OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
TABLETS 
 
 BY 
 
 A. BRONSON ALCOTT 
 
 For curious method expect none, essays for the most part not being placed 
 it a feast, but placing themselves as at an ordinary." 
 
 Thomas Fuller. 
 
 R 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 S&UFORN^ 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS 
 1868. 
 

 36 
 if 
 
 Entered according to Act t>{ Congress, in the year 1868, by 
 
 A. URONSON ALCOTT, 
 In the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 Electrotyped and Printed by 
 
 ALFRED MUUGE & SON, 
 
 No. 34 Bchool St., Boston. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK L PRACTICAL. 
 
 I. THE GARDEN. PAGE. 
 
 1 Antiquity . 5 
 
 2 Ornaments " 
 
 3 Pleasures H 
 
 4 Orchard 20 
 
 5 Sweet Herbs 25 
 
 6 Table Plants 28 
 
 7 Rations 3$ 
 
 8 Economies 41 
 
 9 Rural Culture 4 s 
 
 II. RECREATION. 
 
 1 The Fountains 59 
 
 2 The Cheap Physician 65 
 
 III. FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 i Hospitality 69 
 
 3 Conversation 75 
 
 IV. FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 1 Persons .* 8l 
 
 2 Woman 88 
 
 3 Family 9 2 
 
 4 Children 95 
 
 V. CULTURE. 
 
 1 Modern Teaching ......... 103 
 
 2 Socratic Dialectic 108 
 
 3 Pythagorean Discipline . . . . "3 
 
 4 Mother Tongue . . . . "3 
 
 103 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 VI. BOOKS "7 
 
 VII. COUNSELS. 
 
 1 Religious 39 
 
 2 Personal . t MS 
 
 3 Political * 3 4 8 
 
 4 Soul s Errand 151 
 
 BOOK II. SPECULATIVE. 
 
 T. INSTRUMENTALITIES. 
 
 1 Tendencies 59 
 
 2 Method 162 
 
 3 Man 166 
 
 II. MIND. 
 
 1 Ideas 173 
 
 2 The Gifts .179 
 
 3 Person . . . .181 
 
 4 Choice 184 
 
 III. GENESIS. 
 
 1 Vestiges 189 
 
 2 Serpent Symbol 191 
 
 3 Embryons 193 
 
 4 Temperament ...... i . t 195 
 
 IV. METAMORPHOSES. 
 
 1 Sleep i 201 
 
 2 Reminiscence . . . . 203 
 
 3 Immortality . . t * t 205 
 
TABLETS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 PRACTICAL 
 
 " Philosophy, the formatrix of judgment and manners, haa the privi 
 lege of having a hand in everything." MONTAIGNE. 
 
THE GARDEN 
 
 " If Eden be on earth at all, 
 Tis that which we the country call." 
 
 HENRY VAUGHAN. 
 
THE GARDEN 
 
 I. ANTIQUITY. 
 
 I NEVER had any desire so strong and so like to 
 covetousness," says Cowley, " as that one which 
 I have had always that I might be master at last of a 
 small house and ample garden, with very moderate 
 conveniences joined to them, and there to dedicate 
 the remainder of nry life to the culture of them and 
 the study of nature. Virgil s first wish was to be a 
 wise man, the second to be a good husbandman. 
 But since nature denies to most men the capacity or 
 appetite, and fortune allows but to very few the 
 opportunities or possibility of apptying themselves 
 wholly to wisdom, the best mixture of human affairs 
 we can make, are the emplo3 T ments of a country life. 
 It is, as Columella calls it, the nearest neighbor or 
 next in kindred to philosoplry. And Varro says the 
 
6 THE GARDEN. 
 
 principles of it are the same which Ennius made to 
 be the principles of all nature ; earth, water, air, and 
 the sun. There is no other sort of life that affords 
 so many branches of praise to a panegyrist ; the 
 utility of it to a man s self, the usefulness or rather 
 necessity of it to all the rest of mankind, the inno 
 cence, the pleasure, the antiquity, the dignity." 
 
 This wish of the poet s appears to be nearly uni 
 versal. Almost every one is drawn to the country, 
 and takes pleasure in rural pursuits. The citizen 
 hopes to become a countryman, and contrives to 
 secure his cottage or villa, unless he fail by some 
 reverse of fortune or of character. T is man s nat 
 ural position, the Paradise designed for him, and 
 wherein he is placed originally in the Sacred Books 
 of the cultivated peoples ; their first man being con 
 ceived a gardener and countryman by inspiration as 
 by choice. 
 
 Gardens and orchards plant themselves by sym 
 pathy about our dwellings, as if their seeds were 
 preserved in us by inheritance. They distinguish 
 Man properly from the forester and hunter. The 
 country, as discriminated from the woods, is of 
 man s creation. The savage has no country. Nor 
 are farms and shops, trade, cities, but civilization 
 in passing and formation. Civilization begins with 
 persons, ideas ; the garden and orchard showing 
 
THE GARDEN. 7 
 
 the place of their occupants in the scale ; these 
 dotting the earth with symbols of civility wherever 
 they ornament its face. Thus by mingling his mind 
 with nature, and so transforming the landscape into 
 his essence, Man generates the homestead, and opens 
 a country to civilization and the arts. 
 
 In like manner, are the woods meliorated and made 
 ours. Melancholy and morose, standing in their 
 loneliness, we trim them into keeping with our 
 wishes and so adopt them into our good graces, as 
 ornaments of our estates, heraldries of our gentilit}?". 
 Our human history neither opens in forests nor 
 in cities, but in gardens and orchards whose my 
 thologies are woven into the faith of our race ; the 
 poets having made these their chosen themes from 
 the beginning. And we turn, as with emotions of 
 country and consanguinity to the classic pictures of 
 the Paradise, " planted by the Lord God eastward 
 in Eden, and wherein he put the man, whom he had 
 formed to dress and keep it ; " where, 
 
 " Out of the fertile ground he caused to grow 
 All trees of noblest kind for sight, smell, taste ; 
 Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balms, 
 Others whose fruit, burnished with golden rind, 
 
 Hung amiable, 
 Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose ; " 
 
8 THE GARDEN. 
 
 to this ; or, of scarce inferior fame, to the gardens 
 of the Hesperides with their golden apples ; or, 
 to those other 
 
 " gardens feigned 
 
 Or of revived Adonis, or renowned Alcinous," 
 
 whereof Homer sings : 
 
 "Without the hall and close upon the gate 
 A goodly orchard ground was situate 
 Of near ten acres, about which was led 
 A lofty quickset. In it flourished 
 High and broad fruit trees that pomegranates bore; 
 Sweet figs, pears, olives, and a number more 
 Most useful plants did there produce their store, 
 Whose fruits the hardest winter could not kill, 
 Nor hottest summers wither. There was still 
 Fruit in his proper season; all the year 
 Sweet zephyr breathed upon them blasts that were 
 Of varied tempers: these, he made to bear 
 Ripe fruits; these blossoms; pear grew after pear, 
 Apple succeeded apple, grape the grape, 
 Fig after fig; Time made never rape 
 Of any dainty there. A sprightly vine 
 Spread here her roots, whose fruit a hot sunshine 
 Made ripe betimes; there grew another green, 
 Here some were gathering; here some pressing seen; 
 A large allotted several each fruit had, 
 
THE GARDEN. 9 
 
 And all th adorn\l grounds their appearance made 
 In flower and fruit." 
 
 Or again to those preferred by the royal guest of 
 Solomon above all other splendors of his court, 
 
 " Though she on silver floors did tread, 
 With bright Assyrian carpets on them spread, 
 
 To hide the metal s poverty; 
 Though she looked up to roofs of gold, 
 And naught around her could behold 
 
 But silk and rich embroidery, 
 
 And Babylonian tapestry, 
 
 And wealthy Hiram s princely dye ; 
 Tho Ophir s starry stones met everywhere her ej r e, 
 
 Though she herself and her gay host were drest 
 
 With all the shining glories of the East, 
 
 When lavish art her costly work had done, 
 
 The honor and the prize of bravery 
 
 Was by the garden from the palace won; 
 
 And every rose and lily there did stand 
 
 Better attired by nature s hand; 
 The case thus judged against the king you see, 
 By one that would not be so rich, though wiser far 
 than he." 
 
 So the orchard of Academus suggests the ripest 
 wisdom and most elegant learning of accomplished 
 Greece. 
 
10 THE GARDEN. 
 
 Thus we associate gardens and orchards with the 
 perfect condition of mankind. Gardeners ourselves 
 by birthright, we also mythologize and plant our 
 Edens in the East of us, like our ancestors ; the 
 sacredness of earth and heaven still clinging to the 
 tiller of the ground. Him we esteem the pattern 
 man, the most favored of any. His labors have a 
 charming innocency. They yield the gains of a 
 self-respect denied to other callings. His is an 
 occupation friendly to every virtue ; the freest of 
 any from covetousness and debasing cares. It is 
 full of honest profits, manly labors, and brings and 
 administers all necessaries ; gives the largest leisure 
 for study and recreation, while it answers most ten 
 derly the hospitalities of friendship and the claims 
 of home. The delight of children, the pastime of 
 woman, the privilege of the poor man, as it is the 
 ornament of the gentleman, the praise of the scholar, 
 the security of the citizen, it places man in his truest 
 relations to the world in which he lives. And he 
 who is insensible to these pleasures, must lack 
 some chord in the harp of humanity, worshipping, 
 if he worship, at some strange shrine. 
 
 "Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps; 
 Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvests 
 reaps. 
 
THE GARDEN. 11 
 
 II. ORNAMENTS. 
 
 IN laying out a garden there must be protec 
 tion from the north winds, and if the hills are 
 wooded thus much is gained for profit as for orna 
 ment. Every homestead supposes a wood-lot and 
 forest paths for walking and meditation. So the 
 garden claims some shading down from pasture 
 fields and the wilder scenery skirting it. The 
 orchard is an improvement on the garden, and holds 
 a nobler relation to the house and its occupants. 
 Without suitable ornaments and enclosures, these 
 must be set to the side of the farm solely, not to 
 the house, humanity, nor art. Eyes and feet have 
 their claims along with the hands upon the land 
 scape, beauty and convenience having one mind 
 concerning the best ways of dealing with it. It is 
 clear that art has an interest, and should have its 
 hand, in a good well, wholesome cellar, as in the 
 fertility of the soil, the modesty of the grasses and 
 shrubbery. Alleys are best determined by the 
 nature of the grounds. They have a picturesque 
 effect ; so have gates, especially when they open 
 into a wood, or are seen in perspective at the end 
 of an avenue or a lane. Winding paths give pleasing 
 surprises, if accommodated to the grounds, take 
 
12 THE GARDEN. 
 
 us by the most attractive route ; slopes, swells, 
 irregularities of surface, heightening the pleasure 
 attending the prospect. There are spots, too, that 
 plead for their clump of trees, for a single one, for 
 an alcove, an arbor, a conservatory, for a fence, 
 structure of some sort, be it ever so plain and 
 these once there, please the eye as if grown there. 
 Arbors are especially ornamental. No country 
 residence is furnished without the embellishment 
 of a summer-house. It may be constructed of the 
 simplest stuff grown near at hand in the woods. For 
 one shall not range far in that direction without fall 
 ing soon upon every curve in the geometiy of beauty, 
 as if nature designing to surprise him anticipated his 
 coming, and had grown his materials in the under 
 wood along the lines especially of ancient fence rows, 
 where young pines bent by the lopping of the axe, 
 snow falls, or other accident, in seeking to recover 
 their rectitude, describe every graceful form of 
 curve or spiral suited to his rustic works. These may 
 be combined in ways wonderfully varied ; and the 
 pleasure attending the working them into a shapely 
 whole, has charms akin to the composing of poems 
 and pictures. There is a delight, too, in surprising 
 these stags of the woods in their coverts, of which 
 only artists can speak. 
 
THE GARDEN. 13 
 
 Neath hemlocks dark and whispering pines, 
 Wandering he loiters curiously, 
 The forest Muse her searching sense combines 
 To range the shades their cunning curves to see 
 Brackets grotesque, strange gnarled things, 
 Wreathed rails and balusters in twisted pairs, 
 Rhyming their rival coils for sportful stairs ; 
 Scrolls, antlers, volutes full-armed he brings 
 His fagot sheaf of spoils, and binds; 
 While frolic fancy sylvan serpents finds, 
 And Druid lyres for poet s pleasancc strings. 
 
 Then for rainy days, one has the choice of books, 
 pen, or handicraft, to vary his pleasures. There is 
 a charm in using tools to him who has cunning in 
 his hands for converting woods to ornamental uses, 
 the simplest, roughest sticks even, in setting trek 
 lises, hurdles, espaliers for vines, 
 
 " auxiliary poles for hops, 
 
 Ascending spiral, ranged in meet array; " 
 
 in making or mending articles and implements of any 
 kind, for house or grounds, to be objects of interest 
 whenever he views them afterwards. 
 
 The eyes have a property in things and territories 
 not named in any title deeds, and are the owners of 
 our choicest possessions. Nor do we dwell in this 
 emblematic world, and call it ours, any part of it, 
 
14 THE GARDEN. 
 
 without using them: that is ours which they have 
 assisted the hands in creating. Nature sketches 
 rudely the outlines of her plans on the landscape ; 
 t is the artist s privilege to fill out and finish these 
 draughts, improving upon her suggestions. Nor is 
 there a spot which does not kindly take ornament, as 
 if its canvas were spread awaiting the finishing 
 touches. And had he a thousand hands, uninter 
 rupted leisure, the taste and genius, what pleasure 
 were comparable to that of devoting them to drawing 
 lines thereon which shall survive him, to enrich every 
 eye beholding them, though it were only in passing ! 
 So a good man impresses his image on the landscape 
 he improves, and imparts qualities that perpetuate its 
 occupant to after times. 
 
 ra. PLEASURES. 
 
 "Days may conclude with nights, and suns may rest 
 
 As dead within the \vest, 
 Yet the next morn regilds the fragrant east." 
 
 I KNOW not how it is with others, to me the 
 spring s invitations are irresistible. I may be schol 
 arly inclined, and my tasks indoors delightful, yet 
 my garden claims me, monopolizing all my morning 
 hours ; and I know for me has come the season s sum 
 mons which I shall not set aside : no, not for studies 
 
THE GARDEN. 15 
 
 nor hospitalities which become rivals for my time 
 and attentions. My garden waits ; is the civil- 
 ler host, the better entertainer. Then I have a reli 
 gion in this business, and duties must waive compli 
 ments. My tasks are not postponable during the 
 summer da} r s ; if called away from these engage 
 ments, I shall first take counsel of my plants for 
 leave of absence, with intent of hastening back. Im 
 portunities were impertinent while the spell is on me. 
 Would the sun but shine all night long for my work 
 to continue ! Sure of gathering the better crop, I 
 bend to my task, foreseeing the avails of leisure com 
 ing in at the close of my autumn rounds. 
 
 " Me, let my poverty to ease resign 
 "When my bright hearth reflects its blazing cheer, 
 
 In season let me plant the pliant vine, 
 And, with light hand, my swelling apples rear." 
 
 Such toils are wholesome. One cannot afford to 
 dispense with their income of vigor. Then they fill the 
 clays with varied business, the mind gliding from head 
 to hands, from hands to head, in pleasing interludes, 
 to pour for him so deep a draught of Lethe, and so 
 refreshing, that the morning breaks only to release 
 the sleeper to begin anew his labors with the old en 
 thusiasm. Even the stiffness of his fatigues promotes 
 rectitude and probity of carriage : his hearty affection 
 
16 THE GARDEN. 
 
 for his pursuit, shedding lustre on all he takes in 
 hand. His garden is ever charming, always oppor 
 tune. He walks there at all hours, at sunrise r noon, 
 nightfall, finding more than he sought in it, each suc 
 cessive visit being as new as the first. 
 
 " All living things," says the Bhagavad Gita, " are 
 generated from the bread they eat ; bread is generated 
 from rain, rain from divine worship, and divine wor 
 ship from good works." A creed dealing thus super- 
 sensibly with the elements must have fertilizing pro 
 perties, and bring the gardener to his task little 
 tinctured by noxious notions of any kind. If he fall 
 short of being the reverent naturalist, the devout 
 divine, surrounded thus by shapes of skill, types of 
 beauty, tokens of design, every hue in the chromatic, 
 every device in the S3 r mbolic gamut, I see not what 
 shall make him these ; nor why Newton, G oethe, 
 Boehme, should have published their discoveries for 
 his benefit ; why it should occur to him to use his 
 eyes at all when he looks through this glass, regards 
 these signatures, views these blooms, these clasping 
 tendrils, laughing leaves, Tyrian draperies, the sym 
 pathies of his plants and trees with the weather, 
 tlu ir sleep, their thirst for the mists, and worship of 
 the East ; as if 
 
 Moistures their mothers were, 
 Their fathers flames, 
 
THE GARDEN. 17 
 
 < 
 
 and earth were virtually "wife of heaven," as Homer 
 says. 
 
 His is no mere cloud tillage, nor unproductive earth 
 culture. The firmament overhead reflects its lustre in 
 his mind, the mists ascend there from the watered 
 ground beneath, and he sows the mingled sense and 
 sunshine over his fields, enriching both them and him 
 self. He takes account of the double harvest of prof 
 its : both rewarding him for his pleasures and pains 
 takings. His faithful counsellor and genial moralist, 
 the ground, holds strict terms with him ; nor weeds 
 nor nettles have tales to tell, since they cannot thrive 
 under his shadow. He minds his proper affairs; is 
 industrious, punctual ; home keeper, and time keeper 
 no less, taking his tasks diligently as they rise. His 
 work begins with the spring, and continues till win 
 ter ; nor has he many spare minutes ; the slipping 
 away of twelve hours being the loss of a twelve 
 month, unless he do that instantly -which ought to be 
 done at the moment. 
 
 Taking timely counsel of his experience, he adapts 
 his labors to the seasons as they pass ; has his eye on 
 sun and soil at once. Nor shall I think the less of 
 his piety, if he be touched a little with that amiable 
 superstition concerning the planetary influences ; since 
 it ill becomes him to hold lightly any faith that serves 
 2 
 
18 THE GARDEN. 
 
 t 
 
 to brighten his affections and establish sweet relation 
 ships between himself and natural things. In sympa 
 thy with earth and heaven, these conspire for his bene 
 fit : all helping to fructify and ripen his crops. It is 
 unlawful to regard them as enemies of human tillage. 
 Gracefully the seasons come round for weaving 
 into his fancy, if not his faith, the old world s ritual 
 as a religion of engagements. He is an ephemeris 
 and weather-glass. He has his signs too, and aspects, 
 his seasons, periods and stints. The months sway 
 him. What if he sympathize with the year as it rolls ; 
 take equinoxially his March and September? Will 
 his intermediate times be the less genial in conse 
 quence, or his April fail of distilling mystic moods 
 with her fertilizing rains ? His winter may come hoar 
 with ideas, and brown October shall be his golden age 
 of orchards and their ambrosia. And as June best 
 displays the garden s freshness, so October celebrates 
 the orchard s opulence, to crown the gardener for his 
 labors. The golden days running fast and full 
 have not run to waste. Orchards and gardens bloom 
 again. He harvests the richer crop these have 
 ripened ; bright effluences of the stars, for the feast 
 of thought and the flow of discourse. Having thus 
 " gathered the first roses of spring and the last apples 
 of autumn," he is ready to dispute felicity with the 
 
THE GARDEN. 19 
 
 happiest man living, and to chant his paean of praise 
 for his prosperity : 
 
 The earth is mine and mine the sheaves, 
 I ll harvest all her bounty leaves, 
 Nor stinted store she deals to me, 
 Gives all she has, and gives it free, 
 Since from myself I cannot stir 
 But I become her pensioner : 
 Sun, cloud, flame, atom, ether, sea, 
 Beauteous she buildeth into me, 
 Seasons my frame with flowing sense, 
 Insinuates intelligence; 
 Feeds me and fills with sweet contents, 
 Deals duteously her elements: 
 Dawn, day, the noon, the sunset clear, 
 Delight my eye ; winds, woods, my ear, 
 While apple, melon, strawberry, peach, 
 She plants and puts within my reach; 
 Regales with all the garden grows, 
 Whatever the orchard buds and blows; 
 Lifts o er my head her sylvan screens, 
 And sows my slopes with evergreens, 
 While odorous roses, mint, and thyme, 
 Steep soul and sense in softer clime; 
 Preserves me when lapsed memory slips 
 Fading in sleep s apocalypse; 
 Surprising tasks and leisures sends, 
 And crowns herself to give me friends; 
 
20 THE GARDEN. 
 
 The morn s elixir pours for me, 
 And brims my brain with ecstasy. 
 
 Earth all is mine and mine the sheaves, 
 I harvest all her Planter leaves. 
 
 IV. THE ORCHARD. 
 
 / 
 
 ORCHARDS are even more personal in their charms 
 than gardens, as they are more nearly human 
 creations. Ornaments of the homestead, they sub 
 ordinate other features of it ; and such is their sway 
 over the landscape that house and owner appear 
 accidents without them. So men delight to build in 
 an ancient orchard, when so fortunate as to possess 
 one, that they may live in the beauty of its surround 
 ings. Orchards are among the most coveted posses 
 sions ; trees of ancient standing, and vines, being 
 firm friends and royal neighbors forever. The profits, 
 too, are as wonderful as their longevity. And if antiq 
 uity can add any worth to a thing, what possession 
 has a man more noble than these? so unlike most 
 others, which are best at first and grow worse till 
 worth nothing ; while fruit-trees and vines increase in 
 worth and goodness for ages. An orchard in bloom 
 is one of the most pleasing sights the eye beholds ; 
 as if the firmament had stooped to the tree-tops and 
 touched every twig with spangles, and man had min- 
 
THE GARDEN. 21 
 
 gled his essence with the seasons, in its flushing 
 tokens. And how rich the spectacle at the autumnal 
 harvest : 
 
 "Behold the bending boughs, with store of fruit they 
 
 tear, 
 
 And what they have brought forth, for weight, they 
 scarce can bear." 
 
 Apples are general favorites. Every eye covets, 
 every hand reaches to them. It is a noble fruit : 
 the friend of immortality, its virtues blush to be 
 tasted. Every Muse delights in it, as its mythology 
 shows, from the gardens of the Hesperides to the 
 orchard of Plato. A basket of pearmains, golden 
 russets, or any of the choice kinds, standing in 
 sight, shall perfume the scholar s composition as it 
 refreshes his genius. He may snatch wildness from 
 the woods, get shrewdness from cities, learning from 
 libraries and universities, compliments from courts. 
 But for subtlety of thought, for sovereign sense, for 
 color, the graces of diction and behavior, he best 
 betakes himself 
 
 " Where on all sides the apples scattered lie, 
 Each under its own tree." 
 
 Or to his bins, best, Columella says, when beechen 
 chests, such as senators and judges robes were laid 
 
22 THE GARDEN. 
 
 in in his day ; these to be " placed in a dry place, 
 free from frosts, where neither smoke, nor any thing 
 noisome may come ; the fruit spread on sawdust, and 
 so arranged that the fleurets, or blossom ends, may 
 Igok downwards, and the pedicles, or stalks, upwards, 
 after the same manner as it grew upon the tree ; and 
 so as not to touch one another. And better if gath 
 ered a little green; the lids of the chests covering 
 them close." 
 
 The ancient rustic authors give very little informa 
 tion concerning the apples and pears of their time, 
 thinking them too well known to be described, as an 
 author writing of our time might of ours. Most of 
 them had their names from men who brought them 
 into Italy and there cultivated them, and, "by so 
 small a matter," says Pliny, " have rendered their 
 names immortal." 
 
 Phillips thus describes the favorites of his time, 
 most of which we find in our own orchards, and still 
 in good repute : 
 
 " Now turn thine eye to view Alcinous groves, 
 The pride of the Phoeacian isle, from whence, 
 Sailing the spaces of the boundless deep, 
 To Ariconian precious fruits arrived : 
 The pippin burnished o er with gold, the moyle 
 Of sweetest honied taste, the fair pearmain, 
 Tempered, like comeliest nymph, with red and white; 
 
THE GARDEN. 23 
 
 ISTor does the Eliot least deserve thy care, 
 
 Nor John s apple, whose withered rind, intrenched 
 
 With many a furrow, aptly represents 
 
 Decrepit age; nor that from Harvey named, 
 
 Quick relishing. Why should we sing the thrift. 
 
 Codling, or Pomroy, or of pimpled coat 
 
 The russet; the red-streak, that once 
 
 Was of the sylvan kind, uncivilized, 
 
 Of no regard, till Scudamore s skilful hand 
 
 Improved her, and by courtly discipline 
 
 Taught her the savage nature to forget: 
 
 Let every tree in every garden own 
 
 The red-streak as supreme, whose pulpous fruit 
 
 With gold irradiate, and vermilion spires, 
 
 Tempting, not fatal, as the birth of that 
 
 Primeval interdicted plant, that won 
 
 Fond Eve, in hapless hour, to taste and die." 
 
 A quaint old Englishman, writing about orchards, 
 quotes the proverb : " It will beggar a doctor to live 
 where orchards thrive." So Cowley writes : 
 
 " Nor does this happy place only dispense 
 Its various pleasures to the sense, 
 Here health itself doth live, 
 That salt of life which doth to all a relish give; 
 Its standing pleasure and intrinsic wealth, 
 The body s virtue, and the soul s good fortune, health. 
 The tree of life when it in Eden stood, 
 
24 THE GARDEN. 
 
 Did its immortal head to heaven rear; 
 
 It lasted a tall cedar till the flood, 
 
 Now a small thorny shrub it doth appear, 
 
 Nor will it thrive too everywhere ; 
 
 It alwaj T s here is freshest seen, 
 
 T is only here an evergreen: 
 
 If, through the strong and beauteous fence 
 
 Of temperance and innocence, 
 
 And wholesome labors and a quiet mind, 
 
 Diseases passage find, 
 
 They must fight for it, and dispute it hard 
 
 Before they can prevail; 
 
 Scarce any plant is growing here, 
 
 Which against death some weapon does not bear: 
 
 Let cities boast that they provide 
 
 For life the ornaments of pride; 
 
 But t is the country and the field 
 
 That furnish it with staff and shield." 
 
 Nor can we spare his praises of budding and graft 
 ing from our account : 
 
 " We nowhere art do so triumphant see, 
 As when it grafts or buds a tree ; 
 In other things we count it to excel 
 If it a docile scholar can appear 
 To nature, and but imitates her well: 
 It overrules and is her master here : 
 It imitates her Maker s power divine, 
 And changes her sometimes, and sometimes does refine ; 
 
THE GAKDEN. 25 
 
 It does like grace, the fallen tree restore 
 
 To its blest state of Paradise before; 
 
 "Who would not joy to see his conquering hand 
 
 O er all the vegetable world command, 
 
 And the wild giants of the wood, receive 
 
 "What laws he s pleased to give? 
 
 He bids the ill-natured crab produce 
 
 The gentle apple s winy juice, 
 
 The golden fruit that worthy is 
 
 Of Galatea s purple kiss; 
 
 He does the savage hawthorn teach 
 
 To bear the medlar and the pear; 
 
 He bids the rustic plum to rear 
 
 A noble trunk and be a peach; 
 
 Even -Daphne s coyness he does mock, 
 
 And weds the cherry to her stock, 
 
 Though she refused Apollo s suit, 
 
 Even she, that chaste and virgin tree, 
 
 Now wonders at herself to see 
 
 That she s a mother made, and blushes in her fruit." 
 
 V. SWEET HERBS. 
 
 " Thick growing thyme, and roses wet with dew, 
 Are sacred to the sisterhood divine." 
 
 As orchards to man, so are flowers and herbs to 
 women. Indeed the garden appears celibate, as 
 does the house, without womanly hands to plant 
 
26 THE GARDEN. 
 
 and care for it. Here she is in place, suggests 
 lovely images of her personal accomplishments, as 
 if civility were first conceived in such cares, and 
 retired unwillingly, even to houses and chambers ; 
 something being taken from their elegancy and her 
 nobleness by an undue absorption of her thoughts in 
 household affairs. But there is a fitness in her asso 
 ciation with flowers and sweet herbs, as with social, 
 hospitalities, showing her affinities with the magical 
 and medical, as if she were the plant All-Heal, and 
 mother of comforts and spices. Once the herb garden 
 was a necessary part of every homestead ; every coun 
 try house had one well stocked, and there was a 
 matron inside skilled in their secret virtues, having 
 the knowledge of how her 
 
 " Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they 
 Have their acquaintance there," 
 
 her memory running back to the old country from 
 whence they first came, and of which they re 
 tained the fragrance. Are not their names refresh 
 ing? with the superstitions concerning the sign 
 under which they were to be gathered, the quaint 
 spellings ; mint, roses, fennel, coriander, sweet- 
 cicely, celandine, summer savory, smellage, rosemary, 
 dill, caraway, lavender, tanzy, thyme, balm, myrrh ; 
 these and many more, and all good for many an ail ; 
 

 THE GARDEN. 27 
 
 sage, too, sovereign sage, best of all excellent for 
 longevity of which to-day s stock seems running 
 low, for 
 
 " Why should man die? so doth the sentence say, 
 When sage grows in his garden day by day? " 
 
 This persuasion that the things near us, and under 
 our feet, stand in that relationship from some natural 
 affinity they have to our welfare, appears to be most 
 firmly rooted with respect to the medical herbs, 
 whether growing wild in the fields and woods, or 
 about the old homesteads, though the names of most 
 of them are now forgotten. A slight reference to the 
 herbals and receipt books of the last century would 
 show the good uses to which they were applied, as 
 that the virtues of common sense are also disowned, 
 and oftentimes trodden under foot. Certainty, they 
 are less esteemed than formerly, being superseded, 
 for the most part, by drugs less efficacious because 
 less related geographically to our flesh, and not 
 finding acquaintance therewith. Doubtless many 
 superstitions were cherished about them in ancient 
 heads, yet all helpful to the cure. The sweet 
 fennel had its place in the rural garden, and was 
 valued, not as a spice merely, but as a sacred 
 seed, associated with worship, sprigs of it, as of car 
 away and dill, being taken to the pews, for appe- 
 
28 THE GARDEN. 
 
 tizing the service. So the balm and rue had their 
 sacredness. Pliny commends these natives to every 
 housekeeper. " A good housewife," he says, " goes 
 to her herb garden, instead of a spice shop, for sea 
 sonings, and thus preserves the health of her family, 
 by saving her purse." So the poet sends her there, 
 too, for spouse-keeping. 
 
 " When Venus would her dear Ascanius keep, 
 A prisoner in the downy bands of sleep, 
 She odorous herbs and flowers beneath him spread, 
 As the most soft and sweetest bed, 
 Not her own lap would more have charmed his head." 
 
 VI. TABLE PLANTS. 
 
 THE last two centuries have added several plants 
 of eminent virtues to the products of the orchard 
 and garden. The cucumber, the potato, sweet corn, 
 the melon, are the principal acquisitions, especially 
 the last named, for that line of Marvell s 
 
 " Stumbling on melons as I pass," 
 
 must be taken rhetorically, since Evelyn informs us, 
 this fruit had but just been introduced into England 
 from Spain, in the poet s time, and the others but a 
 little before. He says, "I myself remember when 
 
THE GARDEN. 29 
 
 an ordinary melon would have sold for five or six 
 shillings. Tis a fruit not only superior to all of 
 the gourd kind, but paragon with the noblest of the 
 garden." And of the cucumber, " This fruit, now so 
 universally eaten, was accounted little better than 
 poison within my memory." Columella shows some 
 good ones growing in the Roman gardens : 
 
 " The crooked cucumber, the pregnant gourd, 
 Sometimes from arbors pendant, and sometimes 
 Snake-like, through the cold shades of grass they creep, 
 And from tho summer s sun a shelter seek." 
 
