 
 youthful garments, and strive to move with easy 
 gayety among women of whom he might have been 
 the grandfather! Such deportment, ludicrous as it 
 seems, is but assertion of the instinct of self preser 
 vation common to all periods of human life, and, 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 125 
 
 instead of indicating disrespect to the memory of 
 the dead, is rather, pitiful as it is, the most con 
 vincing proof how dearly they were prized while 
 alive. How mournful are the words of Abraham at 
 the funerals of Sarah. "Then Abraham came to 
 Hebron to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. 
 And Abraham stood up before his dead, and spake 
 unto the sons of Heth, saying : I am a stranger and 
 a sojourner with you. Give me a possession of a 
 burying place with you, that I may bury my dead 
 out of my sight. " Yet how the note in that very 
 same chapter is changed! How brief and blithe 
 these words! "Then again Abraham took a wife, 
 and her name was Keturah." This is the life of 
 man. The very best men, more often than the rest, 
 after the loss of those who were beloved more than 
 life, have thus sought to restore, or to simulate a 
 condition all of whose blessedness it is impossible to 
 relinquish. 
 
 But what of the marriage of this woman who, at 
 sixty years of age, was left in a widowhood perhaps 
 more desolate than if she had had a right to the 
 man to whom she had surrendered herself? Upon 
 her face, even in youth, had never been a single 
 trace of the beauty that delights men s eyes. Now 
 she was wrinkled with age, and sickness, and sor 
 row. Can it be believed that thus broken in body, 
 soul, and spirit, she hoped to have her youth re- 
 
126 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE 
 
 newed, and put into a condition which it had never 
 known in its prime, by placing orange blossoms 
 among her gray, withered locks, arraying herself in 
 nuptial veil and vesture, going tottering along the 
 aisle of St. George s Chapel in Hanover Square and 
 having the symbolic ring put upon her wrinkled finger 
 by a man her junior by many years? Had she be 
 come so superannuated as not to know that old De 
 cember can neither impart nor receive the sweet 
 influences of the young May? No. In her case 
 was the desire, when dying, to have a name with 
 which to descend into the grave other than that 
 which she had usurped from one of her sex, who, 
 despite all else that she had forfeited, was en 
 titled to that until death should put an end to the 
 claim. 
 
 Therefore we cannot but compassionate, whenever 
 we reflect upon the unhappy career of Marian Evans. 
 Aside from gratitude for her almost matchless crea 
 tions, we must be touched by the contemplation of 
 what must have been the sadness of a woman who 
 did not believe that happiness was to be had in mar 
 ried life, who had had no experience of happiness 
 without, and who, although without ascertained prin 
 ciples of religious faith, and with an ineffaceable 
 blot upon her own life, yet shrank from imparting 
 precepts which might lead others to ruin. It is 
 pleasing to note her sympathy with every form of 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 127 
 
 suffering and her constant desire to alleviate it. It 
 was as if she would make all possible amends for 
 whatever were the errors of her own life. Under 
 rating both the blessedness and the sacredness of 
 marriage, it was impossible for her to describe it 
 otherwise than it appeared to her eyes. Yet, even 
 if unwittingly, she paid reverence to that estate in 
 teaching that there was no escape from its miseries 
 on this side of the grave. She made her husbands 
 and wives dispute, wrangle, inflict, suffer and endure 
 until death had put an end both to infliction and 
 suffering. Then, at last, when youth and health 
 were gone and when what had been plainness of 
 feature had lapsed into the wrinkles of eld, when 
 she had laid aside her work, and in the solitude of 
 her spirit looked back upon the past and forth upon 
 the future, it is touching to contemplate how, when 
 aged, tired, alone, she yearned for an honorable 
 name to be written upon her tomb. Louise de 
 Stael concealed from the world the marriage of her 
 old age, both because she was afraid of the ridicule 
 and of any subtraction from the name which she 
 had made so renowned. It was not until her last 
 will and testament was opened that men knew that 
 she had taken to her aged bosom a boy of the 
 French infantry when the ridicule that followed 
 could make no impression upon the "dull, cold ear 
 of death." How unlike the Englishwoman, who 
 
128 GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 piteously hoped that the blessing she had not sought 
 in life might descend upon her grave! To bind her 
 self in old age with the bond she had desecrated, 
 without hope or expectation of what impels the 
 young to take its obligations seemed to her the only 
 apology she could make for the wrong done to her 
 self and the world. 
 
 It was well for Marian Evans that the man who 
 had ruined her life died before her. His death 
 overwhelmed her with grief which showed the single 
 ness of her affection; but it afforded opportunities 
 for self-communings of whose salutary results she 
 was in extremest need. He had never been able to 
 seduce her from all religious conviction, and now, 
 when his voice was no longer heard, and his ex 
 ample was taken away, perhaps her more awakened 
 concern for her own spiritual being was enhanced 
 by regretful memories of the wrongs done by him 
 to which she was party, without condonement of 
 which, even by repentance, he had gone to his last 
 account. The marriage of herself to another man 
 would at least seem to consummate the severance 
 that death had already made. If such things were 
 so, if such was her motive for this last action, in 
 it there is a pathos like that when (Edipus of 
 Thebes, alter the suicide of Jocasta, was led to 
 Athens where he was to "turn the goal of weari 
 some existence," when, seated in the grove hard by 
 
GEORGE ELIOT S MARRIED PEOPLE. 129 
 
 the temples of the gods, lifting his sightless eyes 
 towards Heaven, he prayed for "some accomplish 
 ment and end of life." 
 
LOUISE, BARONNE DE ST/EL- 
 HOLSTEIN. 
 
 A MONO all women of letters perhaps Madame 
 ^de Stael was the most passionate not to have 
 avowedly or been known certainly to pass beyond 
 the pale of honor. She seemed to have loved to 
 live near the line of licensed and unlicensed exist 
 ence, with some yearning for the latter that was re 
 strained only by fear of punishment for offending 
 the former s exactions. With her mother, Ma am- 
 selle Curchod, Gibbon the historian fell in love 
 while he was a student at Lausanne. His family 
 not liking the match, he gave up his suit and re 
 mained a bachelor. The damsel, whether spiteful 
 or less sentimental, was married to Necker, the 
 banker, who was to become famous at Paris during 
 the period of the Revolution, Born in that city ( 1 766) 
 never was one more a Parisian in tastes, habits, and 
 ideas, than Louise Necker. At twelve years she 
 was a grown woman. At least she believed herself 
 so to be, and in the matters of culture, experience, 
 and observation she was. Her girlhood had suf- 
 130 
 
LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 13! 
 
 fered from the disagreement of her parents regard 
 ing the discipline to which she ought to be subject 
 ed. The mother was for repressing, the father for 
 indulging her longings for freedom. For a time 
 the former prevailed; but it being, or it appearing 
 that rigor was hurtful to her health, this was relaxed 
 more and more until finally the child was handed 
 over to the fullest paternal indulgence. Ever after 
 wards, while she seemed to care for her mother not 
 at all, for her father she professed, both while he was 
 living, and after his death, an affection that some 
 times seemed rather ridiculous. While she was yet 
 low in her teens, at their salon in Paris, 
 "Were it by accident or destene," 
 
 was a meeting between the mother and her old lov 
 er. Nothing could have exceeded the self-possess 
 ion of the former as she essayed to exhibit how 
 much better, as she believed, she had married than 
 at one time had been expected. On the contrary 
 Gibbon was much embarrassed. Perhaps it was 
 only the awkwardness wrought by retirement from 
 female society. At all events, so it was said, the 
 daughter, out of romantic compassion, offered, with 
 bestowal of her own hand, to compensate for his 
 disappointment. Whereupon the old bachelor, made 
 yet less at his ease, rose, made some search for his 
 hat, and, as soon as he found it, took himself away 
 to return there never again. 
 
132 LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 
 
 The girl soon learned to love Rousseau, and, if 
 she had been a boy, there is no telling the lengths 
 to which she would have rushed in the indulgence 
 of whatever she saw to be coveted in that city so 
 full of objects of desire. But she was a girl, and 
 when she had come to her twentieth year, she saw 
 fit to marry with a man advanced in life, wealthy 
 and titled, stipulating that she was never to go 
 with him to his native country (Sweden) and with 
 tacit understanding that, while tolerating his 
 caresses, she was to think, speak and do as she 
 pleased. 
 
 Marriages avowedly or well understood to be for 
 convenience, at their very start, do not give prom 
 ise of great conjugal felicity. It may not be very 
 surprising how men can enter into them; but it is 
 always to be wondered at when a woman can dis 
 pose of herself in that way. No happiness was to 
 spring from this union along with the children who 
 were engendered by it. Finally a separation took 
 place, and after the decease of the aged husband, 
 the widow r , then forty-six and an invalid, contracted 
 with one who was little more than a boy, another 
 marriage of which she was so ashamed that it was 
 kept secret until after her death. 
 
 The prevailing elements in the being of this illus 
 trious woman were sentiment and ambition, both of 
 which were so passionate as to keep her in acondi- 
 
LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 133 
 
 tion of ever unsatisfied desire. Living in the midst 
 of the Revolution, she contracted a love for politics, 
 which never could be subdued. Living in an age of 
 fiery passion, there cannot be a doubt that she con 
 stantly fretted under constraints which marriage 
 and her sex had imposed upon her action, and that 
 she pined for the freedom of those who had resolved 
 to be free even to licentiousness. Her first literary 
 venture was a foolish eulogium upon Rousseau who, 
 fortunately for mankind, was as disgusting in his 
 manner of living, as the sentiment in his writings 
 was exquisitely sublimated. To what extent were 
 carried the loves which she indulged was not cer 
 tainly known. But it was an open secret that she 
 loved Talleyrand more than she loved her husband, 
 and that she was overwhelmed with anger and 
 shame when he thrust her aside and in her place 
 substituted the younger and more beautiful Madame 
 Grant. 
 
 Yet, in spite of her yieldings, however far these 
 extended, to the consuming passions of her being, 
 her cold regard for her husband, her eager fondness 
 for society and for politics, she was a very great, and 
 in the main, a sincere woman. She believed that 
 she had the right to show, perhaps to avow to others 
 her slight regard for a dotard who had taken her 
 with no acknowledgement or promise of conjugal 
 affection. She let him become father of her chil- 
 
134 LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 
 
 dren, as a mettlesome female of any race, in want 
 of more fit and exalted union, yields reluctant, dis 
 gusted assent to the perpetuation cf a breed which 
 she foresees that, half despising, she will the other 
 half neglect, and kept herself buffeting amid the 
 stormy billows that were within and around her. 
 Inheriting the democratic sentiments of her father, 
 she made such fierce hostility to the usurpations of 
 Bonaparte that he banished her, first from Paris, 
 then from France. The exile came near breaking her 
 heart. In the midst of her sufferings from this source 
 she wrote Delphine. 
 
 True to life as this book is, it is not one for the 
 young of either sex to read with profit. The loves 
 described by the author are of a kind to be unhap 
 py. Disappointment and resentment follow the 
 violations of men s vows. Delphine was partly an 
 attempt to be like La Nouvelle Heloise of Rousseau 
 with the softening that a female hand could impart. 
 Its reception led to the coming of Corinne. The 
 author had drank deep of disappointment which she 
 would have liked to believe that she had had, even 
 if she had not. Then she had travelled much in 
 the fairer softer regions of the South. There is 
 wonderful genius in this book. The marvellous gift 
 of improvisation belonging to some of the Italians 
 she possessed to a great degree. Corinne was a 
 woman too sensitive, too spirited, too passionate to 
 
LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 135 
 
 be made content with the licensed honorable love 
 of one man. Such a woman must be made to love 
 in conditions wherein love s lawful fruition is too 
 tame for entire satisfaction; she must spend the 
 prime of her youth in lawless indulgences and long 
 ings for the impossible, and rush to premature death 
 consumed by the fiery flames which she coiOd never 
 even wish to subdue. In all literature there is noth 
 ing more beautiful than some passages occurring in 
 this novel. Without doubt while some of them 
 were being indited, tears were streaming from the 
 eyes of the author who, though conscious of the 
 power of feeling the most consuming passion, had 
 not one upon whom in its fulness to lavish it. That 
 was a terrific cry uttered by her in one of the per 
 iods of her sense of desolation "Jamais, jamais, je 
 ne serais jamais aime comme faime!" It was the 
 keynote to the wailings of all her women-lovers. 
 Now when such cries come from the mouth of a 
 married woman, who has married of her own free 
 will, and who has children growing up by her side, 
 what shall be said of her fitness to teach mankind 
 lessons from the novel, the gift to teach wherefrom 
 was bestowed with benign intent by the Creator. 
 Not like the Nouvelle Heloise of Rousseau, whose 
 individual coarseness belied the exquisite aspirations 
 which he claimed to have, not like the Elective 
 Affinities of Goethe, so openly insulting to the sense 
 
136 LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 
 
 of decency and honest fear, not like the general 
 libertinism of Voltaire, the culmination of whose 
 audacious grossness perhaps was his jeering debate 
 with another man little known to him regarding the 
 paternity of a child whose mother had abandoned 
 herself to both, her writings tend insidiously to make 
 the young of both sexes unsatisfied with the love 
 that is allowed w r ithin appointed bounds, and they 
 diminish in their minds things and institutions time- 
 honored and consecrated. Unhappy always, in 
 childhood, girlhood, married life, widowhood, again 
 married life, amid all she was yet more vain than 
 unhappy. It is curious to consider that very ex 
 asperation of vanity leading her often into action 
 that made her an object of irrepressible ridicule. 
 Her fame, even while living, went beyond that of 
 any woman in modern times, yet her eagerness kept 
 her from being satisfied with any measure of success 
 or laudation. 
 
 But the genius of this woman ! and the eloquence I 
 In the eloquence of the pen she is almost without 
 a rival. So in the thoroughness and acuteness of 
 her historical researches. That is a wonderful work 
 "De la L literature Consideree dans les Rapports 
 avec les Institutions Sociales." It is almost incred 
 ible with what ingenuity she traced the history of 
 Literature from the earliest times of which any rec 
 ord was made through the Greek, the Roman, the 
 
LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 137 
 
 Middle Age, the Italian, the German, the English, 
 the French. The great purpose which she had in 
 view, chimerical as it was, it is most entertaining 
 to see how eloquently she labored to establish. Her 
 theory was the ultimate Perfectibility of mankind 
 by the general diffusion of knowledge. Readers, 
 even those not at all given to enthusiasm^ cannot 
 but feel some of the rapture that beamed in her 
 breast while making her great impassioned plea. 
 She came not far from being a great historian. She 
 had a genius for politics. In different conditions 
 she might have been a very great poet. But the en 
 thusiasm that was ever burning in her breast from 
 childhood to death was continually leading her 
 astray in her opinions, her language, and her de 
 portment. 
 
 It was not strange that such a spirit would dream 
 of the perfectibility of mankind by human agencies. 
 Reared with indefinite notions of religious obliga 
 tions, claiming and feeling the right to accept and 
 reject what she pleased among the teachings of the 
 Church, ever yearning for things unattainable, in 
 finite in desires, unteachable by experience, exasp 
 erated by disappointments, no wonder that she 
 dreamed and cried out in her dreamings of a state 
 wherein the discordant things in this fallen life which 
 her fancies intensified might be adjusted and a gold 
 en age come again upon the world. Of all dream- 
 
138 LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 
 
 ers they are most extravagant and vain who, en 
 dowed with extraordinary genius, either are not 
 Christians, or feel themselves to be authorized in 
 terpreters of the will of Heaven outside and inside 
 of its revealings. The more eminently gifted are 
 such, the more daring asperations they conceive for 
 the ken of the seer and the voice of the prophet. 
 All except enthusiasts know that the development 
 of virtue has never kept pace with mere culture of 
 the understanding, and only brief reflection is enough 
 to convince a thoughtful mind of the truth of that 
 saying; "far more noble is that learning which 
 flows from above from the divine influence than that 
 which is laboriously acquired by the industry of 
 man." No man nor no woman ever grows better 
 purely by development of the understanding. Some 
 of those most abandoned to evil doing, among wom 
 en as among men, have been gifted with preeminent 
 genius, and had most elaborate culture in the midst 
 of abundant opportunities. Sodom was less cul 
 tured than Capernaum, Gomorrah than Chorazin. 
 The modern cities had been exalted to Heaven, yet 
 for their atrocities, of which the older would have 
 repented in dust and ashes, they were cast into hell. 
 It is not the culture of the understanding alone that 
 is to save from ruin mankind in the aggregate or the 
 individual, that is to put an end to oppression, and 
 war, and ingratitude and dishonor, and neglect, and 
 
LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 139 
 
 contumely, and wrong doing of every sort. It is 
 the cultivation of the spirit under such guidance as 
 Heaven has appointed, and it is a culture within as 
 easy attainment of the simple and weak as of the 
 gifted and powerful. For it comes from God, who 
 sometimes in "an instant elevates the humble mind 
 to comprehend more reasons of the Eternal truth 
 than if any one had studied ten years in the 
 Schools." 
 
 Great as are the historical writings of Madame de 
 Stael they have the same infirmity as those of her 
 imagination. Sentiment and passion go in advance 
 of probability and reason. In Corinne are some 
 things as beautiful and as powerful as ever came 
 from the impassioned tongue of Sappho, whom the 
 Greeks named The Tenth Muse. Yet, after all the 
 display of resistless passion the work falls far short 
 of the best purposes of fiction. It is an outrage 
 upon conjugal honor, the all consuming passion of 
 Corinne for Oswald, a passion become only more 
 consuming when, false to the behests of manhood, 
 he was married to another. As outrageous was the 
 returned passion of the false lover and false hus 
 band. More outrageous than both was making the 
 lawful wife go-between with her husband and the wom 
 an whom he had destroyed. None, or little of value 
 is in the lesson of Corinne s end. Only when she 
 saw death standing by her bed-side did she ask for 
 
140 LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 
 
 the image of this lover to be taken from her 
 breast and its place occupied by that of her offend 
 ed Lord. 
 
 Madame de Stael might have been called the 
 greatest of her sex if she had had a sounder judg 
 ment and well directed religious principles. Her 
 own career ought to have been enough to convince 
 her that her speculations regarding human perfecti 
 bility were illusory. When a girl, of her own free 
 will, she had been married to an old man whom she 
 did not love and whom she grew to despise. After 
 wards and when past middle age, she was married 
 to a boy with whom she consorted in secret in fear 
 of the ridicule which discovery as she feared would 
 have brought upon her. It is a sad life to contem 
 plate. She was not a bad woman. Her impulses 
 were high, but she could never learn to control them 
 by the rules of religion or those of reason. Her 
 extremest desires were for things, some unlawful, 
 others impossible to human attainment. With af 
 fections most intense, their fruition was such as to 
 her own eyes seemed pitiful and contemptible. Vain 
 as it was, almost childish that cry hereinbefore 
 quoted, it was an index to that interior being which, 
 throughout all its changing conditions, was racked 
 by passions and tumultuous strivings. 
 
