l^illtam Eascoc Cl)aper 
 
 THE COLLAPSE OF SUPERMAN. 
 
 GERMANY VS. CIVILIZATION. 
 
 THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF JOHN HAY. 
 2 vols. Illustrated. 
 
 LIFE AND TIMES OF CAVOUR. 2 vols. 
 Illustrated 
 
 ITALICA : Studies in Italian Life and Letters. 
 
 A SHORT HISTORY OF VENICE. 
 
 THE DAWN OF ITALIAN INDEPENDENCE: 
 Italy from the Congress of Vienna, 1814, to the 
 Fall of Venice, 1S40. In the series on Conti- 
 nental History. With maps. 2 vols. 
 
 THRONE-MAKERS. Papers on Bismarck, Na- 
 poleon III., Kossuth, Garibaldi, etc. 
 
 POEMS, NEV/ AND OLD. 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 Boston and New York
 
 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 (Cbc Hibcrisitie prcitfsl CambribQe
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1899, BY WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 CT 
 
 T33t. 
 
 TO 
 
 DR. MORRIS LONGSTRETH 
 
 IN MEDICINE, ORIGINAL AND WISE 
 
 IN FRIENDSHIP, STEADFAST 
 
 o« 
 
 31945
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Since 1789 every European people has been 
 busy making a throne, or seat of government and 
 authority, from which its ruler might preside. 
 These thrones have been of many patterns, to 
 correspond to the diversity in tastes of races, 
 parties, and times. Often, the business of destroy- 
 ing seems to have left no leisure for building. In 
 England alone have men learned how to remodel 
 a throne without disturbing its occupant ; as we 
 in America raise or move large houses without in- 
 terrupting the daily life of the families who dwell 
 in them. 
 
 To portray the personality of some of the con- 
 spicuous Throne - Makers of the century is the 
 purpose of the following studies. I have wished 
 to show just enough of the condition of the coun- 
 tries under review to enable the reader to under- 
 stand what Bismarck, or Napoleon III, or Kossuth, 
 or GariVjakli, achieved. I have been brief, and 
 yet I trust that this method has afforded scope for 
 exhibitinjr that influence of the individual on the
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 multitude which — however our partial science 
 may try to belittle it — was never more strikingly 
 illustrated than by such careers as these in our 
 own time. 
 
 The group of Portraits which follow require 
 no special introduction. In the "Tintoret" and 
 " Giordano Bruno " I have brought together as 
 compactly as possible, for the convenience of Eng- 
 lish readers, what little is known about these two 
 men. Berti's work on Bruno, from which I have 
 drawn largely, deserves a wider recognition than 
 it has received outside of Italy ; whoever reads it 
 will regret that that eminent scholar was prevented 
 from completing his volume on Bruno's philosophy. 
 The sketch of Bryant was written in 1894, that of 
 Carlyle in 1895, on the occasion of their centen- 
 aries. 
 
 My thanks are due to the proprietors of The 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, The Forum, and The American 
 
 Meview of Reviews for permission to reprint such 
 
 of the following articles as originally appeared in 
 
 those periodicals. 
 
 W. R. T. 
 
 8 Berkeley Street, Cambridge, 
 December 8, 1898.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 THRONE-MAKERS : '*" 
 
 BlSMAECK '^ 
 
 Napoleon III 44 
 
 Kossuth ' • • .79 
 
 Garibaldi 115 
 
 PORTRAITS: 
 
 Caklylk 163 
 
 TlNTOKET 193 
 
 Giordano Bbuno 252 
 
 Bryant 309
 
 THRONE-MAKERS
 
 BISMARCK 
 
 One by one the nations of the world come to 
 their own, have free play for their faculties, ex- 
 press themselves, and eventually pass onward into 
 silence. Our age has beheld the elevation of 
 Prussia. Well may we ask, " What has been her 
 message ? "What the path by which she climbed 
 into preeminence ? " That she would reach the 
 summit, the work of Frederick the Great in the 
 last century, and of Stein at the beginning of this, 
 portended. It has been Bismarck's mission to 
 amplify and complete their task. Through him 
 Prussia has come to her own. What, then, does 
 she express ? 
 
 The Prussians have excelled even the Romans 
 in the art of turning men into machines. Set a 
 Yankee down before a heap of coal and another 
 of iron, and he will not rest until he has changed 
 them into an implement to save the labor of many 
 hands ; the Prussian takes flesh and blood, and 
 the will-power latent therein, and converts them 
 into a machine. Such soldiers, such government 
 clerks, such administrators, have never been manu- 
 factured elsewhere. Methodical, punctilious, thor-
 
 4 ' ' ' ■ ■' ' TKEONE-MAKERS 
 
 ough, are those officers and officials. The govern- 
 ment which makes them relies not on sudden 
 spurts, but on the cumulative force of habit. It 
 substitutes rule for whim ; it suppresses individual 
 spontaneity, unless this can be transformed into 
 energy for the great machine to use. That Prus- 
 sian system takes a turnip-fed peasant, and in a 
 few months makes of him a military weapon, the 
 length of whose stride is prescribed in centimetres 
 — a machine which presents arms to a passing 
 lieutenant with as much gravity and precision as 
 if the fate of Prussia hinged on that special act. 
 It takes the average tradesman's son, puts him 
 into the educational mill, and brings him out a 
 professor, — equipped even to the spectacles, — 
 a nonpareil of knowledge, who fastens on some 
 subject, great or small, timely or remote, with the 
 dispassionate persistence of a leech; and who, 
 after many years, revolutionizes our theory of 
 Greek roots, or of microbes, or of religion. Pa- 
 tient and noiseless as the earthworm, this scholar 
 accomplishes a similarly incalculable work. 
 
 A spirit of obedience, which on its upper side 
 passes into deference not always distinguishable 
 from servility, and on its lower side is not always 
 free from arrogance, lies at the bottom of the 
 Prussian nature. Except in India, caste has no- 
 where had more power. The Prussian does not
 
 BISMARCK 5 
 
 chafe at social inequality, but he cannot endure 
 social uncertainty ; he must know where he stands, 
 if it be only on the bootblack's level. The satis- 
 faction he gets from requiring from those below 
 him every scrape and nod of deference proper to 
 his position more than compensates him for the 
 deference he must pay to those above him. Clas- 
 sification is carried to the fraction of an inch. 
 Everybody, be he privy councilor or chimney- 
 sweep, is known by his office. On a hotel register 
 you will see such entries as "Frau X, widow of 
 a school-inspector," or "Fraulein Y, niece of an 
 apothecary." 
 
 This excessive particularization, which amuses 
 foreigners, enables the Prussian to lift his hat at 
 the height appropriate to the position occupied by 
 each person whom he salutes. It naturally devel- 
 ops acuteuess in detecting social grades, and a 
 solicitude to show the proper degree of respect to 
 superiors and to expect as much from inferiors, — 
 a solicitude which a stranger might mistake for 
 servility or arrogance, according as he looked up 
 or down. Yet, amid a punctilio so stringent, fine- 
 breeding — the true politeness which we associate 
 with tke w©»«l "jeutlemaH" — raiKilj axiaits; f«r 
 a geBtlewiaa «ai»«ot We iwii<le hj tke raik he liftlds, 
 wliieln is extermal, kmt »uly l#y •[ualities witkim 
 kiiutelf.
 
 6 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 Nevertheless, these Prussians — so unsympa- 
 thetic and rude compared with their kinsmen in 
 the south and along the Rhine, not to speak of 
 races more amiable still — kept down to our own 
 time a strength and tenacity of character that 
 intercourse with Western Europeans scarcely 
 affected. Frederick the Great tried to graft on 
 them the polished arts and the grace of the French : 
 he might as well have decorated the granite faces 
 of his fortresses with dainty Parisian wall-paper. 
 But when he touched the dominant chord of his 
 race, — its aptitude for system, — he had a large 
 response. The genuine Prussian nature embodied 
 itself in the army, in the bureaucracy, in state 
 education, through all of which its astonishing 
 talent for rules found congenial exercise. One 
 dissipation, indeed, the Prussians allowed them- 
 selves, earlier in this century, — they reveled in 
 Hegelianism. But even here they were true to 
 their instinct; for the philosophy of Hegel com- 
 mended itself to them because it assumed to re- 
 duce the universe to a system, and to pigeon-hole 
 God himself. 
 
 We see, then, the elements out of which Prussia 
 grew to be a strong state, not yet large in popula- 
 tion, but compact and carefully organized. Let 
 us look now at Germany, of which she formed a 
 part.
 
 BISMARCK 7 
 
 We are stnack at once by the fact that until 
 1871 Germany had no political unity. During 
 the centuries when France, England, and Spain 
 were being welded into political units by their 
 respective dynasties, the great Teutonic race in 
 Central Europe escaped the unifying process. 
 The Holy Roman Empire — at best a reminiscence 
 — was too weak to prevent the rise of many petty 
 princedoms and duchies and of a few large states, 
 whose rulers were hereditary, whereas the emperor 
 was elective. Thus particularism — what we might 
 call states' rights — flourished, to the detriment 
 of national union. At the end of the last cen- 
 tury, Germany had four hundred independent 
 sovereigns : the most powerful being the King of 
 Prussia; the weakest, some knight whose realm 
 embraced but a few hundred acres, or some free 
 city whose jurisdiction was bounded by its walls. 
 When Napoleon, the great simplifier, reduced the 
 number of little German states, he had no idea of 
 encouraging the formation of a strong, coherent 
 German Empire. To guard against this, which 
 might menace the supremacy of France, he created 
 the kingdoms of Bavaria and Westphalia, and set 
 up the Confederation of the Rhine. After his 
 downfall the Ciermau Confederation was organ- 
 ized, — a weak institution, consisting of thirty-nine 
 members, whose common affairs were regulated
 
 8 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 by a Diet which sat at Frankfort. Represen- 
 tation in this Diet was so unequal that Austria 
 and Prussia, with forty-two million inhabitants, 
 had only one eighth of the votes, while the small 
 states, with but twelve million inhabitants, had 
 seven eighths. Four tiny principalities, with two 
 hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants each, could 
 exactly offset Prussia with eight millions. By a 
 similar anomaly, Nevada and New York have an 
 equal representation in the United States Senate. 
 
 From 1816 to 1848 Austria ruled the Diet. 
 Yet Austria was herself an interloper in any com- 
 bination of German states, for her German sub- 
 jects, through whom she gained admission to the 
 Diet, numbered only four millions ; but her pres- 
 tige was augmented by the backing of her thirty 
 million non-German subjects besides. Prussia 
 fretted at this Austrian supremacy, fretted, and 
 could not counteract it. Beside the Confedera- 
 tion, which so loosely bound the German particu- 
 larists together, there was a Customs Union, which, 
 though simply commercial, fostered among the 
 Germans the idea of common interests. The 
 spirit of nationality, potent everywhere, awakened 
 also in the Germans a vision of political unity, 
 but for the most part those who beheld the vision 
 were unpractical; the men of action, the rulers, 
 opposed a scheme which enfolded among its possi-
 
 BISMARCK 9 
 
 bilities the curtailing of their autocracy through 
 the adoption of constitutional government. No 
 state held more rigidly than Prussia the tenets of 
 absolutism. 
 
 Great, therefore, was the general surprise, and 
 among Liberals the joy, at the announcement, in 
 February, 1847, that the King of Prussia had 
 consented to the creation of a Prussian Parlia- 
 ment. He granted to it hardly more power than 
 would suffice for it to assemble and adjourn ; but 
 even this, to the Liberals thirsty for a constitu- 
 tion, was as the first premonitory raindrops after 
 a long drought. Among the members of this 
 Parliament, or Diet, was a tall, slim, blond- 
 bearded, massive-headed Brandenbul'ger, thirty- 
 two years old, who sat as proxy for a country 
 gentleman. A few of his colleagues recognized 
 him as Otto von Bismarck; the majority had 
 never heard of him. 
 
 Bismarck was born at Schonhausen, Prussia, 
 April 1, 1815. His paternal ancestors had been 
 soldiers l)a('k to the time when they helped to de- 
 fend the Brandenburg Mar(;h against the inroads 
 of Slav barbarians. His mother was the daugh- 
 ter of an employee in Frederick the Great's War 
 Office. Thus, on both sides his roots were struck 
 in true Prussian soil. At the age of six he was 
 placed in a Berlin boarding-sciiool, of which he
 
 10 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 afterward ridiculed the "spurious Spartanism ; " 
 at twelve he entered a gymnasium, where for five 
 years he pursued the usual course of studies, — 
 an average scholar, but already noteworthy for 
 his fine physique ; at seventeen he went up to the 
 University at Gottingen, In the life of a Prus- 
 sian, there is but one period between the cradle 
 and the grave during which he escapes the re- 
 straints of iron-grooved routine : that period com- 
 prises the years he spends at the university. There 
 a strange license is accorded him. By day he 
 swaggers through the streets, leering at the women 
 and affronting the men; by night he carouses. 
 And from time to time he varies the monotony 
 of drinking-bouts by a duel. Such, at least, was 
 the life of the university student in Bismarck's 
 time. At Gottingen, and subsequently at Berlin, 
 he had the reputation of being the greatest beer- 
 drinker and the fiercest fighter ; yet he must also 
 have studied somewhat, for in due time he received 
 his degree in law, and became official reporter in 
 one of the Berlin courts. Then he served as re- 
 ferendary at Aix-la-Chapelle, and passed a year 
 in military service. 
 
 At twenty-four he set about recuperating the 
 family fortunes, which had suffered through his 
 father's incompetence. He took charge of the 
 estates, devoted himself to agriculture, and was
 
 BISMARCK 11 
 
 known for many miles round as the "mad squire." 
 Tales of his revels at his country house, of his 
 wild pranks and practical jokes, horrified the 
 neighborhood. Yet here, again, his recklessness 
 did not preclude good results. He made the lands 
 pay, and he tamed into usefulness that restive 
 animal, his body, which was to serve as mount for 
 his mighty soul. Some biographers, referring to 
 his bucolic apprenticeship, have compared him to 
 Cromwell; in his youthful roistering he reminds 
 us of Mirabeau. 
 
 To the Diet of 1847 the mad squire came, and 
 during several sittings he held his peace. At last, 
 however, when a Liberal deputy declared that 
 Prussia had risen in arms in 1813, in the hope of 
 getting a constitution quite as much as of expel- 
 ling the French, the blond Brandenburger got leave 
 to speak. In a voice which seemed incongruously 
 small for his stature, but which carried far and 
 produced the effect of being the utterance of an 
 inflexible will, he deprecated the assertions just 
 made, and declared that the desire to shake off 
 foreign tyranny was a sufficient motive for the 
 uprising in 1813. These words set the House in 
 confusion. Liberal deputies hissed and shouted 
 so that Bismarck could not go on; but, nothing 
 daunted, lie took a ncvvspa[)er out of his pocket 
 and read it, there in the tribune, till order was
 
 12 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 restored. Then, having added that whoever 
 deemed that motive inadequate held Prussia's 
 honor cheap, he strode haughtily to his seat, amid 
 renewed jeers and clamor. Such was Bismarck's 
 parliamentary baptism of fire. 
 
 Before the session adjourned, the deputies had 
 come to know him well. They discovered that 
 the mad squire, the blunt "captain of the dikes," 
 was doubly redoubtable ; he had strong opinions, 
 and utter fearlessness in proclaiming them. 
 
 His political creed was short, — it comprised 
 but two clauses: "I believe in the supremacy of 
 Prussia, and in absolute monarchy." More royal- 
 ist than the King, he opposed every concession 
 which might diminish by a hair's breadth the royal 
 prerogative. Constitutional government, popular 
 representation, whatever Liberals had been strug- 
 gling and dying for since 1789, he detested. De- 
 mocracy, and especiaUy German democracy, he 
 scoffed at. For sixty years reformers had been 
 railing at the absurdities of the Old Regime ; they 
 had denounced the injustice of the privileged 
 classes ; they had made odious the tyranny of pa- 
 ternalism. Bismarck entered the lists as the 
 champion of "divine right," and first proved his 
 strength by exposing the defects of democracy. 
 
 Those who believe most firmly in democracy 
 acknowledge, nevertheless, that it has many objec-
 
 BISMARCK 13 
 
 tions, both in theory and in practice. Universal 
 suffrage — the abandoning of the state to the 
 caprice of millions of voters, among whom the 
 proportion of intelligence to ignorance is as 
 one to ten — seems a process worthy of Bedlam. 
 The ballot-box is hardly more accurate than the 
 dice-box, as a test of the fitness of candidates. 
 Popular government means party government, and 
 parties are dogmatic, overbearing, insincere, and 
 corrupt. The men who legislate and administer, 
 chosen by this method, avowedly serve their party, 
 and not the state; and though, by chance, they 
 should be both skilful and honest, they may be 
 overturned by a sudden revulsion of the popular 
 will. Such a system breeds a class of professional 
 politicians, — men who make a business of getting 
 into office, and whose only recommendation is their 
 proficiency in the art of cajoling voters. A gov- 
 ernment should be managed as a great business 
 corporation is managed: it has to deal with the 
 weightiest problems of finance, and with delicate 
 diplomatic questions, for which the trained efforts 
 of judicious experts are needed; but instead of 
 being intrusted to them, it is given over to politi- 
 cians elected by multitudes who cannot even con- 
 duct their private business successfully, much loss 
 entertain large and patriotic views of the common 
 welfare. To decide an election by a show of hands
 
 14 THROXE-MAKERS 
 
 seems not a wliit less absurd than to decide it by 
 the aggregate weight or the color of the hair of 
 the voters. We speak of the will of the majority 
 as if it were infallibly right. The vast majority 
 of men to-day would vote that the sun revolves 
 round the earth: should this belief of a million 
 ignoramuses countervail the knowledge of one as- 
 tronomer? Shall knowledge be the test of fitness 
 in all concerns except government, the most criti- 
 cal, the most far-reaching and responsible of all? 
 Majority rule substitutes mere numbers, bvdk, and 
 quantity for quality. Putting a saddle on Intelli- 
 gence, it bids Ignorance mount and ride whither 
 it will, — even to the devil. It is the dupe of its 
 own folly ; for the politicians whom it chooses turn 
 out to be, not the representatives of the people, 
 but the attorneys of some mill or mine or railway. 
 These and similar objections to democracy Bis- 
 marck urged with a sarcasm and directness hitherto 
 unknown in German politics. When half the 
 world was repeating the words "Liberalism," 
 "Constitution," "Equality," — as if the words 
 themselves possessed magic to regenerate society, 
 — he insisted that firm nations must be based upon 
 facts, not phrases. He had the twofold advantage 
 of invariably separating the actual from the ap- 
 parent, and of being opposed by the most incom- 
 petent Liberals in Europe. However noble the
 
 BISMARCK 15 
 
 ideals of the German reformers, the men them- 
 selves were singularly incapable of dealing with 
 realities. Nor should this surprise us; for they 
 had but recently broken away from the machine 
 we have described, and as they had not yet a 
 new machine to work in, they whirled to and fro 
 in vehement confusion, the very rigidity of their 
 previous restraint increasing their dogmatism and 
 their discord. 
 
 The revolution of 1848 soon put them to the 
 ordeal. The German Liberals aimed at national 
 unity under a constitution. Like their brothers 
 in Austria and Italy, they enjoyed a temporary 
 triumph; but they could not construct. Their 
 Parliament became a cave of the winds. Their 
 schemes clashed. By the beginning of 1850 the 
 old order was restored. 
 
 During this stormy crisis, Bismarck, as deputy 
 in two successive Diets, had resolutely withstood 
 the popular tide. He regarded the revolutionists 
 as men in whom the qualities of knave, fool, and 
 maniac alternately ruled ; the revolution itself, he 
 said, had no other motive than "a lust of theft." 
 One of its leaders he dismissed as a "phrase- 
 watering-pot." The right of assemblages he ridi- 
 culed as furnishing democracy with bellows; a 
 free press he stigmatized as a blood-poisoner. 
 When the imperial crown was offered to the King
 
 16 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 of Prussia, Bismarck argued against accepting it; 
 he would not see his King degraded to the level 
 of a mere "paper president." 
 
 Such opposition would have made the speaker 
 conspicuous, if only for its audacity. His enemies 
 had learned, however, that it required a strong 
 character to support that audacity continuously. 
 They tried to silence him with abuse; but their 
 abuse, like tar, added fuel to his fire. They tried 
 ridicule; but their ridicule had too much of the 
 German dulness to wound him. They called him 
 a bigoted Junker, or squire. "Eemember," he 
 retorted, "that the names Whig and Tory were 
 first used opprobriously, and be assured that we 
 will yet bring the name Junker into respect and 
 honor." Many anecdotes are told illustrating his 
 quick repulse of intended insult or his disregard of 
 formality. He was not unwilling that his enemies 
 should remember that he held his superior physical 
 strength in reserve, if his arguments failed. Yet 
 on a hunting-party, or at a dinner, or in familiar 
 conversation, he was the best of companions. Ger- 
 many has not produced another, unless it were 
 Goethe, so variedly entertaining; and Goethe had 
 no trace of one of Bismarck's characteristics, — • 
 humor. He possessed also tact and a sort of Ho- 
 meric geniality which, coupled with unbending 
 tenacity, fitted him to succeed as a diplomatist.
 
 BISMARCK 17 
 
 In 1851 the King appointed him to represent 
 Prussia at the German Diet, which sat at Frank- 
 fort. The outlook was gloomy. Prussia had 
 quelled the revolution, but she had lost prestige. 
 Unable to break asunder the German Confedera- 
 tion or to dominate it, she had signed, at Obniitz, 
 in the previous autumn, a compact which acknow- 
 ledged the supremacy of her old rival, Austria. 
 While the humiliation still rankled, Bismarck 
 entered upon his career. Hitherto not unfriendly 
 to Austria, because he had looked upon her as the 
 extinguisher of the revolution, which he hated 
 most of all, he began, now that the danger was 
 over, to give a free rein to his jealousy of his 
 country's hereditary competitor. In the Diet, the 
 Austrian representative presided, the rulings were 
 always in Austria's favor, the majority of the 
 smaller states allowed Austria to guide them. 
 Bismarck at once showed his colleagues that 
 humility was not his role. Finding that the Aus- 
 trian president alone smoked at the sittings, he 
 took out his own cigar and lighted it, — a trifle, 
 but significant. He resisted every encroachment, 
 and demanded the strictest observance of the let- 
 ter of the law. Gradually he extended Prussia's 
 influence among the confederates. He unmasked 
 Austria's insincerity; he showed how honestly 
 Prussia walked in the path of legality; until he
 
 18 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 slowly created the impression that wickedness was 
 to be expected from one, and virtue from the 
 other. 
 
 During seven years Bismarck held this outpost, 
 winning no outward victory, but storing a vast 
 amount of knowledge about all the states of the 
 Confederation, their rulers and public men, which 
 was subsequently invaluable to him. His dis- 
 patches to the Prussian Secretary of State, his 
 reports to the King, form a body of diplomatic 
 correspondence unmatched in fulness, vigor, di- 
 rectness, and insight. With him, there was no 
 ambiguity, no diplomatic circumlocution, no Ger- 
 man prolixity. He sketched in indelible outlines 
 the portraits, corporal or mental, of his colleagues. 
 He criticised the policy of Prussia with a brusque- 
 ness which must have startled his superior. He 
 reviewed at longer range the political tendencies 
 of Europe. Officially, he kept strictly within the 
 limits of his instructions ; but his own personality 
 represented more than he could yet officially de- 
 clare, — Prussia's ambition to become the leader 
 of Germany. In all his dispatches, and in all 
 places where caution did not prescribe silence, he 
 reiterated his Cato warning, "Austria must be 
 ousted from Germany." 
 
 Do not suppose, however, that Bismarck's po- 
 litical greatness was then discerned. Probably,
 
 BISMARCK 19 
 
 had you inquired of Germans forty years ago, 
 "Who among you is the coming statesman?" not 
 one would have replied, "Bismarck." At the 
 opera, we cannot mistake the hero, because the 
 moonlight obligingly follows him over the stage ; 
 in real life, the hero passes for the most part 
 unrecognized, until his appointed hour; but the 
 historian's duty is to show how the heroic qual- 
 ities were indubitably latent in him long before 
 the world perceived them. 
 
 In 1859 Bismarck was appointed ambassador at 
 St. Petersburg, where he stayed three years, when 
 he was transferred to Paris. This completed his 
 apprenticeship, for in September, 1862, he was 
 recalled to Berlin to be minister-president. 
 
 His promotion had long been mooted. The new 
 King William — a practical, rigid monarch, with 
 no Liberal visions, no desire to please everybody 
 — had been for eighteen months in conflict with 
 his Parliament. He had determined to reorganize 
 the Prussian army ; the Liberals insisted that, as 
 Parliament was expected to vote appropriations, 
 it should know how they were spent. William 
 at last turned to Bismarck to help him subjugate 
 the unruly deputies, and Bismarck, with a true 
 vassal's loyalty, declared his readiness to serve 
 as "lid to the saucepan," Very soon tlie Liberals 
 began to compare him with Straiford, and tlie
 
 20 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 King with Charles I, but neither of them quailed. 
 "Death on the scaffold, under certain circum- 
 stances, is as honorable," Bismarck said, "as 
 death on the battlefield. I can imagine worse 
 modes of death than the axe." Hitherto he had 
 strenuously maintained the first article of his 
 creed, — "I believe in the supremacy of Prussia; " 
 henceforth he upheld with equal vigor the second, 
 — "I believe in the autocracy of the King." 
 
 The narrow Constitution limited the King's 
 authority, making it coequal with that of the Up- 
 per and Lower Chambers, but Bismarck quickly 
 taught the deputies that he would not allow "a 
 sheet of paper " to intervene between the royal 
 will and its fulfilment. Year after year the 
 Lower House refused to vote the army budget; 
 year after year Bismarck and his master pushed 
 forward the military organization, in spite of the 
 deputies. Noah was not more unmoved by those 
 who came and scoffed at his huge, expensive, 
 apparently useless ark than were the Prussian 
 minister and his King by their critics, who did not 
 see the purpose of the ark the two were building. 
 Bismarck merely insisted that the army, on which 
 depended the integrity of the nation, could not 
 be subjected to the caprice of parties ; it was an 
 institution above parties, above politics, he said, 
 which the Kinc; alone must control.
 
 BISMARCK 21 - 
 
 At the same time, the Minister-President ac- 
 tively pursued his other project, — the expulsion 
 of Austria from Germany. When the King of 
 Denmark died, in December, 1863, the succession 
 to the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein was dis- 
 puted. Bismarck seized the occasion for occupy- 
 ing the disputed territory, in partnership with 
 Austria, England protested, France muttered, 
 but neither cared to risk a war with the allied 
 robbers. When it came to dividing the spoils, 
 Bismarck, who had recently gauged Austria's 
 strength, struck for the lion's share. Austria re- 
 sisted. Bismarck then approved himself a master 
 of diplomacy. Never was he more clever or more 
 unscrupulous, shifting from argument to argu- 
 ment, delaying the open rupture till Prussia was 
 quite ready, feigning willingness to submit the 
 dispute to European arbitration while secretly stip- 
 ulating conditions which foredoomed arbitration to 
 failure, and invariably giving the impression tliat 
 Austria refused to be conciliated. As the juggler 
 lets you see the card he wishes you to see, and no 
 other, so Bismarck always kept in full view, amid 
 whatever shuffling of the pack, the apparent legal- 
 ity of Prussia. In the. end he drove Austria to 
 desperation. 
 
 In June, 18GG, war came, with fury. One 
 Prussian army crushed with a single blow the
 
 22 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 German states which had promised to support 
 Austria; another marched into Bohemia, and, in 
 seven days, confronted the imperial forces at Sa- 
 dowa. There was fought a great battle, in which 
 the Prussian crown prince repeated the master 
 stroke of Bliicher at Waterloo, and then Austria, 
 hopelessly beaten, sued for peace. 
 
 Bismarck now showed himself astute in victory. 
 Having ousted Austria from Germany, he had no 
 wish to wreak a vengeance that she could not for- 
 give. Taking none of her provinces, he exacted 
 only a small indemnity. With the German states 
 he was equally discriminating: those which had 
 been inveterately hostile he annexed to Prussia; 
 the others he let off with a fine. He set up the 
 North German Confederation, embracing all the 
 states north of the river Main, in place of the old 
 German Confederation; and thus Prussia, which 
 had now two thirds of the population of Germany, 
 was undisputed master. The four South German 
 states, Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, Hesse, and Baden, 
 signed a secret treaty, by which they gave the 
 Prussian King the command of their troops in 
 case of war. 
 
 Europe, which had witnessed with astonishment 
 these swift proceedings, understood now that a 
 great reality had arisen, and that Bismarck was 
 its heart. In France, surprise gave way to indig-
 
 BISMARCK 23 
 
 nation. Were not the French the arbiters of 
 Europe? How had it happened that their Em- 
 peror had permitted a first-rate power to organize 
 without their consent? Napoleon III, who knew 
 that his sham empire could last only so long as 
 he furnished his restless subjects food for their 
 vanity, strove to convince them that he had not 
 been outwitted ; that he still could dictate terms. 
 He demanded a share of Rhineland to offset Prus- 
 sia's aggrandizement ; Bismarck refused to cede a 
 single inch. Napoleon bullied ; Bismarck" published 
 the secret compact with the South Germans. Na- 
 poleon forthwith decided that it was not worth 
 while to go to war. 
 
 We have all heard of the sportsman who boasted 
 of always catching big strings of fish. But one 
 day, after whipping every pool and getting never 
 a trout, he was fain, on his way home, to stop at 
 the fishmonger's and buy a salt herring for sup- 
 per. Not otherwise did Napoleon, who had been 
 very forward in announcing that he would take 
 land wherever he chose, now stoop to offer to hvy 
 enough to appease his greedy countrymen. He 
 would pay ninety million francs for Luxemburg, 
 and the King of Holland, to whom it belonged, 
 was willing to sell at that i)ricc; but Bismarck 
 would consent only to withdraw the Prussian gar- 
 rison from the grand duchy, after destroying the
 
 24 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 fortifications, and to its conversion into a neu- 
 tral state. That was the sum of the satisfaction 
 Napoleon and his presumptuous Frenchmen got 
 from their first encounter. A few years before, 
 Napoleon, who had had frequent interviews with 
 Bismarck and liked his joviality, set him down 
 as "a not serious man; " whence we infer that the 
 Emperor was a dull reader of character. 
 
 Although, by this arrangement, the Luxemburg 
 affair blew over, neither France nor Prussia be- 
 lieved that their quarrel was settled. Deep in 
 the heart of each, instinct whispered that a life- 
 and-death struggle was inevitable. Bismarck, 
 amid vast labor on the internal organization of 
 the kingdom, held Prussia ready for war. He 
 would not be the aggressor, but he would decline 
 no challenge. 
 
 In July, 1870, France threw down the glove. 
 When the Spaniards elected Prince Leopold of 
 Hohenzollern to their vacant throne, France de- 
 manded that King William should compel Leo- 
 pold to resign. William replied that, as he had 
 not influenced his kinsman's acceptance, he should 
 not interfere. The prince, who was not a Prus- 
 sian, withdrew of his own accord. But the French 
 Secretary of State, the Due de Gramont, had blus- 
 tered too loudly to let the matter end without 
 achieving his purpose of humbling the Prussian
 
 BISMARCK 25 
 
 King. He therefore telegraphed Benedetti, the 
 French Ambassador, to force King William to 
 promise that at no future time should Leopold 
 be a candidate for the Spanish crown. Benedetti 
 delivered his message to William in the public 
 garden at Ems; and William, naturally refusing to 
 bind himself, announced that further negotiations 
 on the subject would be referred to the Foreign 
 Minister. 
 
 The following morning Bismarck published a 
 dispatch containing a brief report of the inter- 
 view; adding, however, that the King "declined 
 to receive the French Amibassador again, and had 
 him told by the adjutant in attendance that his 
 Majesty had nothing further to communicate to the 
 Ambassador." This deceitful addition produced 
 exactly the effect which Bismarck intended : every 
 German, whether Prussian or not, was incensed 
 to learn that the representative German King had 
 been hectored by the French emissary, and every 
 Frenchman was enraged that the Prussian King 
 had insulted the envoy of the "grand nation." 
 Bismarck, who had feared that another favorable 
 moment for war was passing, now exulted, and 
 Moltke, who had for years been carrying the fu- 
 ture campaign in his head, and whose face grow 
 sombre when peace seemed i)robable, now Hiniled 
 a grim, contented smile. In Paris, the ministers,
 
 26 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 the deputies, the newspapers, and the populace 
 clamored for war. Apparently, Napoleon alone 
 felt a slight hesitation; but he could hesitate no 
 longer when the popular demand became over- 
 whelming. On July 19 France made a formal 
 declaration of war, and the Parisians laid bets 
 that their victorious troops would celebrate the 
 Fete Napoleon — August 15 — in Berlin. Had 
 not their War Minister, Lebceuf, assured them 
 that everything was ready, down to the last button 
 on the last gaiter of the last soldier? 
 
 We cannot describe here the terrible campaign 
 which followed. In numbers, in equipment, in 
 discipline, in generalship, in everything but bra- 
 very, the French were quickly outmatched. When 
 Napoleon groped madly for some friendly hand to 
 stay his fall, he found that Bismarck had cut off 
 succor from him. The South Germans, whom 
 the French had hoped to win over, fought loyally 
 under the command of Prussia; Austria, who 
 might have been persuaded to strike back at her 
 late conqueror, dared not move for fear of Russia, 
 whose friendship Bismarck had secured ; and Italy, 
 instead of aiding France, lost no time in complet- 
 ing her own unification by entering Rome when 
 the French garrison was withdrawn. Forsaken 
 and outwitted, the French Empire sank without 
 even an expiring flash of that tinsel glory which
 
 BISMARCK 27 
 
 had so long bedizened its corruption. And when 
 the French people, lashed to desperation, contin- 
 ued the war which the Empire had brought upon 
 them, they but suffered a long agony of losses 
 before accepting the inevitable defeat. They paid 
 the penalty of their former arrogance in every 
 coin known to the vanquished, — in military ruin, 
 in an enormous indemnity, in the occupation of 
 their land by the victorious Prussians, and in the 
 cession of two rich provinces. Nor was that 
 enough : they had to submit to a humiliation which, 
 to the imagination at least, seems the worst of all, 
 — the proclamation of the Prussian King William 
 as German Emperor in their palace at Versailles, 
 the shrine of French pomp, where two centuries 
 before Louis XIV had embodied the ambition, 
 the glory, and the pride of France. The German 
 cannon bombarding beleaguered Paris paused, 
 while the sovereigns of the German states hailed 
 William as their Emperor. 
 
 This consummation of German unity was the 
 logical outcome of an international war, in wliich 
 all the Germans had been impelled, by mutual 
 interests quite as much as by kinship, to join 
 forces against an alien foe. Twenty years before, 
 Bismarck had opposed German unity, because it 
 would then have made Prussia the jjlaything of 
 her confederates; in this later scheme he was the
 
 28 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 chief agent, if not the originator, for he knew 
 that the primacy of Prussia ran no more risk. 
 
 Let us pause a moment and look back. Only 
 a decade earlier, in 1861, when Bismarck became 
 minister, Prussia was but a second-rate power, 
 Germany was a medley of miscellaneous states, 
 Austria still held her traditional supremacy, the 
 French Emperor seemed firmly established. Now, 
 in 1871, Austria has been humbled, France crushed, 
 Napoleon whiffed off into outer darkness, and 
 Prussia stands unchallenged at the head of United 
 Germany. Many men — the narrow, patient 
 King, the taciturn Moltke, the energetic Von 
 Roon — have contributed to this result; but to 
 Bismarck rightly belongs the highest credit. Slow 
 to prepare and swift to strike, he it was who mea- 
 sured the full capacity of that great machine, the 
 Prussian army, and let it do its work the moment 
 Fortune signaled; he it was who knew that needle 
 guns and discipline would overcome in the end the 
 long prestige of Austria and the wordy insolence 
 of France. Looking back, we are amazed at his 
 achievements, — many a step seems audacious ; 
 but if we investigate, we find that Bismarck had 
 never threatened, never dared, more than his 
 strength at the time warranted. The gods love 
 men of the positive degree, and reward them by 
 converting; their words into facts.
 
 BISMARCK 29 
 
 Of the German Empire thus formed Bismarck 
 was Chancellor for twenty years. His foreign 
 policy hinged on one necessity, — the isolation of 
 France. To that end he made a Triple Alliance, 
 in which Russia and Austria were his partners 
 first, and afterward Italy took Russia's place. He 
 prevented the Franco-Russian coalition, which 
 would place Germany between the hammer and 
 the anvil. From 1871 to 1890 he was not less 
 the arbiter of Europe than the autocrat of Ger- 
 many. 
 
 Nevertheless, although in the management of 
 home affairs Bismarck usually prevailed, he pre- 
 vailed to the detriment of Germany's progress 
 in self-government. The Empire, like Prussia 
 herself, is based on constitutionalism: what hope 
 is there for constitutionalism, when at any moment 
 the vote of a majority of the people's representa- 
 tives can be nullified by an arbitrary prime min- 
 ister? Bismarck carried his measures in one of 
 two ways : he either formed a temporary combina- 
 tion with mutually discordant parliamentary groups 
 and therel)y secured a majority vote, or, when 
 unable to do this, by threatening to resign he gave 
 the Emperor an excuse for vetoing an objection- 
 able bill. Despising representative government, 
 with its interminable chatter, its red tape, its in- 
 discreet meddling, and its whimsical revulsions,
 
 30 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 Bismarck never concealed his scorn. If he be- 
 lieved a measure to be needed, he went down into 
 the parliamentary market-place, and by induce- 
 ments, not of money, but of concessions, he won 
 over votes. At one time or another, every group 
 has voted against him and every group has voted 
 for him. When he was fighting the Vatican, 
 for instance, he conciliated the Jews ; when Jew- 
 baiting was his purpose, he promised the Cath- 
 olics favor in return for their support. Being 
 amenable to the Emperor alone, and not, like the 
 British premier, the head of a party, he dwelt 
 above the caprice of parties. Men thought, at 
 first, to stagger him by charges of inconsistency, 
 and quoted his past utterances against his present 
 policy. He laughed at them. Consistency, he 
 held, is the clog of men who do not advance; 
 for himself, he had no hesitation in altering his 
 policy as fast as circumstances required. With 
 characteristic bluntness, he did not disguise his 
 intentions. "I need your supjjort," he would say 
 to a hostile group, "and I will stand by your bill 
 if you will vote for mine." ''''Do ut des " was his 
 motto; "an honest broker" his self -given nick- 
 name. 
 
 Such a government cannot properly be called 
 representative ; it dangles between the two incom- 
 patibles, constitutionalism and autocracy. Doubt-
 
 BISMARCK 31 
 
 less Bismarck knew better than the herd of depu- 
 ties what woiikl best serve at a given moment 
 the interests of Germany; but his methods were 
 demoralizing, and so personal that they made no 
 provision for the future. His system could not 
 be permanent unless in every generation an auto- 
 crat as powerful and disinterested as himself should 
 arise to wield it; but nature does not rejieat her 
 Bismarcks and her Cromwells. At the end of his 
 career, Germany has still to undergo her appren- 
 ticeship in self-government. 
 
 Two important struggles, in which he engaged 
 with all his might, call for especial mention. 
 
 The first is the CidturJcampf, or contest with 
 the Pope over the appointment of Catholic bishops 
 and clergy in Prussia. Bismarck insisted that 
 the Pope should submit his nominations to the 
 approval of the King; Pius IX maintained that 
 in spiritual matters he could be bound by no 
 temporal lord. Bismarck passed stern laws; he 
 withheld the stipend paid to the Catholic clergy ; 
 he imprisoned some of them; he broke up the 
 parishes of others. It was the mediieval war of 
 investitures over again, and again tlie Pope won. 
 Bismarck discovered that against the intangible 
 resistance of Kome his Krupp guns were i)o\ver- 
 less. After fifteen years of iuetfectual battling, 
 the Chancellor surrendered.
 
 32 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 Similar discomfiture came to him from the 
 Socialists. When he entered upon his ministerial 
 career, they were but a gang of noisy fanatics; 
 when he quitted it, they were a great political 
 j)arty, holding the balance of power in the Reichs- 
 tag, and infecting Germany with their doctrines. 
 At first he thought to extii'pate them by violence, 
 but they throve under persecution; then he pro- 
 pitiated them, and even strove to forestall them 
 by adopting Socialistic measures in advance of 
 their demands. If the next epoch is to witness 
 the triumph of Socialism, as some predict, then 
 Bismarck will surely merit a place in the Social- 
 ists' Saints' Calendar; but if, as some of us hope, 
 society revolts from Socialism before experience 
 teaches how much insanity underlies this seductive 
 theory, then Bismarck will scarcely be praised for 
 coquetting with it. For Socialism is but despot- 
 ism turned upside down; it would substitute the 
 tyranny of an abstraction — the state — for the 
 tyranny of a personal autocrat. It rests on the 
 fallacy that though in every individual citizen 
 there is more or less imperfection, — one dishon- 
 est, another untruthful, another unjust, another 
 greedy, another licentious, another willing to 
 grasp money or power at the expense of his neigh- 
 bor, — yet by adding up all these units, so imper- 
 fect, so selfish, and calling the sum "the state,"
 
 BISMARCK 33 
 
 you get a perfect and unselfish organism, which 
 will manage without flaw or favor the whole busi- 
 ness, public, private, and mixed, of mankind. By 
 what miracle a coil of links, separately weak, can 
 be converted into an unbreakable chain is a secret 
 which the prophets of this Utopia have never con- 
 descended to reveal. Not more state interference, 
 but less, is the warning of history. 
 
 The fact which is significant for us here is that 
 Socialism has best thriven in Germany, where, 
 through the innate tendency of the Germans to a 
 rigid system, the machinery of despotism has been 
 most carefully elaborated, and where the interfer- 
 ence of the state in the most trivial affairs of life 
 has bred in the masses the notion that the state can 
 do everything, — even make the poor rich, if they 
 can only control the lever of the huge machine. 
 
 Nevertheless, though Bismarck has been worsted 
 in his contest with religious and social ideas, his 
 great achievement remains. He has placed Ger- 
 many at the head of Europe, and Prussia at the 
 head of Germany. Will the German Empire cre- 
 ated by him last? Who can say? The historian 
 has no business with prophecy, but he may point 
 out the existence in the German Empire to-day of 
 conditions that have hitherto menaced the safety 
 of nations. The common danger seems the strong- 
 est bond of union among the German states. De
 
 34 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 feat by Russia on the east or by France on the 
 west would mean disaster for the South Germans 
 not less than for the Prussians ; and this peril is 
 formidable enough to cause the Bavarians, for 
 instance, to fight side by side with the Prussians. 
 But there can be no homogeneous internal gov- 
 ernment, no compact nation, so long as twenty or 
 more dynasties, coequal in dignity though not in 
 power, flourish simultaneously. Historically speak- 
 ing, Germany has never passed through that stage 
 of development in which one dynasty swallows up 
 its rivals, — the experience of England, France, 
 and Spain, and even of polyglot Austria. 
 
 Again, Germany embraces three unwilling mem- 
 bers, — Alsace-Lorraine, Schleswig, and Prussian 
 Poland, — any of which may serve as a provoca- 
 tion for war, and must remain a constant source 
 of racial antipathy. How grievous such political 
 thorns may be, though small in bulk compared to 
 the body they worry, England has learned from 
 Ireland. 
 
 Finally, if popular government — the ideal of 
 our century — is to prevail in Germany, the de- 
 spotism extended and solidified by Bismarck will 
 be swept away. Possibly, Germany could not have 
 been united, could not have humbled Austria and 
 crushed France, under a Liberal system; but will 
 the Germans forever submit to the direction of an
 
 BISMARCK 35 
 
 iron chancellor, or glow with exultation at the 
 truculence of a strutting autocrat who flourishes 
 his sword and proclaims, "My will is law"? No 
 other modern desj)otism has been so patriotic, 
 honest, and successful as that of Bismarck; but 
 will the Germans never awake to the truth that 
 even the best despotism convicts those who bow to 
 it of a certain ignoble servility? Or will they, as 
 we have suggested, transform the tyranny of an 
 autocrat into the tyranny of Socialism ? We will 
 not predict, but we can plainly see that Germany, 
 whether in her national or in her constitutional 
 condition, has reached no stable plane of develop- 
 ment. 
 
 And now what shall we conclude as to Bismarck 
 himself? The magnitude of his work no man 
 can dispute. For centuries Europe awaited the 
 unification of Germany, as a necessary step in the 
 organic growth of both. Feudalism was the prin- 
 ciple which bound Christendom together during 
 the Middle Age ; afterward, the dynastic principle 
 operated to blend peoples into nations; finally, in 
 our time, the principle of nationality has accom- 
 plished what neither feudalism nor dynasties could 
 accomplish, the attainment of German unity. In 
 type, Bismarck belongs with the Cliarlcmagnos, 
 the Cromwolls, the Napoleons; but, unlike them, 
 he wrought to found no kingdom for himself ; from
 
 36 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 first to last he was content to be the servant of 
 the monarch whom he ruled. As a statesman, he 
 possessed in equal mixture the qualities of lion 
 and of fox, which Machiavelli long ago declared 
 indispensable to a prince. He had no scruples. 
 What benefited Prussia and his King was to him 
 moral, lawful, desirable ; to them he was inflexibly 
 loyal; for them he would suffer popular odium 
 or incur personal danger. But whoever opposed 
 them was to him an enemy, to be overcome by 
 persuasion, craft, or force. We discern in his 
 conduct toward enemies no more regard for mo- 
 rality than in that of a Mohawk sachem toward 
 his Huron foe. He might spare them, but from 
 motives of policy; he might persecute them, not 
 to gratify a thirst for cruelty, but because he 
 deemed persecution the proper instrument in that 
 case. His justification would be that it was right 
 that Prussia and Germany should hold the first 
 rank in Europe. The world, as he saw it, was a 
 field in which nations maintained a pitiless strug- 
 gle for existence, and the strongest survived; to 
 make his nation the strongest was, he conceived, 
 his highest duty. An army of puny-bodied saints 
 might be beautiful to a pious imagination, but they 
 would fare ill in an actual conflict with Pomera- 
 nian grenadiers. 
 
 Dynamic, therefore, and not morale were Bis-
 
 BISMARCK 37 
 
 marck's ideals and methods. To make every citi- 
 zen a soldier, and to make every soldier a most 
 effective fighting machine by the scientific appli- 
 cation of diet, drill, discipline, and leadership, 
 was Prussia's achievement, whereby she prepared 
 for Bismarck an irresistible weapon. In this ap- 
 plication of science to control with greater exact- 
 ness than ever before the movements of large 
 masses of men in war, and to regulate their ac- 
 tions in peace, consists Prussia's contribution to 
 government; in knowing how to use the engine 
 thus constructed lies Bismarck's fame. When 
 Germans were building air-castles, and, conscious 
 of their irresolution, were asking themselves, "Is 
 Germany Hamlet?" Bismarck saw both a defi- 
 nite goal and the road that led to it. The senti- 
 mentalism which has characterized so much of the 
 action of our time never diluted his tremendous 
 will. He held that by blood and iron empires are 
 welded, and that this stern means causes in the 
 end less suffering than the indecisive compromises 
 of the sentimentalists. Better, he would say, for 
 ninety-nine men to be directed by the hundredth 
 man who knows than for them to be left a prey 
 to their own chaotic, ignorant, and internecine 
 passions. Thus he is tlic latest representative of 
 a type which fiourished in the age when the mod- 
 ern ideal of popular government had not jet risen* 
 
 i2.'ii;)45
 
 38 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 How much of his power was due to his unerring 
 perception of the defects in popular government 
 as it has thus far been exploited, we have already 
 remarked. 
 
 The Germans have not yet perceived that one, 
 perhaps the chief source of his success was his 
 un-German characteristics. He would have all 
 Germany bovmd by rigid laws, but he would not 
 be bov^nd by them himself. He encouraged his 
 countrymen's passion for conventionality and tra- 
 dition, but remained the most unconventional of 
 men. Whatever might complete the conversion of 
 Germany into a vast machine he fostered by every 
 art; but he, the engineer who held the throttle, 
 was no machine. In a land where everything was 
 done by prescription, the spectacle of one man 
 doing whatever his will prompted produced an 
 effect not easily computed. Such characteristics 
 are un-German, we repeat, and Bismarck dis- 
 played them at all times and in all places. His 
 smoking a cigar in the Frankfort Diet; his oppo- 
 sition to democracy, when democracy was the 
 fashion; his resistance to the Prussian Landtag; 
 his arbitrary methods in the German Parliament, 
 — these are but instances, great or small, of his 
 un-German nature. And his relations for thirty 
 years with the King and Emperor whom he seemed 
 to serve show a similar masterfulness. A single
 
 BISMARCK 39 
 
 anecdote, told by himself, gives the key to that 
 sei'vice. 
 
 At the battle of Sadowa King William persisted 
 in exposing himself at short range to the enemy's 
 fire. Bismarck urged him back, but William was 
 obstinate. "If not for yourself, at least for the 
 sake of your minister, whom the nation will hold 
 responsible, retire," pleaded Bismarck. "Well, 
 then, Bismarck, let us ride on a little," the King 
 at last replied. But he rode very slowly. Edg- 
 ing his horse alongside of the King's mare, Bis- 
 marck gave her a stout kick in the haunch. She 
 bounded forward, and the King looked round in 
 astonishment. "I think he saw what I had done," 
 Bismarck added, in telling the story, "but he said 
 nothing." 
 
 On Bismarck's private character I find no im- 
 puted stain. He did not enrich himself by his 
 office, that hideous vice of our time. He did not, 
 like both Napoleons, convert his palace into a 
 harem; neither did he tolerate nepotism, nor the 
 putting of incompetent parasites into responsible 
 positions as a reward for party service. That he 
 remorselessly crushed his rivals let his obliteration 
 of Count von Arnim witness. Tluit he subsidized 
 a "reptile press," or employed spies, or liounded 
 his assailants, came from his belief that a states- 
 man too squeamish to light fire with fire would
 
 40 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 deserve to be burnt. Many orators have excelled 
 him in grace, few in effectiveness. Regarding 
 public speaking as one of the chief perils of the 
 modern state, because it enables demagogues to 
 dupe the easily swayed masses, he despised rhetor- 
 ical artifice. His own speech was un-German in 
 its directness, un-German in its humor, and it 
 clove to the heart of a question with the might of 
 a battle-axe, — as, indeed, he would have used a 
 battle-axe itself to persuade his opponents, five 
 hundred years ago. Since Napoleon, no other 
 European statesman has coined so many political 
 proverbs and apt phrases. His letters to his fam- 
 ily are delightfully natural, and reveal a man of 
 keen observation, capable of enjoying the whole- 
 some pleasures of life, and brimful of common 
 sense, which a rich gift of humor keeps from the 
 dulness of Philistines and the pedantry of doc- 
 trinaires. His intercourse with friends seems to 
 have been in a high degree jovial. 
 
 Not least interesting to a biographer are those 
 last years of Bismarck's life, between March, 
 1890, and his death, on July 30, 1898, which he 
 passed in eclipse. To be dismissed by a young 
 sovereign who, but for him, might have been 
 merely a petty German prince, — to be told that 
 he, the master throne-maker, was unnecessary to 
 the callow apprentice, — galled the Titan's heart.
 
 BISMARCK 41 
 
 Eight years he was destined to endure this morti- 
 fication; and although his countrymen everywhere 
 hailed him as their hero, the fact of dismissal gave 
 him no repose. Europe has seen no similar spec- 
 tacle since she bound Napoleon, Prometheus-like, 
 on St. Helena. But Napoleon, chafing his life 
 away there, had at least the satisfaction of reflect- 
 ing that it took all Europe, allied with Kussia's 
 blizzards and Spain's heats, to conquer him. Bis- 
 marck, storming in his exile from power, felt now 
 scorn, now hate, for the "young fellow " (as he 
 called him) who had turned him out. Here, if 
 ever. Nemesis showed her work. Bismarck's whole 
 energy had been bent for fifty years on fortify- 
 ing the autocracy of the Prussian monarchs; and 
 now a young autocrat run from this mould bade 
 him go — and he went. We may believe that it 
 did not solace Bismarck to find that the "young 
 fellow" could get on without him; or to see that 
 in England Gladstone, six years his elder, led his 
 nation till long past eighty ; Gladstone, — whom 
 he had so often jeered at as an empty rhetorician, 
 — England, which he despised as the home of 
 representative government. Could it be that con- 
 stitutionalism was kinder than despotism to master 
 statesmen ? 
 