 Whittier has sung our sweet corn, as Marvell the 
 melon for Old England. But Raleigh declined that 
 service for his new Roanoke plant, the potato, leaving 
 it for the books to give this prose version instead : 
 " Sir Walter gave some samples of it to his gardener 
 as a fine fruit from Virginia, desiring him to plant them. 
 The roots flowered in August, and in September pro 
 duced the fruit ; but the berries were so different from 
 what the gardener expected, that, in ill-humor, he car 
 ried them to his master, asking, if this was the fine 
 fruit which he had praised so highly? Sir Walter 
 either was, or pretended to be ignorant of the matter, 
 and desired the gardener, since that was the case, to 
 dig up the weed and throw it away." It appears, how 
 ever, that the gardener, who was an Irishman, and had 
 
30 THE GARDEN. 
 
 the best of rights to christen it, soon returned with 
 the good parcel of potatoes, from whose thrift his 
 own country was supplied, and in time distributed so 
 widely as almost to supersede the ancient turnips, 
 once the favorite of husbandmen ; the more religious 
 of them, Columclla tells us, in his time, " sprinkling 
 the seed when they sowed it as if they meant to 
 supply the King, and his subjects also." 
 
 The turnip and the bean this last held sacred 
 by the Greeks, and which Pythagoras honored with 
 a symbol have lost much of the solid repute they 
 once enjoyed here in New England and elsewhere. 
 Good citizens and loyal republicans were fed chiefly 
 from their stanch virtues, knowing how to prize their 
 independence, and to secure it to their descendants. 
 The great staples were grown on their farms and 
 manufactured into substantial comforts without loss 
 of self respect. Bread was home-grown, kneaded 
 of fresh flour, ground in the neighborhood ; the grain 
 sown in hope, their 
 
 "Six months sunshine bound in sheaves," 
 
 being brought home in thankfulness. The grain 
 harvesting was the pride and praise of the country 
 round, as good to be sung as the Syrian pastoral 
 of Ruth gleaning in the fields of Boaz. But this, 
 and other customs, introduced with the cultivation 
 
THE GARDEN. 31 
 
 of wheat into Britain, and brought here by the Pu 
 ritan planters, are fast fading from memory, and the 
 coming generation will need commentaries on Tus- 
 ser and Thomson to make plain our reaping-idyl. 
 
 As kindles now the blazing East 
 
 Afield I haste, 
 
 Eager the sickle s feat to play, 
 Sweeping along the stalked fields my widening way; 
 
 Vexing the eared spires, 
 
 Pricked with desires, 
 My golden gavels on the stubble spend, 
 And to the fair achievement every member lend, 
 The laughing breeze my colleague in my forte, 
 "While the grave sun beams zealous on the sport. 
 Nor doth penurious gain famish my fist, 
 As earing fast it sheds abundant grist, 
 And gleaning damsels kerchief all they list, 
 Kindly conceive me friendliest of peers, 
 And glad my brows adorn with yellow ears; 
 The wide-spread field, its sheafed hoard, 
 The lively symbol of their liberal Lord, 
 "Whose plenteous crop, and ripe supply 
 Areaped is of every hand and eye 
 An opulent shock for poor humanity. 
 
 Their garments, too, were home-spun. Every 
 house, the scene of sprightly industry, was Homeric 
 as were the employments in the garden of Alcinous, 
 
32 THE GARDEN. 
 
 " Where to encounter feast with housewifery, 
 In one room, numerous women did apply 
 Their several tasks; some apple-colored corn 
 Ground in fair querns, and some did spindles turn; 
 Some work in looms; no hand least rest receives, 
 But all have motion apt as aspen leaves; 
 And from the weeds they wove, so fast they laid 
 And so thick thrust together thread by thread, 
 That the oil of which the wool had drank its fill, 
 Did with his moisture in bright dews distil." 
 
 It was plain wool and flax which they spun and 
 wove thus innocently, nor suspected the web of soph 
 istries that was to be twisted and coiled about the 
 countries liberties from a coming rival. " The weed 
 which, planted long ago by the kings of Tyre, 
 made their city a great nation, their merchantmen 
 princes, and spread the Tyrian dye throughout the 
 world ; of which Solomon obtained a branch, and 
 made his little kingdom the admiration of surround 
 ing nations ; of which Alexander sowed the seed in 
 the city to which he gave his name, and Constantino 
 transplanted to Constantinople ; which the first Ed 
 ward sowed on the banks of the Thames, and Eliza 
 beth lived to see blossom through the nourishment 
 which her enlightened mind procured, not only from 
 the original soil of the Levant but from the eastern 
 and newly discovered western world, as well as from 
 
THE GARDEN. 33 
 
 the North," this famous plant, thus cherished by 
 kings, has now become KING, and wields its sceptre 
 over the most cultivated and prosperous nations of 
 the earth ; its history for the last half century being 
 more closely woven with civilization, than perhaps 
 any other commodity known to commerce. And 
 whether it shall be woven into robes of coronation 
 or the shroud of freedom, for the freest of Republics, 
 the fortunes of races, the present moment is deter 
 mining. 
 
 Lettuce has always been loyal. Herodotus tells 
 us that it was served at royal tables some centu 
 ries before the Christian era, and one of the Roman 
 families ennobled its name with that of Lactucinu. 
 So spinach, asparagus and celery have been held in 
 high repute among the eastern nations, as with us. 
 And the parable of the mustard seed shows that 
 plant was known in Christ s time. The Greeks are 
 said to have esteemed radishes so highly that, in 
 offering oblations to Apollo, they presented them 
 in beaten gold. And the Emperor Tiberius held 
 parsnips in such high repute that he had them 
 brought annually from the Rhine for his table. The 
 beet is still prized, but the carrot has lost the reputa 
 tion it had in Queen Elizabeth s time, the leaves 
 being used in the head-dresses of the ladies of her 
 3 
 
34 THE GARDEN. 
 
 court, from whence the epithet applied to the hair is 
 derived. 
 
 Peas had scarcely made their appearance at the 
 tables of the court of Elizabeth, "being very rare," 
 Fuller says, " in the early part of her reign, and sel 
 dom seen except they were brought from Holland, 
 and these were dainties for ladies, they came so far 
 and cost so dear." Nor did the currant appear much 
 earlier in European gardens, coming first under the 
 name of the Corinthian grape : Evelyn calls the ber 
 ries Corinths. So the damson took its name from 
 Damascus ; the cherry from Cerasus, a city of Pon- 
 tus ; and the peach from Persia. The quince, first 
 known as the Cydonian apple, was dedicated to the 
 goddess of love ; and pears, like apples, are from 
 Paradise. 
 
 The apple is the representative fruit, and owes 
 most to culture in its ancient varieties of quince, pear, 
 pomegranate, citron, peach ; as it comprehended all 
 originally. Of these, pears and peaches have parta 
 ken more largely of man s essence, and may be called 
 creations of his, being civilized in the measure he is 
 himself; as are the apple and the grape. These last 
 are more generally diffused over the earth, and their 
 history embraces that of the origin and progress of 
 mankind, the apple being coeval with man ; Eve s 
 
THE GARDEN. 35 
 
 apple preserving the traditions of his earliest experi 
 ences, and the grape appears in connection with him 
 not long after his story comes into clearness from the 
 dimness of the past. 
 
 Fruits have the honor of being most widely diffused 
 geographically, grown with the kindliest care, and of 
 being first used by man as food. They still enter 
 largely into the regimen of the cultivated nations, 
 and are the fairest of civilizers ; like Orpheus, they 
 tame the human passions to consonance and har 
 mony by their lyric influence. The use of them is of 
 that universal importance that we cannot subsist in 
 any plenty or elegance without them. And every 
 where beside the cultivated man grows the orchard, to 
 intimate his refinement in those excellences most 
 befitting his race. The Romans designated the union 
 of all the virtues in the word we render fruit ; and 
 bread comes from Pan, the representative of Nature, 
 whose stores we gather for our common sustenance in 
 our pantries. Biography shows that fruit has been 
 the preferred food of the most illuminated persons of 
 past times, and of many of the ablest. It is friendly 
 to the human constitution, and has been made classic 
 by the pens of poets who have celebrated its beauty 
 aud excellence. 
 
36 THE GARDEN. 
 
 VH. RATIONS. 
 
 THE food of a people may be taken as a natural 
 gauge of their civility. In any scale of the relative 
 virtues of plants, fruits take their place at the top, 
 the grains next, then the herbs, last and lowest the 
 roots. The rule seems this : 
 
 Whatever groivs above ground, and tempered in the 
 solar ray, is most friendly to the strength, genius and 
 beauty proper to man. 
 
 The poet has intimated the law: 
 
 " Plants in the root with earth do most comply, 
 Their leaves with water and humidity; 
 The flowers to air draw near and subtilty, 
 And seeds a kindred fire have with the sky." 
 
 So the ancient doctrine affirms that the originals of 
 all bodies are to be found in their food, every living 
 creature representing its root and feeding upon its 
 mother ; and that from the food chosen, is derived 
 the spirit and complexion of each ; persons, plants, 
 animals, being tempered of earth or sun, according to 
 their likings. 
 
 Apollo feeds his fair ones, Ceres hers, 
 Pomona, Pan, dun Jove, and Luna jpale ; 
 So Nox her olives, so swarth Kiobe. 
 
/ 
 
 f UNIVERSITY j 
 
 \ OF 
 
 THE GABDEN^OK^H^X 37 
 
 It was the doctrine of the Samian Sage, that 
 whatsoever food obstructs divination, is prejudicial to 
 purity and chastity of mind and body, to temperance, 
 health, sweetness of disposition, suavity of manners, 
 grace of form, and dignity of carriage, should be 
 shunned. Especially should those who would appre 
 hend the deepest wisdom and preserve through life 
 the relish for elegant studies and pursuits, abstain 
 from flesh, cherishing the justice which animals claim 
 at man s hands, nor slaughtering them for food nor 
 profit. And, anciently, there existed what is called 
 the Orphic Life, men keeping fast to all things with 
 out life, and abstaining wholly from those that had. 
 
 And, aside from all considerations of humanity for 
 the animals, genius and grace alike enjoin abstinence 
 from every indulgence that impairs the beauty and 
 order of things. Our instincts instruct us to protect, 
 to tame and transform, as far as may be, the animals 
 we domesticate into the image of gentleness and 
 humanity, and that these traits in ourselves are im 
 paired by converting their flesh into ours. Nor do any 
 pleas of necessity avail. Since the experience of large 
 classes of mankind in different climates shows conclu 
 sively that health, strength, beauty, agility, sprightli- 
 ness, longevity, the graces and attainments appertain 
 ing to body and mind, are insured, if not best 
 promoted, by abstinence from animal food. Science, 
 
38 THE GARDEN. 
 
 moreover, favors this experience, since it teaches that 
 man extracts his bodily nourishment mediately or 
 immediately from the vegetable kingdom, and thus 
 lives at the cost of the atmosphere, needing not the 
 interfusion of the spirit of beasts into his system to 
 animalize and sustain him. " He feeds on air alone, 
 springs from it, and returns to it again." 
 
 A purer civilization than ours can yet claim to be, is 
 to inspire the genius of mankind with the skill to deal 
 dutifully with soils and souls, exalt agriculture and 
 manculture into a religion of art; the freer inter 
 change of commodities which the current world-wide 
 intercourse promotes, spread a more various, whole 
 some, classic table, whereby the race shall be refined 
 of traits reminding too plainly of barbarism and the 
 beast. " Ye desire from the gods excellent health and 
 a beautiful old age, but your table opposes itself, 
 since it fetters the hands of Zeus." * 
 
 " Time may come when man 
 With angels may participate and find 
 
 *Grillis having been transformed from a beast into a man, used to 
 discourse with his table companions, about how much better he fed while 
 in that state than his present one, since he then took instinctively what was 
 best for him, avoiding what was hurtful; but now, he said, though en 
 dowed with reason and natural knowledge to guide him in the selection, he 
 yet seemed to have fallen below the beast he was, since he found he liked 
 what did not like him, and took it, moreover, without shame. 
 
THE GARDEN. 39 
 
 ]STo inconvenient diet, no too light fare, 
 And, from these corporal nutriments, perhaps, 
 Their bodies may at last turn all to Spirit 
 Improved by tract of time, and winged ascend 
 Ethereal as they; or may at choice 
 Here, or in heavenly Paradises, dwell." 
 
 An elegant abstinence is complimentary to any 
 one, as, fed from the virgin essences of the season, 
 his genius, dispositions, tastes, have no shame to 
 blush for, and modestly claim the honor of being well 
 bred. And one s table, like Apelles , may be fitly pic 
 tured with the beauty of sobriety on the one side, the 
 deformity of excess on the other, the feast sub 
 stantial as it is lyrical, praising itself and those who 
 partake ; and his guests as ready to compliment him, as 
 Timotheus did Plato, when he said : " They who dine 
 with the philosopher never complain the next morn 
 ing." 
 
 THE SEER S RATIONS. 
 
 TAKES sunbeams, spring waters, 
 Earth s juices, meads creams, 
 Bathes in floods of sweet ethers, 
 Comes baptized from the streams; 
 Guest of Him, the sweet-lipp d, 
 The Dreamer s quaint dreams. 
 
40 THE GARDEN. 
 
 Mingles morals idyllic 
 With Samian fable, 
 Sage seasoned from cruets, 
 Of Plutarch s chaste table. 
 
 Pledges Zeus, Zoroaster, 
 Tastes Cana s glad cheer, 
 Suns, globes, on his trencher, 
 The elements there. 
 
 Bowls of sunrise for breakfast 
 Brimful of the East, 
 Foaming flagons of frolic 
 His evening s gay feast. 
 
 Sov reign solids of nature, 
 Solar seeds of the sphere, 
 Olympian viand 
 Surprising as rare. 
 
 Thus baiting his genius, 
 His wonderful word 
 Brings poets and sibyls 
 To sup at his board. 
 
 Feeds thus and thus fares he, 
 Speeds thus and thus cares he, 
 Thus faces and graces 
 Life s long euthanasies, 
 
THE GARDEN. 41 
 
 His gifts unabated, 
 Transfigured, translated 
 The idealist prudent, 
 Saint, poet, priest, student, 
 Philosopher, he. 
 
 vin. ECONOMIES. 
 
 " Much will always wanting be 
 
 To him who much desires. Thrice happy he 
 
 To whom the indulgency of heaven, 
 
 "With sparing hand, but just enough has given." 
 
 LIFE, when hospitably taken, is a simple affair. 
 Very little suffices to enrich us. Being, a foun 
 tain and fireside, a web of cloth, a garden, a few 
 friends, and good books, a chosen task, health and 
 peace of mind these are a competent estate, em 
 bracing all we need. 
 
 " Like to one s fortune should be his expense, 
 Men s fortunes rightly held in reverence." 
 
 The country opens the best advantages for these 
 enjoyments. And where one has the privilege of 
 choosing for himself, he prefers the scope for seclusion 
 and society that a homestead implies. For his human 
 satisfactions, he draws upon his dispositions and gifts. 
 His appetites he willingly digs for, nor cares to cher- 
 
42 THE GARDEN. 
 
 ish any that he is ashamed to own. For nobler pleas 
 ures he delights to climb. His best estate is in him 
 self. He needs little beside. With good sense for his 
 main portion to make the most of that little, he may 
 well consider Hesiod s opinion of weight : 
 
 " The half is better far than whole." 
 
 If his house is an ancient one, or ancestral, by so 
 much the stronger are the ties that bind his affections 
 to it ; especially if it stand in an orchard, and have a 
 good garden. Even if inconvenient in some respects, 
 he will hesitate about pulling it down in hopes of 
 pleasing himself better in a new one. The genius 
 that repairs an old house successfully may fail in 
 building another. Besides, there were many comforts 
 provided for by our ancestors, who were old Eng 
 lishmen even here in New England, and knew well 
 what a house was built for, and they built for that, 
 against any odds of counsel or expense. Then t is 
 fatal to take time out of a building, which so conse 
 crates it. 
 
 # 
 
 An old house, well built, pleases more with the 
 repairs rendered necessary than a costlier new one. 
 There are good points about it which have been 
 proved by a century or two, and these may be adopted 
 as parts for preserving, while any additions may be 
 made for holding the whole in keeping with the orig- 
 
THE GAEDEN. 43 
 
 inal design, or as improvements on it. Perhaps there 
 are snug recesses, and window-seats, spacious entries, 
 hospitable stairways, wainscoting, finished summers 
 running across the ceilings, a dry cellar, a good well, 
 fence rows in natural places, shrubbery, which if not 
 well set can be reset in the grounds ; an orchard and 
 garden whose mould is infused with the genius of years 
 and humanized for culture. Then the tenement has 
 its genealogy, and belongs to the race who have built 
 into it a history. Trees, too, venerable with age it 
 has, or it could not have been the residence of gentle 
 men. Outbuildings of any kind, useful or ornamental, 
 have found their proper sites, and meet the eye as if 
 they had always been there. It takes some genera 
 tions to complete and harmonize any place with the 
 laws of beauty, as these best honor themselves in that 
 fairest of structures, a human mansion ; which, next 
 to its occupant, is the noblest symbol of the mind 
 that art can render to the senses. One may spend 
 largely upon it, if he have not ousted his manliness 
 in amassing the money. That is an honest house 
 which has the owner s honor built into its apart 
 ments, and whose appointments are his proper orna 
 ments. 
 
 Building is a severe schoolmaster, and gets the best 
 and worst out of us, both, before it has done with us. 
 I conclude no man knows himself on terms cheaper 
 
44 THE GARDEN. 
 
 than the building of one house at least, and paying 
 for it out of his pains. The proverb says : 
 
 " T is a sweet impoverishment, and a great waste of gall." 
 
 Do we not build ourselves into its foundations, to stand 
 or fall with its beams and rafters, every nail being 
 driven in trouble from sills to roof-tree, and the whole 
 proving often a defeat and disappointment : no one 
 liking it, the builder least of all? One may thank 
 heaven, and not himself, if he do not find 
 
 He builded costlier than he knew, 
 Unhoused himself and virtues too, 
 
 at the dismission of his carpenters, and occupancy of 
 it. Perhaps the idea of a house is too precious to be 
 cut into shapes of comfort and comeliness on cheaper 
 conditions than this trial of his manliness by the pay 
 ment of his equanimity as the fair equivalent for the 
 privilege. Nor is this the end of the matter, since it 
 costs many virtues to deal dutifully by his household, 
 by servants if served by second hands day by 
 day, and come forth from the stewardship with credit 
 and self-respect. 
 
 But a garden is a feasible matter. T is within the 
 means of almost every one ; none, or next to none, 
 are so destitute, or indifferent, as to be without one. 
 
THE GAEDEN. 45 
 
 It may be the smallest conceivable, a flower bed only, 
 yet is prized none the less for that. It is loved all 
 the more for its smallness, and the better cared for. 
 Virgil advises to 
 
 " Commend large fields, 
 
 But cultivate small ones." 
 
 And it was a saying of the Carthaginians, that 
 u the land should be weaker than the husbandman, 
 since of necessity he must wrestle with it, and if the 
 ground prevailed, the owner must be crushed by it." 
 The little is much to the frugal and industrious ; and 
 the least most to him who puts that little to loving 
 usury. 
 
 " We are the farmers of ourselves, yet may 
 If we can stock ourselves and thrive, repay 
 Much, much good treasure for the great rent day." 
 
 T is a pity that men want eyes, oftentimes, to har 
 vest crops from their acres never served to them 
 from their trenchers. Civilization has not meliorated 
 .mankind essentially while men hold themselves to 
 services they make menial and degrading, -^leas, 
 king of Scythia, was wont to say ingeniously, that 
 " while he was doing nothing, he differed in nothing 
 from his groom," thus discriminating between ser 
 vices proper to freemen and slaves. The humblest 
 
46 THE GARDEN. 
 
 labors may ennoble us. Honorable in themselves 
 when properly undertaken, they promote us from 
 things to persons. They give us the essential goods 
 of existence as we deserve and can best enjoy 
 them : order, namety, industry, leisure, of which idle 
 ness defrauds, and distraction deprives us. Labor 
 suffices. Putting us, for the time, beyond anxiety 
 and our caprices, it calls into exercise the sentiments 
 proper to the citizen. It softens and humanizes other 
 pleasures. Like philosophy, like religion, it revenges 
 on fortune, and so keeps us by THE ONE amidst the 
 multitude of our perplexities against reverses, and 
 above want. By making us a party in the administra 
 tion of affairs, and superior to Fate, it puts into our 
 hands the iron keys for unlocking her wards, and thus 
 gives us to opulence and independence. We become, 
 thereby, the subjects and friends of Saturn, ever known 
 to be a person of so strict justice as he forces none to 
 serve him unwillingly, and has nothing private to him 
 self, but all things in common, as of one universal 
 patrimony. And so, owning nothing, because want 
 ing nothing, he had all things desirable to make life 
 rich and illustrious. 
 
 "This Golden Age 
 Met all contentment in no surplusage 
 Of dainty viands, but, (as we do still,) 
 Drank the pure water of the crystal rill, 
 
THE GARDEN. 47 
 
 Fed on no other meats than those they fed 
 
 Labor the salad that their stomachs bred." 
 
 Labor saves us from the chaos of sloth, the -pains 
 of shiftlessness. It sweetens the fountains of our 
 enjoyments ; t is neighbor to the elements. Com 
 ing in from July heats, we taste the sweetness of Pin 
 dar s line, 
 
 " Water with purest lustre flows," 
 
 of whose zest the idler knows nothing, and which the 
 sensualist soils and spoils. Besides, there are advan 
 tages to be gained from intimacy with farmers, whose 
 wits are so level with the world they measure and 
 work in. We become one of them for the time, by 
 s}Tnpathy of employment, and get the practical skill 
 and adaptedness that comes from yoking our idealism 
 in their harness of uses. Thus, too, we come to com 
 prehend the better the working classes which minister 
 so largely to the comforts of all men, and are so 
 deserving of consideration for their services. More 
 over, this laboring with plain men is the best cure 
 for any foolishness one may have never sounded in 
 the depths of his egotism, or scorn of persons in 
 humbler stations than his own ; and the swiftest leap 
 across the gulf yawning between his pride and the 
 humility gracing a gentleman in any walk of life. 
 
48 THE GARDEN. 
 
 X. RURAL CULTURE. 
 
 " Nor need the muse to palaces resort, 
 Or bring examples only from the court, 
 The country strives to do our subject right, 
 And gard ning is the gentleman s delight." 
 
 I CONSIDER it the best part of an education to 
 have been born and brought up in the country; 
 the arts of handicraft and husbandry coming by 
 mother wit, like the best use of books, the language 
 one speaks. There is virtue in country houses, in 
 gardens and orchards, in fields, streams and groves, 
 in rustic recreations and plain manners, that neither 
 cities nor universities enjoy. Nor is it creditable to 
 the teaching that so few college graduates take to 
 husbandry and rural pursuits. Held subordinate to 
 thought, as every calling should be, these promote 
 intellectual freshness and moral vigor. They have 
 been made classic by the genius of antiquity; are 
 recreations most becoming to men of every profession 
 and rank in life : 
 
 " Books, wise discourse, garden and fields, 
 And all the joys that unmixed nature yields." 
 
 Rural influences seem to be most desirable, if not 
 necessary, for cherishing the home virtues, especially 
 in a community like ours, where, by prejudices of 
 
THE GARDEN. 49 
 
 tradition, we seek culture more through books and 
 universities than from that closer contact with men 
 and things to which newer communities owe so much, 
 which agriculture promotes, and for which the classic 
 authors chiefly deserve to be studied. 
 
 Men follow what they love, and the love of rural 
 enjoyments is almost universal. Every one likes the 
 country whose tastes are cultivated in the least, and 
 who enjoys what is primitive and pure. The citizen 
 tires of city pleasures. He soon finds that there is 
 no freedom comparable to that which the country 
 affords ; for though he dwell in the city for advan 
 tages of libraries, and social entertainments, he seeks 
 the country for inspiration when these lose their 
 attractions, his spirits as his friendships, crave 
 refreshment and renewal. 
 
 " Who in sad cities dwell, 
 Are of the green trees fully sensible." 
 
 We see how this appetite declares itself in the 
 general swarming during the summer season from the 
 cities to the suburban towns, if not to the hill coun 
 tries, for the freedom, the health, found there ; and 
 how to gratify and meet the demand for more natural 
 satisfactions, our Guide Books have become, not only 
 the most attractive geographies of the territories 
 therein described, but works of taste, combining some 
 4 
 
50 THE GAKDEN. 
 
 of the choicest illustrations of poetry and prose in 
 our literature : sketches of such scenes and par 
 ties are sure of an eager reading. The rustic books, 
 too, are beginning to be inquired after ; translations 
 of the ancient authors, which bring the sentiment of 
 the originals within the grasp of the plainest minds. 
 And we look forward to the time, when, according 
 to the recommendation of Cowley and Milton, poets 
 who did so much for the culture of their time, these 
 authors will be studied in our schools and universi 
 ties, as Virgil and Horace have been so long, for cul 
 tivating the love of nature, of rural pursuits, beauty 
 of sentiment, the graces of style, without an acquaint 
 ance with which, the epithet of a liberal and elegant 
 culture were misapplied on any graduate. Nor need 
 the students be restricted to Greek and Roman pas 
 toral poets, when some of our own authors have given 
 charming examples of treating New England life and 
 landscape in their pages. A people s freshest litera 
 ture springs from free soil, tilled by free men. Every 
 man owes primary duty to the soil, and shall be held 
 incapable by coming generations if he neglect plant 
 ing an orchard at least, if not a family, or book, for 
 their benefit. 
 
 "Agriculture, for an honorable and high-minded 
 man," says Xenophon, "is the best of all occupations 
 and arts by which men procure the means of living. 
 
THE GARDEN. 51 
 
 For it is a pursuit that is most easy to learn and most 
 pleasant to practise ; it puts the bodies of men in the 
 fairest and most vigorous condition, and is far from 
 giving such constant occupation to their minds as to 
 prevent them from attending to the interests of their 
 friends or their country. And it affords some incite 
 ment to those who pursue it to become courageous, as 
 it produces and sustains what is necessary for human 
 life without the need of walls or fortresses. A 
 man s home and fireside are the sweetest of all 
 human possessions." 
 
 I have always admired the good sense and fine am 
 bition of a friend of mine, who, on quitting College, 
 with fair prospects of winning respect in any of the 
 learned professions, chose rather to step aside into the 
 quiet retreat of a cottage, and there give himself to 
 the pleasures and duties of cultivating his family and 
 grounds. And this he did from a sense of its suit 
 ableness to promote the best ends and aims ; esteem 
 ing his gifts and accomplishments due to pursuits 
 which seemed the natural means of securing self-re 
 spect and independence. His first outlay was moderate 
 a sequestered field, on which he erected a comfort 
 able dwelling, planned for convenience and hospital 
 ity. His grounds were laid out and planted with 
 shrubbery, the slopes dotted with evergreens and 
 shapely trees. A nursery was set ; a conservatory, 
 
52 THE GARDEN. 
 
 with suitable outbuildings and ornaments. As he 
 gave himself personally to the work, everything pros 
 pered that he touched. A few years profits paid for 
 his investment, and his thrift soon enabled him to add 
 an adjoining orchard to his first purchase. And so 
 successful was his adventure, that his most sceptical 
 neighbors, the old farmers, confessed him to be the 
 better husbandman ; his gold was ruddier than theirs ; 
 his fields the neater. Nor did our Evelyn disgrace 
 social engagements. His friendships were kept in as 
 good plight as his grounds. He was none the worse 
 citizen for being the better neighbor and gentleman 
 they found him to be, nor the less worthy of the 
 honors of his college. " T is impossible that he 
 who is a true scholar, and has attained besides the 
 felicity of being a good gardener, should give jeal 
 ousy to the State in which he lives." Civilization 
 has a deeper stake in the tillage of the ground than 
 in the other arts, since its roots are fast planted 
 therein, and it thrives only as this flourishes. Omit 
 the garden, degrade this along with the orchard to 
 mere material uses, treat these as of secondary 
 importance, and the State falls fast into worldliness 
 and decay. 
 
 "Oh blessed shades! oh gentle, cool retreat 
 
 From all the immoderate heat 
 In which the frantic world does burn and sweat! 
 
THE GARDEN. 53 
 
 This does the Lion-star, Ambition s rage ; 
 This Avarice, the Dog-star s thirst assuage ; 
 Everywhere else their fatal power we see, 
 They make and rule man s wretched destiny ; 
 
 They neither set, nor disappear, 
 
 But tyrannize o er all the year, 
 Whilst we ne er feel their heat nor influence here. 
 
 The birds that dance from bough to bough, 
 
 And sing above in every tree, 
 
 Are not from fears and cares more free, 
 
 Than we who muse or toil below, 
 
 And should by right be singers too. 
 What Prince s quire of music can excel 
 
 That which within this shade does dwell ? 
 
 To which we nothing pay or give? 
 
 They, like all other poets, live 
 Without reward or thanks for their obliging pains; 
 
 T is well if they become not prey : 
 The whistling winds add their less ardent strains, 
 And a grave bass the murmuring fountains play. 
 
 Nature does all this harmony bestow; 
 
 But, to our plants, arts, music, too, 
 
 The pipe, theorbo, and guitar, we owe, 
 The lute itself, which once was green and mute ; 
 
 When Orpheus struck the inspired lute 
 
 The trees danced round and understood, 
 
 By sympathy, the voice of wood," 
 
 " Methinks I see great Dioclesian walk 
 In the Salonian garden s noble shade, 
 
54 THE GARDEN. 
 
 Which by his own imperial hands was made ; 
 I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk 
 
 "With the ambassadors, who come in vain 
 
 To entice him to a throne again. 
 " If I, my friends," said he, " should to you show 
 All the delights that in these gardens grow, 
 T is likelier much that you should with me stay, 
 Than t is that you should carry me away; 
 And trust me not, my friends, if every day 
 
 I walk not here with more delight 
 
 Than ever, after the most happy fight, 
 
 In triumph to the capitol I ride, 
 
 To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a 
 god." 
 