 It is interesting to compare the life of Louise de 
 Stael with that of Marian Evans; one, the daughter 
 
LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 141 
 
 of wealth, title, power, spoiled in childhood, keeping 
 herself spoiled amid all the phases of good and evil 
 fortune, regardful only of the fine, the influential, 
 the magnificent, despising society except that of the 
 Court and the elite: the other, child of an obscure 
 father, who, when she was made motherless, under 
 stood not her gifts, who, if he had understood, 
 would have set upon them no value beyond the pe 
 cuniary gains which their exercise might be calcu 
 lated to bring; with access to no society except that 
 into which the services which she was found compe 
 tent to render chanced to throw her, even when il 
 lustrious, confined within that made by those who 
 sought her for the sake of acquaintance with the 
 greatest woman of her time, apologizing to them 
 selves for the vanity which led them to desire it. 
 One yearning for the felicity which comes from sat 
 isfied love, not content, nay, rather disgusted with 
 that which only wedded life is permitted to impart, 
 because of its having no temptations, risks, and 
 dangers : the other, with yearnings as powerful and 
 painful, without social influence, her face and form 
 having neither beauty nor comeliness, yet, rather 
 than have not love at all, taking the second and un 
 licensed of one whose first had been betrayed, and 
 showing to this a fidelity of which the French woman 
 knew little of the worth. One regarding Religion 
 as a judge watching and waiting to condemn every 
 
142 LOUISE, BARONNE DE STAEL. 
 
 enjoyment beyond its own measured, stale allow 
 ances : the other fearing God, and ever trembling 
 while partaking of what she must doubt but could 
 not quite believe to have been forbid. One seeking 
 to advance the high to more exalted heights : the 
 other concerned mostly with the lowly, wishing that 
 she might lift them into better conditions. One 
 elate with praises of the world, yet feeling that they 
 were less than she deserved : the other shrinking 
 from the notoriety which she had attained, and as 
 tounded by the impressions which her own creations 
 had made! One when grown old, taking to hus 
 band a beardless youth, expecting this new wifehood 
 to compensate for the old which at its very incipi- 
 ency had palled : the other, more than a widow at 
 the death of the companion, whom she had not the 
 right to keep, yielding saddest assent to him who 
 proposed an honorable name with which the journ 
 als of the time might announce her answer to the 
 summons of death known to be near. One 
 ashamed of the name to be put upon her grave : the 
 other looking forward to that upon her own with 
 humble thankfulness. 
 
PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 TT touches a thoughtful Christian mind with some 
 * pathos to study the philosophy of the ancients. 
 In want of inspired authoritative teaching, the 
 human intellect, never greater nor more earnest, 
 looked alternately outward and inward, and sought 
 eagerly to find the origin and the ultimate end of 
 man and what were the things most suited to the 
 purposes of his being. We may compassionate but 
 never can condemn the speculations of the physi 
 ologists, Thales upon Water, Anaximenes upon Air, 
 nor of the mathematicians with Pythagoras at their 
 head, whom tradition made to tame with a word the 
 Daunian bear, to be heard lecturing at Metapontum 
 and Tauromenium on the same day and hour, to be 
 saluted by the river-god while crossing his waters, 
 and to hear the harmonies of the spheres. There 
 was modesty and there was melancholy in the 
 spirits of these most gifted men. Those preceding 
 the last-named had been called Wise Men. But 
 Pythagoras, greater than all his predecessors, would 
 have an humbler title. There is much modesty in 
 the following words: 
 
 43 
 
144 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 "This life may be compared to the Olympic games. For as in this 
 assembly some seek glory and the crowns, some by the purchase or 
 by the sale of merchandise seek gain, and others, more noble than 
 either, go there neither for gain nor for applause, but solely to en 
 joy this wonderful spectacle and to see and know all that passes; we, 
 in the same manner, qxiit our country, which is heaven, and come 
 into the world, which is an assembly where many work for profit, 
 many for gain, and where there are but few who, despising avarice 
 and vanity, study nature. It is these last whom I call Philosophers; 
 for as there is nothing more noble than to be a spectator without 
 any personal interest, so in this life the contemplation and knowl 
 edge of nature are infinitely more honorable than any other appli 
 cation. 1 " 
 
 Herein we behold a spirit searching for wisdom, not 
 for its practical uses, but for its own sake. There 
 fore he called himself a Lover of Wisdom, to whom 
 the noblest exercise of the understanding was con 
 templation. 
 
 It is interesting to follow the development of phil 
 osophy through the Eleatics. Sadder yet these verses 
 of Xenophanes : 
 
 "Certainly no mortal yet knew, and ne er shall there be one 
 Knowing both well, the Gods and the All, whose nature we treat of; 
 For when by chance he at times may utter the true and the perfect, 
 He wists not unconscious; for error is spread over all things." 
 
 Then come the independent speculators, from 
 Heraclitus to Democritus, of whom 
 
 "One pitied, one condemned the woful times; 
 One laughed at follies, and one wept o er crimes" 
 
 illustrating how "life is a comedy to those who 
 think, a tragedy to those who feel." To the laugh 
 ing philosopher succeed the Sophists, who, tired of 
 the problem of human life, acknowledged to be in- 
 
PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 145 
 
 capable of solution, turned away from it and devoted 
 themselves, as if grimly to compensate or revenge for 
 the continued elusion of truth, to the development 
 of the art of disputation. 
 
 And then Socrates, who seems to us to have been 
 sent into the world to convince it that the most 
 consummate genius, unaided by Revelation, is in 
 competent by searching to find out God. What a 
 career was led by this, the wisest, humblest, bravest, 
 best of mankind ! How did he yearn for Truth ! How 
 did he pursue her ever-eluding form, through heat 
 and cold, in hunger and rags, loving her none the 
 less, believing in her none the less, because he could 
 never find out the exact place of her shrine. His 
 predecessors, because they could not embrace her, 
 had declared her to be a phantom. Not so Socra 
 tes. He knew that, though he could not behold 
 her, she was around and near him, that her laws 
 were immutable and eternal, and that to obtain her 
 blessing mankind must pray without ceasing. Man 
 kind could not do what this Silenus (as they named 
 him) told them they must do or be ruined, and so they 
 slew him. Never was a death a death of a mortal 
 more inevitable. Hear what his lover says, the bril 
 liant Alcibiades: 
 
 " I stop my ears, as from the Sirens, and flee away as fast as possi 
 ble, that I may not sit do\yn beside him and grow old in listening- to 
 his talk; for this man has reduced me to feel the sentiment of shame, 
 which I imagine no one would readily believe was in me; he alone 
 
146 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 inspires me with remorse and awe, for I feel in his presence my in 
 capacity of refuting what he says, or of refusing to do that which 
 he directs; but when I depart from him the glory which the multitude 
 confers overwhelms me. I escape, therefore, and hide myself from 
 him, and when I see him I am overwhelmed with humiliation, be 
 cause I have neglected to do what I have confessed to him ought to 
 be done; and often and often have I wished that he was no longer 
 to be seen among men. But if that were to happen I well know that 
 I should suffer far greater pain; so that where I can turn, or what I 
 can do with this man, I know not. All this have I and many others 
 suffered from the pipings of this satyr." 
 
 The career of Socrates showed the highest height 
 to which the human understanding could reach. 
 Sublime indeed was that height. It showed also 
 the highest height of human virtue, and that, too, 
 was sublime. For a man to proclaim the supre 
 macy of virtue over all other rules of human life, 
 to teach that brave, unswerving adherence to justice 
 was not only the most precious but the only happi 
 ness, to declare that only those are unhappy who 
 are not just these of themselves prove the divine 
 origin of mankind. What the Sophists declared to 
 be a phantom he worshipped as an Existence, not 
 less real because invisible to human eyes; and some 
 times in solemn argumentation, sometimes in irony 
 that burned like fire, he pursued and put to silence 
 those who refused to pay the worship that was ever 
 pouring from his heart. In this wonderful man the 
 human conscience also performed its most perfect 
 work. Had he been a Sophist he must have gone 
 mad from despair. In moral certitude that is, in 
 
PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 147 
 
 the certitude that virtue was eternally existent he 
 found the repose for his soul, that had hungered and 
 thirsted to attain it. Always poor, he never doubted 
 the acceptance of his poor sacrifices, being persuad 
 ed that humility, purity and piety were more pleas 
 ing to the gods than when, without these, their 
 altars were overspread with costliest gifts. His 
 prayers were not for the things which himself 
 might have chosen, but for whatever the gods knew 
 it was good for him to receive. Nothing in all 
 times can excel those words in his last speech to his 
 judges : 
 
 "The difficulty, O Athenians! is not to escape from death, but from 
 guilt; for guilt is swifter than death and runs faster. And now I, 
 being old and slow of foot, have been overtaken by Death, the slow 
 er of the two; but my accusers, who are brisk and vehement by 
 wickedness, the swifter. ... It is now time that we depart, I to die, 
 you to live; but which has the better destiny isunknown to all except 
 the God." 
 
 And so they slew him. A people made blind by in 
 terest and passion cannot see and cannot endure the 
 excellent greatness of such a man. Had not even 
 Alcibiades expressed the wish that he might no longer 
 be seen amongst men? "Everywhere," says Heine, 
 "that a great soul gives utterance to its thoughts there 
 also is Golgotha." And so they slew him. He had 
 prayed to the gods all during his life, and his last 
 words were a prayer to the gods. 
 
 The pupil of Socrates, second only to him in the 
 greatness of renown, Plato, had not the cheerfulness 
 
148 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of his master, though he was equally devoted to 
 Truth and Immortality. How sad, how intensely 
 melancholy he was who has been styled "the inheri 
 tor of the wisdom of his age!" How beautiful his 
 theory of the perfect winged chariots of the gods, 
 contrasted with those, variously imperfect, of man 
 kind! How melancholy the repeated failure of men 
 in placing themselves in the train of the gods and 
 ever journeying along with them! Like Socrates, 
 believing that man came from heaven and has it in 
 his power to be restored thither, his pure, solemn 
 soul was ever unhappy at man s persistent oblivi- 
 ousness or disregard of the Real Existences before 
 seen and known in his native country. In Beauty, 
 for instance (ro naXov] some of his thoughts and 
 words are much like those of the Prophets and 
 Evangelists. What unites the human soul to God is 
 Love, and Love is the longing of the human soul for 
 Beauty. 
 
 "But it is not easy for us to call to mind what the} saw there"" 
 [whilst in Heaven, before their human birth] "those especially 
 which saw that region for a short time only, and those which, having 
 fallen to the earth, were so unfortunate as to be turned to injustice, 
 and consequent oblivion of the sacred things which were seen by 
 them in their former state. Few, therefore, remain who are adequate 
 to the recollection of those things." 
 
 After some observations about temperance, justice, 
 etc., he says: 
 
 "But Beauty was not only most splendid when it was seen by us 
 forming part of the heavenly possession or choir, but here also the 
 
PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 149 
 
 likeness of it comes to us through the most acute and clear of our 
 senses, that of sight, and with a splendor which no other of the ter 
 restrial images of super-celestial existences possess. They, then, 
 who are not fresh from heaven, or who have been corrupted, are not 
 vehemently impelled towards that Beauty which is aloft when they 
 see that upon earth which is called by its name; they do not, there 
 fore, venerate and worship it, but give themselves up to physical 
 pleasure after the manner of a quadruped." 
 
 Sublime yet touching his doctrine that the Good 
 (TO dyaBdv) is GOD, who is invisible, while Beauty, 
 Truth, and others are his attributes. These we may 
 see, but the Good never, but can know it only by 
 its attributes. The great desire of Plato s heart was 
 to see mankind live in a manner like the gods, and 
 his soul grew ever more and more sad because of its 
 continued disappointment. 
 
 Aristotle, the most learned of mankind, with little 
 thought of ethics, bestowed himself mainly to physics 
 and metaphysics, and paved the way to the Sceptics 
 and the Epicureans, the former doubting the exist 
 ence of truth because of its undiscoverable criter 
 ion, and the latter endeavoring to solace disappoint 
 ment with magnifying the good of pleasure and pur 
 suing it. Not that the Epicurean philosophers 
 practised or inculcated either debauchery or intem 
 perance. That was a sincere inscription at the en 
 trance of their garden : "The hospitable keeper of 
 this mansion, where you will find pleasure the high 
 est good, will present you liberally with barley-cakes 
 and water fresh from the spring. The gardens will 
 
150 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 not provoke your appetite by artificial dainties, but 
 satisfy it with natural supplies. Will you not be well 
 entertained?" 
 
 It is very interesting to study the histories of the 
 Epicureans and their rivals and enemies, the Stoics, 
 by whom they suffered from misrepresentations which 
 by the majority of mankind are believed to this 
 day. The times were favorable to two just such rival 
 sects. The glories of Athens were departing. Greece 
 was fast getting to be 
 
 "Living Greece no more." 
 
 Epicurus and Zeno, both good men, revering the 
 name of Socrates, looked upon the decay of civili 
 zation with different eyes. The former would con 
 sole himself with the search and attainment of what 
 ever pleasures were attainable, but always with the 
 purpose of temperate use. To him there was no 
 good, not even pleasure, either in evil indulgences 
 or in the intemperate use of those that were good. 
 See how often Horace, a disciple, commends econo 
 my, temperance, and other virtues. How in that 
 most touching of his odes, 
 
 u Eheu fugaces Posthume, Posthume," 
 
 he commends to his opulent friend thoughts of the 
 tomb, over which, alone of all the trees in his gar 
 den, the cypress neglected in life, will stand. 
 Pleasure, but pleasure not too eagerly pursued, and 
 
PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 151 
 
 especially not intemperately indulged, was the rule 
 of Epicurus. Yet when the pursuit of pleasure is 
 the rule of life, effeminacy and intemperance must 
 ensue among the most. It was, therefore, a noble 
 purpose when Zeno, the father of the Stoics, with 
 sorrow for the general decay of Grecian manhood, 
 and indignant with the men of culture who merely 
 counselled every possible avoidance of pain, under 
 took to restore that manhood which he saw depart 
 ing from his countrymen and taking its abode with 
 the barbarians who had built their city upon the 
 banks of the Tiber. Zeno was as earnest and sol 
 emn a preacher as Socrates or Plato. Yet, though 
 he derided the softness of the Epicureans, he could 
 not endure the railings, the rags, the indecenies of 
 the Cynics. So he formulated his own doctrine, 
 " Live harmoniously with Nature." Contemning 
 effeminacy, inactivity, and mere silent, moody 
 speculation, he urged to untiring activity, in whose 
 career, if perils and pains appeared, as they must, 
 to meet them with courage and ignore them by en 
 durance. He taught that the intellect, which was 
 divine, should despise whatever interfered with its 
 legitimate work, whether that was pleasing or pain 
 ful; that corporeal senses should be and could be 
 held under control by the intellect, and thus it could 
 and would march onward along the highway of 
 freedom and virtue. 
 
152 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 But manhood was passing away from the Greeks. 
 The disciples of Zeno among his own people were 
 to be few : the many rose among the Romans. A 
 great man and a good was Zeno ; but what a mourn 
 ful commentary on the doctrines he taught, to read 
 that, when at ninety-eight years of age he was 
 writhing under the pain of a fractured limb, dis 
 gusted, he strangled himself with a rope! a mourn 
 ful example, destined to be imitated many times in 
 both nations, especially in the one which, though 
 foreign to the great teacher, was most studious and 
 fond of his teachings. For the Greeks were gentle 
 as they were brave, and their greatest heroes had 
 wept as freely as they had fought with the courage 
 of the gods. Tenderness found little place with the 
 rude people across the Adriatic, and so the Stoa 
 was removed from Athens and had its most numer 
 ous discipleship in Rome. An anecdote is told of 
 the behavior of the elder Cato when Carneades, 
 the leader of the New Academy, came to Rome. 
 On his first appearance before the Stoic censor the 
 latter s convictions were shaken ; on the next day, 
 when the Greek, in ridicule of the Stoic s great doc 
 trine of common sense, refuted his own arguments of 
 the previous interview, the auditor persuaded the 
 senate to send back Carneades to his native coun 
 try. Not that great teachers were to arise in 
 Rome ; for Rome, having conquered Greece in arms, 
 
PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 153 
 
 was taken captive by Greece in arts, among which 
 the Stoic creed was best suited to the energetic 
 activities of the victor. But men who were actors, 
 not thinkers merely, who were statesmen, not philos 
 ophers, learning from Athens, learned mostly the Stoic 
 creed and practised its precepts, from Cato to Mar 
 cus Antoninus. 
 
 It is pleasing to contemplate the lingering that 
 philosophy made around the fallen capital of Greece. 
 It must in time depart. Its first new resting-place 
 was at Alexandria, where Philo the Jew reason 
 alone having been found insufficient for man s intel 
 lectual and spiritual wants brought in the alliance 
 of Oriental mysticism, and, more important yet, 
 that of faith. He was the first to announce that 
 science, in its most important being, was the gift of 
 God. The name he imparted to it was Faith, and 
 the faithtul performance of its behests was called 
 Piety. Then came on the controversy between the 
 Jew and the teachers of the Neo-Platonic school, 
 which also was domiciled at Alexandria. These 
 men sought to revive whatever was possible of the 
 ideas of the founder of the Academy. He had, in 
 deed, seemed almost to approximate the faith 
 announced by Philo, if not as to reason, at least 
 as to virtue, which he maintained was not a thing 
 for the intellect of man to discover, but a gift of the 
 Creator. The Jew applied this definition to science 
 
154 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 as well, and so in his hands philosophy became the 
 ology. Henceforth the combat is between Reason 
 and Faith. In the fulness of time Christianity was 
 born. 
 
 And now the victory, humanly speaking, was the 
 more speedily certain when we contrast the benign 
 ity and the universality of the Christian faith with 
 the exclusiveness and the frequent inhumanity of 
 philosophy, as well as its incertitude and its contra 
 dictions. What had been left of philosophy that 
 was not sceptical professed to hold in contempt the 
 body of man with its capacities for pleasure and 
 for pain. Some of the later philosophers had gone 
 to the length of expressing their disgust that they 
 had bodies that were necessary to be fed, clothed, 
 and housed. Christianity appeared, and from the 
 mouths of unlettered fishermen doctrine claimed to 
 be infallible came forth that God himself had be 
 come incarnate in the womb of an Immaculate 
 Virgin, and had made himself known, and had been 
 tempted to evil even as mankind, though without 
 yeilding; that he had suffered like mankind in the 
 human body which he had assumed, and groaned in 
 anguish from this suffering; that he had wept tears 
 of blood, and in his human being had died, but 
 that afterwards he, his body as well as his spirit, 
 had risen from the tomb, and both had gone to his 
 native heaven. Then these same fishermen an- 
 
PRK-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 155 
 
 nounced that not only is the spirit of man immortal, 
 but the body also; that the latter is destined to 
 resurrection similar to that of the Incarnate God, 
 and both, under conditions, live for ever with him 
 in such felicity as the mind of man has never con 
 ceived. 
 