 A great man we may surely pronounce him, 
 long to be the wonder of a world in which great-
 
 42 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 ness of any kind is rare. If you ask, "How does 
 he stand beside Washington and Lincoln?" it 
 must be admitted that his methods would have 
 made them blush, but that his patriotism was not 
 less enduring than theirs. With the materials at 
 hand he fashioned an empire ; it is futile to specu- 
 late whether another, by using different tools, 
 could have achieved the same result. Bismarck 
 knew that though his countrymen might talk elo- 
 quently about liberty, they loved to be governed ; 
 he knew that their genius was mechanical, and he 
 triumphed by directing them along the line of 
 their genius. He would have failed had he ap- 
 pealed to the love of liberty, by appealing to which 
 Cavour freed Italy; or to the love of glory, by 
 appealing to which Napoleon was -able to convert 
 half of Europe into a French province. Bismarck 
 knew that his Prussians must be roused in a dif- 
 ferent way. 
 
 It may be that the empire he created will not 
 last; it is certain that it cannot escape modifica- 
 tions which will change the aspect he stamped 
 upon it; but we may be sure that, whatever hap- 
 pens, the recollection of his Titanic personality 
 will remain. He belongs among the giants, among 
 the few in whom has been stored for a lifetime 
 a stupendous energy, — kinsmen of the whirlwind 
 and the volcano, — whose purpose seems to be to
 
 BISMARCK 43 
 
 amaze us that the limits of the human include 
 such as they. At the thought of him, there rises 
 the vision of mj'thic Thor with his hammer, and 
 of Odin with his spear; the legend of Zeus, who 
 at pleasure held or hurled the thunderbolt, be- 
 comes credible.
 
 NAPOLEON III 
 
 Madame de Stael said of Eienzi and his Ko- 
 mans : " They mistook reminiscences for hopes ; " 
 of the second French Empire and the third Napo- 
 leon we may say : " They staked their hopes on 
 reminiscences." 
 
 In our individual lives we realize the power of 
 memory, suggestion, association. If we have ever 
 yielded to a vice, we have felt, it may be years 
 after, how the sight of the old conditions revives 
 the old temptation. A glance, a sound, a smell, 
 may be enough to conjure up a long series of 
 events, whether to grieve or to tempt us, with 
 more than their original intensity. So we learn 
 that the safest way to escape the enticement is to 
 avoid the conditions. Recent psychology has at 
 last begun to measure the subtle power of sugges- 
 tion. 
 
 But now, suppose that instead of an individual 
 a whole nation has had a terrific experience of 
 succumbing to temptation, and that a cunning, 
 unscrupulous man, aware of the force of associa- 
 tion and reminiscence, deliberately applies both to
 
 NAPOLEON III 45 
 
 reproduce those conditions in which the nation 
 first abandoned itself to excess : the case we have 
 supposed is that of France and Louis Napoleon. 
 Before the reality of their story the romances of 
 hypnotism pale. 
 
 After Sedan it was the fashion to regard Louis 
 Napoleon as the only culprit in the gilded shame 
 of the Second Empire ; we shall see, however, that 
 the great majority of Frenchmen longed for his 
 coming, applauded his victories, and by frequent 
 vote sanctioned his deeds. A free people keeps 
 no worse ruler than it deserves. 
 
 The Napoleonic legend, by which Louis Napo- 
 leon rose to power, was not his creation, but that 
 of the French : he was simply shrewd, and used 
 it. What was this legend ? 
 
 When allied Europe finally crushed the great 
 Napoleon at Waterloo, France breathed a sigh of 
 relief. Twenty campaigns had left her exhausted : 
 she asked only for repose. This the Restoration 
 gave her. But the gratification of our transient 
 cravings, however strong they may be, cannot long 
 satisfy ; and when the French recovered from their 
 exhaustion, they felt their permanent cravings 
 return. The Bourbons, they soon realized, could 
 not appease those dominant Gallic desires. For 
 the Bourbons had destroyed even that semblance 
 of liberty Napoleon took care to preserve ; they
 
 46 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 persecuted democratic ideas ; they brought back 
 the old aristocracy, with its mildewed haughtiness ; 
 they babbled of divine right, — as if the worship 
 of St. Guillotine had not suj)ervened. During 
 twenty years France had been the arbitress of 
 Europe ; now, under the narrow, forceless Bour- 
 bons, she was treated like a second-rate power. 
 Waterloo had meant not only the destruction of 
 Napoleon, from which France derived peace, but 
 also humiliation, which galled Frenchmen more 
 and more as their normal sensitiveness returned. 
 
 The Bourbons, knowing that they might be tol- 
 erated so long as they were not despised, got up 
 a military promenade into Spain, to prove that 
 France could still meddle in her neighbors' affairs, 
 and that the Bourbons were not less mighty men 
 of war than the Bonapartes. They captured the 
 Trocadero, and restored vile King Ferdinand and 
 his twenty-six cooks to the throne of Spain ; and 
 they hoped that the one-candle power of fame 
 lighted by these exploits would outdazzle the Sun 
 of Austerlitz. But no, the dynasty of Bourbon, 
 long since headless, proved to be rootless too : one 
 evening Charles X played his usual game of whist 
 at St. Cloud ; the next, he was posting out of 
 France with all the speed and secrecy he could 
 command. 
 
 Louis Philippe, who came next, might have been
 
 XAPOLEON m 47 
 
 expected to please everybody : Royalists, because 
 he was himself royal ; ReiJiiblicans, because he 
 was Philippe Egalite's son ; constitutionalists, be- 
 cause he hated autocratic methods ; shopkeepers 
 of all kinds, because he was ' practical.' And in 
 truth his administration may be called the Golden 
 Age of the bourgeoisie, — the great middle class 
 which, in France and elsewhere, was superseding 
 the old aristocracy. Napoleon had organized a 
 nobility of the sword ; after him came the nobil- 
 ity of the purse. Louis Philippe could say that 
 under his rule France prospered : her merchants 
 grew rich ; her factories, her railroads, all the 
 organs of commerce, were healthily active. And 
 yet she was discontented. The spectacle of her 
 Citizen King walking unattended in the streets of 
 Paris, his plump thighs encased in democratic 
 trousers, his plump and ruddy face wearing a 
 complacent smile, his whole air that of the senior 
 partner in some old, respectable, and rich firm, — 
 even this failed to satisfy Frenchmen. " lie in- 
 spires no more enthusiasm than a fat grocer," 
 was said of him. Frenchmen did not despise 
 money-making, but they wanted something more: 
 they wanted gloirc. 
 
 Let us use the French word, because the Eng- 
 lish fjlory has another meaning. Glory implies 
 something essentially noble, — nay, in the Lord's
 
 48 thronp:-makers 
 
 Prayer it is a quality attributed to God himself : 
 but gloire suggests vanity ; it is the food brag- 
 garts famish after. The minute-men at Concord 
 earned true glory ; but when the United States, lis- 
 tening to the seductions of evil politicians, attacked 
 and blasted a decrepit power, — fivefold smaller in 
 population, twenty - fold weaker in resources, — 
 they might find gloire among their booty, but 
 glory, never. As prosperity increased, the Gallic 
 appetite for gloire increased. Louis Philippe 
 made several attempts to allay it, but he dared 
 not risk a foreign war, and the failure of his at- 
 tempts made him less and less respected. 
 
 And now arose the Napoleonic legend, at first 
 no more than a bright exhalation in the evening, 
 but gradually taking on the sweep, the definite- 
 ness, the fascination, of mirage at noonday. Time 
 enough had elapsed to dull or quite blot out the 
 recollections of the hardships and strains, the mil- 
 lions of soldiers killed and wounded, the taxes, 
 the grievous tyranny ; men remembered only the 
 victories, the rewards, and the splendor. A new 
 generation, unacquainted with the havoc of war, 
 had grown up, to listen with fervid envy to the 
 reminiscences of some gray-haired veteran, who 
 had made the great charge at Wagrara or ridden 
 behind Ney at Borodino. Those exploits were so 
 stupendous as to seem incredible, and yet they
 
 XAPOLEOX in 49 
 
 were vouched for by too many survivors to be 
 doubted. Was not Thiers setting forth the mar- 
 velous story in nineteen volumes ? Were not 
 Beranger and even Victor Hugo singing of the 
 departed grandeur? Were not the booksellers' 
 shelves loaded with memoirs, lives, historical state- 
 ments, polemics? Paris, France, seemed to exist 
 merely to be the monument of one man. And 
 wherever the young Frenchman traveled — in 
 Spain, in Italy, along the Rhine or the Danube, 
 to Vienna, or Cairo, or Moscow — he saw the 
 footprints of French valor and French audacity, 
 reminders that Napoleon had made France the 
 mistress of Europe. No Frenchman, were he 
 Bourbon or Republican, but felt proud to think 
 that his countrymen had humbled Prussia and 
 Austria- 
 Confronted by such recollections, the France of 
 Louis Philippe looked degenerate. It offered no- 
 thing to thrill at, to brag over ; it sinned in hav- 
 ing — what it could not help — a stupendous past 
 just behind it. So the Napoleonic legend grew. 
 The body of the great Emperor was brought home 
 from St. Helena, to perform more miracles than 
 the mummy of a mediaeval saint. Power and 
 gloire came to be regarded as the products of a 
 Napoleonic regime: to secure them it was. only 
 necessary to put a Bouapartist on the throne.
 
 50 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 Contemporaneous with the expansion of this 
 spell, Socialism grew up, and taught that, just as 
 the hourgeoisie had overthrown the old privileged 
 classes in the French Revolution, so now the woi'k- 
 ing classes must emancipate themselves from the 
 tyranny of the hourgeoisie. Political equality 
 without industrial equality seemed a mockery. In 
 this wise the doctrines of a score of Utopians pene- 
 trated society to loosen old bonds and embitter 
 class with class. And besides all this, there was 
 the usual wrangle of political parties. The tide 
 of opposition rose, and on February 24, 1848, 
 swept away Louis Philippe and his minister Gui- 
 zot. Among the many fortune-seekers whom that 
 tide brought to land was Louis Napoleon. 
 
 He was born in Paris, April 20, 1808, his mo- 
 ther being Hortense Beauharnais, who had married 
 Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. The younger 
 Louis could just remember being petted in the 
 Tuileries by the great Emperor : then, like all 
 the Bonapartes, he had been packed off into exile. 
 His youth was chiefly spent on Lake Constance, 
 at Augsburg, and at Thun. In 1831 he had 
 joined the Carbonari plotters in Italy. The next 
 year, through the death of his elder brother and 
 of the great Napoleon's son, he became the official 
 Pretender to the Bonapartist hopes. People knew 
 him only as a visionary, who talked much about
 
 NAPOLEOX III 51 
 
 his " star," and by writings and deeds tried to 
 persuade the world that he too, like his uncle, was 
 a man of destiny. A few adventurers gathered 
 round him, eager to take the one chance in a 
 thousand of his success. Accompanied by some 
 of these, in 1836, he appeared before the French 
 troops at Strasburg, expecting to be acclaimed 
 Emperor and to march triumphantly to Paris. 
 He did go to Paris, escorted by policemen ; but 
 his attempt seemed so foolish that Louis Philippe 
 merely paid his passage to America to be rid of 
 him. 
 
 The Prince soon returned to Europe and settled 
 in London, where he lived the fast life of the 
 average nobleman. In 1840 he set out on another 
 expedition against France. Carrying a tame eagle 
 with him, he landed at Boulogne : but again nei- 
 ther the soldiers nor populace welcomed him ; the 
 eagle seems to have been a spiritless fowl, likewise 
 incapable of arousing enthusiasm ; and the Prince 
 shortly after was under imprisonment for life in 
 the fortress of Ham. Nearly six years later he 
 bribed a jailer, escaped to London, and, like Mi- 
 cawber, waited for something to turn up. 
 
 The fall of Louis Pliilippe gave Prince Louis 
 his opportunity. He hurried to Paris, but was 
 considerate, or cunning, enougli to hold aloof for 
 a while from disturbing public affairs. In those
 
 52 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 first months of turmoil many aspirants were de- 
 stroyed, by their own folly and by mutual collision. 
 Discreetly, therefore, he stood aside and watched 
 them disappear. 
 
 Of the several factions, the Socialists and Red 
 Republicans first profited by the Revolution. 
 They organized that colossal folly, the National 
 Workshops, in which 120,000 loafers received 
 from the state good wages for pretending to do 
 work which, had they done it, would have bene- 
 fited no one. When the state, realizing that it 
 could not continue this preposterous expense, pro- 
 posed to close the workshops, the loafers became 
 sullen : when the wages were cut off, they throttled 
 Paris. For four days, in June, 1848, they made 
 the streets of Paris their battle-ground, and suc- 
 cumbed only after 30,000 of their number had 
 been killed, wounded, or captured by Cavaignac's 
 troops. The terror inspired by those idlers of 
 Louis Blanc's workshops was the corner-stone of 
 the Second Empire. 
 
 A few weeks later, Louis Napoleon, elected by 
 five constituencies, took his seat in the Assembly. 
 His uncle's name was still his only political capi- 
 tal. His own record — the Strasburg and Bou- 
 logne episodes — inspired mirth. In person there 
 was nothing: commandinsf about him. An " olive- 
 swarthy paroquet " some one called him. " His
 
 NAPOLEON m 53 
 
 gray eyes," says De Tocqueville, " were dull and 
 opaque, like those thick bull's-eyes which light the 
 stateroom of a ship, letting the light pass through, 
 but out of which we can see nothing." In after 
 years " inscrutable '' was the word commonly cho- 
 sen to describe his cold, unblinking gaze. Reserve 
 always characterized his manners ; for even when 
 most affable, his intimates felt that he concealed 
 something: or simulated something:. 
 
 In the Assembly he strove for no sudden recog- 
 nition ; outside, however, he and his emissaries 
 busied themselves night and day fanning the em- 
 bers of Imperialism ; and when, in December, 
 1848, the French people voted for a president, 
 Louis Napoleon received 5,434,000 votes, while Ca- 
 vaignac, his nearest competitor, had but 1,448,000. 
 How had this come about ? Old soldiers and 
 peasants composed the great bulk of his support- 
 ers, every one of them glad to vote for " the 
 nephew of the Emperor." Next, Socialists, blue 
 blouses and others, voted for him because they 
 hated Cavaignac for repressing Red Republican- 
 ism in June ; and Monarchists of both stripes, 
 believing that he would be an easy tool for their 
 plots, preferred him to the unyielding Cavaignac. 
 Mediocrity and other negative qualities thus 
 availed to transform Louis the Ridiculed into the 
 first President of the Republic. " We made two
 
 54 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 blunders in the case of Louis Napoleon," said 
 Thiers ; " first in deeming him a fool, and next in 
 deeming him a genius." Louis Napoleon knew 
 not only how to profit by both of these blunders, 
 but also how to superinduce either belief in the 
 French mind. 
 
 Having sworn to uphold the Republic, he began 
 his administration. During several months he let 
 no sign of his ambition flutter into view, but 
 seemed wholly bent on discharging the duties of 
 president. In the spring of 1849, however, he 
 put forth a feeler by engineering the expedition 
 against the Roman Republic. Honest French- 
 men protested, but a majority in the Assembly 
 supported him ; and presently the instinct to be 
 revenged on the Romans for defending them- 
 selves, and thereby inflicting losses on the French, 
 silenced many who had disapproved of the expe- 
 dition at the outset. Only the Radicals forcibly 
 resisted, but their revolt was quickly put down. 
 Louis Napoleon gained the prestige of having 
 successfully reasserted French influence in Italy, 
 where, for a generation, it had been supplanted 
 by the influence of Austria. Furthermore, by be- 
 coming guardian of the Pope, he propitiated the 
 Clericals, who might some time be useful. That 
 he also roused the wrath of the Red Republicans 
 did not spoil his prospects.
 
 NAPOLEON III 55 
 
 One year, two years passed. Faction discred- 
 ited faction. Every one looked on the Republic as 
 but a preparation for either Anarchy or the Em- 
 pire. The Reds, irreconcilable and ferocious, 
 terrorized the imagination of every one else. No 
 doubt the majority of honest Frenchmen — if by 
 honest we mean the really intelligent and patriotic 
 minority — wished a republic, but those Red Ex- 
 tremists had made all Republicans indiscriminately 
 odious ; and as the Royalist plotters showed neither 
 courage nor ability, the great multitude of French- 
 men came to regard the Empire or Anarchy as 
 their only alternatives. Most of them, having 
 nothing to gain through disorder, leaned to the 
 side which promised to leash the bloodhounds of 
 murder and pillage. Spasm after spasm of terror 
 swept over Paris, and when Paris shudders iu the 
 evening the rest of France shudders by daybreak. 
 Anything to prevent the triumph of tlie Reds — 
 with their guillotine and their abolition of private 
 ownership of property — became the ruling in- 
 stinct of all other Frenchmen. 
 
 Louis Napoleon, we may be sure, took care to 
 encourage the belief that he alone could save 
 France from the abyss. In addition to his recog- 
 nized newspaper organs, he employed a literary 
 bureau to spread broadcast liis ])orti-ait, his bio- 
 graphy, and even songs witli an Im])erialist re-
 
 56 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 frain. He knew the political persuasiveness of 
 cigars and sausages distributed among the troops, 
 and of wine dispensed to their officers. He was 
 by turns modest — declaring that his sole purpose 
 was to obey the Constitution — and bold, announ- 
 cing that he would not shrink from making France 
 strong and prosperous, whenever Frenchmen in- 
 trusted that task to him. In his capacity for 
 waiting, he gave the best proof of his ability ; and 
 we must add that the Assembly, by its folly, gave 
 him indispensable aid. 
 
 The Assembly, for instance, restricted the suf- 
 frage, in the hope that, by preventing workmen 
 from voting, the victory of the Reds might be 
 staved off. Again, the Constitution declared 
 that no president was eligible for reelection until 
 he had been four years out of office. As the 
 time for thinking of Louis Napoleon's successor 
 approached, the moderates of all parties urged 
 that the Constitution be amended, so that he 
 might be quietly reelected, — there being no other 
 candidate who promised to preserve order. But 
 the factious deputies, by a narrow vote, rejected 
 the amendment. 
 
 Napoleon now saw his chance, and openly as- 
 sailed the Assembly. He posed as the champion 
 of universal suffrage, the true representative of 
 the people misrepresented by the factious depu-
 
 NAPOLEOX III 57 
 
 ties. They proposed to subject France to the 
 uncertainties of a political campaign : his continu- 
 ation in office would mean the certain maintenance 
 of order. But Napoleon did not rely on demagogy 
 alone : in secret he plotted a coujj d'etat. 
 
 The trade of house or bank burglar long ago 
 fell into disrepute : not so that of the state bur- 
 glar, who, if he succeed, may wear ermine jauntily, 
 — for ermine, like charity, covers a multitude of 
 sins. Louis Napoleon, ready to risk everything, 
 laid his plans for stealing the government of 
 France. The venture was less difficult than it 
 seems, for if he could win over four or five men 
 the odds would be with him. He must have the 
 Prefect of Paris, the Commandant of the Garrison, 
 the Ministers of "War and of the Interior : others 
 miffht make assurance double sure, but these were 
 absolutely necessary. 
 
 Early in the spring of 1851 he set to work. 
 Chief among his accomplices was his half brother, 
 Morny, — a facile, audacious man, whose reputa- 
 tion, if he had ever had any, would have been lost 
 long since in stock-swindling schemes ; after him, 
 in importance, came Pcrsigny, an adventurer who 
 had fastened on Louis Napoleon fifteen years 
 before; Fleury, a major most active and efficient, 
 without (iualm, for he foresaw a marshal's huion ; 
 and Maupas, one of those easy villains who, never
 
 58 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 having been suspected of honesty, are spared the 
 fatigue of pretending to be better than they are. 
 If we assume that all these gentlemen were Im- 
 perialists for revenue only, we shall do them no 
 injustice. 
 
 Their first move was to send Fleury to Algiers 
 to secure a general to act as minister of war. 
 He had not to search long; for Saint Arnaud, 
 one of the Algerian officers, guessing Fleury's 
 purpose, offered his services forthwith. But 
 Saint Arnaud stood only fifty-third in the line of 
 promotion among French generals ; some excuse 
 must be found for passing by his fifty-two seniors. 
 In a few weeks the French press and official 
 gazette announced an outbreak of great violence 
 among the Kabyles in Algeria; a little later 
 they reported that the insurrection had been sub- 
 dued by the energy of General Saint Arnaud ; 
 then, another proper interval elapsing, Saint Ar- 
 naud had come to Paris as minister of war. 
 
 It took less trouble to dismiss the Prefect of 
 the Seine, and to substitute Maupas for him. 
 Magnan, who commanded the troops, had already 
 been corrupted. Half-brother Morny, at the criti- 
 cal moment, would appear in the Ministry of the 
 Interior. The National Guard and the Public 
 Printer could both be counted on, — the latter 
 required for the prompt issuing of manifestoes.
 
 XAPOLEON III 59 
 
 Everything being ready, the President, after some 
 brief delays, set December 2 — the anniversary 
 of Austerlitz, and of the coronation of the great 
 Napoleon — for committing the crime. 
 
 On the evening of December 1, he held his 
 weekly reception at the Elysee ; moved with his 
 habitual courtesy among the guests ; seemed less 
 stiff than usual, — as if relieved of a burden ; then 
 went to his study for a last conference with his 
 fellow - conspirators. The next morning Paris 
 learned that two hundred leading citizens, mili- 
 tary and political, including many deputies, had 
 been arrested and taken to Vincennes. Placards 
 declared that the President, having had news of a 
 plot against the state, had stolen a march on the 
 plotters, dissolved the Assembly, proclaimed uni- 
 versal suffrage, and called for a plebiscite to accept 
 or reject the constitution he would frame. At 
 first, the stupefied Parisians knew not what to do. 
 Then the deputies who had escaped arrest met 
 and voted to depose the President ; but his gen- 
 darmes quickly broke up the meeting, and lodged 
 the deputies in prison. Thanks to the system of 
 centralization which France had long boasted of, 
 Morny, from the Ministry of the Interior, con- 
 trolled every prefect in France by telegrajdi. 
 The provinces were informed that Paris had ac-
 
 60 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 cepted the coup d'etat almost before Paris had 
 collected her dazed senses on the morning of the 
 2d of December. 
 
 The chief politicians and other leaders being 
 caged, there was no one left, except among the 
 workingmen, to direct a resistance. They did re- 
 volt, and Napoleon and Saint Arnaud gave them 
 free play to raise barricades, to arm and gather. 
 Then the eighty thousand soldiers in Paris sur- 
 rounded them, stormed their barricades, and made 
 no prisoners. Acompanying this suppression of 
 the mob was the bloodthirsty massacre of a multi- 
 tude of defenseless men, women, and children who 
 had collected on the boulevards to see the troops 
 move against the barricaders. They were shot 
 down in cold blood, the soldiers (according to 
 general report) having been rendered ferocious 
 by drink. Thus was achieved the crime of the 
 con}) d'etat. 
 
 By this crime Napoleon had demonstrated that 
 he had the necessary force to put down the law- 
 less, and that he did not hesitate to use it; by 
 massacring the innocent throng, he made the army 
 his accomplices, against any risk of their fra- 
 ternizing with the populace. A fortnight later, 
 7,439,000 Frenchmen ratified his crime and elected 
 him president for ten years : only 646,000 voted 
 against him. Napoleon the Great, by the coup
 
 NAPOLEON ni 61 
 
 d'etat of the 18tb Biumaire, h^d suppressed the 
 Directory ; his imitative nephew couhl now point 
 to an equally successful 2d of December. 
 
 France acquiesced all the more readily because 
 she was put under martial law. One hundred 
 thousand suspects were arrested, and more than 
 ten thousand were deported to Cayenne and Al- 
 geria. Police inquisitions, military commissions, 
 and the other usual devices of tyranny quickly 
 smothered resistance. Under the pretense of sup- 
 pressing anarchy, — an anarchist meaning any one 
 ■who did not submit to Louis Napoleon, — persecu- 
 tion supplanted law and justice. Had you asked 
 to see most of the Frenchmen whose names were 
 the most widely known, you would have been told 
 that they were in exile. 
 
 Like his uncle, Louis Napoleon waited a little 
 before putting on the purple. Only on December 
 2, 1852, the anniversary of his crime, did he have 
 himself proclaimed emperor. The mockery of a 
 plebiscite had preceded, and he had assured France 
 and Europe that the " Empire means peace." 
 
 Having reached the throne, he made the follow- 
 ing arrangements for staying on it. He organized 
 a Senate and a Council of State, whose members 
 he appointed. The public were allowed to elect 
 members to the Corps Lcgishitif, or Legislature ; 
 but as his minions controlled the polls, only such
 
 62 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 candidates as he preferred were likely to be chosen. 
 He suffered a few opponents to be elected, in order 
 to have it appear that he encouraged discussion. 
 Otherwise, he scarcely took pains to varnish his 
 autocracy. As a deft Chinese carver incloses a 
 tiny figure in a nest of ivory boxes, so did Bona- 
 parte imprison the simulacrum of Liberty in the 
 innermost compartment of the political cage in 
 which he held France captive. 
 
 What must the condition of the French people 
 have been that they submitted ! How much ante- 
 cedent incapacity for government, how much cher- 
 ishing of unworthy ideals, were implied by the 
 success of such an adventurer ! And what could 
 patriotism mean, when the French fatherland 
 meant the land of Louis Napoleon, Morny, Mau- 
 pas, Persigny, and their unspeakable underlings ? 
 The new Empire gave France what is called a 
 strong government, by which commercially she 
 throve. Tradesmen, seeing business improve and 
 their hoards grow, chafed less at the loss of polit- 
 ical freedom. The working classes were propi- 
 tiated by public woi'ks — the favorite nostrum of 
 socialists and tyrants — organized on a vast scale. 
 Pensions were showered on old soldiers, or their 
 widows. Taxes ran high ; the public debt had 
 constantly to be increased : but an air of opulence 
 pervaded France.
 
 NAPOLEON III 63 
 
 Established at home, Napoleon now looked 
 abroad for gloire. Before his elevation, some one 
 had warned him that he would find the French 
 a very hard people to govern. " Not at all," he 
 replied ; " all that they need is a war every four 
 years." Europe had formally recognized him, — 
 no country being more ready than England to 
 condone his great crime. Queen Victoria, the 
 tyjiical British matron, exchanging visits with the 
 Imperial adventurer made an edifying specta- 
 cle ! Presently the land-greed of England and 
 the ^/oire-thirst of France brought the sons of 
 the Britons who had whipped the great Napoleon 
 at Waterloo into an alliance with the sons of the 
 Frenchmen who had there been whipped ; and in 
 the summer of 1854 British and French fleets 
 swept through the Bosphorus and across the Black 
 Sea, and landed two armies near Sebastopol. 
 Of the Crimean war which ensued, we need say 
 no more than that it was immoral in conception, 
 blundering in execution, and ineffectual in results. 
 Nevertheless, it supplied Napoleon III with just 
 what he had sought. He extracted from it large 
 quantities of gloire. Marshal's batons and mili- 
 tary promotions, tlie parade of returning troops, 
 the assembling at Paris of the European envoys 
 who were to agree on a treaty of peace, — what 
 did all this show but that Europe had accepted
 
 64 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 Napoleon III at his own valuation ? In Russia's 
 wilderness of snow the great Napoleon had been 
 ruined ; now his nephew posed as the humbler of 
 Russia. The great Napoleon had been finally 
 crushed by England : now his nephew had enticed 
 good, pious England into an alliance, and thereby 
 he had surely avenged his uncle. The last Euro- 
 pean compact, humiliating to France, had been 
 signed at Vienna: the new compact, signed at 
 Paris, bore witness to the supremacy of France. 
 
 That year 1856 marks the acme of Napoleon the 
 Third's career. It saw him the recognized arbiter 
 of Europe. The world, which worships success, 
 forgot that the suave, impassive master of the 
 Tuileries had been Louis the Ridiculed, a political 
 vagabond and hapless pretender, only ten years 
 before. Now, as arbiter, he would meddle when 
 he chose, and the world should not gainsay him. 
 Moreover, he believed his power so secure that he 
 was willing to forgive those whom he had injured. 
 He had gained what he wanted: why, therefore, 
 should they reject his amnesty ? 
 
 Unscrupulously selfish till he had attained his 
 ends, Napoleon III had, nevertheless, curious 
 streaks of disinterestedness in his nature. What 
 but Quixotism impelled him to promise to free 
 Italy from her bondage to Austria? He might 
 add thereby to his personal renown, but the French
 
 NAPOLEON III G5 
 
 people, who must pay the bills and furnish the 
 soldiers, were offered no adequate compensation. 
 Whatever his motives, he crossed the Alps in 
 the spring of 1859, joined the Piedmontese, and 
 defeated the Austi-ians in two great battles. But 
 after Solferino he paused, grew anxious, and 
 drew back. Many reasons were hinted at : he 
 had been horrified at the sight of twelve thousand 
 corpses festering in the midsummer heat on the 
 battlefield ; he perceived that the campaign must 
 last many months before the Austrians could be 
 dislodged from the Quadrilateral ; he dreaded to 
 create in Italy a kingdom strong enough to be a 
 menace to France ; he was worried at the mobiliza- 
 tion of the Prussian army, foreboding a war on the 
 Rhine. Motives are usually com2)osite : perhaps, 
 therefore, all these, and others, made him resolve 
 to quit Italy with his mission only half achieved. 
 But of all his schemes, that Italian expedition has 
 alone escaped the condemnation of posterity.. 
 
 Possessing a great talent for scenic display, 
 Napoleon dressed his victories so as to get the 
 fullest spectacular effect from them. He could 
 pose now as the conqueror of Austria, and offset 
 the gloire of his uncle's Marengo with that of liis 
 own Magenta. He had more hatons and duke- 
 doms to bestow, — more trophies to deposit in the 
 Invalides. The gazettes, the official historians, the
 
 66 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 court writers, the spell-bound populace, acclaimed 
 the new triumphs. Europe became too small for 
 Imperial France to swagger in. Napoleon the 
 First had meddled in Egypt, and Palestine, and 
 the West Indies ; his nephew must do likewise, 
 and seek new worlds to conquer over sea. 
 
 Already, however, sober observers noted other 
 symptoms, and soon the list of Imperial reverses 
 grew ominously long. Early in 1860, Central 
 Italy became a part of Victor Emanuel's kingdom : 
 Napoleon had insisted that it should form a new 
 state for his cousin Plon-Plon. That autumn, 
 Sicily and Naples united themselves to Italy : Na- 
 poleon had wished and schemed otherwise. That 
 same year, too, England compelled him to re- 
 nounce his protectorate over Syria. Then he 
 planned a French empire in Mexico ; sent French 
 troops over under Bazaine ; set up Maximilian, 
 who appeared to have grafted Napoleonism on our 
 continent. But in 1867 he recalled his army, — 
 " spontaneously " as he said. The world smiled 
 when it reflected that the spontaneity of his with- 
 drawal had been superinduced by a curt message 
 from the United States and the massing of United 
 States troops on the Rio Grande. In 1864 he 
 would have kept Prussia and Austria from rob- 
 bing Denmark ; but as he had only words to risk, 
 they heeded him not. In 1866, when Prussia
 
 NAPOLEON III 67 
 
 and Austria went to war, expecting that Austria 
 would be the victor, he had arranged to take a 
 slice of Rhineland while Austria took Silesia. 
 But Prussia was victorious, and so quickly that 
 Napoleon could not save his reputation even as 
 mediator. 
 
 At last Europe realized that his nod was not 
 omnipotent, — that Prussia, his enemy, could raise 
 herself to a power of the first rank, not only with- 
 out but against his sanction. Napoleon also real- 
 ized that his prestige was tottering. He must have 
 some compensation for Prussia's aggrandizement. 
 But when he asked for a strip of Rhineland, Bis- 
 marck replied : " I will never cede an inch of Ger- 
 man soil." Napoleon, not ready for war, cast about 
 for some other screen to his humiliation ; for even 
 in his legislature men now dared to taunt him with 
 allowing Germany to grow perilously strong. To 
 this taunt one of the Imperial spokesmen retorted, 
 " Germany is divided into three fragments, which 
 will never come together." A day or two later 
 Bismarck published the secret treaties by which 
 North and South Germany had bound themselves 
 to su})port each other in case of attack. 
 
 Thus thwarted, Najjoleon schemed to buy the 
 tiny grandduchy of Luxemburg, which had long 
 been garrisoned by Prussian trooj)s. The King of 
 Holland, who owned it, agreed to sell it for ninety
 
 68 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 million francs. Europe was willing, but Bismarck 
 said no. He would consent to withdraw his troops, 
 to destroy the fortifications, and to convert Luxem- 
 burg into a neutral state ; more than that he would 
 not allow. And with that Napoleon had to con- 
 tent himself, and to persuade the French — as best 
 he could — that he had frightened the Prussians 
 out of the grandduchy. 
 
 In 1863 Bismarck said to a friend : " From a 
 distance, the French Empire seems to be some- 
 thing ; near by, it is nothing." About the same 
 time Napoleon, who had had much friendly inter- 
 course with the Prussian statesman, said : " M. de 
 Bismarck is not a serious man." 
 
 Just as the Luxemburg affair was concluded, all 
 the world went to Paris to attend the Exposition, 
 which was intended to be, and seemed, a symbol of 
 the permanence of the Second Empire. The pro- 
 jectors knew that the immense preparations would 
 enable the government to employ many workmen, 
 who might otherwise be unruly, and that the vast 
 concourse of visitors would bring money to the 
 tradespeople and keep them from grvimbling. The 
 ostensible purpose, however, was to dazzle both 
 Frenchmen and strangers by a view of Imperial 
 magnificence ; and it was fully achieved. 
 
 Paris herself, the Phryne among cities, aston- 
 ished those who had never seen her, or who had
 
 NAPOLEON m 69 
 
 seen her in old clays. Where, they asked, were 
 the narrow, crooked streets, in which barricaders 
 once fortified themselves ? Were these boulevards, 
 stretching broad and straight, — were these they ? 
 And by what magic had the old, irregular dwell- 
 ings been transformed into miles of tall, stately 
 blocks ? New churches, new quays, new parks, 
 new palaces, bearing the impress of grace, sym- 
 metry, and a unifying planner, excited the wonder 
 of the cosmopolitan throng of visitors. But the 
 products of industry, the triumphs of the arts of 
 peace, were not allowed to obscure the military 
 glories of the Second Empire. A " Bridge of the 
 Alma " and a " Boulevard of Sebastopol " kept 
 the Crimean prowess in memory ; a " Solferino 
 Bridge " and a " Magenta Boulevard " bore wit- 
 ness to the Italian triumphs. And there were 
 pageants, military, courtly, artistic ; balls, at which, 
 among the picked beauties of the world, the Em- 
 press Eugenie shone most beautiful ; banquets, at 
 which Napoleon sat at the head of the table, with 
 monarcbs at his right hand and his left deferen- 
 tially listening. Little did the on-lookers suppose 
 that the master of those magnificent revels had 
 been lately frustrated by M. de Bismarck, who was 
 merely one of the million whose presence in Paris 
 seemed a tribute to Napoleon's supremacy. 
 
 History, it is said, never repeats : but is the
 
 70 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 saying true ? Is there not an old, old story of 
 Belsbazzar and the magnificent feast he gave in 
 ancient Babylon, and the mysterious writing on 
 the wall ? And was not another Belshazzar repeat- 
 ing the episode in this modern Babylon less than 
 thirty years ago ? However that may be, the Ex- 
 hibition of 1867 was the last triumph of Imperial 
 France. 
 
 Imperialism had made a great show, reprodu- 
 cing, so far as it could, the glamour of the First 
 Empire. Judge how potent that First Empire 
 must have been, when mere imitation of it could 
 thus hypnotize France and delude Europe ! But 
 Imperialism, generated by a crime and vitalized Dy 
 corruption and deceit, was not all France. Hon- 
 est France, excluded in the beginning, could not, 
 would not, be lured in later. Napoleon would have 
 conciliated, but the men whom he needed to con- 
 ciliate would not even parley. To offset Victor 
 Hugo and patriots of his rigid defiance, the Em- 
 peror had the outward acquiescence of Prosper 
 Merimee, the worldly courtier ; of Alfred de Mus- 
 set, the weak-willed, debauched poet ; and of such 
 as they. But he had the conscience of France 
 against him ; to offset that he leagued himself 
 with Jesuits and Clericals. Having exhausted 
 the expedients of force, he had tried the arts of 
 flattery ; he had intimidated, he had blandished ;
 
 NAPOLEON m 71 
 
 he had made vice easy and attractive, in order that, 
 though he could not win over the stubborn to his 
 cause, their character might be softened through 
 vohiptuousness. Whosoever coukl be corrupted — 
 let us give him fidl credit — he did corrupt in 
 masterful fashion ; but conscience, in France as 
 elsewhere, is incorruptible. 
 
 Despite his complicated machinery for gagging 
 conscience, protests began to be made boldly. One 
 such protest, uttered towards the end of 1868, rang 
 throughout France ; and well it might, so auda- 
 cious was the eloquence of the protester. Several 
 newspapers had opened a subscription for a monu- 
 ment to Baudin, a Republican killed in the coup 
 d'etat. The proprietors of these newspapers were 
 arrested. One of them, Delescluze, had for his 
 advocate Leon Gambetta, a vehement young law- 
 yer from the South. Before the judge, and the 
 prosecuting attorneys, and the police — all myrmi- 
 dons of the Emperor — he arraigned the Empire, 
 closing with these words : " Here for seventeen 
 years you have been absolute masters — ' masters 
 at discretion,' it is your phrase — of France. Well, 
 you have never dared to say, ' We will celebrate 
 — we will include among the solemn festivals of 
 France — the Second of December as a national 
 anniversary ! And yet all the governments which 
 have succeeded each other in the land have hon-
 
 72 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 ored the day of their birth ; there are but two 
 anniversaries — the 18th Brumaire and the 2d 
 of December — which have never been put among 
 the solemnities of origin, because you know that, 
 if you dared to put these, the universal conscience 
 would disavow them ! " Gambetta's invective did 
 not save his client from prison, but his arraign- 
 ment of the Empire echoed throughout France. 
 
 And all the next year, 1869, though Imperialism 
 abated in language none of its pretensions, it 
 showed in deeds many signs of nervousness. No 
 longer did it think it prudent, for instance, to abet 
 the enormous extravagances of Hausmann, the re- 
 modeler of Paris. It even talked Liberalism, and 
 set up a seeming Liberal Cabinet, with Ollivier at 
 its head. " All the reform you may give us, we 
 accept," said Gambetta bluntly ; " and we may 
 possibly force you to yield more than you intend ; 
 but all you give, and all we take, we shall simply 
 use as a bridge to carry us over to another form 
 of government." Evidently the conscience of 
 France, expressing itself through the Republican 
 spokesman, could not be placated or seduced. 
 
 A still blacker omen ushered in 1870. Pierre 
 Bonaparte, the Emperor's cousin, shot in cold blood 
 a journalist, Victor Noir. Two hundred thousand 
 persons followed the victim's hearse ; two hundred 
 thousand voices shouted through the streets of
 
 NAPOLEON in 73 
 
 Paris, " Vengeance ! Down with the Empire ! 
 Long live the Republic ! " In April the ministers 
 proposed further reforms, and called for another 
 plebiscite, that worn-out Napoleonic device for de- 
 ceiving public opinion. Seven and a third million 
 votes were dutifully registered for the Empire, 
 and only a million and a half against it ; but 
 the Imperialists did not exult, — a majority of 
 voters in Paris, and forty-six thousand soldiers, 
 had voted no. 
 
 To be deserted by the Parisians, on whom Napo- 
 leon had lavished so much pomp, — that, indeed, 
 was hard ; but the disaffection in the army meant 
 danger. One desperate remedy remained, — a for- 
 eign war. Victory would bring to Imperialism 
 sufficient prestige to postpone for several years the 
 impending collapse ; meanwhile, public attention 
 would be diverted from grievances at home. 
 
 Nemesis saw to it that rogues thus minded 
 should not lack opportunity. The Spaniards 
 having elected an obscure German prince to be 
 their king, the French ministers announced that 
 they would never suffer him to reign. Of his own 
 motion, the German prince declined the election, 
 but the French were not appeased. They wouhl 
 humble the King of Prussia by forcing from him 
 a meek promise. King William refused to be bul- 
 lied ; the French ministers j)roclaimed that France
 
 74 THEONE-MAKERS 
 
 had been Insulted. Not Imperialists only, but 
 Frenchmen of all parties clamored for satisfaction. 
 That love of gloire^ that mercurial vanity which, 
 twenty years before, had made them an easy prey 
 to Louis Napoleon, now made them abettors of his 
 breakneck venture. He appealed to their patriot- 
 ism, the last refuge of a scoundrel, and they were 
 beguiled. 
 
 War came, the Emperor being, by common re- 
 port, most reluctant to consent to its declaration. 
 He was its first victim. Five weeks after taking 
 the field, he surrendered with nearly one hundred 
 and ninety thousand men at Sedan. The corrup- 
 tion which through twenty years he had fostered, 
 in all parts of the state where he expected to profit 
 by it, had gangrened the army also, that branch 
 which a military tyrant needs to have honestly ad- 
 ministered. And now in his need the army failed 
 him. He had been caught, as every one is caught 
 who imagines that he can be wicked with impunity 
 and still keep virtue for an ally when he needs 
 her. From top to bottom his war department was 
 rotten. Conscripts had, by bribe, evaded service ; 
 generals had sworn to false muster-rolls ; minis- 
 ters had connived with dishonest contractors. At 
 Sedan, Napoleon paid the penalty of the corrup- 
 tion which he had erected into a system ; at Sedan, 
 moreover, he completed that cycle of parallels and
 
 NAPOLEON in 75 
 
 imitations which he had made the business of his 
 life. Just as Prussian Bliicher paralyzed the last 
 rally of the great Napoleon at Waterloo, so Prus- 
 sian Moltke achieved the ignominy of Napoleon 
 the Little at Sedan. 
 
 Men forget, even when they do not forgive. 
 Frenchmen, furious at the humiliation of Sedan, 
 cursed Napoleon as the author of it. But after 
 a quarter of a century, although they have not 
 forgiven him, they have come to look on him as 
 victim rather than as villain. Later writers have 
 held him up to be pitied. They describe his long 
 years of suffering from the stone ; they paint him 
 during that month of August, 1870, as a poor, 
 abject creature of circumstances, driven to bay by 
 an irresistible foe, buffeted, scorned, despised by 
 his own officers and troops. They show him to us, 
 speechless and in agony, lifted from his horse at 
 Saarbriicken ; or huddled into a third-class railway 
 carriage with a crowd of common soldiers escap- 
 ing from the oncoming Prussians ; or sitting, as 
 cheerless as a death's-head, at a council of war; 
 now lodged in mean (piarters ; now ])assing gloom- 
 ily down regiments on their way to defeat, and 
 never a voice to cry Vive V Empercur ; ever growing 
 more and more haggard and nervous with worry, 
 disaster, and endless cigarettes; continually ])cltcd 
 with telegrams from Empress Eugenie at Paris,
 
 76 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 " Do this — do that, or the Empire is lost ; " until 
 that final early morning interview with Bismarck 
 in the weaver's cottage at Donchery. Latter-day 
 Frenchmen, beholding such misery, have forgotten 
 that Napoleon himself was chiefly responsible for 
 it, and have ceased to execrate. 
 
 In closing, let us read, from a letter Bismarck 
 wrote to his wife the day after the surrender, a 
 description of the meeting of Napoleon and his 
 conqueror : — 
 
 " Vendresse, Sept. 3, 1870. Yesterday morning 
 at five o'clock, after I had been negotiating until 
 one o'clock, a. m., with Moltke and the French 
 generals about the capitulation to be concluded, I 
 was awakened by General Reille, with whom I am 
 acquainted, to tell me that Napoleon wished to 
 speak with me. Unwashed and unbreakfasted, I 
 rode towards Sedan, found the Emperor in an open 
 carriage, with three aides-de-camp and three in at- 
 tendance on horseback, halted on the road before 
 Sedan. I dismounted, saluted him just as politely 
 as at the Tuileries, and asked for his commands. 
 He wished to see the King. I told him, as the 
 truth was, that his Majesty had his quarters fif- 
 teen miles away, at the spot where I am now writ- 
 ing. In answer to Napoleon's question where he 
 should go, I offered him, as I was not acquainted
 
 NAPOLEON m 77 
 
 with the country, my own quarters at Donchery, a 
 small place in the neighborhood, close by Sedan. 
 He accepted and drove, accompanied by his six 
 Frenchmen, by me and by Carl (who in the mean 
 time had ridden after me), through the lonely 
 morning, towards our lines. Before reaching the 
 spot, he began to be troubled on account of the 
 possible crowd, and he asked me if he could alight 
 in a lonely cottage by the wayside. I had it in- 
 spected by Carl, who brought word it was mean 
 and dirty. ''N^importe'' (No matter), said N., 
 and I ascended with him a rickety, narrow stair- 
 case. In an apartment ten feet square, with a 
 deal-table and two rush-bottomed chairs, we sat 
 for an hour ; the others were below. A powerful 
 contrast with our last meeting in the Tuileries in 
 '67. Our conversation was difficult, if I wanted 
 to avoid touching on topics which could not but 
 affect painfully the man whom God's mighty hand 
 had cast down. I had sent Carl to fetch officers 
 from the town, and to beg Moltke to come." 
 
 That morning the terms of capitulation were 
 drawn up, and the next day Napoleon went a pris- 
 oner to Wilhelmshohe, whence, in due time, he 
 was allowed to depart for England. At Chisle- 
 hurst, on January 9, 1873, he died, having lived to 
 see not only the extinction of French Imperialism
 
 78 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 and of the temporal Papacy, but also the creation 
 of the German Empire and the union of Italy. 
 To prevent all of these things had been his aim. 
 
 In a life like Garibaldi's we see what a disinter- 
 ested genius can do by appealing to men's noble 
 motives : the career of Louis Napoleon illustrates 
 not less clearly what a man with talents and with- 
 out scruples can accomplish by appealing to the 
 instincts of vainglory and selfishness and terror ; 
 to the instinct which bullies weak nations and 
 hoists the flag where it does not belong ; to the 
 instinct which has not the courage to acknowledge 
 an error, but is quick to impute injuries, and 
 declares that there shall be one conscience for poli- 
 ticians and another for citizens. Let us not flatter 
 ourselves that only the French have cherished 
 these stupendous delusions ; let us rather take 
 warning by the retribution exacted from them. 
 
 " Forgetful is green earth : the Gods alone 
 Remember everlastingly ; they strike 
 Remorselessly, and ever like for like. 
 By their great memories the Gods are known."
 
 KOSSUTH 
 
 The history of Hungary is in this respect 
 unique : it records the career of an alien tribe 
 which, cutting its way from Eastern Asia to the 
 heart of Europe, founded there a nation, and this 
 nation, after the friction of a thousand years, still 
 preserves its racial characteristics. In 894 Duke 
 Arpad led his horde of Magyars — whose earlier 
 kinsmen were Huns and Avars — up the valley of 
 the Danube. Long were they a terror to Europe ; 
 then, gradually, they had to content themselves 
 with Hungary as their home. They became Chris- 
 tians ; they adopted a monarchical government ; 
 alongside of their Aryan neighbors, they took on 
 medisival civilization. Europe, unable to expel 
 or to destroy, acknowledged them as citizens. The 
 time came when the Magyars, in a conflict lasting 
 fivescore years, defended Euro])e against the in- 
 vasion of another horde of Asiatic barbarians ; 
 till, unsupported by tlieir neighbors, the Magyars 
 succumbed to the Turks in the battle of Moluics 
 in 1526. Afterwards, for one hundred and fifty 
 years, Hungary herself writhed in the hands of
 
 80 THRONE-MAKEKS 
 
 the Mussulman ; when that bondage ceased, she 
 had a different oppressor, — Austria. 
 
 The Hungarian monarchy was elective, and 
 after the battle of Mohacs the Magyars chose for 
 their king the sovereign of the Austrian states. 
 The succession continued in the House of Haps- 
 burg, becoming in fact hereditary ; but, before 
 the Magyars accepted him as king, each Haps- 
 burg candidate must be ratified by the Hungarian 
 Diet, and must swear to uphold the Hungarian 
 Constitution. When, however, the expulsion of 
 the Turks, at the end of the seventeenth century, 
 left the Austrian sovereigns free to exercise their 
 authority, they set about curtailing the ancient 
 liberties of Hungary. Throughout the eighteenth 
 century that process went on : the Magyars pro- 
 tested ; the Emperor-King encroached, or, when 
 the protests thi-eatened to pass into insurrection, 
 he paused for a while and gave fair promises. 
 
 Such was the situation when the French Eevo- 
 tion, followed by Napoleon's colossal ambition, 
 startled Europe. During the quarter century of 
 upheaval, the Magyars, still pouring their griev- 
 ances into Vienna, remained loyal to their King. 
 After Napoleon's downfall, the Old Regime being 
 firmly reestablished. Emperor Francis not only 
 failed to keep his promises towards Hungary, but 
 revived the old policy of Austrianization, which
 
 KOSSUTH 81 
 
 meant the substitution of German for Magyar 
 officials, and the removal of the chief branches of 
 government to Vienna. Again the protests became 
 angry, until Francis, baffled and alarmed, con- 
 vened the Diet. With the year 1825, when that 
 Diet met, began the modern struggle of Hungary 
 to recover that home rule which one after another 
 of her Hapsburg kings had solemnly sworn to 
 respect, and had as perfidiously disregarded. 
 Thus the seed of the Magyar revolution was sown, 
 like that of so many others, in a demand for the 
 restoration of acknowledged rights, and not in a 
 demand for innovation. Home rule, — Hungary 
 to govern herself, instead of being bullied by 
 foreigners who happened to be also subjects of 
 her Emperor-King, — that seemed an object as 
 simple and definite as it was just. Experience 
 soon showed, however, that this cause was not sim- 
 ple ; that it no more could be attained alone than 
 gold can be taken from quartz without crushing 
 the quartz and separating the silver and lead, and 
 the crushed quartz itself, from the desired gold. 
 For Hungary was imbedded in an old civilization, 
 which must be broken up before home rule, and 
 many another modern ideal, could be attained. 
 
 Imagine a country having an area about as 
 large as the State of Colorado, inhabited by people 
 sprung from four different races, — the Magyar,
 
 82 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 the Slav, the German, and the Italian : imagine, 
 further, these races subdivided into eight different 
 peoples, — Magyars, having poor kinsmen called 
 Szeklers ; Slavs, sending forth four different 
 shoots, Slovaks in the North, Croats in the South- 
 west, Serbs in the South, and Wallachs in the 
 East; imagine this motley population holding 
 various creeds, — Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, 
 Calvinist, Lutheran, and Unitarian : imagine not 
 merely each race, but each people, cherishing its 
 own language, its own customs, its own ambitions, 
 which inevitably clashed with those of its neigh- 
 bors : and having imagined all this, you have not 
 yet come to the end of Hungary's complex organ- 
 ism. Beside the conflicts of race and creed, there 
 were political and social complications. 
 
 The dominant race was the Magyars, who num- 
 bered, however, only a third of the total popula- 
 tion ; their prevailing system was the feudal. A 
 few hundred great nobles, or magnates, a consid- 
 erable body of small nobles and a multitude of 
 artisans, tradesmen, and peasants made up the 
 social strata. Every Magyar who could trace 
 descent to Arpad and his followers — though he 
 were but a peasant in condition — was a noble : 
 members of all the other races had no political 
 rights. Hungary proper comprised fifty-two coun- 
 ties, each of which had its local congregation or
 
 KOSSUTH 83 
 
 assembly, which met four times a year, and sent 
 suggestions or bills of grievances to the Central 
 Diet, composed of the Table of Magnates and 
 the Table of Deputies. A Palatine or Viceroy, 
 representing the Sovereign, was the actual head of 
 the kingdom. Outside of Hungary proper, the 
 Croats had their local Diet at Agram, and Tran- 
 sylvania had hers ; both also chose representatives 
 to the Hungarian Diet. In a measure, therefore, 
 ■we may call Hungary a federation, not forgetting, 
 however, that it was a federation in which one 
 race, the Magyars, domineered. The Latin lan- 
 guage was the common medium of communication 
 between Hungary and Austria, and among the 
 diverse peoples. 
 