 Do we ask, on viewing the rural pictures which the 
 Pastoral Poets afford us, Whither is our modern 
 civilization tending ? What solid profits has it gained 
 on the state of things they describe, seeing the pri 
 mitive virtues and customs, once enjoyed by our 
 ancestors, are fading, the generosity, the cheer, 
 the patriotism, the piety, the republican simplicity 
 and heartiness of those times? Machinery is fast 
 displacing the poetry of farm and fireside ; the sickle, 
 the distaff, the chimney-piece, the family institu 
 tion, being superseded by prose powers ; and, with 
 their sway, have come slavery, pusillanimity, dis 
 honor. I know there are reconciling compensations 
 
THE GARDEN. 55 
 
 for all risks of revolution. For while the Demos 
 thus takes his inch, Divinity secures his ell ; so the 
 garment of mankind comes the fuller from the loom 
 in this transfer of labors. The fig leaf thus cun 
 ningly woven, costs fair honors, nevertheless, and 
 we covet in our hearts the florid simplicity of times 
 of sturdier virtues and unassailable integrity.* 
 
 * Evelyn draws a lively picture of those old times, though not without 
 Badness at the contrast with his own, " The style and method of life are 
 quite changed as well as the language, since the days of our ancestors, 
 simple and plain as they were, courting their wives for their modesty, 
 frugality, keeping at home, good housewifery, and other economical 
 virtues then in reputation. And when the young damsels were taught all 
 these at home in the country at their parents houses ; the portion they 
 brought being more in virtue than money, she being a richer match than, 
 any one who could bring a million and nothing else to commend her. Tho 
 presents then made when all was concluded, were a ring, a necklace of 
 pearls, and perhaps the fair jewel, the paraphernalia of her prudent 
 mother, whose nuptial kirtle, gown and petticoat, lasted as many anniver 
 saries as the happy couple lived together, and were at last bequeathed 
 with a purse of old gold, as an heir-loom to her granddaughter. The 
 virgins and young ladies of that golden age, put their hands to the spindle, 
 nor disdained the needle ; were obsequious and helpful to their parents, 
 instructed in the management of the family, and gave presage of making 
 excellent wives. Their retirements were devout *and religious books, 
 their recreations in the distillery and knowledge of plants, and their vir 
 tues for the comfort of their poor neighbors, and use of the family, which 
 wholesome diet and kitchen physic preserved in health. Nor were the 
 young gentlemen, though extremely modest, at all melancholy, or less gay 
 and in good humor. They could touch the lute and virginal, sing 
 
 "Like to the damask rose," 
 and their breath was as eweet as their voices, Then things were natural, 
 
56 THE GARDEN. 
 
 plain and wholesome ; nothing was superfluous, nothing necessary want 
 ing. Men of estate studied the public good, and gave examples of true 
 piety, loyalty, justice, sobriety, charity; and the good of the neighborhood 
 composed most differences. Laws were reasons, not craft; men s estates 
 were secure : they served their generation with honor, left patrimonial 
 estates improved to a hopeful heir, who, passing from the free school to 
 the college, and thence to Inns of Court, acquainting himself with a com 
 petent tincture of the laws of hia country, followed the example of his 
 worthy ancestors. And if he travelled abroad, it was not to count 
 steeples, and bring home feather and ribbon and the sins of other na 
 tions, but to gain such experience as rendered him useful to his Prince and 
 his countrymen upon occasion, and confirmed him in the love of both of 
 them above any other. Hospitality was kept up in town and country, by 
 which the tenants were enabled to pay their landlords at punctual day. 
 The poor were relieved bountifully, and charity was as warm as the 
 kitchen, where the fire was perpetual." 
 
 
II. 
 
 EECREATION. 
 
 Thou who wouldst know the things that be, 
 Bathe thy heart in the sunrise red, 
 Till its stains of earthly dross are fled. ; > 
 
 GOETHE, 
 
KECREATION. 
 
 I. -THE FOUNTAINS. 
 
 NATURE is wholesome. "Without her elixirs 
 daily taken we perish of lassitude and inanity. 
 The fountains must be stirred to their depths and 
 their torrents sent bounding along their sluices, else 
 we sink presently into the pool of inertia, victims of 
 indecision and slaves of fate. " Thy body, O well 
 disposed man, is a meadow through which flow three 
 hundred and sixty-five rivulets." Every pulse pushes 
 nature s quaternion along life s currents recreating us 
 afresh ; the morn feeding the morn, Memnon s music 
 issuing from every stop, as if the Orient itself had 
 sung. 
 
 Nature is virtuous. Imparting sanity and sweet 
 ness, it spares from decay, giving life with temper 
 ance and a continency that keeps our pleasures chaste 
 
60 RECREATION. 
 
 and perennial. Nothing short of her flowing at 
 mosphere suffices to refill our urns. Neither books, 
 company, conversation, not Genius even, the 
 power present in persons, nature s nature pouring 
 her floods through mind, not this is enough. Nature 
 is the good Baptist plunging us in her Jordan streams 
 to be purified of our stains, and fulfil all righteous 
 ness. And wheresoever our lodge, there is but the 
 thin casement between us and immensity. Nature 
 without, mind within, inviting us forth into the solacing 
 air, the blue ether, if we will but shake our sloth and 
 cares aside, and step forth into her great contentments. 
 
 As from himself he fled, 
 Possessed, insane, 
 
 Tormenting demons drove him from the gate: 
 Away he sped, 
 Casting his woes behind, 
 His joys to find, 
 His better mind. 
 
 T is passing strange, 
 The glorious change, 
 The pleasing pain! 
 
 Recovered, 
 Himself again 
 Over his threshold led, 
 
RECREATION. 61 
 
 Peace fills his breast, 
 He finds his rest; 
 Expecting angels his arrival wait. 
 
 If we cannot spin our tops briskly as boys do theirs, 
 the wailers may chant their dirges over us. En 
 thusiasm is existence ; earnestness, life s exceeding 
 great reward. How busy then, 4 and above criticism. 
 Our cup runs over. But a parted activity, divorcing 
 us from ourselves, degrades our noblest parts to the 
 sway of the lowest and renders our task a drudgery 
 and shame. For what avails, if while one s mind hovers 
 about Olympus, his members flounder in Styx, and he 
 is drawn asunder in the conflict ? Let the days deify 
 the days, the work the workman, giving the joyous task 
 that leaves pleasant memories behind, and ennobles in 
 the performance : 
 
 Tasked days 
 
 Above delays; 
 
 Hours that borrow 
 
 Speed of the morrow, 
 
 Light from sorrow: 
 
 Business bate not, 
 
 "Want nor wait not, 
 
 Doubt nor date not; 
 Life from limb forbid to sever, 
 Kecreate in rapt endeavor. 
 
62 RECREATION. 
 
 We come as a muse to our toil and find amuse 
 ment in it ; to a taskmaster whose company never 
 tires. T is life, the partaking of immortality. A 
 day lived so, glorifies all moments afterwards. Long 
 postponed, perhaps, the hours wearisome, till broke 
 this immortal morning with engagements that time 
 can complete never, nor compel, and whose impor 
 tunity outlasts the hours. 
 
 Sleep, too, having the keys of life in its keeping. 
 How we rise from its delectable divinations with eyes 
 sovereign and anointed for the day s occupations. All 
 our powers are touched with flame, all things are 
 possible. But last night, the world had come to an 
 end ; the floods ebbed low, as if the fates were reversing 
 the torch. How we blazed all the morning, to be 
 cinders yesternight. Then came the god to re-kindle 
 our faded embers, the Phoenix wings her way to meet 
 the rising dawn and embrace the young world once 
 more. Sleep took the sleep out of us. From forth 
 the void there rises a roseate morn upon us. 
 
 The flattering East her gates impearled, 
 We hunt the morning round the world. 
 
 Nor is a day lived if the dawn is left out of it, with 
 the prospects it opens. Who speaks charmingly of 
 nature or of mankind, like him who comes bibulous of 
 sunrise and the fountains of waters ? 
 
RECREATION. 63 
 
 " Mornings are mysteries, the first world s youth, 
 Man s resurrection, and the future s bud 
 Shown in their birth; they make us happy. 
 Make us rich." 
 
 Eise in the morning, rise 
 While yet the streaming tide 
 Flames o er the blue acclivities, 
 And pours its splendors wide; 
 Kindling its high intent 
 Along the firmament, 
 Silence and sleep to break, 
 Imaginations wake, 
 Ideas insphere 
 And bring them here. 
 Loiter nor play 
 In soft delay ; 
 
 Speed glad thy course along 
 The orbs and globes among, 
 And as yon toiling sun 
 Attain thy high meridian: 
 Kadiant and round thy day ; 
 Speed, speed thee on thy way. 
 
 " Every day is a festival, and that which makes it 
 the more splendid is gladness. For as the world is 
 a spacious and beautiful temple, so is life the most 
 perfect institution that introduces us into it. And 
 it is but just that it should be full of cheerfulness 
 
64 RECREATION. 
 
 and tranquillity." Our dispositions are the atmos 
 phere we breathe, and we carry our climate and world 
 in ourselves. Good humor, gay spirits are the 
 liberators, the sure cure for spleen and melancholy. 
 Deeper than tears, these irradiate the tophets with their 
 glad heavens. Go laugh, vent the pits, transmuting 
 imps into angels by the alchymy of smiles. The 
 satans flee at the sight of these redeemers. And he 
 who smiles never is beyond redemption. Once clothed 
 in a suit of light we may cast aside forever our sables. 
 Our best economist of this flowing estate is good 
 temper, without whose presidency life is a perplexity 
 and disaster. Luck is bad luck and ourselves a dis 
 appointment and vexation. Victims of our humors, 
 we victimize everybody. How the swift repulsions 
 play : our atoms all insular, insulating ; demonized, 
 demonizing, from heel to crown ; at the mercy of a 
 glance, a gesture, a word, and ourselves overthrown. 
 Equanimity is the gem in Virtue s chaplet and St. 
 Sweetness the loveliest in her calendar. " On behold 
 ing thyself, fear," says the oracle. Only the saints are 
 sane and wholesome. 
 
RECKEATION. 65 
 
 II. THE CHEAP PHYSICIAN. 
 
 That which makes us have no need 
 Of physic, that s physic indeed. 
 Hark, hither, reader, wilt thou see 
 Nature her own physician be? 
 Wilt see a man all his own wealth, 
 His own music, his own health, 
 A man whose sober soul can tell 
 How to wear her garments well: 
 Her garments that upon her sit, 
 As garments should do, close and fit; 
 A well-clothed soul that s not oppressed, 
 Nor choked with what she should be dressed; 
 A soul sheathed in a crystal shrine, 
 Through which all her bright features shine, 
 As when a piece of wanton lawn, 
 A thin, aerial veil is drawn 
 O er beauty s face, seeming to hide, 
 More sweetly shows the blushing bride: 
 A soul, whose intellectual beams 
 No mists do mask, no lazy streams : 
 A happy soul that all the way 
 To heaven .rides in a summer s day? 
 "Wouldst see a man whose well-warmed blood 
 Bathes him in a genuine flood, 
 A man whose tuned humors be 
 A seat of rarest harmony? 
 5 
 
66 RECREATION. 
 
 Wouldst see blithe looks, fresh cheeks beguile 
 
 Age; wouldst see December smile? 
 
 "Wouldst see nests of new roses grow 
 
 In a bed of reverend snow? 
 
 Warm thought, free spirits flattering 
 
 Winter s self into a spring? 
 
 In sum, wouldst see a man that can 
 
 Live to be old, and still a man 
 
 Whose latest and most leaden hours 
 
 Fall with soft wings, stuck with soft flowers; 
 
 And when life s sweet fable ends, 
 
 Soul and body part like friends; 
 
 No quarrels, murmurs, no delay, 
 
 A kiss, a sigh, and so away, 
 
 This rare one, reader, wouldst thou see? 
 
 Hark within, and thyself be he." 
 
III. 
 
 FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 Health is the first good lent to men, 
 A gentle disposition then, 
 Next competence by no by ways, 
 Lastly with friends to enjoy one s days." 
 
 HEKRICK. 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 I. HOSPITALITY. 
 
 "TjlVELYN writes of the manners and architecture 
 -* of his times : " T is from the want of symmetry 
 in our buildings, decorum in our houses, that the irregu 
 larity of our humors and affections may be shrewdly 
 discerned." But not every builder is gifted with the 
 genius and personal qualities to harmonize the apart 
 ments to the dispositions of the inmates. I confess 
 to a partiality for the primitive style of architecture 
 commended by Evelyn, and question whether in our 
 refinements on these we have not foregone comforts 
 and amenities essential to true hospitality. What 
 shall make good to us the ample chimney-piece of his 
 day, with the courtesies it cherished, the conversation, 
 the cheer, the entertainments? Very welcome were 
 the spacious yards and hospitable door-knockers on 
 
70 FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 those ancestral mansions, fast disappearing from our 
 landscape, supplanted by edifices and surroundings 
 more showy and pretentious ; yet, with all their cost 
 liness, looking somewhat asquint on the visitor, as if 
 questioning his right to enter them ; and, when ad 
 mitted, seem unfamiliar, solitary, desolate, with 
 their elaborate decorations and furnishings. Can we 
 not build an elegant comfort, convenience, ease, into 
 the walls and apartments, rendering the mansion an 
 image of the nobilities becoming the residence of 
 noblemen? To what end the house, if not for con 
 versation, kindly manners, the entertainment of friend 
 ships, the cordialities that render the house large, and 
 the ready receptacle of hosts and guests? If one s 
 hospitalities fail to bring out the better qualities of 
 his company, he fails of being the noble host, be his 
 pretensions what they may. Let him entertain the 
 dispositions, the genius, of his guests, the conversation 
 being the choicer banquet ; for, without baits for 
 these, w r hat were the table but a manger, alike wanting 
 in elegancy as in hospitality, and the feast best taken 
 in silence as an animal qualification, and no more. 
 
 What solitude like those homes where no home is, 
 no company, no conversation, into which one enters 
 with dread, and from which he departs with sadness, 
 as from the sight of hostile tribes bordering on civil 
 ization, strangers to one another, and of mixed bloods ! 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 71 
 
 Civility has not completed its work if it leave us un 
 social, morose, insultable. Sympathy wanting, all is 
 wanting ; its personal magnetism is the conductor of 
 the sacred spark that lights our atoms, puts us in 
 human communion, and gives us to company, con 
 versation, and ourselves. 
 
 " Oh wretched and too solitary, he 
 Who loves not his own company; 
 
 He ll find the weight of it many a day, 
 Unless he call in sin and vanity, 
 
 To help to bear it away." 
 
 The surest sign of age is loneliness. While one 
 finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot 
 be old, whatever his years may number. 
 
 Perhaps those most prize society who find the best 
 in solitude, being equal to either ; strong enough 
 to enjoy themselves aside from companies they would 
 gladly meet and repay by a freedom from prejudices 
 and scruples in which these share and pride them 
 selves, yet whose exclusiveness thrusts them out of 
 their own houses and themselves also. 
 
 " It ever hath been known, 
 They others virtues scorn who doubt their own." 
 
 If solitude makes us love ourselves, society gives 
 us to others, peopling what were else a solitude. 
 
72 FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 It takes us out of ourselves as from a multitude to 
 partake of closer intimacies and satisfactions. Alone 
 and apart, however well occupied, we lose the elas 
 ticity and dignity that come from sympathy with the 
 aims and prospects of others. Nor has any been 
 found equal to uninterrupted solitude. Our virtues 
 need the enamel of intercourse. Exalting us above 
 our private piques, prejudices, egotisms, into the com 
 monwealth of charities, good company makes us 
 catholic, courteous, sane ; we retire from it with a new 
 estimate of ourselves and of mankind. If intercourse 
 have not this wholesome eifcct, it is dissipating and 
 best shunned. Nor is fellowship possible without 
 a certain delicacy and respect of diffidence. There 
 hides a natural piety in this personal grace, while 
 nothing good comes of brass, from whose embrasures 
 there vollies forth but impudence, insolence, defiance. 
 But the more influential powers are attended by a 
 bashful genius, and step forth from themselves with 
 a delicacy of boldness alike free from any blemishes 
 of egotism or pretence. Nor do we accept as genuine 
 the person not characterized by this blushing bash- 
 fulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility 
 to the sentiment of suavity and self-respect. Modesty 
 is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the 
 mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without 
 this ornament. A fine genius has the timidity, the 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 73 
 
 graces of a virgin nature, whose traits are as trans 
 parent in the boldest flights of imagination as dis 
 cernible in the stateliest tread of reason, the play of 
 fancy : a pleasing hesitancy, a refrain, setting off the 
 more boldly by such graceful carriage, the natural 
 graces due to beauty and truth ; and bearing down 
 all else by its charming persuasions. 
 
 Affinities tell. Every one is not for every one ; nor 
 any one good enough to flatter or scorn any ; the kindly 
 recognition being due to the meanest ; even the humblest 
 conferring a certain respect by his call. Yet one might 
 as properly entertain every passing vagary in the pres 
 ence chamber of his memory as every vagrant visitor 
 seeking his acquaintance. Introductions are of small 
 account. What are one s claims, a glance detects ; if 
 ours, he stays, and house and heart are his by silent 
 understanding. If not ours, nor we his, the way is 
 plain. He leaves presently as a traveller the inn 
 keeper s door, an inmate for his meal only and the 
 night. 
 
 The heroic bearing is always becoming. Egotists of 
 the amiable species, one kindly considers. But the sour 
 malcontents, devastators of one s time and patience, 
 what to do with such ? Summon your fairest sunshine 
 forthwith : give your visitor s humors no quarters 
 from the shafts ; smite him with the kindly radiance 
 for dissipating his melancholy, and so send him away the 
 
74 FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 wholesomer, the sweeter for the interview, if not a con 
 vert to the sun s Catholicism, the courtesies clue to 
 civility and good fellowship. So when X, your worst 
 sample approaches, meet him blandly at your door, 
 and ask him civilly to leave his dog outside. But 
 if he persist in bringing him along into your parlor, 
 never hesitate on setting the cur forthwith upon his 
 master though you should find him at your throat 
 straightways. It were giving your visitor the warmest 
 reception possible under the circumstances, and an 
 interview very memorable to all parties. One need 
 not fear dealing his compliments short and signifi 
 cant on the occasion ; the deer running down the dogs 
 for a wonder. 
 
 Does it seem cold and unhandsome, this specular 
 survey of persons ? Yet all hearts crave eyes whereby 
 to measure themselves. And what better foil for 
 one s egotism than this reflection of himself in the 
 mirror of another s appreciation? The frank sun 
 withholds his beams from none for any false delicacy. 
 Nor till one rejoices in being helped to discern excel 
 lence in another, desiring to comprehend and compli 
 ment his own therein, is he freed from the egotism that 
 excludes him from the best benefits one can bestow. 
 Happy if we have dissolved our individualism in the 
 fluent affections, and so made intercourse possible 
 and delightful between us. 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 75 
 
 "We have three friends most useful to us ; a sincere 
 friend, a faithful friend, a friend that hears every 
 thing, examines what is told him, and speaks little. 
 But we have three also whose friendship is pernicious ; 
 a hypocrite, a flatterer, and a great talker. Contract 
 friendship with the man whose heart is upright and 
 sincere, who loves to learn and can teach you some 
 thing in his turn. And in what part of the world 
 soever thou chance to spend thy life, correspond 
 with the wisest and associate with the best." 
 
 n. CONVERSATION. 
 
 Good humor, flowing spirits, a sprightly wit, are 
 essentials of good discourse. Add genial dispositions, 
 graceful elocution, and to these accomplishments diffi 
 dence as the flower of the rest. There can be no 
 eloquence where these are wanting. Any amount of 
 sense, of logic, matter, leaves the discourse incomplete, 
 interest flags, and disappointment ensues. None has 
 command of himself till he can wield his powers 
 sportfully, life sparkling from all his gifts and taking 
 captive alike speaker and hearer, as they were docile 
 children of his genius and surprised converts for 
 the moment. "And I," says Socrates, " through my 
 youth often change my mind, but looking to you and 
 
76 FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 apprehending that you speak the things that are 
 divine, I think so too." If one cannot inspire faith 
 in what he says, no arts avail. Earnestness, sin 
 cerity, are orators whose persuasions are irresistible ; 
 they hold all gifts in fusion, magnetize, divinize, 
 harmonize all. Good conversation is lyrical : a pente- 
 cost of tongues, touching the chords of melody in all 
 minds, it prompts to the best each had to give, to better 
 than any knew they had, what none claims as his own, 
 as if he were the organ of some invisible player be 
 hind the scenes. What abandonments, reserves, which 
 no premeditation, no cunning could have checked or 
 called forth. What chasms are spanned with a trope, 
 what pits forded, summits climbed, prospects com 
 manded, perspectives gained, the tour of the spheres 
 made at a glance, a sitting ; the circle coming safely 
 out of the adventure. All men talk, few converse ; of 
 gossip we have enough, of argument more than 
 enough, rhetoric, debate omit these, speak from 
 the heart to the heart underlying all differences, and 
 we have conversation. For disputing there is the 
 crowd ; for ruminating, the woods ; the clubs for wit 
 and the superficial fellowship. 
 
 Companionableness comes by nature. For though 
 culture may mellow and refine, it cannot give the flush 
 of nobility to the current wherein ride our credentials 
 for the posts of persuasion and of power. We meet 
 
FELLOWSHIP. 77 
 
 magically, and pass with sounding manners ; else en 
 counter repulses, strokes of fate ; temperament telling 
 against temperament, precipitating us into vortices 
 from which the nimblest finds no escape. We pity 
 the person who shows himself unequal to the occasion ; 
 the scholar, for example, whose intellect is so exacting, 
 so precise, that he cannot meet his company other 
 wise than critically ; cannot descend to meet, through 
 the senses or the sentiments, that common level where 
 intercourse is possible with most. We pity him the 
 more, who, from caprice or confusion can meet 
 through these only. Still more, the case of him who 
 can meet neither as sentimentalist nor idealist, or, 
 rather, not at all in a human way. Intellect inter- 
 blends with sentiment in the companionable mind, w r it 
 with humor. We detain the flowing tide at the cost 
 of lapsing out of perception into memory, into the 
 limbo of fools. Excellent people wonder why they 
 cannot meet and converse. They cannot. No. Their 
 wits have ebbed away, and left them helpless. Why, 
 but because of hostile temperaments, states of ani 
 mation ? The personal magnetism finds no conductor. 
 One is individual, the other is individual no less. In 
 dividuals repel. Persons meet. And only as one s 
 personality is sufficiently overpowering to dissolve the 
 other s individualism, can the parties flow together 
 and become one. But individuals have no power of 
 
78 FELLOWSHIP. 
 
 the sort. They are two, not one, perhaps many. 
 Prisoned within themselves by reason of their egotism, 
 like animals, they stand aloof, are separate even when 
 they touch ; are solitary in any company, having none 
 in themselves. But the freed personal mind meets 
 all, is apprehended by all, by the least cultivated, the 
 most gifted ; magnetizes all ; is the spell-binder, the 
 liberator of every one. We speak of sympathies, 
 antipathies, fascinations, fates, for this reason. 
 
IV. 
 FRIENDSHIP 
 
 " So great a happiness do I esteem it to be loved, that I really fancy 
 every blessing both from gods and men ready to descend spontaneously 
 upon him who is loved." XJENOPHON. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 I. PERSONS. 
 
 IT was a charming fancy of the Pythagoreans to 
 exchange names when they met that so they might 
 partake of the virtues each admired in the other. 
 And knowing the power of names they used only such 
 as were musical and pleasing. The compliment thus 
 bestowed upon the sentiment of friendship is most 
 deserved, and suggestive of the magic of its influence 
 at every age, throughout every period of our existence ; 
 our life, properly speaking, opening with the birth of 
 fancy and the affections, and maintaining its freshness 
 only as we are under their sway. A friendship formed 
 in childhood, in youth, by happy accident at any 
 stage of rising manhood, becomes the genius that 
 rules the rest of life. What aspirations it awakens ! 
 what prospects ! To what advantages, adventures, 
 6 
 
82 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 sacrifices, successes, does it not lead its votaries ! 
 What if these early unions are sometimes less tem 
 pered with discretion than those formed later, if they 
 maintain their freshness and open out sure prospects 
 of an endless future ? He surely has no future who is 
 without friends to share it with him, and is wasting an 
 existence meant to give him that assurance. "With 
 this sentiment there comes every felicity into the 
 breasts of those who partake of it. How large the 
 dividend of delight ! how diffusive ! We are the 
 richer for every outlay. We dip our pitchers in these 
 fountains to come away overspilling with satisfaction. 
 And had we a thousand friends, every spring within 
 us would gush forth at the touch of these wands of 
 tenderness, and the days pass as uncounted moments 
 in their company. 
 
 " O friend, the bosom said, 
 Through thee alone the sky is arched, 
 Through thee the rose is red; 
 All things through thee take nobler form, 
 And look beyond the earth, 
 And is the millround of our fate 
 A sunpath in thy worth : 
 Me, too, thy nobleness has taught 
 To master my despair; 
 The fountains of my hidden life, 
 Are through thy friendship fair." 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 83 
 
 How handsome our friends are ! Say they were not 
 moulded at the celestial potteries, we paint them fair 
 behind the plain exterior they wear to indifferent eyes, 
 and as they appear in our gallery of enamels. For 
 who has not seen the plainest features light with a 
 beauty the eyes had not conceived at the rise of a 
 tender sentiment ? a lively thought, the recollection 
 of a noble deed, effacing every trace of ancestral mean 
 ness ; the friend we love all there without blemish or 
 spot, the image we clasp to our breast and cannot 
 forget. 
 
 Spectral and cold, indeed, were life surveyed from 
 the senses alone, not from the soul, wanting the en 
 thusiasm that persons inspire, the faith which exalts 
 us above ourselves, giving us friends to love, and a 
 God to adore. We enter heaven through the gates of 
 friendship. T is by some supreme fellowship that we 
 complete ourselves, and are united to our kind. 
 
 I esteem friendship the fairest as the eldest of 
 religious faiths, being the worship of the unseen 
 through the seen, and excusing many superstitions 
 coloring the need of a personal object of worship. 
 The love and service rendered to persons symbolizes 
 love and service due the Supreme Person ; and he 
 must be pronounced deficient in piety who fails of 
 winning the noblest of victories, a friend. A need 
 of the heart, the best of our life is embosomed in 
 
84 FEIENDSHIP. 
 
 others, much of it taken upon trust in some one or 
 more whom we call by tender names, and whose 
 words accost us with persuasions irresistible. How 
 affectionately one name is pronounced throughout a 
 revering Christendom, because it symbolizes man s 
 friend, that fairest word in the human vocabulary. 
 
 " Fair flowery name, in none like thee 
 And thy nectareal fragrancy, 
 
 Hourly there meets 
 A universal synod of all sweets, 
 By whom it is denned thus : 
 That no perfume 
 May yet presume 
 To pass for odoriferous, 
 But such alone whose sacred pedigree 
 Can prove itself some kin, sweet name, to thee." 
 
 We crave objects abreast and above us. And are 
 bereft of ourselves without such. Friends are the 
 leaders of the bosom, being more ourselves than we 
 are, and we complement our affections in theirs. The 
 passionless laws that sway our unseen Personality are 
 not made lovely to us till thus clothed in human 
 attributes and brought near to our hearts, person em 
 bracing person. Not some It in our friends, but the 
 sentiment that transfigures the It into Him, into Her, 
 this alone makes them ours personally and beloved. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 85 
 
 Theists in our faith, we pay our vows to the Friend in 
 our friend, thus becoming personally One with the 
 Three, and alone no longer. 
 
 Nor elsewise man shall fellow meet, 
 In public place, in converse sweet, 
 In holy aisles, at market gate, 
 In learning s halls, or courts of state, 
 Nor persons properly shall find, 
 Save in the commonwealth of Mind; 
 Fair forms herein their souls intrude, 
 Peopling what else were solitude. 
 
 Persons are love s world. Our Paradise is too fair to 
 be planted out of our breasts. We chase the fleeing 
 beauty all our lives long ; 
 
 " Nor is there near so brisk a fire 
 In fruition, as desire ; 
 The niggard sense, too poor for bliss, 
 Pays us but dully with what is." 
 
 On, onwards, ever onwards are we led. Our Edens 
 abreast of us journeying with ever-opening prospects 
 in the distance. 
 
86 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 THE CHASE. 
 
 O er earth and seas, 
 In sunshine, shade, 
 Blest Beauty crossed, 
 Nor stopt nor stayed, 
 Nor temples took, 
 Nor idols hewed, 
 Apart she dwelt 
 In solitude. 
 
 In solitude, Heart said: 
 
 " Where find the maid? 
 
 My bride s a fugitive, 
 
 From sight doth live, 
 
 And hearts are hunters of the game, 
 
 Pursuers of the same 
 
 Through every passing form, 
 
 The Beauty that all eyes do seek, 
 
 All eyes do but deform; 
 
 The love our faithless lips would speak 
 
 Dies on the listless air, 
 
 Nature befriends us not, 
 
 Nor hearthside doth prepare 
 
 In all her ample plot; 
 
 Life s but illusion, 
 
 Cunning confusion; 
 
 Flings shadows pale about our path, 
 
 She shadow is, and nothing hath; 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 87 
 
 Eyes are divorced from seeing, 
 
 Hearts cloven clean from being; 
 
 My bride I cannot find, 
 
 My love I cannot bind ; 
 
 The thousand fair ones of our sphere, 
 
 Pond, false ones all, nor mine, nor dear; 
 
 The Paradise 
 
 I would surprise, 
 From all my following flies, 
 And I m a thousand infidelities; 
 There s none for me 
 In all I see ; 
 
 Surely the Fair One bides not here, 
 Where dwells she, where, in any sphere? " 
 
 " In any sphere?" 
 
 Love whispered: " Where, where, if not here? 
 Here in thy breast the maiden find, 
 Ideas sole imparadise the mind; 
 Here heart s hymeneals begin, 
 Here s ours and only ours housed here within: 
 Through parting gates of human kind 
 Enter thou blest the Unseen Mind." 
 
88 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 H. WOMAN. 
 
 " Virtue sure 
 
 Were blind as fortune, should she choose the poor 
 Rough cottage man to live in, and despise 
 To dwell in woman s stately edifice ; 
 Woman s approved the fairer sex, and we 
 Mean men repent our pedigree. 
 Why choose the father s name, when we may take 
 The mother s a more honor d blood to make. 
 Woman s of later, though of nobler birth, 
 For she of man was made, man made of earth, 
 The son of dust, and though her sin did breed 
 His fall, again she raised him in her seed; 
 Who had he not her blest creation seen, 
 An Anchorite in Paradise had been." 
 
 PYTHAGORAS said that only good things were to be 
 predicted of women, since they were the mothers of 
 ornaments, of conversation and of confidence, and that 
 he who invented names, perceiving that women were 
 adapted to piety and friendship, gave to each of their 
 ages the name of some Deity to a maiden, Core, or 
 Proserpine, to a bride Nymphe, to a mother, Mater, 
 to a grandmother, according to the Dorian dialect, 
 Maia. And in accordance with the like persuasion 
 the oracles were always unfolded into light by women. 
 Tacitus tells us that the Northern nations also held 
 women in high esteem, "believing ladies had some- 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 89 
 
 thing divine about them." And this faith has de 
 scended to men of the Saxon name, the best regarding 
 her as endowed with magical properties, the type of 
 the highest culture the advanced nations have attained. 
 Endowed with magnetic gifts ; by necessity of sex, a 
 realist and diviner, she lives nearest the cardinal facts 
 of existence, instinct with the mysteries of love and fate ; 
 a romance ever attaching itself to her name and 
 destiny. Entering the school of sensibility with life, 
 she seizes personal qualities by a subtlety of logic 
 overleaping all deductions of the slower reason ; her 
 divinations touching the quick of things as if herself 
 were personally part of the chemistry of life itself. 
 We cannot conceive her as distinct, distant, unrelated, 
 she seems so personal, concrete, so near ; yet can 
 never come quite up to her discernments, nor gainsay 
 their delicacy and truthfulness. Then constancy, 
 fidelity, fortitude, kindness, gratitude, grace, courtesy, 
 discretion, taste, conversation, the adornments of life, 
 were bare names without the splendor of illustration 
 of which the history of the sex affords so many bril 
 liant examples. It seems as if in moulding his world 
 the Creator reserved his choicest work till the last, 
 and consummated his art in her endowments. Shall 
 our sex confess to some slight in not having been 
 mingled more freely of her essence, that so we too might 
 have had access to the crypts into which she is privi- 
 
90 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 leged by birthright to enter? Hers is the way of 
 persuasion, of service, forbearance : 
 
 "If thou dost anything confer that s sweet, 
 In me a grateful relish it shall meet, 
 But if thy bounties thou dost take away, 
 The least repining word I will not say." 
 