 Behold now what dignity was attached to the 
 human body, which so many of the philosophers 
 had despised. It was even styled a temple wherein 
 was wont to dwell the Most High. Not that its evil 
 wants were less to be condemned, but more; yet 
 that they must be restrained, power to accomplish 
 which endeavor could be obtained by fervent re 
 quests to the risen God to impart it; further, that 
 yielding to them in periods of incapacity to resist 
 might be condoned by penance; that while com 
 punction for wrong-doing was ever becoming and 
 salutary, remorse such as led to despair was regarded 
 by Heaven as one of the greatest injuries that man 
 could inflict upon himself. Henceforth the body was 
 to have recognized all of its importance in the being 
 of man all; no more, no less. We were not taught 
 that pain was no evil. Pain was an evil, at least a 
 misfortune, inherited by man from ancestors who 
 had violated well recognized laws. Yet pain could 
 be lessened by submitting with all possible endur 
 ance to its infliction, in the confidence that deliver 
 ance was to come, even as it had come to the In- 
 
156 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 carnate when he had risen from the tomb ; that such 
 endurance would cause the evil to be remembered 
 with pleasure in good time, even during this mortal 
 existence. 
 
 That such doctrines must be received by the mul 
 titudes reasoning minds, even unaided by religious 
 faith, must perceive. Philosophy, in its department 
 of ethics, must go down. It made a feeble struggle. 
 Its last great one was when Julian, persecuted by 
 his kinsmen while they sat upon the throne Chris 
 tians in name but heretical in opinions was driven 
 to seek consolation for the wrongs he had suffered 
 to the melancholy Plato. Among the careers of 
 princes none seems more to be compassionated than 
 that of this, the last and greatest of the Flavian line. 
 What he might have done and what he might have 
 become but for his early death are known only to 
 God. Other things besides admission of defeat may 
 have been meant in those last mournful words : "O 
 Galilean, thou hast triumphed !" 
 
 We said that there was a pathos in that philoso 
 phy of the ancients its various discoursings after 
 the certitude which was to bring tranquillity to the 
 upright, thoughtful mind; its ever-repeating disap 
 pointments; its alternatings between the pursuit of 
 pleasure and the contempt of pain, between the 
 dogmatic assertions of the existence of gods and 
 the doubts thereupon which overwhelmed with sad- 
 
PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 157 
 
 ness and sometimes drove to despair. What sad 
 ness in the words of Cicero to Brutus in explana 
 tion of what the world wondered at his resort to 
 philosophy : "Another inducement to it was a mel 
 ancholy disposition of mind, and the great and 
 heavy oppression of fortune that was upon me; 
 from which, if I could have found any surer remedy, 
 I would not have sought relief in this pursuit." 
 Scarcely less sad the concluding words of that treat 
 ise on The Nature of the Gods, when, after the dis 
 pute between Cotta, a disciple of the Academy, and 
 Balbus, of the Stoics, Velleius, whom the Epicur 
 eans loved to style the most gifted of the Romans, 
 could thus decide : " Velleius judged that the argu 
 ments of Cotta were truest, but those of Balbus 
 seemed to have the greater probability." The great 
 orator, like the last of the Greeks, tired of strife and 
 turmoil, of the weight of years, of the sight of the 
 decay of liberty and patriotism, turned again to the 
 scene of the studies of his youth, 
 
 " The olive-grove of Academe 
 Plato s retirement where the Attic-bird 
 Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long-," 
 
 and dreamed, but only dreamed, of things than the 
 present 
 
 "Far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns." 
 
 The thoughtful Christian mind sees in all these 
 
158 PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 struggles what both to compassionate and what to 
 admire the earnestness of purpose searching for 
 the truth with anguishing anxiety, believing in im 
 mortality although dreading annihilation, yet, during 
 all these struggles, loyal to friendship, and love, and 
 honor, and justice, and patriotism. Ah! how good 
 is God to have bestowed upon the old world such 
 exemplars both to the heathen and to the Christian 
 who was to come after with the Word in his hands 
 and authorized interpreters of all its intentions! 
 No wonder that even Christians styled Plato in par 
 ticular The Divine. Says the Abbe Bougaud in 
 Histoire de Sainte Monique: " II a laissee les Peres 
 de 1 Eglise incertains du nom qu il fallal t lui dormer; 
 ceux-ci voyant en lui le ge nie hum am eleve a sa 
 plus haute puissance; ceux-la 1 appellant un Moise 
 paien, un prophete inspire de Dieu, un preparateur 
 evangelique envoye aux nations assises a 1 ombre 
 de la mort; tous d accord a saluer ce doux et mer- 
 veilleux etranger du nom de Divin." These words 
 were becoming to use while referring to the mother 
 of Augustine, whose mind lingered so fondly with 
 the sage of the Academy, and whose teachings re 
 ceived from that exalted source carried him at 
 length to the highest. 
 
 What if such a man had lived to meet the Baptist 
 clothed in camel s hair in the wilderness of Judea, 
 proclaiming that the kingdom of heaven was at 
 
PRK-A.MERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 159 
 
 hand? Were there not Philo and the rabbis? Were 
 there not the Neo-Platonists? Alas! the former 
 were deaf to the voice, because they had mistaken 
 the nature of the royalty in which their King was to 
 come in triumph, while the latter could not endure 
 to listen to the "foolishness of preaching" in the 
 unlettered poor. From the former, because, being 
 his own, they received him not, he turned away to 
 the Gentiles, and the very wisdom of the latter, now 
 polluted by the decays of many kinds, " knew not 
 God." 
 
 Such is a brief, partial view of ancient philosophy. 
 Its ethics were overthrown by those of Christianity. 
 Its last teachers went out of Christendom to linger 
 out their lives in the kingdoms of the East, while 
 Christians like Thomas of Aquin engrafted its 
 methods upon the new faith, reconciling, never 
 to be disunited, the subtlest reason with the 
 humblest belief. Truth, called at one time a 
 phantom, at another a phantasm, was found to ex 
 ist only in the church of Christ. Happiness, for 
 which the wise of all ages had sought, was found 
 in the grace God extended in equal abundance 
 to the innocent and the penitent. The best 
 lovers and the best-loved of Christ were the virgin, 
 John and Magdalen, the repentant sinner. Since 
 that time the very greatest intellects, the higher 
 have they been exalted in genius, culture, and earn- 
 
l6o PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 estness, have been let down into the lowest depths 
 of humble thankfulness. 
 
 It is less interesting to pursue philosophy in its 
 feeble attempts since to recover what Christianity 
 wrested from its hands. Yet there is interest in 
 contemplating the career of that greatest of modern 
 philosophers, Bacon, who wisely left to Christianity 
 the field which was peculiarly its own, and enlarged 
 that wherein philosophy might work for the attainment 
 ot its lawful ends. The greatest of the philosophers 
 of modern times, he was a Christian. As 
 in the careers of the men of Greece, so in him, 
 after his fall, there is profound pathos, mingled with 
 gratification that he turned for relief to the only 
 source whence it could come to the guilty and the 
 fallen. We can never read without emotion the 
 following portions of one of his prayers: 
 
 "Most gracious Lord God, my merciful Father from my youth up! 
 my Creator, my Redeemer, my Comforter! thou, O Lord, soundest 
 and searchest the depths and secrets of all hearts; thou acknowledg- 
 est the upright of heart; thou judgest the hypocrite; thou ponderest 
 men s thoughts and doings in a balance; thou measurest their inten 
 tions as with a line; vanity and crooked ways cannot be hid from 
 thee . . . O Lord, my strength! I have since my youth met with 
 thee in all my ways, by thy fatherly compassions, by thy comfortable 
 chastisements, and by thy most visible providence. As thy favors 
 have increased upon me, so have thy corrections; so as thou hast 
 been always near me, O Lord, and ever as my worldly blessings 
 were exalted, so secret darts from thee have pierced me; and when I 
 have ascended before men I have descended in humiliation before 
 thee. And now, when I thought most of peace and honor, thy hand 
 is heavy upon me, and hath humbled me according to thy former lov 
 ing kindness, keeping me still in thy fatherly school, not as a bastard, 
 
PRE-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. l6l 
 
 but as a child. Just are thy judgments upon me for my sins, which 
 are more in number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion 
 to thy mercies; for what are the sands of the sea? Earth, heavens, 
 and all these are nothing to thy mercies. Besides my innumerable 
 sins, I confess before thee that I am debtor to thee for the greatest 
 talent of thy gifts and graces, which I have neither put into a napkin 
 nor put it, as I ought, to exchangers, where it might have made best 
 profit, but misspent it in things for which I was least fit; so I may 
 truly say my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgri 
 mage. Be merciful unto me, O Lord, for my Saviour s sake, and re 
 ceive me unto thy bosom, or guide me in thy ways/ 
 
 When philosophy can thus humble itself before 
 God, confess its errors, and pray for pardon and 
 guidance in the pursuit of things beyond its ken, 
 we may bid it God-speed in inquiries within the 
 range of its possibilities. Philosophy may provide 
 for the material wants of mankind, but religion alone 
 can be counted on to satisfy the spiritual. Its sim 
 plicity and its exactions keep away many, especially 
 of the prosperous and the proud; but what healing 
 have not the stricken and the humble found in its 
 sweet influences! Did some of the philosophers 
 call pain an evil, and others not? What would both 
 sets of disputants have said if they could have fore 
 seen Francis Xavier first in his labors and then in 
 his repose? lt Amplius t O Domine! ampliiis!" he 
 said when his sufferings in the East were foretold to 
 him. Afterwards, when resting in the gardens of 
 St. Goa, and his spirit could not support the flood 
 of happiness that poured within it, he could only 
 cry out in the anguish of ecstasy, "Satis, O Domi- 
 
1 62 PRK-AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 net satis est!" The men whom we have mentioned 
 would have rejoiced for the coming of such a day, 
 although knowing that they must die without the 
 sight. 
 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 A MERICA has been in the possession of civilized 
 ** man for three hundred years. Among its num 
 erous varied products is one philosopher. His in 
 fluence upon the generation that was contemporary 
 with him and with some that succeeded was very 
 great. Of his life, private and public, the world 
 knows more than of those of any of his predecessors. 
 His public belongs to the history of his times; his 
 private has been recorded by himself with, a cir 
 cumstantiality that shows how important he regarded 
 it that the world should see to what vast heights a 
 rnan can rise from lowest beginning with no other 
 helps than his own energy, thrift, and sagacity. 
 One who has read his Autobiography, might regard 
 this curious work as a record of confessions but for 
 the evidence of the pride that he took in indit 
 ing it. 
 
 In the article named "Pre- American Philosophy" 
 we noted the modesty, the earnestness, and the 
 sometimes sadness, which for the most part char 
 acterized the wise men of old. We saw that, how 
 ever various were their speculations upon human 
 163 
 
164 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 happiness, they believed it to be made mainly of 
 intellectual and moral elements that were noble and 
 pure. Some of them went to the length of despis 
 ing the pleasures that result from the possession of 
 material benefits; others, not despising, disregarded 
 them; while others yet pursued them with moderate 
 quest and indulged only in their temperate use. 
 Even the gay Horace, favorite at the greatest court 
 of the world, wrote to the opulent Pompeius 
 Grosphus : 
 
 " He who enjoys nor covets more 
 Than lands his father held before 
 
 Is of true bliss possessed: 
 Let but his mind unfettered tread 
 Far as the paths of knowledge lead, 
 
 And wise as well as blessed." 
 
 The acrimonies among the various sects were 
 often pronounced. By the Stoics the garden of 
 Epicurus was called a pig-sty, while by many 
 Diogenes and his associates were saluted Cynics. 
 Nevertheless all of them had aims and counsel for 
 the noble and pure, and not one of them taught 
 that the way to happiness lay through prosperity 
 that comes from the mere possession of wealth. 
 This precept had been reserved for the philosopher 
 of the New World. 
 
 It was said of Diogenes that while but a youth, 
 having been suspected of complicity in the crime of 
 his father, a banker of Sinope, who had been con- 
 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 165 
 
 victed of debasing the coin, he fled to Athens, where 
 Antisthenes was teaching the virtue of poverty, and 
 thereupon became his disciple. Franklin began his 
 philosophic career much younger, even at the age ot 
 ten years. The question was argued between him 
 self and his father whether the utility of a "wharff" 
 which had been constructed by himself, at the head 
 of a band of urchins, on the edge of a quagmire at 
 the margin of a mill-pond in which they were wont 
 to angle for minnows, was greater or less than the 
 crime of stealing the stones for its construction. 
 The old gentleman got the best of the argument 
 with the help of a rod of sufficient firmness. The 
 concession then made, that "nothing was useful 
 which was not honest," had to be deviated 
 from some time afterwards in the case of what he 
 admitted to be one of the errata of his life his 
 availing himself of a fraudulent change in the in 
 dentures by which he had been bound to a brutal 
 elder brother, and running away from him. 
 
 One of Franklin s ancestors had been a poet, a 
 specimen of whose verse here follows (written in 
 behalf of liberty of conscience) : 
 
 " I am for peace and not for war, 
 
 And that s the reason why 
 I write more plain than some men do 
 
 That used to daub and lie. 
 But I shall cease, and set my name 
 
 To what I here insert, 
 Because to be a libeller 
 
1 66 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 I hate it with my heart. 
 From Sherburne town, where now I dwell, 
 
 My name I do put here; 
 Without offence your real friend, 
 
 It is Peter Folgier." 
 
 While apprenticed to his brother, who was a 
 printer, he bestowed temporary attention to the 
 cultivation of the hereditary vein, at the instance of 
 his brother, who sent him around hawking (in Bos 
 ton, their native place) his Lighthouse Tragedy 
 and a sailor s song on the capture of Teach, the 
 pirate. But his father again diverted him by telling 
 him that "verse-makers were generally beggars." 
 
 It is curious to follow the youthful philosopher 
 along his career of endeavors after what were the 
 best things; his eagerness for the knowledge to be 
 gotten from books; his debating with himself about 
 whether or not he ought to spare the time he had 
 for reading on Sundays by going to church, and de 
 ciding for the negative ; his adopting a vegetable 
 diet in order to save both time and money, and 
 other employments judged likely to be useful after 
 a while. Let us hear some of his comments on 
 disputation : 
 
 "There was another bookish lad in the town, John Collins byname, 
 with whom I was intimately acquainted. We sometimes disputed, 
 and very fond we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting 
 one another, which disputatious turn, by the way, is apt to become a 
 very bad habit, making people often extreamly disagreeable in com 
 pany by the contradiction that is necessary to bring it into practice; 
 and thence, besides souring and spoiling the conversation, is produc 
 tive of disgusts, and perhaps enmities where you may have occasion 
 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 167 
 
 for friendship. I had caught it by reading my father s books of dis 
 pute about religion. Persons of good sense, I have since observed, 
 seldom fall into it, except lawyers, university men, and men of all 
 sorts that have been bred at Edinborough." 
 
 The harm of disputatious reasoning appeared to 
 him quite early, as we notice in the following: 
 
 u And being then 1 (after studying Greenwood s English Grammar 
 and Xenophon s "Memorable Things of Socrates,") u from reading 
 Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of 
 our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very 
 embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a de 
 light in it, practised it continually, and grew very artful and expert 
 in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions the 
 consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in 
 difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so 
 obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved. 
 I continued this method some few years, but gradually left it, retain 
 ing only the habit of expressing myself in terms of modest diffidence, 
 never using, when I advanced anything that may be possibly dis 
 puted, the words "certainly, ""undoubtedly, 1 " or any others that give 
 the air of positiveness to an opinion; but rather say, I conceive or ap 
 prehend a thing to be so and so; It appears to me, or I imagine it to be 
 so, if I am not mistaken. This habit, I believe, has been of great ad 
 vantage to me when I have had occasion to inculcate my opinions 
 and persuade men into measures that I have been, from time to time, 
 engaged in promoting," etc. 
 
 The escape from his brother by means of the false 
 indentures troubled him little to remember, especi 
 ally since that brother by his representations con 
 cerning the fraud, hindered him from getting other 
 business in that community: 
 
 "It was not fair for me to take this advantage, and this I therefore 
 reckon one of the first errata of my life; but the unfairness of it 
 weighed little with me, when under impressions of resentment for the 
 blows his passion too often urged him to bestow upon me, though he 
 was otherwise not an ill-natured man; perhaps I was too saucy and 
 provoking." 
 
1 68 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 The fugitive, now a boy of seventeen, was landed 
 in Philadelphia with a cash capital of a Dutch dol 
 lar and about a shilling in copper. The philoso 
 pher develops. "The shilling," he says, "I gave 
 the people of the boat for my passage, who at first 
 refused it on account of my rowing; but I insisted 
 on their taking it. A man being sometimes more 
 generous when he has but a little money than when 
 he has plenty, perhaps thro fear of being thought to 
 have but little." 
 
 We cannot but feel much ot some sort of respect 
 for a philosopher of seventeen years who, with his 
 Dutch dollar less three pennyworth spent for 
 bread confident and cool, strolled along Market 
 Street, gnawing away at one of the huge loaves, 
 while the other two were tucked beneath his arms, 
 looking about him leisurely for the living that he 
 was sure would come, not minding the while the 
 smiles of Miss Read at his awkward and ridiculous 
 appearance, who was to think so much better of 
 him ere long. Employment with one Keimer, 
 one of the pretended prophets from the Cevennes 
 who "could act their enthusiastic agitations," but 
 was very ignorant of the world, gave opportunities 
 to the thrift and cunning he possessed. That was 
 an eventful day when Governor Keith called at the 
 printing-office, and, instead of stopping with the 
 French prophet, who ran down to meet the distin- 
 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 169 
 
 guished visitor, asked for the workman, whose mas 
 ter "started like a pig poisoned;" and it was a day 
 of triumph of its kind when, six months afterwards, 
 full of promises from the governor, whose letter he 
 bore to his father bespeaking the latter s help to set 
 up his son in business so that he could realize these 
 promises, "having a genteel new suit from head to 
 foot, a watch, and my pockets lined with near five 
 pounds in silver," the brother from whom he had 
 run away "received me not very frankly, looked me 
 all over, and turned to his work again." It did 
 seem hard, however, when, the brother "still grum 
 and sullen, " he spread a handful of silver before the 
 wondering eyes of the printing boys, and, going to 
 the length of giving them "a piece of eight to drink, " 
 thereby "insulted him in such a manner before his 
 people that he could never forget or forgive it." 
 Yet from the fond parent he could get nothing but a 
 promise to help him when he should reach the age 
 of twenty-one years, and advice to "endeavor to 
 obtain the general esteem, and avoid lampooning 
 and libelling, to which he thought I had too much 
 inclination." 
 