 The most significant event of the Diet of 1825 
 was the use by Count Stephen Szechenyi of the 
 Magyar language instead of the Latin. Szechenyi, 
 having traveled in Western Europe, came back 
 imbued with large schemes of progress. He helped 
 to introduce steamboats on the Danube ; he founded 
 a Magyar Academy ; he proposed to join Buda 
 and Pesth by a suspension bridge. By stimulating 
 the material welfare of his country, he hoped 
 that many of the social abuses would vanish with- 
 out a struggle. And now his use of the Magyar 
 language was a symptom of the awakening of 
 the spirit of nationality, — one of the controlling
 
 84 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 motives in the history of Europe during the nine- 
 teenth century. In Hungary, as elsewhere, the 
 arousing of that spirit was evidenced not only by 
 an intenser political life, but also by a literary 
 revival. 
 
 In direct reforms the Diet of 1825 accom- 
 plished little, — the Austrian government being 
 still adroit in postponing a settlement, — but it was 
 important in so far as it revealed the presence of 
 new forces, whose nature was as yet undetei-mined. 
 By the time another Diet assembled, in 1832, sev- 
 eral questions had taken a definite shape. Fore- 
 most, of course, was Hungary's demand of home 
 rule, in which all Magyars stood side by side ; but 
 when it came to internal affairs, they inevitably 
 disagreed. The advanced Liberals proposed to 
 emancipate the serfs, to extend the suffrage, and 
 to abolish many of the privileges of the aristo- 
 cracy. How grievous was the condition of the 
 Hungarian serf may be inferred from the fact 
 that, in spite of an improvement decreed by Maria 
 Theresa, he was still bound to contribute to his 
 landlord the equivalent of more than one hundred 
 days' labor a year ; he had no civic rights, and no 
 other chance of redress than in the manorial court 
 presided over by his master. The nobles, on the 
 other hand, paid no taxes, ruled the county assem- 
 blies, appointed magistrates, and, except in case of
 
 KOSSUTH 85 
 
 a foreign invasion, rendered no military service, in 
 return for all their exorbitant immunities. 
 
 That Magyar aristocracy has played so promi- 
 nent a part in the history of Hungary that we may 
 pause a moment to describe it. In 1830 the Mag- 
 yar magnate was still the most picturesque noble 
 in Europe. Like the Spanish grandee and the 
 Venetian senator of an earlier time, he represented 
 one of the highest expressions of the privileged 
 classes. He was haughty, but warm-hearted ; emo- 
 tional, but brave : appeal to his honor, to his 
 magnanimity, and — as Maria Theresa found — he 
 would forget his grievances, disregard his interests, 
 and devote himself body and soul to your cause. 
 He might be ignorant, a spendthrift, an exacting 
 master, but in his capacity for generosity he was 
 — by whatever standard — truly a noble. In old 
 times his forefathers had assembled every year, or 
 when an emergency required, on the plain of 
 Rakos, — a host of gallant warriors, in brilliant 
 armor and gorgeous cloaks and trappings. There 
 they deliberated — perhaps chose a king or deposed 
 one — and then each rode home with his retinue, 
 to live in a splendor half-barbaric for another 
 year. In his dress the Magyar had an Oriental 
 love of color, and in his music there is a similar 
 glow, a similar charm. 
 
 As late as 1840 both the magnates and tlie
 
 86 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 lesser nobility clung to their national costume as 
 loyally as to their national constitution. " It now 
 consists of the attilla,^'' writes Paget at that date, 
 " a frock coat, reaching nearly to the knee, with a 
 military collar, and covered in front with gold 
 lace ; over this is generally worn, hanging loosely 
 on one shoulder, the mente, a somewhat larger 
 coat, lined with fur, and with a fur cape. It is 
 generally suspended by some massive jeweled 
 chain. The tight pantaloons and ankle-boots, with 
 the never-failing spurs, form the lower part. The 
 haljiak^ or fur cap, is of innumei-able forms, and 
 ornamented by a feather fastened by a rich brooch. 
 The white heron's plume, or aigrette, the rare 
 product of the Southern Danube, is the most 
 esteemed. The neck is opened, except for a black 
 ribbon loosely passed round it, the ends of which 
 are finished with gold fringe. The sabre is in the 
 shape of the Turkish scimitar; indeed, richly orna- 
 mented Damascus blades, the spoils of some unsuc- 
 cessful Moslem invasion, are very often worn, and 
 are highly prized. 
 
 " The sword-belt is frequently a heavy gold 
 chain, such as our ancient knights wore over their 
 armor. The colors, as in many respects the form, 
 of the Hungarian uniform, depend entirely on the 
 taste of the individual, and vary from the simple 
 blue dress of the hussar, with white cotton lace, to
 
 KOSSUTH 87 
 
 the rich stuffs, covered with pearls and diamonds, 
 of the Prince Esterhazy. 
 
 " On the whole, I know of no dress so hand- 
 some, so manly, and at the same time so con- 
 venient. It is only on gala days that gay and 
 embroidered dresses are used ; on ordinary occa- 
 sions, as sittings of the Diet, county meetings, and 
 others in which it is customary to wear uniform, 
 dark colors with black silk lace, and trousers, or 
 Hessian boots, are commonly used." ^ 
 
 Such, in its dress, was the Magyar aristocracy 
 which the reformers set themselves to overcome ; 
 and in their character those Magyar nobles — 
 were they magnates or simply gentlemen — cher- 
 ished a tenacity of class unsurpassed by any other 
 aristocrats in Europe. Nevertheless, the reform- 
 ers boldly put forth a programme which involved 
 the complete social and political reorganization 
 of the country, — even throwing down a challenge 
 to the aristocracy to surrender privileges in which 
 these deemed their very existence rooted. Parties 
 had begun to array themselves on these lines 
 when Louis Kossuth entered public life. 
 
 Bom at the village of Monok, Zemplen County, 
 on April 27, 1802, Kossuth had for his father a 
 lesser noble, Slavic in origin, Lutheran in faith, 
 
 ' John Paget, Hungary and Transylvania (new edition, New 
 York, 1850), i, 249, 250,
 
 88 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 and lawyer by jirofesslon. The son received a 
 good education, and began to practice law, which 
 led easily to politics. He sat in his county assem- 
 bly, was early conspicuous as an advocate of pop- 
 ular rights and as an eloquent speaker. Thus 
 equipped, he took his seat in the Diet of 1832, 
 where, as proxy to a magnate, he had a voice 
 but no vote. There seemed slight chance of his 
 emerging from his proxy's obscurity, but to gen- 
 ius all conditions are fluid. Kossuth conceived 
 the plan of publishing the reports of the debates 
 in the Diet. The government permitted no news- 
 papers, and trimmed all other publications to suit 
 its views ; but the members of both Houses could 
 speak freely, without danger of arrest for any of 
 their utterances in the Diet. To circulate their 
 speeches would, therefore, as Kossuth saw, put 
 within reach of the Hungarians a mass of political 
 reading not otherwise obtainable. Hardly had he 
 begun to publish, ere government signified its 
 desire of buying his press. Deprived of this, he 
 employed secretai*ies who wrote out his abstracts 
 of the proceedings and sent them through the 
 mails to their destination. Government ordered 
 its postmen to confiscate and destroy. Still un- 
 vanquished, Kossuth dispatched his budgets by 
 special messengers. Government was foiled. By 
 these devices, before the close of the Diet in 183G,
 
 KOSSUTH 89 
 
 Kossuth — the obscure magnate's proxy — had be- 
 come one of the most widely known men in the 
 kingdom. The reports were literally his reports, 
 giving not only the tenor of the chief debates, but 
 also his comments thereon. 
 
 He now proposed to edit in similar fashion the 
 proceedings of the quarterly meetings of the fifty- 
 two county assemblies ; but Government, no longer 
 restrained by his inviolability as member of the 
 Diet, arrested him. He spent two years in prison, 
 denied books and all intercourse with his friends, 
 before his case came to trial : then he was sen- 
 tenced to a further confinement of four years, 
 during which his great solace was the study of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 Meanwhile, political and social agitation was 
 swelling. The King, thinking a European war 
 over the Eastern Question imminent, summoned 
 another Diet to* vote him a fresh subsidy and more 
 soldiers. But the Diet, indignant and headstrong, 
 refused all help till Kossuth and some other po- 
 litical prisoners should be released. The King 
 yielded. Kossuth came forth a national hero. 
 
 After several months spent in recuperating his 
 health, Kossuth, in January, 1841, establislied the 
 I^e.fti J/irlap, or I^enth Gazette. That Govern- 
 ment acquiesced in this ])rojcct showed how far 
 the tide of Liberalism had risen. It .showed, too,
 
 90 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 that Government was astute, — hoping in this way 
 to rob Kossuth of his martyr's halo ; deeming it 
 wiser to let him publish openly than surrepti- 
 tiously ; trusting, above all, to the sharpness of its 
 censors' eyes and scissors. Kossuth, on his side, 
 was equally cunning, versed in the art of dressing 
 his opinions in such guise that the censor could 
 not object to them, though they carried a meaning 
 which his readers knew how to interpret according 
 to his intention. He wrote on all topics with a 
 vehemence and an Oriental heat which won him 
 tens of thousands of admirers. Like any Mag- 
 yar patriot, he could count on one of the most 
 powerful of allies, — the race hatred between his 
 countrymen and the Austrians. The very word 
 " German " signified, in the Magyar language, vile^ 
 hase, despicable. There was a Magyar proverb to 
 the effect that " German is the only language God 
 does not understand." Innumerable illustrations 
 of this antipathy might be cited, but the following, 
 which Paget tells, will serve as well as another : 
 The proprietor of a theatre produced what he con- 
 sidered a fine piece of scenery, in which was repre- 
 sented a full moon, with round, fat, clean-shaved 
 face. When it rose, the audience hissed, and 
 shouted, " Down with the German moon ! " The 
 manager took the hint ; next night there rose 
 a swarthy-cheeked, black-moustachioed orb. Hur-
 
 KOSSUTH 91 
 
 rahs burst from every mouth, and all cried, " Long 
 live our own true Magyar moon ! " 
 
 Doubt not that Kossuth knew how to kindle 
 the fuel which ages of hatred had been storing. 
 He had the gift peculiar to really great popular 
 leaders of appealing directly to racial pride and 
 passion ; so it mattered little that he dealt in gen- 
 eralizations. Speaking broadly, he preached the 
 abolition of feudalism and the aggrandizement of 
 the Magyar nationality. The former purpose 
 brought him and the Liberals into conflict with 
 the conservative aristocracy ; the latter inflamed 
 against the Magyars the long-smouldering hatred 
 of their subject peoples. 
 
 For the spirit of nationality had awakened these 
 also. The Slavs of Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalma- 
 tia dreamed of establishing a great Slavic king- 
 dom in Southeastern Europe ; they, too, were 
 putting forth a literature. Their Illyrism — to 
 their prospective nation they gave the name 
 " Illyria " — clashed with the recrudescent Mag- 
 yarism. When the Hungarian Diet decreed that 
 the Magyar language should be taught in their 
 schools, and that every official must use it, they 
 protested as strenuously as tlie Magyars themselves 
 had protested when Austria tried to iu)pose the 
 German language and German officials on them. 
 "The Magyars are an island in the Slavic ocean,''
 
 92 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 exclaimed Gaj, the poet and spokesman of Illyr- 
 ism, to the Hungarian Diet : " I did not make 
 this ocean, I did not stir up its waves ; but take 
 care that they do not go over your heads and 
 drown you." Nevertheless, the law was passed. 
 In the Southland the Serbs along the Danube, 
 in the East the Wallachs of Transylvania, feeling 
 the first tingle of national aspirations, resented 
 this encroachment. Austria — whose motto was, 
 Divide et impera — found her advantage in em- 
 bittering tribe with tribe and class with class. 
 
 For three years and a half Kossuth's Gazette 
 had an unprecedented influence in Hungary ; but 
 in the summer of 1844, disagreeing with his pub- 
 lisher over a matter of salary, he resigned, and 
 expected to found another journal which should 
 draw off the Gazette's patrons. Government, 
 however, refused to grant him a license. Accord- 
 ingly, he devoted himself to agitation in another 
 form. In the assembly of the County of Pesth, 
 he discussed with matchless eloquence the great 
 political questions ; outside, he organized an eco- 
 nomical crusade. Austria burdened Hungary with 
 a tariff which stunted her industrial and com- 
 mercial development. Kossuth created a league 
 whose members vowed for five years to use only 
 Hungarian products. He projected a railway to 
 Fiume, to secure an outlet for exporting Hungar
 
 KOSSUTH 93 
 
 rian goods. He urged the establishment of sav- 
 ings banks and of mercantile corporations. And 
 for a brief time, under this patriotic stimulus, 
 trade flourished. 
 
 Thus through all the arteries of the body politic 
 new blood was throbbing. Give a people a great 
 idea, and they will find how to apply it to every 
 concern of life. The Magyar Liberals were surely 
 undermining feudalism ; their race was growing 
 more and more restive at Austria's obstinate de- 
 lays. When Austria removed the native county 
 sheriffs and put German administrators in their 
 stead, all the Magyar factions joined in denoun- 
 cing such an assault on their national life. The 
 county system had been the safeguard of Hun- 
 gary's political institutions for well-nigh eight 
 hundred years ; the sheriff was the foremost of- 
 ficial in the county, to whose guidance its interests 
 and civic activity were intrusted. To make an 
 alien sheriff was thei-efore to check national agi- 
 tation at its source. Accordingly, the Diet which 
 met in the autumn of 1847 met full of defiance 
 and resentment, though the platform of the Liber- 
 als, drawn up by the judicial Deak, wore on its 
 surface a conciliatory aspect. After a hot can- 
 vass, Kossuth was elected to represent Pesth in 
 the Chamber of Deputies. A few sessions sufficed 
 to establish his preeminence as an orator, and his 
 leadership of the Liberal party.
 
 94 TIIRONE-MAKERS 
 
 During the winter months of 1847-48 but little 
 was done, though much was discussed. As usual, 
 the Magnates resisted the reforms aimed at their 
 class ; as usual, Government temporized and post- 
 poned. Suddenly, at the beginning of March, 
 1848, news reached Presburg of the revolution in 
 Paris, and of the flight of Louis Philippe. That 
 news passed like a torch throughout Europe, kin- 
 dling as it passed the fires of revolt. At Presburg, 
 on March 3, Kossuth rose in the Diet and inter- 
 rupted a debate on the financial difficulties with 
 Austria. That question of finance, he said, could 
 never be settled separately ; in it was involved 
 the whole question of Austria's disregard of Hun- 
 gary's rights. Hungary must have her own laws, 
 her own ministry ; taxation must be equal ; the 
 franchise must be extended. More than that, he 
 added, Hungary could never prosper until every 
 part of the Empire should be governed by uniform 
 constitutional methods. 
 
 Kossuth's " baptismal speech of the revolution " 
 took the Lower House by storm. An address to 
 the Throne was framed, which, after fruitless re- 
 luctance on the part of the Magnates, a large com- 
 mittee, headed by Kossuth and Count Louis Bat- 
 thyanyi, — the Liberal leader in the Upper House, 
 — carried twelve days later to Vienna. The dele- 
 gates found the Austrian capital in an uproar.
 
 KOSSUTH 95 
 
 On March 13 Metternich, deserted by the aris- 
 tocracy on whose behalf he had labored unscrupu- 
 lously for fifty years, had been hounded from 
 office. The people, after a bloody struggle, had 
 possession of the city, and they welcomed Kossuth 
 as a deliverer ; for his " baptismal speech " had 
 made their aims articulate. 
 
 The next day, Emperor Ferdinand received the 
 deputation very graciously, and promised to grant 
 their petition. Exulting, they returned to Pres- 
 burg. A Cabinet was formed in which Batthy- 
 anyi held the premiership, and Kossuth the port- 
 folio of finance. Soon, very soon, tremendous 
 difficulties beset them : Radicals clamored for a 
 republic ; the subject races revolted ; the Imperial 
 government proved perfidious. 
 
 The key to Austria's subsequent conduct is 
 this : Austria, at heart a coward, had long been 
 able to play the bully ; now, however, her outraged 
 peoples had risen in wrath and held her at their 
 mercy ; the bully cringed, promised, conceded ; 
 concession brought a temporary respite from dan- 
 ger ; thereupon she began to think she had been 
 unduly terrified and to regret her concessions ; 
 so she cautiously put out feelers of arrogance, to 
 resume her role of bully. When she met sharp 
 resistance, she quickly drew back again, to await 
 a better opportunity. Throughout this crisis, Em-
 
 96 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 peror Ferdinand, at his best a man of mediocre 
 capacity, was becoming imbecile through epilepsy, 
 and a Court clique, or Camarilla, ruled him and 
 the Empire. 
 
 All this was not yet clear to the Hungarians. 
 Assuming the Imperial assurances to be honest, 
 they passed a refox-m bill abolishing the privileges 
 of the nobles, who were to be compensated by the 
 state for the loss they sustained in the emancipa- 
 tion of their serfs. Bills authorizing equal taxa- 
 tion, trial by jury, freedom of speech, the abolition 
 of tithes, and the extension of the franchise to 
 one million two hundred thousand voters, were 
 adopted with but little discussion. Religious tol- 
 eration — except for Jews — became the law of the 
 land. 
 
 The Magnates having made this unparalleled 
 sacrifice. King Ferdinand came over to Presburg 
 and dissolved the Diet in a speech approving its 
 action, and reiterating his pledge to uphold the 
 Constitution. The Cabinet proceeded to organize 
 its administration, — a task which would have been 
 sufficient at any time to keep it busy, but now 
 extraordinary and urgent matters pressed upon 
 it. The Wallachs, Serbs, and Croats rose in rebel- 
 lion. Most alarming was the situation iii Croatia, 
 where the Slavs were agitating for separation from 
 Hungary. Baron Jellachich, who had just been
 
 KOSSUTH 07 
 
 appointed Ban or Viceroy o£ Croatia, abetting the 
 insurrection, strengthened the Croat army. In 
 June the Magyar ministers hurried to lunspruck 
 — whither the Emperor and Camarilla had fled 
 after a second outbreak in Vienna — to protest 
 against these rebellious acts. The Emperor as- 
 sured them that he had given the Ban no sanc- 
 tion ; that he had, indeed, dismissed him from the 
 Imperial service. It happened that Jellachich was 
 at Innspruck at this very moment, carrying the 
 notification of dismissal in his pocket, and in his 
 mind an unwritten commission to serve Austria 
 against Hungary. 
 
 The rebellion of the Serbs, accompanied by 
 unspeakable atrocities, was openly fomented by 
 Austrian agents ; likewise the outbreak in Tran- 
 sylvania. Hungary's embarrassments increased ; 
 she had still to accept Ferdinand's assurances of 
 good faith, for he was her legal king ; but now 
 she knew that the Camarilla, the actual Imperial 
 government, was instigating her enemies. 
 
 The newly elected National Assembly convened 
 at Pesth, the ancient capital, early in July. The 
 royal address condemned by implication Jellachich 
 and all rebels, but tlie insurrection grew in vio- 
 lence from day to day. On July 11 Kossuth 
 made in the Assembly the most effective si)eech of 
 his life. Posterity stands incredulous before the
 
 98 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 record of great orators who, Orpheus-like, are said 
 to have moved stocks and stones by their voice ; 
 yet not on this account must we disbelieve the 
 record. For posterity can never supply the one 
 thing needful to the consummate orator's success, 
 — it can never supply the state of mind of his 
 audience. We shall always find that the epoch- 
 making speech was addressed to listeners every 
 one of whom had long been burning to hear just 
 those words. This is why so many of the orations 
 that altered history look faded on the printed 
 page ; this is why we must in many cases judge 
 the orator as we judge the singer or the actor, — 
 by the effect he produces on his contemporaries. 
 Kossuth, by this standard, ranks with the first 
 orators of the century, though a later generation 
 is little thrilled by his printed speeches. Men who 
 heard him, even those who heard him speak in a 
 language not his own, and who had listened to 
 Webster and Clay and Choate, declare that they 
 never heard his equal. Upon his own country- 
 men, to whom his words came charged with the 
 associations which belong to one's mother-tongue, 
 his eloquence was irresistible. 
 
 In that 11th of July speech, at least, we, too, 
 after long years, can feel the glow. The occasion 
 itself was dramatic. Every deputy realized that 
 the crisis of the revolution was at hand, — that
 
 KOSSUTH 99 
 
 Hungary must either turn back, or dare to plunge 
 into an unknown and perilous sea. All were wait- 
 ing for the decisive word. 
 
 Kossuth, just risen froni a bed of sickness, wath 
 tottering steps mounted the tribune. He was a 
 man of medium height; his hair was brown, his 
 eyes blue ; he wore a full mustache and cut his 
 beard sailor-wise, so that it formed a shaggy fringe 
 beneath his smooth-shaven chin. At first, as he 
 spoke, his pallid face and feeble gestures, though 
 they enhanced the solemnity of his w^ords, made 
 his hearers dread a collapse ; but presently he 
 seemed to be fired with the strength which burned 
 in his subject, and they listened for two hours, 
 spell-bound and electrified. 
 
 " I feel," he said to them, " as if God had put 
 in my hands the trumpet to rouse the dead, that, 
 if sinners and weak, they may sink back into 
 death, but that, if the vigor of life is still in them, 
 they may waken to eternity." He then went on to 
 review the quarrel with Croatia, declaring that 
 to that country Hungary had, from immemorial 
 time, accorded all the privileges which she herself 
 enjoyed, and that recently she had conceded to the 
 Croats a wider use of their native language. " I 
 can understand a people," he said ironically, "who, 
 deeming the freedom they possess too little, take 
 up arms to acquire more, though they play, in-
 
 100 Til HONE-MAKERS 
 
 deed, a hazardous game, for such weapons are two- 
 edged ; but I cannot understand a people who say, 
 ' The freedom you offer us is too great, — we will 
 not accept your offer, but will go and submit our- 
 selves to the yoke of Absolutism.' " Kossuth next 
 touched on the situation in the South, and showed 
 wherein it differed from that in the Southwest. 
 He told how the Camarilla had sought to compel 
 the ministers to acknowledge the unlawful preten- 
 sions of Croatia, and thereby to annul the pledges 
 of the King. He pointed out, as an ominous cloud 
 on the eastern horizon, the recent appearance of a 
 Russian army along the Pruth. When, after this 
 review, he solemnly announced, " The fatherland 
 is in danger," not a deputy was surprised, not a 
 head shook incredulously. At last he asked for 
 authority to levy two hundred thousand soldiers, 
 and to raise a loan of forty-two million florins, 
 setting forth the means by which he planned to 
 meet this extraordinary measure as eloquently as 
 he had set forth its need. 
 
 He had held the Assembly captivated for two 
 hours ; now, as he was closing, his strength failed, 
 and he could not speak. The deputies, too, were 
 speechless. For a brief moment intense silence 
 reigned between him and them. Then Paul Nyary, 
 who only yesterday had attacked the policy of the 
 Cabinet, rose, lifted his right hand as if invoking
 
 KOSSUTfl Icl 
 
 God to be his witness, and exclaimed, " We grant 
 everything! " In a flash four hundred hands were 
 raised, and four hundred voices repeated Nyary's 
 covenant. When quiet came again, Kossuth had 
 recovered strength to say that his request should 
 not be taken as a demand for a vote of confidence. 
 " We ask your vote for the preservation of the 
 country ; and, sirs, if any breast sighs for free- 
 dom, if any desire waits for fulfilment, let that 
 breast suffer a little longer, let it have j^atience 
 until we have saved the fatherland. You have all 
 risen to a man, and I bow before the great-hearted- 
 ness of the nation, while I ask one thing more : let 
 your energy equal your patriotism, and the gates 
 of hell itself shall not prevail against Hungary ! " 
 
 In March, under the magic of Kossuth's irre- 
 sistible oratory, the Magyars had boldly demanded 
 their constitutional rights ; now in July, thrilled 
 by the same magic, they pledged themselves to 
 defend their independence to the death. 
 
 The summer passed amid recruiting of Hon- 
 veds, volunteer "defenders of the fatherland," the 
 attempt to quell the insurrection in Transylvania 
 and among the Serbs, and the renewed intrigues 
 of the Imperial Court to browbeat the Hungarian 
 Cabinet. In September, Jcllachich, at last avow- 
 edly in the service of Austria, prepared to invade 
 Hungary.
 
 -1 0-2 ' T4T RONE-M AK ERS 
 
 The Palatine, unable to bring about a reconcili- 
 ation, quitted the country. The Viennese Cabinet 
 appointed Count Lamberg to assume full control 
 of the military affairs in the kingdom ; the Hun- 
 garians pronounced his appointment unconstitu- 
 tional, and they were right. On his arrival at 
 Pesth, he was murdered by a mob. This rash 
 crime caused some of the Liberals to withdraw 
 horrified. Batthyanyi resigned the premiership, 
 and a Committee of National Defense, in which 
 Kossuth predominated, was chosen. On October 2, 
 the Camarilla, grown truculent, dispatched Recsey 
 to dissolve the Hungarian Assembly, and bade 
 Hungary to submit to Jellachich. The Magyars 
 heeded neither command. Having equity and 
 law on their side, they acted henceforth on the 
 assumption that the orders which emanated from 
 Vienna could not be attributed to Ferdinand with- 
 out imputing perjury to him. 
 
 War could no longer be avoided. The Com- 
 mittee of National Defense displayed great energy 
 in organizing resistance. Kossuth's eloquence 
 went over the land, and the cloddish peasant left 
 the plough, the well-to-do tradesman deserted his 
 shop, the lawyer dropped his brief, to become vol- 
 unteers in the service of their country. A third 
 outbreak at Vienna sent the Camarilla hurrying 
 off to Olmiitz, and seemed for a moment to assure
 
 KOSSUTH 103 
 
 the final triumph of the revolution. During the 
 three weeks which elapsed before an Austrian 
 army under Prince Windischgratz — he who said 
 that " human beings begin with barons " — could 
 be brought up, the Hungarians debated whether 
 they should go to the assistance of the Viennese, 
 for they wished to be strictly legal. At last they 
 found justification in the plea that they had a 
 right to pursue Jellachich, who was marching to 
 join Windischgratz, across the Austrian frontier. 
 But they decided too late. Their troops were 
 beaten at Schwechat, on the outskirts of Vienna, 
 just as Windischgratz was successfully storming 
 the city (October 29). 
 
 For six weeks thereafter Windischgratz devoted 
 himself to stamping out the rebellion in Vienna, 
 and in preparing for a campaign against Hungary. 
 On December 2 poor, weak-witted Ferdinand ab- 
 dicated, and his nephew Francis Joseph succeeded 
 him as emperor. This change betokened the 
 returning confidence of the Court party. They 
 now felt sure of crushing the revolution, and of 
 restoring the Old licginie ; but tliey had no inten- 
 tion that, when the rest of Austria was re-subjected 
 to their despotism, Hungaiy alone should enjoy a 
 constitutional government. Yet this had been pro- 
 mised by Ferdinand, and lie had scruples against 
 openly violating his oatli. Therefore, by remov
 
 101 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 ing him and substituting Francis Joseph, they 
 had a sovereign unhampered by pledges. To this 
 scheme the Magyars naturally did not bend ; their 
 Constitution was their life, and that Constitution 
 recognized no king who had not been crowned by 
 the Magyars, and had not sworn to preserve their 
 rights inviolate. 
 
 Ten days before Christmas, Windischgratz 
 opened his campaign. Five armies besides his 
 own invaded Hungary from five different direc- 
 tions. The Magyars had employed the six weeks' 
 lull in defensive preparations. They gave Arthur 
 Gorgei, an ex-officer thirty-one years old, — able, 
 stern, selfish, and inordinately ambitious, — the 
 command of the Army of the Upper Danube. He 
 proposed to abandon the frontier and to mass the 
 Hungarian forces in the interior, where they could 
 choose their own ground ; but the Committee of 
 Defense insisted that every inch of Hungarian 
 soil should be contested. A fortnight's operations 
 proved the wisdom of Gorgei's plan : tlie Magyars 
 were easily driven back, and on New Year's eve 
 the Austrians camped within gunshot of Buda- 
 Pesth. The following day, January 1, 1849, a 
 melancholy procession of ministers, deputies, state 
 officials, fearful citizens, and stragglers, set out 
 from Pesth, carrying with them the precious crown 
 of St. Stephen, the public coffers and archives, and
 
 KOSSUTH 105 
 
 the printing-presses for bank-notes. Debreczin, a 
 town forty leagues inland, became the temporary 
 capital. At Biula-Pesth, Windischgratz celebrated 
 his triumph by holding a Bloody Assize. To en- 
 voys from the fugitive government who asked him 
 to state his conditions, he only replied, "■ I do not 
 treat with rebels." 
 
 Among the Magyars, consternation was quickly 
 succeeded by a mood of desperation, — such a 
 mood as made France invincible in 1792. Again 
 did Kossuth's eloquence pass like the breath of 
 life over the land ; again did his energy direct the 
 equipment of new recruits and fill the gaps of the 
 regiments already in the field. Had the deputies 
 at Debreczin voted as they wished, they would have 
 voted for peace ; but they knew that the majority 
 of their countrymen would reject any peace which 
 Austria was likely to offer, and they were ashamed 
 to appear less daring than Kossuth. 
 
 The enthusiasm, we might call it the reckless- 
 ness, with which the Magyars rallied to repel in- 
 vasion, became a people who counted John II un- 
 yadi and Francis Rakoczy among their national 
 heroes. Thanks to their patriotic fervor, the Hun- 
 garian cause, which seemed about to collapse at 
 the beginning of January, seemed about to prevail 
 at the end of March. Bern had worsted the Wal- 
 lachs and Austrians in Transylvania ; Gorgei had
 
 106 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 redeemed Northern Hungary; Klapka and Dam- 
 janics had brought Windischgratz to bay in the 
 midlands. 
 
 Well had it been for Hungary if these astonish- 
 ing successes had prevented internal discord, for 
 twofold dissensions now threatened to sap the 
 growing strength. From one side, the generals 
 chafed at being subordinate to the civilian Com- 
 mittee of Defense ; on the other, a large body of 
 soldiers and of civilians were angry at the evident 
 drift of Kossuth and his friends towards a repub- 
 lic. Gorgei, the most conspicuous of the generals, 
 led this opposition. He declared in a manifesto 
 that the army would fight to maintain against 
 every foreign enemy the Constitution granted by 
 Ferdinand, but that they would favor no attempt to 
 convert the constitutional monarchy into a repub- 
 lic. The Committee of Defense, most eager in 
 their patriotism, could not refrain from meddling ; 
 they suffered from the delusion common to such 
 committees, and believed that they knew better 
 than the trained men of war how war should be 
 waged. They felt, too, political responsibilities 
 which made them all the more active; and they 
 had, as was natural, their favorites among the offi- 
 cers. Had the government been strong, it would 
 have cashiered Giargei ; being weak, and solicitous 
 of conciliating so important a man, it tolerated him.
 
 KOSSUTH 107 
 
 But when a government and its generals distrust 
 each otlier, — as we learned in our civil war, — 
 conciliation can satisfy neither. If Gorgei lost a 
 battle, his enemies charged him with lukewarm- 
 ness or disobedience; he retorted by blaming the 
 committee for failing to support him or for break- 
 ing in upon his plans. We need not sift the re- 
 criminations in detail : it suffices for us to know 
 that, from January on, Gorgei and Kossuth, and 
 their respective partisans, worked thus at odds. 
 
 Nevertheless, among the masses these quarrels 
 had but slight effect. The average Magyar was 
 simply bent on avenging his long score of oppres- 
 sion against Austria. He realized that his own 
 existence depended on that of Hungary, and to 
 him Kossuth's eloquence was like a trumpet-call 
 of duty. That in performing his duty the Magyar 
 might lawfully wreak vengeance on his oppressors, 
 made duty doubly attractive. 
 
 In the early spring, Austria closed the way to 
 compromise by proclaiming a new charter for the 
 whole Empire. This charter declared that all the 
 provinces of the Empire were to be reduced to a 
 common equality, deprived of local rights, and 
 governed by a central administration at Vienna. 
 
 The ^lagyars, then, had nothing to hope. 
 Whether they submitted to Austria or were con- 
 quered by her, their ancient Constitution would be
 
 108 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 blotted out. They would cease to be a nation. 
 Accordingly, on April 14, 1849, they proclaimed 
 the independence of Hungary, calling God and 
 man to witness the wrongs she had suffered from 
 the House of Hapsburg, and setting forth the 
 illegality, truculence, and perfidy of Austria dur- 
 ing the past thirteen months. A diet was to be 
 summoned, which should determine the form of 
 government that Hungary would permanently 
 adopt ; meanwhile Kossuth was chosen president- 
 governor, and by appointing Gorgei commander- 
 in-chief he hoped to heal old wounds. 
 
 The moment was propitious. The Austrians 
 had been beaten in a great battle (at Isaszeg) on 
 April 7 ; and most of the fortresses, except Buda, 
 had been recaptured. Gorgei himself seemed sat- 
 isfied. The elated Magyars dreamed even of a 
 swift campaign against Vienna, and of bringing 
 the Imperial tyrant to terms which should be 
 acceptable to all his subject races. But their 
 dream, if ever attainable, was spoiled by delay. 
 Gorgei insisted that Buda must be retaken before 
 he marched farther west, and only on May 21 did 
 he succeed in storming its citadel. By that time a 
 new peril, more terrible than any previous, loomed 
 up. Austria, in despair of subjugating Hungary, 
 had besought Russia to help her, and the Czar, 
 glad of an excuse for interfering, was marshaling 
 his troops on the Hungarian frontier.
 
 KOSSUTH 109 
 
 No assistance could the Magyars secure to offset 
 this threatened intervention. France and Ensf- 
 land would not even recognize their republic, 
 although Frenchmen and Englishmen privately 
 sympathized with their cause. From Venice alone, 
 the little republic round whose neck the Austrian 
 noose was already tightening, came a heartfelt 
 recognition, which, however, added not a soldier to 
 their army nor a florin to their purse. Desperate, 
 but not yet willing to surrender, the Magyars 
 nerved themselves for a final effort. Kossuth 
 proclaimed a crusade, a levy in mass ; every man 
 to arm himself, were it only with a scythe or a 
 bludgeon ; perpetual prayers to be offered up in 
 the churches ; the enemy to be harassed at all 
 places, to be hindered by the destruction of bridges 
 and stores, and, wherever possible, by open fight- 
 ing. 
 
 Posterity, calmly reviewing a death struggle like 
 this, is amazed that any people could be roused to 
 make that last stand. Plainly enough, the Mag- 
 yars had three soldiers against them to every one 
 of theirs ; ammunition and victuals were failing 
 them ; their treasury was empty ; their armies 
 could expect no reinforcements : to what end, 
 therefore, protract a hopeless war? Reasoning 
 thus, we niiss the secret, not only of the revolution- 
 ists of 1848-49, but of all who have ever been
 
 110 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 kindled by patriotism to defend a cause they held 
 dearer than life. The Magyars would never have 
 gone thus far, — never have felt during that May- 
 month the fleeting exhilaration of victory, — had 
 they not been fired by a passion which not disaster 
 but death alone could quench. 
 
 The Russian invasion being assured, the Magyar 
 government held a council of war, at which it was 
 proposed to consolidate the various armies, and to 
 defeat first the Austrians coming from the west 
 and then the Russians coming from the north 
 and east, — a sensible plan, frustrated, however, 
 by delays, some of which were unavoidable. The 
 Austrian army, strengthened by reinforcements 
 from Italy, and commanded by Marshal Haynau, 
 who came red-handed from Brescia, advanced into 
 Hungary, and defeated Gorgei on the river Waag 
 (June 20-21). The Magyar Government and 
 Diet departed for the second time, in melancholy 
 procession, from their capital. By the middle of 
 July one hundred and fifty thousand Russians — 
 eighty thousand of whom were led by the wolfish 
 Paskevitch — had penetrated into the heart of the 
 country. Inevitably, the Magyar forces would 
 be driven in and caught between the victorious 
 enemies : nevertheless, they would not yet submit. 
 
 Internal discord alone tarnished the record of 
 the last days of the Hungarian Republic. On
 
 KOSSUTH 111 
 
 July 1, Kossuth removed Gorgei for insubordina- 
 tion, but Gorgei's officers and men protested so 
 loudly that Kossuth thought it discreet to rein- 
 state him. Three weeks later, a fraction of the 
 Diet, assembled at Szegedin, declared the equality 
 of all the races in Hungary, emancipated the Jews, 
 and then, warned by the rumble of hostile cannon, 
 it dissolved forever. 
 
 For yet a few weeks we have news of Kossuth 
 hurrying hither and thither to proclaim hope 
 where no hope was ; conferring with nonplussed 
 but still resolute generals ; dragging after him, 
 like his shadow, those printing-presses for bank- 
 notes, now worth no more than blank paper. 
 Finally, at Arad, he resigned the presidency, and 
 appointed Gorgei dictator with full powers. At 
 Vilagos, on August 13, Gorgei surrendered his 
 exhausted army of twenty-three thousand men to 
 Rudiger, the Russian general. Thus was con- 
 summated what the Magyars, frenzied by defeat, 
 branded as Gorgei's treason, but what, to an 
 impartial observer, appears an inevitable act. 
 Gorgei's course throughout the war cannot be 
 commended : inordinate personal ambition, not 
 treason, was its motive ; he may have thought to 
 play the part of Monk, but more likely he had 
 taken Napoleon for his model ; one thing alone is 
 certain, — he did not intend that Kossuth should
 
 112 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 reap the glory of victory, if victory came. In sur- 
 rendering at Vilagos he did what every commander 
 is justified in doing, when further resistance could 
 only entail fresh losses without any hope of alter- 
 ing the result. 
 
 Learning the capitulation of the main army, 
 the other generals one by one submitted. Klapka 
 alone maintained an heroic defense at Comorn 
 until September 27, when hunger and an empty 
 maaazine forced him to surrender. With the 
 hauling down of the red-white-and-green flag from 
 the citadel of Comorn vanished the last symbol 
 of that revolution which, bursting forth at Palermo 
 in January, 1848, had spread through Europe, 
 shaking the thrones of monarchs, and kindling in 
 down-trodden people the belief that a new epoch, 
 a Golden Age of Liberty, had come. Hopes as 
 splendid as men ever cherished had now been 
 shattered, and in their stead only the bitterest 
 memories remained ; for as each people pondered 
 in sorrow and oppression the events of those 
 twenty months, it was tormented by the reflection 
 that its own dissensions, not less than the might 
 of its enemies, had wrought its ruin. 
 
 Austria, careful by a deceitful silence to en- 
 courage the stray bodies of Magyar troops to give 
 themselves up, proceeded to punish Hungary with 
 a severity which matched the persecutions of the
 
 KOSSUTH 113 
 
 French Reign of Terror. In every city Marshal 
 Haynau set up his shambles ; in every parish he 
 plied his scourge. Imprisonment, torture, confis- 
 cation, overtook the lowly defenders of the Magyar 
 cause ; death awaited the leaders. On October 6, 
 at Arad, fourteen generals were hanged or shot, 
 and that same day Count Louis Batthyanyi was 
 shot at Pesth. Gorgei was spared, thanks to the 
 personal intervention of Czar Nicholas. 
 
 Kossuth and several thousand Magyars took 
 refuge in Turkey. The Sultan protected him, in 
 spite of the threats of Russia and Austria, — pro- 
 tected him because the Turkish religion forbade 
 the betrayal of a refugee, — but kept him for 
 nearly two years in half bondage. Then the Mag- 
 yar hero, at the instance of the American Con- 
 gress, was permitted to embark on an American 
 man-of-war. He came to the United States, where 
 he was greeted with an enthusiasm which no other 
 foreigner except Lafayette Iiad stirred. He got 
 boundless sympathy, and no inconsiderable sum 
 of money for prosecuting tlie emancipation of 
 Hungary ; but the times were unfavorable, and 
 the lot of the Magyars concerned very little the 
 rulers of European di])loma('y after 1850. Re- 
 turning to Europe, Kossuth made agitation his 
 sole aim. He strove to interest the great jiowers 
 in Hungary's fate ; he strove, through secret
 
 114 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 emissaries, to provoke the Magyars themselves to 
 rebel. The former were deaf ; the latter, taught 
 by terrible experience, deemed it folly to attack 
 Austria again in the field. Through the persist- 
 ent and judicious political agitation led by the 
 sagacious Francis Deak, they achieved, in 1867, 
 a recognition of their constitutional rights, and 
 a full measure of home rule. 
 
 Kossuth, however, refused to the last to be re- 
 conciled. He lived in exile at Turin, a forlorn 
 old man, forlorn but inflexible, amid the memo- 
 ries of exploits which once had amazed the world. 
 There he died on March 20, 1894, having survived 
 all his contemporaries, friends and foes alike, who 
 had beheld the rise and splendor and eclipse of 
 his astonishing career. To be the mouthpiece of 
 a haughty and valiant people at one of the heroic 
 crises of their history was his mission. His genius, 
 his defects, mirror the genius and defects of his 
 countrymen ; his glory, being a part of the glory 
 of a whole race, is secure. That race, which 
 Arpad led into the heart of Europe, showed, at 
 Kossuth's summons, a thousand years later, that it 
 had not lost the traits which had once distinguished 
 it on the shores of Lake Baikal and along the 
 upper waters of the Yenisei.
 
 GARIBALDI 
 
 When men look back, two or three hundred 
 years hence, upon the nineteenth century, it may 
 well be that they will discern its salient character- 
 istic to have been, not scientific, not inventive, as 
 we popularly suppose, but romantic. Science will 
 soon bury our present heaps of facts under larger 
 accumulations, from the summit of which broader 
 theories may be scanned ; to-morrow will make 
 to-day's wonderful invention old-fashioned and in- 
 sufficient : but the romance with which this later 
 time has been charged will exercise an increasinsr 
 fascination over poets and novelists and historians, 
 as the years roll on. Oblivion swallows up mate- 
 rial achievements, but great deeds never grow old. 
 That many of our writers should not have heard 
 this note of the age argues that they, rather than 
 the age, are prosaic and commonplace. For to 
 what other period shall we turn for a richer store 
 of those vicissitudes and contrasts in fortune which 
 make up the real romance, the profound tragedy, 
 of life? Everywhere the dissolution of a society 
 rooted in mediaeval traditions is accompanied by
 
 116 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 confusion and struggle, — the birth-pangs of a new- 
 order. Classes whose separation seemed perma- 
 nent are thrown together, and antagonistic ele- 
 ments are strangely mixed ; there is strife, and 
 doubt, and excess ; sudden combinations are sud- 
 denly rent by discords ; anachronisms flourish side 
 by side with innovations ; new institutions wear 
 old names, and old abuses mask in new disguises. 
 
 In such a crisis, two facts are prominent : the 
 unusual range of activity offered to the individual 
 — may he not traverse the whole scale of experi- 
 ence ? — and the dependence of the individual 
 upon himself. He rises, or he falls, by his own 
 motion. The privileges of caste avail nothing ; 
 for the very confusion produces a certain wild 
 equality, whereby all start at the line, and the 
 swiftest wins. Napoleon's maxim. La carriere 
 ouverte aux talents^ is the motto of the century. 
 Napoleon himself is an epochal illustration of the 
 power of the individual to make the momentum of 
 circumstances work for him. The Revolution, it 
 is true, had harnessed the steeds ; but Napoleon 
 dared to mount the chariot, grasped the reins, and 
 drove over Evirope, upsetting thrones and prince- 
 doms and hierarchies. The haughty descendants 
 of immemorial lineage gave place to the brothers 
 and comrades of the " Corsican upstart." Murat, 
 the son of a tavern-keeper ; Ney, a briefless law-
 
 GARIBALDI 117 
 
 student ; Lannes, a dyer ; Soult, Massena, Ber- 
 thier, Junot, soldiers of fortune ; and how many 
 other children of the Third Estate, — laughed at 
 the pretensions of humbled Bourbons, Hapsburgs, 
 and Hohenzollerns ! Frequent reactions between 
 revolution and restoration serve to emphasize the 
 stress of this crisis ; and these contrasts in the 
 conditions of men, revealing human character 
 under the most diverse phases, show how inextri- 
 cably the romantic and the tragic are interwoven 
 in the average lot. 
 
 Nor in Europe only has this spectacle been 
 going forward. The United States also have wit- 
 nessed similarly rapid transmutations, partly due 
 to other causes. Within a generation we have 
 seen a gigantic national upheaval : three millions 
 of artisans, clerks, merchants, and lawyers were 
 transformed by the magic of a drum-beat into 
 soldiers ; and then, the conflict over, soldiers and 
 uniforms vanished, and the labors of peace were 
 resumed. 
 
 Follow Abraham Lincoln from his Illinois lojr- 
 cabin to the White House ; follow Grant from his 
 tanyard to Appomattox, — and you can compute 
 the sweep of Fortune's wheel. These careers were 
 lived so near us that they hardly astonish us ; 
 they seem as natural as daylight ; and in truth 
 they are as natural as that or any other every-day
 
 118 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 miracle. As if forgetful of these, we ransack the 
 past, or fiction, or melodramas, for heroes to admire. 
 To weak imaginations, distance still lends enchant- 
 ment. 
 
 Our age has produced one romantic man, how- 
 ever, who had not to wait for the mellowing effects 
 of time to be recognized as romantic. He enjoyed, 
 almost from the outset of his career, the fame of a 
 legendary hero, and he will, we cannot doubt, be a 
 hero to posterity. Some future Tasso will find in 
 his life a theme nobler than Godfrey's, too roman- 
 tic in fact for either invention or myth to enhance 
 it. He lived dramas as naturally as Shakespeare 
 wrote them ; the commonplace could not befall 
 him. Looking at him from one side we might say, 
 " Here is a Homeric hero, strangely transplanted 
 from the Iliad into an era of railroads and tele- 
 graphs ! " But if we fix our attention on other 
 qualities, we discover in him a typical democrat, 
 fit product of a democratic age. This man was 
 Joseph Garibaldi, whose career alone would suffice 
 to redeem the nineteenth century from the stigma 
 of egotism and the rebuke of commonplaceness. 
 
 Among all the political achievements of our 
 century, none has more of noble charm than the 
 redemption of Italy. Whether we look at the dif- 
 ficidty of the undertaking, or at the careers of the 
 leaders and the temper of the people who engaged
 
 GARIBALDI 119 
 
 in it, we are alike allured and amazed. After 
 the fall of the Roman Empire, Italy had never 
 been united under one government; nevertheless, 
 from the time of Dante on, the aspiration towards 
 national unity was kept burning in every patri- 
 otic Italian heart. During the Middle Age, little 
 republics won independence by overthrowing their 
 feudal lords ; then they quarreled among them- 
 selves ; and then they became the prey and appa- 
 nage of a few strong families. The Bishop of 
 Eome, forgetful of his spiritual mission, lusted 
 after worldly power, established himself as a tem- 
 poral sovereign, and elevated his cardinals into 
 temporal princes. Foreign invaders — Normans, 
 Spaniards, Germans, French — swept over the 
 peninsula in successive waves ; bloodshed and pil- 
 lage signalized their coming, corruption was the 
 slime they left behind them. One by one, the 
 refugees of independence were submerged in the 
 flood of servitude ; until at last Venice herself, 
 become merely the mummy of a republic, crum- 
 bled to dust at Napoleon's touch. Najjoleon pro- 
 mised, but did not give, to Italy the unity or the 
 freedom which she still dreamed of : he parceled 
 her anew into duchies and kingdoms. By that act 
 he broke down ancient barriers and opened a new 
 prospect. Italians beheld the old order, which 
 had so long oppressed them that many believed it
 
 120 THRONE-MAKEllS 
 
 must endure perpetually, suddenly dissolved, and 
 in its stead a change, although not the change 
 they longed for. Still, any change, in such cir- 
 cumstances, implies fresh possibilities ; and the 
 Italians passed from a lethargy which had seemed 
 hopelessly enthralling into a restless wakefulness. 
 
 The twenty years of the reign of Force, of 
 which Napoleon was the embodiment, ended at 
 Waterloo. Europe, exhausted, sank back into 
 conservatism, and was ruled for thirty years by 
 Craft, of which Metternich was the symbol.^ The 
 Congress of Vienna reimposed the past upon Italy. 
 Monarchs and bureaucrats, like children who amuse 
 themselves by " making believe " things are not as 
 they are, would have it appear that the deluge of 
 revolution, with all its mighty wrecks and subver- 
 sions, had never been. The Pope was restored 
 in the States of the Church ; the Bourbons ruled 
 again in Naples and Sicily ; an Austrian was Arch- 
 duke of Tuscany ; Parma and Piacenza were as- 
 signed to Napoleon's wife, Maria Louisa ; Venetia 
 and Lorabardy went as spoils to Austria ; an abso- 
 lutist king reigned in Piedmont. Evidently the 
 revolution had been but a summer thunderstorm, 
 
 ^ After Metternich, we have the period of Shara-Foree, under 
 Louis Napoleon ; and finally of Force again, under Bismarck. 
 These four stages complete the cycle of European politics during 
 the past century.
 
 GARIBALDI 121 
 
 for the sun of despotism was shining once more. 
 The sun shone ; but what of the sultry air ? What 
 of the threatening clouds along the horizon ? Were 
 these the fringe of the dispersing storm, or the 
 portents of another ? Mutterings and rumblings, 
 too, Carbonari plottings, and quickly extinguished 
 flashes of insurrection, — did not these omens belie 
 Diplomacy's pretense that the eighteenth century 
 had been happily resuscitated to exist forever ? 
 
 It was during this interval of reaction and 
 relapse, when hope was stifled and energy slept; 
 when victorious despotism flattered itself with the 
 belief that the Napoleonic episode had demon- 
 strated the absurdity of Liberalism ; when Met- 
 ternich, the spider of Schonbrunn, was spinning 
 his cobwebs of chicane across the path to liberty, 
 — then it was that the generation which should 
 live to see Italy free and united was getting 
 what learning it could in the Jesuit-ridden schools. 
 Of this generation the most romantic figure was 
 Giuseppe Garibaldi. 
 
 Joseph Garibaldi was born at Nice, July 4, 1807. 
 His father was a fisherman, thrifty enough to have 
 a small vessel of his own. Such stories as have 
 come down to us of the boy's childhood show him 
 to have been plucky, adventurous, and tender- 
 hearted, lie cried bitterly at having broken a 
 grasshopper's leg ; he rescued, when only seven, a
 
 122 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 laundress from drowning; he sailed off with some 
 truant companions for Genoa, and might have 
 vanished forever, had he not been overtaken near 
 Monaco and brought home. His education was 
 intrusted to two priests, from whom, he says, he 
 learned nothing ; then to a layman, Arena, who 
 gave him a smattering of reading, arithmetic, and 
 history. As he was quick at learning, his parents 
 wished to make a lawyer or a priest of him ; but 
 he had the rover's instinct and could not resist the 
 enticements of the sea. At length, when he was 
 fourteen, his parents yielded, and he became a 
 sailor. 
 
 Of those early voyages, we need mention only 
 one, which took him to Rome. Immense the im- 
 pression the Holy City made on his imagination ! 
 Pie saw not the Rome of the Caesars, nor the Rome 
 of the Popes, — the city whose monuments entomb 
 twenty-five centuries of history ; but, he says, " the 
 Rome of the future, that Rome of which I have 
 never despaired, — shipwrecked, at the point of 
 death, buried in the depth of American forests ; 
 the Rome of the regenerating idea of a great 
 people ; the dominating idea of whatever Past or 
 Present could inspire in me, as it has been through 
 all my life. Oh, Rome became then dear to me 
 above all earthly existences. I adored her with all 
 the fervor of my soul. In short, Rome for me is
 
 GARIBALDI 123 
 
 Italy, and I see no Italy possible save in the union, 
 compact or federate, of her scattered members. 
 Rome is the symbol of united Italy, under what- 
 ever form you will. And the most infernal work 
 of the Papacy was that of keeping her morally 
 and materially divided." ^ 
 
 Thenceforth the young mariner, who rose rap- 
 idly to be mate and master, could not rest for the 
 thought of the Eternal City, and of the country 
 his patriotism craved. During these years, he 
 learned to take Fortune's buffets : he was captured 
 by pirates, he lay ill and penniless for months at 
 Constantinople, — adventures which in another 
 career would demand more than passing notice, 
 but which he deemed unimportant in comparison 
 with a conversation he had with a young Ligurian, 
 who unfolded to him the dreams of the Mazzi- 
 nians. " Columbus did not experience so great a 
 satisfaction at the discovery of America," says 
 Garibaldi, " as I experienced at finding one who 
 busied himself with the redemption of our father- 
 laud." 
 