 As there was only solitude till she brought company, 
 conversation, civility, so stooping still to conquer, she 
 is fast gaining ascendancy over passions and prejudices 
 that have held her subservient and their victim. Can 
 we doubt the better rule will be furthered indefinitely 
 by a partnership in power thus intimate and acknow 
 ledged by States? What ideal republics have fabled, 
 ours is to be. Nor need we fear the boldest experi 
 ments which the moral sense of the best women con 
 ceive and advocate. Certainly liberty is in danger of 
 running into license while woman is excluded from 
 exercising political as well as social restraint upon its 
 excesses. Nor is the state planted securely till she 
 possess equal privileges with man of forming its laws 
 and taking a becoming part in their administration. 
 No jury of men, however honorable or wise, are equal 
 to pronounce upon questions relating to woman ; 
 questions involving considerations that concern the 
 whole structure, not only of society, but of humanity 
 itself. The public morals are insecure till the family 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 91 
 
 is chastely planted, the state guarded by the con- 
 tinency of its male members. 
 
 A man defines his standing at the court of chastity 
 by his views of women. He cannot be any man s 
 friend nor his own if not hers. Either nature dealt 
 coldly by him in his descent, else he is the victim of 
 vices which his passions have inflamed till they have 
 their own way with him. 
 
 " They meet but with unwholesome springs, 
 
 And summers which infectious are ; 
 They hear but when the mermaid sings, 
 And only see the falling star 
 
 Who ever dare 
 Affirm no woman chaste and fair." 
 
 The very name of woman becomes soiled if we seek 
 to be related to her by the coarse ties of appetite, in 
 stead of the tender threads of affection, the charm of 
 ideas. There are pleasures for keeping as enjoying, 
 for using delicately, the zest lasting long, the more 
 affluent when tasted with moderation and seldom. 
 
 " Who can to love more rich gift make 
 Than to love s self, for love s own sake? 
 Love, that imports in every sense delight, 
 Is fancied in the soul, not appetite : 
 Why love among the virtues is scarce known 
 Is that love is them all contract in one." 
 
92 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 III. FAMILY. 
 
 <c How fruitful may the smallest circle grow 
 When we the secret of its culture know." 
 
 HERE is room enough, however humble and un 
 furnished, for the most expansive friendships, the 
 purest delights, the noblest labors ; for where women 
 are, there open forth all possibilities of culture. 
 
 Here high o er head of spiteful fate, 
 Jove cradles safe the ideal state. 
 
 "A married life is most beautiful. For what other 
 thing can be such an ornament to a family as the 
 association of husband and wife ? For it must not be 
 said that sumptuous edifices, walls covered, with 
 pictures, and piazzas adorned with stones, so ad 
 mired by those who are ignorant of the Good ; nor 
 yet painted windows, myrtle walks ; nor anything 
 else which is the subject of astonishment to the stu 
 pid, are the ornaments of a family. But the beauty 
 of a household consists in the conjunction of man and 
 wife who are united to each other by desttny, are con- 
 sociated to the gods who preside over nuptials, 
 births, and houses ; and who accord, indeed, with 
 each other, and have all things in common as far as 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 93 
 
 to their bodies, or rather their souls themselves ; 
 who exercise a becoming authority over their house 
 and servants, are properly solicitous about the educa 
 tion of their children and pay an attention to the 
 necessaries of life, which is neither expensive nor 
 negligent, but moderate and appropriate. For what 
 can be better and more excellent, as the most ad 
 mirable Homer says, 
 
 Than when at home the husband and the wife 
 Unanimously live, 3 " 
 
 THE GOBLET. 
 
 I drank delights from every cup, 
 Arts, institutions, I drank up ; 
 Athirst, I quaffed life s flowing bowls, 
 And sipped the flavors of all souls. 
 
 A sparkling cup remained for me, 
 The brimming fount of Family; 
 This I am still drinking, 
 Since, to my thinking, 
 Good wine beads here, 
 Flagons of cheer, 
 Nor laps the soul 
 In Lethe s bowl. 
 
94 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 Wine of immortal power 
 
 Into my chalice now doth pour; 
 
 Prevailing wine, 
 
 Juice of the Nine, 
 
 Flavored of sods, 
 
 Vintage of gods; 
 
 Joyance benign 
 
 This wondrous wine 
 
 Ever at call; 
 Wine maddening none, 
 Wine saddening none, 
 
 Wine gladdening all, 
 Makes love s cup ruddier glow, 
 Genius and grace its overflow. 
 
 I drained the drops of every cup, 
 Times, institutions I drank up: 
 Still Beauty pours the enlivening wine, 
 Fills high her glass to me and mine; 
 Her cup of sparkling youth, 
 Of love first found, and loyal truth: 
 I know, again I know, 
 Her fill of life and overflow. 
 
 When I find my friends are not of the same age as 
 when I first knew them, I may conclude myself, not 
 them, to be decaying and losing flavor. Still youth 
 and innocency are the sole solvents of all doubts and 
 infidelities ; the faiths of women and children in 
 
95 
 
 friendship, ever fresh demonstrations of life s suf 
 ficiency and imperishableness. Families never die, 
 since they trace their pedigree to Adam the First, who 
 is of immortal ancestry. First suckled at our mother s 
 breast our faiths survive all subsequent modifications ; 
 embrace the friendships we form, and color the whole 
 of life. Our intellectual creed may change ; tempera 
 ment, calling, social position, fortune, sect, may phrase 
 differently the delightful lay she sang to us its tone 
 still lingers in the memory of our affections, holding 
 the heart lo} al, and if trusted to the end takes us 
 triumphantly through life. " Ever the feminine leadeth 
 us on." Every prospect the mother gains is soon 
 commanded by her children : our comforts and satis 
 factions life-long having the voice and countenance 
 of woman. 
 
 IV. CHILDREN. 
 " Heaven lies about us in our infancy." 
 
 OUR notion of the perfect society embraces the 
 family as its centre and ornament. Nor is there a 
 paradise planted till the children appear in the fore 
 ground to animate and complete the picture. Without 
 these, the world were a solitude, houses desolate, 
 
96 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 hearts homeless ; there were neither perspectives, nor 
 prospects ; ourselves were not ourselves, nor were there 
 a future for us : 
 
 In their good gifts we hopeful see 
 The fairer selves we fain would be. 
 
 Socrates comprised all objects of his search in 
 
 " Whate er of good or ill can man befall 
 In his own house," 
 
 rightly conceiving this to be the seminary of the 
 virtues and foundation of states. There it stands, 
 the ornament of the landscape, and for the human 
 hospitalities : we cannot render it too attractive. 
 Let it be the home of beauty, the haunt of affection, 
 of ideas. Let its chambers open eastward admitting 
 the sunshine for our own and children s sake. Do 
 they not covet the clear sky, delighting in the blue 
 they left so lately, nay cannot wholly leave in coming 
 into nature, whereof they are ever asking news? 
 These gay enthusiasts must run eagerly, and never 
 have enough of it. How soon the clouds clear away 
 from their faces ! How sufficient they are to the day, 
 and the joy it brings them ! Their poise and plenitude 
 rebuke us. 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 97 
 
 " Happy those early days when I 
 Shined in my angel infancy; 
 Before I taught my soul to wound 
 My conscience with a sinful sound, 
 Or taught my soul to fancy aught 
 But a white celestial thought, 
 Or had the black art to dispense 
 A several sin to every sense, 
 But felt through all this fleshly dress 
 Bright shoots of everlastingness." 
 
 Charming pictures these bright boys, confiding girls, 
 as full of promise to themselves as we were at their 
 age ; are still, if faithful to the beautiful vision. Why 
 else should the flame pale as we come up into life, 
 we pleasing ourselves nor others more, perhaps de 
 spair of maintaining the virtues we espoused so 
 eagerly in our youth ? Must we 
 
 "When we ve enjoyed our ends then lose them, 
 And all our appetites be but as dreams 
 To laugh at in our ages? " 
 
 If this fresh score of years did not deceive us, shall 
 a life of threescore, with its deeper glances into the 
 mystery, lead us to doubt the longevity of a sentiment 
 of whose imperishableness that life itself is the best 
 evidence we need ask? Are we to be left orphans 
 7 
 
98 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 when taken from nature s arms, robbed of all that 
 made life desirable before ? Nature cared for us ; 
 Persons failed us, and all unawares we lapsed out of 
 our paradise, its gates barred against us. 
 
 "I cannot reach it; and my striving eye 
 Dazzles at it, as at eternity. 
 Were now that chronicle alive, 
 Those white designs which children drive, 
 And the thoughts of each harmless hour, 
 "With their content too in my power, 
 Quickly would I make my path even, 
 And by mere playing go to heaven. 
 
 Dear harmless age, the short, swift span 
 Where weeping virtue parts with man ; 
 Where love without lust dwells, and bends 
 What way we please, without self-ends: 
 An age of mysteries ! which he 
 Must live twice that would God s face see; 
 Where angels guard, and with it play, 
 Angels, which foul men drive away." 
 
 T is sad to consider how long time is consumed in 
 wiping away the stains which had been insinuated into 
 the breast during these earlier years and up to coming 
 manhood, to what we call the maturity of our powers. 
 Life is too much for most. So much of age, so little 
 youth ; living for the most part in the moment, and 
 
FRIENDSHIP. 99 
 
 dating existence by the memory of its burdens. Men 
 think they once were not, and fear the like fate may 
 overtake them, as if time were older than their minds. 
 T is because we always were that we cannot trace our 
 beginnings to the atheism of no-being and resolve 
 ourselves into nothing. Children save us. Rather 
 are we saved by remaining children, as Ckyst said. 
 
 Have we forgotten how things looked to us when 
 we were young ; how the dull world the old people 
 lived in seemed to us ? T was not ours, nor their dry 
 theism ; and our fresh hearts whispered reverently : 
 
 "Is not your paradise an Inferno? Please never 
 name it. While in Heaven I speak not of it : I 
 hum that song to myself. Will you spoil my para 
 dise too? Come with me, come, and I will show yon 
 Elysium ; I know all about it ; I am not deceived. I 
 feel it to be solid, safe. It makes good its pledges 
 always. I have a home of all delights am admitted 
 when I please, while you seem vagabonds and woe- 
 begones, bereft of friends, the Friend of friends. Am 
 I to quit my present satisfactions for your promised 
 joys. Unkind ! this taking me from my paradise, 
 unless you conduct me to a happier." 
 
CULTURE. 
 
 " O for the coming of that glorious time, 
 When, prizing knowledge as their noblest wealth 
 And best protection, liberal states shall own 
 An obligation on their part to teach 
 Them, who are born to serve her and obey ; 
 Binding themselves by statute to secure 
 For all the children whom their soil maintains 
 The rudiments of letters; and to inform 
 The mind with moral and religious truth 
 Both understood and practised so that none 
 However destitute, be left to drop 
 By timely culture unsustaincd, or run 
 Into a wild disorder; or be forced 
 To drudge through life without the aid 
 Of intellectual implements and tools; 
 A savage horde among the civilized, 
 A. servile build among the lordly free." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
CULTURE. 
 
 I. MODERN TEACHING. 
 
 SAXON Alfred decreed that every man who had so 
 much as two hides of land, should bring up his 
 children to learning till they were fifteen years of age 
 at least, that they might be religious and live happily ; 
 else, he said, they were but beasts and sots, dangerous 
 to themselves and the state. And the state s true 
 glory lies in its calling forth into fullest exercise and 
 giving scope and right direction to the gifts of its 
 children ; seeking out especially and fostering the 
 best born as they rise, and training these for edu 
 cators of the coming generations. The Parent of 
 parents, the guardian of all gifts born into it, society 
 should neglect none, sequester none from places and 
 honors to which they are entitled by birthright of 
 genius or acquirement. Every child, the gifted by 
 
104 CULTURE. 
 
 divine right, is sent to cherish and redeem the race ; 
 whom to neglect or divert from its aim were base-over 
 sight and abuse of the race itself. Far too noble, too 
 precious be any to be used for ends merely secondary, 
 secular, and thus spoiled for their own and God s in 
 tents. 
 
 Yet simple as this duty seems, society with all its 
 aims and appliances, has not as yet attained the 
 refinement of culture needful to the receiving of a 
 child into its bosom, and of educating it to the full 
 demands of its endowments. With the child comes 
 the seed of states ; the family being the nursery of 
 the citizen, the measure of a people s civilization. 
 As the homes, so the state ; as the parents, so the 
 children. Nor has society fathered its functions 
 till all children, befriended from the first, are 
 fashioned into the image each is capable of attaining. 
 Other goods are but aids to this end ; all are neces 
 sary for educating the human being, since the child is 
 the summary of all gifts, and the most precious of all 
 trusts committed to the state for trial and training. 
 
 Yet still the decease of gifts follows fast on their 
 birth, and parents are oftener called beside the bier 
 of these children of the sun than to their nuptials or 
 coronation. They hold their jubilees in weeds rather ; 
 and the untimeliness of genius is the traged} r of life as 
 of letters. Amidst the sickliness and wane of things, 
 
CULTURE. 105 
 
 neither poet nor saint survives his laurel for more 
 than a day. Far from treating the human being 
 with anything like the subtlety and skill displaj^ed 
 by the ancient masters, we wait for the first hint of 
 an institution for training youth into the fulness of their 
 powers, by the genial touch of sensibility, the mag 
 netism of thought. Left instead to the superficial 
 culture of the sects, the traditions of the elders, the 
 guidance of worldlings, they slide soon into vague con 
 jectures, run adrift on the sea of doubt, the shoals of 
 expediency, bereft of faith in themselves as in things 
 unseen and ideal. 
 
 " See gifted youths rush out to feed on whims; 
 Fashion craves their hours, low hopes their aim, 
 To win not noble women for their brides, 
 But titled slaves, heirs to some teasing caste, 
 For beauty without culture seems mere show; 
 As if great nature laid not on her tints 
 With more contrivance than the brush of art; 
 Or schools where grammars hide the place of sense, 
 And shallow stammering drowns the native voice." 
 
 Not letters but life chiefly educate if we are edu- 
 catable. But experience follows oftenest too late for 
 most and too distant from the work to help us directly 
 without an interpreter to assist in making timely use 
 of it. Fortunate will it be, if by instinct and mother 
 
106 CULTURE. 
 
 wit we take life at first hand, converting it forthwith 
 into thought and habit. Character comes of temper 
 ament far more than of acquirement.! And the most 
 that culture performs is the drawing forth, fashioning ^ 
 and polishing the natural gifts. But we cannot create 
 what is not inbornA A fine brain is a spiritual en 
 dowment, as from the head of Jove sprang Minerva. 
 Centuries of culture pass into pure power ; piety and 
 genius are parents of piety and genius. But less dis 
 criminating than were the ancient carvers in wood and 
 ivory, who, when they had an order for a head of 
 Hermes, or any ordinary god even, searched care 
 fully for substances adapted to receive the proper 
 form, states attempt to fashion saints and rulers out of 
 any materials that chance brings to hand. Omitting 
 mind, or overriding it in our haste to come at immediate 
 and superficial results, we ignore ideas and principles 
 altogether. Aiming at little we attain little. For 
 while our country opens the freest scope for the 
 exercise of the higher gifts of genius and character, 
 we cherish these but feebly in our public or private 
 training. The highest prizes held forth to youth are 
 not only beneath the aims of a noble ambition, but 
 the stimulus for their attainment is wanting. \Even 
 in New England, culture is external, provincial ; 
 neglectful of the better parts of body and mind ; behind 
 the old countries, that of the ancient states. We 
 
CULTURE. 107 
 
 cram the memory with the lore of foreign tongues, 
 the understanding with a medley of learning, leaving 
 fancy, imagination, the moral sentiment, mainly to shift 
 for themselves the forming of the manners, motives, 
 aims and aspirations. Then what substitutes have 
 we, for the falcony, archery, the hunting, fishing, of 
 
 earlier and what we deem barbarous times ? 
 
 Yet these 
 
 were sports, heroic and wholesome, giving a national 
 coloring and strength of character : the wrestling too, 
 throwing the quoit, and other manly games, horse 
 manship, boating, swimming, were a natural gymnastic 
 for body and mind. War also had its advantages. 
 So the plays and games were schools of genius and 
 valor : the people were refined by contact with the 
 refinements of the best citizens, the guardians of public 
 taste and honor providing hereby a polite and manly 
 culture suited to the needs of the state. Education 
 extended into the age of ripe maturity. Nor was the 
 disciple committed to himself till he became the 
 master. And through life he was prompted by 
 incentives of virtue and fame. The state was venera 
 ble, ennobled as it was by the genius and services of 
 great men ; great men earning honorably their re 
 nown by teaching. 
 
 T is noble minds who noble men create, 
 
 And they who have great manners form mankind. 
 
108 CULTURE. 
 
 Happy the man who wins the confidence of the 
 rising youth of his time. He becomes priest and 
 professor elect without degrees of synods or uni 
 versities. He shapes the future of the next generation 
 as of the succeeding. A noble artist he cherishes 
 visions of excellence not easily impersonated or 
 spoken. His life and teachings are studies for high 
 ideals. 
 
 II. SOCRATIG DIALECTIC. 
 
 THE highest end of instruction is to discipline and 
 liberalize mind and character by familiarizing the 
 thoughts with those of the learned and wise. Charac 
 ter is inspired by admiration of character, intellect by 
 participating in intellect. The masters form masters. 
 And had I the choice of my class, I would put Plato s 
 works at once into its hands. And, for a beginning, 
 say the Alcibiades of the earlier Dialogues. I know 
 of no discipline under the care of a thoughtful in 
 structor so fitting for educating the reason, quick 
 ening the moral sense, refining the sensibilities, fashion 
 ing the manners, ennobling the character, as exercises 
 in the Socratic dialectic : opening the whole armory of 
 gifts, it sharpens and polishes these for the victories of 
 life. The youth who masters Plato wins fairly his 
 
CULTURE. 109 
 
 degree alike in humanity and divinity. lie has the 
 key to the mysteries, ancient and modern.* 
 
 Take the following as an example of the pure 
 dialectic method as of metaphysic ; 
 
 " In what way, asks Socrates, may we attain to know 
 the soul itself with the greatest clearness? for when we 
 know this, it seems we shall know ourselves. Now, in 
 the name of the gods, whether are we not ignorant of the 
 right meanings of that Delphic inscription just now 
 mentioned, Know thyself ? " 
 
 Aldbiades. "What meaning? what have you in your 
 thoughts, Socrates, when you ask the question? 
 
 Socrates. I will tell you what I suspect this inscription 
 means, and what particular thing it advises us to do. 
 For a just resemblance of it is, I think, not to be found 
 wherever one pleases, but in only one thing, the sight. 
 
 * " It might be thought serious trifling," says the accomplished Bishop 
 Berkeley, to tell my readers that th e greatest of men had ever a high esteem 
 of Plato, whose writings are the touchstone of a hasty and shallow mind, 
 whose philosophy has been the admiration of ages; which supplied 
 patriots, magistrates nd lawgivers to the most flourishing states, as 
 well as fathers of the church and doctors of the schools. Albeit, in 
 these days, the depths of that old learning are rarely fathomed. And 
 yet it were happy for these lands if our young nobility and gentry, instead 
 of modern maxims would imbibe the notions of the great men of antiquity. 
 But in these loose times many an empty head is shook at Aristotle and 
 Plato, as well as the Holy Scriptures. Certainly, where a people are well 
 educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of 
 Plato." 
 
110 CULTURE. 
 
 Alcibiades. How do you mean? 
 
 Socrates. Consider it jointly with me. "Were a man to 
 address himself to the outward human eye, as it were 
 some other man; and were he to give it this counsel, 
 " See yourself," what particular thing should we suppose 
 that he advises the eye to do? Should we not suppose 
 that it was to look at such a thing as that the eye by 
 looking at it, might see itself ? 
 
 Alcibiades. Certainly we should. 
 
 Socrates. What kind of thing then do we think of hy 
 looking at which we see things at which we look, and at 
 the same time see ourselves? 
 
 Alcibiades. T is evident, Socrates, that for this purpose 
 we must look at mirrors and other things of like kind. 
 
 Socrates. You are right. And has not the eye itself, 
 with which we see, something of the same kind belonging 
 to it? 
 
 Alcibiades. Most certainly it has. 
 
 Socrates. You have observed then, that the face of the 
 person who looks in the eye of another person, appears 
 visible to himself in the eye of the person opposite to him, 
 as in a mirror. And we therefore call this the pupil, 
 because it exhibits the image of that person who 
 examines it. 
 
 Alcibiades. What you say is true. 
 
 Socrates. The eye beholding an eye and looking in the 
 most excellent part of it in that which it sees, may thus 
 see itself? 
 
 Alcibiades. Apparently so. 
 
CULTUEE. Ill 
 
 Socrates. But if the eye look at any other part of the 
 man, or at anything whatever, except what this part of 
 the eye happens to be like, it will not see itself. 
 
 Alcibiades. It is true. 
 
 Socrates. If therefore the eye would see itself, it must 
 look in an eye, and in that place of the eye, too, where the 
 virtue of the eye is naturally seated; and the virtue of 
 the eye is sight. 
 
 Alcibiades. I am aware that it is so. 
 
 Socrates. Whether then is it not true, my friend 
 Alcibiades, that the soul if she know herself, must look 
 at soul, and especially at that place in the soul in which 
 wisdom, the virtue of the soul, is ingenerated, and also at 
 whatsoever else this virtue of the soul resembles? 
 
 Alcibiades. To me, Socrates, it seems true. 
 
 Socrates. Do we know of any place in the soul more 
 divine than that which is the seat of knowledge and 
 intelligence ? 
 
 Alcibiades. "We do not. 
 
 Socrates. This, therefore, in the soul resembles the 
 divine nature. And a man, looking at this, and realizing 
 all that which is divine and God and wisdom, would gain 
 the most knowledge of himself. 
 
 Alcibiades. It is apparent. 
 
 Socrates. And to know one s self we acknowledge to 
 be wisdom. 
 
 Alcibiades. By all means. 
 
 Socrates. Shall we not say, therefore, that as mirrors 
 arc clearer, purer, and more splendid than that which is 
 
112 CULTURE. 
 
 most analogous to a mirror in the eye, in like manner, 
 God is purer and more splendid than that which is best 
 in our soul? 
 
 Alcibiades. It is likely, Socrates. 
 
 Socrates. Looking therefore at God, we should make 
 use of him as the most beautiful mirror, and among 
 human concerns we should look at the virtue of the 
 soul, and thus by so doing shall we especially see and 
 know our very self. 
 
 AlciUades. Yes." 
 
 And yet knowing the fascinations that beset gifted 
 young men, one might say to them at parting, as 
 Socrates did to the accomplished Alcibiades, when 
 the latter intimated that he would begin thenceforward 
 to cultivate the science of justice : 
 
 " I wish you may persevere. But I am terribly afraid 
 for you; not that I in the least distrust the goodness of 
 your disposition ; but perceiving the torrent of the times, 
 I fear you may be borne away with it, in spite of your 
 own resistance and all my endeavors in your aid." 
 
CULTURE. 113 
 
 HI. PYTHAGOREAN DISCIPLINE. 
 
 LET us see, too, how wisely the great master Pytha 
 goras went to his work. 
 
 " He prepared his disciples for learning by many 
 trials ; for he did not receive into the number of 
 his associates any who came to him till he had sub * 
 jected them to various examinations. In the first 
 place, he inquired after what manner they as 
 sociated with their parents and relations generally ; 
 next, he surveyed their unreasonable laughter, their 
 silence, their speaking when it was not proper ; and 
 farther, still, what were their desires, their intimacies 
 with their companions, their conversation ; how they 
 employed their leisure time, and what were the subjects 
 of their joy and grief. He likewise surveyed their 
 form, their gait, gestures and whole motion of their 
 body, their voice, complexion and physiognomy, con 
 sidering all these natural indications to be the manifest 
 signs of the unapparent manners of the soul. 
 
 Having thus subjected them to this scrutiny, he next 
 suffered them to pass a good while seemingly unob 
 served by him, that he might the better judge of each 
 one how he was disposed towards stability and a love 
 of learning, and whether he was sufficiently fortified 
 8 
 
114 CULTURE. 
 
 against the flatteries of popularity and false honor and 
 glory. After this, he advised such to maintain a long 
 silence, that he might observe how far they were dis 
 posed towards continence in speech, and that most 
 difficult of all victories the victory over the tongue. 
 Thus practically he made trial of their aptitudes to 
 be educated, for he was as anxious that they should 
 be modest and discreet, as that they should not 
 speak unadvisedly. He likewise directed his at 
 tention to every other particular, such as whether 
 they were astonished at the outbreaks of immoderate 
 passion and desire. Nor did he superficially con 
 sider how they were affected by these ; or whether 
 they were contentious or ambitious, or how they 
 were disposed as to friendship and strife. And 
 if on his surveying all these particulars accurately, 
 they appeared to him endued with worthy manners, 
 he next directed his attention to their facility in 
 learning and memory ; first whether they were able to 
 follow what was said with rapidity and perspicuity ; 
 and in the next place, whether a certain love and 
 temperance attracted them to the disciplines by which 
 they were taught ; whether they loved to learn 
 and to be governed ; also how they were disposed as 
 to gentleness, which he called elegance of manners ; 
 conceiving all ferocity of temper as hostile to his 
 mode of education. For impudence, shainelessness, 
 
CULTURE. 115 
 
 intemperance, slothfulness, slowness of learning, un 
 restrained licentiousness, disgrace and the like, are 
 attendants of savage manners, but the contrary of 
 these are gentleness and mildness. 
 
 Of food he held that whatsoever obstructs divi 
 nation should be shunned. And that the juvenile 
 age should make trial of temperance this being 
 alone of all the virtues alike adapted to youths 
 and maidens, and comprehends the good both of 
 body and mind, and also the desire for the most 
 excellent studies and pursuits. Boys he thought were 
 especially dear to divinity, and he exhorted women to 
 use words of good omen through the whole of life, 
 and to endeavor that others may predict good things 
 of them. lie paid great attention to the health of 
 body and mind, using unction and the bath often, 
 wrestling, leaping with weights in the hands, also 
 pantomimes with a view to strengthening the body, 
 selecting for this purpose opposite exercises. 
 
 Music he thought contributed greatly to health, as 
 well as to purifying the heart and manners, and he 
 called it a medicine when he so used it, conceiving 
 that each faculty had its particular melody. He 
 placed in the middle a player on the lyre, and seated 
 around him were those who were able to sing. And 
 when the person struck the lyre, they sang certain 
 paeans, through which they were sure to be delighted, 
 
116 CULTURE. 
 
 and to become orderly and graceful, and he had melo 
 dies devised as remedies against the passions, as anger, 
 despondency, complaint, inordinate desire and the 
 rest, which afforded the greatest relief to these dis 
 tempers of the soul. He likewise used dancing, 
 walking and conversation. 
 
 Eulers, who received their country from the multi 
 tude of citizens as a common deposit, were to transmit 
 it faithfully to their posterity as a hereditary pos 
 session ; their language was to be such as to render 
 them worthy of belief without an oath. And as 
 parents, they were so to manage their domestic affairs 
 as to make the government of them the object of de 
 liberate choice, being kindly disposed towards their 
 offspring, as they were the only animals that were 
 susceptible of moral obedience. And they were to 
 associate with their wives as companions for life, 
 being mindful that other compacts were engraved on 
 tablets and pillars, but those with wives were inserted 
 in children, and that they should endeavor to be be 
 loved by them, not through nature alone, of which 
 they were not the causes, but through choice ; for this 
 was voluntary beneficence ; they remembering, also, 
 that they received their wives from the vestal hearth 
 with libations, and brought them home as if they were 
 suppliants of the gods themselves. 
 
 By orderly conduct and temperance, they were to be 
 
CULTURE. U7 
 
 examples both to their families and the city in which 
 they lived, revering beautiful and worthy manners, 
 expelling sluggishness from all their actions, op 
 portunity being the chief good in all. Separation 
 of parents and children from one another was the 
 greatest of injuries both to themselves and the State. 
 Youths and virgins were to be educated in labor and 
 exercises conducing to health, using food convenient 
 thereto, and in a temperate and tolerant life. Of 
 things in human life, there were many in which to be 
 late conversant was best. A boy was to be so edu- 
 cuated and fed, as not to have the desires awakened 
 till the nuptial hour. Parents benefited their children 
 prior to their birth, and were the causes of their good 
 conduct afterwards. Hence the children owed them 
 as many thanks as a dead man would owe to him who 
 should be able to restore him back to life. And they 
 were to associate with one another in such a manner 
 as not be in a state of hostility, and be easily recon 
 ciled after any disputes, exhibiting a modesty of 
 behavior to their elders, benevolent dispositions to 
 wards parents and love and regard to all deserving 
 these. All who aspired after true glory, were to be 
 such in reality as they wished to appear to be to 
 others. The most pure and unadulterated character 
 was that of him who gave himself to the contemplation 
 
118 CULTURE. 
 
 and practice of the most beautiful things, and was a 
 lover as well as student of wisdom. 
 
 It was by disciplines and inventions like these that 
 he sought to heal and purify the soul, to revive and 
 save its divine part, and thus conduct to the intel 
 ligible One its divine Eye, which is better worth 
 saving than ten thousand corporeal eyes : since by 
 its sight alone when thus strengthened and clarified, 
 the truth pertaining to all beings is clearly perceived." 
 
 IV. MOTHER TOXGUE. 
 
 " Let foreign nations of their language boast 
 
 What fine variety each tongue affords, 
 I like our language as our men and coast, 
 Who cannot dress it well want wit not words." 
 
 "GREAT, verily," says Camden, "was the glory of 
 our tongue before the Norman conquest, in this, that 
 the old English could express most aptly all the 
 conceptions of the mind in their own speech without 
 borrowing from any." 
 
 We still draw from the same wells of meaning as 
 did Chaucer and Camden ; the language, by ad 
 ditions from foreign sources, as by native growth, 
 having now become the most composite of any ; it is the 
 
CULTURE. 119 
 
 one we speak, and affect to teach. If we have few 
 masters, it is because we }^et cultivate other tongues 
 at its cost. Scholars praise the exceeding richness 
 and beauty of the best writers of the age of Elizabeth, 
 but fail to inform us by what happy chances, whether 
 by force of genius altogether, or more natural methods 
 of study, the language and literature came to its prime 
 in that period. Meanwhile it were not amiss for us to 
 listen to the great authors and teachers of those golden 
 days when our tongue had the sweep and splendor, 
 the force, depth, accuracy, the grace and flexibility 
 proper to its genius and idiom, if we may learn from 
 these authorities by what method they attained to their 
 proficiency in its use ; instructors of Princes, as they 
 were, and inspirers of those who made the literature. 
 Roger Ascham Queen Elizabeth s school-master 
 proposed after teaching the common rudiments of 
 grammar to begin a course of double translation, 
 first from Latin into English, and shortly after from 
 English into Latin, correcting the mistakes of the 
 student and leading to the formation of a classical 
 style, by pointing out the differences between the 
 re-translation and the original, and explaining their 
 reasons. " His whole system is built upon the principle 
 of dispensing as much as possible with the details of 
 grammar, and he supports his theory by a triumphant 
 reference to its practical effects, especially as dis^ 
 
120 CULTURE. 
 
 played in the case of Queen Elizabeth, whose well 
 known proficiency in Latin, he declares to have been 
 obtained without grammatical rules, after the very 
 simplest had been mastered." 
 