 It reads like a moderately good novel when the 
 philosopher tells of how, on the voyage back to 
 Philadelphia, he soothed the qualms of conscience 
 for the "unprovoked murder of taking fish," when a 
 cod came "hot out of the frying-pan, smelling 
 
I 70 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 admirably well;" of how he rose in Keimer s es 
 timation by his adroit use of the Socratic method, 
 and 
 
 "Trepanned him so often by questions apparently so distant from 
 any point we had in hand, and yet by degrees lead to the point and 
 brought him into difficulties and contradictions, that at last he grew 
 ridiculously cautious, and would hardly answer me the most common 
 question without asking first, What do you intend to infer from that? 1 
 However, it gave him so high an opinion of my abilities in the con 
 futing way that he seriously proposed my being his colleague in a 
 project he had of setting up a new sect. He was to preach the doct 
 rines, and I was to confound all opponents. \Vhen he came to explain 
 with me upon the doctrines I found several conundrums which I ob 
 jected to, unless I might have my way a little too, and introduce some 
 of mine." 
 
 It is proper to note here that the philosopher was 
 not yet fully prepared to originate and propound 
 theological doctrines. They must remain in abey 
 ance until those more important for the government 
 of this mere mortal existence were sufficiently ascer 
 tained and settled. For the present he would con 
 tent himself with a temporary quasi-coalescence 
 with the prophet from the Cevennes, destined to be 
 snapped suddenly by the latter s violation of one 
 article of their creed (the abstaining from animal 
 food) by eating the whole of a roast pig at his own 
 table before the time of dinner, to which his coll 
 eague and "two women-friends" had been invited. 
 Yet he admits to have unsettled the faith of Charles 
 Osborne and James Ralph,* two young men of his 
 
 *Ralph went back to England and became somewhat noted as a 
 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. Ijl 
 
 acquaintance, "for which they both made me suffer" 
 in his pocket. As for Ralph, who was destined 
 to be kept from oblivion by the Dimciad of Pope, 
 the philosopher s advice to him reminds one of the 
 chiding of Xenophanes upon Homer, and Plato s 
 exclusion of poets from his Republic r "I approved 
 the amusing one s self with poetry now and then, so 
 far as to improve one s language, but no farther." 
 The recollection of his father s criticism upon the 
 Lighthouse Tragedy, and his name for the followers 
 of the gai science, doubtless assured him of the 
 wholesomeness of this counsel. 
 
 All varieties of philosophers, excepting probably 
 the Cynics, and certainly those bound by celibate 
 obligations, have not been insensible to the goods, 
 real and imaginary, of married life. Even Socrates 
 must have a wife, selecting, as some said, the most 
 shrewish he could find, not with the hope of taming 
 her, like Petrucchio, but of subjecting his patience 
 and endurance to perennial tests. But for the 
 printed words from his own manuscript it would be 
 incredible that Franklin, then old, rich, and re 
 nowned, should have written with such shocking in 
 delicacy regarding the woman whom he was to 
 marry, and some of the incentives that drove him 
 
 political pamphleteer. Pope silenced him as a poet with the follow 
 ing in the "Dunciad:" 
 
 "And see! the very Gazetteers give o er, 
 
 Ev n Ralph repents, and Henley writes no more." 
 
172 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 thereto. Some love-passages had been between 
 him and the Miss Read before mentioned, with 
 whose parents he took his first board, but on his sail 
 ing for England these (though he was confident of her 
 reciprocation of his feeling) were suspended. Stung 
 by her lover s long neglect, she had married a potter, 
 whom, having found him to be a worthless fellow 
 and reputed to have another wife, she had forsaken. 
 He confesses to the shame he felt, upon his return 
 from England, on meeting the forlorn woman, his 
 treatment of whom he names another of his errata 
 one, however, which several conditions (some 
 not to be repeated by us) rendered capable of 
 correction. We can afford to give the following 
 specimen: 
 
 U I pitied poor Miss Read s unfortunate situation, who was gener 
 ally dejected, seldom cheerful, and avoided company. I considered 
 my giddiness and inconstancy when in London as in a great degree 
 the cause of her unhappiness, tho 1 the mother was good enough to 
 think the fault more her own than mine, as she had prevented our 
 marrying before I went thither, and persuaded the other match in 
 my absence. Our mutual affection was revived, but there were now 
 great objections to our union. The match was indeed looked upon 
 as invalid, a preceding wife being said to be still living in England; 
 but this could not easily be proved because of the distance; and tho 
 there was a report of his death, it was not certain. Then, tho 1 it 
 should be true, he had left many debts, which his successor might be 
 called upon to pay. We ventured, however, over all these difficulties, 
 and I took her to wife September ist, 1730. None of the inconven 
 iences happened that we had apprehended; she proved a good and 
 faithful helpmate, assisted me much by attending the shop; we 
 throve together, and have. ever mutually endeavored to make each 
 other happy. Thus I corrected that great erratum as well as I 
 could." 
 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. I 73 
 
 The principal element in the being of Franklin 
 as a man and as a philosopher was selfishness. It 
 was his cool imperturbabrlity, it was his never- 
 sleeping watchfulness towards what would gratify 
 this selfishness that carried him to such a height. 
 His great doctrine was that the road to human vir 
 tue and happiness was wealth. This doctrine was 
 already in his mind when he was a child in his 
 father s house, grown stronger when he went about 
 the streets of Boston hawking his own ballads, and 
 living upon vegetables in order to have money with 
 which to purchase books. Whatever came within 
 view of that spirit, the most watchful and persistent 
 of mankind, was appropriated or /ejected according 
 as it was found or believed to be a help or a hin 
 drance in the way of the kind of happiness that he 
 sought. The disputes which he had had with his 
 father about the need of the wharf, which he held 
 with himself a little later upon the question of at 
 tending religious services or staying home with his 
 books on Sundays, were prophetic. It was utility, 
 personal utility, that he was to study and to take 
 wherever he could. The consequences of the wharf 
 business convinced him that dishonesty was not 
 useful. Therefore he will practise it no more, at 
 least after just such a style as pilfering another s 
 goods. But the world must not expect from him 
 delicate balancings along the border-line between 
 
174 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the questionable and the unquestionable thing? 
 in human conduct. Some of the things that 
 he tells us exhibit an audacity of vanity that 
 none except a very great man could feel or dare 
 to avow. One had learned to rather pity the 
 poor crazy prophet, so unthrifty, so friendless, so 
 unapt in hiding his poverty and his numerous in 
 firmities in fine, so much of a child, an orphan- 
 child at that. Yet for years the employee had been 
 foreseeing the end of a sure decline and silently 
 counting upon rising upon his fall. It was at the 
 time of beginning the famous The Universal In 
 structor in all Arts and Sciences, and Pennsylvania 
 Gazette, the intention of whose establishment, long 
 concealed, was made known to Keimer by another 
 workman, one Webb, that the failing printer tried 
 to improve his own sheet so that it might compete 
 with the one now projected. The friends whom 
 Franklin had made had assured him often that it 
 was only a question of time, ever rapidly diminish 
 ing, when the thriftless creature must get out of 
 his way. Now, this last spasmodic effort was too 
 much for the man who had been waiting "long, 
 too long already." Let us listen to what he 
 says: 
 
 "I resented this, and to counteract them, as I could not yet begin 
 our paper, I wrote several pieces of entertainment for Bradford s 
 paper, under the title of Busy Body, which Breintnal continued some 
 months. By this means the attention of the puhlick was fixed on 
 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. I 75 
 
 that paper, and Keimer s proposals, which were burlesqued and rid 
 iculed, were disregarded. He began his paper, however, and, after 
 carrying it on three-quarters of a year, he offered it to me for a 
 trifle; and I, having been ready some time to go on with it, took it in 
 hand directly, and it proved in a few years extreamly profitable to 
 me." 
 
 The poor insolvent got away somehow and emi 
 grated to the Barbadoes. Now Franklin, taught by 
 the results of the quagmire "wharff " and other ex 
 periences, doubtless would have regarded it very un 
 wise to have practised on the "novice," as he some 
 times named him, actions bold as the stealing of a 
 builder s stones; for such conduct had been proven 
 at least not useful. We may not reach forth and 
 pluck with our hands the fruit, though overripe, that 
 hang upon another s tree; but we may eagerly 
 watch the bough upon which it hangs leaning over 
 our side of the wall, and receive it when fallen into 
 thankful laps. The useful, is that for which we 
 must seek in order for the obtainment of the hap 
 piness we desire. Dishonesty is bad policy, hon 
 esty is good. Let us consider how the argument 
 was carried into religion. After telling of how he 
 once became a deist he thus proceeds: 
 
 "My arguments perverted some others, particularly Collins and 
 Ralph; but each of them having afterwards wronged me greatly 
 without the least compunction, and recollecting Keith s conduct 
 towards me* (who was another free-thinker) and my own towards 
 Vernonf and Miss Read, which at times gave me great trouble, I 
 
 *Keith had broken his promise of letters of introduction to persons 
 in London. 
 j-He had collected some money for Vernon, used it, and been tardy 
 
176 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 began to suspect that this doctrine, tho 1 it might be true, was not 
 very useful." 
 
 That conclusion must settle the business with 
 deism. Deism had to go out of his creed, and it 
 went. 
 
 But a religion of some sort was necessary to man 
 in the long run, and in emergencies it must even be 
 pronounced and clamorous, and sometimes, for a de 
 sired purpose of utility, put on sack-cloth and sit 
 amid ashes! There is an undertone of humor in his 
 account of the fast "the first ever thought of in the 
 province" whose proclamation he had advised. As 
 no precedent coiild be found, the mover had to draw 
 up the document. 
 
 " My education in New England, where a fast is proclaimed every 
 year, was here of some advantage. I drew it in the accustomed stile; 
 it was translated into German, printed in both languages, and di 
 vulged through the province. This gave the clergy of the different 
 sects an opportunity of influencing their congregations to join in the 
 association, and it would probably have been gener?! among all but 
 Quakers if the peace had not soon intervened." 
 
 But the vanity of Franklin becomes gigantic when 
 we see him, after becoming illustrious throughout 
 the world, meditating the foundation of a new sect. 
 In his old age he indulged in charitable regret that 
 his other engagements kept putting off and finally 
 
 in its payment. "Mr. Vernon about this time put me in mind of the 
 debt I owed him, but did not press me. I wrote him an ingenuous 
 letter of acknowledgment, craved his forbearance a little longer, 
 which he allowed me, and as soon as I was able I paid the principal 
 with interest and many thanks; so that erratum was in some degree 
 corrected." 
 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 177 
 
 hindered so benign an intention. In the history of 
 mankind we believe that there is nothing to be found 
 in its kind equal to the following: 
 
 " My ideas at that time were that the sect should he begun and 
 spread at first among young and single men only; that each person 
 to be initiated should not only declare his assent to such a creed, but 
 should have exercised himself with the thirteen weeks examination 
 and practice of the virtues, as in the forementioned model; that the 
 existence of such a society should be kept secret till it was become 
 considerable, to prevent solicitations for the admission of improper 
 persons, but that the members should each of them search among 
 his acquaintance for ingenuous, well-disposed youths, to whom, with 
 prudent caution, the scheme should be gradually communicated; that 
 the members should engage to afford their advice, assistance, and 
 support to each other in promoting one another s interests, business, 
 and advancement in life; that for distinction we should be called 
 The Society of the Free and Easy, " etc., etc. 
 
 Herein have we put down a few things in the 
 career of the one philosopher whom the New World 
 has produced thus far. They are taken from his 
 own writing, recorded when he had become old and 
 the world was filled with his fame. Other things 
 are in this curious book which could not be repro 
 duced without offending others as well as ourselves, 
 and others yet were decently suppressed by the editor 
 from the author s manuscript. 
 
 That Franklin was, in some respects, what is usu 
 ally known in the name of a great man is undeni 
 able. His confidence in his own powers, his patient 
 biding of his times, his sagacity in the pursuit and 
 compassing of the ends which he proposed, his 
 ready perception and self-satisfactory corrections of 
 
I 78 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 the mistakes he had made from time to time, his 
 steady endeavors for the possible, his keeping his 
 eyes away from the visionary, his calm lead of man 
 kind, his freedom from temptation for the quest or 
 indulgence of whatever would injure his health or 
 his name, or would retard the projects he had ex 
 tended all these show him to have been what is 
 generally understood in the name of a great man. 
 But remembering of what sort of men were the wise 
 of ancient Greece, can we justly style a philosopher 
 such a man as Franklin? The wise men of ancient 
 Greece, heathen though they were, made their aim 
 for the highest good that was possible to human 
 nature. That highest good was virtue. Whatever 
 else that word might include within its meaning, 
 neither wealth nor mere utility was among them, 
 bait the fear of God and kindness to mankind were, 
 chiefest constitutents. Some despised, many dis 
 regarded, but none ever sought riches as the chiefest 
 means of leading to happiness, and especially to 
 virtue. The wisest among them did not withhold 
 becoming respect for those who had become rich by 
 industry or inheritance, whenever these did not 
 magnify the importance of their possessions in the 
 sum of human existence. Industry, frugality, tem 
 perance they counselled, because they were promo 
 ters, to the extent of their importance, of virtue by 
 the health of body and the peace of mind which 
 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. I 79 
 
 they induced, not by the mere accumulation of lands 
 and goods. Franklin was the first to exalt Plutus 
 among the superior gods -indeed, to put his throne 
 at the summit. With him wealth was both virtue 
 and happiness. In the pursuit of wealth a man s 
 constant aim must be to search for the things that 
 will be useful for his purpose, and evade everything 
 that will not. He must not steal, nor lie (that is, 
 on a very great scale), nor be debauched, nor glut 
 tonous, nor intemperate, nor be a deist. Why? 
 Because these and their likes will be found useless 
 in the matter he has in hand. For the first time in 
 lexicography honesty is defined or made synonymous 
 with policy; rather, good policy. As for religion, 
 that is a harmless thing in general, of which a leader 
 of men, on occasions of great perturbation of the 
 public mind, may avail for the end of inducing the 
 clergy of all sects (except Quakers, who are com 
 paratively weak) to incite their congregations to co 
 operation in action necessary to the common weal. 
 But a distinct, definite, reasonable, true, unerring 
 creed the philosopher, in the multifold engrossments 
 with public and private business, could never obtain 
 leisure to propound. In the retirement of age he 
 kindly, yet without pain, regrets that a scheme so 
 generously conceived was hindered in its execution 
 because of so many matters of more importance 
 having devolved upon him. It would have been 
 
l8o AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 curious to see the poor, the weary, and the heavy- 
 laden knocking at the door of that church to which 
 were specially to be denied admittance all who owed 
 money. Such as these could not be expected to 
 keep themselves in view of that standard of virtue 
 which in the "Almanac by Richard Saunders, 
 Philomat, printed and sold by B. Franklin," was 
 exalted even above the Labarum of Constantine. 
 
 "I therefore filled," he says in the fulness of the sweetness of re 
 membering- Richard s prodigious success in his venture "I therefore 
 filled all the little spaces that occurred between the remarkable days 
 in the calendar with proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated 
 industry and frugality as the means of procuring wealth, and there 
 by securing virtue; it being more difficult for a man in want to act 
 always honestly, as, to use here one of those proverbs, it is hard for 
 an empty sack to stand upright. " 
 
 It would have been curious, we repeat, to see the 
 result of a poor man s application for membership 
 in a church whose founder s preaching was such " as 
 the harangue of a wise old man to the people at 
 tending an auction." We imagine the applicant to 
 be dismissed with some such words as lago employ 
 ed with the rejected Roderigo : 
 
 "Put money in thy purse: ... I say, put money in thy purse. De 
 feat thy favor with a usurped beard. Put but money in thy purse. 
 . . . Fill thy purse with money. . . . Traverse! go; provide thy 
 money." 
 
 How fallen such a creed below not only the be 
 hests of Christianity, but of the very ancientest and 
 crudest philosophies! To say nothing of what 
 Franklin thought of Christ, how he must have imag- 
 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. l8l 
 
 ined himself to compassionate all others who had pre 
 ceded him in quest of the true paths of wisdom ! How 
 useless to him must have seemed their solemn medita 
 tions on God and the best good of mankind, their 
 yearnings for immortality, their despondent search- 
 ings for truth, destined never certainly to be known 
 not to be a phantom until her hiding-place should be 
 discovered by the great philosopher of the West ! 
 That a man with such views and maxims, with ex 
 traordinary powers for their enforcement, should 
 have exerted an immense influence upon a hetero 
 geneous people in their formation of society in a 
 country so new and so vast, may not be wondered at, 
 but only deplored. No other philosopher ever had so 
 numerous a following. With .Aw Richard s Alma 
 nac in his hand, and with his own persistent, tireless, 
 endless commentings, he made himself an apostle 
 to the multitudes whose minds he led away from 
 concern for spiritual things and directed to the pur 
 suit of the one important material. The dullest 
 understanding comprehended his doctrine as well 
 as the brightest. Reduced to logical form it would 
 read thus: 
 
 All virtuous men are happy; 
 
 But, none but the rich are virtuous: 
 
 Therefore, none but the rich are happy. 
 
 In such a discipline how many thousands upon 
 thousands in our country have spent lives of varying 
 
1 82 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 lengths in that search for happiness ! What contriv 
 ances have been invented for that end ! What simula 
 tions of justifiable means that were often but the "Index 
 and obscure prologue to the history of foul thoughts !" 
 Alas! how many have been led away from Chris 
 tianity, and even from the development of manhood ! 
 How many have been destroyed whilst endeavoring 
 to reconcile those two proverbs so vastly apart, 
 Honesty is the best policy and It is hard for an 
 empty sack to stand upright. 
 
 Of all the great teachers whom the world has 
 produced, Franklin, seems least like Christ. Christ 
 ennobled poverty by being born into its estate. In 
 it he chose his mother, his brethren, his friends. 
 In it he lived and died. He had said, "Blessed are 
 the poor." Franklin rejecting this, elected some 
 others of his precepts, and cunningly diverted them 
 from the chiefest purposes for which they had been 
 propounded. Yet he hesitated not to advise the 
 weaker in his school and those outside to call upon 
 Christ on occasions of public emergency, in order 
 to obtain universal co-operation in endeavors of 
 pressing public importance. In his old age, while 
 retrospecting his long career, the full gratification of 
 his mind must express itself in the words of that 
 Autobiography, a thing unique in its kind. Too 
 wise to lament in vain the dwindling of strength and 
 desires, he yet professed his willingness, if such 
 
AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. 183 
 
 could be, to live over his life, even including the 
 errata, all of which he had moderately regretted, 
 and of some of which he had been rather ashamed. 
 Had Franklin been a Christian, or had he not 
 sought to meddle with and pervert Christian ethics, 
 but kept his speculations within the fields of legiti 
 mate philosophical inquiry, the greatness of his 
 career would have been far more excellent, and all 
 might endorse the praise of Jeffrey: "He was the 
 most rational, perhaps, of all philosophers. No in 
 dividual perhaps ever possessed a juster understand 
 ing, or was so seldom obstructed in the use of it by 
 indolence, enthusiasm, and authority. 
 
DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 UOORROW is better than laughter," said the 
 ^ Preacher. Yet he said again, "There is a 
 time to laugh." What a support to the heart of man 
 is in the tears which come to his eyes, both when 
 they come from grief and when they come from joy! 
 The subtile influences which console for one and 
 subdue the exuberance of the other are closely 
 blended in the depths of our being. So it is that 
 sorrow is often followed by smiles, and laughter 
 ends with sighing. The writer, therefore, who un 
 dertakes to represent the life of man must study 
 these elements with equal care. Plato tells us of a 
 discussion that took place in Athens between So 
 crates and Aristophanes, in which the former main 
 tained that a good writer of tragedies ought to be 
 able to write comedies also. Yet it was two thous 
 and years before the full force of the argument was 
 illustrated. 
 
 Greek tragedy, originating in religion, designed 
 
 to inculcate fear of the gods, especially of fate, had 
 
 no place for scenes except of the solemn, the awful, 
 
 and the terrific. A brave man struggles with Fate, 
 
 184 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 185 
 
 bravest of all because he knows that he must strug 
 gle in vain, but struggling on in obedience to his 
 native impulsions of courage, honor and sense of 
 justice, and, when vanquished, leaving behind the 
 name of one whom nothing except Fate could have 
 overthrown. Such was the burden of Greek tragedy. 
 Its achievements were indescribably great, and they 
 stimulated the very highest endeavor. Greek comedy 
 also, in its very first intentions, had elements of the 
 religious. Curious as it may be, yet such were 
 many of the scenes in honor of Bacchus. But 
 among the refined Greeks comedy seemed to have 
 had for its object to make a contrast, more or less 
 pleasing, with the solemnities of tragedy. If it had 
 been the habit of the tragic muse to employ tor its 
 heroes, even sometimes, other than the most illustri 
 ous, perhaps the genial and generous humor which 
 was unknown to Greek dramatic writing might have 
 come in earlier. But neither the tragic nor the 
 comic poets seemed to care much for the multitude. 
 It is interesting to consider what has been the 
 tendency of the sentiment of pity. Love travels 
 mainly on a level or downward. Pity, like worship, 
 tends upwards. Tragedy dealt with demigods and 
 legendary heroes with CEdipus and Orestes, with 
 Alcestis and Medea, with Andromache and Anti 
 gone. How have the multitude, forgetting their own 
 and one another s sorrows, wept at those of the great ! 
 
1 86 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 Now, to relieve men s minds from such painful 
 solemnities the comic poets, in an age less relig 
 ious, less heroic, less fond of individual greatness, 
 or with contempt because the latter had passed and 
 without expectation of its return, began to select 
 from among contemporary characters those who 
 would but could not, be heroes, and contrast them 
 with the mighty who had lived. Such comedy was 
 merely satire. It railed at contemporary life in 
 comparing it with that of purer times. It laid 
 bare not only the weaknesses but the meannesses of 
 the human heart, for the purpose of burlesquing the 
 noble virtues which tragedy represented. It seemed 
 at last almost avowedly depreciatory of those vir 
 tues. "As tragedy," says Schlegel, "by painful 
 emotions, elevates us to the most dignified views 
 of humanity, comedy, on the other hand, by its 
 jocose and depreciatory view of all things, calls 
 forth the most petulant hilarity." What words! 
 For a "petulant hilarity" is a hilarity in which there 
 is no enjoyment and from which can proceed no 
 profit. In such representations there was abund 
 ance of wit. Attic salt, flung mercilessly upon the 
 excoriated flesh of the upstart and the braggart, 
 would make them writhe in agony, and while the 
 spectators would shout they would also curse with 
 laughter. Humor humor, which is so much broader 
 and kinder than wit seems not to have been known. 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 187 
 
 Instead of being intended for the production of the 
 innocent indulgence in careless pastime while con 
 templating such absurd and ludicrous conjunctures 
 as, with little or no evil, occur in ordinary life, 
 comedy seemed to have been intended, though in a 
 most doubtful way, to be ancillary to the serious 
 purposes of tragedy. In one of the theatres last 
 night Sophocles had excited to weeping the men and 
 women of Athens by recitals of the sufferings of 
 CEdipus and his children. To-night Aristophanes 
 will lead them into a house in another street and 
 exhibit his play of The B irds, in which the mannikins 
 of the time are put in contrast with the great of 
 Grecian story. They have become so contemptible 
 that the birds of the air have supplanted them in 
 the conduct of sublunary affairs. Even the fair 
 Iris with heavenly wings, though bearing divine 
 messages, is chided for passing beyond the aerial 
 conclave. The loud laugh will arise, but it will be 
 a " petulant hilarity," with none of the healthfulness 
 that comes from genuine comic feeling. 
 
 This difference between tragic and comic writing, 
 rather this resemblance between them, continued 
 almost until the coming ot Shakespeare. In " the 
 Sacred Comedy" following the Miracle Plays of the 
 middle age the character that made the fun was the 
 Devil himself. Our ancestors laughed as well as 
 they could. For man cannot always be serious. 
 
I 88 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 He must laugh sometimes, if it can be for nothing 
 more ridiculous, at a pleasant conceit of seeing the 
 great enemy fall into his own pit, and beaten, and 
 pinched, and made to roar with pain and discom 
 fiture. When the time came in England for another 
 sort of fun upon the stage and it seems wonderful 
 how slow it was in coming it broke forth abruptly 
 and about as broadly as any who were fond of the 
 broadest might ever care to see. When an ecclesias 
 tic of a former age sometimes, as in the opinion of 
 Bishop Bonner, verged upon too great liberties with 
 the Devil and the Vice in the sacred comedies, a 
 check was placed upon such performances, and 
 finally their suspension was ordered. But by the 
 middle of the sixteenth century such salutary re 
 straint had ceased to be in vogue, and it seems 
 almost incredible that a play so unmixedly coarse as 
 " Gammer Gurtorfs Nedle" to open the ball of 
 modern English comedy should have been composed 
 by a Doctor of Divinity, Lady Margaret Professor 
 of Divinity, prebend of Westminster, Master of St. 
 John s and Trinity Colleges, Cambridge, Archdeacon 
 of Sudbury, Bishop of Bath and Wells. But bishops 
 in the line of Parker were not what they used to be 
 in the old line. This one fell into a humorous vein 
 and, for a preacher, showed extraordinary familiar 
 ity with the lowly and the gross in English society, 
 and as hearty an appreciation of them as any who 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 189 
 
 could ever have aspired to a gown, not mentioning 
 lawn sleeves and the mitre. There was some frolic 
 for the boys of Eton College when their head-master, 
 Nicholas Udall(he a preacher, too, in the Parker 
 succession), let them present his Ralph R oyster 
 Doyster; but how must the bigger boys at Christ 
 Church, Cambridge (where it was first put upon the 
 stage), have roared at the hair-pulling of Dame Chat 
 and Gammer Gurton, and the more than coarse 
 scurrilities of Dickon and Hodge ! Yet such as these 
 were not only the best but the only. Such a people 
 would not have listened half an hour to such as the 
 Captivi of Plautus or the Andria of Terentius. 
 They were not the people to pick out the fun, what 
 there was, from beneath Greek or Latin roots, but 
 must have it pouring forth fresh, if muddy and 
 most foul, in homely vernacular for portraying 
 scenes in contemporary English life. What that life 
 was under Tudor rule it fills a delicate, modest 
 mind with painful astonishment to contemplate. 
 Both the tragic and the comic went to their highest 
 heights and their lowest depths, and the pieces 
 which came upon the stage, in order to be 
 waited upon for their close by an English audience, 
 must be made to have no stint of blood from mur 
 ders of every kind, and, in the after-piece, no spar 
 ing of nastiness. Let us see how that consummate 
 
190 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 young genius Marlowe whetted keener the hatred 
 for the Jew : 
 
 "I walk abroad a-nights, 
 And kill sick people groaning under walls: 
 Sometimes I go about and poison wells. . . . 
 Being voung I studied phvsic, and began 
 To practise first upon the Italian; 
 There I enriched the priests with burials, 
 And always kept the sexton s arms in use 
 With digging graves and ringing dead men s knells. 
 I filled the jails with bankrouts in a year, 
 And with young orphans planted hospitals; 
 And every moon made some or other mad, 
 And now and then one hang himself for grief, 
 Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll 
 How I with interest tormented him." 
 
 In this terrible piece there is neither pity from 
 Christian to Jew nor from Jew to Christian. War 
 to the last blood, anguish in extreme, that can 
 neither be increased nor diminished these were 
 what our ancestors three hundred years ago wished 
 to see when war and anguish were to be mimicked 
 upon the stage. Not that they were without com 
 passion for 
 
 u Hem that stode in gret prosperite 
 
 And been fallen out of her high degree," 
 
 but they insisted upon seeing the blood and hearing 
 the shriek. They preferred witnessing the murder 
 ous combat to hearing it recited. The counsel of 
 Horace to the Pisos would have been wasted upon 
 them. He who wondered how the Romans of the 
 
 *Barabbas in " The Jew of Malta." 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 19! 
 
 foretime had endured the rudeness of Plautus, and 
 were not shocked at the unnatural murder cor am 
 populo of the children of Jason, would never have 
 been seen, had he lived in that time, at the Globe 
 or Blackfriars. For that public relished such as 
 these beyond all else. If Progne is to be changed 
 into a bird and Cadmus into a snake, if Clytem- 
 nestra is to be slain at the bath and the parricide 
 to be pursued by the Furies, that English public 
 demanded to see how these interesting things were 
 done. And then they were ready, having had 
 enough of horrors, for the jest, and the broader 
 was this, the shouts were louder and heartier. 
 They must have both. "An action," says Mr. 
 Hallam, "passing visibly on the stage, instead of a 
 frigid narrative, a copious intermixture of comic 
 buffoonery with the gravest story, were requisites 
 with which no English audience would dispense. " 
 Illogical, unreasonable as such demands seemed, 
 they were the foundation of the greatest dramatic 
 literature of the world. The wits who sought fame 
 or livelihood must conform to them. Fond as it was 
 to shed tears of pity, it was needful to wipe them 
 away in time and afford a channel for those of hi 
 larity. These two great wants of the human heart, 
 so nearly connected, so necessary to each other, this 
 English people, rough and unstudying as they were, 
 first asserted upon the stage in the alternate 
 
192 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 sequence in which they prevail in daily life. He 
 was but half a philosopher who did nothing but 
 weep ; less than half was he who only laughed. 
 
 It is interesting to study the development of this 
 dramatic literature, and see how it made ready the 
 way for the coming of Shakespeare. Dreadful in 
 deed were the things in tragedy, and revolting the 
 obscenities in comedy. Some of the latter are the 
 more extravagant, but the more venial, because they 
 were brought out, as in the case of poor Massinger, 
 with reluctant hands and only for the purpose of 
 obtaining food and raiment for the hungry and rag 
 ged, and shelter for the houseless. Others, like 
 those of Beaumont and Fletcher both gentlemen 
 born, and sufficiently prosperous were congenial 
 to the minds which applauded the tastes and habits 
 of the age. The greater genius of the two died 
 young. The other, son of the dean of Peterbor 
 ough, who was rewarded with a bishopric for his 
 insults to Mary Stuart in the very article of her 
 death, survived long and worked up a vast amount 
 of filth that was most cordially relished for too long 
 a time. 
 
 Added to the rudeness of the times, that made 
 such coarseness endurable and even preferred, were 
 the contemporary rise of Puritanism and the ex 
 tremes to which hostile parties will sometimes urge 
 their principles and conduct. The playgoers laughed 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 193 
 
 the heartier at the Four Ps, .of Heywood, and the 
 Mother Bombie, of Lyly, thinking of the not inconsid 
 erable public outside who believed it to be a sin to 
 laugh at all. The satyr that these merry spirits 
 brought out from the woods, instead of being 
 exhibited in his best attitudes according to the pre 
 cept of the Roman critic, was exhibited in his 
 worst, because there were those to maintain that 
 the satyr should never have been taken from 
 his native wilds. Yet that same Heywood could 
 excite to weeping in A Woman Killed with Kind 
 ness, while Lyly could rise to delicate humor in 
 Midas, Endymion, and Campaspe. 
 
 More decent than those aforementioned was Ben 
 Jonson, more serious, more brave; but, lacking the 
 pathos of the tragic muse and having to turn to the 
 comic in order to be allowed to live at all, it is sad 
 to see how his saturnine nature struggled between 
 the classicism which he reverenced and the modern 
 broadness of humor which he despised, and for 
 which he could not forbear to substitute the satire 
 of Menander and Plautus. He could rouse to 
 laughter, but it was such as brought no relief to the 
 heart. In Volpone, for instance, the characters 
 intended to excite laughter, instead of being ludic 
 rous, are villanous to a degree that is shocking to 
 humanity. The laugh that arises from beholding 
 them has the bitterness of disgust and the eagerness 
 
 3 
 
194 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 of revenge. When the great rascal is caught and is 
 writhing with the pain of punishment the audience 
 scream with laughter; but it is such laughter as 
 we might indulge withal if perchance we should see 
 a brute of a man insult a woman upon the streets, 
 and immediately thereafter assaulted by a true man, 
 and beaten, and kicked, and cowhided, and set on 
 by the dogs. Yet the witness of such scenes does 
 not good to the heart wherein it most needs good. 
 Thus, Ben Jonson, though rising to the full dignity 
 of the Romans, both in his tragedies and his come 
 dies, yet, in want of pathos for the former and 
 humor for the latter, went behind those whom he 
 should have preceded. 
 
 Interesting struggles those were in the modern 
 English drama. The buskin beginning with solemn, 
 stately Gorboduc, the sock with Ralph R oyster 
 Doyster, and Gammer Gurton s Nedle how wide 
 apart were these, apparently how irreconcilable! 
 Writers like Sackville might be disgusted to think 
 how a reasonable public could gather pleasure 
 from the talks of Hodge and Doctor Rat, and yet 
 desire to hear tell the sufferings of the great of all 
 times. But that people intended to have all their 
 wants gratified. They meant to laugh with the gay 
 and weep with them that wept; and inasmuch as 
 prim pietists, becoming more numerous and more 
 prim, found fault with comic scenes of even delicate 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 195 
 
 kinds, and public opinion excluded women from 
 theatres, not only as actors but as spectators, they 
 made their fun the coarser and their laugh the 
 more uproarious. 
 
 The theatre is the repertory of the best literature 
 of the ages. From Sackville, from Still and Udall, 
 the playwrights must study the temper of the pits 
 and learn both when it is the time to weep and when 
 the time to laugh. Tragedy, having so noble prec 
 edents, easily led the way. Comedy comedy 
 such as it was and ought to become, generous as gay, 
 sympathizing as ludicrous, comedy that was to lead 
 to laughter that brought neither pain nor anger 
 had to work its way and be developed with the 
 tastes and manners of society. In ancient times it 
 had made men laugh the laugh of contempt, scorn, 
 hatred, and satisfied revenge. Its newest laughs 
 were for the actions and sayings of the lowly and 
 the vulgar. The time was not yet, but it was com 
 ing fast, when it could invite gentlemen and ladies 
 to come together to its recitals, in listening to which 
 they could laugh without pain and without blushing. 
 
 In the lives of the playwrights what blending of 
 the serious with the sportive will one see who studies 
 them closely! How often will he find cheerfulness 
 among the serious, and especially seriousness 
 among the sportive! Charles Reade, in Peg Wof- 
 Jington, makes Mrs. Triplett, on retiring from the 
 
196 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 stage at night, take from her person the finery, lay 
 it upon the table with disgust, and then regard with 
 affection a cold sausage that she has taken from her 
 pocket. We smile at the drollery, but simultane 
 ously we feel the tenderness and the sweetness of 
 pity. Many a time has the London comic dramatist, 
 standing in the street in rags, almost hatless and 
 shoeless, certainly dinnerless, or sitting in prison 
 hard by, heard a thousand voices roaring to the fun 
 himself had created. Fortunately for mankind, it 
 requires not a habitually gay temper nor felicitous 
 circumstances to promote humorous compositions. 
 On the contrary, it is he who has the profoundest 
 knowledge of the sadness of the human heart who 
 can most skillfully touch the chords that vibrate to 
 humorous impulsions. Before Shakespeare the drama 
 was made up mostly of tragedy the bloodiest and 
 farce the broadest. It was reserved for him to 
 unite pathos and humor as they are conjoined in 
 human life, and lift each as high as human language 
 could exalt. These observations we have made 
 preliminary to the consideration of what we pro 
 pose to style the comparative delicacy of Shakes 
 peare. Of his sadness, and of the predominance 
 of the serious over the sportive in his character and 
 writings, we shall speak in another article. 
 
 When Shakespeare came to London, English 
 comedy knew little more than the farce. The del i 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 197 
 
 cate humor which springs out of the pleasant phan 
 tasies of persons in polite society had been introduced 
 rarely and with timidity. Men who had wept at a 
 tale of grief desired for the after-piece or the inter 
 lude the relief which was to come from a great, 
 broad joke. Whatever contributions were made to 
 the enjoyment of the playgoers by the young actor 
 who, having married too early and not well, had 
 left his native Stratford, little of them has been 
 transmitted beyond the fact that he preferred and 
 sufficiently well sustained the parts of old men. 
 His heart already, it seems, had learned to find its 
 best sympathy among those who, having tried this 
 life, found it unable to fulfil its early promises. He 
 went to the stage as another man goes to another 
 business to make money for present uses and to 
 lay up for those of his advanced age. Finding that 
 there was more money in running the theatre than 
 acting upon its boards, he took that business. 
 Examining the plays that were offered, whenever he 
 bought, his experienced sagacity detected what 
 should be subtracted, what added. When, for want 
 of those sufficiently suited to his purposes, he under 
 took to write them throughout, his genius, so all-sided, 
 found soon how to intermingle the serious with the 
 gay as he had seen them intermingled in the habitual 
 intercourse of daily life. Like all great minds, he 
 had, what Goethe properly styles reverence for -man- 
 
198 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 kind, for superiors, for equals, for inferiors. He re 
 spected men sufficiently to know that they could be 
 raised by discreet means to appreciate humor that 
 was delicate as well as what was rough and broad. 
 The world was a stage : let the stage be the world. 
 Not all who go to festive scenes are gay, nor all at 
 funerals subdued with sadness. On the contrary, 
 such is the constitution of the human heart that some 
 seriousness renders more enjoyable a season of 
 gayety, while often on solemn occasions irresistible 
 is the impulse to smile at the sudden occurence of 
 ludicrous accidents. How inexpressibly sad the 
 death of Ophelia; yet who but kindred and lovers 
 can forbear to laugh at the chattings of the diggers 
 of her grave? Just as men are most fond to do 
 what is forbidden, so are they most prone to seek, 
 as relief from a surfeit of grief, something that comes 
 from the sportive. Wise, therefore, and benignant 
 is he who provides such relief, and of a kind that 
 will elevate instead of degrading. 
 