 Fatherland ! the name seemed a mockery to the 
 Italians of that time. Italy, as Metternich phrased 
 it, was only a geograj)hical expression. Seven or 
 eight potty princes, including the Pope, ruled the 
 little patches into which the Peninsula was cut 
 
 ^ This was written iu 1840.
 
 124 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 up. All the north, except Piedmont, was directly 
 subject to a foreign despot, Austria ; while, indi- 
 rectly, Austria domineered over Tuscany, Rome, 
 and Naples. Piedmont had a native king, indeed, 
 but Absolutism throve nowhere more vigorously 
 than there. The Jesuits controlled the worship 
 and education of the little kingdom ; reactionaries 
 filled the ministerial offices, the army, and the gov- 
 ernment bureaux ; the sovereign himself, Charles 
 Albert, believed devoutly in the divine right of 
 kings, and held that it would be criminal in him, 
 by granting his people more freedom, to lessen the 
 responsibility imposed on him by God. Through- 
 out the Peninsula, no one might discuss politics, 
 whether in speech or writing. It was high trea- 
 son to suggest representative government ; the sov- 
 ereign's will was the only constitution. In some 
 parts of the land, the very word Italy could not be 
 used by actors on the stage ; and everywhere cen- 
 sors kept watch to prevent the idea of a regenerate 
 Italy from slipping into print. 
 
 By foreigners, the Italians were more often de- 
 spised than pitied ; they were believed to be pluck- 
 less, wordy, deceitful creatures, who at best had 
 their uses as singers, dancing-masters, and paint- 
 ers' models. Among themselves, discord (born of 
 ancestral feuds), envy (born of local ambitions, 
 a love of haranguing, and a lack of leaders), had
 
 GARIBALDI 125 
 
 thrice resulted in an abortive revolution. And 
 now, just as the third attempt had failed, and in 
 its failure had discredited the great organizations 
 of conspiracy that had been for fifteen years 
 the hope of Italian patriotism, Joseph Mazzini, a 
 Genoese a year younger than Garibaldi, banished 
 from Piedmont because he had a suspicious habit 
 of walking abroad after dark, formed the new 
 secret society of Young Italy which aimed at not 
 only the political but the social and moral redemp- 
 tion of his countrymen. Garibaldi, eager to hasten 
 the emancipation of his country, joined Young 
 Italy ; but in the first plot in which he was en- 
 gaged his confederates failed to appear at the 
 appointed time, and he was forced to fly from 
 Genoa for his life. " Here begins my public 
 career," he says in his memoirs. 
 
 After being twice captured and twice escaping, 
 he made his way on foot, disguised as a peasant, 
 to Marseilles, where, on opening a newspaper, the 
 first thing he read was the sentence of death de- 
 creed against him should he ever be caught in 
 Piedmont. This was in February, 1834. Pro- 
 scribed but not disheartened, when chance offered 
 he resumed his seafaring. But mercantile voyages 
 grew monotonous. Should he offer his services to 
 the Bey of Tunis, wlio was seeking a Eurojjean to 
 take charge of his navy ? After hesitation, Gari-
 
 126 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 baldi decided " no." During a cholera epidemic, 
 he volunteered as nurse in the Marseilles hospital. 
 Finally he shipped for South America. Landing 
 at Rio Janeiro, he fell in with another exile, Ros- 
 setti, and for a while they kept a shop. Soon, 
 however, more congenial occupation presented it- 
 self. 
 
 Rio Grande do Sul, the southernmost province 
 of Brazil, had revolted from the Empire and set 
 up a republic, which it was struggling to maintain. 
 Garibaldi, who could never resist aiding republi- 
 cans, equipped a small privateer, on which he and 
 Rossetti, with twelve companions, set sail for the 
 south. This was the opening of a life of adven- 
 ture which lasted twelve years, and which, could 
 we trace it step by step, would be found a nonpa- 
 reil of heroic deeds and startling dangers. The 
 political and social condition of South America 
 then resembled in lawlessness that period in Eu- 
 ropean history when chivalry had its rise ; when, 
 as a foil to the bullying and craft and greed of the 
 many, stood out the courage and honor and cour- 
 tesy of the few. Garibaldi, whether by sea or 
 land, approved himself a peerless knight. Follow- 
 ing him, we should witness now a battle of gun- 
 boats far up the river Parana, until, his ammunition 
 having given out, he loaded the cannon with the 
 chain cables ; or, again, we should undergo the
 
 GARIBALDI 127 
 
 horrors of a shipwreck near the mouth of La 
 Plata, or join in a desperate battle against great 
 odds at some lonely Paraguayan ranch ; we should 
 traverse vast pampas, or thrid the solitude of 
 trackless forests ; we should know hunger, thirst, 
 and cold, and be incessantly attacking or attacked ; 
 and we should realize that although these cam- 
 paigns seem mere border forays when compared 
 with the wars of modern Europe and the United 
 States, yet they settled the fate of territories as 
 large as France, and required those martial quali- 
 ties which beget heroism in any crisis under any 
 sky. 
 
 Although we must pass all this, one marking 
 episode in Garibaldi's life at that time ought not 
 to be forgotten. His ships had been cast away in 
 a storm. He succeeded in swimming to shore, but 
 his dearest comrades perished. He felt lonely, 
 dispirited, and though he was soon to command 
 another cruiser, the excitements of war could no 
 longer dissipate his melancholy. " In short," he 
 says, in a characteristic passage of his Autobio- 
 graphy, " I had need of a human being to love me 
 immediately, — to have one near without whom ex- 
 istence was growing intolerable to me. Although 
 not old, I understood men well enough to know 
 how hard it is to find a true friend. A woman ? 
 Yes, a woman ; for I always deemed her the most
 
 128 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 perfect of creatures, and — whatever may be said 
 — amongst women it is infinitely easier to find a 
 loving heart. I was pacing the quarter-deck, ru- 
 minating my dismal thoughts, and, after reasonings 
 of all kinds, I decided finally to seek a woman, to 
 draw me out of my tiresome and unbearable con- 
 dition. I cast a casual glance towards the Barra : 
 that was the name of a rather high hill at the 
 entrance of the lagune, toward the south, on which 
 were visible some simple and picturesque habita- 
 tions. There, with the aid of the glass, I discov- 
 ered a young woman, I had myself set ashore in 
 her d,irection. I disembarked, and, going towards 
 the house where was the object of my expedition, 
 I had not reached her before I met a man of the 
 place, whom I had known at the beginning of our 
 stay. He asked me to take coffee in his house. 
 We entered, and the first person who met my gaze 
 was she whose appearance had caused me to come 
 ashore. It was Anita, the mother of my sons, the 
 companion of my life in good and evil fortune, — 
 the woman whose courage I have so often envied. 
 "We both remained rapt and speechless, recipro- 
 cally looking at each other, like two persons who 
 do not meet for the first time, and who seek in the 
 features one of the other something to assist recol- 
 lection. At last I greeted her and said, ' Thou 
 must be mine.' I spoke but little Portuguese,
 
 GARIBALDI 129 
 
 and uttered these hardy words in Italian. How- 
 ever, I was magnetic in my presumption. I had 
 drawn a knot, sealed a compact, which death alone 
 could break." 
 
 A few nights later Garibaldi carried Anita off 
 to his ship, clandestinely as it appears, and they 
 were wedded when they reached another port. 
 She was a companion matching his ideal : she 
 shared his wild fortunes and hardships ; she was 
 an indefatigable horsewoman, a dead-shot, and 
 upon occasion she could touch off a cannon. 
 
 After years of fighting. Garibaldi obtained a 
 furlough, gathered a drove of cattle, and journeyed 
 across Uruguay to Montevideo. There he was 
 reduced to teach the rudiments of arithmetic in a 
 private school, picking up whatever other precari- 
 ous pennies he could, until civil war broke out in 
 Uruguay, and he enlisted on the side of the peo- 
 ple, struggling to free themselves from a blood- 
 thirsty dictator. Garibaldi's exploits as a guer- 
 rilla and corsair had made him famous, and now 
 he repeated at Montevideo his amazing feats. 
 From among his countrymen he organized an 
 "Italian Legion," which proved throughout a long 
 service that Italians could and would fight, — two 
 facts which scornful Europe was loth then to be- 
 lieve. He also illustrated his perfect disinterested- 
 ness by refusing all rewards beyond a bare means
 
 130 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 of subsistence. At a time when he held the fate 
 of Montevideo in his hand, he had not money to 
 buy candles to light the poor room where he and 
 his family were dwelling. 
 
 Thus, giving his utmost for liberty and the wel- 
 fare of strangers, he saw the years pass without 
 bringing the one thing he desired most of all, — 
 the chance to consecrate himself to the redemption 
 of Italy. That desire, the ruling passion of his 
 life, had followed him everywhere. I marvel that 
 any materialists exist ; for where, in the material 
 world, shall we find anything comparable to the 
 tenacity of ideas ? " Think not to preserve them by 
 locking them in an iron safe ; write them not on 
 stone, which crumbles, but on the human soid, and 
 they shall be indestructible. Have we not daily 
 proof that against remorse, love, hate, ambition, 
 all the powers of the material world — fire or frost, 
 hunger, disease, persecution — dash as harmless as 
 vapor against adamant ? By the moral precepts, 
 by which Moses awed his people three thousand 
 years ago, we are awed. They are permanent, be- 
 ing graven on something more durable than tables 
 of stone ; and it matters not how many times old 
 Nile is renewed, or whether Sinai itself wear in 
 dust away. 
 
 On Garibaldi's heart of hearts " Italy " was 
 written, — an ideal which nothing could cancel.
 
 GARIBALDI 131 
 
 At length, in the early autumn of 1846 news came 
 to Montevideo that a Liberal Pope had been elected 
 at Rome, that the word " amnesty " had been ut- 
 tered, and that the Peninsula was throbbing with 
 splendid hopes. Each succeeding message con- 
 firmed the presentiment that the longed-for day 
 of action was nigh. Garibaldi, subordinating his 
 hatred of priestcraft to his patriotism, wrote to ^ 
 offer his sword to the new Pope, to whom all Ital- 
 ians were looking as the leader of their crusade 
 for freedom, but Pius never acknowledged the 
 offer. Then Garibaldi and some threescore of the 
 Legion hired a brigantine, which they named La 
 Speranza (Hope), and on Api-il 15, 1848, bade 
 the Montevideans farewell. They had to touch at 
 Santa Pola, on the coast of Spain, for water, where 
 they learned that all Europe was in revolution, 
 and then they dropped anchor at Nice on June 23. 
 Over Garibaldi's head the death-sentence still 
 hung, but he had nothing to fear, as the events of 
 the past six months had wiped out old memories. "^ 
 Those six months had had no parallel in modern 
 European history. They had witnessed the tri- 
 umph of revolution from the Douro to the Don. 
 
 Not even during the Napoleonic upheaval had 
 modern Europe felt a convulsion like that of 1848: 
 for government and order were as necessary to 
 Napoleon as to his victims, and his revolution was
 
 V 
 
 132 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 the effort of one lion to devour foxes and wolves, 
 — of one preponderant tyranny to absorb many 
 smaller tyrannies ; but the catastrophe of 1848 
 seemed, to anxious observers, to endanger civiliza- 
 tion itself. Society was dissolving into its elements. 
 The many-headed beast had risen, ubiquitous, ter- 
 rific. Lop off one head, and others grew from 
 the trunk. What substitute could possibly be 
 found in that chaos for the tottering system? 
 Nothing seemed certain but anarchy. 
 
 That was the year when sovereigns were sud- 
 denly made acquainted with their lackeys' stair- 
 cases and the back doors of their palaces. The 
 Pope escaped from Rome in the livery of a foot- 
 man. Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria, fled twice 
 from Vienna. Louis Philippe, the " citizen king " 
 of the French, put on a disguise, and slipped away 
 to England. Metternich, rudely interrupted in 
 his diplomatic game of chess, barely escaped with 
 his life to London. The Crown Prince of Prus- 
 sia, subsequently Emperor of Germany, eluded the 
 angry Berliners, a trusty noble driving the car- 
 riage in which he escaped. There was a scamper- 
 ing of petty German princes, as of prairie-dogs 
 at the sportsman's approach. Nobility, whose 
 ambition hitherto had been to display itself, was 
 now wondrously fond of burrows. And just as 
 the frightened upholders of absolutism went into
 
 GARIBALDI 133 
 
 hiding, the apostles of democracy emerged from 
 prisons and exile. 
 
 Paper constitutions, grandiloquent manifestoes, 
 patriotic resolutions, doctrinaire pamphlets, were 
 whirled hither and thither as thick as autumn 
 leaves. Every man who had a tongue spoke ; 
 speaking, so furious was the din, soon loudened 
 into shouting. But the Old Regime was encamped 
 in no Jericho whose walls would tumble at mere 
 sound. There must be deeds as well as words ; 
 in truth, more action and less Babel had been 
 wiser. Committees of national safety, working- 
 men's unions, civic guards, armies of the people, 
 sprang into existence, and it is wonderful to note 
 with what quickness officers and leaders were 
 found to command them. Universities were turned 
 into recruiting stations and barracks ; students 
 and professors became soldiers. Tliere were he- 
 roic combats, excesses, reverses bravely borne. 
 Gradually the fatal lack of centre and organiza- 
 tion could not be concealed. The leaders disputed 
 as to measures ; then followed misunderstandings, 
 jealousies, desertions. Each doctrinaire cared that 
 his plan, rather than the general cause, should *^ 
 prevail. Each sect, each race, feared that it would 
 lose should its rival take the lead. But the pur- 
 pose of monarchy was everywhere the same, — to 
 recover its footing ; and the agents of monarchy.
 
 134 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 cautiously creeping out of their retreats, began 
 to profit by the divisions among their enemies. 
 Within a year the European revolt was crushed. 
 Nevertheless its lessons abide. It taught that 
 despots cannot be permanently abolished so long 
 as a large majority of a nation require despotic 
 government, and the proof that they require it is 
 the fact that they submit to it ; whence it follows 
 that real democracy cannot conquer until a peo- 
 ple be educated up to the capacity of governing 
 themselves. It taught that without unity among 
 the heads and obedience among the members no 
 reform can succeed. It taught, finally, that no 
 society which has once attained a certain level 
 of civilization can exist in a state of anarchy ; for 
 when anarchy is reached, the opportunity of the 
 strongest man, the tyrant, offers, and the pro- 
 cess of reconstruction from the basis of absolutism 
 begins. 
 
 To Liberals, in June, 1848, however, the days 
 of tyranny seemed at an end ; the Golden Age of 
 liberty, constitutional government, and the brother- 
 hood of nations seemed to have dawned. Gari- 
 baldi learned that Lombardy had expelled the 
 Austrians ; that Charles Albert, the Piedmontese 
 King, had drawn his sword as the champion of 
 Italian independence ; and that the Pope and the 
 other princes, including even Bomba of Naples,
 
 GARIBALDI 135 
 
 had espoused the national cause. The rapid vic- 
 tories of the spring had been succeeded by military- 
 inertia; frantic enthusiasm had given place to a 
 chatter of criticism ; but not even those who grum- 
 bled loudest believed as yet that the cause was in 
 danger. 
 
 Garibaldi hurried to the King's headquarters, 
 near Mantua. He was no lover of royalty, but he 
 would support any king honestly fighting in behalf 
 of Italy. Charles Albert granted him an audience, 
 but avoided accepting his offered services, telling 
 him that he had better consult the Minister of 
 War, at Turin. To Turin, accordingly. Garibaldi \/ 
 posted back, saw that official, received further eva- 
 sive replies, and departed angry. To have traveled 
 seven thousand miles over sea to fight for his coun- 
 try's redemption, only to be treated in this fashion, 
 might well astound a blunt soldier who had sup- 
 posed that every volunteer would be welcomed. 
 In his own case the rebuff was peculiarly aston- 
 ishing, for he was, presumably, an ally whom any 
 commander would be glad to secure. Europe 
 had rung with the fame of his South American 
 career, and already regarded him as a legendary 
 hero. Imagine Charlemagne refusing Roland's 
 aid in his campaign against the Paynims, or the 
 old Romans turning coldly away from one of the 
 great Twin Brethren !
 
 136 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 Although Garibaldi would have despised rea- 
 sons of state which deprived him of the right of 
 volunteering against Austria, yet the King had to 
 be governed by them. For his excuse in declaring 
 war had been that, unless he interfered, anarchy, 
 followed by a republic, would prevail in Lom- 
 bardy. To be consistent, therefore, he had to 
 keep clear of even an apparent league with repub- 
 licanism as embodied in Garibaldi. 
 
 Baffled and exasperated, but determined not 
 to be cut off from all activity, Garibaldi went 
 to Milan, where a provisional government with 
 republican leanings still ruled. By it he and his 
 legionaries were hospitably received, and sent out, 
 ^ with a considerable body of raw recruits, to harass 
 the Austrians along the lakes. In a few weeks, 
 however, the main Austrian army had reconquered 
 Lombardy, and the Garibaldians were driven to 
 take refuge across the Swiss frontier. 
 
 Garibaldi, like a true knight-errant, now went 
 forth in search of another chance to do battle for 
 freedom. At Florence the republicans did him 
 honor, but were waiy of asking him to command 
 their troops, the fact being that each disti'ict had 
 leaders of its own, and a host of zealous aspirants, 
 who were patriotically disinclined to make way for 
 even the most distinguished knight-errant. At 
 Rome, whence Pius IX had fled, the revolutionists
 
 GARIBALDI 137 
 
 gave him a warmer greeting, and when, in Febru- 
 ary, 1849, they set up a republic, — Garibaldi 
 having made a motion to that effect in the Roman 
 Assembly, — they made him second in command 
 of their army. And now, properly speaking, the 
 tale of Garibaldi's European exploits begins. 
 
 We cannot follow in detail the story of the 
 defense of Rome against the French troops sent 
 thither by the perfidious Louis Napoleon, and their 
 allies from Spain and Naples ; yet it were well 
 worth oiu* while to give an hour to deeds so bril- 
 liant, so noble, so picturesque, — to pass from the 
 Assembly Hall, where Mazzini, the indomitable 
 dreamer, was the dictator, to the fortifications 
 where band after band of volunteers, speaking 
 many dialects, clothed in many costumes, were re- 
 solved to ffive their lives for freedom ! We should 
 see Lucian Manara, a modern knight, captain of 
 a legion of brave men ; we should see Mameli, the 
 blond poet-soldier, a mere lad ; and the brothers 
 Dandolo, and Medici and Nino Bixio, and many 
 another doomed to win renown by an early death 
 there, or there to begin a career which became 
 a necessary strand in Italy's regeneration. But, 
 most conspicuous of all, we should see Garibaldi, 
 for whom the legionaries and their leaders had 
 such a feeling as the Knights of the Round Table 
 for Arthur their King. Call it loyalty, 't is not
 
 138 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 enough ; call it filial affection, something remains 
 unexpressed ; call it fascination, enthusiasm, sor- 
 / eery, — each term helps the definition, though 
 none singly suffices. His was, indeed, that eldest 
 sorcery which binds the hearts of men to their 
 hero, — that power which reveals itself as an ideal 
 stronger than danger or hardship or disease, some- 
 thing to worship, to love, to die for. 
 
 During her five-and-twenty centuries, Rome had 
 seen many strange captains, but none more original 
 than this, her latest defender, from the pampas 
 of South America. In person he was of middle 
 stature ; his hair and beard were of a brown in- 
 clining to red ; his eyes blue, more noteworthy for 
 their expression than for their color ; his mouth, 
 so far as it could be seen under the moustache, 
 was firm, but capable of an irresistible smile. His 
 soldiers, remembering his aspect in battle, spoke 
 of his face as " leonine ; " women, caught perhaps 
 by the charm rather than the cut of his features, 
 thought him beautiful. And as if Nature had 
 not done enough to mark her hero, he adopted on 
 his return to Europe the dress which he had worn 
 in South America, — a small, plumed cap, the gray- 
 ish-white cloak or poncho lined with red, the red 
 flannel shirt, the trousers and boots of the Uru- 
 guayan herdsmen and guerrillas. 
 
 During that siege of Rome, Europe came to
 
 GARIBALDI 139 
 
 know Garibaldi and his red-shirted companions, 
 who were equally bizarre in character and in 
 costume, — a troop of poets, students, dreamers, 
 vagabonds, and adventurers, — who, with the nu- 
 cleus of the Legion from Montevideo, were capa- 
 ble, under their chieftain's guidance, of splendid 
 achievements. Their victories against the Neapo- 
 litans at Palestrina and Velletri ; their stubborn 
 defense of Rome against the overwhelming armies 
 of France ; their bravery at the Villa Pamfili ; 
 their desperate struggle to hold the Vascello, where 
 Manara was killed ; their unwilling but inevitable 
 yielding of the outposts, and finally of the inner 
 breastworks, — made up a tale of heroism which 
 could be matched only at Venice in that year of 
 waning revolution. 
 
 But Europe had declared that there should be 
 no republic at Rome, and after nine weeks' gal- 
 lantry the city capitulated to the French, who 
 represented the cause of reaction. Garibaldi, 
 however, did not surrender. On the day when 
 the French made their entry by one gate, he 
 marched out of another, followed by nearly four 
 thousand soldiers. He wound across the Cam- 
 pagna, and then for twenty-nine days he led his ' 
 troop among the Apennines, evading now the 
 French who pressed on the rear, now the Austri- 
 ans, who harassed both flanks and tlireatened to
 
 140 TIIROXE-MAKERS 
 
 bar the advance. The little army dwindled, but 
 Garibaldi held bis purpose to reach Venice, where 
 the Austrian tyrants had not yet forced their 
 return. At length, however, in the little republic 
 of San Marino he was surrounded. All but two 
 hundred of his followers disbanded ; with the 
 remainder he eluded the enemy's cordon, reached 
 the coast at Cesenatico, seized some fishing-boats, 
 and embarked for Venice. Mid-voyage, a fleet of 
 Austrian cruisers came upon them and opened 
 fire. As best they could the fugitives landed, with 
 Austrian pursuers at their heels. Garibaldi and 
 one companion bore Anita in dying condition — 
 she had followed the retreat on horseback all the 
 way from Rome — to a wood-cutter's hut, where 
 she died. A moment later Garibaldi had to fly. 
 
 Of that retreat, and his subsequent hair-breadth 
 escapes in being smuggled across Italy, he has left 
 in his memoirs a thrilling account. For a second 
 time he tasted the bitterness of exile : his first 
 refuge was Genoa, but the Piedmontese govern- 
 ment, timid after defeat, informed him that he 
 must depart ; he was expelled from Turin at the 
 instigation of the French ; England warned him 
 that he must be gone from Gibraltar within a 
 week. Only in semi-savage Morocco did he at 
 last find shelter ; thence, after a few months, he 
 came to New York. Consider who it was that
 
 GARIBALDI 141 
 
 Europe thus outlawed, and what was his crime. 
 He was a man whose life had been a long devotion 
 to human liberty, and whose most recent guilt was 
 to have attempted to prevent foreign despots from 
 reenslaving his countrymen. A system is judged 
 by the men it persecutes. 
 
 Wifeless, homeless, chagrined by the thought 
 that Italy had waged her war of independence 
 only to be beaten, Garibaldi began his second 
 wanderings. A real Odyssey we may call it, 
 with its strange happenings. For a year the hero \/ 
 of Rome earned a bare livelihood making candles 
 in Meucci's factory on Staten Island ; then he 
 shipped for Central and South A merica ; cap- 
 tained a cargo of guano from Lima to Canton, 
 and a cargo of tea back to Lima ; brought a ship 
 laden with copper, round Cape Horn to Boston ; 
 and finally, in May, 1854, he dropped anchor at 
 Genoa, where the government no longer feared 
 his presence. AYith the proceeds of his mercan- 
 tile ventures, he bought Caprera, — a mere rock, 
 which juts out of the Tuscan Sea, near the north- 
 ern tip of Sardinia. There, " like some tired eagle 
 on a crag remote," he dwelt five years, apparently i^ 
 oblivious to the passing current of events, and 
 wholly intent on coaxing a few vines and vegeta- 
 bles to grow on his wind-swept rock. 
 
 Early in 1859 a messenger summoned Garibaldi
 
 142 THROXE-MAKERS 
 
 from his hermitage to Turin. This summons was 
 not unexpected. For months the world had re- 
 garded war in Italy as inevitable, and now war 
 was on the point of breaking out. 
 
 How had this come to pass ? After her defeat in 
 184:9, Piedmont, the little northwestern kingdom of 
 four million souls, had sturdily set about reform- 
 ing herself. She stood firmly by the constitutional 
 government adopted in 1848 ; she strengthened 
 her army and her navy ; she took education out 
 of the hands of the Jesuits : she encouraged com- 
 merce, industry, and agriculture. Thus she proved 
 to Europe that Italians could govern themselves 
 by as good a political system as then existed : to 
 all the other Italians, groaning under Austrian, or 
 Bourbon, or Papal tyranny, she proved that they 
 might look to her to lead the Italian cause. 
 
 This marvelous attainment was due primarily 
 to Count Cavour, the statesman who, since 1850; 
 had been almost continuously prime minister of 
 Piedmont ; and. in the second place, to Victor 
 Emanuel, the shrewd, honest, chivalrous King, 
 worthy to be the visible symbol of Italy's patri- 
 otism. But Cavour had realized from the begin- 
 ning that, however strong he might make Pied- 
 mont, she would not be able singly to cope with 
 Austria : four millions against thirty-five millions 
 — the odds were too ffreat ! So he labored to
 
 GARIBALDI 143 
 
 bring Piedmont into the stream of European life ,♦ 
 he allied her to France and England in the Crimean 
 War ; and now, at the beginning of 1859 he had 
 persuaded Napoleon III to march the armies of 
 France into Italy to join Piedmont in expelling 
 the Austrians. 
 
 All this had been brought about against great 
 hindrances, not the least of which was the keeping 
 in check the Italian conspirators. Since the days 
 of the Carbonari, a certain number of Italians had 
 hoped to set up a republic. Mazzini, now the 
 chief leader of conspiracy, was uncompromisingly 
 republican, holding so little faith in the methods 
 of Cavour and the Constitutional Monarchists 
 that he never hesitated to hatch plots against them 
 as well as against the Austrians. Between these 
 two irreconcilable parties Garibaldi was the link. 
 By preference a republican, he yet recognized Vic- 
 tor Emanuel as the only practicable standard- 
 bearer, and he therefore fought loyally under him ; 
 but he distrusted Cavour, scorned diplomacy, and 
 abhorred Napoleon III. In his exuberant way, he 
 insisted that Italians could, if they would, recover 
 independence without begging the rogue, who had 
 crushed Rome ten years before, to succor them. 
 
 A volunteer corps, called tlie Hunters of the 
 Alps, was accordingly organized, with the double 
 purpose of using Garibaldi's skill as a guerrilla
 
 lu tiironp:-makers 
 
 chieftain against the Austrians, and his unique 
 popularity in drawing all sorts of partisans to 
 support the national war. He suspected that the 
 government was not wholly ingenuous ; he com- 
 plained that his volunteers had to swallow many 
 snubs from the regulars ; he chafed at being 
 responsible to any superior : but the fact that he 
 had at last a chance of striking the oppressors of 
 Italy outweighed everything else. 
 
 Despite the shortness of the war of 1859, Gari- 
 baldi and his Hunters proved of real service in it. 
 Varese, Como, remember their valor still ; and 
 had not Napoleon III suspended hostilities after 
 the great victory of Solferino, the Garibaldians 
 might have redeemed the Tyrol. But Napoleon's 
 peace of Villafranca, while it gave Lombardy to 
 Piedmont, left Venetia in the hands of the Aus- 
 trians, and stopped further operations in the north 
 at that time. During the autumn, however. Gari- 
 baldi, with many of his volunteers, went to Tus- 
 cany, where a provisional government was then 
 awaiting the propitious moment for annexation 
 to Victor Emanuel's kingdom. The situation was 
 very ticklish, requiring careful diplomacy : Gari- 
 baldi, who shared with General Fanti the military 
 command, wished to have done with diplomacy, 
 to call out one hundred thousand volunteers, and 
 to rely on them to disentangle all complications.
 
 GARIBALDI 145 
 
 Irritated at having his plan overruled, he resigned 
 his command and withdrew to Caprera. 
 
 Within three months, however, he was called 
 from his retreat. Secret agents brought word 
 that " something could be done " in Sicily, where 
 for a long time Mazzinians had been preparing 
 a revolt. It needed, they said, but Garibaldi's 
 presence to redeem the island from Bourbon mis- 
 rule. He could not resist the temptation. Trusty 
 lieutenants of his had collected arms and ammu- 
 nition, hired two steamers and enrolled volunteers. 
 At Genoa, where these preparations w^ei-e making, 
 nobody, except the government officials, was igno- 
 rant of their jjurpose. The government, however, 
 pretended not to see. Cavour could not openly 
 abet an exj^edition against a power with which 
 Piedmont was not at war ; neither did he wish to 
 hinder an expedition for whose success he and all 
 Italian patriots prayed. So he discreetly closed 
 his eyes. 
 
 On the night of May 5, 1860, Garibaldi and 
 10G7 followers embarked on their two steamers 
 near Genoa and vanished into the darkness. For 
 a week thereafter Europe wondered whither they 
 were bound, — whetlier against the Pa}>al States or 
 Na])les ; then the telegraph reported that they had 
 landed at Marsala, on the morning of May 11, just 
 in time to escape two Neapolitan cruisers which
 
 146 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 had been watching for them. From that moment, 
 day by day, with increasing astonishment, the 
 world followed the progress of Garibaldi and his 
 Thousand. No achievement like theirs has been 
 chronicled in many centuries. They set out, a 
 thousand filibusters, scantily equipped and un- 
 drilled, to free an island of two and a half million 
 inhabitants, an island guarded by an army fifty 
 thousand strong, with forts and garrisons in all 
 its ports, and having quick communication with 
 Naples, where the Bourbon King had six million 
 more subjects from whom to recruit his forces. 
 Grant that the Sicilians fervently sympathized 
 with Garibaldi, yet they were too wary to commit 
 themselves before they had indications that he 
 would win ; grant that the Bourbon troops were 
 half-hearted and ludicrously superstitious, — many 
 of them believed that the Garibaldians were wiz- 
 "^ ards, bullet-proof, — yet they had been trained to 
 fight, they were well-armed, and by their numbers 
 alone were formidable. That they would run away 
 could not be assumed by the little band of libera- 
 tors, any more than Childe Roland could suppose 
 that the grim monsters who threatened his advance 
 would vanish when he upon his slug-horn blew. 
 
 And in truth the Bourbon soldiers did not run. 
 At Calatifimi the Garibaldians beat them only 
 after a fierce encounter ; at Palermo there was a
 
 GARIBALDI 147 
 
 desperate struggle ; at Milazzo, a resistance which 
 might, if prolonged, have destroyed the expedi- 
 tion. In every instance it seemed as if the Bour- 
 bons might have won had they but displayed a 
 little more nerve, another half hour's persistence ; 
 but it was always the Garibaldians who had the 
 precious reserve of pluck and strength to draw 
 upon, and they always won. Their capture of 
 Palermo, a walled city of two hundred thousand 
 inhabitants, defended by many regiments on land 
 and by men-of-war in the harbor, ranks highest 
 among their exploits. Less than a month after 
 quitting Genoa, they had liberated more than half 
 the island and had set up a provisional govern- 
 ment. By the first of August only two or three 
 fortresses had not surrendered to them. 
 
 And now questions of diplomacy came in to dis- 
 turb the swift current of conquest. Garibaldi de- 
 termined to cross to the mainland, redeem Naples, 
 march on to Rome, and from the Capitol hail 
 Victor Emanuel King of Italy. Cavour saw great 
 danger in this plan. At any moment, a defeat 
 would jeopard the positions already gained ; an 
 attack on the Pope's domain would bring Louis 
 Napoleon and Austria to his rescue, and might 
 entail a war in which the just-formed Kingdoui of 
 Italy would be broken up ; furthermore, Cavour 
 believed that assimilation ought to keep pace with
 
 148 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 annexation. He knew that it would require long 
 training; to raise the Italians of the south, cor- 
 rupted by ages of hideous misrule, to the level of 
 their northern kinsmen. 
 
 Such considerations as these could not, however, 
 deter Garibaldi. He grew wroth at the thought 
 that any foreigner — were he even the Emperor of 
 the French — should be consulted by Italians in 
 the achievement of their independence. Eluding 
 both the Neapolitan and the Piedmontese cruisers, 
 he crossed to the mainland and took Reggio after 
 a sharp fight. From that moment his progress 
 towards the capital resembled a triumph. And 
 when, on September 7, accompanied by only a few 
 officers, he entered Naples, though there were still 
 a dozen or more Bourbon regiments in garrison 
 there, the soldiers joined with the civilians and the 
 loud-throathed lazzaroni in acclaiming him their 
 deliverer. Yet only a few hours before their King 
 had sneaked off, too craven to defend himself, too 
 much detested to be defended. Think what it 
 meant that this should happen, — that the sover- 
 eign, the source of honor, the fountain of justice, 
 the symbol of the life and integrity of the state, 
 should not find in his own palace one loyal sword 
 unsheathed in his defense, even though the loyalty 
 were hired, like that of the eight hundred Swiss 
 who gave their lives for Louis XVI ! By an inev-
 
 GARIBALDI 149 
 
 itable penalty, Bourbon misrule in Naples passed 
 vilely away ; it had been, as Gladstone declared, 
 the embodied " negation of God : " even in its col- 
 lapse and ruin there was nothing tragic, portend- 
 ing strength ; there was only the negative energy 
 of putrefaction. 
 
 Having taken measures for temporarily govern- 
 ing Naples, Garibaldi prepared for a last encounter 
 with the Bourbons. King Francis still commauded 
 an army of forty thousand men along the Vol- 
 turno, near Capua. There Garibaldi, with hardly 
 a third of that number, fought and won a pitched 
 battle on October 1. A month later he welcomed 
 Victor Emanuel as sovereign of the kingdom which 
 he and his Thousand had liberated. The republi- 
 cans, instigated by Mazzini, had wished to postpone, 
 if they could not prevent, annexation ; but Gari- 
 baldi, whose patriotic instinct was truer than their 
 partisanship, insisted that Naples and Sicily should 
 be united to the Kingdom of Italy under the House 
 of Savoy. In all modern histoiy there is no par- 
 allel to his bestowal of his conquests on the King, 
 as there is nothing nobler than his complete disin- ^ 
 terestedness. He declined all honors, titles, sti- 
 pends, and offices for himself, and departed, almost 
 secretly, from Naples for Caj)rera the day after he 
 had consigned the government to its new lord. 
 
 Fortune has one gift which she begrudges even
 
 150 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 to her darlings : she does not allow them to die at 
 the summit of their career. Either too soon for 
 their country's good, or too late for their personal 
 fame, she sends death to dispatch them. Pericles, 
 Cavour, Lincoln, were snatched away prematurely; 
 Themistocles and Grant should have prayed to 
 be released before they had slipped below their 
 zenith. So, too. Garibaldi lacked nothing but 
 that, after having redeemed a kingdom by one of 
 the most splendid expeditions in history, and after 
 having given it to the unifier of his fatherland, 
 he should have vanished from the earth. Thanks 
 to a kindlier fortune, the old Hebrew prophets 
 were translated, and the Homeric heroes were 
 borne off invisible, at the perfect moment. But 
 while Garibaldi lacked this epic finale to his epic 
 career, the closing decades of his life were as char- 
 acteristic as any. 
 
 In the spring of 1861 he reappeared on the 
 scene at the opening of the first parliament of the 
 Kingdom of Italy, to which he had been chosen 
 deputy by many districts. He came, not jubilant 
 but angry. Nice, his home, had been ceded to 
 France in payment for French aid in the war of 
 1859 : against Cavour, who had consented to this 
 bargain. Garibaldi conceived the most intense ha- 
 tred, and on the floor of the House he fulminated 
 at the Prime Minister whose "treason had made
 
 GARIBALDI 151 
 
 Garibaldi a foreigner in his native land." He 
 complained, further, because the officers and sol- 
 diers of the Garibaldian army had not been gener- 
 ously treated by the government. The outburst 
 was most deplorable. Many feared that the hero's 
 testiness might lead to civil war ; and though the 
 King arranged a meeting, in the hope of bringing 
 about a reconciliation, Garibaldi went from it with 
 bitterness in his heart. Six weeks later, on June 
 6, Cavour, stricken by fever, died when his coun- 
 try needed him most. Little did Garibaldi realize 
 that in the great statesman's death he was losing 
 the man who had been indisjjensable to his suc- 
 cess in Sicily, and whose judgment was needed to 
 direct Garibaldian impulses to a fruitful end. 
 
 Only Rome and Venetia now remained ununited 
 to the Kingdom of Italy : in Rome a French gar- 
 rison propped the Pope's despised temporal power ; 
 in Venetia the Austrian regiments held fast. To 
 rescue the Italians still in bondage, and to com- 
 plete the unification of Italy, were henceforth Gari- 
 baldi's aims. He paid no heed to the diplomatic 
 embarrassments which his schemes might create ; 
 for as usual he regarded diplomacy as a device by 
 which cowards, knaves, and traitors thwarted the </ 
 desires of patriots. 
 
 In the summer of 18G2, therefore, he recruited 
 three or four thousand volunteers in Sicily, raised
 
 152 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 the war-cry, "Rome or death," crossed to the 
 mainland, and had to be forcibly stopped by royal 
 troops at Aspromonte. In the brief skirmish he 
 was wounded, and for many months was confined 
 at Varignano, whither flocked admirers — men, 
 women, and youths — from all parts of Europe. 
 There is no doubt that Rattazzi, then the premier, 
 had connived at the expedition, hoping to repeat 
 Cavour's master-stroke ; but the conditions were 
 different from those of 1860, and the Premier but 
 illustrated the truth that talent cannot even copy 
 genius judiciously. Moreover, by allowing Gari- 
 baldi to go so far and by then arresting him, Rat- 
 tazzi subjected the government to a dangerous 
 strain ; for Garibaldi's popularity was immense, 
 and even those of his countrymen who insisted that 
 no citizen — however distinguished his services — 
 should be permitted to live above the law, and to 
 wage war when he pleased, were as eager as he 
 that Rome should be emancipated. 
 
 Untaught by experience, Rattazzi connived at a 
 similar expedition five years later. For several 
 weeks Garibaldi went about openly preaching 
 another crusade. When the French government 
 asked for explanations, Rattazzi had Garibaldi 
 arrested and escorted to Caprera. A dozen men- 
 of-war sailed round and round the rock, forbidding 
 any one to approach or quit it. But one night
 
 GARIBALDI 153 
 
 Garibaldi escaped in a tiny wherry, and a few 
 days later he led a band of crusaders across the 
 Papal frontier. They met the French troops at 
 Mentana, were worsted and dispersed ; and again 
 Garibaldi was locked up in the fortress of Vari- 
 gnano, while one party denounced the government 
 for ingratitude towaixls the beloved hero, and an- 
 other denounced it for treating him as a privileged 
 person who might, when the impulse seized him, 
 embroil the country in war. If we regard the ac- 
 quirement of the methods of constitutional gov- 
 ernment and of respect for law and order as the 
 chief need of the Italians at that time, we can 
 only regret the agitation and expeditions which 
 Garibaldi conducted, to the detriment of his coun- 
 try's progi'ess. 
 
 Meanwhile, in 1866, Venetia had been restored 
 to her kinsfolk, as the result of the brief conflict 
 in which Italy and Prussia allied themselves against 
 Austria. Garibaldi organized another corps of 
 Hunters of the Alps, but the shortness of the 
 campaign prevented him, as in 1859, from going 
 far. In 1870 the war between France and Prussia 
 enabled the Italians to take possession of Rome 
 as soon as the French garrison was withdrawn ; so 
 that Italy owed the comj)letion of her unity, not to 
 li(!r own sword, but to a lucky turn in the quarrels 
 of her neighbors.
 
 154 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 No sooner had the French Empire collapsed, 
 and the French Republic was seen to be terribly 
 beset by the Germans, than Garibaldi offered his 
 services to her. He was assigned* to the command 
 of the Army of the Vosges, a nondescript corps, 
 which more than once gave proof of bravery, 
 although it could not match the superior numbers 
 and discipline of Moltke's men. The French gave 
 him scanty thanks for his services, and at the end 
 of the war he returned home. 
 
 During the next ten years he was either at 
 Rome, arraigning the government, the fallen Pa- 
 pacy, and the wastefulness of the monarchy ; or 
 he was making triumphal progresses through the 
 land, sure everywhere of being treated as an idol ; 
 ^ or he stayed in his Caprera hermitage, inditing 
 letters in behalf of political extremists, Nihilists, 
 fanatics. Yet his popularity did not wane ; his 
 countrymen regarded him more than ever as a 
 privileged person, whose senile extravagances were 
 not to be taken too seriously. They loved his in- 
 tentions ; they revered him for the achievements 
 of his prime ; and when, on June 2, 1882, he fell 
 asleep in his Caprera home, all Italy put on mourn- 
 ing, and the world, conscious that it had lost a 
 hero, grieved. 
 
 On his sixty-fifth birthday (July 4, 1872) he 
 drew his own portrait thus : " A tempestuous life,
 
 GARIBALDI 155 
 
 composed of good and of evil, as I believe of the 
 large part of the world. A consciousness of hav- 
 ing sought the good always, for me and for my 
 kind. If I have sometimes done wrong, certainly 
 I did it involuntarily. A hater of tyranny and 
 falsehood, with the profound conviction that in 
 them is the principal origin of the ills and of the 
 corruption of the human race. Hence a republi- 
 can, this being the system of honest folk, the 
 normal system, willed by the majority, and con- 
 sequently not imposed with violence and wdth 
 imposture. Tolerant and not exclusive, incapable ^y 
 of imposing my republicanism by force, on the 
 English, for instance, if they are contented with 
 the government of Queen Victoria. And, however 
 contented they may be, their government should 
 be considered republican. A republican, but ever- 
 more persuaded of the necessity of an honest and 
 temporary dictatorship at the head of those nations 
 which, like France, Spain, and Italy, are the vic- 
 tims of a most pernicious Byzantinisra. ... I was 
 copious in praises of the dead, fallen on fields of 
 battle for liberty. I praised less the living, espe- 
 cially my comrades. When I felt myself urged by 
 just rancor against those who wronged me, I strove 
 to placate my resentment before speaking of tlie 
 offense and of the offender. In every writing of 
 mine, I have always attacked clericalism, more
 
 1 ;-)( ; T 1 1 llO N E-:\I A K E lis 
 
 particularly because in it I have always believed 
 that I found the prop of every despotism, of every 
 vice, of every corruption. The priest is the per- 
 sonification of lies, the liar is a thief, the thief is 
 a murderer, — and I could find for the priest a 
 series of infamous corollaries." 
 
 Thus he read his own character, and we need 
 not subject it to a searching analysis. In action lay 
 his strength. He trusted instinct against any ar- 
 gument. Hence the single-minded zeal with which 
 he plunged into evei-y entei-prise; hence, too, his 
 inability to weigh other policies than his own, and 
 his distrust, often intensified into unreasoning pre- 
 judice, of those who differed from him. If his 
 kindly, generous nature often made him the dupe 
 of schemers, the wonder is that they did not be- 
 guile him into irreparable excesses. He was saved 
 partly by a thread of common sense and partly by 
 self-respect akin to vanity, which kept him con- 
 stantly on the alert against being used as a tool. 
 Although modest, he knew so well the grandeur of 
 the part he was playing that he took no pains to 
 dissemble the childlike delight he felt at demon- 
 strations of his popularity. The lifelong chamj^ion 
 of democracy, he behaved, in practice, as autocrat- 
 ically as Cromwell ; a believer in dictatorships, 
 never able to work successfully as yoke-fellow or 
 subordinate to any one else. Like the dreamers, he
 
 GARIBALDI 157 
 
 could not comprehend that human society, being 
 a growth and not a manufacture, cannot be sud- 
 denly lifted by benevolent manifesto or patriotic 
 resolution. He scorned parliamentary debates, he 
 reviled diplomacy, he underrated counsel. 
 
 But what he had, he had superlatively : valor, 
 presence of mind, geniality, unselfishness, mag- 
 nanimity, — he had all these, the qualities of a 
 popular soldier, to a degree which made whoever 
 fought with him worship him. No other man of 
 his time, nor perhaps of any time, inspired so 
 many human beings with personal affection — as 
 distinsfuished from that devotion which other fa- 
 vorite captains have inspired — as he did. Every 
 one of his soldiers felt that in Garibaldi he had 
 not merely a commander but a brother ; every 
 person who approached him acknowledged his 
 fascination. 
 
 Strip off Garibaldi's eccentricities, look into his 
 heart, contemplate his achievements, — we behold 
 a hero of the Homeric brood. Again we enter the 
 presence of a man of a few elemental traits, whose 
 habit it was to exhibit his passions without that 
 reserve which belongs to our sophisticated age. 
 Like Achilles, he wept when he was moved, he 
 sulked when he was angry. Equally simple was 
 the mainspring of his action. lie obeyed two 
 ideals, and those two of the noblest, — love of
 
 158 THRONE-MAKERS 
 
 liberty and love of his fellow-men : nay, more, he 
 obeyed them as quickly when they led into exile, 
 poverty, and danger as when they led him to a 
 conquest unparalleled in modern history, and to 
 fame in which the wonder and the affection of 
 the world blended in equal parts. 
 
 In the making of Italy it was his mission to 
 rouse some of his countrymen to a sense of their 
 patriotic duty, and to lead others to fight for a 
 nation under Victor Emanuel instead of for a fac- 
 tion under Mazzini. Through him, the forces of 
 royalism and of revolution formed an alliance 
 which, although it was almost indispensable to the 
 success of the Italian cause, might never, but for 
 him, have been formed. 
 
 Such was Garibaldi, his character, his exploits. 
 Shall we not seek also for the meaning of his 
 career ? Shall we not ask, " To what attributes of 
 general human nature had his individuality the 
 key?" That conquest of Sicily was but an epi- 
 sode ; long anterior to it was built up the tempera- 
 ment which might have liberated twenty Sicilies, 
 and which found a multitude ready to respond to 
 its least signal. 
 
 More than half of our nature is emotion. Men 
 may lie sluggish, they may seem sodden in selfish- 
 ness, or they may fritter their force away on petty 
 things. But let the hero come, — the Garibaldi,
 
 GARIBALDI 159 
 
 the embodied emotion, — and they will know him 
 as light knows light, or lover his beloved. What 
 just now seemed a dead, sordid mass is tinder, is 
 flame. The craven legions, bewitched and trans- 
 formed by his example, will follow him anywhere, 
 were it to storm the gates of hell ! The immense 
 scope of noble emotion, — is not that the signif- 
 icance, if we seek it, of Garibaldi's marvelous 
 influence ? And has it ever been more certainly 
 displayed than in our very century, miscalled pro- 
 saic ?
 
 PORTRAITS
 
 CARLYLE 
 
 Dr. Samuel Johnson, during a long life, cher- 
 ished an aversion, Platonic rather than militant, 
 for Scotland and the Scotch. Had any one told 
 him that out of the land where oats were fed to 
 men there should issue, soon after his death, a 
 master of romance, an incomparable singer, and a 
 historian without rival, we can well imagine the 
 emphasis with which he would have said, " Tut ! 
 tut ! sir, that is impossible ! " Nevertheless, for 
 the best part of a century Scotland has shed her 
 influence through the world in the genius of 
 Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Thomas Carlyle ; 
 and she has taken sweet vengeance on the burly 
 Doctor himself by creating in James Boswell not 
 only the best of British biographers, but one so 
 far the best that no other can be named worthy to 
 stand second to him. We now celebrate the cen- 
 tenary of the last of these great Scotchmen, — 
 Thomas Carlyle, — and it is fitting that we should 
 survey his life and work.^ 
 
 In a time like our own, when literature on 
 * First printed in The Forum, New York, December, 1895.
 
 164 PORTRAITS 
 
 either side of the Atlantic lacks original energy ; 
 when the best minds are busy with criticism rather 
 than with creation ; when ephemeral story-tellers 
 and spineless disciples of culture pass for mas- 
 ters, and sincere but uninspired scholars have our 
 respect but move us not, — we shall do well to 
 contemplate anew the man who by his personality 
 and his books has nobly swayed two generations of 
 the English-speaking race, and who, as the years 
 recede, looms more and more certainly as the fore- 
 most modern British man of letters. Men may 
 look distorted to their contemporaries, like the 
 figures in a Chinese picture ; but Time, the wisest 
 of painters, sets them in their true perspective, 
 gives them their just proportions, and reveals their 
 permanent features in light and shade. And suf- 
 ficient time has now elapsed for us to perceive 
 that Carlyle belongs to that thrice-winnowed class 
 of literary primates whom posterity crowns. He 
 holds in the nineteenth century a position similar 
 to Johnson's in the eighteenth, and to Milton's in 
 the seventeenth, — each masterful, but in a differ- 
 ent way ; each typifying his age without losing his 
 individuality ; all brothers in preeminence. 
 
 When, for convenience' sake, we classify Car- 
 lyle among men of letters, we fail to describe 
 him adequately. The phrase suggests too little. 
 Charles Lamb, the lovable, is the true type of
 
 CARLYLE 165 
 
 men of letters, who illuminate, sweeten, clelight, 
 and entertain us. Carlyle was far more : he was 
 a mighty moral force, using many forms of litera- 
 ture — criticism, biography, history, pamphlets — 
 as its organs of expression. He had, as the dis- 
 cerning Goethe said of him, " unborrowed princi- 
 ples of conviction," by which he tested the world. 
 He felt the compulsion of a great message in- 
 trusted to him. There rings through most of his 
 utterances the uncompromising "Thus saith the 
 Lord" of the Hebrew prophets, — a tone which, 
 if it do not persuade us, we call arrogant, yet 
 which speaks the voice of conscience to those who 
 give it heed. What, then, was his message? — 
 what those " unborrowed principles of conviction " 
 by which he judged his time ? 
 
 Born in the poor village of Ecclefechan on De- 
 cember 4, 1795, his childhood and youth were 
 spent amid those stern conditions by which, rather 
 than by affluence, brave, self-reliant, earnest char- 
 acters are moulded. His parents were Calvinists, 
 to whom religion was the chief concern, and who 
 taught him by example the severe virtues of that 
 grim sect. Next to religion, and its active mani- 
 festation in a pious life, they prized education, 
 begrudging themselves no sacrifices by which their 
 son might attend the University of Edinburgh. 
 They wished him to be a minister, but when he
 
 166 PORTRAITS 
 
 came to maturity he recognized his unfitness for 
 that vocation and abandoned it. They acquiesced 
 regretfully, little dreaming that he who refused 
 to be confined in some Annandale pulpit should 
 become the foremost preacher of his age. 
 
 Carlyle's reluctance was rooted in conscientious 
 scruples. He began by questioning the authority 
 of his Church ; he went on to sift the authority of 
 the Bible. Little by little the whole wondrous 
 fabric of supernatural Christianity crumbled be- 
 fore him. He could not but be honest with him- 
 self ; he could not but see how Hebrew legend 
 had overgrown the stern ethical code attributed 
 to Moses ; how the glosses of Paul and Augustine 
 and a hundred later religionists had changed or 
 perverted the simple teaching of Christ. Awe- 
 struck, he beheld the God of his youth vanish out 
 of the world. He wandered in the wilderness of 
 doubt ; he wrestled daily and nightly with despair. 
 And then slowly, painfully, after brooding through 
 long years, he saw the outlines of a larger faith 
 emerge from the gloom. He fortified himself by 
 acknowledging that, since righteousness is eternal, 
 it cannot perish when we reject whatever opinions 
 some Council of Westminster, of Trent, or of 
 Nice may have resolved about it. 
 