 Sir Philip Sidney, whose opinions are of the 
 highest importance in these matters, speaking in his 
 " Defence of Poesie," says : 
 
 " Another will say that English wanteth grammar. 
 Nay, truly, it hath that praise that it wants not gram 
 mar ; for grammar it might have, but needs not, being 
 so easie in itselfe and so void of those cumbersome 
 differencies of cases, genders, moods and tenses, which 
 I think was a piece of the tower of Babylon s curse, 
 that a man should be put to schoole to learn his mother 
 tongue. But for the uttering sweetly and properly 
 the conceit of the minde which is the end of speech, 
 that it hath equally with any other tongue in the 
 world." * 
 
 Milton, to whom, next to Shakespeare our tongue 
 owes most, and who spent much time in compiling an 
 
 *" We learn languages," says Luther, " much better by way of mouth at 
 home, in the street, than out of books. Letters are dead -words; the ut 
 terances of the mouth, are living words, which in writing can never stand 
 forth so distinct and excellent, as the soul of man bodies them forth 
 through the mouth. Tell me where was there ever a language, which men 
 could learn to speak with correctness and propriety by the rules of gram 
 mar. Yet let none think or-conclude from all this, that I would reject the 
 grammars altogether." 
 
CULTUEE. 121 
 
 English Dictionary, writes in one of his Italian 
 Letters : 
 
 " Whoever in a state, knows how to form wisely 
 the manners and men and to rule them at home and 
 in war, by excellent institutions, him in the first 
 place above all others I should esteem worthy of 
 honor. But next to him, the man who strives in 
 maxims and rules the method and habit of speaking 
 and writing derived from a good age of the nation, 
 and as it were to fortify the same round with a kind 
 of wall, the daring to overleap which a law only 
 short of that of Romulus should be used to prevent. 
 Should we choose to compare the two in respect to 
 utility, it is the former alone that can make the social 
 existence of the citizens just and holy, but it is the 
 latter that makes it splendid and beautiful, which is 
 the next thing to be desired. The one, as I believe, 
 supplies a noble courage and intrepid counsels against 
 an enemy invading the territory ; the other takes to 
 himself the task of extirpating and defeating by 
 means of a learned detective police of ears, and a 
 light-infantry of good authors, that barbarism which 
 makes large inroads upon the minds of men and is a 
 destructive intestine enemy to genius. Nor is it to 
 be considered of small importance what language, 
 pure or corrupt, a people has, or what is their cus 
 tomary degree of propriety in speaking it a matter 
 
122 CULTURE. 
 
 which oftener than once was the salvation of Athens. 
 Nay, as it is Plato s opinion, that, by a change in the 
 manner and habit of dress, serious commotions and 
 mutations are portended in a commonwealth, I, for 
 my part, would rather believe that the fall of that city, 
 and low and obscure condition, followed on the 
 general vitiation of its usage in the matter of speech. 
 For let the words of a country be in part unhandsome 
 and offensive in themselves, in part debased by wear, 
 and wrongly uttered, and what do they declare but 
 by no light indication, that the inhabitants of that 
 country are an indolent, idly-yawning race, with 
 minds already prepared for any amount of servility? 
 On the other hand, we have never heard that any em 
 pire, any state, did not flourish in at least a middling 
 degree as long as its liking and care for its language 
 lasted." 
 
 Devotees of grammatical studies have not been dis 
 tinguished for any very remarkable felicities of ex 
 pression. If we consult our experience we shall find 
 that we owe much to the home dialect, the school, the 
 books we read, the letters we write ; to our fellowships, 
 the practice of such living speakers and writers as 
 chance threw in our way, our habits of thinking, 
 observations of life and things, the cultivation of the 
 sensibilities, imagination, the common sense, more 
 than all else besides. A man s speech is the measure 
 
CULTURE. 123 
 
 of his culture ; a graceful utterance the first born of 
 the arts. 
 
 Nature is the armory of genius. Cities serve it 
 poorly ; books and colleges at second hand ; the eye 
 craves the spectacle of the horizon, of mountain, 
 ocean, river and plain, the clouds and stars : actual 
 contact with the elements, sympathy with the seasons 
 as these rise and roll. And whoever will strike bold 
 strokes for institutions and literature, must be often 
 afoot with nature and thought in his eye for grasping 
 the select rhetoric for his theme. 
 
VI. 
 
 BOOKS. 
 
 " As great a store 
 
 Have we of books as bees of herbs, or more, 
 And the great task to try them, know the good, 
 To discern weeds and judge of wholesome food, 
 Is a rare scant performance." 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
BOOKS. 
 
 GOOD books, like good friends, are few and 
 chosen ; the more select the more enjoyable ; 
 and like these are approached with diffidence, nor 
 sought too familiarly nor too often, having the pre 
 cedence only when friends tire. The most mannerly of 
 companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, they 
 frankly declare the author s mind, without giving 
 offence. Like living friends they too have their voice 
 and physiognomies, and their company is prized as 
 old acquaintances. We seek them in our need of 
 counsel or of amusement, without impertinence or 
 apology, sure of having our claims allowed. A good 
 book justifies our theory of personal supremacy, keep 
 ing this fresh in the memory and perennial. What 
 were days without such fellowship? We were alone 
 in the world without it. Nor does our faith falter 
 though the secret we search for and do not find m< 
 
128 BOOKS. 
 
 them will not commit itself to literature, still we take 
 up the new issue with the old expectation, and again 
 and again, as we try our friends after many failures at 
 conversation, believing this visit will be the favored 
 hour and all will be told us. Nor do I know what 
 book I can well spare, certainly none that has ad 
 mitted me, though it be but for the moment and by 
 the most oblique glimpse, into the mind and per 
 sonality of its author ; though few there are that pre 
 fer such friendly claim to one s regard, and satisfy 
 expectation as he turns their leaves. Our favorites 
 are few ; since only what rises from the heart reaches 
 it, being caught and carried on the tongues of men 
 wheresoever love and letters journey. 
 
 Nor need we wonder at their scarcity or the value we 
 set upon them ; life, the essence of good letters as of 
 friendship, being its own best biographer, the artist 
 that portrays the persons and thoughts we are, and are 
 becoming. And the most that even he can do, is but 
 a chance stroke or two at this fine essence housed in 
 the handsome dust, but too fugitive and coy to be 
 caught and held fast for longer than the passing 
 glance ; the master touching ever and retouching the 
 picture he leaves unfinished. 
 
 - "My life has been the poem I would have writ, 
 But I could not both live and utter it." 
 
BOOKS. 129 
 
 I find books like persons more attractive as they 
 are the more suggestive, more mythical and diffi 
 cult to render at once to the senses, and enjoy them 
 the more for this blending of nature with mind, the 
 text sparkling with the author s personality. What 
 is thus implied is more gracefully delivered than if 
 written literally ; it piques then the fancy more and 
 calls the higher gifts into play ; and an author best 
 serves me who, speaking alike to imagination and 
 reason, arms with figures apt for occasions, thus 
 pluming the genius for discourse. And the like may 
 be said of the dictionaries : opened at hazard in lively 
 moods, the columns become charged with thought, as if 
 each word were blood-wise and fleshed with meaning. 
 Again, books professing system and completeness are 
 wont to be dry and unprofitable save for their facts 
 and inferences ; truth the flowing essence of things, 
 the substance of being, accosting the mind most 
 gracefully as a flowing form, fixed for the moment of 
 passing only in the mind s eye, and is studied to best 
 advantage rather in books of biography and poetry 
 than of history or science, wherein the personality is 
 oftenest lost in abstractions of fact. Reading, like 
 conversation, is an idealism most profitable as it calls 
 imagination into play, and thus leads forth all other 
 gifts. 
 
 Books of table-talk have this advantage over most 
 9 
 
130 BOOKS. 
 
 others ; being the best companions for the moment, they 
 can be taken up and laid down without loss, and when 
 sensible are best whetstones for the wits. With the 
 essayists, the poets, books of letters and lives, one s 
 library were always alive and inviting. Good for 
 moments these are always good: we may open by 
 chance, dip anywhere, read in any order, begin at the 
 last paragraph and read backward as well ; obvious 
 consecutiveness being of less consequence. Nor do I 
 find the logic the worse when thus seemingly broken 
 and obscure, since each paragraph is a unit standing 
 apart yet all related in the perspective which the 
 reader commands. We could not spare from our 
 galaxy the great essayists and moralists, Pliny, 
 Plutarch, Xenophon, Plato, Epictetus, Seneca, Marcus 
 Aurelius, Montaigne, Bacon, Sir Thomas Browne 
 Cowley, Coleridge, and the rest ; each delineating in 
 his proper way that antique faith in man and the 
 world, which being one and universal in essence, 
 unites all mankind. We know the history of these 
 pieces of life, these experiences recorded for us by 
 their inspired authors, as if themselves were scribes 
 of the spirit and committed it to letters for our 
 especial benefit. 
 
 Any library is an attraction. And there is an in 
 describable delight who has not felt it that deserves 
 the name of scholar in mousing at choice among 
 
BOOKS. 131 
 
 the alcoves of antique book-shops especially, and find 
 ing the oldest of these sometimes newest of the new, 
 fresher, more suggestive than the book just published 
 and praised in the reviews. Nor is the pleasure scarcely 
 less of cutting the leaves of the new volume, opening 
 by preference at the end rather than title-page, and 
 seizing the author s conclusions at a glance. Very 
 few books repay the reading in course.- Nor can we 
 excuse an author if his page does not tempt us to 
 copy passages into our common places, for quotation, 
 proverbs, meditation, or other uses. A good book is 
 fruitful of other books ; it perpetuates its fame from 
 age to age, and makes eras in the lives of its readers. 
 One must be rich in thought and character to owe 
 nothing to books, though preparation is necessary to 
 profitable reading ; and the less reading is better than 
 more ; book-struck men are of all readers leastwise, 
 however knowing or learned. 
 
 " Books cannot make the mind, 
 
 Which we must bring apt to be set aright, 
 Yet do they rectify it in that kind 
 
 And touch it so as that they turn that way 
 Where judgment lies. And though we may not find 
 
 The certain place of truth, yet do they stay 
 And entertain us near about the same, 
 
 And give the soul the best delight that may 
 Encheer it most, and make our spirits enflanie 
 
 To thoughts of glory and to worthy deeds." 
 
132 BOOKS. 
 
 Moreover for gifts, what so gracefully bestowed as 
 fitting books conveying what no words of the giver 
 could convey ? Were the history of the few books of 
 the heart published, what more enduring compliment 
 would this confer on their authors ! Perhaps the 
 finest books have least fame and find but a few 
 choice readers. T is high praise bestowed on an 
 author that his book is taken up with love and ex 
 pectation, we coming to his page again and again 
 without disappointment. To be enjoyable a book must 
 be wholesome like nature, and flavored with the 
 religion of wisdom. 
 
 Books of letters bring the reader nearest to the life 
 and personality of the writer : 
 
 " For more than kisses letters mingle souls, 
 For then friends absent meet." 
 
 Written with this advantage of perspective, the 
 epistle is oftentimes more acceptable than were the 
 interview, more discreet and opportune, since com 
 mitting ourselves to the writing with a kind of re 
 served abandonment, if I may thus characterize our 
 mood, which in conversation we might naturally over 
 leap, we give that only in which another may modestly 
 sympathize and share so shading our egotism as to 
 tell all about ourselves with the delicacy of self-respect 
 without wounding that of others. Epistolary cor- 
 
BOOKS. 133 
 
 respondence is the most difficult and delicate of all 
 composition. And this perhaps accounts for the few 
 books of the kind in our or any language ; and the 
 best of these mostly written by women who give them 
 selves heartily to sentiment. One may think himself 
 fortunate if the gift be his, and his experience find 
 expression in his correspondence. Perhaps the diary 
 has this advantage over letters; we make it our 
 confidant committing to its leaves what we would not 
 to another ; sure of the sacred trust being kept for 
 us. And the most interesting biographies are com 
 posed largely of these. The more autobiographical 
 the more attractive. The keeping of a journal is an 
 education. Let every one try his hand at one and begin 
 young. If it get the best of his hours and an autobi 
 ography out of him, neither his time has been misspent 
 nor has he lived in vain. A life worth living is worth 
 recording. To what end lives any, if he fail of getting 
 apparent order at least into it; living in a manner 
 worthy of celebrity ? Life were poor enough that does 
 not organize the chaos and bring the joy of creation, 
 pronouncing it and all things good, excellence ever 
 falling naturally into order and melody. Let one 
 value above all literary fame the gift of seizing and 
 portraying his privatest thought, the homely furni 
 tures and primogenitures, and if but partially suc 
 cessful consider himself as having attained the fairest 
 
134 BOOKS. 
 
 laurels the muse has to bestow. As the best fruits of 
 the season fall latest and keep the longest, so those of 
 a lifetime ; and fortunate is he whose genius thus 
 gathers his choicest samples housed carefully in a 
 book for any who may relish their flavor. 
 
 One cannot be well read unless well seasoned in 
 thought and experience. Life makes the man. And 
 he must have lived in all his gifts and become ac 
 climated herein to profit by his readings. Living at 
 the breadth of Shakspeare, the depth of Plato, the 
 height of Christ, gives the mastery, or if not that, a 
 worthy discipleship. Life alone divines life. We 
 read as we live ; the book being for us the deeper or 
 the shallower as we are. If read from the reason, it 
 answers to the reason, but fails of finding imagination, 
 the moral sentiment, the affections, fails of making 
 valid its claims upon the deepest instincts of the 
 heart, those critics of inspiration and interpreters, 
 all books owing their credibility to the fact of being 
 written from, and addressed to these, as eye-witnesses 
 and sponsors. Mothers of our mothers we are 
 ever at their teats. Most owe more to tradition 
 than to culture or literature ; the best of literature as 
 of nurture, being still largely tinctured with tradition. 
 Our debt to the Hebrew scriptures has been greater 
 doubtless than to any literature hitherto accessible to 
 us of the Saxon stock ; greater than to all foreign 
 
BOOKS. 135 
 
 literatures besides. And now the instincts prompt 
 thoughtful minds as never before to explore the prime 
 sources and drink freely at the fountains. 
 
 "Are mouldy records now the living springs, 
 Whose healing waters slake the thirst within ? 
 
 Oh! never yet hath mortal drank 
 
 A draught restorative 
 That well d not from the depths of his own soul." 
 
 Very desirable it were since the gates of the East are 
 now opening wide and giving the free commerce of 
 mind with mind, to collect and compare the Bibles of 
 the races for general circulation and careful reading. 
 For still out of the Theban night rays the light of 
 our day and blends with all our thinking and doing 
 China, Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Palestine, Greece, 
 Koine, Britain the Christendom and world of to-day. 
 
 Why nibbling always where 
 Ye nothing fresh can find 
 Upon those rocks ? 
 
 Lo ! meadows green and fair ! 
 Come pasture here your mind. 
 Ye bleating flocks. 
 
VII. 
 COUNSELS. 
 
 " Counsel ia not so sacred a thing as praise, since the former is only 
 useful among men, but the latter ia for the most part reserved for the 
 gods," PYTHAGORAS. 
 
COUNSELS. 
 
 I. RELIGIOUS. 
 
 " "WTio shapes his Godhead out of flesh or stone, 
 Knows not a God ; but he who lives like one." 
 
 KNOW, that seeing you, I divine your gods also. 
 Why name them then one by one so senti 
 mentally and so often? Being yours individually, 
 so unmistakably in your image, surely none needs 
 question or desire them. A thousand thanks if you 
 will lisp never a syllable more about them. As I 
 treat them civilly by my silence, why persist thus 
 pertinaciously in thrusting their claims upon my at 
 tention and then questioning my piety for not christen 
 ing them ? O ! rare respecting silence, deep is the 
 religion that fathoms thine ; speaking most reverently 
 when deepest, and divining mysteries that none names 
 
140 COUNSELS. 
 
 devoutly. What if the sacred name were the silent syl 
 lable in the saint s devotions, and he 
 
 " One of the few, who in his town 
 Honors all preachers, is his own? 
 Sermons ne er hears, or not so many 
 As leaves no time to practise any? 
 Hears, ponders reverently, and then 
 His practice preaches o er again. 
 His parlor sermons rather are 
 Those to the eye than to the ear ; 
 His prayers taking price and strength 
 Not from their loudness nor their length: 
 His murmurs have their music too, 
 Ye mighty pipes, as well as you ; 
 
 Nor yields the noblest nest 
 Of warbling seraphim to the ears of love 
 A choicer lesson, than the joyful breast 
 Of some poor panting turtle dove." 
 
 One sometimes thinks silence for a century were 
 most worshipful since speech babbles so badly. Has 
 not harlequin in bands and book played out his 
 part the world over? the drawl of sacred names 
 been heard till sacred names seem profane, and 
 it were devout to fall into silence about them more 
 eloquent than any speeches about sanctity? If in 
 fidelity, indifference, scepticism, sweep secretly the 
 breadth and depths of Christendom, t is but the bind- 
 
COUNSELS. 141 
 
 ing spell of these superstitions about the name of 
 One whom the love and admiration of all good men 
 hold precious and will not let perish from love and 
 remembrance. 
 
 What were Christ Jesus life and gospel sweet, 
 If not in loving hearts lie fix his holy seat ? 
 
 If one s life is not worshipful, no one cares for his 
 professions. Piety is a sentiment : the more natural 
 it is, the wholesomer. Nor is there piety where charity 
 is wanting. " If one love not his brother whom 
 he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not 
 seen." None are deceived as to the spirit of their ac 
 quaintances : the instinct of every village, every home, 
 intimates true character. We recognize goodness 
 wherever we find it. T is the same helpful influence, 
 beautifying the meanest as the greatest service 
 by its manners, doing most when least conscious, as 
 if it did it not. 
 
 " A man s best things are nearest him, 
 
 Lie at his feet; 
 It is the distant and the dim 
 That we are sick to greet." 
 
 Let us have unspoken creeds and these quick and 
 operative. I wish mine to be so, for though it em 
 bosoms doctrines fit to shine in words, it seems most 
 
142 COUNSELS. 
 
 becoming to publish truths thus vital by example 
 rather, sentiments so private shrinking from the frost 
 of distrust, the heat of controversy. Personal in 
 their traits and colored with individual hues, they 
 court the confidences of silence, and are unspeakable. 
 One needs but brighten his eyes to look deep into 
 the depths of his heart and settle all disputes. 
 Enlarge by a thought our view, exalt it by a senti 
 ment, we find all men of our creed ; or, far better, 
 superior to party or creed. The uprise of an idea, 
 perception of a principle, makes many one and in 
 separable. The liberal mind is of no sect ; it shows 
 to sects their departures from the ideal standard, and 
 thus maintains pure religion in the world. But there 
 are those whose minds, like the pupil of the eye, con 
 tract as the light increases. T is a poor egotism that 
 sees only its o\vn image reflected in its vision. " Only 
 as thou bccst it thou seest it." How differently 
 the different sects interpret the scriptures, each ac 
 cording to its light and training! I imagine our 
 Bible is more loosely read, least understood of any 
 book in the English tongue : conceive a fresh generation 
 coming to its perusal as to a volume just issued in 
 modern type from a popular bookstore and reviewed in 
 the journals. How better acquit ourselves to the 
 Bibles of the world than by fairly measuring our 
 private convictions with their spirit and teachings? 
 
COUNSELS. 143 
 
 Let us first acquaint ourselves with these Records of 
 Revelation before we claim for ours the merit of being 
 the only inspired volume ; ourselves the favored 
 people as if the Truth were a geographical resident 
 dwelling in our neighborhood only. 
 
 "When thou approachest to The One, 
 Self from thyself thou first must free, 
 
 Thy cloak duplicity cast clean aside, 
 And in the Being s Being Be. 
 
 One does not like to disturb the faith of his neigh 
 bors, yet cannot speak truly on religious themes without 
 touching the sensibilities of the weak, and sometimes 
 wounding where he sought sympatlry and support. It 
 takes a good man to speak tenderly of matters of faith 
 and practice in which good people have been bred, 
 their hearts being prompt to feel and act without 
 questioning the head. Precious souls, if not overwise, 
 or strong for reform ; the weak saints being as 
 formidable impediments as the strong sinners, both 
 blocking the ways to amendment. But temperament, 
 inborn tendencies, predispositions, determine one s 
 cast of thinking or no-thinking, and go far to shape 
 his religious opinions. Our instincts, faithfully drawn 
 out and cherished by purity of life, lead to Theism as 
 their flower and fruit. If swayed by the senses we are 
 natural Pantheists, at best idolaters and unbelievers 
 
144 COUNSELS. 
 
 in the Personal Mind. The passions prevailing, in 
 cline us to Atheism, or some superstition ending in 
 scepticism, and indifference to all religious con 
 siderations. 
 
 " Some whom we call virtuous, are not so 
 In their whole substance, but their virtues grow 
 But in their humors, and at seasons show. 
 
 For when through tasteless, flat humility, 
 
 In dough-baked men some harmlessness we see, 
 
 T is but his phlegm that s virtuous and not he. 
 
 So is the blood sometimes : whoever ran 
 To danger unimportuned, he was then 
 No better than a sanguine, virtuous man. 
 
 So cloistered men, who, on pretence of fear 
 All contributions to this world forbear, 
 Have virtue in melancholy, and only there. 
 
 Spiritual, choleric critics, who in all 
 
 Religions find fault, and forgive no fall, 
 
 Have through their zeal virtue but in their gall. 
 
 We re thus but parcel gilt, to gold we re grown 
 
 When virtue is our soul s complexion 
 
 Who knows his virtue s name or place has none." 
 
COUNSELS. 145 
 
 n. PERSONAL, 
 
 PERSIST in being yourself, and against fate and your- 
 Faith and persistency are life s architects, while 
 doubt and despair bury all under the ruins of any en? 
 deavor. You may pull all your paradises about your 
 ears save your earliest ; that is to be yours sometime. 
 Strive and have ; still striving till striving is having. 
 We mount to heaven mostly on the ruins of our 
 cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes. 
 Nor need we turn sour if we fail to draw the prizes in 
 life s lottery. It were the speck in the fruit, the 
 falling of our manliness into decay. These blanks were 
 all prizes had we the equanimity to take them without 
 whimpering or discontent. The calamities we suffer 
 arise not from circumstances chiefly, but from ourselves. 
 If the dose is nauseous or bitter, t is because we are, 
 else it were not drank off with the disgust we mani 
 fest. Sweet, bitter or sour, we taste one thing in 
 everything tasted, and that is ourselves. Could each 
 once be clean delivered of himself how salutary were 
 all things and sufficing. " T is in morals as in 
 dietetics, one cannot see his fault till he has got rid 
 of it." 
 
 Only virtue is fame ; nor is it forward in sounding 
 its own praises, being sure that merit never sleeps un- 
 10 
 
146 COUNSELS. 
 
 told, nor dies without honors. It cannot : once lived 
 and whispered ever so faintly in private places, it 
 publishes itself in spite of every concealment and 
 sometime blazes its fame abroad by myriads of 
 trumpets. The light trembling in the socket of bash- 
 fulness, or hidden under the bushel of misappre 
 hension, or inopportunity, flames forth at fitting 
 moment, irradiates the world thereafter forever, 
 streaks the dawn, as a visitation of the day-spring 
 from on high. 
 
 It is as ignoble to go begging conditions as to go 
 begging bread. If too feeble, too proud or unapt to 
 create these, one may make up his mind to dispense 
 with any advantage that power on that side of life 
 confers. Not a circumstance, like the animal whose 
 place in nature is determined, but a creator of 
 circumstances, man brings to his help freedom, 
 opportunity, art, to build a world out of the world in 
 harmony with his wants. If his occupation is spoiling 
 him t is the dictate of virtue as of prudence, to quit 
 it for one that in maintaining shall enrich him also. 
 He must be a bad economist who squanders himself 
 on his maintenance ; wasting both his days and him 
 self. His gifts are too costly for such cheap im 
 providence. One s character is the task allotted 
 him to form, his faculties the implements, his genius 
 the workman, life the engagement, and with these gifts 
 
COUNSELS. 147 
 
 of nature and of God, shall be fail to quarry forth from 
 his opportunities a man for his heavenly task-master? 
 "The wise man does not submit to employments 
 which he may undertake, but accommodates and lends 
 himself to them only." 
 
 any man greatest standing apart in his in- 
 his strength and jdjgnit^cqme by sym- 
 
 pathy with the aims of the best men of the_comniumty 
 of which he is a member. Yet whoever seeks the 
 crowd, craving popularity for propping repute, for 
 feits his claim to reverence and expires in the 
 incense he inhales. The truly great stand upright as 
 columns of the temple whose dome covers all, against 
 whose pillared sides multitudes lean ; at whose base 
 they kneel in times of trouble. Stand fast by your 
 convictions and there maintain yourself against every 
 odds. One with yourself, you are one with Almighty 
 majority against all the world : 
 
 Vox priva, vox Dei. 
 
148 COUNSELS. 
 
 III. POLITICAL. 
 
 " To God, thy country, and thyself be true, 
 If priest and people change, keep thou thy guard." 
 
 BOTH conformity and nonconformity are alike im 
 practicable. When the conformist can stay clean 
 in his conformity, the nonconformist come clean 
 out of his nonconformity, it will be time to plead self- 
 consistency. Nor let any stay to make proselytes. 
 I have never known the followers of either to come 
 clean out of themselves even, but casting their tributes 
 to expediency or authority, surrender unreservedly 
 to party or sect and sink the man. Born free into 
 free institutions, it behooves all to preserve that 
 freedom unimpaired, neither intimidated nor bribed by 
 persons or parties : see that these take nothing of 
 theirs with consent, least of all that which gives 
 consent its dignity and worth, one s integrity. Good 
 men should not obey bad laws too well, lest bad men 
 taking courage from the precedent, disobey good 
 ones. 
 
 " Know there s on earth a } r et auguster thing, 
 Veiled though it be, than President or King." 
 
 The honorable man prefers his privilege of stand 
 ing uncommitted to parties when these fail to 
 
COUNSELS. 149 
 
 represent the whole of honor and justice for the 
 state. But when politics become attractive by being 
 principled, senates and cabinets the legislators and 
 executives of justice and common rights, servants of 
 the High Laws, then, as an honorable man and faith 
 ful citizen, he is won to the polls to cast a pious and 
 patriotic suffrage for having affairs administered 
 through the best men, whom best men promote to 
 offices to which their virtues give dignity and dis 
 tinction. There are times nevertheless in one s history 
 when abstinence from this first privilege of a freeman 
 and republican, seems a duty best performed in its iion- 
 performance, the true means of preserving self-respect, 
 by standing magnanimously as a protest for the 
 right against the wrong a vote less on the wrong 
 side of a mixed issue, being as two cast on the right 
 side, the silent significance of a name known as the 
 representative of honor and justice, showing where lies 
 the wrong and the shame the blush of a defeat on the 
 cheek of an ill-gotten victory. Of no party properly, 
 a good man votes by his virtues for mankind, too just 
 to be claimed by any unless to save it from dishonor. 
 At best the state s polity is deliberative, ruling 
 the right as far as is practicable under the circum 
 stances. Of mixed elements, it contents itself with 
 mixed results, the best permitted -under the mixed 
 conditions. But the statesman may not compromise 
 
150 COUNSELS. 
 
 principle for the sake of accommodating legislation to 
 suit the interests of party. If he ride that horse too 
 fearlessly, he is sure to be overthrown. General 
 intelligence interposes the effective check upon po 
 litical ambition and carries forward state affairs. But 
 if, unequal to self-government, the people have at 
 tained to that sense of freedom and no more, which 
 renders liberty a snare, then the state stumbles to 
 wards a despotism, call the rule by any fine name 
 you please. No greater calamity can befall a people 
 than that of deliberating long on issues imperilling 
 liberty ; any impotency of indecision betraying a lapse 
 into slavery from which the gravest deliberative wisdom 
 cannot rescue them. Knowingly to put on the yoke 
 and wear it restively meanwhile , were a servitude that 
 only slavery itself can cure. 
 
 Where sleep the gods 
 There mob-rule sways the state, 
 Treason hath plots and fell debate, 
 Brother doth brother darkly brand, 
 Few faithful midst sedition s storm do stand, 
 The whole of virtue theirs to stay the reeling land. 
 
 " States are destroyed, not so much from want of 
 courage as for want of virtue, and the most pernicious 
 of all ignorance is, when men do not love what they 
 approve ; written laws being but images of, or sub- 
 
COUNSELS. 151 
 
 stitutes for those true laws which ought to be present 
 in every human soul through a perfect insight into 
 good." 
 
 THE SOUL S ERRAND. 
 
 " Go, Soul, the Body s guest, 
 Upon a thankless errand; 
 Fear not to touch the best, 
 
 The truth shall be thy warrant ; 
 Go, since all else must die, 
 And give all else the lie. 
 
 Go tell the Court it glows 
 
 And shines like rotten wood ; 
 Go tell the Church it shows 
 "What s good, but does not good : 
 If Court and Church reply, 
 Give Court and Church the lie. 
 
 Tell Potentates they live 
 
 Acting, but base their actions ; 
 Not loved, unless they give, 
 Nor strong, save by their factions : 
 If Potentates reply, 
 Give Potentates the lie. 
 
 Tell men of high condition, 
 
 That rule affairs of state, 
 
 Their purpose is ambition. 
 
152 COUNSELS. 
 
 Their practice chiefly hate : 
 And if they do reply, 
 Then give them all the lie. 
 
 Tell those that brave it most, 
 
 They beg for more by spending ; 
 Who, in their greatest cost, 
 
 Seek nothing but commending : 
 And if they make reply, 
 Spare not to give the lie. 
 
 Tell Zeal it lacks devotion ; 
 
 Tell Love it is but lust ; 
 Tell Time it is but motion ; 
 Tell Help it is but dust : 
 And wish them no reply, 
 For thou must give the lie. 
 
 Tell Age it daily wasteth ; 
 
 Tell Honor how it alters ; 
 Tell Beauty that it blasteth ; 
 Tell Favor that she falters : 
 And as they do reply, 
 Give every one the lie. 
 
 Tell Wit how much she wrangles 
 In fickle points of niceness ; 
 
 Tell Wisdom she entangles 
 Herself in over niceness ; 
 
COUNSELS. 153 
 
 And if they do reply 
 
 Then give them both the lie. 
 
 Tell Physic of her boldness ; 
 Tell Skill it is pretension ; 
 Tell Charity of coldness ; 
 Tell Law it is contention ; 
 And if they yield reply, 
 Then give them all the lie. 
 
 Tell Fortune of her blindness ; 
 
 Tell Nature of decay ; 
 Tell Friendship of unkindness ; 
 Tell Justice of delay ; 
 And if they do reply, 
 Then give them still the lie. 
 