 To such a mind as Shakespeare, we do not" doubt, 
 such as Gammer Gurton s Nedle were unmix- 
 edly disgusting. All remember the touching mel 
 ancholy of that complaint, in one of his sonnets, 
 against 
 
 " The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, 
 
 That did not better for my life provide 
 
 Than public means which public manners breeds." 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 199 
 
 The rougher things in his plays are doubtless attribu 
 table to the exactions of an age behind his own 
 aspirations exactions more powerful because of 
 the examples in the houses of kings and courtiers. 
 The manager of a theatre, he must provide what 
 ever is demanded; but, if only occasionally and by 
 degrees, he will lead his audiences to something 
 higher than they have seen, and educate them to its 
 appreciation by making it ineffably beautiful. He 
 will give the rude jest when he must; but whenever 
 it is possible he will substitute the delicate mirth 
 of genteelness, and thus give tone to a reasonable 
 mean between the tragic and the farcical. How 
 merely fanciful are most of his comedies! For as 
 yet the comedy of intrigue was little developed. 
 It was plain to see that it was a serious, even a sad, 
 mind that, in spite of all this exquisite sportiveness, 
 saw beyond it into the melancholy that was yet more 
 exquisite, and felt that that was the role in which 
 was to be done its greatest work. 
 
 Let us look at Twelfth Night. How fanciful 
 this play! Yet for this we have an apology in its 
 first words, the sweetness of which none but the very 
 coarsest could fail to enjoy: 
 
 "If music be the food of love, play on; 
 Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting , 
 The appetite may sicken, and so die. 
 That strain again! it had a dying fall: 
 O, it came o er my ear like the sweet south, 
 
200 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets, 
 Stealing and giving odor. Enough; no more: 
 Tis not so sweet now as it was before; 
 O spirit of love! how great and fresh art thou, 
 That, notwithstanding thy capacity 
 Receiveth as the sea, naught enters there, 
 Of what validity and pitch soe er, 
 But falls into abatement and low price, 
 Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy 
 That it alone is high-fantastical." 
 
 These are the words of the duke, who, for the 
 time, is in love with Olivia, who will not hear of 
 love until her mourning be over for the death of her 
 brother. What contrast between such words and 
 thoughts and those when Cesario, his confidant, 
 proves to be Viola in disguise! Imperiously, but 
 with sweetest airiness, does fancy play amid the 
 affections of all the leading characters. Viola takes 
 the disguise of a boy. Olivia becomes enraptured 
 with this boy and will not listen to the duke. Viola 
 finds herself in love with the duke, who, when he 
 ascertains her sex, retires from Olivia and thinks 
 he has never loved before. The reappearance of 
 Sebastian, Viola s brother, more than compensates 
 Olivia for her disappointment, and the endings seem 
 like the realization of those fond dreams in which 
 the young of both sexes indulge on the dreamy 
 season of Twelfth Night. 
 
 Amidst all this play and interplaying of the serious 
 and the gently sportive what glorious fun there is in 
 the talks of Sir Toby Belch and Aguecheek, the 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 2OI 
 
 clown, Maria and Malvolio ! Entertainment there 
 for all boxes, dress-circle, pit and gallery polite 
 ears and vulgar. Some of the words for all are to 
 become immortal, some for the poet to dream about 
 and seek in vain to imitate, and some for the coster- 
 monger to recall over his pipe and mug of ale, and 
 roar at the recital. 
 
 The thoughts we are presenting are well illus 
 trated again in As You Like It. There is genuine 
 grief in the exile of the banished duke, and genuine 
 remorse in the tyrant, his brother. Between them 
 and the lowest characters comes in Jaques, in 
 whom the elements of seriousness and sport are so 
 blended as to leave us in doubt what manner of man 
 the author meant he should be regarded. When we 
 hear him moralizing on the seven stages of human 
 life we feel that Socrates nor Plato could have 
 talked more wisely. When we hear his reflections 
 
 " Under an oak whose antique root peeps out." 
 
 and his "smiles" upon a wounded stag, we are 
 touched with tenderness. When we see his ambi 
 tion for a "motley fool," and hear him say, 
 
 "I have neither the scholar s melancholy, which is emulation, nor 
 the musician s, which is fantastical, nor the courtier s, which is 
 proud, nor the soldier s, which is ambitous, nor the lawyer s, which 
 is politic, nor the lady s, which is nice, nor the lover s, which is all 
 these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many 
 simples, extracted from many objects, and indeed the sundry con 
 templation of my travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in 
 a most humorous sadness," 
 
202 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 we feel, what exquisite characterization! How im 
 mense the gap between this and the classical drama ! 
 Subtle, yet natural ; like many a man of culture who, 
 partly in imagination, partly in reality, wearied with 
 superabundance of books and courts and travel, in 
 dulges in thoughts ever shifting between the earnest 
 and the jocose, claiming to sadness, but a sadness 
 all his own. In reading this play it is most pleasing 
 to notice the stream of melancholy pervading it; 
 losing itself here and there among such as Touch 
 stone and Aubrey, and reappearing among the gifted, 
 giving tone and adding sweetness to the abounding 
 humor that allows a mind tired of business, or seek 
 ing relief from the pain of recent witness of tragic 
 scenes, to sport as it pleases, to laugh aloud or smile 
 archly, and sometimes, if so disposed, to sigh, yet 
 not with pain. 
 
 Whenever we read Midsummer Night s Dream 
 we wonder anew that one, at the very time of the 
 creation of such as Bottom, and Snug, and Flute, 
 and their likes, could have created such as Oberon 
 and Titania. In this most poetical of human pro 
 ductions, Shakespeare, persistent to his purpose to 
 let the stage picture human life, represented it not 
 only as it is when we are awake, but while we sleep 
 and are dreaming of things impossible. A mid 
 summer night s dream when the night is brief, the 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 203 
 
 woods and meadows serene and silent, inviting not 
 only to sleep but to dreams! 
 
 Wise, benignant is the king, Theseus, a royal lover, 
 on the eve of marriage with the queen of the Ama 
 zons: noble words to his espoused, to Hermia and 
 the rest of his court; wise words as he discusses the 
 lunatic, the lover, and the poet.* But what we 
 notice more especially at this time is the interlude 
 of the Dream, the waywardness of the fairies in 
 sporting with these high-born men and women and 
 among themselves. It is a poor , dull mind that 
 does not sometimes dream beautiful dreams. Who 
 has not sometimes dreamed of having been endowed 
 with gifts of most excellent greatness; of being ad 
 mitted within the inner places of all that is most fair 
 and lovely, and discoursing as with the tongue of an 
 angel? Yet if one could reproduce such a vision it 
 might not surpass this in which we hear language, 
 such as no other human tongue could have uttered, 
 sounding upon the ear as if in very deed it had been 
 whispered to the poet by the gentle spirits which he 
 had invoked. 
 
 And then to awake and find it has all been a 
 dream ! What shall we do next? Shut our eyes and 
 bring back the airy, sweet visions? Ah! no. They 
 will not come again to-night; perhaps, in such in 
 effable beauty, never more. What shall we do, then, 
 
 *Act v. Scene i. 
 
204 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 after having been to the highest heights? Why, we 
 must even see what fancy may have put into the 
 heads of clowns. The courtiers tell the monarch 
 what these poor fellows have prepared to contribute 
 to the celebration of the approaching nuptials, and 
 and they advise him that it 
 
 " It is nothing-, nothing in the world." 
 
 Even the gracious Hippolyta begs 
 
 " Not to see wretchedness o ercharged." 
 
 But a wise king values too much the faithful service 
 of his lowest subjects to find fault with the rude 
 terms in which it is expressed. Thus he speaks to 
 his bride: 
 
 "I will hear that play; 
 For never anything can be amiss 
 When simpleness and duty tender it. 
 
 The kinder we, to give them thanks for nothing. 
 
 Our sport shall be to take what they mistake: 
 
 And what poor duty cannot do, 
 
 Noble respect takes it in might, not merit. 
 
 Where I have come, great clerks have purposed 
 
 To greet me with premeditated welcomes; 
 
 Where I have seen them shiver and look pale, 
 
 Make periods in the midst of sentences, 
 
 Throttle their practised accent in their fears, 
 
 And in conclusion dumbly have broke off, 
 
 Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet, 
 
 Out of this silence yet I pick d a welcome; 
 
 And in the modesty of fearful duty 
 
 I read as much as from the ratling tongue 
 
 Of saucy and audacious eloquence. 
 
 Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity 
 
 In least speak most, to my capacity. 1 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 205 
 
 We are glad the good king did not refuse the 
 rendition of Pyramus and Thisbe. Irresistibly funny 
 as it is, when it threatens to become tiresome he 
 has the discretion to limit the players to a Bergo- 
 mask dance, omitting the epilogue. 
 
 Such was the device, a great, broad joke, full of 
 absurdities and incongruities, with which this wisest, 
 most generous, most humane of poets let down from 
 the contemplation of the fanciful and the impossible. 
 
 But it is The Merchant of Venice wherein is to 
 be seen the most delicate intermingling of the earn 
 est with the different shades of humor, from the 
 broadest upward and upward, refining and refining 
 until it grows into sadness and even approximates 
 the tragic. 
 
 Already had the Hebrew been made famous in the 
 drama by Marlowe. But Bar abbas had been drawn, 
 in accordance with legends of too credulous times, 
 reciting enormities practised in secret by the Jews 
 upon Christian peoples. Bar abbas, therefore, was 
 a monster. Now, it comported not with the nature 
 of Shakespeare to represent a character so mon 
 strously, incredibly cruel and vindictive. For the 
 purposes of his comedy he sought to represent the 
 Jew what ages of various fortune had made him. 
 In Shy lock we see something of what has been 
 wrought through immemorial persecution. But 
 Shakespeare, who was too great to despise anything 
 
206 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 which God has made in his image, while he allows 
 the thoughtless to laugh, leads the thoughtful to pity 
 this man not only for his misfortunes, but for his 
 wish for revenge, attributing this in part to influence 
 of generations of outrages, and in part to the cause 
 less insultings of the merchant-prince who was known 
 to have especial hate for the "sacred nation," and. 
 
 WHO There where merchants most do congregate," 
 
 had often railed upon this especial Jew. Even in 
 the act of borrowing the money upon the fatal bond 
 there are insults that a man with the blood of a true 
 man would find difficult to endure : 
 
 " SHY. Signor Antonio, many a time and oft 
 In the Kialto you have rated me 
 About my moneys and my usances: 
 Still have I borne it with a patient shrug, 
 For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe. 
 You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, 
 And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine, 
 And all for use of that which is mine own. 
 Well, then, it now appears you need my help: 
 Go to, then; you come to me, and you say, 
 Shylock, AVC would have moneys: you say so; 
 You, that did void your rheum upon my beard, 
 And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur 
 Over your threshold: moneys is your suit. 
 What should I say to you? Should I not say 
 Hath a dog money? Is it possible 
 A cur can lend three thousand ducats? Or 
 Shall I bend low and in a bondman s key, 
 With bated breath and whispering humbleness, 
 Say this: 
 
 Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last; 
 You spurned me such a day; another time 
 You call me dog; and for these courtesies, 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 2O7 
 
 I d lend you thus much moneys? 1 
 
 "ANT. I am as like to call thee so again, 
 To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too. 
 If thou wilt lend this money, lend it not 
 As to thy friends (for when did friendship take 
 A breed for barren metal of his friend?) 
 But lend it rather to thine enemy." 
 
 Now, when a man has to take such as this, we ex 
 pect him, whether Jew or Gentile, to try to find 
 something adequate to give in return. The poet 
 most adroitly throws in other things to subdue the 
 ruthless insistence of the penalty of the forfeited 
 bond. The Jew loses from his house, his heart, the 
 faith of his fathers, his only child, Jessica, only 
 pledge of the beloved, departed Leah. The 
 groundlings shout at the exploit of the bold Lorenzo, 
 and hoot at the dog of a Jew as he curses in vain, 
 and all, except Launcelot Gobbo, rejoice that an 
 other is added to the true faith. But the generous 
 consider how piteous is the desolation of the parent s 
 heart when his only loved, his fully trusted, has 
 robbed him, fled from him, and been joined with the 
 persecutors of his race. Yet we are spared the pain 
 of resentment against this filial impiety partly by 
 her conversion to Christianity, but mostly by the 
 childish simplicity which keeps her from compre 
 hending the depth of the sorrow into which the 
 father has been plunged by her elopement. The 
 most stringent adherent for the claims of parental 
 control might relent to some degree while listening to 
 
208 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 her childlike talks with Gobbo, and seeing her after 
 wards yielding to the sweet influences of song when 
 she, so newly married, says : 
 
 "I am never merry when I hear sweet music." 
 
 These preliminary things help to subdue our scorn 
 for the creditor s claim. The most indignant hearer 
 may attempt, but will attempt in vain, to answer 
 quite successfully his arguments drawn from the 
 analogies of the treatment of his own nation of 
 what should be a Christian s sufferance by Chris 
 tian example. It is such as these that, while 
 the dramatist approximated the pathos of tragedy, 
 served to keep him on the hither side, and thus 
 create that delicious, delicate enjoyment when, 
 being upon the verge of weeping, one experiences 
 the sudden relief of gentle laughter. Here was the 
 subtlest essence of high comedy. 
 
 But the groundlings must have the unmixed. 
 Though they have laughed at the tortures of the 
 Jew, yet it was not the laugh of heartiness and of 
 health. For this the author provided the good 
 Gobbo, or good Launcelot, or good Launcelot Gobbo. 
 What an invention ! Unique in the history of comic 
 literature this compound of earnestness and fun, of 
 conscientiousness and knavery. He cannot be con 
 vinced that Jessica 1 s conversion is a matter for con 
 gratulation, not even on moral grounds: 
 
 "Yes, truly," says he to her after the marriage "yes, truly; for, 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 209 
 
 look you, the sins of the father are to be laid upon the children: 
 therefore, I promise ye, I fear you. I was always plain with you, 
 and so now I speak my agitation of the matter: therefore be of 
 good cheer, for truly I think you are damn d." 
 
 Nor on economical: 
 
 "JESSICA. I shall be saved by my husband: he hath made me a 
 Christian. 
 
 " LAUN. The more to blame he. We were Christians enow before; 
 e en as many as could well live, one by another. This making of 
 Christians will raise the price of hogs; if we grow all to be pork- 
 eaters, we shall not shortly have a rasher on the coals for money." 
 
 Here is the most ludicrous of all those curious 
 characters who, having 
 
 " Planted in their memory 
 An armv of good words," 
 
 " for a tricksy word 
 Defy the matter." 
 
 This is the extreme of the humor of this play. As 
 for the means, it is pleasing to study how they play 
 between, lifting faomjGobbo to Nerissa, and thence 
 to Jessica and Lorenzo, and thence to Portia and 
 Bassanio. Shakespeare has been often praised for 
 the compliment he paid to the female sex in the 
 creation of Portia. A rich orphan, to whom, per 
 haps of all women, the choice of a husband is most 
 difficult and dangerous, her conduct in the midst of 
 the suits that are paid to her is the very perfection 
 of high-born ladyship. What wit and what wisdom 
 have come to this beautiful heiress ! How well she 
 understands, and how playfully, talking with her 
 maid, she cuts into pieces the Neapolitan prince, the 
 
210 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 County Palatine, Monsieur Le Bon, Falconbridge, 
 the Scottish lord, the Duke of Saxony s nephew! 
 (Act i. scene ii.) In the treatment of the princes 
 of Arragon and Morocco, men of real worth and 
 serious, honorable purpose, her deportment is our 
 best ideal of that which a true gentlewoman em 
 ploys in the presence of a gentleman upon whom, 
 though not unworthy of her love, it is not possible 
 to bestow r it. When Bassanio appears and wins 
 the prize we may search through all romance in 
 vain for a subdual so complete, so frank, so delicate, 
 so ineffably sweet. 
 
 " Ycm see me, Lord Bassanio, where I stand, 
 
 Such as I am: though for myself alone 
 
 I would not be ambitious in my wish, 
 
 To wish myself much better; yet. for 3^011 
 
 I would be trebled twenty times myself ; 
 
 A tho\;sand times more fair, ten thousand times more rich; 
 
 That only to stand high in your account, 
 
 I might in virtues, beauties, livings, friends, 
 
 Exceed account; but the full sum of me 
 
 Is sum of nothing; which, to term in gross, 
 
 Is an unlesson d girl, unschool d, unpractised; 
 
 Happy in this, she is not yet so old 
 
 But she may learn; happier than this, 
 
 She is not bred so dull but she can learn; 
 
 Happiest of all is that her gentle spirit 
 
 Commits itself to yours to be directed, 
 
 As from her lord, her governor, her king. 
 
 Myself and what is mine to you and yours 
 
 Is now converted; but now I was the lord 
 
 Of this fair mansion, master of my servants, 
 
 Queen o er myself; and even now, but now, 
 
 This house, these servants, and this same myself 
 
 Are yours, my lord: I give them with this ring." 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 211 
 
 Amid the first transports of the accepted lover 
 news comes of the forfeiture of the bond of Antonio. 
 At once is seen how orphanage, leaving her to the 
 care of herself, has developed beyond the time her 
 discretion, her sense of gratitude and justice and 
 honor. Not a moment s delay will she allow to 
 Bassanio, whom she urges to fly to the comfort and 
 rescue of the friend who suffers in his behalf 
 a fitting preparation for the difficult part which is to 
 be happy in its ending. Such is the felicitous 
 blending of the numerous colorings and shadings 
 of sportiveness which have made The Merchant 
 of Venice the greatest of the comedies. 
 
 A few words about Sir John Falstaff will end 
 this article. In the view we have been taking of 
 Shakespeare we can find apt and touching illustra 
 tion even in old Sir John, in the thread of serious 
 ness which, beginning though late, runs along in that 
 great web of humor, and finally absorbs the end that, 
 all tangled, is torn from the loom of his life. Amidst 
 all the fun in Act i. Scene ii., ("King Henry IV.," 
 Part II.) there is a touching sadness in the talk with 
 the little page whom, out of the drollery of a con 
 trast with his gigantic stature, the prince has as 
 signed to him : 
 
 " FAL. Sirrah, you giant, what says the doctor to my case? 
 " PAGE. He said, sir, the party that owed it might have more dis 
 eases than he knew for. 
 " FAL. Men of all sorts take a pride to gird at me. The brain of 
 
212 THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 this compounded clay, man, is not able to invent anything- that tends 
 to laughter, more than I invent or is invented on me," etc. 
 