 Only earnest souls who have experienced the 
 wrench which comes when we first break away
 
 CARLYLE 167 
 
 from the bondage of an artificial religion, and 
 perceive that the moral law may be something 
 very different from dogmas, know the pang it 
 costs. The dread of losing the truth when errors 
 are thrown over — nay, the apparent hopelessness 
 of being able to decide what is truth — causes 
 many to hesitate, and some to turn back. Carlyle 
 was not, of course, the first in Britain to tread the 
 desolate path from Superstition into Rationalism. 
 In the eighteenth century — to go no farther back 
 — two very eminent minds had preceded him ; but 
 in both Hume and Gibbon the intellectual pre- 
 dominated over the moral nature, and to tempera- 
 ments like theirs the pangs of new birth are always 
 less acute. It is because in Carlyle the moral 
 nature preponderated — intense, fiery, and endur- 
 ing — that he became the spokesman of myriads 
 who since him have had a similar experience. 
 
 If we were to hazard a generalization which 
 should sum up the nineteenth century, might we 
 not affirm that the chief business of the century 
 has been to establish a basis of conduct in har- 
 mony with what we actually know of the laws 
 governing the universe? Hitherto, for ages to- 
 gether, men have not consciously done this, but 
 they have accepted standards handed down to them 
 by earlier men, who compounded tlx'se standards 
 out of little knowledge, much ignorance, legend,
 
 168 PORTRAITS 
 
 and hearsay. Skeptics there have always been, 
 but usually, like the skeptics who flourished in the 
 last century, they have differed from the doubters 
 in ours by the degree of their moral intensity. 
 Whether we turn to Carlyle or to George Eliot, 
 we find each tirelessly busy in substituting for the 
 worn-out tenets of the past, springs of belief and 
 conduct worthy to satisfy a more enlightened con- 
 science. 
 
 Here, then, we have the corner-stone of Car- 
 lyle's influence. Our world is a moral world ; 
 conscience and righteousness are eternal realities, 
 independent of the vicissitudes of any church. If 
 we seek for a definite statement of Carlyle's creed, 
 we shall be disajjpointed ; he never formulated 
 any. After breaking loose from one prison, he 
 would have scoffed at the idea of voluntarily lock- 
 ing himself up in another. He held that to pos- 
 sess a moral sense is to possess its justification ; 
 that conscience is a fact transcending logic just as 
 consciousness or life itself does. In the presence 
 of this supreme fact he cared little for its gene- 
 alogy. The immanence of God was to him an 
 ever-present, awful verity. 
 
 Likewise, when we come to examine his philoso- 
 phy, we discover that he constructed no formal 
 system. He absorbed the doctrine of Kant and 
 his followers, and may be classed, by those who
 
 CARLYLE 169 
 
 insist that every man shall have a label, among 
 the transcendentalists : but his main interest was 
 the application of moral laws to life, the trial of 
 men and institutions in the court of conscience, 
 rather than the exercise of the intellect in meta- 
 physical speculations. The mystery of evil may 
 not be explained for some ages, if ever ; while we 
 argue about it, evil grows : the one indispensable 
 duty for all of us, he would say, is to combat evil 
 in ourselves and in society now and here. The 
 stanch seaman, when his shiji founders, does not 
 waste time in meditating why it should be that 
 water will sink a ship, but he lashes together a 
 raft, if haply he may thereby come off safe. 
 
 In these respects we behold Carlyle a true repre- 
 sentative of his time. Before the vast bulk of sin 
 and sorrow and pain he did not cower ; he would 
 fight it manfully. But the smoke of battle dark- 
 ened him. The spectacle of mankind, dwelling in 
 Eternity, yet ignorant of their heritage, pursuing 
 " desires whose purpose ends in Time ; " of souls 
 engaged from dawn to dusk of their swift-fleeting 
 existence, not on soul's business, but on body's 
 business, worshiping idols they know to be false, 
 deceiving, persecuting, slaying each other, — con- 
 firmed a tendency to pessimism to which his early 
 Calvinism had predisposed him. But Carlyle's 
 pessimism must not be confounded with Swift's
 
 170 PORTRAITS 
 
 misanthropy, or with Leopardi's blank despair, or 
 with the despicable Schopenhauer's cosmic nega- 
 tion of good. Carlyle was neither cynic nor mis- 
 anthrope. He might exclaim with Ecclesiastes, 
 " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity ! " but he would 
 mean that the ways and works of man are vain 
 in comparison with his possibilities, and with the 
 incalculable worth of righteousness. " Man's un- 
 happiness, as I construe," he says, " comes of his 
 greatness ; it is because there is an Infinite in 
 him which, with all his cunning, he cannot quite 
 bury under the Finite. Always there is a black 
 spot in our sunshine : it is even the Shadow of 
 Ourselves." 
 
 These being the elements of Carlyle's moral 
 nature, let us look for a moment at the world 
 which he was to test by his " unborrowed princi- 
 ples of conviction." He came on the scene dur- 
 ing the decade of reaction which followed the 
 battle of Waterloo. Official Europe, confounding 
 the ambition of Napoleon with the causes under- 
 lying the Revolution, supposed that in crushing 
 one it had destroyed the other. The motto of the 
 Old Regime had been Privilege, of the New it 
 was Merit. The revived political fashions of the 
 eighteenth century, though cut by such elegant 
 tailors as Metternich, Castlereagh, and Polignac, 
 chafed a generation which had grown used to a
 
 CARLYLE 171 
 
 freer costume. At any time there yawns between 
 the ideals and the practices of society a discrepancy 
 which provokes the censure of the philosopher and 
 the sarcasm of the cynic ; but in a time like the 
 Restoration, when some men consciously repudiated 
 and none sincerely believed the system thrust upon 
 them, the chasm between profession and perform- 
 ance must open wider still, revealing not only the 
 noble failures born of earnest but baffled endeavor, 
 but also all the hideous growths of hypocrisy, of 
 deceptions, insincerities, and intellectual fraud. 
 And in very truth the Old Regime resuscitated 
 by Europe's oligarchs was doubly condemned, 
 — first, as being unfitted to the new age ; and, 
 secondly, as having marked in the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, when it flourished, the logical conclusion of a 
 political and social epoch. In 1820 the trunk and 
 main branches of the tree of Feudalism were dead : 
 he was not a wise man who imagined that the still 
 surviving upper branches would long keep green. 
 
 Not alone in the political constitution of society 
 were momentous changes operating. They but 
 represented the attempt of man to work out, in 
 his civic and social relations, ideas which had 
 already penetrated his religion and his philosophy. 
 Distil those ideas to their inmost essence, its name 
 is Liberty. The old Church, wliether Roman or 
 Protestant, lay rotting at anchor in the land-locked
 
 172 PORTRAITS 
 
 bayou of Authority ; and the pioneers of the new 
 convictions, abandoning her and her cargo of anti- 
 quated dogmas, had pushed on across intervening 
 morasses to the shore of the illimitable sea ; yea, 
 they were launching thereon their skiffs of modern 
 pattern, and resolutely, hopefully steering whither 
 their consciences pointed. Better the storms of 
 the living ocean than the miasma of that stagnant, 
 scum-breeding pool ! But a church is of all insti- 
 tutions that to which men cling most stubbornly, 
 paying it lip-service long after its doctrines have 
 ceased to shape their conduct or to lift their aspi- 
 rations ; trying to believe, in spite of their unbe- 
 lief, that it will continue to be to them a source of 
 strength as it once was to their fathers ; preserv- 
 ing forms, but veneering them with contradictory 
 meanings ; coming at last to declare that an in- 
 stitution must be kept, if for no other reason than 
 because it once fulfilled the purposes for which it 
 is now inadequate. The aroma of association has 
 for some minds the potency of original inspiration. 
 Who can ponder on life without perceiving that 
 whereas in their business, their possessions, their 
 love, and their hate, men resent dictation ; in mat- 
 ters beyond the scojae of experience, and conse- 
 quently beyond proof, — as the conditions of a 
 future life, — men credulously accept the guidance 
 of others quite as ignorant as themselves, from
 
 CARLYLE 173 
 
 whom in their business or their passions they 
 would submit to no interference ? 
 
 Needless to say the revived Old Regime in- 
 trenched itself behind whatever church it found 
 standing-, — in Prussia the Lutheran, in England 
 the Anglican, in Scotland the Calvinist, in the 
 Latin countries the Roman. The ecclesiastical in- 
 stitution might not humanize the masses, but at 
 least it held them in check ; it might not spiritual- 
 ize the classes, but it taught them that in rallying 
 to its support they were best guarding their own 
 privileges. Metternich, whom we call the repre- 
 sentative of the Restoration, did not scruple to 
 announce that, as the dangers which threatened 
 Church and State were identical, the Church could 
 be saved only by upholding the State. Not for 
 the first time in history was the priest a policeman 
 in disguise. 
 
 Into this world of transition Thomas Carlyle 
 strode with his store of unborrowed principles. 
 Right or wrong, his convictions were his own ; 
 therefore they were realities that need not fear a 
 conflict with ghosts of dead convictions and insin- 
 cerities. 
 
 Naturally, one of the first facts that amazed 
 him was the monstrous unreality in that transi- 
 tional society. By the census the people of Great 
 Britain were rated as Christians ; by their acts
 
 174 PORTRAITS 
 
 they seemed little better than barbarians. What 
 availed the Established Church, in which livings 
 were assigned at the pleasure of some dissolute 
 noble, fox-hunting parsons were given the cure 
 of souls, and worldlings or unbelievers rose to be 
 bishops ? Could the loudest protestations explain 
 the existence of great, gaunt, brutalized masses, 
 beyond the pale of human charity ; every horse 
 sleek, well lodged, and well fed, but innumerable 
 men dying of hunger or lodged in the almshouse ? 
 Can that be true civilization in which the various 
 constituents recognize no interdependence, and 
 only a few usurp benefits which are pernicious 
 unless they be free to all? Respectability, and 
 not virtue, — that, Carlyle declared, was John 
 Bull's ideal, and he opened fire upon its chief 
 allies. Sham and Cant. He spared no prejudices, 
 he respected no institutions. With sarcasm until 
 then unknown in English, he unmasked one arti- 
 ficiality after another, disclosing the cruelty or the 
 hypocrisy which lurked behind it, and setting over 
 against it the true nature of the thing it pretended 
 to be. To interpret such conditions by the crite- 
 rion of conscience was to condemn them. 
 
 But Carlyle's mission was not merely to destroy : 
 he shattered error in order that the clogged foun- 
 tain of truth might once more gush forth. Before 
 eyes long dimmed with gazing on insincerity, he
 
 CARLYLE 175 
 
 would hold up shining patterns of sincerity ; souls 
 groping for guidance, he would stay and comfort 
 by precedents of strength ; hearts pursuing false 
 idols, he would chasten by examples of truth. 
 Men talked — and nowhere more pragmatically 
 than in the churches — as if God, after having im- 
 parted his behests to a few Hebrews ages ago, had 
 retired into some remote empyrean, and busied 
 himself no more with the affairs of men. But to 
 Carlyle the immanence of God was an ever-present 
 reality, manifesting itself throughout all history 
 and in every individual conscience, but nowise 
 more clearly than in the careers of great men. 
 
 Thus he made it his business to set before his 
 contemporaries models worthy of veneration, for 
 he recognized that worship is a primary moral 
 need. " Great men," he says, " are the inspired 
 (speaking and acting) Texts of that divine Booh 
 of Revelatio7is, whereof a Chapter is completed 
 from epoch to epoch, and by some named His- 
 tory.''' In this spirit he introduced Goethe, the 
 latest of the heroes, to English readers, as the 
 man who, from amid chaos similar to that which 
 bewildered them, had climbed to a position where 
 life could be lived nobly, rationally, well. " Close 
 your Byron, open your Goethe," was his advice to 
 those in whom Byron's mingled defiance and senti- 
 mentality found an echo. He showed in Crom-
 
 17(1 PORTRAITS 
 
 well how religious zeal is something very different 
 from a phantom faith. He laid bare the truth in 
 Mahomet. He made Lutlier live again. And all 
 to the end that he might convince his dazed con- 
 temporaries that in no age, if we look deeply, shall 
 we look in vain for concrete, living examples of 
 those qualities which are indispensable to right 
 action ; that salvation — the purging of the char- 
 acter — is won by exercising virtues, and not by 
 conforming to a stereotyped routine ; that the au- 
 thority of conscience is a present fact, not a mere 
 mechanism which God woimd up and gave to the 
 Hebrews, and has been transmitted in poor repair 
 by them to us. As an antidote to sterilizing 
 doubt, Carlyle prescribed the simple remedy which 
 sums up the wisdom of all the sages : " Do the 
 Duty which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest 
 to be a Duty ! Thy second Duty will already have 
 become clearer." In this fashion did Carlyle dis- 
 charge his mission as a moral regenerator. We 
 live as individuals, and to the individual conscience 
 he made his appeal, caring little for the organiza- 
 tion of principles into institutions. Rather, like 
 every individualist, did he incline to deprecate the 
 numbing effect of institutions. Let each unit be 
 righteous, in order that whatever the collective 
 units shall establish may be righteous too. 
 
 Bearing this in mind, we shall understand Car-
 
 CARLYLE 177 
 
 lyle's attitude toward the great social and intel- 
 lectual movements of his time. The watchword 
 which had inspired generous minds at the end of 
 the last century was Liberty, and after the thun- 
 ders of the Napoleonic wars that had drowned it 
 died away, it rang out its summons more clearly 
 tlian before, never again to be quite deadened, 
 despite all the efforts of the Old Regime. The 
 application of the theory of Liberty to govern- 
 ment resulted in setting up Democracy as the ideal 
 political system. Since every citizen in the State 
 bears, directly or indirectly, his fraction of the 
 burden of taxation, and since he is affected by the 
 laws, and interested, even to the point of laying 
 down his life, in the preservation of his country. 
 Democracy declares that he should have an equal 
 part with every other citizen in determining what 
 the taxes and policy of his State shall be ; and it 
 thrusts upon him the responsibility of choosing his 
 own governors and representatives. To Carlyle 
 this ideal seemed a chimera. Plonest, just, and 
 intelligent government is of all social contrivances 
 the most difficult: by what miracle, therefore, 
 shall the sum of the opinions of a million voters, 
 severally ignorant, be intelligent? As well blow 
 a million soap-bubbles, each thinner than gossa- 
 mer, and expect that collectively they will be hard 
 as steel ! Or, admitting that the representatives
 
 178 PORTRAITS 
 
 Demos chooses be not so incompetent as itself, 
 how shall they be kept disinterested ? Their very- 
 numbers not only make them unmanageable, but 
 so divide responsibility that any individual among 
 them can shift from his own shoulders the blame 
 for corrupt or harmful laws. Moreover, popular 
 government means party government, and that 
 means compromise. To Carlyle, principles were 
 either right or wrong, and between right and 
 wrong he saw no neutral ground for compromise. 
 Party government cleaves to expediency, which at 
 best is only a half-truth; but half-truth is also 
 half-error, and any infinitesimal taint of error 
 vitiates the truth to which it clings. Finally, 
 Democracy substitutes a new, many-headed tyr- 
 anny — more difficult to destroy because many- 
 headed — for the tyranny it would abolish. 
 
 Such objections Carlyle urged with consummate 
 vigor. He foresaw, too, many of the other evils 
 which have accompanied the development of this 
 system to impair its efficacy, such as the rise of 
 a class of professional politicians, of political 
 sophists, of corrupt "bosses," expert in the art 
 of wheedling the ignorant many, and thereby of 
 frustrating the initial purpose of the system. His 
 opposition did not spring from desire to see the 
 masses down-trodden, but from conviction that 
 they need guidance and enlightenment, and that
 
 CARLYLE 179 
 
 they are therefore no more competent to choose 
 their own law-makers than children are to choose 
 their own teachers. In knowledge of public affairs 
 Demos is still a child, innocent, well-intentioned, if 
 you will ; but ignorant, and by this system left to 
 the mercy of the unscrupulous. 
 
 This brings us to consider the charge that Car- 
 lyle, in his exaltation of the Strong Man, wor- 
 shiped crude force. Let us grant that on the 
 surface the accusation seems plausible ; but when 
 we seek deeper, we shall discover that he exalts 
 Cromwell and Frederick, not because they were 
 despots, but because, in his judgment, they knew 
 better than any other man, or group of men, in 
 their respective countries, how to govern. Their 
 ability was their justification ; their force, but 
 the symbol of their ability. " Weakness " — Car- 
 lyle was fond of quoting — " is the only misery." 
 What is ignorance but weakness (through lack of 
 training) of the intellect ? In the incessant battle 
 of life, — and few men have been more constantly 
 impressed than Carlyle by the battle-aspect of 
 life, — weakness of whatever kind succumbs to 
 strength. Evil perpetually marshals its forces 
 against Good, — positive, aggressive forces, to be 
 overcome neither by inertia, nor indifference, nor 
 half-hearted compromise, but by hurling stronger 
 forces of Good against them. Interpreting Car-
 
 180 PORTRAITS 
 
 lyle's views thus, we perceive why he extolled the 
 Strong Man and distrusted the aggregate igno- 
 rance of Democracy. Furthermore, we must not 
 forget that he never considered politics the prime 
 business of life : first, make the masses righteous, 
 next, enlightened, and then they will naturally 
 organize a righteous and enlightened government. 
 When Carlyle rejoined to the zealots of Demo- 
 cracy or other panaceas, " Adopt your new system 
 if you must, will not the same old human units 
 operate it? Were it not wiser to perfect them 
 first?" — he antagonized the spirit of the age: 
 wisely or not, only time can show. Those of us 
 who would reject his arguments would neverthe- 
 less admit that Democracy is still on trial. 
 
 With equal fearlessness he attacked the cheap 
 optimism based on material prosperity, which brags 
 of the enormous commercial expansion made pos- 
 sible by the invention of machinery ; which boasts 
 of the rapid increase in population — so many 
 more million mouths to feed and bodies to clothe, 
 and so much more food and raiment produced — 
 from decade to decade. These facts, he insisted, 
 are not of themselves evidences of progress. Your 
 inventions procure greater comfort, a more exu- 
 berant luxury; but do comfort and luxury neces- 
 sarily build up character ? — do they not rather 
 unbuild it? Are your newly bred millions of bodies
 
 CARLYLE 181 
 
 more than bodies? Take a census of souls, has 
 their number increased? Though your steam- 
 horse carries you fifty miles an hour, have you 
 thereby become more.virtuous ? Though the light- 
 ning bears your messages, have you gained bra- 
 very ? Of old, your aristocracy were soldiers : is 
 the brewer who rises from his vats to the House 
 of Lords — is any other man owing his promotion 
 to the tradesman's skill in heaping wealth — more 
 worshipful than they ? Let us not say that this 
 amazing industrial expansion may not conduce to 
 the uplifting of character ; but let us strenuously 
 affirm that it is of itself no indication of moral 
 progress, and that, if it fail to be accompanied by 
 a corresponding spiritual growth, it will surely 
 lead society by the Byzantine high-road to effemi- 
 nacy, exhaustion, and death. 
 
 A different gospel, this, from that which Car- 
 lyle's great rival, Macaulay, was preaching, — 
 Macaulay, who lauded the inventor of a useful 
 machine above all philosophers ! Different from 
 the optimism — which gauges by bulk — of the 
 newspapers and the political haranguers ! Differ- 
 ent, because true ! Yet, though it sounded harsh, 
 it stirred consciences, — which smug flatterings 
 and gratulations can never do ; and it gave a 
 tremendous impetus to that movement which has 
 come to overshadow all others, — the movement to
 
 182 PORTRAITS 
 
 reconstruct society on a basis, not of privilege, 
 not of bare legality, but of mutual obligations. 
 
 Any inventory, however brief, of Carlyle's sub- 
 stance, would be incomplete without some refer- 
 ence to his quarrel with Science. To Science a 
 large part of the best intelligence of our age has 
 been devoted, — a sign of the breaking away of 
 the best minds from the cretinizing quibbles of 
 theology into fields where knowledge can be ascer- 
 tained. It is a truism that Science has advanced 
 farther in our century than in all preceding time. 
 By what paradox, then, should Carlyle slight its 
 splendid achievements ? Was it not because he 
 revolted from the materialistic tendency which he 
 believed to be inseparable from Science, a ten- 
 dency which predominated a generation ago more 
 than it does to-day ? Materialism Carlyle re- 
 garded as a Gorgon's head, the sight of which 
 would inevitably petrify man's moral nature. 
 
 Moreover, Carlyle's method differed radically 
 from that of the scientific man, who describes 
 processes and investigates relations, but does not 
 explain causes. Pledged to his allegiance to tan- 
 gible facts, the man of science looks at things seri- 
 ally, pays heed to an individual as a link in an 
 endless chain rather than as an individual, lays 
 emphasis on averages rather than on particulars. 
 To him this method is alone honest, and, thanks
 
 CARLYLE 183 
 
 to it, a single science to-day commands more au- 
 thenticated facts than all the sciences had fifty 
 years ago. But there are facts of supreme im- 
 portance which, up to the present at least, this 
 method does not solve. The mystery of the origin 
 of life still confronts us. Consciousness, the 
 Sphinx, still mutely challenges the caravans which 
 file before her. The revelations of Science seem, 
 under one aspect, but descriptions of the habita- 
 tions of life from the protoplasmic cell up to the 
 human body. Immense though the value of such 
 a register be, we are not deceived into imagining 
 that it explains ultimates. How came life into 
 protoplasm at all ? Whence each infinitesimal in- 
 crement of life, recognizable at last in the budding 
 of some new organ ? And when we arrive at man, 
 whence came his personality ? Each of us is not 
 only one in a genealogical series stretching back 
 to the unreasoning, conscienceless amoeha, but a 
 clearly defined individual, a little world in himself, 
 to whom his love, his sorrow, his pain and joy and 
 terror, transcend in vividness all the experiences of 
 all previous men : a microcosm, having its own im- 
 mediate relations — absolute relations — witli the 
 infinite macrocosm. Science, bent on establishing 
 present laws, , measures by aeons, counts by mil- 
 lions, and has warrant for ignoring your brief span 
 or mine ; but to you and me these few decades are
 
 184 PORTRAITS 
 
 all in all. However it may fare with the millions, 
 you and I have vital, pressing needs, to supply 
 which the experience of the entire animal kingdom 
 can give us no help. Upon these most human 
 needs Carlyle fastened, to the exclusion of what 
 he held to be unnecessary to the furtherance of 
 our spiritual welfare. He busied himself with 
 ultimates and the Absolute. Not the stages of 
 development, but the development attained ; not 
 the pedigree of conscience, but conscience as the 
 supreme present reality ; not the species, but the 
 individual, — were his absorbing interests. 
 
 Thus we see how Carlyle approached the great 
 questions of life invariably as a moralist. Mere 
 erudition, which too often tends away from the 
 human, did not attract him. Science, which he 
 beheld still unspiritualized, he undervalued : what 
 boots it to know the " mileage and tonnage " of 
 the universe, when our foremost need is to build 
 up character? In politics, in philosophy, in reli- 
 gion, likewise, he set this consideration above all 
 others : before its august presence outward reforms 
 dwindled into insignificance. 
 
 Such was the substance of Carlyle's message. 
 Remarkable as is its range, profound as is its im- 
 port, it required for its consummation the uniqne 
 powers of utterance which Carlyle possessed. 
 Among the masters of British prose he holds a
 
 CARLYLE 185 
 
 position similar to that of Michael Angelo among 
 the masters of painting. Power, elemental, titanic, 
 rushing forth from an inexhaustible moral nature, 
 yet guided by art, is the quality in both which 
 first startles our wonder. The great passages in 
 Carlyle's works, like the Prophets and Sibyls of 
 the Sixtine Chapel, have no peers : they form a 
 new species, of which they are the only examples. 
 They seem to defy the ordinary canons of criti- 
 cism ; but if they break the rules it is because 
 whoever made the rules did not foresee the possi- 
 bility of such works. Transcendent Power, let it 
 take whatever shape it will, — volcano, torrent, 
 Caesar, Buonarotti, Carlyle, — proclaims : " Here 
 I am, — a fact : make of me what you can ! You 
 shall not ignore me ! " 
 
 Of Carlyle's style we may say that, whether one 
 likes it or not, one can as little ignore it as fail to 
 perceive that he makes it serve, with equal success, 
 whatever purpose he requires. It can explain, it 
 can laugh, it can draw tears ; it can inveigh, argue, 
 exhort ; it can tell a story or preach a sermon. 
 Carlyle has, it is computed, the largest vocabulary 
 in English prose. Ilis endowment of imagination 
 and of humor beggars all his competitors. None 
 of them has invented so many new images, or 
 given to old images such fresh pertinence. Your 
 first impression, on turning to other writings after
 
 186 PORTRAITS 
 
 his, is that they are pale, and dim, and cold : such 
 is the fascination inalienable from power. Excess 
 there may be in so vehement a genius ; repetition 
 there must be in utterances poured out during 
 sixty years ; an individuality so intense must have 
 an equally individual manner ; but there is, rightly 
 speaking, no mannerism, for mannerism implies 
 affectation, and Carlyle's primal instinct was sin- 
 cerity. His expression is an organic part of him- 
 self, and shares his merits and defects. 
 
 Carlyle won his first reputation as a historian ; 
 singularly enough, his achievements in history 
 have temporarily suffered a partial eclipse. Teach- 
 ers in our colleges refer to them dubiously or not 
 at all. Does the fault lie with these same teach- 
 ers, or with Carlyle ? A glance at the methods of 
 the school of historical students which has sprung 
 up during the last generation will explain the dis- 
 agreement. 
 
 History, like every other branch of intellectual 
 activity, has responded to the doctrines of Evolu- 
 tion. That most fertile working hypothesis has 
 proved, when applied here, not less fruitful than 
 in other fields. It has caused the annals of the 
 past to be reinvestigated, every document, record, 
 and monument to be gathered up, and the results 
 have been set forth from the new point of view. 
 Evolutionary science, as we saw above, fixes its
 
 CARLYLE 187 
 
 attention primarily on the processes of develop- 
 ment, and regards the individual, in comparison 
 with a species or the race, as a negligible quantity. 
 A similar spirit has guided historical students. 
 They have turned away fi'om " great captains with 
 their guns and drums," away from figure-head 
 monarchs, away from the achievements of even the 
 mightiest individuals, to scrutinize human action 
 in its collective forms, the rise and supremacy and 
 fall of institutions, the growth of parties, the wax- 
 ing and waning of organisms like Church or State, 
 in whose many-centuried existence individual ca- 
 reers are swallowed up. Using the methods of 
 Science, these students have persuaded themselves 
 that history also is a science, which, in truth, it 
 can never be. Judicial temper, patience, veracity, 
 — the qualities which they rightly magnify, — 
 were not invented by them, nor are these the only 
 qualities required in writing history. Speaking 
 broadly, facts lie within the reach of any diligent 
 searcher. But a fact is a mere pebble in a brook 
 until some David comes to put it in his sling. 
 True history is the arrangement and interpretation 
 of facts, and — more difficult still — insight into 
 motives : for this there must be art, there must be 
 imagination. 
 
 To the disciples of the " scientific school " it 
 may be said that the heaping up of great stores of
 
 188 PORTRAITS 
 
 facts — the collection of manuscripts, the catalogu- 
 ing of documents, the shoveling all together in 
 thick volumes prefaced by forty pages of biblio- 
 graphy, each paragraph floating on a deep, viscous 
 stream of notes, each volume bulging with a score 
 of appendices — is in no high sense history, but 
 the accumulation of material therefor. It bears 
 the same relation to history as the work of the 
 quarryman to that of the architect ; most worthy 
 in itself, and evidently indispensable, but not the 
 same. Stand before some noble edifice, — Lincoln 
 Cathedral, for instance, with its incomparable site, 
 its symmetry and majestic proportions : scan it 
 until you feel its personality and realize that this 
 is a living idea, the embodiment of strength and 
 beauty and aspiration and awe, — and you will not 
 confound the agency of the stone-cutters who 
 quarried the blocks with that of the architect in 
 whose imagination the design first rose. Neither 
 should there be confusion between the historical 
 hodman and the historian. 
 
 Indubitably, history of the highest kind may 
 be written from the evolutionist's standpoint, but 
 as yet works of the lower variety predominate. 
 Therefore, in a time when the development of in- 
 stitutions chiefly commands attention, Carlyle, 
 who magnifies individuals, will naturally be neg- 
 lected. But in reality, histories of both kinds are
 
 CARLYLE 189 
 
 needed to supplement each other. All institu- 
 tions originate and exist in the activities of indi- 
 viduals. The hero, the great man, makes concrete 
 and human what would otherwise be abstract. 
 Environment does not wholly explain him. It is 
 easy to show wherein he resembles his fellows; 
 that difference from them which constitutes his 
 pecidiar, original gift is the real mystery, which 
 the study of resemblances cannot solve. Men will 
 cease to be men when personality shall lose its 
 power over them. 
 
 Accepting, therefore, the inherent antagonism 
 in the two points of view, — antagonism which 
 implies parity and not the necessary extinction of 
 one by the other, — we can judge Carlyle fairly. 
 Among historians he excels in vividness. Perhaps 
 more than any other who has attempted to chron- 
 icle the past, he has visualized the past. The 
 men he describes are not lay figures, with wooden 
 frames and sawdust vitals, to be called Frenchmen 
 or Germans or Englishmen according: as a dif- 
 ferent costume is draped upon them ; but human 
 beings, each swayed by his own passions, striving 
 and sinning, and incessantly alive. They are actors 
 in a real drama : such as they are, Carlyle has 
 seen them ; such as he has seen, he depicts them. 
 To go oack to Carlyle from one of the " scien- 
 tific historians " is like passing from a museum of
 
 100 PORTRAITS 
 
 mummies out into the throng of living men. If 
 his portraits differ from those of another artist, it 
 does not follow that they are false. In ordinary 
 affairs, two witnesses may give a different report 
 of the same event, yet each may, from his angle 
 of observation, have given exact testimony. Ab- 
 solute truth, who shall utter it? Since history of 
 the highest, architectonic kind is interpretation, 
 its value must depend on the character of the in- 
 terpreter. Not to be greatly esteemed, we suspect, 
 are those grubbers among the rubbish heaps who 
 imagine that Carlyle's interpretation of the French 
 Revolution, or of Cromwell, or of Frederick, may 
 be ignored. Character, insight, and imagination 
 went to the production of works like these : they 
 require kindred gifts to be appreciated. 
 
 Neither of Carlyle's portrait gallery, unparal- 
 leled in range, in which from each picture an 
 authentic human face looks out at us ; nor of his 
 masterpieces of narration, long since laureled even 
 by the unwilling, — is there space here to speak. 
 In portraiture he used Rembrandt's methods : seiz- 
 ing on structural and characteristic traits, he dis- 
 plays them in strong, full light, and heightens the 
 effect by surrounding them with shadows. As 
 a biographer he succeeded equally well in telling 
 the story of Schiller and that of John Sterling : 
 the latter a most difficult task, as it must always be 
 to make intellisrible to strana:ers a beautiful charac-
 
 CARLYLE 191 
 
 ter whose charm and force are felt by his friends, 
 but have no proportionate expression in his writ- 
 ings. As an essayist he has left models in many 
 branches: " Mirabeau," "Johnson," "Goethe," 
 " Characteristics," " Burns," " History," stand as 
 foothills before his more massive works. His is 
 creative criticism, never restricted, like the criti- 
 cism of the schools, to purely literary, academic 
 considerations, but penetrating to the inmost heart 
 of a book or a man, to discover what deepest 
 human significance may there be found. A later 
 generation has, as we have noted, adopted a differ- 
 ent treatment in all these fields : bending itself to 
 trace the ancestry and to map out the environ- 
 ment of men of genius ; concentrating attention on 
 the chain rather than its links ; necessarily belit- 
 tling the individual to aggrandize the mass. It 
 behooves us, while we recognize the value of this 
 treatment as a new means to truth, not to forget 
 that it is not the only one. By and by — perhaps 
 the time is already at hand — we shall recognize 
 that the other method, which deals with the indi- 
 vidual as an ultimate rather than in relation to a 
 series, which is human rather than abstract, cannot 
 be neglected without injury to truth. Either alone 
 is partial ; each corrects and enlightens the other. 
 
 Meanwhile we will indulge in no vain prophe- 
 cies as to Carlyle's probable rank with posterity. 
 That a man's influence shall be permanent depends
 
 192 PORTRAITS 
 
 first on his having grasped elemental facts in hu- 
 man nature, and next on his having given them an 
 enduring form. Systems struggle into existence, 
 mature, and pass away, but the needs of the 
 individual remain. Though we were to wake up 
 to-morrow in Utopia, the next day Utopia would 
 have vanished, unless we ourselves had been mira- 
 culously transformed. To teach the individual 
 soul the way of purification ; to make it a worthy 
 citizen of Eternity which laps it around ; to kindle 
 its conscience ; to fortify it with courage ; to hu- 
 manize it with sympathy ; to make it true, — this 
 has been Carlyle's mission, performed with all the 
 vigor of a spirit " in earnest with the universe," 
 and with intellectual gifts most various, most pow- 
 erful, most rare. It will be strange if, in time to 
 come, souls with these needs, which are perpetual, 
 lose contact with him. But, whatever befall in 
 the future, Carlyle's past is secure. He has influ- 
 enced the elite of two generations : men as differ- 
 ent as Tyndall and Ruskin, as Mill and Tennyson, 
 as Browning and Arnold and Meredith, have felt 
 the infusion of his moral force. And to the new 
 generation we would say : " Open your ' Sartor ; ' 
 there you shall hear the deepest utterances of Brit- 
 ain in our century on matters which concern you 
 most ; there, perad venture, you shall discover your- 
 selves."
 
 TINTORET.i 
 
 I. HIS LIFE. 
 
 We have no authentic biography of Tintoret. 
 The men of his epoch hungered for fame, but it 
 was by the splendor of their genius, and not by 
 the details of their personal lives, that they hoped 
 to be known to posterity. The days of judicious 
 Boswells and injudicious Froudes had not then 
 come to pass ; so that we are now as ignorant of 
 the lives of the painters of the great school which 
 flourished at Venice during the sixteenth century 
 as of the lives of that group of poets who flour- 
 ished in England during the reigns of Elizabeth 
 and James I. Nevertheless, Providence sees to it 
 that nothing essential be lost ; and, in the absence 
 of memoirs, the masterpiece itself becomes a me- 
 moir for those who have insight. In art, works 
 which proceed from the soul, and not from the 
 skill, are truthful witnesses to the character of 
 the artist. " For by the greatness and beauty of 
 the creatures })roportionably the maker of them is 
 seen." It is not wholly to be regretted, therefore, 
 
 * First printed in The Atlantic Monthly, June, 1891.
 
 194 PORTRAITS 
 
 that the meagreness of our information concerning 
 Tintoret compels us to study his paintings the 
 more earnestly. The lives of artists are generally 
 scanty in those adventures and dramatic incidents 
 which make entertaining biographies. Men of 
 action express their character in deeds: poems, 
 statues, paintings, are the deeds of artists. Blot 
 out a few pages of history, and what remains of 
 Hannibal or Scipio ? But we should know much 
 about Michael Angelo or Raphael from their paint- 
 ings, had no written word about either come down 
 to us. 
 
 The year of Tintoret's birth is variously stated 
 as 1512 and 1518. Even his name has been a 
 cause of dispute to antiquaries ; but since he was 
 content to call and sign himself Jacopo (or Gia- 
 como) Robusti, we may accept this as correct. 
 His father was a dyer of silk (tintore)^ and as the 
 boy early helped at that trade he got the nickname 
 il tintoretto^ " the little dyer." Vasari, also born 
 in 1512, is the only contemporary who furnishes 
 an account of Tintoret. Unsatisfactory and well- 
 nigh ridiculous it is, if we remember that by 1574, 
 when Vasari died, Tintoret had already produced 
 many of his masterpieces. Yet the Florentine 
 painter-historian did not accord to him so much 
 as a separate chapter in his " Lives of the Most 
 Excellent Painters," but inserted his few pages of
 
 TINTORET 195 
 
 criticism and gossip, as if by an afterthought, in the 
 sketch of the forgotten Battista Franco. Since 
 much that has been subsequently written about 
 Tintoret is merely a repetition of Vasari's shallow 
 opinions, which created a mythical Tintoret, just 
 as English reviewers created a mythical " Johnny 
 Keats," long believed to be the real Keats, I quote 
 a few sentences from Vasari. 
 
 " There still lives in Venice," he says, " a painter 
 called Jacopo Tintoretto, who has amused himself 
 with all accomplishments, and particularly with 
 playing music and several instruments, and is, 
 besides, pleasing in all his actions ; but in mat- 
 ters of painting he is extravagant, full of caprice, 
 dashing, and resolute, the most terrible brain that 
 painting ever had, as you may see in all his works, 
 and in his compositions of fantastic subjects, done 
 by him diversely and contrary to the custom of 
 other painters. Nay, he has capped extravagance 
 with the novel and whimsical inventions and odd 
 devices of his intellect, which he has used haphaz- 
 ard and without design, as if to show that this art 
 is a trifle. . . . And because in his youth he 
 showed himself in many fair works of great judg- 
 ment, if he had recognized the great endowment 
 which he received from nature, and had fortified it 
 with study and judgment, as those have done who 
 have followed the fine manner of his elders, and
 
 196 PORTRAITS 
 
 if he had not (as he has done) cut loose from 
 practiced rules, he would have been one of the 
 greatest painters that ever Venice had; yet, for 
 all this, we would not deny that he is a proud and 
 good painter, with an alert, capricious, and refined 
 spirit." 1 
 
 Evidently, the originality of this " terrible '* 
 Tintoret could not be understood by Vasari, who 
 imagined that he followed successfully the fine 
 manner of his elders in the academic proprieties. 
 But there is no hint that Tintoret heeded this gen- 
 erous advice. Perhaps it came too late, — at three- 
 score years one's character and methods are no 
 longer plastic ; perhaps it had been too often reit- 
 erated, for Tintoret had been assured from his 
 youth up that, if he would only be instructed by 
 his feUow-artists, he might hope to become a great 
 painter like them. But, from the first glimpse we 
 get of this perverse Tintoret to the last, one char- 
 acteristic dominates all, — obedience to his own 
 genius. Censure, coaxing, fashion, envy, popu- 
 
 ^ Vasari's condescending estimate of Tintoret may remind 
 some readers of Voltaire's patronizing estimate of Shakespeare : 
 " It seems as though nature had mingled in the brain of Shake- 
 speare the greatest conceivable strength and grandeur with 
 whatever witless vulgarity can devise that is lowest and most 
 detestable ; " and much more of the same kind about the " in- 
 toxicated barbarian," which will seem pitiful or amusing accord- 
 ing to the humor of the reader.
 
 TINTORET 197 
 
 larity, seem never to have swerved him. Like 
 every consummate genius, he drew his inspiration 
 directly from within. " Conform ! conform I or 
 be written down a fool ! " has always been the 
 greeting of the world to the self-centred, spirit- 
 guided few. " Right or wrong, I cannot other- 
 wise," has been their invariable reply. 
 
 By the time that Tintoret made his first essays 
 in painting, the Venetian school was the foremost 
 in the world. The great Leonardo had died in 
 France, leaving behind him in Lombardy a com- 
 pany of pupils who were rapidly enslaved by a 
 graceless mannerism. Even earlier than this, the 
 best talents of Umbria had wandered into feeble 
 eccentricities, or had been absorbed by Raphael's 
 large humanism. Raphael himself was dead, at 
 the height of his popularity and in the prime of 
 his powers, and his disciples were hurrying along 
 the road of imitation into the desert of formalism. 
 Michael Angelo alone survived in central Italy, a 
 Titan too colossal, too individual, to be a school- 
 master, although there were many of the younger 
 brood (Vasari among them) who called him Maes- 
 tro, and fancied that the grimaces and contortions 
 they drew sprang from force and grandeur sucli as 
 his. But in Venice painting was flourishing ; there 
 it had the exuberance and the strength, the joyous- 
 ness and the splendor, of an art approaching its
 
 198 PORTRAITS 
 
 meridian. John Bellini, the eldest of the great 
 Venetians, had died ; but not before there had 
 issued from his studio a wonderful band of disci- 
 ples, some of whom were destined to surpass him. 
 Giorgione, one of these, had been cut off in his 
 thirty-fourth year, having barely had time to give 
 to the world a few handsels of his genius. The 
 fame of Titian had risen to that height where it 
 has ever since held its station. A troop of lesser 
 men — lesser in comparison with him — were em- 
 bellishing Venice, or carrying the magic of her 
 art to other parts of Italy. 
 
 The tradition runs that the boy Tintoret amused 
 himself by drawing charcoal figures on the wall, 
 then coloring them with his father's dyes : whence 
 his parents were persuaded that he was born to be 
 a painter. Accordingly, his father got permission 
 for him to work in Titian's studio, the privilege 
 most coveted by every apprentice of the time. His 
 stay there was brief, however ; hardly above ten 
 days, if the legend be true which tells how Titian 
 returned one day and saw some strange sketches, 
 and how, learning that Tintoret had made them, 
 he bade another pupil send him away. Some say 
 that Titian already foresaw a rival in the youthful 
 draughtsman ; others, that the figures were in a 
 style so contrary to the master's that he discerned 
 no good in them, and judged that it would be
 
 TINTORET 199 
 
 useless for Tintoret to pursue an art in which he 
 could never excel. Let the dyer's son go back to 
 his vats : there he could at least earn a livelihood. 
 We are loth to believe that Titian, whose reputa- 
 tion was established, could have been moved by- 
 jealousy of a mere novice : we must remember, 
 nevertheless, that even when Tintoret had come to 
 maturity, and was reckoned among the leading 
 painters of Venice, Titian treated him coldly, and 
 apparently thwarted and disparaged him. Few 
 artists, indeed, have risen quite above the marsh- 
 mists of jealousy. Their ambition regards fame 
 as a fixed quantity, and, like Goldsmith, they look 
 upon any one who acquires a part of this treasure 
 as having diminished the amount they can appro- 
 priate for themselves. But in Tintoret's great 
 soul envy could find no place. " Enmities he has 
 none," as Emerson says of Goethe. " Enemy of 
 him you may be : if so, you shall teach him aught 
 which your good-will cannot, were it only what 
 experience will accrue from your ruin. Enemy 
 and welcome, but enemy on high terms. He can- 
 not hate anybody ; his time is worth too much." 
 
 Under whom Tintoret studied, after being thrust 
 off by Titian, we are not told. Probably he had 
 no acknowledged preceptor except himself. Al- 
 ready his aim was at the highest. On the wall of 
 his studio he blazoned tlie motto, " The drawing
 
 200 PORTRAITS 
 
 of M'lchad Angela and the coloring of Titian.^^ 
 To blend the excellence of each in a supreme 
 unity, — that was his ambition. Titian might shut 
 him out from personal instruction, but Titian's 
 works in the churches and palaces were within 
 reach. Tintoret studied them, copied them, and 
 conjured from them the secret their master wished 
 to hide. Having procured casts of Michael An- 
 gelo's statues in the Medicean Chapel at Florence, 
 he made drawings of them in every position. Far 
 into the night he worked by lamplight, watching 
 the play of light and shade, the outlines and the 
 relief. He drew also from living models, and 
 learned anatomy by dissecting corpses. He in- 
 vented " little figures of wax and of clay, clothing 
 them with bits of cloth, examining accurately, by 
 the folds of the dresses, the position of the limbs ; 
 and these models he distributed among little houses 
 and perspectives composed of planks and card- 
 board, and he put lights in the windows." From 
 the rafters he suspended other manikins, and 
 thereby learned the foreshortening proper to fig- 
 ures painted on ceilings and on high places. So 
 indefatigable, so careful, was this man, who is 
 known to posterity as " the thunderbolt of paint- 
 ers " ! In his prime, he astonished all by his 
 power of elaborating his ideas at a speed at which 
 few masters can even sketch ; but that power was
 
 TINTORET 201 
 
 nourislied by his infinite painstaking in those years 
 of obscurity. 
 
 Wherever Tintoret might learn, thither he went. 
 Now we hear of him working with the masons 
 at Cittadella ; now taking his seat on the bench 
 of the journeymen painters in St. Mark's Place ; 
 now watching some illustrious master decorating 
 the facade of a palace. No commission was too 
 humble for him : who knows how many signboards 
 he may have furnished in his 'prentice days ? His 
 first recorded works were two portraits, — of him- 
 self holding a bas-relief in his hand, and of his 
 brotlier playing a cithern. As the custom then 
 was, he exhibited these in the Merceria, that nar- 
 row lane of shops which leads from St. Mark's to 
 the Ilialto. "What the latest novel or yesterday's 
 political speech is to us, that was a new picture to 
 the Venetians. Their innate sense of color and 
 beauty and their familiarity with the best works 
 of art made them ready critics. They knew 
 whether the colors on a canvas were in harmony, 
 as the average Italian of to-day can tell whether 
 a singer keeps the key, and doubtless they were 
 vivacious in their discussions. Tintoret's portraits 
 attracted attention. They were painted with noc- 
 tninal lights and shadows, " in so terrible a manner 
 that tliey amazed every one," even to the degree of 
 suggesting to one beholder the following epigram ;
 
 202 PORTRAITS 
 
 " Si Tinctorectus noctis sic lucet in umbris, 
 Exorto faciei quid radiante die ? " ^ 
 
 Soon after, he displayed on the Rialto bridge an- 
 other picture, by which the surprise already ex- 
 cited was increased, and he began thenceforward to 
 get employment in the smaller churches and con- 
 vents. Important commissions which brought 
 wealth and honors were reserved for Titian and 
 a few favorites ; but Tintoret rejected no offer. 
 Only let him express those ideas swarming in his 
 imagination : he asked no further recompense. He 
 seems to have been early noted for the practice of 
 taking no pay at all, or only enough to provide 
 his paints and canvas, — a practice which brought 
 upon him the abuse of his fellows, who cried out 
 that be would ruin their profession. But there 
 was then no law to prohibit artist or artisan from 
 working for any price he chose, and Tintoret, as 
 usual, took his own course. 
 
 At last a great opportunity offered. On each 
 side of the high altar of the Church of Sta. Maria 
 dell' Orto was a bare space, nearly fifty feet high 
 and fifteen or twenty feet broad. " Let me paint 
 you two pictures," said Tintoret to the friars, who 
 laughed at the extravagant proposal. " A whole 
 year's income would not suffice for such an under- 
 
 ^ If Tintoret shines thus in the shades of night, what will he 
 do when radiant day has risen ?
 
 TINTORET 203 
 
 taking," they replied. "You shall have no ex- 
 pense but for the canvas and colors," said Tinto- 
 ret. " I shall charge nothing for my work." And 
 on these terms he executed " The Last Judgment " 
 and "The Worship of the Golden Calf." The 
 creator of those masterpieces could no longer be 
 ignored. Here was a power, a variety, which hos- 
 tility and envy could not gainsay : they must note, 
 though they refused to admire. It was in 1546, or 
 thereabouts, that Tintoi-et uttered this challenge. 
 In a little while he had orders for four pictures 
 for the School of St. Mark ; one of which, " St. 
 Mark Freeing a Fugitive Slave," soon became' 
 popular, and has continued so. " Here is color- 
 ing as rich as Titian's, and energy as daring as 
 Michael Angelo's ! " visitors still exclaim. Other 
 commissions followed, until there came that which 
 the Venetian prized above all others, — an order 
 to paint for the Ducal Palace. 
 
 As the patriotic Briton aspires to a monument 
 in Westminster Abbey, as the Florentine covets a 
 memorial in Santa Croce, so the Venetian artist 
 coveted for his works a place in the Palace of the 
 Doges. That was his Temple of Fame. His dream, 
 liowever, soared beyond the gratification of per- 
 sonal ambition : he desired that through him the 
 glory and beauty of Venice might be enhanced and 
 immortalized. This devotion to the ideal of a city,
 
 204 PORTRAITS 
 
 this true patriotism, lias unfortunately almost dis- 
 appeared from the earth. The very conception of 
 it is now unintelligible to most persons. The city 
 where you live — New York, Boston, Loudon — 
 you value in proportion as it affords advantages 
 for your business, objects for your comfort and 
 amusement ; but you quit it without compunction 
 if taxes be lower and trade brisker elsewhere. 
 You ai-e interested in its affairs just in so far as 
 they affect your own. When you build a dwelling 
 or a factory, you do not inquire whether it will 
 improve or injure your neighbor's property, much 
 less whether it will be an ornament to the city; 
 you need not even abate a nuisance until com- 
 pelled to do so by the law. 
 
 But to the noble-minded Venetian, his city was 
 not merely a convenience : it was a personality. 
 Venezia was a spiritual patroness, a goddess who 
 presided over the destiny of the State ; he and 
 every one of his fellow-citizens shared the honor 
 and blessing of her protection. She had crowned 
 with prosperity the energy and piety, the rectitude 
 and justice, of his ancestors through many centu- 
 ries. Every act of his had more than a personal, 
 more even than a human, bearing. How would 
 it affect her f — that was his test. He could do 
 nothing unto himself alone ; for good or for ill, 
 what he did reacted upon the community, upon the
 
 TINTORET 205 
 
 ideal Venezia. The outward citj'^ — the churches, 
 palaces, and dwellings — was but the garment and 
 visible expression of that ideal city. Venezia had 
 blessed him, and he was grateful ; she was beau- 
 tiful, and he loved her. His gratitude impelled 
 him to deeds worthy of her protection ; his love 
 blossomed in gifts that should increase her beauty. 
 
 This reverence and devotion have, as I re- 
 marked, vanished from among men ; yet in this 
 ideal beams the conception of the true common- 
 wealth. Observe that those three cities which held 
 such an ideal before them have bequeathed to us 
 the most precious works of beauty, Athens, Flor- 
 ence, Venice, — these are the Graces among the 
 cities. At Karnak, at Constantinople, at Rome, 
 at Paris, you will behold stupendous ruins or im- 
 posing monuments commemorating the pride and 
 power of individual Pharaohs, Sultans, Caesars, 
 Popes, and Napoleons, but you will not find the 
 spirit which was worshiped by the beautifying of 
 the Acropolis, and of republican Florence, and of 
 Venice. In which modern city will the most dili- 
 gent search discover it? 
 
 Tintoret, then, had at last earned the privilege 
 of consecrating liis genius to Venezia. His first 
 work for her seems to liave been a portrait of the 
 reigning Doge.^ Then he painted two historical 
 
 ^ It 13 interestiiiy to kiiuw tliut the price regularly paid to
 
 206 PORTRAITS 
 
 subjects, — " Frederick Barbarossa being crowned 
 by Pope Adrian," and " Pope Alexander III ex- 
 eonmuinicating Frederick Barbarossa : " and ** The 
 Last Judgment," destroyed by the fire of 1557. 
 Not long thereafter began his employment by the 
 brothers of the confraternity of San Rocco. For 
 their church, about 1560. he painted two scenes in 
 the life of St. Koch, and then he joined in compe- 
 tition for a ceiling painting for the Salla dell' Al- 
 berto in the School itseK. The brothers called 
 for designs, and upon the appointed day Paul Ve- 
 ronese, Andrea Schiavone, Giuseppe Salviati, and 
 Federigo Zuccaro submitted theirs. But Tintoret 
 had out^ped them, and when his design was asked 
 for he caused a screen to.be removed from the 
 ceiling, and lo ! there was a finished picture of the 
 specified subject. Brothers and competitors were 
 astonished, and not greatly pleased. " We asked 
 for sketches," said the former. " That is the way 
 I make my sketches," replied Tintoret. They de- 
 murred : but Tintoret presented the picture to the 
 SchooL one of whose rules made it obligatory that 
 all gifts should be accepted. The displeasirre of 
 the confraternity soon passed away, and Tintoret 
 
 Titian and Tintoret for state portraits was frsrenty-fiTe ducats 
 (about thirty-one dollars). Painters who hare not a hundredth 
 part of the renins of either Titian or Tintoret now receive one 
 hundred tinies that sum.
 
 TINTORET 207 
 
 was commissioned to furnish whatever paintings 
 should be required in future. An annual salaiy 
 of one hundred ducats was bestowed upon him, in 
 return for which he was to give at least one paint- 
 ing a year. Generously did he fulfil the con- 
 tract ; for at his death the School possessed more 
 than sixty of his works, for which he had been 
 paid but twenty-four hundred and forty-seven 
 ducats. 
 