 Tell Arts they have no soundness, 
 
 But vary by esteeming ; 
 Tell Schools they lack profoundness 
 And stand too much on seeming : 
 If Arts and Schools reply, 
 Give Arts and Schools the lie. 
 
 Tell Faith it s fled the city ; 
 
 Tell how the country erreth ; 
 Tell manhood, shakes off pity, 
 Tell Virtue least preferreth ; 
 And if they do reply, 
 Spare not to give the lie. 
 
154 COUNSELS. 
 
 So when thou hast, as I 
 
 Commanded thee, done blabbing ; 
 Although to give the lie 
 Deserves no less than stabbing \ 
 Yet stab at thee who will, 
 No stab the soul can kill." 
 
TABLETS 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 SPECULATIVE 
 
 "Philosophy is one of the richest presents that man ever received 
 from heaven, being that which raises the mind into the contemplation 
 of eternal things, and is the science which of all others affords the 
 most agreeable entertainment." EVELYN. 
 
I. 
 
 INSTRUMENTALITIES. 
 
 " The age, the present times, are not 
 To snudge in, and embrace a cot; 
 Action and blood now get the game, 
 Disdain treads on the peaceful name : 
 "Who sits at home, too, bears a load 
 Greater than those that gad abroad." 
 
 HENRY VAUGHAN. 
 
INSTRUMENTALITIES. 
 
 I. TENDENCIES. 
 
 OUR time is revolutionary. It drifts strong and 
 fast into unitarianism and the empire of ideas. 
 All things are undergoing reform and reconstruction ; 
 the fellowship of all souls intent on laying broad and 
 deep the foundations of the new institutions. The 
 firm of Globe Brothers & Co., prospers in both 
 hemispheres, every citizen being a partner in the 
 concern. The nations are leagued together on the 
 basis of mutual assistance, finding the old alliances 
 founded on force and fear to be insecure ; the people 
 seeing it best to be friends and copartners in conducting 
 the world s affairs ; trade the natural knot tying them 
 b} T the coarser wants only ; world-politics their bond of 
 union and prosperity. No longer playing independent 
 parts safely, they co-operate and conspire for the com 
 mon welfare, interposing such checks as each individu- 
 
160 INSTRUMENTALITIES. 
 
 ally requires for his security. Ruling is conducted not 
 by legislation nor diplomacy, but by social and com 
 mercial inter-communication ; every man opening out 
 for himself the sphere suited to his gifts, and taking 
 his thinking and doing into head and hands as a loyal 
 man and citizen. Power is stealing with a speed 
 and momentum unprecedented from the few to the 
 many ; is played out on a theatre world-wide, whole 
 populations taking part in affairs ; the distance once 
 separating extremes being bridged ; middle men with 
 human sympathies and broad common-sense taking the 
 lead and setting the old pretensions aside. A daring 
 realism overleaping the old barriers gives govern 
 ment into the hands of the whole people, rulers being 
 their servants, not masters ; presidents and kings the 
 representatives of ideas and paying loyal homage to 
 these crowned heads ; the old virtues of reverence for 
 man, fidelity to principle, so venerable and sacred in 
 private stations, seeking reappearance in public life. 
 If once the great, the wise, were in the minority, 
 ) and none dreamed of reason becoming popular, 
 reason is fast becoming republicanized ; from being 
 the exclusive property of the few is diffusing itself uni 
 versally as the common possession of the multitude. 
 
 Imperial thought now holds her powerful sway, 
 And drives the peoples on their prosperous way. 
 
INSTRUMENTALITIES. 161 
 
 The freshest, best thoughts of the best minds of all 
 times are claimed by the community ; itself the awakened 
 critic and prompter of the best ; all thirsting for in 
 formation, world-wisdom, and drinking off eagerly 
 the lore of centuries. Knowledge everywhere dif 
 fused is accessible to all, rolls with the globe, 
 dashes against the shores of every sea, delves the 
 caverns, climbs the hill-tops with sun and moon, for 
 the common benefit. If Hesiod wrote for his times 
 that 
 
 " Riches are the soul of feeble men," 
 
 our time is fast translating his line practically : 
 Riches are the hand of able men ; 
 
 Capitalists holding kings and presidents in check 
 while playing the better game of civilization, equalizing 
 indirectly by legislative philanthropies the extremes 
 every man s needs being taken as drafts drawn by 
 Providence on opulence, to be honored at sight : 
 
 " Stewards of the gods alone 
 Are we ; have nothing of our own 
 Save what to us the gods commit, 
 And take away when they see fit." 
 
 Once all crimes were capital and punished with 
 death. Now this Draconian code has been so 
 11 
 
162 INSTRUMENTALITIES. 
 
 meliorated and softened by the diffusion of mercy and 
 humanity as to take life for life only ; is pleading 
 powerfully for the abolition of the death-penalty 
 altogether. 
 
 The sects are losing their monopoly in the heavenly 
 luminary, closing no longer their brazen cope of 
 darkening doctrines on the religious horizon to 
 vitiate the social and political morals of mankind. 
 The faiths of the cultivated nations are being revised, 
 Christendom itself drifting with irresistible speed and 
 momentum into a world-religion, commensurate with 
 the advancing thought of advancing minds everywhere. 
 As the Greeks received their Gods from Eg} T pt and 
 Phoenicia, Rome hers from Greece, and we ours from 
 Rome, Judea and Britain, by the law of interfusion 
 we are ripening into a cosmopolitan faith, with its 
 Pantheon for all races. 
 
 II. -METHOD. 
 
 OURS were a trivial time if busied in building solely 
 from the senses in facts of understanding, having 
 nothing ideal to enshrine. Without symbols, peoples 
 perish. Things must be exalted into some fair image 
 of mind, the senses and gifts magnetized to body 
 forth thoughts ; the eye beholding these in what the 
 hands fashion. Ideas supplement and symbolize 
 
INSTRUMENTALITIES. 163 
 
 facts : the field of realities lying behind unseen ; 
 the paddock of the common sense being but an 
 enclosure within the immeasurable spaces of which 
 thought is royal ranger, owner of domains far 
 larger and richer than these confine or survey, ideal 
 estates which only mind can claim ; quarries out of 
 which nature itself is hewn, eye and hand are shapen. 
 Head and hand should go abreast with thought. If 
 the age of iron and bronze has been welding chains 
 and fetters about the forehead and limbs, here, 
 too, is the Promethean thought, using the new agen 
 cies let loose by the Daedalus of mechanic invention 
 in the service of soul as of the senses. Having 
 recovered the omnipotence in nature, the omnipresence, 
 graded space, tunnelled the abyss, joined ocean and 
 land by living wires, stolen the chemistry of the solar 
 ray, made light our painter, the lightning our runner, 
 discovered the polar axis, set matter on fire, thought is 
 pushing its inquiries into the hitherto unexplored re 
 gions of man s personality, for whose survey and service 
 every modern instrumentality lends the outfit and means 
 facilities ample, unprecedented new instruments 
 for the new discoveries new eyes for the new specta 
 cles. Using no longer contentedly the fumbling fingers 
 of the old circuitous logic, the genius takes the track 
 of the creative thought, intuitively, cosmically, onto- 
 logically. A subtler analysis is finely discriminated, a 
 
164 INSTRUMENTALITIES. 
 
 broader synthesis generalized from the materials ac 
 cumulated in the mind during the centuries, the globe s 
 contents being gathered in from all quarters, the 
 Book of Creation illustrated anew, and posted to date. 
 The new calculus is ours. An organon alike ser 
 viceable to metaphysician and naturalist whereby 
 things answer to thought, facts are resolved into 
 truths, images into ideas, matter into mind, power 
 into personality, man into God ; the One soul in all 
 souls revealed as the Creative Spirit pulsating in all 
 breasts, immanent in all atoms, prompting all wills, 
 and personally embosoming all persons in one un 
 broken synthesis of Being.* 
 
 " It has hitherto, unhappily, been the misfortune of 
 the mere materialist, in his mania for matter on the 
 one hand and dread of ideas on the other, to invert 
 this creative order, and thus hang the world s picture 
 as a man with his heels upwards " a process con- 
 
 *" Truth can be known by the thinking reason. It has been known by 
 speculative thinkers scattered through the ages. Their systems exist and 
 may be mastered. Their differences are not radical, but lie rather in the 
 mode of exposition the point of departure, the various obstacles over 
 come, and the character of the technique used. Their agreement is central 
 and pervading. The method of speculative cognition is to be distinguished 
 from that of sensuous certitude, and from the reflection of the understanding 
 by the exhaustive nature of its procedure. It considers its subject in a 
 universal manner and its steps are void of all arbitrariness. 
 
 In order to detect a speculative system, ask the following questions of it: 
 
INSTRUMENTALITIES. 165 
 
 ducting of necessity to conclusions as derogatory to 
 himself as to Nature s author. Assuming matter as 
 his basis of investigation, force as father of thought, 
 he confounds faculties with organs, life with brute sub 
 stance, piles his atom atop of atom, cements cell on cell, 
 in constructing his column, sconce mounting sconce 
 aspiringly as it rises, till his shaft of gifts crown itself 
 surreptitiously with the ape s glorified effigy, as 
 Nature s frontispiece and head life s atomy with life 
 omitted altogether, man wanting. Contrarywise reads 
 the ideal naturalist the book of lives. Opening at 
 Spirit, and thence proceeding to ideas, he finds their 
 types in matter, life unfolds itself naturally in organs, 
 faculties begetting forces, mind moulding things sub 
 stantially, its connections and interpendencies appear 
 in series and degrees as he traces the leaves, thought 
 the key to originals, man connexus, archetype, and 
 classifier of things ; he, straightway, leading forth 
 abreast of himself the animated creation from the 
 
 1, " Is the highest principle regarded as a fixed, abstract, and rigid one, or 
 as a concrete and self-moving one?" 2. "Is the starting point of the 
 system regarded as the highest principle, and the onward movement of the 
 same merely a result deduced analytically ; or is the beginning treated as 
 the most abstract and deficient, while the final result is the basis of all ? " 
 In other words, " Is the system a descent from a first principle or an 
 ascent to one ? " This will detect a defect of the method, while the former 
 question, (1,) will detect defects in the content or subject matter of the 
 system." WILLIAM T, HARRIS. 
 
166 INSTRUMENTALITIES. 
 
 chaos, the primeval Adam naming his mates, him 
 self their ancestor, contemporary and survivor.* 
 
 in. 
 
 " Imago Dei in animo ; mundi, in corpore." 
 
 MAN is a soul, informed by divine ideas, and body 
 ing forth their image. His mind is the unit anci 
 measure of things visible and invisible. In him stii 
 
 *" There are four modes of knowledge which we are able to acquire ir 
 the present life : 
 
 1. The first of these results from opinion, by which we learn that i 
 thing is, without knowing the why; and this constitutes that part ol 
 knowledge which was called by Aristotle and Plato, erudition; am 
 which consists in moral instructions for the purpose of purifying ourselvei 
 from immoderate desires. 
 
 2. But the second is produced by the sciences, which from establishinj 
 certain principles as hypotheses, conduct to necessary conclusions whereb] 
 we arrive at the knowledge of the why, as in the mathematical sciences 
 but at the same time are ignorant with respect to the principles of these con 
 elusions, because they are merely hypothetical. 
 
 3. The third species of knowledge is that which results from Plato i 
 dialectic ; in which by a progression through ideas, we arrive at the firs 
 principles of things, and at that which is no longer hypothetical, and thus 
 dividing some things and analyzing others, by producing many thing! 
 from one, and one from many. 
 
 4. But the fourth species is still more simple than this; because it nc 
 longer uses analyses or compositions, but whole things themselves bj 
 intuition, and becomes one with the object of its perception; and this 
 energy is the Divine Reason, which Plato epeaks of, and which fa] 
 transcends other modes of knowledge. " THOMAS TAYLOR. 
 
INSTRUMENTALITIES. 167 
 
 the creatures potentially, and through his personal 
 volitions are conceived and brought forth in matter 
 whatsoever he sees, touches, and treads under foot, 
 the planet he spins. 
 
 He omnipresent is, 
 
 All round himself he lies, 
 
 Osiris spread abroad, 
 
 Upstaring in all eyes : 
 
 Nature his globed thought, 
 
 Without him she were not, 
 
 Cosmos from chaos were not spoken, 
 
 And God bereft of visible token. 
 
 A theometer an instrument of instruments he 
 gathers in himself all forces, partakes in his plenitude 
 of omniscience, being the Spirit s acme, and culmination 
 in nature. A quickening spirit and mediator between 
 mind and matter, he conspires with all souls, with the 
 Soul of souls, in generating the substance in which he 
 immerses his form, and wherein he embosoms his 
 essence. Not elemental, but fundamental, essential, 
 he generates elements and forces, perpetually re 
 plenishing his waste ; the final conflagration a cur 
 rent fact of his existence. Does the assertion seem 
 incredible, absurd ? But science, grown luminous and 
 transcendent, boldly declares that life to the senses is 
 a blaze refeeding steadily its flame from the atmos- 
 
168 INSTRUMENTALITIES. 
 
 phere it kindles into life, its embers the spent remains 
 from which rises perpetually the new-born Phoenix 
 into regions where flame is lost in itself, and light is its 
 resolvent emblem.* 
 
 "Thee, eye of heaven, the great soul envies not, 
 By thy male force is all we have, begot." 
 
 " This kindles the fire which exists in every thing, 
 is received by every thing. While it sheds a full light, 
 it is itself hidden. Its presence is unknown, unless 
 some material be given to induce the exertion of 
 its power. It is invisible, as well as unquenchable ; 
 and it has the faculty of transforming into itself every 
 thing it touches. It renovates every thing by its vital 
 heat, it illumines every thing by its flashing beams ; it 
 can neither be confined nor intermingled ; it divides and 
 yet is immutable. It always ascends, it is constantly 
 in motion ; it moves by its own will and power, and 
 sets in motion every thing around it. It has the 
 power of seizing, but cannot itself be grasped. It needs 
 
 k "Man feeds upon air, the plant collecting the materials from the at 
 mosphere and compounding them for his food. Even life itself, as we 
 know it, is but a process of combustion, of which decomposition is the 
 final conclusion. Through this combustion all the constituents return back 
 into air, a few ashes remaining to the earth from whence they came. But 
 from these embers, slowly invisible flames arise into regions where our 
 science has no longer any value, " SCHLEIDEN. 
 
INSTRUMENTALITIES. 169 
 
 no aid. It increases silently and breaks forth in 
 majesty upon all. It generates, it is powerful, in 
 visible, and omnipotent. If neglected, its existence 
 might be forgotten, but on friction being applied, 
 it flashes out again like the sword from its scabbard, 
 shines resplendently by its own natural properties, 
 and soars into the air. Many other powers may 
 yet be noticed as belonging to it. For this reason 
 theologians have asserted that all substances being 
 formed of fire, are thus created as nearly as possible 
 in the image of God." 
 
 
II. 
 
 MIND. 
 
 " But all the Gods we have are in The Mind, 
 By whose proportions only we redeem 
 Our thoughts from out confusion, and do find 
 The measure of ourselves and of our powers, 
 And that all happiness remains confined 
 Within the kingdom of this breast of ours, 
 Without whose bounds all that we look on lies 
 In others jurisdiction, others powers, 
 Out of the circuit of our libertiee." 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
MIND. 
 
 I. IDEAS. 
 
 THE Ancients had a happy conception of mind in 
 their Pantheon of its Powers. They fabled these 
 as gods celestial, mundane, infernal, according to 
 their several prerogatives and uses. It appears their 
 ideal metaphysic has not as yet been surpassed or 
 superseded altogether, as the classic mythology still 
 holds its high place in modern thought and the schools 
 as a discipline and culture. And for the reason that 
 thought is an Olympian, and man a native of the 
 cloudlands, whatever his metaphysical pretensions. 
 It is only as we sit aloft that we oversee the world 
 below and comprehend aright its drift and revolutions. 
 Ixion falling out of the mist, which he illicitly em 
 braced, is the visionary mistaking images for ideas, 
 and thus paying the cost in his downfall. Plumage, 
 \vings or none, imagination or understanding, the 
 
174 MIND. 
 
 fledged idea or the footed fact, the fleet reason or slow 
 these distribute mankind into thinkers or observers. 
 Only genius combines the double gifts in harmonious 
 proportions and interplay, possessing the mind entire, 
 and is a denizen of both hemispheres. The idealist 
 is the true realist, grasping the substance and not its 
 shadow. The man of sense is the visionary or illu 
 sionist, fancying things as permanencies, and thoughts 
 as fleeting phantoms. A Ptolemaist in theory, and 
 earth-bound, he fears to venture above his terra firma 
 into the real firmament whereinto mind is fashioned to 
 spring, and command the wide prospect around. 
 
 " Things divine are not attained by mortals who under 
 stand body merely, 
 
 But only those who are lightly armed arrive at the 
 summit." 
 
 Thought is the Mercury ; and things are caught on 
 the wing, ani by the flying spectator only. Nature 
 is thought in solution. Like a river whose current is 
 flowing steadily, drop displacing drop, particle fol 
 lowing particle of the passing stream, nothing abides 
 but the spectacle. So the flowing world is fashioned 
 in the idealist s vision, and is the reality which to 
 slower wits seems fixed in space and apart from 
 thought, subsisting in itself. But thought works in 
 the changing and becoming, not in the changed and 
 
MIND. 175 
 
 become ; all things sliding by imperceptible gradations 
 into their contraries, the cosmos rising out of the 
 chaos by its agency. Nothing abides ; all is image 
 and expression out of our thought. 
 
 So Speech represents the flowing essence as sen 
 sitive, transitive ; the word signifying what we make 
 it at the moment of using, but needing life s rounded 
 experiences to unfold its manifold senses and shades 
 of meaning.* Definitions, however precise, fail to 
 translate the sense. They confine in defining ; good 
 for the occasion, but leaps in the dark ; at best, 
 guesses at the meanings we seek ; parapets built in 
 the air, the lighter the safer ; mere ladders of sound, 
 whose rounds crumble as we tread. We write as we 
 speak. The silence bars away the sense, closing 
 shape and significance from us. Here is the mind 
 
 * CATEGORIES OF SPEECH. 
 
 BEING : 
 
 
 Flowing, 
 
 Fixed, 
 
 Subjective. 
 
 Objective. 
 
 i. in. 
 
 it. 
 
 Actions, Participles, 
 
 Things, 
 
 Verbs. 
 
 Nouns. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Qualities, 
 Adverbs, Adjectives. 
 
 v. 
 
 Relations. 
 Prepositions, Conjunctions, Pronouns, 
 
176 MIND. 
 
 facing its image the world, and wishing to see the re 
 flection at a glance, a trope. No. The world is but 
 the symbol of mind, and speech a mythology woven 
 of both. Each thing suggests the thought imperfectly, 
 and thought is translatable only by thought. Our 
 standards are ideas, those things of the mind and 
 originals of words. 
 
 Thought s winged hand, 
 Marshals in trope and tone 
 The ideal band. 
 Genius alone 
 Holds fast in eye 
 The fleeing God 
 Brings Beauty nigh 
 Senses descry 
 Footsteps he trod, 
 Figures he drew, 
 Shapes old and new, 
 The fair, the true, 
 In soul and sod. 
 
 Nature is thought immersed in matter, and seen 
 differently as viewed from the one or the other. To 
 the laborer it is a thing of mere uses ; to the scholar 
 a symbol and a muse. The same landscape is not the 
 same as seen by poet and plowman. It stands for 
 material benefit to the one, immaterial to the other. 
 The artist s point of view is one of uses seen as means 
 
MIND. 177 
 
 of beauty, that being the complement of uses. His 
 faculties handle his organs ; the hands, like somnam 
 bulists, playing their under parts to ideas ; these, 
 again, serving uses still higher. The poet, awakened 
 from the sleep of things, beholds beauty in essence 
 and form, being thus admitted to the secret of causes, 
 the laws of pure Being. 
 
 The like of Persons. Every one s glass reflects his 
 bias. If the thinker views men as troglodytes like 
 Plato s groundlings, unconscious of the sun shining 
 overhead ; men of the senses, and mere makeweights 
 they in turn pronounce him the dreamer, sitting 
 aloof from human concerns, an unproductive citizen 
 and waste power in the world, Still, thought makes 
 the world and sustains it ; atom and idea alike being 
 its constituents. Nor can thought, from its nature, at 
 once become popular. It is the property and delight 
 of the few fitted by genius and culture for discrimi 
 nating truth from adhering falsehood, and of setting 
 it forth in its simplicity and truth to the under 
 standings of the less favored. Apart by pursuit from 
 the mass of mankind, or at most taking a separate and 
 subordinate part in affairs that engage their sole atten 
 tion, the thinker seems useless to all save those who 
 can apprehend and avail themselves of his immediate 
 labors ; and the less is he known and appreciated as 
 his studies are of lasting importance to his race. Yet 
 12 
 
178 MIND. 
 
 time is just, and brings all men to the side of thought 
 as they become familiar with its practical benefits, 
 else the victory were not gained for philosophy, and 
 wisdom justified in him of her chosen children. 
 
 Ideas alone supplement nature and complement 
 mind. Our senses neither satisfy our sensibility nor 
 intellect. The mind s objects are mind itself; imagi 
 nation the mind s eye, memory the ear, ideas of the 
 one imaging the other, and the mind thus rounding its 
 history. And hence the pleasurable perspective ex 
 perienced in surveying our personality from obverse 
 sides in the landscape of existence culture, in its 
 inclusive sense, making the tour of our gifts, and ac 
 quainting us with ourselves and the world we live in. 
 All men gain a residence in the senses and the family 
 of natural things ; few come into possession of their 
 better inheritance and home in the mind the Palace 
 of Power and Personality. Sons of earth rather by 
 preference, and chiefly emulous for their little while 
 of its occupancy, its honors, emoluments, they here 
 pitch their tents, here plant fast their hopes, and roll 
 through life they know not whither. . 
 
MIND. 
 
 179 
 
 II. THE GIFTS. 
 
 INSTINCT is the fountain of Personal power, and 
 mother of the Gifts. With instinct there may be an 
 embryo, but sense must be superinduced to constitute 
 an animal memory, moral sentiment, reason, imagi 
 nation, personality, to constitute the man. The mind 
 is the man, not the outward shape : all is in the Will. 
 The animal may mount to fancy in the grade of gifts ; 
 but reason, imagination, conscience, choice the me 
 diating, creative, ruling powers the personality be 
 long to man alone. But not to all men, save in essence 
 and possibility. Man properly traverses the hierarchy 
 of Powers spiritual, intellectual, moral, natural, ani 
 mal their full possession and interplay enabling him 
 to hold free colloquy with all, giving the whole mind 
 voice in the dialogue. Thus : 
 
 Asking for 
 
 
 
 
 The Who ? 
 
 Will responds, 
 
 The Person. 
 
 The Ought? 
 
 Conscience 
 
 u 
 
 The Right. 
 
 The How ? 
 
 Imagination 
 
 
 
 The Idea. 
 
 The Why? 
 
 Reason 
 
 a 
 
 The Truth. 
 
 The Thus ? 
 
 Fancy 
 
 u 
 
 The Image. 
 
 The Where? 
 
 Understanding 
 
 a 
 
 The Fact. 
 
 The When? 
 
 Memory 
 
 a 
 
 The Event. 
 
 The Which? 
 
 Sense 
 
 u 
 
 The Thing. 
 
 The What? 
 
 Instinct 
 
 u 
 
 The Life. 
 
180 
 
 MIND. 
 
 In accordance with this gradation of gifts, man 
 and animals may be classified as to their measures of 
 intelligence respectively ; instinct being taken as the 
 initial gift and prompter of the rest in their order of 
 genesis, growth and adaptability: man alone, when 
 fully unfolded in harmony, being capable of ranging 
 throughout the entire scale.* 
 
 Thus : 
 
 CLASS r _ 
 
 I. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding Fancy, Reason, Imagination, Conldenc^ 
 
 II. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reason, Imagination, Conscience. 
 
 III. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reason, Imagination. 
 
 IV. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy, Reasoi 
 
 V. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding, Fancy. 
 
 VI. Instinct, Sense, Memory, Understanding. 
 
 VII. Instinct, Sense, Memory. 
 
 VIII. Instinct, Sense. 
 
 MAN is 
 
 Spiritual as he experiences, Personality, Thought. 
 
 Moral " Choice, Conscience. 
 
 Intellectual " Imagination, Reason. 
 
 Natural " Fancy, Understanding. 
 
 Brute " Memory, Sense. 
 
 Demonic Appetite, Passion. 
 
 * " One would think nothing were easier for us than to know our own 
 mind, discern what was our main scope and drift, and what we proposed 
 to ourselves as our end in the several occurrences of our lives. But our 
 thoughts have such an obscure, implicit language, that it is the hardest 
 thing in the world to make them speak out distinctly; and for this reason 
 the right method is to give them voice and accent. And this, in our 
 default, is what the philosophers endeavor to do to our hand, when, hold 
 ing out a kind of vocal looking-glass, they draw sound out of our breast, 
 and instruct us to personate ourselves in the plainest manner." LOUD 
 
 SlIAlTESBURY. 
 
MIND. 181 
 
 Nature does not contain the Personal man. He 
 is the mind with the brute omitted, or, conversely, 
 the animal transfigured and divinized by the Spirit. 
 It is a slow process ; long for the individual, longe- 
 val for the race. Centuries, millenniads elapse, mind 
 meanwhile travailing with man, the birth arrested 
 for the most part, or premature, the translation from 
 germ to genius being supernatural, thought hardly 
 delivered from spine and occiput into face and fore 
 head, the mind uplifted and crowned in personality. 
 
 Pure mind alone is face, 
 
 Brute matter surface all ; 
 As souls immersed in space, 
 
 Ideal rise, or idol fall. 
 
 in. PERSON. 
 
 THE lapsed Personality, or deuce human and divine, 
 has played the prime part in metaphysical theology of 
 times past, as it does still. But rarely has thought 
 freed itself from the notion of duplicity, triplicity, and 
 grounded its faith in the Idea of the One Personal 
 Spirit, as a pure theism, and planted therein a faith and 
 cultus. If we claim this for the Hebrew thought, as it 
 rose to an intuition in the mind of its inspired thinker, 
 it passed away with him ; since Christendom throughout 
 
182 MIND. 
 
 mythologizes, rather than thinks about his attributes ; 
 is divided, subdivided into sects, schools of doctrine ; 
 each immersed so deeply in its special individualism 
 as to be unable to rise to the comprehension of the 
 Personal One. Nor, considering the demands mind 
 makes upon the senses, these inclining always to 
 idolatry, is it surprising that this spiritual theism, 
 seeking its symbols in pure thought, without image 
 graven or conceived, should find any considerable 
 number of followers. Yet a faith less supersensuous 
 and ideal, any school of thought, code of doctrine, 
 creed founded on substance, force, law, tradition, 
 authority, miracle, is a covert superstition, ending 
 logically in atheism, necessity, nihilism, disowning 
 alike personality, free agency. Nature is sufficient for 
 the creature, but person alone for man, without whose 
 immanency and inspirations, man were heartless and 
 worshipless. The Person wanting all is wanting. 
 For where God is disembosomed, spectres rule the 
 chaos within and without.* 
 
 *"The first principle of all things is Living Goodness, armed with 
 Wisdom and all-powerful Love. But if a man s soul be once sunk by evil 
 fate or desert, from the sense of this high and heavenly truth into the cold 
 conceit that the original of all lies either in shuffling chance or in the stark 
 root of unknowing nature and brute necessity, all the subtle cords of 
 reason, without the timely recovery of that divine torch within the hidden 
 spirit of his heart, will never be able to draw him out of that abhorred pit 
 
MIND. 183 
 
 " Make us a god," said man : 
 
 Power first the voice obeyed, 
 And soon a monstrous form 
 
 Its worshippers dismayed ; 
 Uncouth and huge, by nations rude adored, 
 With savage rites and sacrifice abhorred. 
 
 "Make us a god," said man: 
 
 Art next the voice obeyed, 
 Lovely, serene, and grand, 
 
 Uprose the Athenian maid : 
 The perfect statue, Greece with wreathed brows, 
 Adores in festal rites and lyric vows. 
 
 " Make us a god," said man : 
 Religion followed art, 
 
 of atheism and infidelity. So much better is innocency and piety than 
 subtle argument, and sincere devotion than curious dispute. But con 
 templations concerning the dry essence of the Godhead have for the most 
 part been most confusing and unsatisfactory. Far better is it to drink of 
 the blood of the grape than to bite the root of the grape, to smell the rose 
 than to chew the stalk. And blessed be God, the meanest of men are 
 capable of the former, very few successful in the latter; and the less, be 
 cause the reports of those that have busied themselves that way have not 
 only seemed strange to most men, but even repugnant to one another. 
 But we should in charity refer this to the nature of the pigeon s neck than 
 to mistake and contradiction. One and the same object in nature affords 
 many different aspects. And God is infinitely various and simple; 
 like a circle, indifferent whether you suppose it of one uniform line, or an 
 infinite number of angles. Wherefore it is more safe to admit all possible 
 perfections of God than rashly to deny what appears not to us from our 
 particular posture." HENRY MOKE. 
 
184 MIND. 
 
 And answered, c Look within ; 
 
 Find God in thine own heart 
 His noblest image there, and holiest shrine, 
 Silent revere and be thyself divine. " 
 
 rv. CHOICE. 
 
 Heaven hell s pit copes : 
 
 Nor fathoms any sin s abyss, or clambers out, 
 Save by the steps his choice hath delved. 
 
 THE gods descend in the likeness of men, and 
 ascending transfigure the man into their Personal like 
 ness. Descending below himself he debases and dis 
 figures this image ; as by choice he leaps upwards, 
 so by choice he lapses downwards. Yet, while free to 
 choose, he sinks himself never beneath himself abso 
 lutely, his beneath subsisting by his election only. 
 His choices free or fetter, elevate or debase, deify or 
 demonize his humanity. Superior to all forces is 
 the Spirit within, doing or defying his determinations, 
 ever holding him fast to the consequences. Obeying 
 its dictates or disobeying, frees or binds. It has 
 golden chains for the good, for others iron. Love is 
 its soft, yet mighty curb ; freedom its easy yoke ; fate 
 its fetter. 
 
 Nor man in evil willingly doth rest, 
 Nor God in good unwillingly is blest. 
 
MIND. 185 
 
 There is no appeal from the decisions of this High 
 Court of Duty in the breast. The Ought is the Must 
 and the Inevitable. One may misinterpret the voice, 
 may deliberate, disobey the commandment, but cannot 
 escape the consequences of his election. The deed 
 decides. Nor is the Conscience appeased till sooner 
 or later our deserts are pronounced The welcome 
 " well done," or the dread " depart." 
 
 " T is vain to flee till gentle mercy show 
 Her better eye. The further off we go 
 The swing of justice deals the mightier blow." 
 
 Only the repenting consciousness of freedom abused 
 restores the lost holiness, redeems from the guilty 
 lapse the sin that in separating us from the One, 
 revealed the fearful Doubleness within, opening the 
 yawning pit down which we stumbled, to become the 
 prey of the undying worm. 
 
 " Meek love alone doth wash our ills away." 
 