 This sense of humiliation and approaching fri end 
 lessness and abandonment exhibits itself at sundry 
 times. The bold words he employs, the rude jests, 
 show occasionally that he understands that his wit 
 and humor are his only capital, and that he supects 
 that they will not last him to the end. It is really 
 melancholy to witness his last attempt to hold to the 
 prince who is now king, and hear his talk with Shal 
 low , his creditor, after the heartless repulse, avowing 
 his assurance that His Majesty has snubbed him in 
 public merely for the sake of appearances, and that 
 he will surely send for him in private. All the things 
 occurring henceforth in rapid succession draw us 
 with genuine pity to him who has been so ruthlessly 
 and shamelessly forsaken. The sudden reformation 
 of the youngster of a king with the new-born, in 
 temperate zeal of fresh reformers generally ; the 
 poor spite of the chief-justice, who, when he has an 
 opportunity, returns and inflicts a punishment greater 
 than was required, and all because Sir John had been 
 witness of his own humiliation all these lead us to 
 feel, for the time being, that the old knight, so ill- 
 treated, is worth more than the king and the chief- 
 justice put together. These last words to the latter, 
 "My lord, my lord," are piteous in the extreme. 
 But the dignitary passed on, and the appeal was 
 
THE DELICACY OF SHAKESPEARE. 213 
 
 not uttered or was unheard. The career of the 
 knight was over. A mere jester, a man without 
 heart, might have lived on. Yet even to those more 
 vulgar companions, Hostess and Pistol, Nym and 
 Bardolph, when they hear that he is sick, they 
 know that he is sick unto death. 
 
 " XYM. The king hath run bad humors on the knight; that s the 
 even of it. 
 
 " PISTOL. Nym, thou hast spoke the right; his heart is fracted and 
 corroborate. 
 
 " XYM. The king is a good king; but it must be as it may; he 
 passes some humors and careers." 
 
 And the Hostess tells of his playing with flowers, 
 and babbling of green fields, and calling upon the 
 name of God; and Bardolph wishes he might be 
 with him in Arthur s bosom, whither the good wo 
 man has consigned him "an it had been any Christom 
 child;" and PistoVs manly heart, yearning the while, 
 exhorts Bardolph to be blithe, and Nym to rouse 
 his vaunting veins, and they all know that the mat 
 ter with Sir John was, "the king killed his heart." 
 We may make our pocket-handkerchiefs wet with 
 laughter over such condolence of these droll 
 "lambkins." And so we laugh sometimes at the 
 poor verses of "his aunty" or "his grandma, "follow 
 ing announcements in the morning papers of the 
 death of " a child. " But both are the best evidences 
 that such uncultured hearts believe they can give of 
 the sadness they feel, and their most fitting tribute 
 to the dead. 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC 
 LOVERS. 
 
 HP HOSE who are familiar with Shakespeare s 
 Venus and Adonis remember the prophecy 
 which, while writhing with anguish at the death 
 of her lover from the tusk of the wild boar, the 
 goddess pronounced upon human loves. Begin 
 ning thus: 
 
 u Since thou art dead, lo here I prophesy," 
 
 it ends with the curse: 
 
 "Sith in his prime death doth my love destroy, 
 They that love best their loves shall not enjoy. 1 
 
 Let us consider how, mindful of these words, the 
 poet through whose mouth they were uttered, treated 
 of this passion in its extreme st misfortune during the 
 periods of youth, middle-life, and old age, the ardent 
 unthoughtful loves of Romeo and Juliet, the conjugal 
 cf Othello, and last of all, the parental of King Lear. 
 Shakespeare was now past his own youth, and his 
 native seriousness, deepened by accidents whose 
 nature and influence have never been made well 
 known, was bound to predominate in the repre 
 sentations which thenceforth he was to make of 
 
 human life. What had been in his boyhood, and 
 214 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 215 
 
 what now was in his married experience to intensify 
 the melancholy of his being, if any of his contempo 
 raries knew, they did not transmit. Yet whoever 
 has reflected upon what little is known of his per 
 sonal history, if he has ever been in that yet re 
 spectable looking house on a prominent street of 
 Strattord-on-Avon, and afterwards wandered across 
 the fields to the village of Shottery, and gone inside 
 the low-roof, thatched cottage wherein, when a lad 
 of eighteen, he was married to a girl his senior by 
 many years, must again speculate upon those Son 
 nets whose complainings, never understood, are the 
 saddest, most piteous to be found in all uninspired 
 writing. 
 
 Heretofore in his business as a manager of thea 
 tres he had worked mainly on the sportive side of 
 his profession and had excited merriment of every 
 degree from the jestings of clowns and wenches to 
 the sallies ot the highborn and cultured. Yet, with 
 a humanity above all former comic writers and a 
 delicacy far beyond the age in which he lived, he 
 had paid respect to human nature in every condi 
 tion of its existence. And now when, though but 
 seven-and-twenty, he had been a married man ten 
 years, he essayed to let the world witness the ful 
 fillment of the prophecy, learn what was meant by 
 the budding and the blasting of love, its unjust sus- 
 pectings, its foolish trustings, its wretched inequali- 
 
216 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 ties, all those elements which pitilessly tend to 
 dissensions and discontents of every sort that 
 
 " Make the young old, the old become a child" 
 
 and eventuate in inevitable ruin. 
 
 The circumstances attending the inception of the 
 loves of Romeo and Juliet were such as to render 
 them eager, rapid, absorbing, irresistible, and there 
 fore doomed inevitably to result in disaster. We 
 are not told of the causes which led to the hostility 
 between their families. For the purposes of the 
 poet it was sufficient that they existed, and that 
 they were old, so old indeed that by this time the 
 wrongs and the revenges of both might be regarded 
 as about equal. In accordance with the demands 
 of destiny, the time came for these to have an end, 
 and that by the sacrifice of innocent blood. This 
 boy of the Montagues, and this girl of the Capulets, 
 too young to have any of the hereditary hatred of 
 their houses, each fashioned in perfect kind for the 
 spring of sudden, passionate love, become involved 
 the more quickly and inextricably because of the 
 difficulties and the dangers. It was consummate 
 art to make Romeo tall in love first with Rosaline. 
 For in the manners of a boy suffering with his first 
 passion there is something ridiculous; but such 
 experience sometimes leads to a refinement that is 
 captivating. This brief adventure was fitly pre 
 liminary to the instantaneous recognition of the 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 217 
 
 superior charms of another maid, and a learning of 
 the courtly arts by which to make it known and sue 
 for reciprocation of the feeling which it had in 
 spired. The same art was exhibited in representing 
 Juliet until now without love s experience, and there 
 fore without strength to resist its first assault. 
 
 Yet, young as both are, they recognize the peril. 
 Even before the masquerade which Romeo con 
 sented to attend with Benvolio and Mercutio, his 
 
 " Mind misgives 
 
 Some consequence yet hanging in the stars 
 Shall bitterly begin his fearful date 
 With this night s revels, and expire the term 
 Of a despised life." 
 
 So, Juliet, appalled to find her lover to be a 
 Montague, instantaneously springs into womanhood, 
 and muses thus : 
 
 " My only love sprung from my only hate! 
 Too early seen unknown, and known too late! 
 Prodigious birth it is of love to me, 
 That I must love a loathed enemy." 
 
 Yet such a love finds not an end in such discour 
 aging circumstances. There is no courage greater 
 than that of love when it is young and innocent. 
 The hereditary hatred in their families had served 
 only to intensify their infatuation. The ardor of the 
 boy, his recklessness of danger, his mad pursuit of 
 this girl of fourteen years, into whose mind, on the 
 morning of that very day, thoughts of marriage for 
 the first time have been put by her own parents, 
 
218 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 these were as irresistible as any thing in the careers 
 of Oedipus or Orestes. The poet took both at the 
 spring of the want that attracts to each other man 
 and woman, and in a situation of extremest peril, 
 and in order to exhibit the recklessness of youth 
 when the prospect of possession by each of the 
 other, though unlicensed, seems to them to make 
 nugatory all preliminary dangers and compensate 
 for all possible future disasters. What a courtship 
 was on that starry night, as the girl with the first 
 consciousness of the love of a man, stood in the 
 w r indow of her chamber, while her lover, unseen, 
 stood in the garden below. 
 
 On the side of his mother, Mary Arden, Shakes 
 peare had gentle blood, and his inheritance of gen 
 tility had been made manifest in several of his 
 creations. So it appears in the exquisite delicacy 
 of this young girl s behavior in the midst of her un 
 controllable feeling. The struggle between the 
 frank avowal of a love that could not be repressed 
 nor concealed, with the fear of being regarded too 
 soon and too easily won, makes a case which not 
 only the young, but those who have long outlived 
 the times of similar experiences are ever fond to 
 contemplate. 
 
 " Thou know st the mask of night is on my face, 
 Else would a maiden blush bepaint my cheek 
 For that which thou hast heard me speak to-night. 
 Fain would I dwell on form, fain, fain deny 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 2 1 9 
 
 What I have spoke; but farewell compliment! 
 
 Dost thou love me? I know thou wilt say, "Ay," 
 
 And I will take thy word; yet, if thou swear st, 
 
 Thou may st prove false; at lovers perjuries 
 
 They say, Jove laughs. O gentle Romeo, 
 
 If thou dost love, pronounce it faithfully: 
 
 Or if thou think st I am too quickly won, 
 
 I ll frown, and be perverse, and say thee nay. 
 
 So thou wilt woo; but else, not for the world. 
 
 In truth, fair Montague, I am too fond, 
 
 And therefore thou may st think my havior light: 
 
 But, trust me, gentlemen, I ll prove more true 
 
 Than those that have more cunning to be strange: 
 
 I should have been more strange, I must confess, t 
 
 But that thou o erheard st ere I was ware 
 
 My true love s passion; therefore pardon me, 
 
 And not impute this yielding to light love 
 
 Which the dark night hath so discovered." 
 
 How touching in these words, the maidenly re 
 monstrance and the pleading in hindering a judgment 
 which, in the exquisite bashfulness of virtue, she 
 fears that she may have deserved! After protesting 
 against all oaths, except "by thy gracious self" and 
 briefly, solemnly dwelling upon the suddenness of 
 their mutual feeling, she dismissed him with this 
 prayer : 
 
 " Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest 
 Come to thy heart as that within my breast." 
 
 Then we know that consuming as the passion is 
 in that young breast, it is kept subordinate to what 
 every woman, if a gentlewoman, feels that she must 
 recognize as entitled to a more earnest devotion 
 and a more faithful service. For no man, more 
 clearly than Shakespeare ever understood that the 
 
220 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 joys of love, even those of briefest, most passionate 
 continunance, were not worth the having unless 
 licensed by the laws of God and of men. 
 
 Such a union, coming in such conditions, must 
 have a brief season. Swiftly, tumultuously it came 
 on, and as tumultuously came the end. Yet in 
 that brief season the feuds of those two great fami 
 lies, in accordance with the silent pronouncement 
 of Nemesis, were obliterated by the coalescence and 
 the sacrifice of these innocent young spirits. The 
 Muse of Tragedy must have her costly sacrifice, 
 and the young bridegroom and his bride, like the 
 children of the Argive mother, meet their happiest 
 destiny in lying down to sleep to wake no more. 
 The grief, the agonizing anguish were with the sur 
 vivors. 
 
 In the deaths of Romeo and Juliet it is made ap 
 pear that the justice which is infinite was satisfied 
 for the wrong-doings of those of whom they were 
 the last and only innocent representatives. It is 
 pitiful, but it is instructive, to see those old men, 
 hereditary enemies, take each other by the hand 
 across these graves, and wail and endeavor to con 
 sole each for his own and the other s dead. Mon 
 tague raises a statue of pure gold to the daughter 
 of Capulet, and Capulet a similar to the son of 
 Montague. Costly as they are they seem to them 
 both, and are admitted to be, 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 221 
 
 "Poor sacrifices of our enmity. " 
 
 The lesson is the blessedness to the innocent in 
 being allowed to expiate the wrong-doings of the 
 guilty, leaving the guilty to reflect upon what a 
 thing it is to them, when for those wrong-doings, 
 the innocent are sacrificed. 
 
 More widely different could not be the loves just 
 considered from those of Othello and Desdemona. 
 It is difficult to fix a limit to our admiration for 
 the artist who represented in such varying phases 
 "first and passionate love," and that of mature man 
 hood. Not like the instantaneous infatuation of 
 Romeo and Juliet, the loves of Othello and Desde 
 mona were ot deliberate, almost studied develop 
 ment. An inmate of the house of Brabantio^ en 
 tertained therein partly from admiration of his 
 brilliant achievements, perhaps mostly from thoughts 
 of the interest which such condescension on the 
 part of a powerful lord excited among the common 
 people, the Moor was wont to speak, after invita 
 tion thereto, of his adventures on land and sea, 
 without suspicion on anybody s part that any un 
 common sentiment was to spring between him and 
 the daughter of his host. Unlike Juliet, who, at 
 the first consciousness of sex, was made captive of 
 manly beauty and gracefulness, Desdemona, after 
 some lapse of time, found that her heart s affec 
 tions were following in the train of admiration for 
 
222 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 this middle-aged hero, and then, herself yet young, 
 without experience of any sort except home exist 
 ence, became his wife. An alliance apparently so 
 unnatural, the father, supported by the common 
 sentiment of Venice, attributed to magic until his 
 daughter s disavowal when, overwhelmed with dis 
 gust as well as disappointment, he withdrew his 
 prosecution, surrendered her to the fortune which 
 she had selected, and turned his back upon her for 
 ever. It was an ill-starred marriage. Although a 
 hero, the Moor was of a despised race. In such a 
 case, no degree of individual merit can satisfy old 
 family pride or the demands of aristocratic society. 
 Amidst all of the admiration for this especial Moor, 
 it had never been dreamed that he would aspire to 
 ally himself with a leading family of this fairest of 
 Italian cities, the Bride of the Sea. The woman 
 was yet too young to have imbibed very much of 
 this pride of family and society, and doubtless she 
 had become disgusted with the manikins who 
 abounded in the circle to which she had been ac 
 customed. Therefore, unconsciously and irresisti 
 bly she was drawn to this barbarian, who, despite 
 his advanced age and tawny color, seemed to the 
 eyes of a thoughtful young woman of more worth 
 than all of those whose only merits were that they 
 were of the best blood of Venice, and could show 
 the images of ancestors, rich and illustrious. 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 223 
 
 Now it is not allowed to appear that Desdemona 
 had been won solely by recitals of great deeds ; 
 but it is shown that in and about Othello were some 
 things besides the record of heroic actions and suf 
 ferings which had power to attract from woman 
 however highly born and connected, not only ad 
 miration, but love. He was not only a scarred war 
 rior, but, after his kind, a gentleman. It does not 
 appear that he had so informed Desdemona: for 
 your true gentleman does not talk of his ancestry, 
 especially while in pursuit of ends that are as deli 
 cate as desirable. Yet, he was of the best blood of 
 his race, and therefore he could not have been with 
 out some of those graces which in one form and 
 another accompany the walk and conversation of 
 the well-born of every race. It was not, therefore, 
 a love like that of Pasiphaefor the bull, or of Leda 
 for the Swan, that won this fair Christian girl to a 
 descendant of Ishmael, but it was such a love as a 
 brave, gallant man may excite in a woman who has 
 been looking out for better examples than she had 
 been able to find among her set in social life. That 
 was a touching evidence of the dignity becoming 
 gentlemen everywhere, when, in discoursing with 
 lago on the opposition to his alliance, he said 
 
 u Tis yet to know 
 
 Which, when I know that boasting is an honor, 
 I shall promulgate I fetch my life and being 
 From men of royal siege, and my demerits 
 
224 SHAKESPEARES TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 May speak unbonneted to as proud a fortune 
 As this that I have reached; for know, lago, 
 But that I love the jjentle Desdeniona, 
 I would not my unhoused free condition 
 Put into circumscription and confine 
 For the Sea s worth."" 
 
 It is the modestest, and the saddest, yet it is also 
 the manfulest assertion of self-respect that is to be 
 found in literature. It ought not to surprise very 
 much that a man who could speak thus on such a 
 theme would draw to him a young woman like Des- 
 demona, who, as he felt, in consenting to become 
 his wife had made no social or family condescen 
 sion, nor had lifted him to a connection higher than 
 that in which he had been born. Yet, to the Ve 
 netians this warrior with the record of a thousand 
 exploits such as the young men of Venice, even of 
 the best families, were incapable of performing was, 
 at last, only a Moor. If this girl had been older 
 and more addicted to society, doubtless she might 
 have been influenced by prejudices regarded by 
 society salutary to the preservation of its exclusive- 
 ness; for such society assumes to feel that it is bet 
 ter to be destroyed utterly than admit willingly one 
 drop of contamination. As it was, because she 
 could not do otherwise, she yielded to the charm 
 which came with sach natural, generous, lordly ap 
 proach, and bestowed her whole self upon the 
 brave, weather-beaten, almost aged warrior. It 
 was a marriage, I repeat, not under propitious stars. 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 225 
 
 It was without parental blessing which it is always 
 dangerous to forego. The poet, with delicate fore 
 sight of tragic results took away this auspice so be 
 nign to nuptial solemnization. The young virgin 
 went forth from her father s house without his beni- 
 son, and was joined with a man of a foreign race. 
 
 "Declined 
 Into the vale of years," 
 
 of a race not only regarded by her own as its infer 
 ior, but one prone to jealousy of its women, which 
 of all the enemies of conjugal prosperity, is the 
 most malignant and dangerous. 
 
 Yet, if no disturber come between, with such 
 loftiness of soul in one, and such single devoted- 
 ness in the other, their wedded life may be safe in 
 its felicity, and friends of both might hope to see 
 how the softening influences of the accomplished 
 Venetian woman will subdue in time whatever is too 
 barbaric in the being of this descendant of the 
 Kings of the Desert. 
 
 One of the most consummate of the creatures of 
 the imagination islago. Drawing a man the most 
 abjectly evil of his kind, the artist, at an early stage 
 in his work, seemed to feel that he must apologize 
 for human nature in the person of this, its worst 
 representative, by a semblance of something tend 
 ing to show that villany so diabolic could not have 
 been perpetrated without at least some suspicion of 
 
226 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 provocation. lago, a married man himself, hus 
 band of a woman of a levity unbecoming a wife, 
 had already learned to hate the Moor with the 
 hatred that a mean spirit feels for the good and the 
 gifted. Yet we are spared the greatest rudeness of 
 the shock, and we are permitted to retain our incredu 
 lity in the absolute diabolism of any human being 
 by finding that this wretch has persuaded him 
 self that, as a husband, he has against the 
 Moor, some occasion of resentment, or of possible 
 resentment, a possibility springing mainly from the 
 consciousness of his own limitless inferiority, but 
 which, with a spirit so abjectly vile, is as effectual 
 as proof most positive in raising and fomenting the 
 spirit of revenge. 
 
 And now if ever "the guilty goddess of harmful 
 deeds" followed a course of conjugal life with a 
 pursuit insatiate in pitilessness, it was this. For 
 the extremest demands of tragedy there must be in 
 the beginning the existence or the appearance of 
 perfect fidelity. On the part of the wife, added to 
 an all absorbing love of her husband, a love won by 
 the manfulness of his spirit without help from ad 
 ventitious accidents, as youth, beauty, and social 
 connections, there was the innocence which in its 
 own pure sweet atmosphere, knew not and believed 
 not either of enmity or other form of evil else 
 where. One a hundred times over may read the 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 227 
 
 talk between her and Emilia on the night of the 
 murder, and he will admire more and more the art 
 ist who thus could paint a mortal woman, and while 
 keeping her mortal to the last, make her so like the 
 celestial. Surely conjugal purity was never set 
 forth in such excellent beauty. Her very ignorance 
 and unbelief of evil are what have made her so 
 liable to be betrayed and destroyed. 
 