 In 1577 a fire in the Ducal Palace destroyed 
 many of the paintings, and when the edifice was 
 restored the government looked for artists to re- 
 place them. Titian being dead, his opposition had 
 no longer to be overcome ; yet even now Tintoret 
 had to compete with men of inferior powers, but 
 of stronger influence. Nevertheless, to him and 
 Paul Veronese was assigned the lion's share of the 
 undertaking, and for ten years those two men 
 labored side by side, in noble rivalry, to eternize 
 the beauty and the glory of Venice. In 1588, 
 owing to the death of Paul Veronese, who with 
 Francesco Bassano had been commissioned to paint 
 a " Paradise " in the Hall of the Grand Council, 
 the work was transferred to Tintoret, who devoted 
 to it the last six years of his life, and left in it the 
 highest expression not only of his genius, but of 
 Italian painting.^ Old age robbed him of none 
 1 Has any on^ remarked that when Tintoret was painting the
 
 •208 PORTRAITS 
 
 of his energy, but added sublimity to his imagi- 
 nation, and interfused serenity and mellowness 
 throughout his work. Still teeming with plans, 
 he died of a gastric trouble, after a fortnight's ill- 
 ness, on the 31st of May, 1594.1 
 
 With this clue, spun from the discursive records 
 of Ridolfi (whose Meraviglie delV Arte was first 
 published in 1648), we can pass through the laby- 
 rinth of Tintoret's career. There are, besides, 
 several anecdotes which help us to know the man's 
 personality better : if all be not authentic, at least 
 all agree in attributing to him certain weU-defined 
 traits. 
 
 As a workman, as we have seen, Tintoret was 
 indefatigable. His lifelong yearning was not for 
 praise, but for opportunity to work. Modesty he 
 had to a degree unrecorded of any other painter, 
 although none seems to have been more confident 
 of his own powers.^ Like Shakespeare, he wrought 
 
 " Paradise," Cervantes, Spain's spokesman before the nations, 
 Montaigne, the largest figure in French literature, and Shake- 
 speare, paragon not of England only, but of the world, were his 
 contemporaries ? Those four might have met in his studio ; and 
 Science might have furnished three peerless representatives, — 
 Bacon, Galileo, and Kepler. 
 
 1 Tintoret is buried in the church of Santa Maria dell' Orto. 
 
 2 Two instances are worthy of record. Having agreed to paint 
 a large historical picture for the Doges' Palace, he said to the 
 procurators, " If any other shall, within the space of two years, 
 paint a better picture of this subject, you shall take his and reject
 
 TINTORET 209 
 
 his masterpieces swiftly, and left them to their fate, 
 because his imagination, like Shakespeare's, was 
 already on the wing for higher quarry. There 
 was in the man an inflexible dignity, born of self- 
 respect, which neither the allurements of poi3ularity 
 nor the flattery of the great could bend. When 
 invited by the Duke of Mantua to go to that city 
 and execute some paintings, Tintoret replied that 
 wherever he went his wife wished to accompany 
 him ; at which the Duke bade him bring his wife 
 and family, had them conveyed to Mantua in a 
 state barge, and entertained them at his palace 
 " at magnificent expense for many days." He 
 urged Tintoret to settle there ; but the Venetian 
 could not be persuaded to renounce his allegiance 
 to Venice. He saw that titles would add nothing 
 to his fame, and refused an offer of knighthood 
 from Henry HI of France. Princes and gran- 
 dees and illustrious visitors to Venice went to his 
 house ; but though he received them courteously, 
 he sought no intimacy with them. His time was 
 too precious, his projects were too earnest, to allow 
 of aristocratic dissipation. He had a keen sense 
 
 mine." At first his enemies spoke so censuringly of his " St. Mark 
 Freeing the Fugitive Slave " that the brethren hesitated wlietlier 
 to accept it ; whereupon Tintoret liad it brouglit back to his 
 studio. Afterwards the brethren repented, begged for its return, 
 and ordered three other pictures.
 
 210 PORTRAITS 
 
 of humor, which displayed itself now in some 
 ready reply, now in genial conversation with his 
 familiars. Ridolfi relates that certain prelates 
 and senators who visited him whilst he was mak- 
 ing sketches for the " Paradise " asked him why 
 he worked so hurriedly, whereas John Bellini and 
 Titian had been deliberate and painstaking. " The 
 old masters," said Tintoret, " had not so many 
 to bother them as I have." At another time, at 
 a gathering of amateurs, a woman's portrait by 
 Titian was lauded. " That 's the way to paint," 
 said one of the critics. Tintoret went home, took 
 a sketch by Titian and covered it with lampblack, 
 painted a head in Titian's manner on the same 
 canvas, and showed it at the next meeting of these 
 amateurs. " Ah, there 's a real Titian ! " they all 
 agreed. Tintoret rubbed off the lampblack from 
 the original sketch and said : " This, gentlemen, 
 is indeed by Titian ; that which you have admired 
 is mine. You see now how authority and opinion 
 prevail in criticism, and how few there are who 
 really understand painting." 
 
 Pietro Aretino, that depraved adventurer and 
 most successful blackmailer in literature, was one 
 of Titian's intimates and partisans. He wished, 
 nevertheless, to have his portrait painted by Tinto- 
 ret, who was in no wise afraid of the scoundrel's 
 enmity, although most of the prominent person-
 
 TINTORET 211 
 
 ages of the time quailed before it. Aretino being 
 posed, Tintoret furiously drew a hanger from 
 under his coat. Aretino was terrified lest he should 
 be punished for his malicious tongue, and cried 
 out, " Jacopo, what are you about ? " "I am 
 only going to take your measure," said Tintoret 
 complacently ; and, measuring him from head to 
 foot, he added, " your height is just two and a 
 half hangers." Aretino's impudence returned. 
 " You 're a great madman," he said, " and always 
 up to your pranks." But this grim hint sufficed ; 
 the rascal never after dared to slander Tintoret, 
 but, on the contrary, tried to ingratiate himself 
 into his friendship. 
 
 In his home Tintoret enjoyed tranquillity. His 
 wife, Faustina de' Vescovi, was thrifty and digni- 
 fied, and perhaps she was not a little annoyed by 
 the " unpracticalness " of her husband. According 
 to tradition, when he went out she tied up money 
 for him in his handkerchief, and bade him give an 
 exact account of it on his return. Having spent 
 his afternoon and money with congenial spirits at 
 some rendezvous whose name, unlike that of the 
 Mermaid, where Elizabethan wits caroused, has 
 been lost, he playfully assured Madonna Faustina 
 that her allowance had gone to help the poor. 
 She was particular that he should wear the dress 
 of a Venetian citizen ; but if he happened to go
 
 212 PORTRAITS 
 
 abroad in rainy weather, she called out to him 
 from an upper window to come back and put on 
 his old clothes. We have glimpses of him passing 
 to and fro in Venice with Marietta, his favorite 
 daughter, a painter of merit, whose early death 
 saddened his later years. ^ Of his other children, 
 two daughters entered a nimnery; a third mar- 
 ried Casser, a German ; his eldest son, Domenico, 
 adopted his father's profession, and assisted him 
 in his work ; another son went to the bad, and 
 was cut off from an inheritance by his father's 
 will. In spite of his habit of giving away pic- 
 tures, or of charging a small price for them, Tinto- 
 ret bequeathed a comfortable fortune to his heirs. 
 
 A few of his precepts and suggestions concern- 
 ing art have come down to us through Kidolfi, who 
 had them from Aliense, one of Tintoret's pupils. 
 
 " The study of painting is arduous," he used 
 to say; "and to him who advances farthest in 
 it more difficulties appear, the sea grows ever 
 larger." 
 
 " Students must never fail to profit by the ex- 
 ample of the great masters, Michael Angelo and 
 Titian." 
 
 " Nature is always the same ; in painting, there- 
 fore, muscles must not be varied by caprice." 
 
 "In judging a picture, observe if, at the first 
 1 Marietta was bom in 1560, and died in 1590.
 
 TINTORET 213 
 
 examination, the eye is satisfied, and if the author 
 has obeyed the great principles of art ; as to the 
 details, each will fall into error. Do not go im- 
 mediately to look at a new work, but wait till the 
 darts of criticism have all been shot, and men are 
 accustomed to the sight." 
 
 Being asked which are the most beautiful colors, 
 he answered, " Black and white ; because the for- 
 mer gives force to figures by deepening the shad- 
 ows, the latter gives the relief." 
 
 He insisted that only the experienced artist 
 shoidd draw from living models, which lack, for 
 the most part, grace and symmetrical forms. 
 
 "Fine colors," he said, "are sold in the Rialto 
 shops ; but design is got from the casket of genius, 
 by hard study and long vigils, and is therefore 
 understood and practiced by but few." 
 
 Odoardo Fialeti asked him what to study. 
 "Drawing," replied Tintoret. Somewhat later, 
 Fialeti sought further advice. " Drawing, and 
 again drawing," Tintoret reiterated. 
 
 " Art must perfect nature," was his guiding 
 rule ; and he instanced that Greek artist who 
 modeled an Aphrodite by selecting the best fea- 
 tures of the five most beautiful women he could 
 find. 
 
 His studio was in the most retired part of his 
 house. Few were admitted to it, and they had to
 
 214 PORTRAITS 
 
 find their way thither up a dark staircase and 
 along dark passages, by the light of a candle. 
 There he spent most of his time, — a grave man 
 ordinarily, as must ever be the case with genius 
 which ranges the utmost abysses and sublimities ; 
 at heart a solitary man, so far as the absence 
 of flesh-and-blood companions constitutes solitude, 
 but forever attended by the great associates of his 
 imagination. Laconic, too, in speech as with his 
 brush ; as when, in reply to a long letter from his 
 brother, he wrote simply, " Sir : no." But upon 
 occasion — as that anecdote of Madonna Faustina's 
 allowance shows — he indulged in conviviality ; 
 and he had the gift, peculiar to a gentleman, of 
 *' being easy with persons of all ranks, and of put- 
 ting them at ease." " With his friends he pre- 
 served great affability. He was copious in fine 
 sayings and witty hits, putting them forth with 
 much grace, but without sign of laughter ; and 
 when he deemed it opportune, he knew also how 
 to joke with the great." 
 
 Tintoret's genius was only partially acknow- 
 ledged during his lifetime, and his fame has suf- 
 fered strange vicissitudes since his death. At 
 times he has been extolled with meaningless ex- 
 travagance ; oftener condemned, after Vasari's 
 lukewarm fashion, or passed over without men- 
 tion. Not until Mr. Ruskin came and opened the
 
 TINTORET 215 
 
 eyes of the world had Tintoret been adequately 
 appreciated for those points of excellence wherein 
 he has neither rival nor second. He has suffered 
 for the same reasons that Shakespeare was long 
 unesteemed in France : his works are bold, very 
 rapid, often unequal, not in the least to be mea- 
 sured by the yardstick of conventionalism ; he 
 treats many new subjects, and the old subjects he 
 always treats in new fashion, thereby provoking 
 formalists to accuse him of wilful oddity or ca- 
 price ; his reputation for swiftness of execution 
 was deemed by many presumptive evidence that 
 he was superficial ; above all, his imagination was 
 so rich and so powerful that it required a cognate 
 imagination to follow it. 
 
 Moreover, Tintoret was the last master of the 
 great era of Italian painting. After him came 
 schools which did not rely upon originality, but 
 upon the inspiration of former masters. Pictures 
 were but specimens of technique, and the mod- 
 els chosen for imitation were naturally those in 
 which technique could be most easily reduced to 
 rules. The public, as well as the painters them- 
 selves, gradually lost the power of valuing art as a 
 spiritual expression. Word by word, sentence by 
 sentence, the great language of painting was for- 
 gotten, until at last it became as a dead language. 
 It was inevitable that Tintoret's works, which had
 
 216 PORTRAITS 
 
 not always been understood by his contempora- 
 ries, should baffle the iuterpreters of art gram- 
 mars and the pedagogues of technique. 
 
 Again, Tintoret's pigments have suffered more 
 than those of any other master. The darker 
 colors, in many cases, have become almost black ; 
 the lighter have faded, and sometimes completely 
 changed.^ How far this is due to an original de- 
 fect in the paints, how far to exposure and neglect, 
 I cannot say. It must always be remembered that, 
 as popular canvases have been frequently var- 
 nished and restored, many Titians and Raphaels 
 are as fresh to-day as they were when they left the 
 easel. How much remains of the original painting 
 is another question. Directors of galleries aim at 
 pleasing the public, not at respecting the prefer- 
 ences of connoisseurs, and the public craves lively 
 colors. It would feel itself imposed upon if it 
 traveled to Dresden only to find the " Sixtine Ma- 
 donna " as dark as would probably be the case if 
 the restorer had not interfered. In every gallery 
 you will observe that the crowds flock to the 
 brightest pictures, irrespective of their merits. 
 The fact that they have been kept bright is an 
 advertisement that they are deemed precious ; and 
 besides, it requires less time to glance at a clean 
 
 1 In some of the paintings at San Giorgio the blues are now 
 milky splotches.
 
 TIXTORET 217 
 
 canvas and pass on than to recover, after patient 
 scrutiny and an effort of the imagination, some of' 
 the beauty which time and dust conceal. It is 
 significant that the one painting by Tintoret which 
 is most commonly mentioned by all classes of tour- 
 ists — " St. Mark Freeing a Fugitive Slave " — 
 is precisely that one which the directors of the 
 Venice Academy keep polished as good as new. 
 
 I cannot dismiss this subject without alluding 
 to another cause for the slight attention given to 
 Tintoret : his pictures are almost invariably con- 
 demned to oblivion by the position in which they 
 have been hung. You must look for them in dark 
 corners near the ceiling, or in cross-lights which 
 render an examination impossible. Of those which 
 still exist in the churches for which they were 
 painted, some have been injured by the drippings 
 from candles ; others have been partly hidden by 
 tabernacles, reliquaries, and other objects of church 
 ceremonial. Travelers in Venice a generation ago 
 record that rain leaked through the roof of the 
 School of San Rocco, and soaked some of the can- 
 vases ; others, hung near windows, have had to 
 suffer from the strong sunlight for centuries. In 
 the Ducal Palace, one series of ceiling paintings 
 have succumbed to the daubing of restorers, and 
 are now hardly recognizable as being Tintoret's ; 
 while the matchless " Paradise," when I recently
 
 218 PORTRAITS 
 
 saw it,^ was falling rapidly to decay. The seams 
 where the vast canvas was originally joined had 
 rotted in many places ; the canvas itself was 
 warped and rumpled, forming little shelves and 
 unevennesses on which the dust had collected so 
 as to hide the colors ; and from the ceiling dan- 
 gled a ragged fringe of cobwebs, in some places 
 two or three feet long. 
 
 A few generations hence, when these incom- 
 parable works have been irretrievably damaged, 
 posterity will wonder — with a wonder intensified 
 by indignation — that we allowed them to perish. 
 Early Christians, who mutilated pagan works of 
 art because they believed them to be pernicious, 
 may be excused ; but what excuse has our age to 
 offer? We pretend to cherish all manifestations 
 of culture, and we have ample means to preserve 
 them ; yet whilst our museums are daily adding to 
 their collections of half-barbarous antiquities, dug 
 up in Arizona, in Mexico, in Yucatan, in Peru, 
 in Asia Minor, in Mesopotamia, there are surely 
 hastening to destruction scores of the works of 
 the mightiest genius who ever honored painting. 
 During the past twenty years. New York mil- 
 lionaires have paid more for the immoralities and 
 inanities of modern French painters than would be 
 necessary to erect a separate gallery in Venice for 
 1 In August, 1889.
 
 TINTORET 219 
 
 the proper preservation of Tintoret's masterpieces. 
 If there were but a single manuscript of Hamlet 
 in the world, and no printing-presses, what should 
 we say to those who allowed it to perish through 
 neglect? Yet there are many of Tintoret's pic- 
 tures, each of them as precious in its way as a 
 page of Hamlet^ which we raise no voice to save. 
 In our selfishness, we forget that the treasures 
 which we have inherited from the past are not 
 ours to dissipate and destroy ; we hold them in 
 trust for the future, and woe unto us if, unmindful 
 of our responsibility, we prove careless stewards.^ 
 
 II. HIS WORKS. 
 
 What, then, are some of the qualities of Tinto- 
 ret's genius ? First of all, he had vast scope : 
 Christian and classic lore, the legend and story of 
 Venice, contemporary scenes, and portraiture, — 
 
 ^ So long aa the originals exist, copies of great paintings are as 
 unsatisfactory as a Beethoven symphony or a Wagner opera on 
 the piano ; but when the originals have perished, copies may 
 serve a worthy purpose in perpetuating at least the concept and 
 general treatment of the painter. It is greatly to be desired 
 that some capable student should do for Tintoret what Toschi 
 has done for Correggio at Parma. A series of faithfully exe- 
 cuted sketches would enable posterity to judge of Tintoret's 
 range of imagination and inexliaustible powers of treatment, 
 altliough his coloring and drawing could not be reproduced. 
 Many of his paintings have never been engraved, and not one 
 has been well engraved.
 
 220 PORTRAITS 
 
 all these lay within his province. But scope alone, 
 unguided by rarer powers, does not suffice for 
 the equipment of the supreme master. Rubens 
 had scope, even Dore had it, and neither ranks 
 among the foremost. In Tintoret it was accom- 
 panied by a most intense imagination, which pene- 
 trated to the elemental reality and understood the 
 intertangled relations of life. Imagination oper- 
 ated through him with a vigor more like Nature's 
 own than that of any other man except Shake- 
 speare ; a vigor which seems at once inexhausti- 
 ble and effortless, which never wastes and never 
 scants. In creating a beggar or a seraph he ex- 
 pended just as much energy as was necessary for 
 each; you do not feel that one was harder for 
 him than the other. Tintoret's creations have this 
 further resemblance to Shakespeare's : they live ! 
 You do not exclaim, " This is a great picture ! " 
 but, " This is a great scene ! " He is like a 
 traveler who brings back views from a strange 
 country : albeit you have never been there, yet the 
 views are so real, the figures are painted so freely 
 and lifelike, and not in conscious or conventional 
 attitudes, that you cannot doubt their faithfulness, 
 and are absorbed by the wonders and beauties 
 they present. 
 
 Tintoret never conspires to startle you by sensa- 
 tional devices. Even in those works where he is
 
 TIXTORET 221 
 
 most daring he is really painting what his imagi- 
 nation saw naturally, and is no more bent on in- 
 venting oddities and marvels than was John in 
 the Apocalj/pse. Before beginning a Biblical or 
 an historical subject, he seems to have asked him- 
 self, " How did this look to a bystander ? " and he 
 relies upon the actuality of the scene to produce 
 the desired impression. He has been charged, 
 sometimes, with making Christ and his disciples 
 too vulgar. Other painters have so accustomed 
 you to look for a kingly personage in Christ, and 
 for princely garments on his followers, that when 
 you first see a " Last Supper " by Tintoret you 
 miss the habitual elegance ; for he shows you sim- 
 ple and earnest but not ignoble fishermen and ar- 
 tisans of Judea. If you contemplate them wisely, 
 your astonishment will deepen as you reflect that 
 it was through and by such lowly and zealous men 
 as these, and not by philosophers and prelates and 
 princes, that the gospel of bi"otherly love was dis- 
 seminated among mankind. It is legitimate for 
 an artist to invest an historic character with em- 
 blems which bespeak the significance posterity has 
 attached to him ; but it is wholesome to see him 
 as he probably appeared to his contemporaries, 
 before subse(pient generations have discovered a 
 retroactive importance in his career. Tintoret em- 
 ployed now one method and now the other, and
 
 222 PORTRAITS 
 
 whosoever has been moved by the " Christ before 
 Pilate " and " The Crucifixion " of the School of 
 San Rocco needs not to be told that pathos and 
 sublimity belong only to the former method. 
 
 Tintoret's versatility would have made a lesser 
 man renowned. He counted it but an amusement, 
 when the learned critics chided him for not obey- 
 ing academic rules, to imitate the style of Titian, 
 or Paul Veronese, or Schiavone, so that the critics 
 themselves were deceived and confounded. He in- 
 variably adapted his treatment to the requirements 
 of each work : if it was to be viewed from a consid- 
 erable distance, he painted broadly ; if it was to 
 be seen near, no one surpassed him in the delicacy 
 and carefulness of his finish. This sense of fit- 
 ness governed his composition as well as his draw- 
 ing. In a picture intended for a refectory, for 
 instance, he introduced proportions in harmony 
 with the dimensions of that refectory, causing it 
 to appear more spacious and imposing. Where 
 Tintoret's figures are not correctly drawn, the 
 apparent fault was often intentional : restore the 
 picture to the position for which he designed it, 
 and the drawing will no longer offend ; for he 
 always took into account the distance and angle 
 from which the spectator would look, and he is not 
 responsible for the changes in location. In study- 
 ing any picture, remember that there is one, and
 
 TINTORET 223 
 
 only one, point of view where it can be seen as 
 the artist wished it to be seen. If you stand too 
 far or too near, you will miss his purpose. In a 
 portrait by Titian or Tintoret, no line, no dot of 
 color is superfluous : you must adjust your vision 
 until the tiniest flake of white on the tip of the 
 chin or on the pupils of the eyes shows you its 
 reason for being there. Try to imagine that last 
 perfecting touch away, and you will learn its value. 
 For these men did nothing haphazard : they would 
 as soon have wasted diamonds and rubies as their 
 precious colors ; every hair of their pencil was a 
 nerve through which their imagination transmitted 
 itself to the canvas. 
 
 Although it be well-nigh impossible to describe 
 a painting so that one who has not seen it can 
 derive profit from the description, I shall attempt 
 to point out a few of the characteristics of some of 
 Tintoret's other works, in the hope of refreshing 
 the memory of readers who are already familiar 
 with them, and of stimulating the interest of those 
 who may see them hereafter. It is the thought 
 Tintoret has expressed, and not the technique of 
 his manner, to which I would call attention, be- 
 lieving that this can be in some measure made 
 real even to those who cannot refer to the paint- 
 ings themselves. 
 
 One fact impresses us immediately, — Tintoret's
 
 224 PORTRAITS 
 
 originality. Previous painters had used all the 
 familiar Christian themes so often, that there had 
 grown up a conventional form of representing each ; 
 but, although Tintoret used these themes, his 
 treatment of them rarely recalls that of any other 
 painters, and always demands fresh study. Giotto 
 may be said to have fixed the norm which his suc- 
 cessors generally followed, diverging from it only in 
 details. Tintoi'et established a new norm. More- 
 over, he never copied himself ; his inexhaustible 
 imagination refused to repeat. It represented the 
 same subject under different aspects, never twice 
 alike. We have many replicas of Raphael's and 
 Titian's works, but none, so far as I know, of 
 Tintoret's. In rare cases where two copies of a 
 painting by him exist, one is the sketch. 
 
 In one famous instance he is brought into direct 
 comparison with his rival, Titian. They both 
 painted " The Presentation of the Virgin," in 
 somewhat similar manner. Titian conceives the 
 scene as follows: In front of a stately pile of 
 buildings, two flights of steps lead up to the thresh- 
 old of the Temple, where stands a venei-able high 
 priest ; near him are two other ecclesiastics and 
 a youth. Spectators look out from the windows 
 and balconies of the adjoining edifice upon Mary, 
 a pretty little maiden, who has reached the first step 
 of the second staircase, and, looking up at the high
 
 TINTORET 225 
 
 priest, prepares to finish the ascent. Immediately- 
 back of her figure is an ornate Corinthian column. 
 Her mother and a friend wait at the foot of the 
 staircase, and a goodly company of Venetian no- 
 bles is gathered near them, — like pleasure-seekers 
 taking a stroll, who stop for a moment to witness 
 a chance episode. An old woman with a basket 
 of egrers sits in the forcOTOund. A colonnade and 
 pyramid close in the picture on the left,^ and a 
 pleasing view of mountains stretches out behind. 
 
 This is Tintoret's conception : A high priest, pa- 
 triarchal in dignity, stands at the top of a flight of 
 steps leading to the door of the Temple. Just below 
 him Mary is mounting, her slight form and dress 
 being beautifully contrasted with the sky beyond. 
 Behind her is a young woman (probably her mo- 
 ther, Anne) carrying a young child. At the foot 
 of the steps, in the centre of the painting, another 
 mother (one of Tintoret's matchless creations) 
 is pointing toward Mary, and telling her little 
 daughter that she, too, will erelong be presented at 
 the Temple. Two girls recline on the steps near 
 by. On the left, seven or eight old men and idlers 
 (such as one still sees at the approach to churches 
 in Italy, and to mosques and synagogues in the 
 Orient) are ranged along the stairs, indolently 
 
 ' I use left and right to denote the positions as the spectator 
 faces the picture.
 
 226 PORTRAITS 
 
 watching the scene. The shadow of the building 
 falls upon them, and prevents their figures from 
 being too prominent. There is no suggestion of 
 Venice or Venetian nobles. The attention is not 
 distracted by costly apparel or imposing architec- 
 ture, but is fixed upon the chief actors, — upon 
 the venerableness of the high priest, the sim- 
 plicity and confidingness of the little maiden, 
 and the magnificent forms and naturalness of the 
 women. 
 
 Critics have disputed whether Titian's picture 
 or Tintoret's be the earlier. The presumption is 
 in favor of the former,^ but there is no reason to 
 cry plagiarism against either, because each master 
 has worked out a similar conception with charac- 
 teristic independence. The central idea — the 
 youthful Virgin ascending the steps of the Temple 
 to be received by the high priest — may be seen in 
 one of Giotto's frescoes.^ What we admire is the 
 originality of treatment in both pictures. To me, 
 Tintoret's conception seems the more nobly appro- 
 priate ; and I know not in which of Titian's works 
 to look for a counterpart of that woman in Tinto- 
 ret's foreground, so easy, so living, so superb. 
 
 ^ Crowe and Cavalcaselle give 1539 as the date of Titian's 
 " Presentation ; " 1545-46 is usually assigned as the date of 
 Tintoret's. 
 
 2 At the Arena, Padua.
 
 TINTORET 227 
 
 • As an example of Tintoret's Insight into the 
 spiritual world, turn to his picture of Lucifer.^ 
 From early Christian times, the Evil One has 
 been represented by very crude and vulgar sym- 
 bols. A hideous face, horns, a tail, and cloven 
 hoofs have come to be his accepted signs. Such a 
 monster could never tempt even the frailest striver 
 after righteousness ; for this conception illustrates 
 the loathsomeness of the results of sin, and not the 
 allurements by which sin entraps us. It would 
 be equally appropriate to show to a lover a crum- 
 bling skeleton as the effigy of the woman whom he 
 loves. The Devil would make no converts if he 
 announced himself to be the Devil, and dangled 
 before men's eyes the despair, the degradation, the 
 infinite remorse, which are his actual merchandise, 
 instead of the fleeting pleasures and deceitful pro- 
 mises under which he masks them. He is no bun- 
 gler or fool, but supremely skilful in proportioning 
 his enticement to the strength of his victim, and 
 very alert in choosing the moment most favorable 
 for attack. Goethe, in his Mephistopheles, has por- 
 trayed the enemy of good under one of his aspects, 
 emphasizing the cynical and wicked rather than 
 the seductive and plausible qualities. Tintoret 
 has depicted the latter. His Lucifer is still an 
 angel, though fallen. He has a commanding and 
 ^ At the School of San Rocco, Venice.
 
 228 PORTRAITS 
 
 beautiful form, and a countenance which at first 
 fascinates, until, on searching it more deeply, you 
 fancy you discern a suggestion of duplicity, a hint 
 of sensuality, in it. Bright-hued and strong are 
 the plumes of his wings, and a circlet of jewels 
 sparkles on his left arm, the sole emblem of the 
 wearer's wealth. Here is indeed a being whose 
 beauty might seduce, whose guile might deceive, 
 — one whose presence dazzles and attracts, for 
 it has majesty and grace and charm. Here is a 
 fit embodiment of that ambition which shrinks 
 not from crime in order to possess power ; or of 
 that false pleasure which decoys men from duty, 
 and, still flying beyond reach, leads its prisoner 
 deeper and deeper into the abominations of the 
 abyss. 
 
 With equal originality and truth, Tintoret has 
 illustrated the allegory of the temptation of St. 
 Anthony.! This subject is usually treated either 
 absurdly or grotesquely; as when the saint is 
 discovered in a grotto through which bats, mice, 
 witches, and imps flit and gambol. Not one of 
 these ridiculous creatures, we may safely say, 
 would frighten or tempt anybody. But who are 
 the enemies that a man whose life is dedicated to 
 holiness, and who has taken the three vows of 
 poverty, chastity, and obedience, must resist? 
 1 In the church of San Trovaso, Venice.
 
 TINTORET 229 
 
 Tintoret's picture gives the answer. In it one of 
 the figures, typifying Riches, offers gokl and pre- 
 cious gems. "Why live a beggar?" she pleads 
 softly ; " take these and have power." A second 
 figure, Voluptuousness, is that of a woman fair 
 in body. " Come with me," she urges ; " let us 
 taste of joy together while there is still time." A 
 third, who (I think) represents Unbelief or Her- 
 esy, has already dashed the saint's missal and 
 rosary to the ground, has snatched up his scourge, 
 and, endeavoring to drag him away, has plucked 
 off his mantle. " Come with me," this tempter 
 seems to say ; " there will be no more scourging, 
 and fasting, and mortification ; with me your life 
 shall be without care and unrestrained." Never- 
 theless, Anthony, thus hard beset, looks heaven- 
 ward, uttering a prayer for succor. Are not these 
 apt personifications of those lower impulses to 
 which even men of high resolve have succumbed ? 
 All the witches of the Brocken and all the bats 
 in a Pharaoh's tomb have nothing allurinjj about 
 them. 
 
 There are few of Tintoret's paintings which will 
 not make similar revelations, if you look atten- 
 tively. Often what appears to be only a casual 
 accessory is the key to the whole composition. 
 Let me cite two instances of his imaginative use 
 of color. The first occurs in " The Martyrdom
 
 230 PORTRAITS 
 
 of St. Stephen." ^ The saint has fallen on his 
 knees beneath the stoning of his persecutors, but 
 there is no melodramatic spurting of blood or sign 
 of physical pain. His face betokens fortitude, 
 resignation, and forgiveness of his tormentors. He 
 gazes up steadfastly into heaven, and sees the glory 
 of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand 
 of God. The Almighty is clothed in a robe of 
 red and a black mantle. In the background on 
 earth, behind the martyr, a crowd watch the per- 
 secution ; they are too far away for us to dis- 
 tinguish faces, but one of them, who is seated, 
 is clothed in black and red. It is Paul, soon to 
 acknowledge Christ and put on the livery of God. 
 Again, in the " Paradise," Tintoret gives profound 
 significance to color as a symbol : Moses, the wit- 
 ness to the Old Covenant, and Christ, the witness 
 to the New Covenant, have robes of similar colors. 
 The Doges' Palace contains a score of Tinto- 
 ret's imaginative paintings and many of his por- 
 traits, and there are few churches in Venice which 
 have not at least one altar-piece by him. His 
 best portraits, as I think, outrank even Titian's 
 best : they have a vital quality, an inevitahleness, 
 which can be felt, but not described. What a con- 
 course of doges, senators, procurators, nobles, and 
 
 1 In the church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Mr. Ruskin 
 Mas the first to point out this stroke of genius.
 
 TINTORET 231 
 
 soldiers he has portrayed ! Their grave, refined 
 faces, their stately carriage, the sobriety as often 
 as the sumptuousness of their dress, bear witness 
 to the glory and power of Venice ; that glory and 
 power which had begun to decline in the sixteenth 
 century, though the Venetians perceived it not. 
 They misread the signs. They could not believe 
 that Venice, which had continually grown in wealth 
 during ten centuries, could decline or perish. Esto 
 perpetua ! — may she live forever ! — was the last 
 prayer of her historian, Sarpi, the abiding dream 
 of all her citizens. 
 
 It was Tintoret's pride to immortalize on canvas 
 her legends and her history, and to illustrate her 
 grandeur by means of allegory. He painted the 
 popular stories of the recovery of St. Mark's body 
 from Alexandria, and of the miracles performed 
 by that holy patron. He painted the siege of 
 Zara, the battle of Lepanto, and the ambassadors 
 of Venice holding head before the haughtiness 
 of Frederick Babarossa. He painted Venice en- 
 throned among the gods, and Venice as mistress 
 of the sea. 
 
 But his genius was not confined to the expres- 
 sion of pomp and patriotism. It delighted not 
 only in majestic flights of imagination, but also 
 in contemplating and in setting forth pure beauty. 
 In one of the smaller rooms of the Ducal Palace
 
 232 PORTRAITS 
 
 are two classic subjects by him, — " Mercury and 
 the Graces," " Ariadne and Bacchus," — which, 
 whether we regard their perfect symmetry, or the 
 grace of their forms, or the delicious poetic spirit 
 that emanates from them like fragrance from a 
 bed of lilies, have few rivals in loveliness. They 
 arouse in some beholders a mood akin to that 
 which a joyous theme in one of Beethoven's sym- 
 phonies can arouse, — a mood sweeter than hope 
 itself, or the brightest afterglow of memory ; for, 
 while it lasts, the present, flooded with peace and 
 beauty and a nameless ecstacy, satisfies the soul. 
 
 The School of San Rocco possesses sixty-four 
 pictures by Tintoret. This series, illustrating the 
 principal events in the Old and New Testaments, 
 is quite without parallel, not only in extent, but in 
 the excellence of a large number of the separate 
 paintings. You pass from one to another as from 
 scene to scene in Shakespeare ; and it is only when 
 you return to the works of lesser men that you 
 realize the richness and strength of the master, 
 who has lifted you to his level so easily that you 
 were conscious of no effort. The halls in which 
 these paintings are kept are utterly inadequate for 
 their proper examination : not one can be seen 
 in a favorable light ; many are almost buried in 
 gloom, or hidden in the equally impenetrable glare 
 that falls on their surface from the cross-lights of
 
 TINTORET 233 
 
 conflicting windows. Some of the canvases liave 
 been injured by water ; the colors have grown dim 
 or dingy with age ; and in some cases " restor- 
 ers " ^ have blurred the outlines and brought dis- 
 cord among the tones. Nevertheless, who that has 
 once seen can ever forget many of those paint- 
 ings ? The original conception looms up beautiful 
 and grand from amid the wreck of time and neg- 
 lect, like a mutilated, earth-stained Greek statue, 
 and your imagination exerts itself to see the work 
 as it must have appeared when the colors were 
 fresh. Who can forget that flock of angels in 
 " The Annunciation ; " or " The Visit of the 
 Magi ; " or " The Flight into Egypt ; " or the 
 terrible "Slaughter of the Innocents," which seems 
 to have been painted in blood, though there is 
 hardly any blood to be seen ; or " The Adoration 
 of the Shepherds ; " or " Christ's Agony in Geth- 
 semane ; " or " Christ before Pilate ; " or " Christ 
 being led to Calvary " ? 
 
 The series concludes with " The Crucifixion," a 
 masterpiece before which artists and amateurs, and 
 even academic critics, have stood in mute wonder. 
 It is a panoramic summary of the last acts in the 
 
 1 One painting bears the inscription, REST. ANTONIVS FLO- 
 RIAN, 18.'54. " Exactly in proportion to a man's idiocy," Mr. 
 Ruskin remarks, " is always tlie size of the letters in which he 
 writes his name on the picture that he spoils."
 
 234 PORTRAITS 
 
 persecution of Christ. No detail which the Evan- 
 gelists furnish has been omitted, but all details 
 have been subordinated to a unity so vast and im- 
 pressive that it eludes analysis. Primarily, this is 
 a pictorial representation of an historical event ; 
 but for the Christian believer it is an image of the 
 profoundest religious meaning. There are many 
 groups, but if you study each group you will dis- 
 cover that without it something would have been 
 wanting to the whole. Here are Romans, to whom 
 the spectacle has no moral interest ; they are sol- 
 diers and judges, executing unperturbed the Ro- 
 man law upon the person of a Jew who has stirred 
 up the wrath of his fellows and caused a popular 
 tumult. Here are Jews, mocking and full of hate. 
 Here, too, is the little remnant of Jews who, be- 
 lieving in the victim as their master, are faithful 
 to him unto death. Is not the indifference or the 
 idle curiosity of some of the spectators as signifi- 
 cant as the cruelty of his enemies and the devo- 
 tion and anguish of his friends ? For consider 
 well what it implies that any human being should 
 gaze unmoved, or moved only as by an every-day 
 occurrence, at a fellow creature suffering the pen- 
 alty of death. Is life, then, so cheap ? Is a human 
 soul of so slight account that men can cast lots or 
 jeer while it passes in agony from earth forever ? 
 Who can estimate the cruelty which delights in the
 
 TINTORET 235 
 
 torments of that struggle ? And if this sacrifice 
 be viewed with the eyes of a Christian, and not of 
 an impassive observer, if the victim be esteemed 
 not merely a man, but the Son of God, what words 
 shall describe its solemnity ? 
 
 Tintoret has painted all this into his picture, in 
 which the central object is the cross with Christ 
 upon it. His head has sunk upon his bosom, and 
 we imagine that with his downcast eyes he beholds 
 the group of holy women at the foot of the cross, 
 and says to Mary, " Woman, behold thy son." 
 That group is the most pathetic that painter ever 
 drew. Some of the women, overwhelmed by grief, 
 have fainted. Not by their faces, but by their 
 drooping, motionless bodies, can you infer the un- 
 speakable burden which is crushing them. One 
 kneels ; another — Magdalen, it may be — has 
 risen, and looks up at the expiring Saviour. A 
 venerable disciple gazes tenderly at the face of the 
 Virgin, who has swooned. A younger disciple 
 lifts his eyes toward Christ. They cannot help ; 
 they cannot speak ; they can only wait and sorrow. 
 Who shall utter the agony that love feels when it 
 is powerless to relieve the suffering of its beloved I 
 Behind this group stands a man holding a bowl, 
 into which another man, who has climbed a ladder 
 resting against the back of the cross, dips a s])onge 
 stuck on a spear. At the left, other executioners
 
 236 PORTRAITS 
 
 are raising the cross on which one of the male- 
 factors has been bound. Some men in front are 
 tugging at ropes ; others behind are pushing or 
 steadying it. Hammers, adzes, a saw, and other 
 tools bestrew the gi'ound. Farther on are many 
 spectators, — a Roman officer in armor, elders, 
 dignitaries, and a soldier bearing the Roman stand- 
 ard. Some point toward Christ, and evidently 
 say to one another : " That is the impostor who 
 calls himself the Son of God and the King of the 
 Jews. Where is his pretended might ? " A little 
 in the background, a mounted spearman has thrown 
 the reins on the neck of his ass, which compla- 
 cently feeds on withered palm leaves, — an imagi- 
 native touch characteristic of Tintoret, which will 
 not be lost on those who recall Christ's entry into 
 Jerusalem a few days before. 
 
 In the foreground, to the right, a man Is dig-, 
 ging a hole for the cross of the second malefactor, 
 while soldiers are drawing lots for Christ's gar- 
 ments, and other mounted soldiers are watching 
 the proceedings near by. A little beyond, another 
 oTOup is busy attaching that malefactor to his 
 cross ; one boring a hole for the spike to pierce 
 his hand, another holding down his legs so that 
 they can be bound, while a third has a rope. In 
 the distance, men hurry toward the scene, lest they 
 be too late to enjoy it ; and the foremost camels of
 
 TINTORET 237 
 
 a caravan on its way into the city appear just at 
 a turn in the road. For traffic and the daily toil 
 of men are not interrupted by the crucifixion of 
 Christ, though soldiers and idlers have come out 
 to witness it. On the left there is a palace, and 
 then hills succeeded by craggy mountains. The 
 clouds have deepened almost into darkness along 
 the horizon. The sun, as it sinks into this gloom, 
 appears as a huge disk of ghastly light, and this 
 disk forms a dim halo behind Christ's head. Yet 
 a little while and the earth shall be wholly dark- 
 ened, and these curious, careless spectators shall 
 flee away in terror.^ 
 
 Such, told briefly and inadequately, — for lan- 
 guage can only hint at the effects of painting, — 
 is this solemn event as conceived by Tintoret's 
 imagination.^ 
 
 We have no evidence that Tintoret visited 
 Kome, nor any record of his journeys, except that 
 to Mantua, yet we may be sure that he was famil- 
 iar with the scenery of the mainland. The woods 
 and foliage, the streams, valleys, and meadows, 
 
 ^ In a great picture, now niinod, at the abandoned Bavarian 
 palace of Schleissheira, near Munich, Tintoret lias represented 
 the Crncifixion in its later aspnct. 
 
 2 This is one of the four or five painting's which Tintoret 
 signed. It was finished in 15<)5. His receipt for its payment 
 Btill exists. It is dated March 9, 150G. The sum received was 
 two hundred and fifty ducats.
 
 238 PORTRAITS 
 
 the little hills and picturesque mountains, which 
 abound in his paintings, he did not see at Venice. 
 Our lack of information leaves us in doubt, there- 
 fore, whether he studied Michael Angelo's " Last 
 Judgment" in the Sixtine Chapel. If he never 
 went to Rome, he probably was acquainted, from 
 engravings or copies, with the composition of that 
 extraordinary work ; yet his own painting of that 
 subject bears so little resemblance to Michael An- 
 gelo's that it seems to have been produced inde- 
 pendently. 
 
 The masterpiece of the Sixtine Chapel is so com- 
 plicated that it bewilders the student, imtil he 
 observes that the principal groups are roughly 
 arranged in an immense irregular horseshoe, the 
 points of which are near the bottom of the lower 
 wall, while Christ, the chief figure, is inclosed in 
 the upper oval. Four fifths of the action takes 
 place in the air, the lower portion alone of the 
 fresco being occupied by the river Styx and its 
 adjacent bank. In its present nearly ruined con- 
 dition we cannot guess the original effect of this 
 work ; but I doubt whether it could ever have 
 satisfied the beholder's instinctive demand for har- 
 mony. The groups, even the individuals, seem 
 isolated, not only in space but in spirit. There 
 is not, nor could there be, a single prevailing pas- 
 sion. The only characteristic which applies to the
 
 TINTORET 239 
 
 whole work is tremendous energy. Whatever of 
 agony, of fury, of stubbornness, of determination, 
 can be expressed by the human body, is expressed 
 here. There is no muscle or tendon which is not 
 exhibited in various positions ; no posture of limbs 
 or trunk which is not represented. The resurrec- 
 tion of the hody is illustrated in a hundred ways, 
 and the expression of the faces is of secondary 
 importance. Here, patriarchs have the vigor of 
 Titans ; saints are as robust as athletes ; Christ 
 himself might be a majestically stern Apollo. Not 
 without reason may we call these effigies of rest- 
 less, writhing human beings wonderful diagrams 
 of anatomy and concrete illustrations of dynamics. 
 Even the saved, who occupy the higher regions, 
 are not tranquil. In striving to comprehend these 
 whirlwinds of action, the mind is wearied and 
 baffled. Unit by unit you examine this multitude, 
 and you are amazed in turn by sublimity, or hor- 
 ror, or power. 
 
 The space ^ to which Tintoret had to adapt his 
 picture of " The Last Judgment " is oblong, about 
 fifty feet high and twenty feet broad. In the 
 upper part of the heavens Christ is represented, 
 not in the character of the inexorable Judge, but 
 in that of the Shepherd who welcomes his faithful 
 flock to Paradise ; for the resurrection and judg- 
 ^ In the church of Santa Maria dell' Orto, Venice.
 
 240 PORTRAITS 
 
 raent are coincid*it. On one side, near Christ, 
 John the Baptist is kneeling, and Mary and the 
 repentant sinner, who bears a cross, are near ; on 
 the other side are personifications of the cardinal 
 virtues. Extremely lovely is Charity, carrying in 
 her arms two young children to present to the 
 Saviour. Zones of fleecy clouds separate the up- 
 per part of the painting into sections, in which the 
 saints are ranked ; but the distribution seems natu- 
 ral, not arbitrary, and serves to prevent confusion 
 among so many figures. Midway in the scene, 
 angels plunge eartliward to rouse the dead. Mi- 
 chael, with his terrible sword unsheathed, pursues 
 the wicked toward a mighty river, which sweeps 
 irresistibly into the abyss. In the distance, on a 
 low shelf of sand amid the waters, is huddled a 
 crowd of sinners, too indolent or too terrified to 
 struggle against the flood which must soon engulf 
 them. Crouching, they await their doom. In 
 them Tintoret lias perhaps typified those miserable 
 creatures whom Dante describes as " a Dio spia- 
 centi ed cC nemici swi," — hateful to God and to 
 his enemies. Demons convoy a bark-load of the 
 damned through the hellish torrent. And on the 
 shore what a spectacle ! Bodies starting from their 
 graves, some not yet clothed with flesh, some with 
 leafy branches growing from their arms, some 
 striving to free themselves from the earth into
 
 TINTORET 241 
 
 which corruption resolved them ; everywhere signs 
 of the suddenness and awfuhiess of that supreme 
 moment when the dead shall rise again in the 
 forms they bore when alive, and go to the eternal 
 abode, of bliss or punishment, for which each has 
 fitted himself by his career on earth. 
 
 A parallel has frequently been drawn between 
 the genius of Michael Angelo and that of Dante, 
 and many have deplored the loss of that portfolio 
 in which Michael Angelo is known to have made 
 a series of illustrations to The Divine Comedy. 
 The resemblance between the supreme Tuscan poet 
 and the supreme Tuscan artist seems to me, how- 
 ever, to hold only when we limit our view to Dante 
 as the author of the Inferno. In energy, in 
 intense perception of evil, in unswerving condem- 
 nation of sin, in austerity, in appreciation of the 
 terror of life, the poet and the painter were indeed 
 akin. These are the characteristics which most 
 readers associate with Dante's genius, for the rea- 
 son that most readers go no farther than the 
 Inferno, or are unable to comprehend the more 
 spiritual sublimity of the Purgatorio and the 
 Paradise. The Inferno describes torments which 
 the most sluggish person can understand, and the 
 contrasts of lurid flames and impenetrable gloom 
 by which the scenes in hell are diversified are so 
 vivid as to require no commentary. We marvel
 
 242 PORTRAITS 
 
 at the imagination that could travei'se unpara- 
 lyzed these horrors and dare to report them. But 
 Dante's genius stopped not here : it passed in 
 review all human nature, from its lowest sinful con- 
 dition to that highest excellence when it merges 
 with God. Though Evil be a terrible reality, 
 Dante saw that Love is even more real, the source 
 and the goal of all things, and he proved his uni- 
 versality by his power to describe it. And they 
 whose imagination is strong enough to follow him 
 through the regions of the blessed incline to rank 
 the third canticle of his " sacred poem " even 
 higher than the first. 
 
 Among painters, Tintoret only has, like Dante, 
 swept through the full circuit of human experi- 
 ence and aspiration. He has shown us the anguish 
 of the damned in his " Last Judgment," and the 
 peace and bliss of the blessed in his " Paradise." 
 That "The Last Judgment" should be Michael 
 Angelo's masterpiece, and that he should have 
 painted it on the altar wall of the Pope's favorite 
 chapel, are fatally appropriate. In that terrific 
 scene, the judge is not Christ, but Michael Angelo 
 himself ; a righteous man, who looked out upon 
 the iniquities of his time and dared to condemn 
 them ; a religious man, who, coming to Rome, the 
 religious centre of Christendom, discovered there 
 a second Sodom, in which pope, cardinals, and
 
 TINTORET 243 
 
 bishops were the most shameless offenders ; a pa- 
 triotic man, who had fought for the liberty of 
 his beloved Florence, and had beheld her, through 
 the treachery of some and the apathy of others, 
 become the slave of a corrupt master. No wonder 
 that the terror and anguish, the depravity and 
 hopelessness, of life should have eaten into Mi- 
 chael Angelo's soul. As he worked solitarily in 
 the Sixtine Chapel, no wonder that a vision of the 
 retribution which shall overtake the wicked should 
 have possessed his imagination, and transformed 
 the artist into the judge. Day by day, a spirit 
 mightier than theirs painted the protest which 
 Savonarola, Zwingli, Luther, and Calvin had 
 preached, — the spirit of a Job united to that of 
 an Isaiah. 
 
 Not less appropriate was it that the genius of 
 Tintoret and of Venetian art should culminate in 
 the representation of Paradise. Of all common- 
 wealths, Venice had enjoyed the longest prosper- 
 ity ; of aU peoples, hers had been the most sensi- 
 tive to the joy of life. Even at the end of the 
 sixteenth century, when her power abroad had 
 been curtailed, and when luxury at home was 
 slowly enervating the integrity of her citizens, she 
 was still outwardly imposing, magnificent. No 
 pope had ever succeeded, either by guile or by 
 force, in ravishing her independence. Her imme-
 
 244 PORTRAITS 
 
 morial glory blazed across the past and irradiated 
 the present, as the setting sun spreads an avenue 
 of splendor upon the ocean and fills the heavens 
 with golden and purple light. Venice was indeed 
 the abode of Joy ; and Tintoret, at the close of 
 a long career, in which he had witnessed all the 
 aspects and pondered all the possibilities of human 
 life, was filled, like Dante, with hope, and felt Joy 
 and Love to be the supreme realities, the everlast- 
 ing fulfilments, of mankind's desires. 
 
 If the Last Judgment is an " unimaginable " 
 theme, as Mr. Ruskin remarks, how much more 
 so is Paradise ! Men have always found it easier 
 to represent grief than happiness, villainy than 
 virtue, shadows than sunshine ; for the former 
 are by their nature limited, and draw their own 
 outlines, while the latter have a quality of bound- 
 lessness which to define abridges it. Moreover, 
 pleasure is oftenest unconscious, and always indi- 
 vidual ; pain, on the contrary, is too conscious of 
 self, and is manifest in attributes common to many. 
 Nevertheless, Tintoret has achieved the seeming 
 impossibility of representing, so far as painting 
 may, the happiness, unmixed and eternal, of the 
 celestial host. 
 
 His painting is known to most visitors at Venice 
 as being the largest in the world. The ordinary 
 traveler, after reading the dimensions in his guide-
 
 TINTORET 245 
 
 book, looks up at tlie canvas, and sees crowds of 
 figures and colors grown dark ; wonders what it 
 all means, and why the janitor does not sweep 
 down the dust and cobwebs ; and then turns away 
 to devote equal attention to the black panel where 
 Marino Faliero's portrait would be had he not died 
 a traitor's death. In like manner, I have seen 
 intelligent strangers exhaust the treasures of the 
 Acropolis of Athens in a quarter of an hour, and 
 return to their hotel to read the last English news- 
 paper. But let him who would commune with one 
 of the few supreme masterpieces of art sit down 
 patiently and reverently before Tintoret's " Para- 
 dise," and he will be rewarded by revelations pro- 
 portioned to his study. As soon as his eyes grow 
 used to the dimness of the hall, the tones of the 
 canvas begin to be intelligible to him : it is as if 
 he heard a symphony played in a lower key than 
 the composer intended ; many of the original ef- 
 fects are lost, but harmony interpenetrates and 
 unifies all the jjarts. When he has adjusted his 
 eyes to this pitch, he can examine the figures sepa- 
 rately ; until, little by little, in what seemed a 
 vast confused multitude, he will be aware of the 
 presence of an all-controlling order ; and he will 
 gaze at last understandingly, as in a vision, upon 
 the congregations of heaven as they are unfolded 
 in Tintoret's desijrn.
 