 And with love enough, knowledge were useless. It 
 comes in defect of love. Exhaustless in its sources, 
 love supersedes knowledge, being the proper intellect 
 of spirit and spring of intuition God being very 
 God, because his love absorbs all knowledge and con 
 tains his Godhead. Knowing without loving is 
 decease from love, and lapse from pure intellect into 
 
186 MIND. 
 
 sense. Knowledge is not enough. The more knowl 
 edge, the deeper the depths left unsounded, the more 
 exacting our faith in the certainty of knowing. Our 
 faith feels after its objects, if haply by groping in the 
 darkness of our ignorance we may fathom its depths, 
 and find ourselves in Him who is ever seeking us. 
 " Although no man knoweth the spirit of a man save 
 The Spirit within him, yet is there something in him 
 that not even man s spirit knoweth." 
 
 " WHO placed thee here, did something then infuse 
 Which now can tell thee news. 7 
 
 
III. 
 
 GENESIS. 
 
 "Had man withstood the trial, his descendants would have heen born 
 one from another in the same way that Adam i. e., mankind was, 
 namely, in the image of God ; for that which proceeds from the Eternal 
 has eternal manner of birth."- BEHMEN, 
 
GENESIS. 
 
 I. VESTIGES. 
 
 T) OEHME, the subtilest thinker on Genesis since 
 -LJ Moses, conceives that nature fell from its original 
 oneness by fault of Lucifer before man rose physically 
 from its ruins ; and moreover, that his present ex 
 istence, being the struggle to recover from nature s 
 lapse, is embarrassed with double difficulties by de 
 fection from rectitude on his part. We think it needs 
 no Lucifer other than mankind collectively conspiring, 
 to account for nature s mishaps, or man s, since, as 
 suming man to be nature s ancestor, and nature man s 
 ruins rather, himself were the impediment he seeks 
 to remove ; nature being the child of his choices, 
 corresponding in large or macrocosmically to his 
 intents. Eldest of creatures, the progenitor of all be 
 low him, personally one and imperishable in essence, 
 
190 GENESIS. 
 
 if debased forms appear in nature, these are con 
 sequent on man s degeneracy prior to their genesis. 
 And it is only as he lapses out of his integrity, 
 by debasing his essence, that he impairs his original 
 likeness, and drags it into the prone shapes of the 
 animal kingdom these being the effigies and vestiges 
 of his individualized and shattered personality. Behold 
 these upstarts of his loins, everywhere the mimics 
 jeering at him saucity, or gaily parodying their fallen 
 lord. 
 
 " Most happy he who hath fit place assigned 
 To his beasts, and disafforested his mind ; 
 Can use his horse, goat, wolf, and every beast, 
 And is not ape himself to all the rest." 
 
 It is man alone who conceives and brings forth the 
 beast in him that swerves and dies. Perversion of 
 will by mis-choice precipitates him into serpentine form, 
 duplicated in sex, 
 
 " Parts of that Part which once was all." 
 
 T is but one and the same soul in him, entertaining 
 a dialogue with himself, that is symbolized in the 
 Serpent, Adam, and the woman ; nor needs there 
 fabulous "Paradises Lost or Regained," for setting in 
 relief this serpent symbol of temptation, this Lord or 
 Lucifer in our spiritual Eden : 
 

 GENESIS. 191 
 
 "First state of human kind, 
 "Which one remains while man doth find 
 Joy in his partner s company; 
 When two, alas I adulterate joined, 
 The serpent made the three." 
 
 H. SERPENT SYMBOL. 
 
 BETTER is he who is above temptation, than he 
 who, being tempted, overcomes, since the latter but 
 suppresses the evil inclination stirring in his breast 
 which the former has not. Whoever is tempted 
 has so far sinned as to entertain the tempting lust 
 within, betraying his lapse from singleness or holiness. 
 The virtuous choose, are virtuous by choice ; the 
 holy, being one, deliberate not their volitions an 
 swering spontaneously to their desires. It is the 
 cleft personality, or other within, which seduces the 
 Will, and is the Adversary and Deuce we become 
 individually, and impersonate in the Snake. 
 
 Chaste love s a maid, 
 Though shapen as a man. 
 
 But one were an CEdipus to expound this serpent my 
 thology ; whereby is symbolized the mysteries of gene 
 sis, and of The One rejoining man s parted personality, 
 and thus recreating mankind. Coeval with flesh, the 
 
192 GENESIS. 
 
 symbol appears wherever traces of civilization 
 exist ; a remnant of it in the ancient Phallus 
 worship having come to us disguised in our May 
 day dance. Nor was it confined to carnal knowledge 
 merely. The seipent symbolized divine wisdom, also ; 
 and it was under this acceptation that it became as 
 sociated with those " traditionary teachers of mankind 
 whose genial wisdom entitled them to divine honors." 
 An early Christian sect, called Ophites, worshipped it 
 as the personation of natural knowledge. So the in 
 junction, " Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as 
 doves," becomes the more significant when we learn 
 that seraph in the original means a serpent ; cherub, a 
 dove. And these again symbolize facts in osteological 
 science as connected with the latest theories of the 
 vertebrated cranium,* which view Nature as ophio- 
 morphous a series of spines, crowned, winged, 
 webbed, finned, footed in structure set erect, prone, 
 trailing, as charged with life in higher potency or 
 lower ; man, holding the sceptre of dominion as he 
 maintains his inborn rectitude, or losing his prerogative 
 as lapsed from his integrity hereby debasing his form 
 
 * " Spix, in his Cephalogenesis, aids Oken s theory of the spinal cranium 
 in endowing the artist s symbol of the cherub with all that it seemed to 
 want before that discovery ; namely: with a thorax, abdomen and pelvis, 
 arms, legs, hands and feet." OWEN. 
 
GENESIS. 193 
 
 and parcelling his gifts away in the prone shapes dis 
 tributed throughout nature s kingdoms. Or, again as 
 aspiring for lost supremacy, he uplift and crown his 
 fallen form with forehead, countenance, speech, thus 
 liberating the genius from the slime of its prone 
 periods, and restoring it to rectitude, religion, science, 
 fellowship, the ideal arts. 
 
 "Unless above himself he can 
 Erect himself, how poor a thing is man." 
 
 m. EMBRYONS. 
 
 " The form is in the archetype before it appears in the work, in the divine 
 mind before it exists in the creature." 
 
 As the male impregnates the female, so mind charges 
 matter with form and fecundity ; the spermatic world 
 being life in transmission and body in embryo ; the 
 egg a genesis and seminary of forms, the kingdoms of 
 animated nature sleeping coiled in its yolk, and 
 awaiting the quickening magnetism that ushers them 
 into light. Herein the human embryon unfolds in 
 series the lineaments of all forms in the living 
 hierarchy, to be fixed at last in its microcosm, un 
 reeling therefrom its faculties into filamental organs, 
 spinning so minutely the threads, " that were it phys 
 ically possible to dissolve away all other members of 
 13 
 
194 GENESIS. 
 
 the body, there would still remain the full and perfect 
 figure of a man. And it is this perfect cerebro-spinal 
 axis, this statue-like tissue of filaments, that, physically 
 speaking, is the man." * The mind contains him 
 spiritually, and reveals him physically to himself and 
 his kind. Every creature assists in its own formation, 
 souls being essentially creative and craving form. 
 
 "The creature ever delights in the image of the Creator; 
 And the soul of man will in a manner clasp God to 
 
 herself; 
 Having nothing mortal, she is wholly inebriated of 
 
 God; 
 For she glories in the harmony under which the human 
 
 body exists." 
 
 Throughout the domain of spirit desire creates sub 
 stance wherein all creatures seek conjunction, lodging 
 and nurture. Nor is there anything in nature save 
 desire holding substances together, all things being 
 dissolvable and recombinable in this spiritual men 
 struum. 
 
 *" Thou hast possessed my reins, thou hast covered me in my mother s 
 womb. My substance was not hid from thee when I was made in a secret 
 place, and there curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth : 
 there thine eyes did see my substance yet being imperfect: and in thy 
 Book were all my members written, which in continuance were fashioned 
 when as yet there was none of them." PSALM cxxxix : 13, 15, 16. 
 
GENESIS. 195 
 
 " T is the blossom whence there blows 
 Everything that lives and grows; 
 It doth make the heavens to move 
 And the sun to burn in love : 
 The strong to weak it seeks to yoke, 
 And makes the ivy climb the oak, 
 Under whose shadows lions wild, 
 Softened thereby grow tame and mild. 
 It all medicine doth appease, 
 It burns the fishes in the seas, 
 Not all the skill its wounds can stanch, 
 Not all the sea its thirst can quench: 
 It did make the bloody spear 
 Once a leafy coat to wear, 
 While in his leaves there shrouded lay 
 Sweet birds for love that sing and play; 
 And of all the joyful flame,. 
 Bud and blossom this we name." 
 
 IV. TEMPERAMENT. 
 
 TEMPERAMENT is a fate, oftentimes, from whose 
 jurisdiction its victims hardly escape, but do its bid 
 ding herein, be it murder or martyrdom. Virtues and 
 crimes are mixed in one s cup of nativity, with the 
 lesser or larger margin of choice. Unless of chaste 
 extraction, his regeneration shall be wrought with 
 difficulty through the struggling kingdom of evil into 
 
196 GENESIS. 
 
 the peaceful realm of good. Blood is a destiny. One s 
 genius descends in the stream from long lines of 
 ancestry, from fountains whence rose Adam the first 
 and his Eve. The oldest and most persistent of 
 forces, if once ennobled by virtue and refined by 
 culture, it resists base mixtures long, preserving its 
 purity and power for generations. All gifts descend 
 in the torrent ; all are mingled in the ecstasy, as purity 
 or passion prevail ; genius being the fruit of chaste 
 conjunctions, brute force of adulterous the virgin 
 complexions or the mixed.* 
 
 *Boehme thus classifies and describes the temperaments: 
 "Lapsing out of her innocency, man s soul enters into a strange inn or 
 lodging, wherein he is held sometime captive as in a dungeon, wherein are 
 four chambers or stories, in one of which she is fated to remain, though 
 not without instincts of the upper wards (if her place be the lowest) and 
 hope of finding the keys by which she may ascend into these also. These 
 chambers are the elements of his constitution, and characterized as the 
 four temperaments or complexions, namely : 
 
 I. The melancholic or earthy. 
 
 II. The phlegmatic or aqueous. 
 
 III. The choleric or fiery. 
 
 IV. The sanguine or ethereal. 
 
 I. The splenetic or melancholic partakes of the properties of the earth, 
 being cold, dark, and hungry for the light. It is timid, incredulous, empty, 
 consuming itself in corrosive cares, anxieties and sorrows, being sad when 
 the sun shines, and needs perpetual encouragement. Its color is dark. 
 
 II. The phlegmatic being nourished from the earth s moisture, is in 
 clined to heaviness; is gross, effeminate, dull of apprehension, careless, 
 
GENESIS. 197 
 
 " Our generation moulds our state, 
 
 Its virtues, vices, fix our fate ; 
 
 Nor otherwise experience proves, 
 
 The unseen hands make all the moves, 
 
 If some are great, and some are small, 
 Some climb to good, some from good fortune fall, 
 Not figures these of speech, forefathers sway us all. 
 
 Me from the womb the midnight muse did take, 
 
 She clothed me, nourished, and mine head 
 
 With her own hands she fashioned; 
 
 She did a cov nant with me make, 
 And circumcised my tender soul, and thus she spake : 
 4 Thou of my church shalt be, 
 
 Hate and renounce (said she) 
 Wealth, honour, pleasure, all the world for me. 
 Thou neither great at court, nor in the war, 
 Nor at th exchange shalt be, nor at the wrangling bar, 
 
 indifferent. It has but faint glimpses of the light, and needs much incul 
 cation from without. Its color is brown. 
 
 III. The choleric is of the fiery temper, inclined to violence, wrath, 
 obstinacy, irreverence, ambition. It is impulsive, contentious, aspires for 
 power, and authority. It is greedy of the sun, and glories in its blazing 
 beams. Its color is florid. 
 
 IV. The sanguine, being tempered of ether, and the least imprisoned, is 
 cheerful, gentle, genial, versatile, naturally chaste, insinuating, searching 
 into the secret of things natural and spiritual, and capable of divining the 
 deepest mysteries. It loves the light, and aspires toward the sun. Its 
 complexion is fair. 
 
198 GENESIS. 
 
 Content thyself with the small barren praise, 
 That neglected verse does raise. 
 
 She spake, and all my years to come 
 
 Took their determined doom : 
 Their several ways of life, let others choose, 
 
 Their several pleasures let them use, 
 But I was born for love and for a muse. 
 
 "With fate what boots it to contend? 
 Such I began, such am, and so shall end : 
 The star that did my being frame 
 Was but a lambent flame ; 
 Some light indeed it did dispense, 
 But less of heat and influence. 
 
 No matter, poet, let proud fortune see 
 That thou canst her despise no less than she does thee ; 
 
 Why grieve thyself or blush to be 
 
 As all the inspired tuneful seers, 
 
 And all thy great forefathers were from Shakspeare to 
 thy peers." 
 
 Yet, biassed by temperament as we may be, whether 
 for good or for evil, such measure of freedom is ours, 
 nevertheless, as enables us to free ourselves from its 
 tendencies and temptations. In the breast of each is 
 a liberating angel, at whose touch, when we will it 
 persistently, the doors of our dungeon fly open and 
 loose their prisoner. 
 
IV. 
 METAMORPHOSES 
 
 Generation is not a creation of life, "but a production of things to sense, 
 and making them manifest. Neither is change death, but a hiding of that 
 which was." HERMES TEISMEGISTUS. 
 
METAMORPHOSES. 
 
 L SLEEP. 
 
 T IFE is a current of spiritual forces. In perpetual 
 -* tides, the stream traverses its vessels to vary 
 its pulsations and perspectives of things, receding from 
 forehead and face into cerebellum and spine, to be 
 replenished night by night from these springs of 
 vigor. The Genius trims our lamps while we sleep. 
 It plumbs us by day and levels us by night. Here re 
 cumbent as at nature s navel, her energies flood the 
 spirits with puissance, restoring tone and tension for 
 the coming day s occupations. Then what varying 
 scenes rise to fancy s eye, while the mind lapses out 
 of the globe of thought, the house of the senses, into 
 the palaces of memory, through the gate of dreams ! 
 Under the sway of occult forces we partake of preternat 
 ural insights, having access to sources of information 
 unopened to us in our wakeful hours. Vast systems 
 
202 METAMORPHOSES. 
 
 of sympathies, antedating and extending beyond our 
 mundane experiences, absorb us within their sphere, re 
 lating us to other worlds of life and light ; as if stirred 
 by the nocturnal impulse we climbed the empyrean, still 
 crediting the superstition of our affinities with the starry 
 orbs 
 
 "Eternal fathers of whate er exists below." 
 
 Or, pursuing our peregrinations, we plunge suddenly 
 into the abyss of origins, transformed for the moment 
 into slumbering umbilici, skirting the shores of our 
 nativity; or, ascending spine-wise, traverse the hie 
 rarchy of gifts. How we grope strangely ! Seeking 
 the One amidst the many, we lose ourselves in finding 
 the One we lost. We enter bodies of our bodies, 
 souls of our soul, successively; each organ our 
 prisoner, we in turn the prisoner of each, till by 
 chance the bewildered occupant recover the key to 
 the wards of his apartments,, and forth issues into 
 the haunts of his consciousness, the world of natural 
 things. For never is the sleep so profound, the dream 
 so distracting, as to obliterate all sense of the per 
 sonality, despite these vagaries of the night, these 
 opiates of the senses, memory sometime dispels the 
 oblivious slumber, and recovers for the mind recol 
 lections of its descent and destiny. Some reliques 
 
METAMORPHOSES. 203 
 
 of the ancient consciousness survive, recalling our 
 previous history and experiences.* 
 
 n. REMINISCENCE, 
 "Heaven s exile straying from the orb of light." 
 
 AND but for our surface and distracted lives, 
 lived here for the most part in the senses, we should 
 have never lost the consciousness of our descent 
 into mortality, nor have questioned our resurrection 
 and longevity. But as in descending, all drink of 
 oblivion some more, some less it happens that while 
 all are conscious of life, by defect of memory, our rec 
 ollections are various concerning it ; those discerning 
 most vividly who have drank least of oblivion, they 
 more easily recalling the memory of their past exist 
 ence. Ancients of days, we hardly are persuaded 
 
 *" T is well known that acccording to the senee of antiquity, these two 
 considerations were always included in that one opinion of the soul s im 
 mortality namely ; its pre-existence as well as its post existence. Neither 
 were there ever any of the ancients hefore Christianity, that held the soul s 
 future permanency after death, who did not likewise assert its pre- 
 existence, they clearly perceiving that if it was once granted that the 
 BOU! was generated, it could never be proved but that it might be also cor 
 rupted. And therefore the asserters of its immortality commonly began 
 here first, to prove its pre-existence, proceeding thence afterwards to 
 establish its permanency after death." CUDWORTH. 
 
204 METAMORPHOSES. 
 
 to believe that our souls are no older than our bodies, 
 and to date our nativity from our family registers, as 
 if time and space could chronicle the periods of the 
 immortal mind by its advent into the flesh and de 
 cease out of it. 
 
 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ; 
 The soul that rises with us, our life s star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And cometh from afar ; 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 Nor yet in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 From God who is our home." 
 
 None of us remember when we did not remember, 
 when memory was nought, and ourselves were unborn. 
 Memory is the premise of our sensations, it dates 
 our immortality. Nestling ever in the twilight of our 
 earliest recollections, it cradles our nativity, canopies 
 our hopes, and bears us babes, out of our bodies as 
 into them ; opening vistas alike into our past and 
 coming existence. The thread of our experiences, it 
 cannot be severed by any accidents of our mortality ; 
 time and space, earliest found and last to leave us, 
 fading and falling away as we pass into recollections 
 which these can neither date nor confine the smiles 
 
METAMORPHOSES. 205 
 
 that welcomed, the tears that dismiss us, being of 
 no age, nor place nor time. 
 
 " O love ! thou makest all things even 
 
 In earth and heaven : 
 Finding thy way through prison bars 
 
 Up to the stars : 
 Or true to the Almighty plan 
 That out of dust created man, 
 Thou lookest in a grave, to see 
 
 Thine immortality." 
 
 III. IMMORTALITY. 
 
 IF immortality inhere in objects known by us, these 
 surely are persons ; the ties of kindred being the 
 liveliest, most abiding of any ; our faith in the im 
 possibility of being sundered forever, remaining un 
 shaken to the last, and surviving all changes that 
 our bodies may undergo. 
 
 " Deep love, the godlike in us, still believes 
 Its objects are immortal as itself. " 
 
 T is not our bodies that contain us but our souls. 
 None beholds with bodily eyes the apparition of his 
 person, sees and survives the ghost he provokes. 
 The perturbed spirits alone linger about the tombs 
 
206 METAMORPHOSES. 
 
 dead before they die, dead burying their dead 
 comfortless because these are bereft of bodies, flesh 
 being all of them they ever knew.* 
 
 Moreover, the insatiableness of our desires asserts 
 our personal imperishableness. Yearning for full 
 satisfactions while balked of these perpetually, we still 
 prosecute our search for them, our faith in their attain 
 ment remaining unshaken under every disappointment. 
 Our hope is eternal as ourselves a never ending, still 
 beginning quest of our divinity. Infinite in essence, 
 we crave it in potence. The boundlessness and elastic 
 ity of the mind, its power of self-recovery, uprise from 
 temporary obstructions self-imposed, or from tem 
 perament, are assurances made doubly sure of our 
 soul s infinitude and longevity. So the lives of em 
 pires, of men of genius and sanctity, are grand illus 
 trations of its heroic strife for the largest freedom, 
 the widest sway, of instincts striving within, which 
 these pent confines of time and space can neither sub 
 jugate nor appease. 
 
 *Let us remember that immortality signifies a negative, or not having of 
 mortality, and that a positive term is required by which to express a 
 change, since nature teaches that whatever is, will abide with the being it 
 is, unless forced out of it by something positive. And as it appears that 
 man s soul has these grounds in her which make all visible things to be 
 perishable, it is obvious that his soul is immortal and the cause of mortal 
 ity itself. SIR KENELM DIGBY. 
 
METAMORPHOSES. 207 
 
 "Take this, my child," the father said, 
 " This globe I give thy mind for bread;" 
 Eager we seize the proffered store, 
 The bait devour then ask for more. 
 
 "Everything aspires to its own perfection and is 
 restless till it attain it, as the trembling needle till it 
 find its beloved north. And the knowledge of this is 
 innate as is the desire, else the last had been a tor 
 ment and needless importunity. Nature shoots not at 
 rovers. Even inanimate things, while ignorant of 
 their perfection, are carried towards it by a blind im 
 pulse. But that which conducts them knows. The 
 next order of beings have some sight of it, and man 
 most perfectly till he touch the apple." Our delights 
 suckle us life long, our desires being memories of past 
 satisfactions, and we here but sip pleasures once 
 tasted to satiety. The more exquisite our enjoyments, 
 the more transient ; the more eagerly sought, the 
 more elusive. We cannot come out of our paradise, 
 nor stay in it contentedly, the gates of bliss closing 
 on opening. 
 
 "E en as the amorous needle joys to bend 
 
 To her magnetic friend, 
 Or as the greedy lover s eyeballs fly 
 
 At his fair mistress eye, 
 Eager we kindle life s illumined stuff, 
 Can tire, nor tease, nor kindle it enough." 
 
208 METAMOKPHOSES. 
 
 Still heaven is, our hearts affirm against every dis 
 appointment ; and whether behind or before us, as 
 memory or as hope, tis to be ours, our port and 
 resting place sometime in the stream of ages. 
 
 "All before us lies the way; 
 
 Give the past unto the wind; 
 All before us is the day, 
 Night and darkness are behind. 
 
 Eden with its angels bold, 
 
 Love and flowers and coolest sea, 
 Is less an ancient story told 
 
 Than a glowing prophecy. 
 
 In the spirit s perfect air, 
 In the passions tame and kind, 
 
 Innocence from selfish care, 
 The real Eden we shall find. 
 
 When the soul to sin hath died, 
 True and beautiful and sound, 
 
 Then all earth is sanctified, 
 Upsprings paradise around. 
 
 From the spirit-land, afar 
 All disturbing force shall flee; 
 
 Stir, nor toil, nor hope shall mar 
 Its immortal unity." 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 THE LAYMAN S BREVIARY. A Selection for Ever} 
 Day in the Year. Translated from the German of LEOPOLD SCHEFEB, 
 by Charles T. Brooks. In one square IGmo. volume, bevelled cloth, 
 gilt edges. Price, $2.50. A cheaper edition. Price, $ 1.50. 
 
 : The < Layman s Breviary will adorn drawing-room centre-tables, 
 boudoirs, library nooks; it will be a favorite travelling companion, and 
 be carried on summer excursions to read under trees and on verandas. 
 For every day of the year there are thoughts, counsels, aspirations ma 
 ny of them Oriental in tone, or patriarchal in spirit; there are delineations 
 of nature, pure utterances of faith ; each page contains fresh and earnest 
 expressions of a poetic, believing, humane soul often" clad in exquisite 
 language. It is eminently a household book, and one to be taken up and 
 enjoyed at intervals." Boston Transcript. 
 
 " Each poem is in itself a sermon ; not of dry, theological dogmas, but 
 the love and care of the Infinite, the yearning and outreaching of the hu 
 man to grasp the divine. It is a book not to be lightly read and carelessly 
 tossed aside, but to be studied daily until the lessons it conveys are 
 learned, and its comforting words written on every heart. Of the au 
 thor s religious opinions we know nothing ; what creed he subscribes to 
 we cannot tell ; but we do know that he is a true worshipper of God, and 
 lover of his fellow-men. This book should be on every table ; all house 
 holds should possess it; we cannot too highly recommend it to the notice 
 of all. It has been truly said, that these blooming pictures of Nature, 
 praising the love, the goodness, the wisdom of the Creator and His work, 
 form in truth a poetical book of devotion for the layman whom the dogma 
 does not satisfy a breviary for man. " The Wide World. , 
 
 MY PRISONS. Memoirs of SILVIO PELLICO. With an 
 
 Introduction by Epes Sargent, and embellished with fifty Illustra 
 tions from drawings by Billings. One square 12mo. volume, bevelled 
 cloth, gilt edges. Price, $ 3.50. A cheaper edition. Price, $ 2.00. 
 
 " Some thirty-five years ago the publication of" My Prisons, Memoirs of 
 Silvio Pellico," first appealed to the sympathies of the Italian people. 
 The history of a martyr to freedom is always entertaining, and the pathos 
 and beauty which surround the narrative in question have always kept 
 
 of Austria in the incarceration of Pellico, and the changes which have 
 since occurred in European politics." Chicago Evening Journal. 
 
 si 
 no 
 
 whic _ f , j t 
 
 and that so few years have passed since men of noble birth and fine cul 
 ture were condemned to suffer for years in prison on account of their po 
 litical opinions." Lost on Transcript. 
 
 &3 Matted, post paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, ly th 
 
 Publishers. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 LIVES OF EXEMPLARY WOMEN. 
 
 Messrs. ROBERTS BROS, are publishing a series o-f Lives of Exemplary 
 Women, uniform in size and price. The first volume is 
 
 MEMOIRS AND CORRESPONDENCE OF MADAME 
 RECAMIER. Translated from the French and edited by Miss 
 LUYSTER. With a fine portrait of Madame Recamier. Sixth edition. 
 One handsome 12mo volume. Price $2.00. 
 
 " Tier own contributions to it are exceedingly brief, but her individuality permeates the 
 whole work and gives it unity. She was undoubtedly a woman of genius; but it was in her 
 life alone, in her noble friendships, in her unselfish devotion to all bound to her by any ties, 
 that gave her genius expression, and it is only fair, therefore, that she should attain immor 
 tality riot through the labor of her o\yn spirit, but rather through the praise of those by 
 Whom she was so well beloved." Virginia Vauglian in " The Leader." 
 
 The second volume is 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS OF MADAME SWETCHINE. By 
 COUNT DE FALLOUX. Translated by Miss Preston. Fourth edition. 
 In one volume. 12mo. Price $ 2.00. 
 
 " The Life and Letters of Madame Swetchine, is a companion volume to Mme. Recamier, 
 and both works give us two phases of contemporary Paris life, aud two characters that, 
 with some accidental resemblances, present strong points of contrast. 
 
 " The social influence both women exercised was good, but when we compare the two, 
 Madame Recamier s sinks to a much lower level. She (Madame R.) was gentle and kind, 
 ready to sacrifice herself to any extent to advance the material influence of her friends, hut 
 she was essentially a worldly woman; whereas Madame Swetchine was in the world but 
 not of it. She exerted an immense spiritual as well as intellectual influence on all who 
 approached her, and raised her friends to her own level. Madame Recamier made her asso 
 ciates pleased with themselves, whilst Madame Swetchine taught hers to forget themselves. 
 
 " As a biography, the life of Madame Swetchine is more satisfactory and much better 
 written; that of Madame Recamier is fuller of personal anecdote respecting distinguished 
 persons, and as a book of reference is more valuable. We frequently meet the same people 
 in each, aud iu this respect they serve to illustrate and explain each, other." Providence 
 Journal. 
 
 The third volume is 
 
 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF "WOMEN. By REV. W. R. ALGER. 
 Fourth edition. One volume, 12mo. Price $2.00. 
 
 "Mr. Alger is among our most diligent students and earnest thinkers; and this volume 
 will add to the reputation he has fairly earned as the occupant of quite a prominent place in 
 American literature. He deserves all the popularity he has won; for, always thoughtful, 
 sincere, and excellent of purpose with his pen, he allows no success to seduce him into any 
 content with what he has already accomplished. His Friendships of Women, for many 
 reasons, will have a wide circle of readers, and cannot fail to increase our sense of the 
 worth of human nature, as it enthusiastically delineates some of its most elevated manifes 
 tations. By telling what woman has been, he tells what woman maybe; intellectually a8 
 well as morally, in the beauty of her mind as well as in the ati ectious of her heart, aud the 
 loveliness of her person." Salem Gazette. 
 
 The fourth volume is 
 
 SAINT BEUVE S PORTRAITS OF CELEBRATED 
 
 "WOMEN. 
 MADAME DE SEVTONE. MADAME DE DURAS. 
 
 MADAME DK LA FAYETTE. MADAME DE REMUSAT. 
 
 MADAME DE SOL ZA. MADAME DE KRUDENER. 
 
 MADAME ROLAND. MADAME GU1ZOT. 
 
 MADAME DE STAEL. 
 
 To match " Madame Recamier," " Madame Swetchine," and " The 
 Friendships of Women." In one volume, 12mo. Price $ 2.00. 
 
 jj- Mailed, post-paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, by the 
 Publishers. 
 
 12 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 Jean Ingelow s Writings. 
 
 " Except Mrs. Browning, Jean Ingelow is first among the women whom the 
 World calls poets." The Independent. 
 
 " Miss Ingelow 3 new volume exhibits abundant evidence that time, study, and 
 devotion to her vocation have both elevated and mellowed the powers of the most 
 gifted poetess we possess, now that Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Adelaide 
 Procter sing no more on earth. Lincolnshire has claims to be considered the 
 Arcadia of England at present, having given birth both to Mr. Tennyson and our 
 present Lady Laureate." London Morning Star. 
 
 " We have read and reread, always with a better and softer heart We 
 
 wish everybody loved Jean Ingelow s writings, or, rather, that everybody would 
 read them, for their admiration would follow." Providence Post. 
 
 POEMS. Illustrated Edition, with One Hundred Pictures from 
 Drawings by the first Artists in England. In one quarto vol 
 ume, bound in cloth, bevelled and gilt, price, $ 12.00 ; or in 
 Morocco, price, $18.00. 
 
 "The book is certainly among the most beautiful of the holiday offerings 
 The lovers of the poet will not tolerate even this slightly qualified praise, but 
 pronounce it the most beautiful." 
 
 SONGS OF SEVEN. Illustrated Edition, small quarto, 
 bound in cloth, gilt, price $5.00 ; or in Morocco, price $8.00. 
 "This work is an acknowledged triumph of typographic art, with its delicate 
 creamy page and red-line border." 
 
 POEMS. The first volume. 
 
 A STORY OF DOOM, and Other Poems. 
 
 Both volumes, 16mo, cloth, gilt top, price $3.50; or sep 
 arately, price $ 1.75 each. 
 
 Both volumes, 32mo, Blue and Gold Edition, price $ 3.00 ; 
 or separately, price $ 1 .50 each. 
 
 |^= Mailed to any address, post-paid, on receipt of price, by the 
 Pul> Ushers. 
 
Jean Ingeloufs Writings. 
 
 OTUDIES FOR STORIES. Comprising Five Stories, 
 ^-^ with an Illustration to each Story. In one vol. i6mo. 
 Price, $1.50. 
 
 " Simple in style, warm with human affection, and written in faultless Eng 
 lish, these five stories are studies for the artist, sermons for the thoughtful, and 
 a rare source of delight for all who can find pleasure in really good works of 
 prose fiction. . . . They are prose poems, carefully meditated, and exquisitely 
 touched in by a teacher ready to sympathize with every joy and sorrow." 
 A thenceum. 
 
 TORIES TOLD TO A CHILD. Comprising Fourteen 
 Stories, with an Illustration to each Story. In one voL 
 l6mo. Price, $ 1.75. 
 A cheaper edition, with Five Illustrations. Price, $ 1.25. 
 