 "Dost thou in conscience think tell me Emilia 
 That there be women do abuse their husbands 
 In such gross kind?" 
 
 The lower woman, the woman of the world, has 
 to admit that there are exceptional instances, that 
 all women are not like the spotless who thus inter 
 rogates. Yet she would not believe such things to 
 be possible with any. This innocence, this igno 
 rance, this incredulity hindered her, until too late, 
 from discovering what has so perplexed and estranged 
 her husband; and when she has discovered, instead 
 of indulging in resentment for the wrong done to 
 her, a wrong, in her imagination, so foul, that the 
 poorest and most abject of women are incapable of 
 deserving it she only utters one sorrowful appeal 
 in behalf of all her sex, and makes them partners 
 and companions in her grief when she cries, 
 
 "Oh these men, these men!" 
 
 In this cry there is piteous utterance of the be 
 lief that but for the overpowering seducings of man 
 
228 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 there is no woman who would not be clean. 
 
 Yet the outrage subtracts not from her conjugal 
 affection. She who might have cursed, kneeled to 
 beseech. 
 
 "Alas, lago! 
 Good friend, go to him. 
 
 Here I kneel: 
 
 If e er my will did trespass gainst his love, 
 Either in discourse of thought or actual deed, 
 Or that mine eyes, mine ears, or any sense 
 Delighted them in any other form, 
 Or that I do not and ever did, 
 And ever will though he do shake me off 
 To beggarly divorcement love him dearly, 
 Comfort forswear me! Unkindness may do much: 
 And his unkindness may defeat my life, 
 But never taint my love." 
 
 So, true to the honorable behests of her last con 
 dition she gave instructions that her body shall be 
 wrapped, not in her virgin, but her bridal robes, so 
 that such witness, fragile, unsubstantial, mute though 
 it be, of the loyalty that was unrecognized and out 
 raged in life, may accompany her into the grave. 
 
 Yet the deepest compassion in this drama is not 
 for the sufferings of Desdemona. In the death of 
 the innocent, even when wrought by violence, the 
 sorrow we feel is subdued, I might almost say, 
 sweetened by recollection of what was its most ex 
 cellent beauty, and by our thoughts, that instead of 
 being destroyed, it has been translated to an estate 
 more fit for its abode. The tenderest wish which 
 we can make for sinlessness when persecuted, is that 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 229 
 
 its sufferings may be not long protracted, but that it 
 may be allowed soon to fly away to its native 
 Heaven. There is something we know not what, 
 in the quick death of the innocent, which, instead 
 of repelling, attracts us, we know not how. Our 
 minds associate them with those who attained martyr 
 dom which we are taught to regard the supremest of 
 earthly felicities. So we thought of Virginia, whom 
 her father s knife saved from the Decemvir s outrage. 
 So of Agnes, with Thecla sharing, after the Virgin 
 Immaculate, the chiefest distinction of purity: so of 
 Cecilia, the blind custodian of the Catacombs : so 
 of Philomena, martyr of the Tiber, whose turbid 
 waves bore up her fair chaste body, as, with a light 
 above its forehead, it glided along down to the sea. 
 The very silence and apparent painlessness in the 
 deaths of the young and harmless will not admit the 
 anguishing sympathy which we feel when the expe 
 rienced, the strong, the valiant, the violent are over 
 come. The birdling opens its tiny beak, and chir 
 rups before the robber as blithe and as pleading as 
 when its parent has returned to the nest, and it 
 dies without a quaver and without even a fluttering 
 of its young wings. Not so the eagle, experienced 
 in warfare, rapine, and slaughter, who, when met 
 with his conqueror, battles to the last, both when 
 aloft and when prostrate, and death finds him rol 
 ling his fiery, unvanquished eyes, and thrusting with 
 
230 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 his talons. Such an ending we witness with tumul 
 tuous sympathy, and our very hair stands on an end 
 before the last, heroic, desperate struggle of one so 
 brave. 
 
 So in silence and not in overpowering grief we 
 take the clean body of this young bride, and lay it 
 in the tomb. Then we turn to contemplate the sur 
 vivor! The poet, who well understood these vary 
 ing influences, claimed our deepest sympathy for 
 the greatest sufferer; and herein he surpassed not 
 only all other artists, but himself, and then, going 
 back to Stratford, he wrote no more. 
 
 Let us briefly study the situation of Othello. He 
 had not formally wooed Desdemona. A foreigner, 
 of a despised race, no longer young, never having 
 studied nor desired to learn the arts that specially 
 please women, he found himself, unexpectedly to 
 himself, beloved of a young woman of one of the 
 first families in Venice, and. soon thereafter became 
 her husband. If she had been wise as she was vir 
 tuous and fond, she would have been able to under 
 stand and thwart the machinations of her own and 
 her husband s enemy. In the absence of all pru 
 dential preventives, the inequalities of that union 
 inevitably recurring to his own mind, aided by ex 
 terior insidious suggestion, began to frighten him. 
 To a great, brave spirit fear is the most anguishing 
 of emotions because most incompatible with what has 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 231 
 
 made such a spirit what it is, and hitherto has been its 
 most animating incentive. It thrills us to witness the 
 struggles of a generous and naturally unsuspecting man 
 with a subtle enemy on a field whereon it has had no 
 experience yet on which are things to fight for that are 
 a thousand fold more dear than all those for which 
 the battles of a score of years have been fought and 
 won elsewhere. How that grand spirit writhed 
 with the sense of incompetency for the exigencies 
 of this new warfare, when it must condescend to 
 appeal from the injustice of their having been de 
 volved upon him ! How unlike a brave man, how 
 pitiful these words, 
 
 "Haply, for I am black, 
 
 And have not those soft parts of conversation 
 That chamberers have, or for I am declined 
 Into the vale of years." 
 
 Herein was a momentary humiliation, a shame 
 faced self-contemning like that of a lion when in 
 volved in the toils that came invisible as they were 
 innumerable. Yet how noble the struggle for re 
 covery, when, his native courage recovering its poise, 
 he sought to console himself by comparing his own 
 with the misfortunes common to the great 
 
 " Yet, tis the plague of great ones; 
 Prerogatived are they less than the base: 
 Tis destiny unshnnnable, like death!" 
 
 Pathetic almost beyond degree it is to see this 
 struggle in the bosom of a hero, and his conscious 
 
232 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 loss of manhood with the loss of domestic honor. 
 When he has bidden farewell to 
 
 "The plumed troop and the big wars, 
 
 The neighing steed, and the shrill trump, 
 
 The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife, 
 
 The royal banner and all quality, 
 
 Praise, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war," 
 
 we know that he feels that this last defeat has un 
 done all the achievements of a career unrivalled in 
 glory, and has remanded him to the lowest of the 
 barbarians among whom he sprang. Henceforth 
 the strife was most feeble and most vain. The van 
 quished hero shorn of his glory, descended to the 
 level of the basest, most cowardly. Yet, to my 
 thinking, in all dramatic literature there is nothing 
 more pathetic than that last effort to rebound once 
 more and undo whatever was possible, when, after 
 one brief humble appeal for commutations of men s 
 opinions by recital, not of the vast historic services 
 which he had rendered to the commerce of the mer 
 chant princes of Europe, he told of a single private 
 action : 
 
 "In Aleppo once 
 
 When a malignant and a turban d Turk 
 Beat a Venetian and traduced the State, 
 I took by the throat the circumcised dog 
 And smote him thus. 1 
 
 And now let us contemplate briefly in King Lear, 
 that last stage when, having survived most of the 
 passions which were contemporary with youth, man- 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 233 
 
 hood, and middle age, an old man leaned for sup 
 port upon the young, whose dependence upon him 
 had developed what perhaps is the most powerful of 
 human loves. King Lear was the most notable ex 
 emplar of that class of aged men who in the over 
 weening and always impossible desire to receive 
 from their children as much affection as they bestow 
 upon them, do violence to that tender relationship and 
 become involved inextricably in mistakes and disas 
 ters. This is most natural and the most to be pitied of 
 all the infirmities of old age. Whenever, as in the case 
 of Lear, such wish becomes active, and a father 
 seeks among his children for the purpose specially 
 and avowedly of rewarding those who seem to him 
 to satisfy that impossible standard, he is certain, 
 from the very nature of things to make the most 
 unfortunate choice. It was therefore not a mere 
 fancy of Shakespeare nor of the old legend-gatherer 
 from whom he borrowed the theme for his drama, 
 that this father should reject from his heart and from 
 share in his power such as Cordelia who, among his 
 children, was the one who responded most dutifully 
 to his affection. With such a man, who, as after 
 wards Regan said of him, had 
 
 "Ever but slenderly known himself," 
 
 now lapsed into dotage, making the usual mistake of 
 senility in conceiting that he is wiser than ever be 
 fore, unless all of his children are true to him, one an- 
 
234 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 other, and themselves, he is sure to become the victim 
 of those who are not. The parent who makes such a 
 choice, if it be accepted and ratified by the chosen, 
 has made the worst choice possible because choos 
 ing at all in such conditions is wicked and unnat 
 ural. 
 
 If such things be true in ordinary families, how 
 much more striking their truth in the houses of 
 mighty kings when the prize of such a contest is in 
 vestment with 
 
 Power, 
 
 Pre-eminence, and all the large effects 
 That troop with majesty." 
 
 For such a prize, when inheritance is not to de 
 volve according to ascertained fixed order, rivalries 
 for succession begin before the father has grown old. 
 The ambitious who are evil-minded already have 
 been studying the arts to be employed in possible 
 contingencies, and parted from the filial piety which 
 the aged value more than all earthly possessions, 
 even though these be kingly crowns. Even in king 
 doms that are hereditary, the reigning monarch is 
 not often well loved by the heir-apparent, particu 
 larly when the former is thought to be living too 
 long. Mournful it is in the lives of the aged, es 
 pecially if the places which they fill are much to be 
 desired, that those who are expecting to occupy 
 sometimes, if only in secret, complain, that they 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 235 
 
 linger in them so long. Few things upon this earth 
 are more to be compassionated than the fond vain 
 yearnings of an old man for continuance in full of 
 the loves which were inspired in his former time. 
 It rends the heart to read, in that terrific satire of 
 Swift, of the neglect, the friendlessness, the con- 
 temptibility of those few upon whom had been con 
 ferred the gift of earthly immortality. Ludicrous 
 as was the fate of Tithonus, the lover of Aurora, to 
 whom in her fondness she granted the request that 
 he might not see death, yet to a thoughtful mind it 
 is sad to contemplate him when, grown old, having 
 survived all the contemporaries of his youth, lost in 
 beauty, and strength, and capacity to love the things 
 of earth, he prayed for the boon to be taken back, 
 and the goddess, who could not comply, gave him 
 in derision the metamorphose of a grasshopper. 
 Poor old Wycherley, who had been in his youth a 
 charmer of men and women by his graces and his 
 powers in the comic drama, used to stand before his 
 mirror, and shed tears for the decay of the beauty 
 which had been the chiefest source of his pride. On 
 the other hand, Zeno, founder of the Stoic School, 
 hanged himself because, at the age of ninety-eight, 
 his strength was insufficient to endure the pain, 
 which, for sixty years he had taught to be no evil. 
 It is interesting to read, in Cicero s De Senectute^ of 
 the domestic rule of Appius Claudius; but more 
 
2 3 6 
 
 touching of the dread of Old Cato that, having sur 
 vived Marcus, his best beloved, the time of his own 
 departure to the blessed fields whither this son had 
 gone, would be too late prolonged. He is the most 
 blest representative of advanced age, in whom Heav 
 en in its mercy, subdues love of the world, but tem 
 pers both the wish to remain and the longing to de 
 part, whom, in the words of Goethe, it allows to be 
 "unresting, unhasting, like a star. " The saddest of 
 all things in the lives of the superannuated, saddest 
 for them and for the young, is that the poor rem 
 nant of what was once abundant sometimes has to 
 be sold and purchased, and for a consideration more 
 than the little all which the buyer has to give, but 
 with which it is impossible for the seller to be sat 
 isfied. 
 
 These thoughts, it seems to me, and others far 
 more profound, were in Shakespeare s mind while 
 constructing this drama. The fond King Lear, 
 weary, or imagining himself to be weary of empire, 
 meaning to dispose his great Estate so that he may 
 
 "Unburden d crawl toward death." 
 
 vainly hoping that he may avoid the general lot of 
 kings, and be able to repose, during the remainder 
 of his life upon the love and gratitude of at least 
 some of his children, made his choice. Employing 
 a standard, of all the one most illusory, he chose 
 wrong. What followed the poet told in words which 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 237 
 
 make even the young grow pale to think what may 
 befall the last days of the careers of even the great 
 est among mankind. None but a seer who was 
 most profound in the knowledge of the human heart 
 could thus have presented the various phases in that 
 wretched decline. Yet, as in the case of lago, whom 
 he was both too humane and too wise to let be with 
 out some excuse for atrocities which otherwise would 
 have appeared diabolical, and therefore incredible, 
 so with these two daughters, Regan and Goneril, 
 "the unruly waywardness that infirm and choleric 
 years bring with them" was such as to be wholly in 
 consistent with their changed relations, thus making 
 some foundation, insufficient as it was, for conduct 
 not wholly inexcusable in its inception. 
 
 Goneril "Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his 
 fool?" 
 
 Oswald "Yes, madam." 
 
 Goneril "By day and night he wrongs me; every hour 
 He flashes into one gross crime or other, 
 That sets us all at odds: I ll not endure it: 
 His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us 
 On every trifle." 
 
 The monarch had not considered that these daugh 
 ters must have inherited some of the spirit which 
 had made their father a ruler of mankind. Then, 
 when he had laid aside the burdens of empire, he 
 had not believed that therewith he was parting from 
 control of all who were about him; for it had been 
 stipulated that he was to .retain, 
 
238 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 "The name and all the additions of a king." 
 
 Vain as were such expectations, they were natu 
 ral to a superannuated monarch, upon whom the 
 ambitions of absolute autocracy had palled. The 
 poet set down subsequent things in careful sequence 
 in order to prepare for the fearful catastrophe of 
 disappointment. What these were I need not recall 
 first astonishment at the insults of Goneril, his in 
 dignant turning Irom her to Regan, his answer to 
 the latter when she counselled him coldly to return 
 to Goneril and acknowledge that he had wronged 
 her, the sense of humiliation in entreating from his 
 children the consideration due to his age and rela 
 tionship; his prayer, instead of fighting with 
 "women s weapons", to be "touched with noble an 
 ger"; his pitiful deprecation of madness, and that 
 threat of vengeance that becomes the veriest embit- 
 terment of terror when his own instincts make sure 
 that he will have power to fulfill it. Appalling is the 
 energy with which the outraged father prosecuted 
 his threat; his going forth into the pelting storm, 
 baring his aged head to the blast, suffering of cold 
 and hunger, all for the purpose of heaping up wrath 
 upon the children who had dishonored him ! Sure 
 ly to no other man not inspired came in such meas 
 ure as to this poet the gift to employ the language 
 of grief and imprecation. Burning indeed were 
 the words of Prometheus when to all the elements 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 239 
 
 he complained of the remorseless infliction of un 
 merited suffering. But even this passion consumed 
 not as that of old Lear when his age was outraged 
 by the chosen ones of his heart. When we heard 
 his curses, we shrank aghast, because we know 
 that heaven, next to disobedience to itself abhors 
 the dishonor put upon a parent s head and we could 
 foresee all the horror of the retribution. 
 
 The brief season of softness when he and the 
 cast-out Cordelia have met in misfortune and recon 
 ciliation is as natural as it is exceeding sweet. 
 
 Cordelia "Shall we not see these daughters, and these sisters?" 
 Lear u No, no, no, no! Come, let s away to prison: 
 We two alone will sing like birds i the cage; 
 When thou dost ask me blessing, I ll kneel down, 
 And ask of thee forgiveness: So we ll live, 
 And pray and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh 
 At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues 
 Talk of Court news: and we ll talk with them too, 
 Who loses and who wins; who s in, who s out; 
 And take upon s the mystery of things, 
 As if we were God s spies: and we d wear out 
 In a wall d prison, packs and sects of great ones, 
 Thnt ebb and flow by the moon." 
 
 In this ignoring of the very existence of his in- 
 grates, is a terror yet more fearful than while the 
 imprecations were pouring from his burning tongue. 
 A brief season of sweetness, vain as an old man s 
 dream of the returning of his youth, then, one more 
 agony, the death of Cordelia and one more 
 act of vengeful strength the slaying of her assassin. 
 It is grand to see in this revulsion momentary revi- 
 
240 SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 
 
 val of the mighty power which he had been wont to 
 exert in the day of his prime. It was like the last 
 act of Samson, who, when subdued and captive, 
 summoned the remains of his giant strength, and, 
 in his own ruin, overwhelmed his enemies. 
 
 Perhaps the most delicate and subtle tenderness 
 in this drama is in that portion wherein are told the 
 relations of Lear with his Fool. The Fool was an 
 indispensable minister in ancient unlimited mon 
 archies. He was needed to impart occasional re 
 lief from the surfeit that came from the constant 
 servilities of the rest of mankind, and give tempo 
 rary relaxation from the cares and the sense of un 
 questioned, secure domination. A despotic king, 
 if only from caprice, must have sometimes a mim 
 icry of the feeling of independence in a subject, yet, 
 tolerating no earnest sort, he must adopt a fool and 
 put upon him the cap and bells. Whenever such a 
 king abdicates his crown, it is most natural for him 
 to retain this appendage, which, of all, had least to do 
 with the cares that made him weary. With what 
 art the poet leads to the changes in the relations of 
 these two! As the King declines, the Foo 1 is ex 
 alted. A sort of wisdom, paroxysmal though it be, 
 comes to the fool in the midst of this sudden, vast 
 degradation. How do the jestings grow into pet 
 ulant complainings, into semi-serious remenstra- 
 tion, into serious rebuking, into apt quoting of old 
 
SHAKESPEARE S TRAGIC LOVERS. 24! 
 
 wise saws, until he becomes silent, and, like a dog, 
 faithful to the last, is willing to die, and dies tor 
 his master. We could not have foreseen these 
 changes. But when we saw, we recognized them 
 as true to that strange companionship, and yet once 
 again wonder at the universality of the genius 
 which so well understood, and so faithfully por 
 trayed these extremes in human conditions. 
 
 Sad histories these of human loves. From no pe 
 riod in man s life, youth, middle age, or old the un 
 relenting Queen will lift her malediction, 
 
 "They that love best, their loves shall not enjoy." 
 


 btudies, 
 and socia 
 
 literary 
 
 J73 
 ser.l 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 X"~~ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY <?F CALIFORNIA LIBRARY