 246 PORTRAITS 
 
 Christ is seated in the central upper part of the 
 painting- : his left hand rests on a crystal globe ; 
 innumerable rays of light illumine his head and 
 dart in all directions. Opposite to him is the 
 Madonna, above whom sparkles a circlet of stars. 
 At Christ's left soars the archangel Michael bear- 
 ing the heavenly scales ; at Mary's right is Ga- 
 briel with a spray of lilies. A cloud of countless 
 cherubs hovers at the feet of the Divine Person- 
 age ; while on each side of the archangels, curving 
 toward the upper extremities of the canvas, sweep 
 companies of seraphim and cherubim, and the 
 thrones, principalities, and powers, and angels with 
 swords, sceptres, and globes. These form the first 
 circle of the angelic host, who from eternity have 
 held their station nearest to their Lord. Below 
 them is a larger circle, composed of those spirits 
 who, by prophecy or preaching, established and 
 extended the kingdom of God on earth. On the 
 left we see the forerunners of Christ, — David play- 
 ing the cithern, Moses holding up the tables of the 
 law, Noah with his ark, Solomon, Abraham, and 
 the other patriarchs ; and near these we distin- 
 guish John the Baptist, who displays a scroll on 
 which is written Ecce Agnvs. Midway in this 
 circle are the Evangelists, the four corners of the 
 Christian temple, and the intermediaries between 
 the old and new dispensations. Here is Mark
 
 TINTORET 247 
 
 accompanied by his lion, Luke and his ox, Mat- 
 thew with pen in hand, and John with his book 
 resting on an eagle. As the line sweeps on, we 
 see the early fathers, doctors, and great popes, — 
 Peter and Gregory ; Paul, the apostle militant, 
 recognizable by his sword ; Jerome, Ambrose, and 
 Augustine. In the centre, between Luke and 
 Matthew, is the third archangel, Raphael, whose 
 clasped hands and upturned face betoken a soul 
 rapt in adoration. The third and lowest circle 
 is made up of many groups of martyrs and holy 
 men and women, the great body of the Church 
 of Christ. Among the throng on the left are 
 Barbara ; Catherine with her wheel ; Francis of 
 Assisi and Dominick, the founders of the great 
 religious orders ; Giustina bearing a palm branch ; 
 St. George (with banner), Lawrence, Sebastian, 
 Agnes, and Stephen, each recognizable by a famil- 
 iar emblem. In the centre, along the bottom of 
 the painting, hover clusters of worshiping angels ; 
 beyond them, more saints, Monica, and ]Magdalen ; 
 then Rachel and a troop of lovely children, and 
 Christopher, who carried the boy Christ on his 
 shoulder here below, and now carries a globe. At 
 last, on the extreme right, we reach the assembly 
 of prelates and theologians. 
 
 With this key to the general distribution, tlie 
 student who has Tintoret's " Paradise " before him
 
 248 PORTRAITS 
 
 can recognize scores of other figures. He will 
 compare Tintoret's portrayal of each saint, or pro- 
 phet, or martyr with conceptions other painters 
 have drawn ; and if he reflect that any one of 
 these groups, and many of these figures singly, 
 would have sufficed to establish the renown of an 
 artist less masterly than Tintoret, his astonish- 
 ment will swell into admiration, and this into awe, 
 when he surveys the work as a whole. Who can 
 describe the effect of the innumerable multitude ? 
 Cast your eyes almost anywhere upon the canvas, 
 and lo ! out of the deeper, distant spaces angelic 
 countenances loom up. Forms, though distinctly 
 outlined, by some magic seem diaphanous ; and 
 the farther your gaze penetrates, the brighter is 
 the light which radiates throughout heaven from 
 the throne of Christ. Still more marvelous is the 
 sense of infinite tranquillity, even in those figures 
 which are moving. These are veritable spirits, 
 though they have human bodies, and they move or 
 rest with equal ease. In this heavenly ether there 
 is no effort. Even those rushing seraphim, whose 
 majestic pinions seem to beat melody from air in 
 their rhythmic flight, suggest a certain grand re- 
 pose begotten of motion itself, — a repose akin to 
 that produced by the sight of the sea, whose myr- 
 iad little waves dance and glisten, or of Niagara, 
 whose falling flood seems stationary. The specta-
 
 TINTORET 249 
 
 tor who has risen to this conception will not fail 
 to note the light of a joy, not vehement but pro- 
 found, which bathes every face ; and how the ac- 
 tion of ever}^ individual and of every group is in 
 some manner addressed to Christ, and would be 
 incomplete but for that divine centre. Christ and 
 the Madonna, and the dove of the Holy Spirit 
 floating between them, he will look at first and 
 turn from last, — the noblest personification of 
 ideal manhood and ideal womanhood that ever 
 painter expressed. The embodiment and essence 
 of Love^ which is the author of all good, they are 
 enthroned amid the serenity of the highest heaven. 
 Round them wheels the inner circle of the archan- 
 gels and the angels, the symbols of divine Power. 
 Then, in ever-widening circles, the saints and apos- 
 tles and prophets, and the elect of every clime and 
 condition, all children of Faith and exemplars of 
 Charity^ float and revolve in bliss forevermore. 
 And it needs no strain of the imagination to hear 
 the hosannas which the morning stars sing to- 
 gether, and all the sons of God shout for joy.^ 
 
 The dark chapel of the Rucellai, in the church 
 of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, has a dingy 
 
 1 In the execution of the " Paradise " he was assisted by his son 
 Dornciiico. If Tintoret was born in 1512, most of the work was 
 done after his eightieth year, an indication of physical viyor
 
 250 PORTRAITS 
 
 altar-piece representing the Virgin and the infant 
 Christ. Cimabue painted it ; and when it was 
 finished the Florentines made a holiday, and bore 
 the picture through the streets, amid great rejoi- 
 cing, to the chapel where it now hangs. That stiff 
 and awkward Madonna, that doll-like Child, were 
 hailed by thera as the highest achievement of 
 painting. For us Cimabue's masterpiece has only 
 an historic interest, — we find no charm in its 
 Byzantine rigidness. Yet that crude work was 
 the seed of Italian painting, and if we follow its 
 growth during three centuries we shall be led to 
 the " Paradise " of Tintoret, in which are em- 
 bodied all the excellences and advances of the 
 painter's art. Between that humble beginning and 
 that glorious culmination an army of artists and 
 myriads of paintings intervene. If we look deep 
 enough, we shall be conscious that they were all 
 agents whereby a mighty spirit was seeking to ex- 
 press itself to man, — a spirit which first appealed 
 to human piety through the symbols of religion, 
 and which, as its agents acquired skill and reach, 
 bodied itself forth in higher images and in con- 
 scious forms. The name of that spirit is Beauty, 
 never to be found perfect in the outer world, but 
 
 almost unparalleled. A rapid study for another " Paradise," in 
 ■which the groups are arranged on a different plan, reminding one 
 of Dante's description of the Celestial Rose, is now in the Louvre.
 
 TINTORET 251 
 
 known as it communicates through the senses por- 
 tents of itself which the soul sublimes into that 
 ideal unity by which the laws of nature and the 
 destiny of man are beheld in their highest aspect. 
 True Worship, as in the sweet piety of Fra An- 
 gelico, led to Beauty ; to Beauty also, along an 
 inevitable path, led the pursuit of Truth by the 
 sixteenth century masters, latest among whom was 
 Tintoret : for Beauty is the final seal and test of 
 both Holiness and Truth.
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO: HIS TRIAL, OPIN- 
 IONS, AND DEATH 1 
 
 On Saturday, the 23d of May, 1592, Giovanni 
 Mocenigo, son of the late excellent Marcanto- 
 nio Mocenigo, addressed to the Father Inquisitor 
 of Venice a letter containing charges of heresy 
 against Giordano Bruno, the Nolan. Among other 
 things, he alleged that Bruno had said " that it is 
 a great blasphemy to say, as Catholics do, that 
 bread is changed to flesh ; that he is hostile to 
 the mass ; that no religion satisfies him ; that 
 Christ was a good-for-nothing, and did wretched 
 tricks to seduce tlie people, and ought to have 
 been hanged ; that there is no separating God into 
 persons ; that the world is eternal ; that worlds 
 are infinite, and God makes an infinite number of 
 them continually ; that Christ wrought apparent 
 miracles and was a magician, and so were the 
 Apostles ; that Christ showed that he died unwill- 
 ingly, and evaded death as long as he could ; that 
 there is no punishment of sins ; and that souls 
 
 1 First printed in The Atlantic Monthly, March, ISOO.
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 2o3 
 
 created by the agency of nature pass from one 
 animal into another; and that as the brutes are 
 begotten of corruption, so also are men. Further, 
 he has denied that the Virgin could have borne a 
 child ; he asserted that our Catholic faith is full of 
 blasphemies against the majesty of God ; that he 
 wished to give himself to the diviner's art, and 
 draw the whole world after him ; that St. Thomas 
 and all the doctors were blockheads compared 
 with himself. Therefore, urged by my conscience 
 and by command of my confessor, I have de- 
 nounced this Bruno to the Holy Office. Suspect- 
 ing that he might depart, I have locked him up in 
 one of my rooms, at your requisition ; and because 
 I believe him possessed of a demon, I pray you to 
 take speedy resolution concerning him." 
 
 Two days later, this Mocenigo, of whom we 
 know no more than that he belonged to one of the 
 illustrious families of Venice, and was thirty-four 
 years of age, added to his accusations : " On that 
 day when I had Giordano Bruno locked up, on 
 my asking him if he would teach me what he had 
 promised, in view of the many courtesies and gifts 
 he had had from me, so that I might not accuse 
 him of the many wicked words which he had said 
 to me, both against our Lord and against the Holy 
 Catholic Church, he replied that he was not afraid 
 of the Inquisition, because he offended nobody in
 
 254 PORTRAITS 
 
 livino- as he chose ; and then that he did not re- 
 member to have said anything bad to me, and that 
 even if he had said it he had said it to me alone, 
 and that he did not fear that I could harm him iff 
 this way, and that, even should he come under the 
 hand of the Inquisition, it could at the most force 
 him to wear his friar's gown again." 
 
 On May 29, Mocenigo, who had in the mean 
 time, at the suggestion of the Inquisition, dredged 
 in the slimy depths of his memory for other 
 charges, informed the Father Inquisitor that he 
 had heard Bruno say " that the forms which the 
 Church now uses are not those which the Apostles 
 used, because the Apostles, by preaching and by 
 example of a good life, converted the people, but 
 that now he who wiU not be a Catholic must suffer 
 the rod and punishment, because force is used, and 
 not love ; that the world could not go on thus, 
 because now only ignorance, and not religion, is 
 good ; that the Catholic religion pleased him more 
 than the others, but that it had need of great for- 
 malities, which was not right, but very soon the 
 world would see itself reformed, because it was 
 impossible that such corruption should endure. 
 He told me, too, that now, when the greatest igno- 
 rance flourishes which the world ever had, some 
 glory in having the greatest knowledge there ever 
 was, because they say they know what they do not
 
 GIORDANO BRUXO 255 
 
 understand, — which is, that God can be one and 
 three, — and that these are impossibilities, igno- 
 rances, and most shocking blasphemies against the 
 majesty of God. Besides this, he said that he 
 liked women hugely, and that the Church com- 
 mitted a great sin in calling sin that which is 
 according to nature." 
 
 After these charges, we hear no more of this 
 latter-day Judas, Giovanni Mocenigo. Honest we 
 can hardly deem him, for he confesses that he in- 
 tended to betray Bruno long before he did betray 
 him, and only delayed till he should gather suffi- 
 cient damning evidence against him. And so we 
 dismiss him to join the despicable crew of those 
 who were traitors to their lords and benefactors. 
 
 The Inquisition examined four other witnesses. 
 Two booksellers, Giotto and Bertano, deposed that 
 they had known Bruno at Frankfort-on-the-Main, 
 whither they went to attend the famous book- 
 fairs ; that they had not heard him say aught 
 which caused them to believe he was not a Catho- 
 lic and a good Christian ; but that he had the 
 reputation of being a philosopher, who spent his 
 time in writing and " in meditating new things." 
 Andrea Morosini, a gentleman of noble birth, tes- 
 tified that during the recent months Bruno had 
 been at his house, whither divers gentlemen and 
 also prelates were wont to meet to discuss letters,
 
 256 PORTRAITS 
 
 and principally philosophy ; but that he had never 
 inferred from Bruno's remarks that he held opin- 
 ions contrary to the faith. Finally, Fra Domenico 
 da Nocera, of the Order of Preachers, deposed that 
 "one day, near the feast of Pentecost, as I was 
 coming out of the sacristy of the church of John 
 and Paul, a layman, whom I did not know, bowed 
 to me, and presently engaged in conversation. 
 He said he was a friar of our province of Naples, 
 a man of letters ; Fra Giordano of Nola, his name. 
 So we sought out a retired part of the aforesaid 
 church. Then he told me how he had renounced 
 the gown ; of the many kingdoms he had trav- 
 ersed, and the royal courts, with his important 
 exercises in letters ; but that he had always lived 
 as a Catholic. And I asking him what he was do- 
 ing in Venice, and how he was living, he said that 
 he had been in Venice but very few days, and was 
 living comfortably ; that he proposed to get tran- 
 quillity and write a book he had in his head, and 
 to present it to his Holiness, for the quiet of his 
 conscience and in order to be allowed to remain in 
 Rome, and there devote himself to literary work, 
 to show his ability, and perhaps to obtain a lec- 
 tureship." 
 
 So far as we know, the Holy Office examined 
 no other witnesses. Tliat tribunal of the Inqui- 
 sition at Venice was composed, in 1592, of the
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 257 
 
 Apostolic Nuncio, Monsignor Taberna ; of the Pa- 
 triarch, Monsignor Lorenzo Priuli ; of the Father 
 Inquisitor, Giovanni Gabriele da Saluzzo, a Do- 
 minican ; and of three nobles appointed by the 
 State, and called the savil alV eresia (sages or 
 experts in heresy), who reported all proceedings 
 to the Doge and Senate, and stopped the delibera- 
 tions when they deemed them contrary to the laws 
 and customs of the State, or to the secret instruc- 
 tions they had received. These three sages were, 
 in that year, Luigi Foscari, Sebastian Barbarigo, 
 and Tomaso Morosini. 
 
 Before this tribunal, which sat at the prison of 
 the Inquisition, appeared the prisoner, Giordano 
 Bruno, on Tuesday, May 26, 1592. He was a 
 small, lean man, in aspect about forty years old, 
 with a slight chestnut beard. On being bidden to 
 speak, he began : — 
 
 " I will speak the truth. Several times I have 
 been threatened with being brought to this Holy 
 Office, and I have always held it as a jest, because 
 I am ready to give an account of myself. While 
 at Frankfort last year, I had two letters from 
 Signor Giovanni Mocenigo, in which he invited 
 me to come to Venice, as he wished me to teach 
 him the art of memory and invention, promising 
 to treat me well, and that I should be satisfied 
 with him. And so I came, seven or eight months
 
 ojS PORTRAITS 
 
 ago. I have taught him various terms pertaining 
 to these two sciences ; living at first outside of his 
 house, and latterly in his own house. And, as it 
 seemed to me that I had done and taught him as 
 much as was necessary, and as was my duty in 
 respect to the things he had sought me for, and 
 deliberating, therefore, to return to Frankfort to 
 publish certain of my works. I took leave of him 
 last Thursday, so as to depart. He, hearing this, 
 and doubting lest I wished to leave his house to 
 teach other persons the very sciences I had taught 
 him and others, rather than to go to Frankfort, as 
 I announced, was most urgent to detain me ; but 
 I none the less insisting on going, he began at first 
 to complain that I had not taught him all I had 
 aorreed, and then to threaten me by saving that, if 
 I would not remain of my own accord, he would find 
 means to compel me. And the following night, 
 which was Friday, seeing me firm in my resolution 
 of going, and that I had put my things in order, 
 and arranged to send them to Frankfort, he came, 
 when I was in bed, with the pretext of wishing to 
 speak to me : and after he had entered, there fol- 
 lowed his servant Bortolo, with five or six others, 
 who were, as I believed, gondoliers of the sort 
 near by. And they made me get out of bed, and 
 conducted me up to an attic, and locked me in 
 there, Master Giovanni saving that, if I would re-
 
 GIORDAXO BRUXO 259 
 
 main and instruct him in the terms of memory and 
 of geometrr, as he had wished hitherto, he would 
 set me at liberty : otherwise, something disagree- 
 able would happen to me. And I replying all 
 along that I thought I had taught him enough, 
 and more than I was bound, and that I did not 
 deserve to be treated in that fashion, he left me 
 till the next day, when there came a captain, ac- 
 companied by certain men whom I did not know, 
 and had them lead me down to a storeroom on 
 the ground-floor of the house, where they left me 
 till night. Then came another captain, with his 
 assistants, and conducted me to the prison of this 
 Holy Office, whither I believe I have been brought 
 by the work of the aforesaid Ser Giovanni, who, 
 indignant for the reason I have given, has, I think, 
 made some accusation against me. 
 
 " My name is Giordano, of the Bruno family, 
 of the city of Xola, twelve miles from Naples. 
 I was bom and brought up in that town ; my pro- 
 fession has been, and is, that of letters and every 
 science. My father's name was Giovanni, my 
 mother's Fraulissa Savolina ; he being a soldier 
 by profession, who died at the same time with my 
 mother. I am about forty-four years old, being 
 born, according to what my people told me, in the 
 year 1548. From my fourteenth year I was at 
 Naples, to learn humanity, logic, and dialectics.
 
 260 PORTRAITS 
 
 and I used to attend the public lectures of a cer- 
 tain Sarnese ; I heard logic privately from an 
 Augustinian father, called Fra Theofilo da Vai- 
 rano, who subsequently lectured on metaphysics at 
 Rome. When I was fourteen or fifteen, I put on 
 the habit of St. Dominick at the convent of St. 
 Dominick at Naples. After the year of probation 
 I was admitted to the profession, and then I was 
 promoted to holy orders and to the priesthood in 
 due time, and sang my first mass at Campagna, 
 a town in the same kingdom. I lived there in a 
 convent of the same order, called St. Bartholomew, 
 and continued in this garb of St. Dominick, cele- 
 brating mass and the divine officeSj and obedience 
 to the superiors of the said order and of the priors 
 of monasteries, till 1576, the year after the Jubi- 
 lee. I was then at Rome, in the convent of the 
 Minerva, under Master Sisto de Luca, procurator 
 of the order, whither I had come because at Naples 
 I had been brought to trial twice : the first time 
 for having given away certain representations 
 . and images of the saints, and kept only a crucifix, 
 wherefore I was charged with spuming the images 
 of the saints ; and, again, for saying to a novice, 
 who was reading The History of the Seven Joys 
 in verse, what business he had with such a book, — • 
 to throw it aside, and to read sooner some other 
 work, like Tlie Lives of the Holy Fathers ; and
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 261 
 
 this case was renewed against me at the time I 
 went to Rome, together with other charges, which 
 I do not know. On this account I left the order, 
 and put off the gown. 
 
 " I went to Noli, in Genoese territory, and stayed 
 there about four months, teaching small boys gram- 
 mar, and reading lectures on the sphere [astro- 
 nomy] to certain gentlemen ; then I went away, 
 first to Savona, where I tarried about a fortnight, 
 and thence to Turin. Not finding entertainment 
 there to my taste, I came to Venice by the Po, 
 and lived a month and a half in the Frezzaria, in 
 the lodging of a man employed at the Arsenal, 
 whose name I do not know. Whilst I was here, 
 I had printed this work [On the Signs of the 
 Times], to make a little money for my support; 
 I showed it first to Father Remigio de Fiorenza. 
 Departing hence, I went to Padua, where I found 
 some Dominican fathers, acquaintances of mine, 
 who persuaded me to wear the habit again, even 
 if I should not choose to return to the order ; for 
 it seemed to them more proper to wear that habit 
 than not. With this view I went to Bergamo, 
 and liad made a garment of cheap white cloth, 
 and over it I put the scapular, which I had kept 
 wben I left Rome. Thus attired I set out for 
 Lyons ; and at Charabery, going to lodge with the 
 order, and being very decently entertained, and
 
 262 PORTRAITS 
 
 talking about this with an Italian father who was 
 there, he said to me, ' Be warned, for you will not 
 meet with any sort of friendliness in these parts ; 
 and you will find less the farther you go.' So I 
 set out for Geneva. There I lodged at the hos- 
 telry ; and, a little after my arrival, the Marquis 
 de Vico, a Neapolitan who was in that city, asked 
 me who I was, and whether I had gone there to 
 settle and to profess the religion of that place. 
 I replied to him, after giving an account of myself 
 and the reason why I had left the order, that I 
 did not intend to profess that religion, because 
 I did not know what it was ; and that therefore I 
 wished to abide there to live in liberty and to be 
 safe, rather than for any other purpose. Being 
 persuaded to put off that habit in any case, I took 
 these clothes, and had a pair of hose made, and 
 other things ; and the marquis, with some other 
 Italians, gave me a sword, hat, cloak, and other 
 necessary articles, and, in order that I might sup- 
 port myself, they procured proof-reading for me. 
 I kept to that work about two months, going, how- 
 ever, sometimes to preaching and sermons, whether 
 of the Italians or of the French who lectured and 
 preached there : among others, I heard more than 
 once Nicolo Balbani, of Lucca, who read the Epis- 
 tles of St. Paul, and preached on the Evangelists. 
 But when I was told that I could not stay long in
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 263 
 
 that place unless I should accept its religion, be- 
 cause I would have no employment from them, 
 and finding, too, that I could not earn enough to 
 live on, I went thence to Toulouse, where there is 
 a famous university. Having become acquainted 
 with some intelligent persons, I was asked to lec- 
 ture on the sphere to divers students, which I did 
 — with other lectures on philosophy — for perhaps 
 six months. At this point, the post of ' ordinary * 
 lecturer in philosophy, which is filled by compe- 
 tition, falling vacant, I took my doctor's degree, 
 presented myself for the said competition, was 
 admitted and approved, and lectured in that city 
 two years continuously on the text of Aristotle's 
 De Anima and other philosophical works. Then, 
 on account of the Civil Wars, I quitted and went 
 to Paris, where, in order to make myself known, 
 and to give proof of myself, I undertook an ' ex- 
 traordinary ' lectureship, and read thirty lectures, 
 choosing for subject Thirty Divine Attributes, 
 taken from the first part of St. Thomas, Later, 
 being requested to accept an ' ordinary ' lecture- 
 ship, I would not, because public lecturers in that 
 city go generally to mass and the other divine 
 offices, and I have always avoided this, knowing 
 that I was excommunicated because I had quitted 
 my order and habit ; and although I had that 
 'ordinary' lectureship at Toulouse, I was not
 
 264 PORTRAITS 
 
 forced to go to mass, as I should have been at 
 Paris. But conducting the ' extraordinary ' there, 
 I acquired such a name that the king, Henry III, 
 sent for me, and wished to know whether my 
 memory was natural or due to magic art. I satis- 
 fied him, both by what I said, and proved to him, 
 that it was not by magic art, but by science. 
 After this I published a work on the memory, 
 under the title De Unibris Idearum^ which I 
 dedicated to his Majesty, — on which occasion he 
 made me ' lecturer extraordinary,' with a pension ; 
 and I continued to read in that city perhaps five 
 years, when, on account of the tumults which arose, 
 I took my leave, and with letters from the king 
 himself I went into England to reside with his 
 ambassador, Michael de Castelnau. In his house 
 I lived as a gentleman. I stayed in England 
 two years and a half, and when the ambassador 
 returned to France I accompanied him to Paris, 
 where I remained another year. Having quitted 
 Paris on account of the tumults, I betook myself 
 to Germany, stopping first at Mayence, an archi- 
 episcopal city, for twelve days. Finding neither 
 here nor at Wiirzburg, a town a little way off, any 
 entertainment, I went to Wittenberg, in Saxony, 
 where I found two factions, — one of philosophers, 
 who were Calvinists, the other of theologians, who 
 were Lutherans. Among the latter was Alberigo
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 265 
 
 Gentile, whom I had known in England, a law- 
 professor, who befriended me and introduced me to 
 read lectures on the Orgaiwn of Aristotle; which 
 I did, with other lectures in philosophy, for two 
 years. At that time, the son of the old Duke hav- 
 ing succeeded his father, who was a Lutheran, 
 and the son being a Calvinist, he began to favor 
 the party opposed to those who favored me ; so 
 I departed, and went to Prague, and stayed six 
 months. Whilst there, I published a book on 
 geometry, which I presented to the Emperor, from 
 whom I had a gift of three hundred thalers. With 
 this money, having quitted Prague, I spent a year 
 at the Julian Academy in Brunswick ; and the 
 death of the Duke ^ happening at that time, I 
 delivered an oration at his funeral, in competition 
 with many others from the university, on which 
 account his son and successor bestowed eighty 
 crowns of those parts upon me ; and I went away 
 to Frankfort to publish two books, — one De 
 3fi7iimo, and the other De Numero, Monade^ et 
 Figura, etc. I stayed about six months at Frank- 
 fort, lodging in the convent of the Carmelites, — 
 a place assigned to me by the publisher, who 
 was obliged to provide me a lodging. And from 
 Frankfort, having been invited, as I have said, by 
 
 * " Who was a heretic " is written on the margin of the original 
 proces-verbal.
 
 266 PORTRAITS 
 
 Ser Giovanni Mocenigo, I came to Venice seven 
 or eight mouths ago, where what has since hap- 
 pened I have already related. I was going anew 
 to Frankfort to print other works of mine, and 
 one in particular on The Seven Liberal Arts^ with 
 the intention of taking these and some other of 
 my published works which I approve — for some 
 I do not approve — and of going to Rome to lay 
 them at the feet of his Holiness, who, I have un- 
 derstood, loves the virtuous, and to put my case 
 before him, with a view to obtain absolution from 
 excesses, and permission to live in the clerical 
 garb outside of the order. ... I said I wish to 
 present myself at the feet of his Holiness with 
 some of my approved works, as I have some I do 
 not approve, meaning by that that some of the 
 works written by me and sent to the press I do 
 not approve, because in them I have spoken and 
 discussed too philosophically, unbecomingly, and 
 not enough like a good Christian ; and in par- 
 ticular I know that in some of these works I 
 have taught and maintained philosophically things 
 which ought to be attributed to the power, wis- 
 dom, and goodness of God according to the Chris- 
 tian faith ; founding my doctrine on sense and 
 reason, and not on faith. So much for them in 
 general ; concerning particulars, I refer to the 
 writings, for I do not now recall a single article or
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 267 
 
 particular doctrine I may have taught, but I will 
 reply according as I shall be questioned and as 
 I shall remember. . . . 
 
 " The subject of all my books, speaking broadly, 
 is philosophy. In all of them I have always de- 
 fined in the manner of philosophy and according 
 to principles and natural light, not having most 
 concern as to what, according to faith, ought to 
 be believed ; and I think there is nothing in them 
 from which it can be judged that I professedly 
 wish to impugn religion rather than to exalt phi- 
 losophy, although I may have set forth many impi- 
 ous matters based on my natural light. 
 
 " I have taught nothing directly against Catho- 
 lic Christian religion, although [I may have done 
 so] indirectly ; as was judged at Paris, where, 
 however, I was allowed to hold certain disputes 
 imder the title of One Hundred and Twenty Arti- 
 ticles against the Peripatetics and Other Vulgar 
 Philosophers (printed with permission of the su- 
 periors) ; as it was permitted to treat them by the 
 way of natural principles, without prejudice to the 
 truth according to the light of faith, in which man- 
 ner the books of Aristotle and Plato may be read 
 and taught, which are in similar fashion, indirectly 
 contrary to faith, — nay, much more so than the 
 articles propounded and defended by me in the 
 manner of philosophy : all these can be known
 
 268 PORTRAITS 
 
 from what is piinted in my last Latin books from 
 Frankfort, entitled De Minimo^ De Monade, de 
 Immenso et Tnnumerabilibus, and in part in De 
 Compositione Imaginum. In these particularly 
 you can see ray intention and what I have held, 
 which is, in a word, I believe in an infinite uni- 
 verse, — that is, the effect of infinite divine power ; 
 because I esteemed it unworthy of the divine good- 
 ness and power that, when it could produce besides 
 this world another, and infinite others, it should 
 produce a single finite world : so I have declared 
 that there is an infinite number of particular 
 worlds similar to this of the earth, which, with 
 Pythagoras, I consider a star, like which is the 
 moon, other planets, and other stars, which are in- 
 finite ; and that all these bodies are worlds, with- 
 out number, which make up the infinite university 
 in infinite space, and we call this the infinite uni- 
 verse, in which are numberless worlds : so that 
 there is a double infinitude, that of the greatness 
 of the universe, and that of the multitude of the 
 worlds, — by which indirectly it is meant to assail 
 the truth according to faith. 
 
 " Moreover, in this universe I place a universal 
 Providence, in virtue of which everything lives, 
 vegetates, moves, and reaches its perfection ; and I 
 understand Providence in two ways : one in which 
 it is present as the soul in all matter, and all in
 
 GIORDANO BRUXO 269 
 
 any part whatsoever, and this I call Nature, the 
 shadow and footprint of the Deity ; the other in 
 the ineffable way with which God, by essence, pre- 
 sence, and power, is in all things and over all 
 things, not as a part, but as Soul, in a manner 
 indescribable. In the Deity I understand all the 
 attributes to be one and the same substance, — ■ 
 just as theologians and the greatest philosophers 
 hold ; I perceive these attributes, power, wisdom, 
 and goodness, or will, intelligence, and love, by 
 means of which things have, first, being (by reason 
 of the will), then, orderly and distinct being (by 
 reason of the intelligence), and third, concord and 
 symmetry (by reason of love) ; this I believe is in 
 all and above all, as nothing is without participa- 
 tion in being, and being is not without its essence, 
 just as nothing is beautiful without the presence 
 of beauty ; so nothing can be exempt from the 
 divine presence. In this manner, by use of rea- 
 son, and not by use of substantial [theological] 
 truth, I discern distinctions in the Deity. 
 
 " liegarding the world as caused and produced, 
 I meant that, as all being depends on the First 
 Cause, I did not shrink from the term * creation ; ' 
 which I believe even Aristotle expressed, saying 
 that God is, on whom the world and Nature are 
 dependent ; so that, according to the explanation 
 of St. Thomas, be the world either eternal or tern-
 
 270 PORTRAITS 
 
 poral according to its nature, it is dependent on 
 the First Cause, and nothing exists in it independ- 
 ently. 
 
 " Next, concerning that which belongs to faith 
 — not speaking in the manner of philosophy — 
 about the divine persons, that wisdom and that son 
 of the mind, called by philosophers intellect and 
 by theologians the Word, which we are to believe 
 took upon itself human flesh, I, standing within 
 the bounds of philosophy, have not understood 
 it ; but I have doubted, and with inconstant faith 
 maintained, — not that I recall having shown a 
 sign of it in writing or in speech, excepting as in 
 other things indirectly one might gather from my 
 belief and profession concerning those things which 
 can be proved by the reason and deduced from 
 natural light. And then concerning the divine 
 spirit in a third jjerson, I have been able to com- 
 prehend nothing in the way in which one ought to 
 believe ; but in the Pythagorean way, conformable 
 to that way which Solomon points out, I have 
 understood it to be the soul of the imiverse, or 
 assistant in the universe, according to that saying 
 in the Wisdom of Solomon, ' The Spirit of the 
 Lord filleth the world ; and that which containeth 
 all things hath knowledge of the voice.' ^ This 
 seems to me to agree to the Pythagorean doc- 
 1 Chap. I, V, 7.
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 271 
 
 trine explained by Vergil in this passage of the 
 ^neid : — 
 
 * Principio coeliim ac terras camposque liquentes, 
 Lucentemque globuni Lunae Titaniaque astra, 
 Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus 
 Mens agitat molem.' ^ 
 
 *' I teach in my philosophy that from this spirit, 
 which is called the Life of the Universe, the life 
 and soul of everything which has life and soul 
 springs ; that it is immortal, just as bodies, so 
 far as concerns their substance, are all immortal, 
 death being nothing else than division and coming 
 together ; this doctrine seems to be expressed in 
 Ecclesiastes, where it says, ' There is no new thing 
 under the sun. Is there anything whereof it may 
 be said, See, this is new ? ' and so on." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Have you held, do you hold and 
 believe, the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, 
 one in essence, but distinct in person, as is taught 
 and believed by the Catholic Church ? " 
 
 Bruno. " Speaking as a Christian, and accord- 
 ing to theology, and as every faithful Christian 
 and Catholic ought to believe, I have indeed had 
 doubts about the name ' person ' as applied to the 
 Son and the Holy Spirit ; not understanding these 
 two persons to be distinct from the Father, except 
 as I have said above, speaking in the manner of 
 1 Book VI, 724-27.
 
 272 PORTRAITS 
 
 pliilosophy, and assigning the intelligence of the 
 Father to the Son, and his love to the Holy Spirit, 
 but without comprehending this word ' persons,' 
 which in St. Augustine is declared to be not an 
 ancient but a new word, and of his time : and I 
 have held this opinion since I was eighteen years 
 old till now, but in fact I have never denied, nor 
 taught, nor written, but only doubted in my own 
 mind, as I have said." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Have you believed, and do you 
 believe, all that the Holy Mother Catholic Church 
 teaches, believes, and holds about the First Person, 
 and have you ever in any wise doubted concerning 
 the First Person?" 
 
 Bruno. " I have believed and held undoubtingly 
 all that every faithful Christian ought to believe 
 and hold concerning the First Person. Regarding 
 the Second Person, I declare that I have held it 
 to be really one in essence with the First, and so 
 the Third ; because, being indivisible in essence, 
 they cannot suffer inequality, for all the attributes 
 which belong to the Father belong also to the Son 
 and Holy Spirit : only I have doubted, as I said 
 above, how this Second Person could become incar- 
 nate and could have suffered ; nevertheless I have 
 never denied nor taught that, and if I have said 
 anythiug about this Second Person, I have said it 
 in quoting the opinions of others, like Arius and
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 273 
 
 Sabellius and other followers of theirs. I will tell 
 what I must have said, and which may have 
 caused scandal and suspicion, as was set down in 
 the first charges against me at Naples, to wit : I 
 declared that the opinion of Arius seemed less 
 pernicious than it was commonly esteemed and un- 
 derstood, because it is commonly understood that 
 Arius meant to say that the Word is the first thing 
 created by the Father; whereas I declared that 
 Arius said that the Word was neither creator nor 
 creature, but midway between creator and crea- 
 ture, — as the word is midway between the speaker 
 and the thing spoken, — and therefore that the 
 Word was the first-born before all creatures, not 
 hy which, but through which everything has been 
 created, not to which but through which everything 
 is referred and returns to the ultimate end, which 
 is the Father. I exaggerated on this theme so that 
 I was regarded with suspicion. I recall further 
 to have said here in Venice that Arius did not 
 intend to say that Christ, that is the Word, is a 
 creature, but a mediator in the sense I have stated. 
 I do not remember the precise place, whether at a 
 drufrcist's or bookseller's, but I know I said this 
 in one of these shops, arguing with certain priests 
 who made a show of theology : I know not who 
 they were, nor should I recognize them if I saw 
 them. To make my statement more clear, I repeat
 
 L>74 PORTRAITS 
 
 that I have held there is one God, distinguished as 
 Father, as Word, and as Love, which is the Divine 
 Spirit, and that all these three are one God in 
 essence ; but I have not understood, and have 
 doubted, how these three can get the name of 
 persons, for it did not seem to me that this name 
 of person was applicable to the Deity ; and I sup- 
 ported myself in this by the words of St. Augus- 
 tine, who says, ' Cum formidine proferimus hoc 
 nomen personae, quando loquimur de divinisy et 
 necessitate coacti utimur ; ' besides which, in the 
 Old and New Testaments I have not foimd nor 
 read this expression nor this form of speech." 
 
 Inquisitor. "Having doubted the Incarnation 
 of the Word, what has been your opinion about 
 Christ?" 
 
 Bruno. " I have thought that the divinity of 
 the Word was present in the humanity of Christ 
 individually, and I have not been able to under- 
 stand that it was a imion like that of soul and 
 body, but a presence of such a kind that we could 
 truly say of this man that he was God, and of this 
 divinity that it was man ; because between sub- 
 stance infinite and divine and substance finite and 
 human there is no proportion as between soul and 
 body, or any other two things which can make up 
 one existence ; and I believe, therefore, that St. 
 Augustine shrank from applying that word ' per-
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 275 
 
 son ' to this case : so that, in conclusion, I think, 
 as regards my doubt of the Incarnation, I have 
 wavered concerning its ineffable meaning, but not 
 against the Holy Scripture, which says ' the Word 
 is made flesh.' " 
 
 Inquisitor. " What opinion have you had con- 
 cerning the miracles, acts, and death of Christ?" 
 
 Bruno. " I have held what the Holy Catholic 
 Church holds, although I have said of the mira- 
 cles that, while they are testimony of the divinity 
 [of Christ], the evangelical law is, in my opinion, 
 a stronger testimony, because the Lord said * he 
 shall do greater than these ' miracles ; and it oc- 
 curred to me that whilst others, like the Apostles, 
 wrought miracles, so that, in their external effect, 
 they seemed like those wrought by him, Christ 
 worked by his own virtue, and the Apostles by 
 virtue of another's power. Therefore I have 
 maintained that the miracles of Christ were di- 
 vine, true, real, and not apparent ; nor have I ever 
 thought, said, nor believed the contrary. 
 
 " I have never spoken of the sacrifice of the 
 mass, nor of transubstantiation, except in the way 
 the Holy Church holds. I have believed, and do 
 believe, that the transubstantiation of the bread 
 and wine into the body and blood of Christ takes 
 place really and in substance." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Did you ever say that Christ was
 
 276 PORTRAITS 
 
 not God, but a good-for-nothing, and that, doing 
 wretched works, he ought to have expected to be 
 put to death, although he showed that he died un- 
 willingly ? " 
 
 Bruno. " I am astonished that this question is 
 put to me, for I have never had such opinions, nor 
 said such a thing, nor thought aught contrary to 
 what I said just now about the person of Christ, 
 which is that I believe what the Holy Mother 
 Church believes. I know not how these things 
 are imputed to me." At this he seemed much 
 grieved. 
 
 Inquisitor. " In reasoning about the Incarna- 
 tion of the Word, what have you held concern- 
 ing the delivery of the said Word by the Virgin 
 Mary ? " 
 
 Bruno. " That it was conceived of the Holy 
 Ghost, born of Mary as Virgin ; and when any one 
 shall find that I have said or maintained the con- 
 trary, I will submit myself to any punishment." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Do you know the import and 
 effect of the sacrament of penance ? " 
 
 Bruno. " I know that it is ordained to purge 
 our sins ; and never, never have I talked on this 
 subject, but have always held that whosoever dies 
 in mortal sin will be damned. It is about sixteen 
 years since I presented myself to a confessor, ex- 
 cept on two occasions : once at Toulouse, to a
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 277 
 
 Jesuit, and another time in Paris, to another 
 Jesuit, whilst I was treating, through the Bishop 
 of Bergamo, then nuncio at Paris, and through 
 Don Bernardin de Mendoza, to reenter my order, 
 with a view to confessing ; and they said that, 
 being an apostate, they could not absolve me, and 
 that I could, not go to the holy offices, wherefore 
 I have abstained from the confessional and from 
 going to mass. I have intended, however, to 
 emerge some time from these censures, and to live 
 like a Christian and a priest ; and when I have 
 sinned I have always asked pardon of God, and 
 I would also willingly have confessed if I could, 
 because I have firmly believed that impenitent sin- 
 ners are damned." 
 
 Inquisitor. "You hold, therefore, that souls 
 are immortal, and that they do not pass from one 
 body into another, as we have information you 
 have said ? " 
 
 Bimno. " I have held, and hold, that souls are 
 immortal, and that they are subsisting substances, 
 that is rational souls, and that, speaking as a 
 Catholic, they do not pass from one body into an- 
 other, but go either to paradise or to purgatory, or 
 to hell ; but I have, to be sure, argued, following 
 philosophical reasons, that as the soul subsists in 
 the body, and is non-existent in the body [that is, 
 not an integral part of it], it may, in the same
 
 278 PORTRAITS 
 
 way that it exists in one, exist in another, and pass 
 from one to another ; and if this be not true, it at 
 least seems like the opinion of Pythagoras." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Have you busied yourself much 
 in theological studies, and are you instructed in 
 the Catholic resolutions ? " 
 
 Bruno. " Not a great deal, having devoted my- 
 self to philosophy, which has been my profession." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Have you ever vituperated the 
 theologians and their decisions, calling their doc- 
 trine vanity and other similar opprobrious names ? " 
 
 Bruno. " Speaking of the theologians who in- 
 terpret Holy Scripture, I have never spoken other- 
 wise than well. I may have said something about 
 some one in particular, and blamed him, — some 
 Lutheran theologian, for instance, or other here- 
 tics, — but I have always esteemed the Catholic 
 theologians, especially St. Thomas, whose works I 
 have ever kept by me, read, and studied, and hon- 
 ored them, and I have them at present, and hold 
 them very dear." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Which have you reckoned hereti- 
 cal theologians?" 
 
 Bruno. " All those who profess theology, but 
 who do not agree with the Roman Church, I have 
 esteemed heretics. I have read books by Melanch- 
 thon, Luther, Calvin, and by other heretics beyond 
 the mountains, not to learn their doctrine nor to
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 279 
 
 avail myself of it, for I deemed them more igno- 
 rant than myself, but I read them out of curiosity. 
 I despise these heretics and their doctrines, be- 
 cause they do not merit the name of theologians, 
 but of pedants ; for the Catholic ecclesiastical doc- 
 tors, on the contrary, I have the esteem I should." 
 
 Inquisitor. " How, then, have you dared to say 
 that the Catholic faith is full of blasphemies, and 
 without merit in God's sight ? " 
 
 Bnino. " Never have I said such a thing, 
 neither in writing, nor in word, nor in thought." 
 
 Inqidsitor. " What things are needful for sal- 
 vation ? " 
 
 Bruno. " Faith, hope, and charity. Good 
 works are also necessary ; or it will suffice not to 
 do to others that which we do not wish to have 
 done to us, and to live morally." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Have you ever denounced the 
 Catholic religious orders, especially for having 
 revenues ? " 
 
 Bruno. " I have never denounced one of them 
 for any cause ; on the contrary, I have found fault 
 when the clergy, lacking income, are forced to 
 beg ; and I was surprised, in France, when I saw 
 certain priests going about the streets to beg, with 
 open missals." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Did you ever say that the life of 
 the clergy does not conform to that of the Apos- 
 tles ? "
 
 280 PORTRAITS 
 
 Bnmo. " I have never said nor held such a 
 thing ! " And as he said this he raised his hands, 
 and looked about astonished. In answer to an- 
 other question, he continued : " I have said that 
 the Apostles achieved more by their preaching, 
 good life, examples, and miracles than force can 
 accomplish, which is used against those who refuse 
 to be Catholics ; without condemning this method, 
 I approve the other." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Have you ever said that the mira- 
 cles wrought by Christ and the Apostles were ap- 
 parent miracles, done by magic art, and not real ; 
 and that you have enough spirit to work the same 
 or greater, and wished finally to make the whole 
 world run after you? " 
 
 Bruno (lifting up both his hands). " What is 
 this ? What man has invented this devilishness ? 
 I have never said such a thing, nor has it entered 
 my imagination. O God, what is this? I had 
 rather be dead than that this should be proposed 
 to me ! " 
 
 Inquisitor. "What opinion have you of the 
 sin of the flesh, outside of the sacrament of matri- 
 mony : 
 
 Bruno. " I have spoken of this sometimes, say- 
 ing, in general, that it was a lesser sin than the 
 others, but that adultery was the chief of carnal 
 sins, whereas the other was lighter, and almost
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 281 
 
 venial. This, indeed, I have said, but I know and 
 acknowledge to have spoken in error, because I 
 remember what St. Paul says. However, I spoke 
 thus through levity, being with others and discuss- 
 ing worldly topics. I have never said that the 
 Church made a great mistake in constituting this 
 a sin. . . . 
 
 " I hold it a pious and holy thing, as the Church 
 ordains, to observe fasts and abstain from meat 
 and prohibited food on the days she appoints, and 
 that every faithful Catholic is bound to observe 
 them ; which I too would have done except for the 
 reason given above ; and God help me if I have 
 ever eaten meat out of contempt [for the Church]. 
 As for having listened to heretics preach, or lec- 
 ture, or dispute, I did so several times from curios- 
 ity and to see their methods and eloquence, rather 
 than from delight or enjoyment ; indeed, after the 
 reading or sermon, at the time when they distrib- 
 uted bread according to their form of commun- 
 ion, I went away about ray business, and never 
 partook of their bread nor observed their rites." 
 
 Inquisitor. " From your explanation of the 
 Incarnation there follows another grave error, 
 namely, tliat in Christ there was a human jierson- 
 ality." 
 
 Bruno. " I recognize and concede tliat these 
 and other improprieties may follow, and I liave
 
 282 PORTRAITS 
 
 stated this opinion, not to defend, but only to 
 explain it ; and I confess my error such and so 
 great as it is ; and had I applied my mind to this 
 adduced impropriety and to others deducible from 
 it, I should not have reached these conclusions, 
 because I may have erred in the premises, but 
 certainly not in the conclusions." 
 
 Inquisitor. "Do you remember to have said 
 that men are begotten of corruption, like the other 
 animals, and that this has been since the Deluge 
 down to the present ? " 
 
 Bruno. " I believe this is the opinion of Lucre- 
 tius. I have read it and heard it talked about, 
 but I do not recall having referred to it as my 
 opinion ; nor have I ever believed it. When I 
 reasoned about it, I did so referring it to Lucre- 
 tius, Epicurus, and their similars, and it is not 
 possible to deduce it from my philosophy, as will 
 readily appear to any one who reads that." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Have you ever had any book of 
 conjurations or of similar superstitious arts, or 
 have you said you wished to devote yourself to the 
 art of divination ? " 
 
 Bruno. " As for books of conjurations, I have 
 always despised them, never had them by me, nor 
 attributed any efficacy to them. As for divina- 
 tion, particularly that relating to judicial astro- 
 logy, I have said,. and even proposed, to study it
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 283 
 
 to see if there is any truth or conformity in it. I 
 have communicated my purpose to several persons, 
 remarking that, as I have examined all parts of 
 philosophy, and inquired into all science except 
 the judicial, when I had convenience and leisure 
 I wish to have a look at that, which I have not 
 done yet." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Have you said that the opera- 
 tions of the world are guided by Fate, denying the 
 providence of God ? " 
 
 Bruno. " This cannot be found either in my 
 words or in my writings ; on the contrary, you 
 will jBnd, in my books, that I set forth providence 
 and free will. ... I have praised many heretics 
 and also heretic princes, but not as heretics, but 
 only for the moral virtues they possessed. In 
 particular, in my book De la Causa., Principio et 
 Uno, I praise the Queen of England, and call her 
 * divine ; ' not as an attribute of religion, but as 
 a certain epithet which the ancients used also to 
 bestow on princes ; and in England, where I then 
 was and wrote that book, it is customary to give 
 this title ' divine ' to the Queen ; and I was all the 
 more persuaded to name her thus because she 
 knew me, for I often went with the ambassador to 
 court. I acknowledge to have erred in ])raising 
 this lady, wlio is a heretic, and especially in attrib- 
 uting to her the epithet ' divine.' "...
 
 284 PORTRAITS 
 
 Inquisitor. " Are the errors and heresies com- 
 mitted and confessed by you still embraced, or do 
 you detest them ? " 
 
 Bruno. " All the errors I have committed, 
 down to this very day, pertaining to Catholic life 
 and regular profession, and all the heresies I have 
 held and the doubts I have had concerning the 
 Catholic faith and the questions determined by the 
 Holy Church, I now detest ; and I abhor, and re- 
 pent me of having done, held, said, believed, or 
 doubted of anything that was not Catholic ; and I 
 pray this holy tribunal that, knowing my infirmi- 
 ties, it will please to accept me into the bosom of 
 the Holy Church, providing me with remedies op- 
 portune for my safety and using me with mercy." 
 
 Bruno was then re-questioned concerning the 
 reason why he broke away from his order. He 
 repeated, in substance, the testimony already given, 
 adding that his baptismal name was Philip. 
 
 Inquisitor. " Have you, in these parts, any 
 enemy or other malevolent person, and who is he, 
 and for what cause ? " 
 
 Bruno. " I have no enemy in these parts, unless 
 it be Ser Giovanni Mocenigo and his followers and 
 servants, by whom I have been more grievously 
 offended than by any other man living, because he 
 has assassinated me in my life, in my honor, and 
 in my goods, — having imprisoned me in his own
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 285 
 
 house, confiscating all my writings, books, and 
 other property ; and he has done this, not only be- 
 cause he wished me to teach him all I knew, but 
 also because he wished that I should not teach it 
 to any one else ; and he has always threatened my 
 life and honor if . I did not teach him what I 
 knew." 
 
 Inquisitor. " Your apostacy of so many years 
 renders you very suspicious to the Holy Faith, 
 since you have so long spurned her censures, 
 whence it may happen that you have held sinister 
 opinions in other matters than those you have 
 deposed ; you may, therefore, and ought now to 
 purify your conscience." 
 
 Bruno. " It seems to me that the articles I have 
 confessed, and all that which I have expressed in 
 my writings, show sufficiently the importance of 
 my excess, and therefore I confess it, whatsoever 
 may be its extent, and I acknowledge to have 
 given grave cause for the suspicion of heresy. 
 And I add to this that I have always had re- 
 morse in my conscience, and the purpose of reform- 
 ing, although I was seeking to effect this in the 
 easiest and surest way, still shrinking from going 
 back to the straitness of regular obedience. . . . 
 And I was at this veiy time putting in order cer- 
 tain writings to propitiate his Holiness, so that I 
 might be allowed to live more independently than 
 is possible as an ecclesiastic. ...
 
 286 PORTRAITS 
 
 " Beginning with my accuser, who I believe is 
 Signor Giovanni Mocenigo, I think no one will be 
 found who can say that I have taught false and 
 heretical doctrine ; and I have no suspicion that 
 any one else can accuse me in matters of holy 
 faith. It may be that I, during so long a course 
 of time, may have erred and strayed from the 
 Church in other matters than those I have exposed, 
 and that I may be ensnared in other censures, but, 
 though I have reflected much upon it, I have dis- 
 covered nothing- ; and I now promptly confess my 
 errors, and am here in the hands of your Excel- 
 lencies to receive remedy, for my salvation. My 
 force does not suffice to tell how great is my re- 
 pentance for my misdeeds, nor to express it as I 
 should wish." Having knelt down, he said : " I 
 humbly ask pardon of God and your Excellencies 
 for all the errors committed by me ; and I am 
 ready to suffer whatsoever by your prudence shall 
 be determined and adjudged expedient for my 
 soul. And I further supplicate that you rather 
 give me a punishment which is excessive in grav- 
 ity than make such a public demonstration as 
 might bring some dishonor upon the holy habit of 
 the order which I have worn ; and if, through the 
 mercy of God and of your Excellencies, my life 
 shall be granted to me, I promise to make a nota- 
 ble reform in my life, and that I will atone for the 
 scandal by other and as great edification."
 
 GIORDAXO BRUNO 287 
 
 Inquisitor. " Have you anything else to say for 
 the present?" 
 
 Bruno. " I have nothing more to say." 
 
 II 
 
 This is the confession and apology of Giordano 
 Bruno, taken from the minutes of the Inquisition 
 of Venice, so far as I have been able to interpret 
 the ungrammatical, ill-punctuated report of the 
 secretary. The examinations were held on May 
 26 and 30, June 2, 3, 4, and July 30, 1592 ; and 
 as there were, consequently, many repetitions of 
 statement, I have condensed where it seemed ad- 
 visable. From Bruno's lips we hear the explana- 
 tion of his philosophical system, his doubts, his 
 belief, and his recantation of any opinions which 
 clashed with the dogmas of Catholicism. Was his 
 recantation sincere ? Before answering this ques- 
 tion, let us glance at his opinions as he expressed 
 them freely in his works ; for upon Bruno's value 
 as a thinker must finally rest the justification of 
 our interest in him. True, the romance of his 
 strange vagabond career and the pathos of his no- 
 ble death will always excite interest in his person- 
 ality ; but the final question which mankind asks 
 of prophet, philosopher, poet, preacher, or man of 
 science is, " What can you tell us concerning our 
 origin and our destiny ? "
 
 28S PORTRAITS 
 
 Be warned at the outset that Bruno furnished 
 no complete, systematic reply to this question. 
 He did not, like Sphioza, reduce his system to the 
 precision of a geometrical text-book, all theorems 
 and corollaries ; nor, like Herbert Spencer, did 
 he stow the universe away in a cabinet of pigeon- 
 holes. He is often inconsistent, often contradicts 
 himself. Perhaps his chief merit is that he stimu- 
 lated thought on every subject he touched, and 
 that he made sublime guesses which experiment, 
 toiling patiently after him, has established as 
 truths. Like all searchers for truth, his purpose 
 was to discover the all-embracing Unity. Our 
 reason shows us an unbridgeable chasm between 
 matter and mind ; the world of ideas and the 
 outward world are in perpetual flux; nature is 
 composed of innumerable separate objects, yet a 
 superior unity pervades them. Life and death 
 subsist antagonistically side by side : what is that, 
 greater than both, which includes both? What is 
 the permanence underlying this shifting, evanes- 
 cent world ? Conscience likewise reports the con- 
 flict between good and evil : what is the cause an- 
 terior to both ? Many solutions have been offered ; 
 perhaps the commonest is that which, taught by 
 the Manicheans and adopted by early Christians, 
 announces that there are two principles in the 
 universe, — one good, God, the other evil, Satan.
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 289 
 
 But insuperable difficulties accompany this view. 
 If God be, as assumed, all-powerful, why does he 
 not exterminate Satan ; if he be just, why does 
 he permit evil to exist at all ? 
 