 "This is one of the most charming juvenile books ever laid on our table. It 
 is beautifully printed and bound, and profusely illustrated. The stories are 
 very interesting, and breathe a sweet, pure, happy Christian spirit. Jean In- 
 gelow, the noble English poet, second only to Mrs. Browning, bends easily and 
 gracefully from the heights of thought and fine imagination to commune with 
 the minds and hearts of children ; to sympathize with their little joys and sor 
 rows ; to feel for their temptations. She is a safe guide for the little pilgrims ; 
 for her paths, though paths of pleasantness, lead straight upward." Grace 
 Greenwood in " The Little Pilgrim" 
 
 T)OOR MATT; "OR, THE CLOUDED INTELLECT. With an 
 * Illustration. One vol. i8mo. Price, 60 cents. 
 
 " A lovely story, told in most sweet and simple language. There is a deep 
 spiritual significance in the character of the poor half-idiot boy, which should 
 touch the hearts of children of a larger growth. " Grace Greenwood in 
 " The Little Pilgrim." 
 
 A 
 
 SISTER S BYE-HOURS. Comprising Seven Stories. 
 In one vol. i6mo. Price, $ 1.25. 
 
 5lr => Mailed to any address, post-paid, on receipt of the price, by the 
 Publishers, 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
 3 
 
J^= The Books in this List, unless otherwise specified, are bound in 
 Cloth. All of our Publications mailed, post-paid, on receipt of price. 
 
 No. 143 WASHINGTON STREET, Boston, 
 Summer, 1868. 
 
 MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS 
 
 List of Publications. 
 
 SUPERBLY ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS. 
 
 A ROUND OF DAYS. Described in Forty Original 
 Poems by some of our most celebrated poets, and in Seventy 
 Pictures by eminent artists. 
 
 One volume, quarto. Cloth, elegant , , . 9 10.00. 
 " Morocco 15.00. 
 
 THE PARABLES OP OUR LORD. With illustra 
 tions from designs by J. E. MILLAIS, H. A. 
 
 One volume, quarto. Cloth, elegant . ... 8 10.00. 
 
 " Morocco 15.00. 
 
 THE ADVENTURES OP DON QUIXOTE DE 
 LA MANCHA. With one hundred illustrations by A. 
 B. HOUGHTON. 
 
 One volume, small quarto. Cloth, elegant . . . $8.00. 
 " Morocco .... 12.00. 
 
 This is a most beautiful edition, equally well adapted for the library or me 
 drawing-room table. 
 
 SCHILLER S LAY OP THE BELL. Translated 
 by BULWER. The designs by MOIUTZ RETZSCH. 
 
 One volume, oblong quarto. Cloth, elegant . . . $7.50. 
 " Morocco. . . . 12.00. 
 
 GUSTAVE DORE . Two Hundred Sketches, Humorous 
 and Grotesque. By GUSTAVE DORE. 
 
 One volume, quarto. Half cloth . . . Price, S 3.75. 
 "As a grotesque designer he has no living rival." London Athenceum. 
 
 GRISET S GROTESQUES; or, Jokes Drawn on 
 Wood. With Rhymes by TOM HOOD. One hundred 
 quaint designs by ERNEST GRISET. 
 One volume, small quarto. Cloth, bevelled and illuminated. Price, $ 3.75. 
 
 AN OLD PAIRY TALE TOLD ANEW. By 
 
 RICHARD DOYLE and J. R. PLANCHE. 
 
 One volume, small quarto. Cloth, elegant. Price, $ 3.00. 
 1 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 Jean Ingelow s Writings. 
 
 " Except Mrs. Browning, Jean Ingelow is first among the women whom the 
 world calls poets." The Independent. 
 
 " Miss Ingelow s new volume exhibits abundant evidence that time, study, and 
 devotion to her vocation have both elevated and mellowed the powers of the most 
 gifted poetess we possess, now that Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Adelaide 
 Procter sing no more on earth. Lincolnshire has claims to be considered the 
 Arcadia of England at present, having given birth both to Mr. Tennyson and our 
 present Lady Laureate." London Morning Star. 
 
 "We have read and reread, always with a better and softer heart We 
 
 wish everybody loved Jean Ingelow s writings, or, rather, that everybody would 
 read them, for their admiration would follow." Providence Post. 
 
 POEMS. Illustrated Edition, with One Huudred Pictures from 
 Drawings by the first Artists in England. In one quarto vol 
 ume, bound in cloth, bevelled and gilt, price, $ 12.00 ; or in 
 Morocco, price, $ 18.00. 
 
 "The book is certainly among the most beautiful of the holiday offerings 
 The lovers of the poet will not tolerate even this slightly qualified praise, but 
 pronounce it the most beautiful." 
 
 SONGS OF SEVEN. Illustrated Edition, small quarto, 
 bound in cloth, gilt, price $5.00 ; or in Morocco, price $8.00. 
 
 " This work is an acknowledged triumph of typographic art, with its delicate 
 creamy page and red-line border." 
 
 POEMS. The first volume. 
 
 A STORY OF DOOM, and Other Poems. 
 
 Both .volumes, 16mo, cloth, gilt top, price $3.50; or sep 
 arately, price $ 1.75 each. 
 
 Both volumes, 32mo, Blue and Gold Edition, price $ 3.00 j 
 or separately, price $ 1 .50 each. 
 
 Ug^^ Mailed to any address, post-paid, on receipt of price, by tht 
 Publishers. 
 
 2 
 
Jean Ingelow s Writings. 
 
 STUDIES FOR STORIES. Comprising Five Stories, 
 with an Illustration to each Story. In one vol. i6mo. 
 Price, $ 1.50. 
 
 " Simple in style, warm with human affection, and written in faultless Eng 
 lish, these five stories are studies for the artist, sermons for the thoughtful, and 
 a rare source of delight for all who can find pleasure in really good works of 
 
 prose fiction They are prose poems, carefully meditated, and exquisitely 
 
 touched in by a teacher ready to sympathize with every joy and sorrow." - 
 A thenceum, 
 
 STORIES TOLD TO A CHILD. Comprising Fourteen 
 Stories, with an Illustration to each Story. In one vol. 
 l6mo. Price, $ 1.75. 
 A cheaper edition, with Five Illustrations. Price, $ 1.25. 
 
 " This is one of the most charming juvenile books ever laid on our table. It 
 is beautifully printed and bound, and profusely illustrated. The stories are 
 very interesting, and breathe a sweet, pure, happy Christian spirit. Jean In- 
 gelow, the noble English poet, second only to Mrs. Browning, bends easily and 
 gracefully from the heights of thought and fine imagination to commune with 
 the minds and hearts of children ; to sympathize with their little joys and sor 
 rows ; to feel for their temptations. She is a safe guide for the little pilgrims ; 
 for her paths, though paths of pleasantness, lead straight upward." Grace 
 Greenwood in " The Little Pilgrim" 
 
 POOR MATT ; OR, THE CLOUDED INTELLECT. With an 
 Illustration. One vol. i8mo. Price, 60 cents. 
 
 " A lovely story, told in most sweet and simple language. There is a deep 
 spiritual significance in the character of the poor half-idiot boy, which should 
 touch the hearts of children of a larger growth. " Grace Greenwood in 
 " The Little Pilgn,*." 
 
 A 
 
 SISTER S BYE-HOURS. Comprising Seven Stories. 
 In one vol. i6mo. Price, $ 1.25. 
 
 ^^ Mailed to any address, post-paid, on receipt of the price, by the 
 
 Publishers, ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 
 
 3 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 ECCE HOMO. A Survey of the Life and Work of Jesus 
 
 Christ, in one volume, 16mo. Price, $ 1.50. 
 
 " It will do a service among a very large class of readers, such as are assigned 
 to hardly more thau two or three volumes iu a century." Rev. George E. Ellis. 
 
 "This remarkable book is one of those which permanently influence public 
 opinion. The author has a right to claim deference from those who think deepest 
 and know most, when he pleads before them that not Philosophy can save and 
 reclaim the world, buc Faith in a Divine Person who is worthy of it, allegiance 
 to a Divine Society which He founded, and union of hearts iu the object for 
 which He created it." Tlie Guardian. 
 
 ECCE DEUS : Essays on the Life and Doctrine of Jesus 
 Christ. With Controversial Notes on Ecce Homo. In one 
 volume, to match Ecce Homo. Price, $ 1.50. 
 
 " We believe that many of the most grateful and consenting readers of Ecce 
 Homo will also be the most admiring readers of Ecce Deus. Iu the main tenor 
 
 of both the volumes there is nothing to our minds inconsistent There are 
 
 large numbers of liberal minds to which the new book will be a most welcome 
 and helpful volume." Boston Transcript. 
 
 " Ecce Deus leaves Ecce Homo far behind, and casts a shade over it, as it 
 rises to the higher and grander theme of the Incarnation. We are sorry we 
 cannot enter into the merits of this work, but we advise our readers to peruse it 
 along with Ecce Homo, and they will be satisfied of the important part its 
 author plays as a vindicator of the Truth as it is in Jesus. " Scottish 
 American Journal. 
 
 THE SEER; or, Common Places Refreshed. By 
 
 LEIGH HUNT. In two volumes, 16 mo. Price, $3.00. 
 
 " A collection of delicious essays, thoroughly imbued with the characteristics 
 of the writer s genius and manner, and on topics especially calculated to bring 
 out all the charms of his genial spirit and develop all the niceties of his fluent 
 diction, and worthy of being domesticated among those choice family books which 
 while away leisure hours with agreeable thoughts and fancies." Boston 
 Transcript. 
 
 " The Seer is one of the best specimens of the modern essayist s dealing with 
 the minor pleasures and domestic philosophy of life, and is a capital antidote for 
 the too exciting books of the hour , it lures us to musing, and what Hazlitt calls 
 reposing on our sensations. " H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 THE LIFE AND DEATH OF JASON. A Poem. 
 By WILLIAM MORRIS. One volume, 16mo. Price, $1.50. 
 
 " In all the noble roll of our poets there has been since Chaucer no second 
 teller of tales, no second rhapsode comparable to the first, till the advent of this 
 one." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " A poem remarkable for originality, freshness, and vividness of description, 
 and beauty and force of narration." London Review. 
 
 " In his style he exercises upon us the spells of the accomplished story-teller-" 
 Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 JiblP Mailed, post-paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, by the 
 Publishers. 
 
 4 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 CHRISTINA ROSSETTI S POEMS. With Four De- 
 signs by 1). G. ROSSETTI. One elegant 16mo volume. Price, 
 
 $1.75. 
 "Two of the best of the younger poets of this generation are women Jean 
 
 Ingelow and Christina Rossetti The woman who could write the ^ngs of 
 
 Seven, and The High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnslure, ueed not look to fu 
 ture successes for applause ; and there are many poems in this beautiful volume 
 by Miss llossetti which entitle her to a high place among the poets of the day. - 
 John U. Saxe. , 
 
 THE BOOK OP THE SONNET. By LEIGH HUNT 
 and S ADAMS LEE. A Posthumous Work by Hunt, now first 
 published from the original MSS. In two beautiful post 8vo 
 volumes. Price, $ 5.00. 
 
 "The genuine aroma of literature abounds in every page of Leigh Hunt s de 
 licious Essay on the Sonnet. His mind shows itself imbued with a rich knowl 
 edge of his subject, and this, illumined by the evidence of a thorough and unaf 
 fected liking for it, makes him irresistible." London Saturday Review. 
 
 ROBERT BUCHANAN S POEMS. In one volume. 
 
 16mo. Cloth, gilt top. Price, $ 1.75. 
 
 "The volume is the work of a born poet. Let any one read the first and last 
 poems in the collection, and he will not fail to read every line which intervenes 
 between them. l Langley Lane is one of the tenderest, sweetest, most musical, 
 and most original love-poems in the language." Boston Transcript. 
 
 CHARLES LAMB. A Memoir. By BARRY CORNWALL. 
 One volume, 16mo, with Profile Portrait of Lamb. Price, 
 
 $1.75. 
 
 " We advise all young readers to approach Elia and Lamb s Life and Letters 
 
 through this soft and exquisite prelude of Barry Cornwall s Closing the 
 
 book,and remembering that its writer is seventy-seven years old, and the sole 
 survivor of those evenings which are as familiar to the lovers of Elia as if they 
 had been themselves present, it lingers in the memory like a strain of the sad 
 dest and sweetest music." Harper s Monthly. 
 
 THE GENIUS OP SOLITUDE. By REV. WM. R. 
 ALGER, Author of " The Doctrine of a Future Life." One 
 volume, 12mo. Price, $2.00. 
 
 "Mr. Alger s Genius of Solitude is the work of a scholar, of a man who has 
 written critically and comprehensively on Oriental poetry, and on a branch of 
 speculative psychology. It is, moreover, a book intended to have a practical 
 effect to teach men to dislike what is bad, and to admire and love what is 
 good." London Chronicle. 
 
 HSF" Mailed, post -paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, by tht 
 
 Publishers. 
 
 5 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 MEMOIRS AND CORRESPONDENCE OP 
 MADAME RECAMIER. Translated and Edited by 
 Miss LUYSTER. One Volume, 12mo, with a finely engraved 
 Portrait. Price, $2.00. 
 
 " The diversified contents of this volume can hardly fail to gain for it a wide 
 perusal. It has the interest, in a greater or less degree, of history and romance ; 
 of truth stranger than tiction ; of personal sketches , of the curious phases of an 
 exceptional social life ; of singular admixtures of piety and folly, of greatness and 
 profligacy, idelity and intrigue, all mingling or revealed in connection with the 
 prolonged career of one who was, in certain respects, the most remarkable woman 
 of her time." Boston Transcript. 
 
 A PAINTER S CAMP. Book I. : & England. Book IT. : 
 In Scotland. Book III. : In France. By PHILIP GILBERT 
 HAMKKTOX. In one volume. 16mo. Pictorial title. Price, 
 $1.50. 
 
 " In the pursuit of his profession as a landscape-painter, the author has not 
 hesitated to plunge into the remote and unattractive nooks and corners of nature, 
 gathering a rich store of materials for his pencil, arid describing his whimsical 
 experiences with a gayety and unction in perfect keeping with the subject. His 
 account of the practical methods by which he conquered the difficulties of the 
 position is instructive in the extreme, while the anecdotes and adventures which 
 he relates with such exuberant fun make his book one of the most entertaining of 
 the season." New York Tribune. 
 
 CURIOUS MYTHS OP THE MIDDLE AGES. 
 
 By S. BARING-GOULD. In one volume, 16mo. With Illus 
 trations. Price, $ 1.50. 
 
 . " A singular book, and a very interesting one to those who are fond of explor 
 ing the dark corners of literature and life, is Curious Myths of The Middle Ages, 
 by S. Baring-Gould, M. A. It treats of The Wandering Jew ; Prester John ; The 
 Divining Rod ; The Seven Sleepers of Ephesus 5 William Tell ; The Dog Gellert ; 
 Tailed Men ; Antichrist and Pope Joan ; The Man in the Moon ; The Mountain 
 of Venus , Fatality of Numbers ; The Terrestrial Paradise ; bringing together 
 many quaint and fanciful legends, exposing the fallacy of some popular beliefs, 
 and suggesting topics for thought and investigation as to various psychological 
 problems." Springfield Republican. 
 
 SUNSHINE AND SHOWERS : Their Influences 
 throughout Creation. A Compendium of Popular Meteorology. 
 By ANDREW STEINMITZ, ESQ. The English Edition. One 
 volume, post 8vo. With Illustrations. Price, $ 3.00. 
 " We have received from Roberts Brothers a delightful Volume, published by 
 Reeve & Co., London, entitled Sunshine and Showers : their Influences through 
 out Creation : by Andrew Steinmitz. It is a compendium of popular meteo 
 rology. As a large portion of the conversation of human beings relates to the 
 weather, we should judge that a book which enables one to talk intelligently about 
 it would have an extensive circulation. It treats, in an intelligible way, of the 
 arrangement of the atmosphere, the moisture in the air, the characteristics arid 
 meteorology of the seasons, the method of interpreting the barometer and the 
 thermometer, the prediction of the weather and the explanation of popular weather 
 prognostics, the curiosities of lightning, artificial rain, &e. , and it answers the 
 questions, What Becomes of the Sunshine ? and What Becomes of the 
 Showers? The science relating to all topics connected with the weather seems 
 to have been mastered by the writer, and his volume is therefore full of surprising 
 facts and ingenious theories." Boston Transcript. 
 
 ^iT" Milled, post-paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, by the 
 Publishers. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers* Publications. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE. The Globe Edition. With all the Poems 
 and a Glossary. In one volume, 1 61110. Price, $2.00. 
 
 For a one-volume edition, this is the most attractive now before the public. 
 The typography is beautifully clear, the paper fine and good, and the whole well 
 calculated to suit the student or the general reader 
 
 THE EARTHLY PARADISE. A Poem. Comprising, 
 Atalanta s Race, The Man born to be King, The Doom of 
 King Acrisius, The Proud King, Story of Cupid and Psyche, 
 The Writing on the Image, The Love of Alcestis, The Lady 
 of the Land, The Son of Croesus, Watching of the Falcon, 
 Pygmalion and the Image, Ogier the Dane. By WILLIAM 
 MORRIS, Author of "Jason." One volume, crown 8vo. 
 Price, $3.00. 
 
 THE POETRY OF THE ORIENT. By WILLIAM 
 
 UOUNSEVILLE ALGER. In one volume, 16mo. Price, $1.75. 
 
 This is a complete Introduction to Oriental Poetry in all its families and de 
 partments ; from the great epics of India, Persia, and Arabia, to their innu 
 merable varieties of lyrical, descriptive, and aphoristic verse. It gives a critical 
 account of the chief Eastern authors and their works, and illustrates them by 
 hundreds of specimens. It is the only work of the kind in our language ; and 
 as such, no less than from its intrinsic merits, it possesses a unique value and 
 charm. 
 
 POEMS. By DAVID GRAY. With an Introductory Notice by 
 Lord Houghton, Memoir of the Author, and Final Memorials. 
 One volume, 16mo. Price, $ 1 50. 
 
 " His heart and life are mirrored in these poems, and how pathetic is the pic 
 ture ! How the ardent soul, yearning for fame and life, shrinks and shudders 
 as it sees death steadily approaching ; how it clings to the dear dreams of youth ; 
 how earnestly it strives for resignation and faith, and seeks to make the life 
 beyond the grave as real and tangible as this, which the failing frame feels in its 
 veins ! To this identity of the poems with the poet, to this clear showing of t 
 inner man; the Look before us owes, perhaps, its deepest and most touching 
 charms." Boston Daily Advertiser. 
 
 H^= Mailed, post-paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, by the 
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Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 A THOUSAND MILES IN THE ROB ROY 
 CANOE, or Rivers and Lakes of Europe. By JOHN MAC- 
 GREGOR, M. A. Fifth Edition. With a Map and numerous 
 Illustrations. One volume, 16rao. Price, $ 2.50. 
 
 THE ROB ROY ON THE BALTIC; The Narra- 
 tive of the Rob Roy Canoe, on Lakes and Rivers of Sweden, 
 Denmark, Norway, and on the Baltic and North Seas. By 
 JOHN MACGREGOR, Trin. Coll., Cambridge; Author of "A 
 Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe." With numerous 
 Illustrations. One volume, 16mo. Price, $2.50. 
 
 THE VOYAGE ALONE IN THE YAWL "ROB 
 ROY," from London to Paris, and back by Havre, the Isle 
 of Wight, South Coast, &c., &c. By JOHN MACGREGOR, M. A. 
 One volume, 16mo. Price, $ 2.50. 
 
 DRAMAS AND POEMS. By BULWER LYTTON. Con 
 taining " The Lady of Lyons," " Richelieu," and " Money," 
 and Minor Poems. With a fine Portrait on Steel. One vol 
 ume, 32mo. Blue and Gold. Price, $ 1.25. 
 
 "No living English writer is more read on the continent of Bui-ope than Bul- 
 wer. His works have been translated iuto nearly all the living languages of 
 Europe." New American Cyclopedia. 
 
 POEMS. By CHARLES SWAIN. With a fine Portrait from a 
 recent photograph. One volume, 32mo. Blue and Gold. 
 Price, $1.25. 
 
 " Many of his songs have been wafted by their own aerial sweetness across the 
 sea , and his felicitous description of Scott s funeral (Dryburgh Abbey), attended 
 by a procession of the romancer s immortal characters, is too graphic a tribute 
 to genius not to be recalled with delight." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 HUDIBRAS. A Poem. By SAMUEL BUTLER. With 
 Notes, a Life of the Author, and Illustrations. In one vol 
 ume, 32mo. Price, $1.25.- 
 " The choicest of all editions for the reader or student." 
 
 JglF" Mailed, post-paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, by the 
 
 Publishers. 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 MELANCHOLY ANATOMIZED ; showing its Causes, 
 Consequences, and Cure. With Anecdotic Illustrations. 
 Chiefly founded on Burton s Anatomy of Melancholy. In 
 one volume, 16mo. Price, $ 1.75. 
 
 THE ESSAYS OP ABRAHAM COWLEY. With 
 Life, Notes, and Illustrations, by DR. HDRD and others. One 
 volume, 18mo. Price, $1.25. 
 
 THE MODEL LETTER- WRITER, Containing Let 
 ters on Business, Friendship, Love, etc., to which are added 
 Le<n\l Forms, useful to every one. In one volume, 32mo. 
 Price, 50 cents. 
 
 A POCKET ENGLISH DICTIONARY. By DR. 
 
 JOHNSON. One volume, 32mo. Price, 30 cents. 
 
 LIFE AND LETTERS OP MADAME SWET- 
 CHINE. By COUNT DE FALLOUX, of the French Acade 
 my. Translated by H. W. PRESTON, with an Introduction. 
 In one volume. 12mo. Price, $2.00. 
 
 Madame Swetchine was a friend and cotemporary of Madame Recamier, and 
 this is intended as a companion volume to that delightful book, being the sec 
 ond volume of Messrs. Roberts Brothers Library of Exemplary Women. 
 
 THE LAYMAN S BREVIARY. A Selection for every 
 Day in the Year. Translated from the German of Leopold 
 Schefer, by C. T. BROOKS. In one square 16mo volume. 
 Bevelled cloth, gilt edges. Price, $ 2.50. 
 
 MY PRISONS. By SILVIO PELLICO. A new edition, with 
 many beautiful Illustrations. One volume, 16mo. Bevelled 
 cloth, gilt edge. Price, $ 3.50. 
 
 THE FRIENDSHIPS OP WOMEN. By WILLIAM 
 
 ROUNSEVILLE ALGER, Author of " The Genius of Solitude.^ 
 In one volume, 12mo, to match " Madame Re camicr." 
 Price, $2.00. 
 
 m~ Mailed, post-paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, by the 
 Pubtishers. 
 
 9 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 THE GREAT RELIGIOUS BOOKS OF THE DAY. 
 
 ECCE HOMO. 
 ECCE DEUS. 
 
 Although it is now two years since the publication of " Ecce Homo," and one 
 year since " Ecce Deus " appeared, the sale of these extraordinary and remarkable 
 books continues quite as large as ever. Some of the ablest and most cultivated 
 minds in the world have been devoted to a critical analysis of them. 
 
 The foremost man in Kngland, the Right Honorable \V. E. Gladstone, has just 
 published a book devoted entirely to a review of u Ecce Homo," in which he uses 
 the following language : 
 
 " To me it appears that each page of the book breathes out, as it proceeds, what 
 we may call an air, which grows musical by degrees, and which, becoming more 
 distinct even as it swells, takes form, as in due time we find, in the articulate con 
 clusion, Surely, this is the Son of God ; surely, this is the King of Heaven. " 
 
 Of " Ecce Deus," whicu may be considered the complement of " Ecce Homo," 
 there are almost as many admirers, the sale of both books being nearly alike. 
 
 Both volumes bound uniformly. Sold separately. Price of each, $1.50. 
 
 Prof. Ingraham s Works. 
 
 THE PRINCE OF THE HOUSE OF DAVID; or, Three 
 Years in the Holy City. 
 
 THE PILLAR OF FIRE ; or, Israel in Bondage. 
 
 THE THRONE OF DAVID; from the Consecration of the Shepherd 
 
 of Bethlehem to the Rebellion of Prince Absalom. 
 
 The extraordinary interest evinced in these books, from the date of their pub 
 lication to the present time, has in no wise abated. The demand for them is still 
 as large as ever. 
 
 In three volumes, 12mo, cloth, gilt, with illustrations. Sold separately. Price 
 of each, $2.00. 
 
 The Heaven Series. 
 
 HEAVEN OUR HOME. We have no Saviour but Jesus, and no Home 
 
 but Heaven. 
 
 MEET FOR HEAVEN. A State of Grace upon Earth the only Prepa 
 ration for a State of Glory in Heaven. 
 LIFE IN HEAVEN. There Faith is changed into Sight, and Hope is 
 
 passed into Blissful Fruition. 
 
 From Rev. Samuel L. Tuttle, Assistant Secretary of the American Bible Society. 
 " I wish that every Christian person could have the perusal of these writings. 
 I can never be sufficiently thankful to him who wrote them for the service that he 
 has rendered to me and all others. They have given form and substance to every 
 thing revealed in Vie Scriptures respecting our heavenly home of love, and they 
 have done not a little to invest it with the most powerful attractions to my heart. 
 Since I have enjoyed the privilege of following the thought of their author, I have 
 felt that there was a reality in all these things which I have never felt before ; and 
 I find myself often thanking God for putting it into the heart of a poor worm of 
 the dust to spread such glorious representations before our race, all of whom 
 stand in need of such a rest." 
 
 In three volumes, 16mo. Sold separately. Price of each, $1 25. 
 Mailed, post-paid, to any address, on receipt of the price by the publishers. 
 10 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 JUVENILES. 
 
 SWEET COUNSEL. A Book for Girls. By SARAH 
 TYTLER. 16mo. $2.25. 
 
 THE PIGEON PIE. A Tale of Roundhead Times. By 
 Miss YONGE. Illustrated. 16mo. $1.25. 
 
 HELEN AND HER COUSINS; or, Two Months at 
 Ashfield Rectory. Illustrated. 18mo. 50 cents. 
 
 THE TANNER BOY. A Life of General Grant. Illus 
 trated. 16mo. $1.50. 
 
 GASCOYNE ; The Sandal-Wood Trader. By BALLANTYNE. 
 
 Illustrated. 16mo. $ .50. 
 
 THE TIGER PRINCE : or, Adventures in the Wilds of 
 Abyssinia. By DALTON. Illustrated. 16mo. $1.50. 
 
 THE PRIVATEERSMAN. Adventures by Sea and 
 Land. By CAPTAIN MARK YATT. Illustrated. 16mo. $1.50. 
 
 SANDFORD AND MERTON. By THOMAS DAY. 
 Illustrated. Square 16mo. $1.25. 
 
 POPULAR FAIRY TALES. Containing the choicest 
 and best known Fairy Stories. Illustrated. 2 vols., square 
 16mo. Each, $1.25. 
 
 PAUL PRESTON S VOYAGES, Travels, and Re- 
 markable Adventures. Illustrated. Square IGmo. $1.25. 
 
 FIRESIDE TALES. In Prose and Verse. By MARY 
 HOWITT. Illustrated. l.Gmo. 75 cents. 
 
 THE SCOTTISH ORPHANS ; and Arthur Monteith. 
 By MRS. BLACKFORD. Illustrated. 16mo. 75 cents. 
 
 5^=- Mailed, post-paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, by the 
 Publishers. 
 
 11 
 
Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 
 
 LIVES OF EXEMPLARY WOMEN. 
 
 Messrs. ROBERTS BROS, are publishing a series of Lives of Exemplary 
 
 Women, uniform in size and price. The first volume is 
 MEMOIRS AND CORRESPONDENCE OF MADAME 
 RECAMIER. Translated from the French and edited by Miss 
 LUYSTER. With a fine portrait of Madame Recamier. Sixth edition. 
 One handsome 12mo volume. Price $ 2.00. 
 
 Her own contributions to it are exceedingly brief, but her individuality permeates the 
 whole work and gives it unity. She was undoubtedly a woman of genius; but it was in her 
 life alone, in her noble friendships, in her unselfish devotion to all bound to her by any ties, 
 that gave her genius expression, and it is only fair, therefore, that she should attain immor 
 tality not through the labor of her own spirit, but rather through the praise of those by 
 whom she was so well beloved." Virginia Vaughan in " The Leacler." 
 
 The second volume is 
 
 "LIFE AND LETTERS OF MADAME SWETCHINE. By 
 COUNT DE FALLOUX. Translated by Miss Preston. Fourth edition. 
 In one volume. 12mo. Price $ 2.00. 
 
 " The Life and Letters of Madame Swetchine, is a companion volume to Mme. Recamier, 
 and both works give us two phases of contemporary Paris life, aud two characters that, 
 with some accidental resemblances, present strong points of contrast. 
 
 " The social influence both women exercised was good, but when we compare the two, 
 Madame Recamier s sinks to a much lower level. She (Madame RJ was gentle and kind, 
 ready to sacrifice herself to any extent to advance the material influence of her friends, but 
 she was essentially a worldly woman; whereas Madame Swetehine was in the world but 
 not of it. She exerted an immense spiritual as well as intellectual influence on all who 
 approached her, and raised her friends to her own level. Madame Recamier made her asso 
 ciates pleased with themselves, whilst Madame Swetchine taught hers to forget themselves. 
 
 " As a biography, the life of Madame Swetchine is more satisfactory and much better 
 written; that of Madame Ilecamier is fuller of personal anecdote respecting distinguished 
 persons, and as a book of reference is more valuable. We frequently meet the same people 
 in each, and iu this respect they serve to illustrate and explain each other." Providence 
 Journal. 
 
 The third volume is 
 
 THE FRIENDSHIPS OF "WOMEN. By REV. W. R. ALGER. 
 Fourth edition. One volume, 12mo. Price $2.00. 
 
 "Mr. Alger is among our most diligent students and earnest thinkers; and this volume 
 will add to the reputation he has fairly earned as the occupant of quite a prominent place in 
 American literature. lie deserves all the popularity he has won ; for, always tho_ughtful, 
 sincere, and excellent of purpose with his pen, he allows no success to seduce him into any 
 content with what he has already accomplished. His Friendships of Women, for many 
 reasons, will have a wide circle of readers, and cannot fail to increase our sense of the 
 worth of human nature, as it enthusiastically delineates some of its most elevated manifes 
 tations. By telling what woman has been, he tells what woman may he; intellectually as 
 well as morally, in the beauty of her mind as well as in the affections of her heart, and the 
 loveliness of her person." Salem Gazette. 
 
 The fourth volume is 
 
 SAINT BETJVE S PORTRAITS OF CELEBRATED 
 
 WOMEN. 
 
 MADAME DE SEVIONE. MADAME DE DURAS. 
 
 MADAME DE LA FAYETTE. MADAME DE REMUS AT. 
 
 MADAME DE SOUZA. MADAME DE KRUDENER. 
 
 MADAME ROLAND. MADAME GUIZOT. 
 
 MADAME DE STAEL. 
 
 To match " Madame Recamier," " Madame Swetchine," and " The 
 Friendships of Women." In one volume, 12mo. Price $2.00. 
 
 jj- Mailed, post-paid, to any address, on receipt of the price, by the 
 12 
 
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