 Bruno, as we have seen in his deposition, pro- 
 claims that God is one and indivisible, the Soul 
 of the universe ; that his attributes are power, 
 wisdom, and love ; that he is in all things, yet 
 above all things, not to be understood, ineffable, 
 and whether personal or impersonal, man cannot 
 say ; that Nature is his footprint, God being the 
 nature of Nature ; that since every material atom 
 is part of him, by virtue of his inunanence in Na- 
 ture, it is eternal, and so are human souls immor- 
 tal, being emanations from his immortal spirit ; but 
 whether souls preserve their identity, or whether, 
 like the atoms, they are forever re-composed into 
 new forms, Bruno does not decide. This, si)eak- 
 ing broadly, is pantheism ; and pantheism is a 
 system from which we are taught to recoil with 
 almost as much horror as from atheism. " That 
 is mere pantheism ! " exclaimed John Sterling, 
 aghast, at one of Carlyle's conclusions. " And 
 suppose it were />o^theism ? If the thing is true ! " 
 replied Carlyle, — a reply not to be taken for valid 
 argument, perhaps, yet worthy of being pondered. 
 As a pantheist, then, we must classify Bruno, — 
 in that wide class which includes Spinoza, Goethe,
 
 290 PORTRAITS 
 
 Shelley, and Emerson, " Within man is the soul 
 of the whole," says Emerson ; " the wise silence, 
 the universal beauty, to which every part and 
 particle is equally related, the eternal one. And 
 this deep power in which we exist, and whose 
 beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self- 
 sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of 
 seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spec- 
 tacle, the subject and the object, are one." The 
 Inquisition in 1600 would have burned Emerson 
 for those two sentences. 
 
 Coming to details, we find that Bruno shakes 
 himself free from the tyranny of Aristotle, — • 
 a mighty audacity, to measure which we must 
 remember that upon Aristotle's arbitrary dicta 
 the fathers and doctors of the Catholic Church 
 had based their dogmas. Though a pagan, he had 
 been for fifteen hundred years the logical pillar of 
 Christendom, uncanouized, yet deserving canoni- 
 zation along with St. Thomas and St. Augustine. 
 Bruno dared to attack the mighty despot in his 
 very strongholds, the Sorbonne and Oxford, and, by 
 so doing, helped to clear the road for subsequent 
 explorers of philosophy and science. Equally 
 courageous was his championship of the discoveries 
 and theories of Copernicus. Bruno, we may safely 
 say, was the first man who realized the full mean- 
 ing of the Copernican system, — a meaning which
 
 GIORDAXO BRUNO 291 
 
 even to-day the majority have not grasped. He 
 saw that it was not merely a question as to whether 
 the earth moves round the sun, or the sun moves 
 round the earth ; but that when Copernicus traced 
 the courses of our solar system, and saw other 
 and yet other systems beyond, he invalidated the 
 strong presumption upon which dogmatic Chris- 
 tianity was reared. According to the old view, the 
 earth was the centre of the universe, the especial 
 gem of God's creation ; as a final mark of his 
 favor, God created man to rule the earth, and 
 from among men he designated a few — his " chosen 
 people " — who should enjoy everlasting bliss in 
 heaven. But it follows from Copernicus's discov- 
 eries, that the earth is but one of a company of 
 satellites which circle round the sun ; that the 
 sun itself is but one of innumerable other suns, 
 each with its satellites ; that there are probably 
 coimtless inhabited orbs ; that the scheme of sal- 
 vation taught by the old theology is inadequate to 
 the new conceptions we are bound to form of the 
 majesty, justice, and omnipotence of the Supreme 
 Ruler of an infinite universe. The God whom 
 Bruno apprehended was not one who narrowed his 
 interests to the concerns of a Syrian tribe, and of 
 a sect of Christians on this little ball of earth, but 
 one whose power is commensurate with infinitude, 
 and who cherishes all creatures and all things in
 
 292 PORTRAITS 
 
 all worlds. Copernicus himself did not foresee 
 the full significance of the discovery which de- 
 throned the earth and man from their supposed 
 preeminence in the universe ; but Bruno caught 
 its mighty import, and the labors of Kepler, Gali- 
 leo, Newton, Herschel, and Darwin have corrobo- 
 rated him. 
 
 Inspired by this revelation, Bruno was the first 
 to envisage religions as human growths, just as 
 laws and customs are human growths, expressing 
 the higher or lower needs and aspirations of the 
 people and age in which they exist. His famous 
 satire, The Expulsion of the Beast Triumphant} 
 has a far deeper purpose than to travesty classic 
 mythology, or to ridicule the abuses of Romanists 
 and Protestants, or to scoff at the exaggerated 
 pretensions of the Pope. Under the form of an 
 allegory, it is a prophecy of the ultimate passing 
 away of all anthropomorphic religion. It shows 
 how the god whom men have worshiped hitherto 
 has been endowed by them with human passions 
 and attributes, " writ large," to be sure, but still 
 
 1 This, the most famous of Bruno's works, was until recently 
 so rare that only two or three copies of it were known to exist. 
 Hence numerovis blunders and misconceptions by critics who wrote 
 about it from hearsay. For a detailed analysis of " The Beast 
 Triumphant" I may refer the reader to The New World for 
 September, 1894. Lucian's satire, " Zeus in Heroics," may have 
 given the hint to Bruno.
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 293 
 
 unworthy of being associated with that Soul of 
 the AVorld which is in all things, yet above all 
 things. Everywhere he assails the doctrine that 
 faith, without good works, can lead to salvation. 
 He denounces celibacy, and other unnatural rules 
 of the Catholic Church. He denounces still more 
 vigorously the monstrous theory of original sin, 
 according to which an assumedly just God pun- 
 ishes myriads of millions of human beings for the 
 alleged trespass of two of their ancestors. Bruno 
 also cites the discovery of new races in America 
 as evidence that mankind are not all descended 
 from Adam and Eve ; whence he infers that, since 
 the Mosaic cosmogony is too narrow to explain 
 the creation and growth of mankind, the Hebrew 
 scheme of vicarious punishment and vicarious re- 
 demption must be inadequate. He laughs at the 
 idea of a "chosen people." Over and over again 
 Bruno derides the assertion that, in order to be 
 saved, we must despise our divinest guide. Reason, 
 and be led blindly by Faith, reducing ourselves 
 so far as we can to the level of donkeys. His 
 satire. La Cahala del Cavallo Pegaseo, which 
 supplements The Beast Triumphant, is a mock 
 eulogy of this " holy asininity, holy ignorance, holy 
 stupidity, and pious devotion, which alone can make 
 souls so good that human genius and study cannot 
 surpass them." " What avails, O truth-seeker,"
 
 294 PORTRAITS 
 
 he exclaims in one of his finest sonnets, ''your 
 studving and wishing to know how Xature works, 
 and whether the stars also are earth, fire, and sea ? 
 Holy donkeydom cares not for that, but with 
 clasped hands wills to remain on its knees, await- 
 ing from God its doom." 
 
 In a striking passage, Bruno explains that evil 
 is relative. •* Nothing is absolutely bad." he says; 
 '• because the viper is not deadly and pK)isonous to 
 the viper, nor the lion to the lion, nor dragon to 
 dragon, nor bear to bear ; but each thing is bad in 
 respect to some other, just as you. virtuous gods, 
 are evil towards the vicious." Again he says, 
 " Xobody is to-day the same as yesterday." The 
 immanence of the universal soul in the animal 
 world he illustrated thus : " "U'ith what under- 
 standing the ant gnaws her grain of wheat, lest 
 it should sprout in her underground habitation! 
 The fool says this is instinct, but we say it is a 
 species of understanding.'' 
 
 These are some of Bruno's characteristic opin- 
 ions. Their influence upon subsequent philoso- 
 phers has been much discussed. His conception 
 of the universe as an '* animal " corresponds with 
 Kepler's well-known view. Spinoza, the great pan- 
 theist of the following century, took from him the 
 idea of an immanent God, and the distinction 
 between natura naturans and natura naturata.
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 295 
 
 Schelling, who acknowledged Bruno as his master, 
 found in him the principle of the indifference of 
 contraries ; Hegel, that of the absolute identity 
 of subject and object, of the real and the ideal, 
 of thought and things. La Croze discovers in 
 Bruno the germs of most of Leibnitz's theories, 
 beginning with the monad. Symonds declares that 
 "he anticipated Descartes's position of the iden- 
 tity of mind and being. The modem theory of 
 evolution was enunciated by him in pretty plain 
 terms. He had grasped the physical law of the 
 conservation of energy. He solved the problem 
 of evil by defining it to be a relative condition of 
 imperfect energy. . . . TV"e have indeed reason 
 to marvel how many of Bruno's intuitions have 
 formed the stuff of later, more elaborated systems, 
 and still remain the best which these contain. We 
 have reason to wonder how many of his divina- 
 tions have worked themselves into the common 
 fund of modem beliefs, and have become philo- 
 sophical truisms." ^ Hallam, who strangely under- 
 valued Bruno, states that he understood the prin- 
 ciple of compound forces. After making due 
 allowance for the common tendency to read back 
 into men's opinions interpretations they never 
 dreamed of, we shall find that much solid sub- 
 
 ^ From J. A. SymondB's Renaissance in Italy : The Catholic 
 Reaction, chap. iz.
 
 296 PORTRAITS 
 
 stance still remains to Bruno's credit. He is, 
 above all, suggestive. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We come now to that perplexing question, 
 *' Why did he recant ? How could he, who was 
 so evidently a freethinker and a rationalist, hon- 
 estly affirm his belief in the Roman Catholic dog- 
 mas?" His confession seems to be straightfor- 
 ward and candid : had he wished to propitiate the 
 Inquisitors, he needed only not to mention his 
 philosophical doubts about the Incarnation and 
 the Trinity ; he needed only to admit that there 
 were in his writings errors which he no longer ap- 
 proved, and to throw himself on the mercy of his 
 tribunal. What, then, was the motive ? Was it 
 physical fear ? Did life and liberty seem too tempt- 
 ing to him who loved both so intensely; prefer- 
 able to death, no matter how great the sacrifice of 
 honor ? Did he simply perjure himself ? Or was 
 he suddenly overcome by a doubt that his opinions 
 might be, after all, wrong, and that the Church 
 might be right ? He testified, and others testified, 
 that before he had any thought of being brought 
 to trial he had determined to make his peace with 
 the Pope, and to obtain leave, if he could, to pass 
 the remainder of his life in philosophical tranquil- 
 lity. Did the early religious associations and preju- 
 dices, which he supposed had long ago ceased to
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 297 
 
 influence him, unexpectedly spring up, to reassert 
 a temporary tyranny over his reason ? Many men 
 not in jeopardy of their lives have had this expe- 
 rience of the tenacious vitality of the doctrines 
 taught to them before they could reason. Did 
 it seem to him a huge Aristophanic joke that a 
 church which then had but little real faith and 
 less true religion in it should call any one to ac- 
 count for any opinions, and that therefore the lips 
 might well enough accept her dogmas without 
 binding the heart to them? Many men, who be- 
 lieved themselves sincere, have subscribed in a 
 " non-natural sense " to the Thirty-nine Articles of 
 Anglicanism ; did Bruno subscribe to the Catholic 
 Articles under a similar mental reservation ? Or, 
 believing, as he did, that every religion contains 
 fragments of the truth, could he not honestly say 
 he believed in Catholicism, at the same time hold- 
 ing that her symbols had a deeper significance 
 than her theologians perceived, and that the truth 
 he apprehended was immeasurably wider? — just 
 as a mathematician might subscribe to the multi- 
 plication table, knowing that it is not the final 
 bound of mathematical truth, but only the first 
 step towards higher and unlimited investigations. 
 
 Throughout his examination Bruno was careful 
 to make the distinction between the province of 
 faith and the province of speculation. " Speaking 
 after the manner of philosophy," he confessed that
 
 298 PORTRAITS 
 
 he had reached conclusions which, " speaking as a 
 Catholic," he ought not to believe. This distinc- 
 tion, which we now think uncandid and casuisti- 
 cal, was nevertheless admitted in his time. All 
 through that century, men had argued "philoso- 
 phically " about the immortality of the soul ; but 
 " theologically " such an argument was impossible, 
 because the Church pronounced the immortality of 
 the soul to be an indisputable fact. But, we ask, 
 can a man honestly hold two antagonistic, mutu- 
 ally destroying beliefs ; saying, for instance, that 
 his reason has disproved the Incarnation, but that 
 his faith accepts that doctrine ? Or was Bruno 
 unaware of his contradictions ? Of how many of 
 your opinions concerning the ultimate mysteries of 
 life do you, reader, feel so sure that, were you sud- 
 denly seized, imprisoned, brought face to face with 
 a pitiless tribunal, and confronted by torture and 
 burning, you — one man against the world — 
 would boldly, without hesitation, publish and main- 
 tain them? Galileo, one of mankind's noblest, 
 could not endure this ordeal, although the evi- 
 dence of his senses and the testimony of his rea- 
 son contradicted the denial which pain and dread 
 wrung from him. Savonarola, another great spirit, 
 flinched likewise. These are points we are bound 
 to consider before we pronounce Bruno a hypo- 
 crite or a coward.
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 299 
 
 The last news we have of him in Venice is 
 when, " having been bidden several times," he rose 
 from his knees, after confessing his penitence, on 
 that 30th of July, 1592. The authorities of the 
 Inquisition at Rome immediately opened negotia- 
 tions for his extradition. The Doge and Senate 
 demurred ; they hesitated before establishing the 
 precedent whereby Rome could reach over and 
 punish Venetian culprits. Time was, indeed, when 
 Venice allowed no one, though he were the Pope, 
 to meddle in her administration ; but, alas ! the 
 lion had died out in Venetian souls. Finally, 
 " wishing to give satisfaction to his Holiness," 
 Doge and Senators consented to deliver Bruno up ; 
 the Pope expressed his gratification, and said that 
 he would never force upon the Republic " bones 
 hard to gnaw." So Bruno was taken to Rome. 
 In the " list of the prisoners of the Holy Office, 
 made Monday, April 5, 1599," we find that he 
 was imprisoned on February 27, 1553. What hap- 
 pened during almost seven years we can only sur- 
 mise. We may be sure the Inquisitors searched 
 his books for further heretical doctrine. We hear 
 that they visited him in his cell from time to time, 
 and exhorted him to recant, but that he replied 
 that he had nothing to abjure, and that they had 
 misinterpreted him. A memorial which he ad-
 
 300 PORTRAITS 
 
 dressed to them they did not read. Growing weary 
 of their ejBforts to save his soul, they would tempo- 
 rize no more ; on a given day he must retract, or 
 be handed over to the secular arm. That day 
 came: Giordano Bruno stood firm, though he knew 
 the penalty was death. 
 
 We cannot tell when he first resolved to dare 
 and suffer all. Some time during those seven 
 years of solitude and torment, he awoke to the 
 great fact that 
 
 " 'T is man's perdition to be safe, 
 When for the truth he ought to die." 
 
 Mere existence he could purchase with the base 
 coin of cowardice or casuistry ; but that would be, 
 not life, but a living shame, and he refused. Who 
 can tell how hard instinct pleaded, — how the 
 thoughts of freedom, how the longings for com- 
 panions, how the recollections of that beautiful 
 Neapolitan home which he loved and wished to 
 revisit, how the desire to explore yet more freely 
 the beauties and the mysteries of the divine uni- 
 verse, came to him with reasons and excuses to 
 tempt him from his resolution? But conscience 
 supported him. He took Truth by the hand, 
 turned his back on the world and its joy and sun- 
 shine, and followed whither she led into the silent, 
 sunless unknown. Let us dismiss the theory that
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 301 
 
 he was impelled by the desire to escape in this 
 way from an imprisonment which threatened to 
 be perpetual ; let us dismiss, and contemptuously 
 dismiss, the insinuation of an English writer, that 
 Bruno's purpose was, by a theatrical death, to 
 startle the world which had begun to forget him 
 in his confinement. To impute a low motive to a 
 noble deed is surely as base as to extenuate a 
 crime. Bruno had no sentimental respect for mar- 
 tyrs ; but on the day when he resolved to die for 
 his convictions, he proved his kinship with the 
 noblest martyrs and heroes of the race. 
 
 On February 8, 1600, he was brought before 
 Cardinal Mandruzzi, the Supreme Inquisitor. He 
 was formally degraded from his order, sentence of 
 death was pronounced against him, and he was 
 given up to the secular authorities. During the 
 reading, he remained tranquil, thoughtful. "When 
 the Inquisitor ceased, he uttered those memorable 
 words, which still, judging from the recent alarm 
 in the Vatican, resound ominously in the ears of 
 the Romish hierarchy : " Peradventure you pro- 
 nounce this sentence against me with greater fear 
 than I receive it." After nine days had been 
 allowed for his recantation, he was led forth, on 
 February 17, to the Campo di Fiora, — once an 
 amphitheatre, built by Pompey, and now a vege- 
 table market. When he had been bound to the
 
 302 PORTRAITS 
 
 stake, he protested, according to one witness, that 
 he died willingly, and that his soul would mount 
 with the smoke into paradise. Another account 
 says that he was gagged, to prevent his uttering 
 blasphemies. As the flames leaped up, a crucifix 
 was held before him, but he turned his head away. 
 He uttered no scream, nor sigh, nor murmur, as 
 Hus and Servetus had done ; even that last mortal 
 agony of the flesh could not overcome his spirit. 
 And when nothing remained of his body but 
 ashes, these were gathered up and tossed to the 
 winds. 
 
 Berti, to whose indefatigable and enlightened 
 researches, extending over forty years, we owe our 
 knowledge of Bruno's career,^ says justly that 
 Bruno bequeathed to his countrymen the example 
 of an Italian dying for an ideal, — a rare example 
 in the sixteenth century, but emulated by thou- 
 sands of Italians in the nineteenth. To us and to 
 all men his death brings not only that lesson, but 
 it also teaches that no tribunal, whether religious 
 or political, has a right to coerce the conscience 
 and inmost thoughts of any human being. Let a 
 man's deeds, so far as they affect the community, 
 be amenable to its laws, but his opinions should 
 
 1 See Berti's work, Giordano Bruno da Nola ; Sua Vita e Sua 
 Dottrina, 1889. This excellent biography deserves to be trans- 
 lated into English.
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 303 
 
 be free and inviolable. We can grant that the 
 Torquemadas and Calvins and Loyolas were sin- 
 cere, and that, from their point of view, they were 
 justified in persecuting men who differed from 
 them in religion ; for the heretic, they believed, 
 was Satan's emissary, and deserved no more mercy 
 than a fever-infected rag ; but history admonishes 
 us that their point of view was not only cruel, but 
 wrong. No man, no church, is infallible : there- 
 fore it may turn out that the opinions which the 
 orthodoxy of yesterday deemed pernicious have 
 infused new blood into the orthodoxy of to-day. 
 Bruno declared that the universe is infinite and 
 its worlds are innumerable ; the Roman Inquisi- 
 tion, in its ignorance, knew better. Galileo de- 
 clared that the earth moves round the sun ; the 
 Inquisition, in its ignorance, said, No. It burned 
 Bruno, it harried Galileo ; yet, after three centu- 
 ries, which do we believe ? And if the Roman 
 Church was fallible in matters susceptible of easy 
 proof, shall we believe that it, or any other church, 
 is infallible in matters immeasurably deeper and 
 beyond the scope of finite demonstration ? Cardi- 
 nal Bellarmine, an upright man, and perhaps the 
 ablest Jesuit of any age, was the foremost Inquisi- 
 tor in bringing Bruno to the stake, and in men- 
 acing Galileo with the rack ; but should a schoolboy 
 of ten now uphold Bellarmine's theory of the solar
 
 304 PORTRAITS 
 
 system, he would be sent into the corner with a 
 fool's-cap on his head. 
 
 Strange is it that mankind, who have the most 
 nro-ent need for truth, should have been in all 
 ages so hostile to receiving it. Starving men do 
 not kill their rescuers who bring them bread; 
 whereas history is little more than the chronicle 
 of the persecution and slaughter of those who have 
 brought food for the soul. Doubtless the first 
 savage who suggested that reindeer-meat would 
 taste better cooked than raw was slain by his com- 
 panions as a dangerous innovator. Ever since that 
 time, the messengers of truth have been stoned, and 
 burned, and ganched, and crucified ; yet their mes- 
 sage has been delivered, and has at last prevailed. 
 This is, indeed, the best encouragement we derive 
 from history, and the fairest presage of the per- 
 fectibility of mankind. 
 
 The study of the works of Giordano Bruno, 
 which has been revived and extended during this 
 century, is one evidence of a more general tolera- 
 tion, and of a healthy desire to know the opinions 
 of all kinds of thinkers. One reason why Bruno 
 has attracted modern investigators is because so 
 many of his doctrines are in tune with recent 
 metaphysical and scientific theories ; and it seems 
 probable that, for a while at least, the interest 
 awakened in him will increase rather than dimin-
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 305 
 
 ish, until, after the republication and examination 
 of all his writings, a just estimate of his specula- 
 tions shall have been made. Much will undoubt- 
 edly have to be thrown out as obsolete or fanciful ; 
 much as flippant and inconsistent ; much as vitiated 
 by the cumbrous methods of scholasticism, and the 
 tedious fashion of expounding philosophy by means 
 of allegory and satire. But, after all the chaff has 
 been sifted and all the excrescences have been 
 lopped off, something precious will remain. 
 
 The very diversity of opinions about the upshot 
 and value of his teaching insures for him the at- 
 tention of scholars for some time to come. Those 
 thinkers who can be quickly classified and easily 
 understood are as quickly forgotten ; only those 
 who elude classification, and constantly surprise 
 us by turning a new facet towards us, and provoke 
 debate, are sure of a longer consideration. And 
 see how conflicting are the verdicts passed upon 
 Bruno. Sir Philip Sidney and that fine group 
 of men who just preceded the Shakespearean com- 
 pany were his friends, and listened eagerly to his 
 speculations. Hegel says : " His inconstancy has 
 no other motive than his great-hearted enthusiasm. 
 The vulgar, the little, the finite, satisfied him not ; 
 he soared to the sublime idea of the Universal 
 Substance." The French philosophes of the eigh- 
 teenth century debated whether he were an athe-
 
 306 PORTRAITS 
 
 ist ; the critics of the nineteenth century declare 
 him to be a pantheist. Hallam thought that, at 
 the most, he was but a " meteor of philosophy." 
 Berti ranks him above all the Italian philosophers 
 of his epoch, and above all who have since lived in 
 Italy except Rosmini, and perhaps Gioberti. Some 
 have called him a charlatan ; some, a prophet. 
 Finally, Leo XIII, in an allocution which was read 
 from every Romish pulpit in Christendom, asserted 
 that " his writings prove him an adept in panthe- 
 ism and in shameful materialism, imbued with 
 coarse errors, and often inconsistent with him- 
 self;" and that "his talents were to feign, to lie, 
 to be devoted wholly to himself, not to bear con- 
 tradiction, to be of a base mind and wicked heart." 
 As we read these sentences of Leo XIII, and his 
 further denunciation of those who, like Bruno, ally 
 themselves to the Devil by using their reason, we 
 reflect that, were popes as powerful now as they 
 were three centuries ago, they would have found 
 reason enough to burn Mill and Darwin, and many 
 another modern benefactor. 
 
 Bruno's character, like his philosophy, offers so 
 many points for dispute that it cannot soon cease 
 to interest men. He is so human — neither demi- 
 god nor demon, but a creature of perplexities and 
 contradictions — that he is far more fascinating 
 than those men of a single faculty, those mono-
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO 307 
 
 tones whom we soon estimate and tire of. His 
 vitality, his daring, his surprises, stimulate us. In 
 an age when the growing bulk of rationalism casts 
 a pessimistic shadow over so many hopes, it is en- 
 couraging to know that the rationalist Bruno saw 
 no reason for despair ; and when some persons are 
 seriously asking whether life be worth living, it 
 is inspiring to point to a man to whom the boon 
 of life was so precious and its delights seemed so 
 inexhaustible. At any period, when many minds, 
 after exploring all the avenues of science, report 
 that they perceive only dead matter everywhere, it 
 must help some of them to learn that Bruno be- 
 held throughout the whole creation and in every 
 creature the presence of an infinite Unity, of a 
 Soul of the World, whose attributes are power, 
 wisdom, and love. He was indeed " a God-intox- 
 icated man." Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Aquinas 
 spun their cobwebs round the border of the nar- 
 row circle in which, they asserted, all truth, mun- 
 dane and celestial, was comprehended ; Bruno's 
 restless spirit broke through the cobwebs, and dis- 
 covered limitless spaces, innumerable worlds, be- 
 yond. To his enraptured eyes, all things were 
 parts of the One, the Ineffable. "The Inquisi- 
 tion and the stake," says Mr. Symonds, " put an 
 end abruptly to his dream. But the dream was 
 80 golden, so divine, that it was worth the pangs
 
 308 PORTRAITS 
 
 of martyrdom. Can we say the same for Hegel's 
 system, or for Schopenhauer's, or for the encyclo- 
 paedic ingenuity of Herbert Spencer?" By his 
 death Bruno did not prove that his convictions 
 are true, but he proved beyond peradventure that 
 he vras a true man ; and by such from the begin- 
 ning has human nature been raised tovjrards that 
 ideal nature which we believe divine.
 
 BRYANT 
 
 There are many good reasons why we should 
 celebrate the one hundredth birthday of William 
 Cullen Bryant.^ Not the least of them is this, 
 that in bringing him our tribute we also commem- 
 orate the birthday of American poetry. He was 
 our earliest poet, and " Thanatopsis " our earliest 
 poem. Through him, therefore, we make festival 
 to the Muse who has taught many since him to 
 sing. 
 
 Older than Bryant were three single-poem men, 
 — Francis Scott Key, Joseph Hopkinson, and 
 John Howard Payne ; yet, so far as I can learn, 
 their three poems were written later than " Thana- 
 topsis," and, after all, neither " The Star Spangled 
 Banner," nor " Hail Columbia," nor " Home, 
 Sweet Home," would rank high as poetry. Like- 
 wise, though Fitz-Greene Halleck was older than 
 Bryant by four years, and once enjoyed a consid- 
 erable vogue, his verse is now obsolescent, if not 
 obsolete. In the anthologies — those presses of 
 faded poetical flowers — you will still find some 
 
 * First printed in The Review of Reviews, New York, October, 
 1894.
 
 310 PORTRAITS 
 
 of his pieces ; but which of us now regards " Marco 
 Bozzaris " as the " finest martial poem in the lan- 
 guage " ? 
 
 Bryant's priority among his immediate contem- 
 poraries is thus clearly established ; furthermore, 
 a considerable interval separated him from that 
 group of American poets who rose to eminence in 
 the two decades before the civil war. Bryant 
 was born in 1794, Emerson in 1803, Longfellow 
 and Whittier in 1807, Holmes and Poe in 1809, 
 Lowell and Whitman in 1819. An almost un- 
 exampled precocity also set Bryant's pioneership 
 beyond dispute. 
 
 But when we call Bryant the earliest American 
 poet, and " Thanatopsis " the earliest American 
 poem, we must not suppose that both had not had 
 many ineffectual predecessors. Versifiers, like 
 milliners, flourish from age to age, and their works 
 are forgotten in favor of a later fashion. Who 
 the forgotten predecessors of Bryant were, he him- 
 self will tell us. Being asked in February, 1818, 
 to write an article on American poetry for the 
 North American Reniew he replied : — 
 
 " Most of the American poets of much note, I 
 believe, I have read, — Dwight, Barlow, Trumbull, 
 Humphreys, Honeywood, Clifton, Paine. The 
 works of Hopkins I have never met with. I have 
 seen Philip Freneau's writings, and some things by
 
 BRYANT 311 
 
 Francis Hopkinson. There was a Dr. Ladd, if I 
 am not mistaken in the name, of Rhode Island, 
 who, it seems, was much celebrated in his time for 
 his poetical talent, of whom I have seen hardly 
 anj'thing ; and another, Dr. Church, a Tory at the 
 beginning of the Revolution, who was comj^elled 
 to leave the country, and some of whose satirical 
 verses which I have heard recited possess consid- 
 erable merit as specimens of forcible and glowing 
 invective. I have read most of Mrs. Morton's 
 poems, and turned over a volume of stale and 
 senseless rhymes by Mrs. Warren. Before the 
 time of these writers, some of whom are still alive, 
 and the rest belong to the generation which has 
 just passed away, I imagine that we could hardly 
 be said to have any poetry of our own ; and indeed 
 it seems to me that American poetry, such as it 
 is, may justly enough be said to have had its rise 
 with that knot of Connecticut poets, Trumbull 
 and others, most of whose works appeared about 
 the time of the Revolution." ^ 
 
 Bryant's list contains the name of not one poet 
 whose works are read to-day. All these volumes 
 belong to fossil literature, — literature, that is, 
 which may be dug up and studied for the light it 
 may throw on the customs of a time, or its intcl- 
 
 ^ A Biogrujjfiy of William Cullen Hri/unt, by Parke Godwin, 
 i, 154.
 
 312 PORTRAITS 
 
 lectual development, but which, so far as its own 
 vitality is concerned, has passed away beyond hope 
 of resuscitation. The historical student of Amer- 
 ican poetry may read Barlow's " Columbiad " as a 
 matter of duty ; but those of us to whom poetry is 
 the breath of life will not seek it in that literary 
 graveyard. Reverently, rather, will we read the 
 titles on the tombstones and pass on. 
 
 Almost coeval with American independence it- 
 self was the notion that there ought to be an in- 
 dependent American literature. The Revolution 
 had resulted in the formation of a republic new 
 in pattern, in opportunities, in ideals ; a republic 
 which, having broken forever with the political 
 system of Britain, would gladly have been freed 
 from all obligations — including intellectual and 
 aesthetic obligations — to her. We hardly realize 
 how acute was the sensitiveness of our great- 
 grandfathers on this point. The satisfaction they 
 took in recalling the victories of Bennington and 
 Yorktown vanished when they were reminded — 
 and there was always some candid foreigner at 
 hand to remind them — that a nation's real great- 
 ness is measured, not by the size of its crops, nor 
 by its millions of square miles of surface, nor by 
 the rapidity with which its population doubles, 
 nor even by its ability to whip King George the 
 Third's armies, but by its contributions to philo-
 
 BRYANT 313 
 
 sopliy, to literature, to art, to religion. " What 
 have you to show in these lines ? " we imagine the 
 candid foreigner to have been perpetually asking ; 
 and the patriotic American to have winced, as he 
 had to reply, " Nothing ; " unless, indeed, he hap- 
 pened to have Thomas Jefferson's philosophical 
 poise. To the slur of Abbe Raynal, that " Amer- 
 ica had not produced a single man of genius," 
 Jefferson replied : " When we shall have existed 
 as a people as long as the Greeks did before they 
 produced a Homer, the Romans a Virgil, the French 
 a Racine and Voltaire, the English a Shakespeare 
 and Milton, should this reproach be still true, we 
 will inquire from what unfriendly causes it has 
 proceeded that the other countries of Europe and 
 other quarters of the earth shall not have inscribed 
 any name of ours on the roll of poets." 
 
 Very few Americans, however, could bear with 
 Jeffersonian equanimity the imputation of inferi- 
 ority. All were well aware that they had just 
 achieved a revolution without parallel in history ; 
 they were honestly proud of it ; and they could not 
 help feeling touchy when their critics, ignoring 
 this stupendous achievement, censured them for 
 failure in fields they had never entered. A few, 
 like Jefferson, would respond, " Give us time ; " 
 the majority either masked their irritation under 
 pretended contempt for the opinion of foreigners,
 
 314 PORTRAITS 
 
 or silently admitted the impeachment. There 
 grew up, on the one hand, " spread-eagleism," — 
 brag over our material and political bigness, — and, 
 on the other, an impatient desire to produce mas- 
 terpieces which should not fear comparison with 
 the best the world could show. The Hebrew pa- 
 triarchs, whose faith Jehovah tested by denying 
 them children till the old age of their wives, were 
 not less troubled at the postponement of their 
 dearest wishes than were those eager watchers for 
 the advent of American genius. Long before 
 Bryant's little volume was published, in 1821, 
 those watchers had begun to speculate as to the 
 sort of work in which that genius would mani- 
 fest itself, and then was conjured up that bogy, 
 " The American Spii'it," which has flitted up and 
 down through our college lecture-rooms and flut- 
 tered the minds of immature critics ever since. It 
 was generally agreed that the question to be asked 
 about each new book should be, " Has it The Amer- 
 ican Spirit?" and not, "Is it excellent?" No- 
 body knew how to define that spirit, but everybody 
 had a teasing conviction that, unless it were con- 
 spicuous, the offspring of American genius could 
 not prove their legitimac}'. Foreigners, especially 
 the English, encouraged this conviction. They ex- 
 pected something strange and uncouth ; they would 
 accept nothing else as genuine. Hence, years after-
 
 BRYANT 315 
 
 ward, when Whitman, with cowboy gait, came 
 swaggering up Parnassus, shouting nicknames 
 at the Muses and ready to ship Apollo on the 
 back, our perspicacious English cousins exclaimed, 
 " There I there ! that 's American ! At last we 've 
 found a poet with The American Spirit ! " For 
 quite other reasons Whitman deserves serious at- 
 tention ; not for those extravagances which he 
 deluded himself and his unrestrained admirers into 
 thinking were most precious manifestations of The 
 American Spirit. This bogy has now been pretty 
 thoroughly exorcised, its followers being chiefly 
 the writers of bad grammar, bad s^Delling, and 
 slang, — which pass for dialect stories, — and an 
 occasional student of literature, who finds very lit- 
 tle of the American product that could not have 
 been produced elsewhere. We may dismiss The 
 American Spirit, bidding it seek its spectral com- 
 panion. The Great American Novel, but we must 
 remember that, even before Bryant began to write, 
 it was worrying the minds of our literary folk. 
 
 Bryant himself must have been subjected, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, to the influences we have 
 surveyed, — for who can escape breathing the com- 
 mon atmosphere ? But he had within him that 
 which is more potent than any external mould, 
 and is the one trait hereditary in genius of every 
 kind, — he had sincerity. What he saw, he saw
 
 310 PORTRAITS 
 
 with his own eyes ; what he spake, he spake with 
 his own lips ; and inevitably it followed that men 
 proclaimed him original. His secret, his method, 
 were no more than this. " I saw some lines by 
 you to the skylark," he writes to his brother in 
 1838. " Did you ever see such a bird ? Let me 
 counsel you to draw your images, in describing 
 Nature, from what you observe around you, unless 
 you are professedly composing a description of 
 some foreign country, when, of course, you will 
 learn what you can from books. The skylark is 
 an Ensrlish bird, and an American who has never 
 visited Europe has no right to be in raptures 
 about it." That last sentence explains Bryant; 
 it is worth a hundred essays on The American 
 Spirit ; it shoidd be the warning of every writer. 
 The raptures of Americans over English skylarks 
 they had never seen were then, and have always 
 been, the bane of our literature. Eighty years 
 ago the lowlands at the foot of our Helicon had 
 been turned into a slough by the tears of rhym- 
 sters who did not feel the griefs they sang of, and 
 the woods howled with sighs which caused no pang 
 to the sighers. Bryant, by merely being natural 
 and sincere, was instantly recognized as belonging 
 to that lineage every one of whose children is a 
 king. 
 
 The story of his entry into literature, though
 
 BRYANT ;U7 
 
 well known, cannot be too often told. Born at 
 Cumraington, a little village on the Hampshire 
 hills, Massachusetts, November 3, 1794, his father 
 was a genial, fairly cultivated country doctor; 
 his mother, Sarah Snell, an indefatigable house- 
 wife, with Yankee common-sense and deep-grained 
 Puritan principles. William Cullen, the second 
 of several children, was precocious; both parents 
 encouraged his aptitude for verse-making, and a 
 satire which he wrote in 1807 on Jefferson and 
 the Embargo his father was proud to have printed 
 in Boston, In 1810 young Bryant entered the 
 sophomore class of Williams College, and spent a 
 year there. He hoped to pass from Williams to 
 Yale, where he looked for more advanced instruc- 
 tion, but his father's means did not permit, and 
 the son, instead of finishing his course at Wil- 
 liams, went into a country lawyer's office and fitted 
 himself for the bar. Just at the moment of in- 
 decision, in the autumn of 1811, Bryant wrote 
 " Thanatopsis." Contrary to his custom, he did 
 not show it to his father, but laid it away with 
 other papers in a drawer. Six years later Dr. 
 Bryant, whose duties as a member of the Massa- 
 chusetts legislature took him often to Boston, and 
 whose bright parts and liberal views made him 
 welcome in the foremost circles there, was asked 
 by his friends, who edited the North American
 
 318 PORTRAITS 
 
 Meview^ for some contribution. On returning to 
 Cummington, he happened to find his son's seques- 
 tered papers, and, choosing " Thanatopsis " — of 
 which, the original being covered with many cor- 
 rections, he made a copy — and " The Waterfowl," 
 he sent them off to Boston, and they appeared in 
 the Review for September, 1817. The young poet, 
 having meanwhile completed his legal studies, was 
 practicing law at Great Barrington, unconscious of 
 the fame about to descend upon him. Owing to 
 the handwriting of the copy of the poems sent 
 to the Review, however. Dr. Bryant had for a 
 moment the credit of being the author of " Thana- 
 topsis." 
 
 After duly allowing for the common tendency 
 to make fame retroactive, we cannot doubt that 
 *' Thanatopsis " secured immediate and, relatively, 
 immense recognition. The best judges agreed that 
 at last a bit of genuine American literature was 
 before them ; the uncritical but appreciative, from 
 ministers to school children, read, learned, ad- 
 mired, and quoted the grave, sonorous lines. 
 
 Thanatopsis, — a Vision of Death ! A strange 
 corner-stone for the poetic literature of the nation 
 which had only recently sprung into life, — a nation 
 conscious as no other had been of its exuberant 
 vitality, of its boundless material resources, of its 
 expansiveness and invincible will. Yet neither the
 
 BRYANT :119 
 
 glory achieved nor the ambition cherished fired the 
 imagination of the youthful poet. He looked upon 
 the earth, and saw it but a vast grave ; he looked 
 upon men and beheld, not their high ambitions nor 
 the great deeds which blazon human story, but 
 their transcience, their mortality. Nothing in life 
 could so awe him as the majestic mystery of death. 
 
 The mood, I believe, is not rare among sensitive 
 and thoughtful youths, who, just as their faculties 
 have ripened sufficiently to enable them to feel 
 a little of the unspeakable delight of living, are 
 staggered at realizing for the first time that death 
 is inevitable, and that the days of the longest life 
 are few. That this terrific discovery should kindle 
 thoughts full of sublimity need not surprise us ; 
 but we may well be astonished that Bryant at 
 seventeen should have had power to express them 
 in a poem which is neither morbid nor religiously 
 commonplace. 
 
 In 1821 Bryant received what was then the blue 
 ribbon of recognition in being asked to deliver a 
 poem before the Harvard Chapter of the Phi Beta 
 Kappa Society. He wrote " The Ages," read it 
 in Cambridge and printed it, together with " Than- 
 atopsis " and a few other pieces, in a little volume. 
 The previous conviction was confirmed ; every one 
 spoke of Bryant as the American poet. Even the 
 professional critics — those sapient fellows whose
 
 ;3-20 PORTRAITS 
 
 obtuseness is the wonder of posterity, the clique 
 which pooh-poohed Keats, and ha-hahed Words- 
 worth, and bear-baited Carlyle — made in Bryant's 
 case no mistake. Although one of them, indeed, 
 declared that there was "no more poetry in Bry- 
 ant's poems than in the Sermon on the Mount," 
 yet the opinions were generally laudatory, and the 
 critics were quick in defining the qualities of the 
 new poet. They found in him something of Cow- 
 per and something of Wordsworth, but the resem- 
 blances did not imply imitation ; Bryant might 
 speak their language, but it was his also. No one 
 questioned the genuineness of his inspiration, and 
 not for a quarter of a century after the publica- 
 tion of " Thanatopsis," that is, not until the early 
 forties, — when Longfellow, Whittier, Poe, and 
 Emerson began to have a public for their poetry, 
 — did any one question Bryant's primacy. He had 
 been so long the only American poet that it was 
 naturally assumed that he would always be the 
 best. He had redeemed America from the re- 
 proach of barrenness in poetry, as Irving and 
 Cooper redeemed its prose, and Americans could 
 feel toward no others as they felt toward him. 
 
 A hundred years have elapsed since his birth ; 
 three generations have known his works : what is 
 Bryant to us, who are posterity to him ? Is he, 
 like Cimabue in painting, a mere name to date
 
 BRYANT :521 
 
 from, — a pioneer whom we respect, — and nothing 
 more ? Far from it. Bryant's poetry is not only 
 chronologically but absolutely interesting : it lives 
 to-day, and the qualities which have vitalized it for 
 three quarters of a century show no signs of decay. 
 It would be incorrect, of course, to assert that 
 Bryant holds relatively so high a place in our liter- 
 ature as he held fifty years ago ; his estate then 
 was the first poetic clearing in the wilderness ; 
 its boundaries are still the same ; but subsequent 
 poets have made other clearings all round his, and 
 brought different prospects into view and different 
 talents under cultivation. 
 
 Let us look briefly at Bryant's domain. Inti- 
 mate and faithful portrayal of Nature is the pro- 
 duct which first draws our attention ; next we 
 perceive that the observer who makes the picture 
 is a sober moralist. He delights in Nature for 
 her own sake, for her beauty and variety ; and then 
 she suggests to him some rule of conduct, some 
 parallel between her laws and the laws of human 
 life, by which he is comforted and uplifted. Bry- 
 ant, I have said elsewhere, interprets Nature mor- 
 ally, Emerson spiritually, and Shelley emotion- 
 ally. We need not stop to inquire which of these 
 methods of interpretation is the highest. Suffice 
 it for us to realize that all of them are valuable, 
 and that the poet who succeeds in identifying him-
 
 322 PORTRAITS 
 
 self in a marked degree with any one of them will 
 not soon be forgotten. 
 
 That Wordsworth preceded Bryant in the moral 
 interpretation of Nature detracts nothing from 
 Bryant's merit. The latest prophet is no less ori- 
 ginal than the earliest ; for originality lies in being 
 a prophet at all. Young Bryant, wandering over 
 the bleak Hampshire hills or in the woods or along 
 the brawling streams, had original impressions, 
 which he trustingly recorded ; and to-day, if you 
 go to Cummington, you will marvel at the fidelity 
 of his record. But his poetry is true not only 
 there ; it is true in every region where Nature 
 has similar aspects ; symbolically, it is true every- 
 where. 
 
 There being no doubt as to the veracity of his 
 pictures, what shall we say of that other quality, 
 the moral tone which pervades them ? That, too, 
 is of a kind men will not soon outgrow. It incul- 
 cates courage, patience, fortitude, trust ; it springs 
 from the optimism of one who believes in the ulti- 
 mate triumph of good, not because he can prove 
 it, but because his whole being revolts at the 
 thought of evil triumphant. He has the stoic's 
 dread of flinching before any shock of misfortune, 
 the Christian's dread of the taint of sin. Here 
 are two ideals, each the complement of the other, 
 which the world cannot outgrow, and the poet who
 
 BRYANT 323 
 
 — pondering on a fringed gentian or the flight of 
 a waterfowl, or on a rivulet bickering among its 
 grasses — found new incitements to courage and 
 virtue, thereby associated himself with the eternal. 
 To interpret nature morally in this fashion, which 
 is Bryant's fashion, is to rise far above the level of 
 the common didacticism of our pulpits. Profes- 
 sional moralists go to nature for figures of sjjeech 
 to furnish forth their sermons and religious verse, 
 as they go to their kitchen garden for vegetables ; 
 but they do not enter Bryant's world. 
 
 Moreover, in painting the scenery of the Hamp- 
 shire hills, and in saturating his descriptions with 
 the moral tonic I have spoken of, Bryant became 
 the representative of a phase of New England life 
 which has had an incalculable influence on the de- 
 velopment of this nation. The mitigated Spartan- 
 ism amid which his youth was passed bred those 
 colonists who carried New England standards with 
 them to the shores of the Pacific. A Puritan by 
 derivation and environment, Bryant was by train- 
 ing and conviction a Unitarian, — a combination 
 which made him in a sense the exemplar both of 
 the austerity which had characterized New Eng- 
 land ideals in the past, and of the liberalism which 
 during this century has nowhere found more stren- 
 uous supporters than in New P]ngland. 
 
 On many positive grounds, therefore, Bryant's
 
 ty2i PORTRAITS 
 
 title to fame rests ; he was one of Nature's men, 
 he shed moral health, he uttered the ideals of a 
 great race in a transitional epoch. His tempera- 
 ment, in making his poetic product small, gave him 
 yet another hostage against oblivion. The poet 
 who, having so many claims to the consideration 
 of posterity, can also plead brevity, need not worry 
 himself about what is called literary immortality. 
 Bryant's typical and best work is comprised in a 
 dozen poems, the longest not exceeding 140 lines. 
 Kead " Thanatopsis," " The Yellow Violet," " In- 
 scription for the Entrance to a Wood," " To a 
 Waterfowl," " Green River," " A Winter Piece," 
 " The Rivulet," " A Forest Hymn," " The Past," 
 "To a Fringed Gentian," "The Death of the 
 Flowers," and "The Battlefield," and you have 
 Bryant's message ; the rest of his work either 
 echoes the notes already sounded in these, or re- 
 presents uncharacteristic, and therefore transitory, 
 moods. 
 
 Not less conspicuous than his excellences are 
 Bryant's limitations. We may say of him that, 
 like Wordsworth, he did not always overcome a 
 tendency to emphasize the obvious, and that, like 
 almost all contemplative poets, he sometimes made 
 the didactic unnecessarily obtrusive. We have all 
 heard parsons who, after finishing their sermon, 
 sum it up in a valedictory prayer, with a hint as
 
 BRYANT 325 
 
 to its application, for the benefit of the Lord; 
 equally superfluous, even for mortal readers, is the 
 moral too often appended to a poem which is well 
 able to convey its meaning without it. In this 
 respect Bryant resembles most of our American 
 poets, in whom didacticism has prevailed to an 
 extent that will lessen their repute with poster- 
 ity ; for each generation manufactures more than 
 enough of this commodity for its own consumption, 
 and cannot be induced to try stale moralities left 
 over from the fathers. 
 
 Bryant's self-control, the backbone of a char- 
 acter of high integrity, prevented him from in- 
 didging in emotions which, if they be not the sub- 
 stance of great poetry, are the color, the glow, 
 which give great poetry its charm. He addresses 
 the intellect; he has, if not heat, light; and he 
 does not, as emotional poets sometimes do, play 
 the intellect false or lead it astray. 
 
 In his versification he is compact and stately, 
 though occasionally stiff. He came at the end of 
 that metrical drought which lasted from Milton's 
 death to Burns, when the instinct for writing mu- 
 sical iambics was lost, and, instead, men wrote in 
 measured thuds, by rule. That phenomenon the 
 psychologist should explain. How was it that a 
 people lost, during a century and a half, its ear 
 for metrical music, as if a violinist should sud-
 
 326 PORTRAITS 
 
 denly prefer a tom-tom to a violin ? Probably the 
 exorbitant use of hymn and psalm singing, that 
 came in with the Puritans, helped to degrade 
 English poetry. The spirit which expelled emo- 
 tion from worship, and destroyed whatever it coidd 
 of the beauty of England's churches, had no un- 
 derstanding for metrical harmony. Any poor 
 shred of morality, the tritest dogmatic platitude, if 
 stretched thin, chopped into the required number 
 of feet, rhymed, and packed into six or eight 
 stanzas, with clumsy variations on the doxology at 
 the end, made a hymn, for the edification of per- 
 sons whose object was worship and not beauty. 
 As a means to unction, mere doggerel, sung out of 
 tune, would serve as well as anything. 
 
 At any rate, the taste for rigid iambics would 
 naturally be acquired by Bryant at his church- 
 going in childhood, and from the eighteenth cen- 
 tury poets whom he read earliest. The beautiful 
 variety of modulations which Coleridge, Shelley, 
 Keats, and Tennyson have shown this verse — the 
 historic metre of our race — to be susceptible of, 
 lay beyond Bryant's range. His verse is either 
 simple, almost colloquial, or dignified, as befits his 
 theme ; even in ornament he is sober. As he never 
 surpassed the grandeur of conception of " Thana- 
 topsis," so, I think, he did not afterward equal 
 the splendid metrical sweep of certain passages 
 in that wonderful poem.
 
 BRYANT 327 
 
 And this fact points to another : Bryant is one 
 of the few poets of genuine power whose poetic 
 career shows no advance. The first arrow he 
 drew from his quiver was the best, and with it 
 he made his longest shot ; many others he sent in 
 the same direction, but they all fell behind the 
 first. This accounts for the singleness and depth 
 of the impression he has left ; he stands for two 
 or three elementals, and thereby keeps his force 
 unscattered. He was not, indeed, wholly insensi- 
 ble to the romanticist stirrings of his time, as such 
 effusions as " The Damsel of Peru," " The Arctic 
 Lover," and " The Hunter's Serenade," bear wit- 
 ness. He w rote several pieces about Indians, — 
 not the real red men, but those imaginary noble 
 savages, possessors of all the primitive virtues, 
 with whom our grandfathers peopled the Ameri- 
 can forests. He wrote strenuously in behalf of 
 Greek emancipation and against slavery; but even 
 here, though the subject lay very near his heart, 
 he could not match the righteous vehemence of 
 Whittier, or Lowell's alternate volleys of sarcasm 
 and rebuke. Like Antaeus, Bryant ceased to be 
 powerful when he did not tread his native earth. 
 
 We have thus surveyed his poetical product and 
 genius, for to these first of all is due the celebra- 
 tion of his centennial, and we conclude that his 
 contemporaries were right and that we are right
 
 328 PORTRAITS 
 
 in holding his work precious. But while it is 
 through his poetry that Bryant survives, let us 
 not forget the worth of his personality. For sixty 
 years he was the clean of American letters. By 
 liis example he swept away the old foolish idea 
 that unwillingness to pay bills, addiction to the 
 bottle and women, and a preference for frowsy 
 hair and dirty linen are necessary attributes of 
 genius, especially of poetic genius. He disdained 
 the proverbial backbiting and envy of authors. 
 As the editor of a newspaper which for haK a 
 century had no superior in the country, he exer- 
 cised an influence which cannot be computed. We 
 who live under the regime of journalists who con- 
 ceive it to be the mission of newspapers to deposit 
 at every doorstep from eight to eighty pages of 
 the moral and political garbage of the world every 
 morning, — we may well magnify Bryant, whose 
 long editorial career bore witness that being a 
 journalist should not absolve a man from the 
 common obligations of moral cleanliness, of vera- 
 city, of scandal-hating, of delicacy, of honor. 
 
 Finally, Bryant was a great citizen, — that last 
 product which it is the business of our education 
 and our political and social life to bring forth. In 
 a monarchy the soldier is the type most highly 
 prized; but in a democracy, if democratic forms 
 shall long endure, citizens of the Bryant pattern.
 
 BRYAXT .329 
 
 whose chief concern in public not less than in pri- 
 vate life is to " make reason and the will of God 
 prevail," must abound in constantly increasing 
 numbers. Happy and grateful should we be that, 
 in commemorating our earliest poet, we can discern 
 no line of his which has not an upward tendency, 
 no trait of his character unfit to be used in build- 
 ing a noble, strong, and righteous State.
 
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